Barges

[LargeSlowTarget]

1. Will AE provide more barges? The Japanese built hundreds if not thousands of them, but in WitP I have never seen more than a few dozen being available at any time.

2. Will they still have the same movement restrictions like real ships, i.e. not being able to cross hex sides defined as reefs? This is something that drives me crazy in WitP - shallow-draft barges taking detours because of reefs, while they should be able to find passes through a reef or simply float over it.

3. Historically, Japanese barges traveled by night and stayed hidden and camouflaged in some inlet or between islands during daytime. In WitP, they travel night and day, and due to #2 above often find themselves in the open seas in broad daylight, to be sunk by anything that happens to be around (my opponent usually stations a sub at hexes where my barges have to move through on their detour trip). Is 'travel at night, hide by day' modelled in AE?

4. It is very difficult to provide fuel at front bases to keep the barges running, because TKs or AKs loaded with fuel will be sunk on sight, and the barges themselves cannot transport much more fuel than they need themselves, so they are rendered more or less useless once the local fuel stockpiles are used up or destroyed. But since barges had diesel or petrol engines, fuel should not be an issue - barges should use supplies for their propulsion, like planes do in the game. Same goes for Allied barges and PT boats. Has this been changed in AE or will the poor Japanese player with front bases cut-off by Allied airpower still face this problem?

[Don Bowen]

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget

1. Will AE provide more barges? The Japanese built hundreds if not thousands of them, but in WitP I have never seen more than a few dozen being available at any time.

Sorry, I can't answer OOB questions. I do not believe there is any major expansion of barges for either side.

2. Will they still have the same movement restrictions like real ships, i.e. not being able to cross hex sides defined as reefs? This is something that drives me crazy in WitP - shallow-draft barges taking detours because of reefs, while they should be able to find passes through a reef or simply float over it.

Yes they will. We did look at different routing for "shallow draft" TFs but it turned out to be very complex. Lost out to waypoints and patrol zones in priority assignment and did not make the cut.

3. Historically, Japanese barges traveled by night and stayed hidden and camouflaged in some inlet or between islands during daytime. In WitP, they travel night and day, and due to #2 above often find themselves in the open seas in broad daylight, to be sunk by anything that happens to be around (my opponent usually stations a sub at hexes where my barges have to move through on their detour trip). Is 'travel at night, hide by day' modelled in AE?

No it is not. Another good idea but not there (yet). Perhaps in the future we can take a look at special code for these coastal type TFs, but they are only a small part of the picture and it's difficult to allocate massive amounts of code and time to tweak them up.

4. It is very difficult to provide fuel at front bases to keep the barges running, because TKs or AKs loaded with fuel will be sunk on sight, and the barges themselves cannot transport much more fuel than they need themselves, so they are rendered more or less useless once the local fuel stockpiles are used up or destroyed. But since barges had diesel or petrol engines, fuel should not be an issue - barges should use supplies for their propulsion, like planes do in the game. Same goes for Allied barges and PT boats. Has this been changed in AE or will the poor Japanese player with front bases cut-off by Allied airpower still face this problem?

OK, yet another good idea - and one we did look at. The generalization of "fuel" to be all the variations of ship fuel (NSFO, coal, diesel, high Octane gas) is still with us. That and the generalization of supply to be everything from ammo to replacement aircraft. Breaking either of them down is mark 1, left handed bitch. So the answer is, once again, no.

On a general, philosophical, note: there are literally thousands of good ideas that are not there in AE. Were we to work on them, AE would never get released. And, no matter how many of them we might provide, there will always be a next level.

[LargeSlowTarget]

Thanks for the feedback. Well, we can't have everything... [:(]  

[pad152]

I like the idea of barges and PT boats using supplies vs fuel, this makes them more useful, the lack of fuel at foward or cutoff bases makes them useless, maybe something to consider in future patch.

[castor troy]

you can still drive around your barges without fuel as they are exactly moving as far as they move with fuel: 1 hex a phase. Strange smell though to use them without fuel.

[Don Bowen]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

you can still drive around your barges without fuel as they are exactly moving as far as they move with fuel: 1 hex a phase. Strange smell though to use them without fuel.

Not in AE. Out of fuel speed is 1 hex per DAY, and damage to ships increases massively if at sea out of fuel. Depends on the random but you'll start losing ships in a few days.

You also can not keep troops in barges very long or their disruption goes off the scale.

[pad152]

In WITP about 60% of the time, barges are sailing with no fuel. Something doesn't seem right if barges can't be used like they were historicaly in AE. How did barges operate from Rabual & Shortlands to/from Guadalcanal, did they refuel them half way, if so with what?

Funny, lack of fuel never stops planes from flying![;)]

[LargeSlowTarget]

There were numerous barge staging points in the Solomons and PNG, usually at some river inlet or a cove, for example Bairoko Harbor on New Georgia or Arawe on New Britain. They were used to hide barges during daytime, to give the troops embarked a rest, to refuel and to make simple repairs if necessary. The staging points were protected by a few dozen or a few hundred troops at most and usually had few if any fixed installations, as they were of temporary nature. It does not take much to store some barge-loads of diesel drums on a beach in order to refuel other barges carrying troops and supplies. [/align]I think the crux is that the barges in WitP use too much fuel in relation to their cargo capacity, so it not possible to accumulate such a stockpile of fuel - unless the barges carry nothing but fuel. But then barge operations become an end in itself and no longer serve their intended purpose...      [/align] [/align]

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

Not in AE. Out of fuel speed is 1 hex per DAY, and damage to ships increases massively if at sea out of fuel. Depends on the random but you'll start losing ships in a few days.

There does seem to be a conundrum here. Barges didn't require much fuel, and the old WitP mechanics handled that by giving them very short legs. However, as many others have noted, it's almost impossible to stock enough fuel at their destinations, and that means the new penalty for "sailing without fuel" is going to be a big issue for barges (although it's a great idea for almost every other ship type). They might make it to their destinations, but most will sink on the way home. On the other hand, giving them longer legs could open up a different can of worms by increasing the likelihood of their use in non-historical situations (like cross-ocean voyages). And allowing Barges to use supplies instead of fuel - although clearly a wonderful idea - just can't be implemented in AE. Would it be possible to change the new damage model so that fuel-less barges don't suffer added damage, although they still travel at the new "hex-per-day" speed?

You also can not keep troops in barges very long or their disruption goes off the scale.

That's a very good idea. In "Rising Sun", Toland describes what happened when the 3500 man "Kawaguchi Detachment" was transported to Guadalcanal from Shortland Island. 2400 men traveled in an 8-destroyer convoy, leaving on the morning of 8/31 and arriving at Taivu Point near midnight the same day. There wasn't cargo space for much in the way of supplies, but they suffered no casualties during the short voyage. The remaining 1100 traveled by "Ant Freight" (barge), and didn't reach the island until September 8th. 650 men died enroute, and the remainder arrived "with no food and little ammunition" and "were in no shape to fight".