Artillery and ships

[buchanan17]

This part of the game is crazy. For example in playing ANY overlord scenario from the highest to lowest scale, the allied ships get disabled WAY too easily. Three German guns can disable battleships just too easily. The ships are moving for goodness sake, and can take a fair bit of damage, yet the shore guns - in a fixed location and often not even in bunkers hardly get touched in these exchanges. YOu end up having to move the ships away from the coast towards the end of the turn - OK if it doesn't come suddenly early!

[Brevet]

Planes will sink 'em quick too...

[MarcA]

Depending on the ship, of course, you really need a 12"+ gun do do any thing except surface damage to a battleship.

To kill a battle ship you really need another battle ship or torpedo planes, even then many had belt armour against this, for example the BB Musashi needed 19 torpedoes to sink here. You either had to get a lucky strike on the prop shaft/steering gear or basically pound them apart.

I know naval units are an abstraction but it might be worth looking over this again as BB's and CA's do seem to be incapacitated very easily

[golden delicious]

What you have to bear in mind is;

a) when a ship is 'destroyed' in TOAW combat, there is a good chance it is just sent to the 'on-hand' stockpile in the replacement engine. Depending on a few things, it should come back into the game in a while.
b) even if the ship is permanently 'lost' in TOAW terms, this just means it is out of action for the duration of the scenario. If your scenario (or- in the case of Overlord scenarios- the duration for which the naval units are present) is only a few days, this could mean just some minor damage or even that the ship has exhausted all its AA ammunition (ships retired away from Crete in 1941 for just this reason). Most scenarios don't cover more than a few months, so any significant damage is not going to be repaired during the course of the game, so as far as the players are concerned it might as well have been sunk.

[MarcA]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

What you have to bear in mind is;

a) when a ship is 'destroyed' in TOAW combat, there is a good chance it is just sent to the 'on-hand' stockpile in the replacement engine. Depending on a few things, it should come back into the game in a while.
b) even if the ship is permanently 'lost' in TOAW terms, this just means it is out of action for the duration of the scenario. If your scenario (or- in the case of Overlord scenarios- the duration for which the naval units are present) is only a few days, this could mean just some minor damage or even that the ship has exhausted all its AA ammunition (ships retired away from Crete in 1941 for just this reason). Most scenarios don't cover more than a few months, so any significant damage is not going to be repaired during the course of the game, so as far as the players are concerned it might as well have been sunk.

I understand your point but for battle ships this is generally invalid as only the largest dedicated shore batteries would have a chance at damaging them other than superficially.

For the smaller ships damage leading to repair and refitting is reasonably modelled by the abstraction in the game, but for the heavy stuff it is just too easy to damage them.

In the longer scenarios use of ammo would be a concern while in the campaign scenarios such things as maintanance and R&R would also be consideration. But these things can be modelled through the degredation of efficiency, supply and readiness of the naval units each turn it is not docked in a freindly port.

[shunwick]

The main problem is that naval warfare is barely modelled by TOAW.  If you are finding that your ships are sunk too easily then the real culprit is the scenario designer. 
 
Best wishes,
 
Steve

[SMK-at-work]

Shore batteries WERE insanely effective vs ships - they had all hte advantages - they had fixed positions which they knew, they had massive rangefinders, they had no other structure that could be damaged and cause them to become useless without actually getting hit (eg engines, bridge, hull) - unless you actually hit the gun then you weren't going to do anything.

Time after time, throughout the ages, ships have always been at a disadvantage vs shore batteries - Gallipoli is perhaps hte most famous - antiquated Turkish guns vs dozens of pre-dreadnoughts and even the 15" guns of hte Queen Elizabeth over several days culminating on 18 March 1915.  Only a handfull of Turkish guns were actually destroyed - had it gone on another day the Turks would have run out of ammo!!

[MarcA]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

Shore batteries WERE insanely effective vs ships - they had all hte advantages - they had fixed positions which they knew, they had massive rangefinders, they had no other structure that could be damaged and cause them to become useless without actually getting hit (eg engines, bridge, hull) - unless you actually hit the gun then you weren't going to do anything.

Time after time, throughout the ages, ships have always been at a disadvantage vs shore batteries - Gallipoli is perhaps hte most famous - antiquated Turkish guns vs dozens of pre-dreadnoughts and even the 15" guns of hte Queen Elizabeth over several days culminating on 18 March 1915. Only a handfull of Turkish guns were actually destroyed - had it gone on another day the Turks would have run out of ammo!!

Maybe so, but the point here is that BB's in particular are too easily damaged in this game, which they are. You are discussing the damage to the shore guns during a bombardment, which is different topic.

And if we go to the particular operation the OP was discussing, the D-Day landings, the type of guns the Germans had available to them in reality, did very little damage, if any, to the heavy ships bombardment and suirface combat fleet. Note, I said bombardment fleet and not amphibeous landing fleet, which primarily consisted of light craft.

BB's are put out of action too easily in TOAW. Somebody else, in a different thread suggested multiplying the defensive values of BB's by 5, which sounds like a start, but would require an equipment editor. As another suggestion here, wanting to be positive rather than negative on this subject, you could model ammo loss through the proportion of supplies used during combat. Is there anyway to alter supplies used during combat through an editor?

