Wicked bombardment

[HobbesACW]

I just had 2 heavy artillery batteries wiped out in Norfolk in one turn although they did seem to do quite a bit of damage in return. It was a bit of a shock and I wouldn't have thought all the guns in a town or entrenchment would be wiped out in this way. You would think some could be moved to safety during a heavy bombardment or repaired afterwards. If this is indicative it would be very difficult to keep artillery in one piece in coastal regions.

Cheers, Chris

[Gem35]

It would be nice to see some screenshots of these horrible bombardments.

[jimwinsor]

Unfortunately no screenshots are available, really; all you see with ships vs guns is a line in the events on the bottom of the screen, saying X hits were dished out.

[Grotius]

I hope the original poster can send Pocus a savegame. Me, I haven't seen anything remotely like this, and I've been playing for several weeks now.

[Brooksie]

Ive hard large river fleets destroyed by Corps artillery before, granted i think this was due in part to a low cohesion on my river fleets part as well. I think though now with 1.06 out you all will be noticing that Naval Fleet inflict little damage on coastal targets, while em placed arty is doing much more back in return.


I think Jimwinsor was having a good day when he saw my river fleet under porter sunk.

[jimwinsor]

Yeah, I can veryify Brooksie's comment; basically, with the new 1.06 changes, ships now have to be VERY careful approaching forts or ANY entrenched (level 5+) batteries.
 
In our game, Porter with several river ironclads and gunboats tried to sail down the Cumberland, past Bragg's corps in Nashville.
 
Unbeknownst to him, Bragg has 4 CSA divisions, each division having 4 batteries; each battery was at full strength (which is 6 I believe) so, there was a total of 24 x 4 = 96 guns there. The entrench level had gotten up to 7 (two more than was needed for anti-ship fire, IIRC).
 
Seemed to me, all Porter was trying to do was peacefully sail past...instead the effect was like a fly landing on a bug zapper...according to the event report, Porter's fleet suffered something like 160+ hits...and Brooksie confirmed to me that yes indeed, the entire fleet was vaporized on contact.
 
I cannot recall the damage caused to Bragg except that it was insignificant.
 
So, I think the issue now under 1.06 is not Wicked Bombardment but perhaps Wicked Coastal Anti-Ship Fire.
 
And I'm not sure the problem here is that the damage was too much...96 well sighted guns aimed at a river probably COULD so destroy a river fleet, even of ironclads.  No, the problem is that it is doubtful a river admiral would intentionally subject his fleet to that kind of punishment from batteries for as long as it would take for the annialation to be carried out.
 
Perhaps what need to be done is to have ships automatically RETREAT from batteries when the heat gets too hot...much like land forces automatically retreat from combat as they currently do.  This would do much to solve the "bug zapper" problem we now seem to have.

[Gray_Lensman]

I like your "bug zapper" analogy. [:D]