How to make ships more resistant against Coastal Artillery?

[Telumar]

Anyone has 'design' experience in ships/coastal artillery? In my scenario ships are still too vulnerable to coastal artillery - my opponent managed to sink 8 of them on a PM turn with his coastal artillery ..! To give you an idea about the combat values i used (all bio-ed'ed) i attached some ship values and the stronger one of the two german coastal batteries.
Will increasing the ships' defence values probably help or is there another way (make them armoured (or composite etc), selecting heavy naval instead of light etc..?



EDIT: Don't wonder about the ranges, the scenario scale is 1km ,with the 2,5 km scale used in the editor and modified ranges.

[Zaratoughda]

What Eric Nygaard did in his scenarios (well, at least in Operation Torch) was to break down the ships into components.... in other words.... guns, hull, etc... and this cut down the casualties that ships took significantly. He also had replacements for the ship components and this meant that, in time, ships that had become damaged, would be repaired.

Z

[macgregor]

Very interesting Telumar! But at this scale, what are your intentions? Some sort of universal Naval combat simulator? Since the topic is shore batteries, I suppose not. Eric Nygard has a great idea, but his scenario doesn't work in TOAW3(my apologies, I was thinking about 'Countdown to Infamy'). His system allows multiple weapons systems with different ranges as well as progressive damage. Torpedo combat is the kicker. At short enough range, their accuracy increases significantly. Perhaps 2 different torp ratings? Though target speed has so much to do with vulnerability. Now I realize that in my own typical fashion, I'm now changing the subject.Just a thought.

[Telumar]

ORIGINAL: macgregor

Very interesting Telumar! But at this scale, what are your intentions? Some sort of universal Naval combat simulator? Since the topic is shore batteries, I suppose not.

Let Heeresküstenartillerie Italien-Mitte, Batterie Genzano shell Taskforces Peter and X-Ray cruising in the waters near Anzio harbour without sinking half the Royal Navy on a night turn (!)..that's all.[:'(]

ORIGINAL: macgregor

Eric Nygard has a great idea, but his scenario doesn't work in TOAW3(my apologies, I was thinking about 'Countdown to Infamy'). His system allows multiple weapons systems with different ranges as well as progressive damage.

What do you mean by 'it doesn't work'? I suppose you tried it - so, with what results?

[Zaratoughda]

Hmmmm.... I played Eric's Russio-Japanese War scenario (Double Eagle - Rising Sun) to completion before these naval changes and then played it again AFTER these changes were put in (Eric sent me a test version... not sure it was ever released for this scenario) and..... BIG IMPROVEMENT (IMO).

So, might not be the ultimate in naval simulations but much better than what you get otherwise with the naval actions in TOAW (IMO).

Z

[Telumar]

ORIGINAL: Zaratoughda

Hmmmm.... I played Eric's Russio-Japanese War scenario (Double Eagle - Rising Sun) to completion before these naval changes and then played it again AFTER these changes were put in (Eric sent me a test version... not sure it was ever released for this scenario) and..... BIG IMPROVEMENT (IMO).

So, might not be the ultimate in naval simulations but much better than what you get otherwise with the naval actions in TOAW (IMO).

Z

In each case, it looks promising, many thanks. I'll contact Erik about his methods.

[macgregor]

ORIGINAL: Telumar
What do you mean by 'it doesn't work'? I suppose you tried it - so, with what results?

Well, the weirdest thing happened, thuogh weird stuff seems to happen with converted ACOW scens. My Pearl Harbor strike aircraft, instead of striking the American fleet, appeared to have struck their own task forces instead. Most bizarre, though probably correctable. Hopefully he'll mess with it some more.

[Telumar]

ORIGINAL: macgregor

ORIGINAL: Telumar
What do you mean by 'it doesn't work'? I suppose you tried it - so, with what results?

Well, the weirdest thing happened, thuogh weird stuff seems to happen with converted ACOW scens. My Pearl Harbor strike aircraft, instead of striking the American fleet, appeared to have struck their own task forces instead. Most bizarre, though probably correctable. Hopefully he'll mess with it some more.

Oh, i thought you meant Operation Torch's Naval Combat System wouldn't work.

[Erik2]

Stephan

Email me at erik.nygaard@nrk.no and I will send you the excel-sheet I use for creating ship equipment.
The sheet is an expanded version of Bob Cross' original.
Here's an extract showing the three equipment components for Warspite's main, 2nd and 3rd guns.

[macgregor]

Telumar- would it be possible for you to share with me your criteria for assessing the TOAW values for these naval units? I have yet to get my editor working but would really like to create a database for the scenarios; Europe Aflame and Zero Hour, perhaps even modifying the aircraft values to show more diversity.

[Telumar]

ORIGINAL: macgregor

Telumar- would it be possible for you to share with me your criteria for assessing the TOAW values for these naval units? I have yet to get my editor working but would really like to create a database for the scenarios; Europe Aflame and Zero Hour, perhaps even modifying the aircraft values to show more diversity.

Well, i have not developed any criteria, i work with Erik's excel sheet which has been derived from the War in the Pacific database - if you want i can send you a copy, i think Erik will have nothing against it. There was also a thread here at the Matrix forums that dealed with naval units, ship class design and combat values: tm.asp?m=1403648

After testing Erik's setup i came to the conclusion that it's not suited for Anzio. Most ships of task forces X-Ray and Peter were destroyers which would still be single equipment piece units with Erik's sheet, the few cruisers would be two pieces of equipment. Tests revealed the 17cm Coastal Battery usually evaporated the USS Brooklyn with two to four bombardments within a single turn, even at night (Will put the coastal batteries to garrison during PM turns). Ok, a problem here might be that the Coastal Battery at Genzano is out of naval gun range, it looks different with the battery at Castel Porciano which is well in naval gun range and subject to counterbattery fire.
But then there is still the Luftwaffe...deadly to all swimming objects when she makes it through the Allied AS cover.

So, after all i will try it with every ship broken down to the single gun/battery, i.e. the USS Brooklyn would consist of:
5x [font="Arial"]Triple 6in/47 Mk16 Gun[/font] and 8x [font="Arial"]5in/25 Mk10 Gun[/font]
making a total of 13 equipment pieces.

I derived the values for these pieces directly from Erik's excel sheet, dividing DF, AA and AP values by the number of guns.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/USN-ships.html is btw a very good source covering all the US navy's ships of WWII. I found yet nothing comparable for the Royal navy, yet i am working on it with wikipedia as a main source [8|]..
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/index_weapons.htm is also a very informative site.

I still will have to put things together in Bio Ed and the editor and run some tests to see how it works. And then there's nothing to say against weakening the coastal guns as a last measure.[;)]

So, that's the actual state of affairs at Telumar's Anzio beachhead..sorry for not yet answering your e-mail, but i hope this will satisfy you for the time being.

[macgregor]

Sweet! It looks as though the calculations have already been done. I'll just use those values. Defense strength should take into account tactical speed and size of target as well as armor and damage control. Perhaps instead of having to break down to each battery there could be a generic unit related to tonnage to absorb some of the hits. Just a thought.