[SMK-at-work]

If the shore guns are good enough they wil massacre ships as the Norwegian guns at Oslo did to the Blucher in 1940 - 2 x 47 year old 28cm guns and 2 x 40 year old guided torpedoes sank the 10,000 ton cruiser, and 15cm guns knocked out the Anton 28cm turret of the Lutzow.

The Germans bombarded the fort from outside its range for the next day and a half, causing zero casualties. In total the fort lost 1 man for a cruiser sunk and a pocket battleship badly damaged - that man was on a scoput boat that had gone out to warn hte approaching ships and was fired upon with live rounds after firing warning shots - there was not a single caualty in the fortress.

So the concept of land fortifications crippling or even sinking heavy ships is far from unreasonable.

Most of the Atlantic wall was, of course, not attacked at all, and in Normandy there was considerable egffort made to silence hte heavy batteries before or during the landing proper - which were successful AFAIK - although some of them were found to be empty.

Land fortifications may well be a waste of resource in toto, but they had the edge over pretty much any shipping that came within range.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: mantill

I understand your point but for battle ships this is generally invalid as only the largest dedicated shore batteries would have a chance at damaging them other than superficially.

Mm. Weird stuff happens sometimes, though. I imagine being peppered with enough 6 inch shells would certainly go a long way to cramping a battleship's style.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

So the concept of land fortifications crippling or even sinking heavy ships is far from unreasonable.

Yeah- on the whole, ships get by through not moving into range of coastal batteries until they've been silenced.

Land fortifications may well be a waste of resource in toto, but they had the edge over pretty much any shipping that came within range.

There's an inherent disadvantage to being on a floating platform as opposed to a prepared position on dry land.

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: mantill
Is there anyway to alter supplies used during combat through an editor?

No. This is hard-coded.

[Tom Hunter]

SMK

The problem is that the German shore batteries regularly sink the Allied gunfire support fleet if it is not pulled back at the end of the turn. This was simply beyond the capabilities of the Germans, but it happens regularly in the game.

The solution is to pull all your ships back before the turn ends, but this is a real pain at best, and if the turn ends before you expect it to it can be quite painful.

This discussion has nothing to do with the theoretical effectiveness of shore batteries in general. I was messing around with a North Africa scenario the other day and lost Barham to an Italian 75mm battery. Obivously something is wrong.

[Ian R]

Has any attention been paid to this problem in recent patches, maybe by making ships floating tanks instead of floating artillery?
 
 

[Catch21]

ORIGINAL: buchanan17

This part of the game is crazy. For example in playing ANY overlord scenario from the highest to lowest scale, the allied ships get disabled WAY too easily.

Remember the naval war in TOAW is somewhat (well highly really) abstracted. Take 2WIN. The Allied answer to this issue is to ensure that their ships (a huge fire support asset particularly in direct fire mode) are ALWAYS out of range of any shore battery until they've been rolled up by combat troops. If you don't the Germans in their turn will (or should) direct fire their batteries against any Allied ships in range towards the end of their turn (given their 0 MP rating).

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: General Staff
If you don't the Germans in their turn will (or should) direct fire their batteries against any Allied ships in range towards the end of their turn (given their 0 MP rating).

In TOAW III, waiting until the end of the turn isn't necessary, since you can fire 0 MP artillery from the very first tactical round, without burning out the turn.

[Dabbs]

First thing is that if you know land-based artillery is good at taking out naval vessels, don't leave your naval vessels in their range.  It is a matter of prepping the field - in which with Two Weeks in Normandy, the Allies have several fleets, total domination of the skies with several bombers, and plenty of ground units... meanwhile the Axis has no fleet...no airforce, only a few artillery units with the range of actually reaching the navy, and very likely only a few turns of even having that capability before it is overrun or pushed out of range.  A battleship sitting close to shore (2.5 km) firing away at everything with impunity is going to be a priority target.
 
 
 

[Catch21]

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM
In TOAW III, waiting until the end of the turn isn't necessary, since you can fire 0 MP artillery from the very first tactical round, without burning out the turn.

Thanks. I should know better. Still trying to get a handle on this. Is there anywhere the mechanics of this are explained in detail? I couldn't find anything in the manual. Any pointers appreciated.

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: General Staff

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM
In TOAW III, waiting until the end of the turn isn't necessary, since you can fire 0 MP artillery from the very first tactical round, without burning out the turn.

Thanks. I should know better. Still trying to get a handle on this. Is there anywhere the mechanics of this are explained in detail? I couldn't find anything in the manual. Any pointers appreciated.

In detail? No. However, you can look at the Whatsnew doc, and for item 33, on the v3.0.0.12 release notes, see that "Low MP unit combat is improved. Zero MP units may now fire without using the entire turn."

There is a general all-around improvement in the way low MP units attack. In CoW, a unit with only 4 of 4 MP's wouldn't start the attack until the 3rd tactical round. Now, they begin on the first. Likewise with the other low MP situations. Many of the low MP scenarios that were IMO dreadfully boring to play because of the way earlier versions of TOAW handled the units in combat are now much more playable.

[Ian R]

So does this mean that if you do what historically was done at Omaha beach, ie move two destroyers as close in as possible to sail up and down the beach firing (including directly) on the German pill boxes and strongpoints, it works? or do they fall victim to German artillery as soon as it can fire?