Interesting Sea Battle

[Hard Sarge]

opps, that one is a Danish Frigate, that got broken away from the main Fleet and chased south

[Hard Sarge]

think this should be my scouting Fleet, heavy with Frigates, but got two SOL's to add some punch if needed

[Hard Sarge]

then again, I think that is really my battle Fleet, this is my scouting Fleet

[Hard Sarge]

and this is one of my Docks, I am trying to get to size 7, and am building a 4th Rate, also, have taken as much labor as I can, to try and speed up the building, but it is hurting me for other stuff that I need

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

getting a little closer and, dang snow, just what I need snow, but, it is going to let me get closer before I got to face his broadsides

The problem I have with this is your opponent has smaller and faster ships. Realistically they would simply turn away and keep the range from your ships easily.

You should NOT have been able to close with him so easily and he should have picked you apart by bringing his guns to bear, firing and then turning away to reload. Then bringing his guns to bear, firing and turning away… rinse and repeat until you’re sunk or until you break off the action.

This shows a real weakness in the naval system I fear.

Jim

[Hard Sarge]

I disagree, this is not a battle type where they are up to speed

plus you got to remember which way the wind is blowing, if I am having to sail into it, he is not going to be able to turn into it and sail away, also, I have the better sailors, I got a much better chance to tack, then the French will

so there best chance to try and maintain there line, or turn and sail into me

which over all, is no chance or bad chance, some may turn and sail past me, but I can turn faster and get on there stern

that one is pretty much a do or die battle

[Randomizer]

You should NOT have been able to close with him so easily and he should have picked you apart by bringing his guns to bear, firing and then turning away to reload. Then bringing his guns to bear, firing and turning away… rinse and repeat until you’re sunk or until you break off the action.

In the days of instant communications and TBS perhaps but the coordination and precision of signaling means that existed in those days would make controlling such tactics impossible. Even if it were doctrinal (an it would have to be), variations in the wind, the skills of the individual sailing masters and the characteristics of individual ships would result in the formation coming apart and likely suffering defeat in detail.

This technique might be (and was on occasion) used in single ship actions or where two inferior vessels faced a slower but stronger opponent and where both ships could act independently and formation or inter-ship communications was not an issue.

In a fleet action, the loss of fleet cohesion could precipitate a rout that generally spelled disaster for the 'defending' fleet in a melee battle.

I think that the Naval game looks quite good from what Hard Sarge has been showing.

[Hard Sarge]

plus in the screen shot, you see two of my ships not facing the same as the rest, they failed there tack attempt, as you do it more and more, you also are going to have more failures, and the line starts to break up

I do not know if it is perfect, or if it is even the "way" it should be, but it is fun and gives you the feel/idea of the battle, very much more then QC did in the old game

[Hard Sarge]

still going with my last set of snaps

trying to do the break out

my Dutch and Dane Fleets are trying to get out of port and meet up, if the enemy does not move, that is 3 battles to win, each winnable, if, the enemy does not move

in the MED, I am breaking the battle fleet out, which again means 3 battles, they win, then I can pull the trapped fleet in Spain out and get them repaired

[Hard Sarge]

and the MED

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

I disagree, this is not a battle type where they are up to speed

plus you got to remember which way the wind is blowing, if I am having to sail into it, he is not going to be able to turn into it and sail away, also, I have the better sailors, I got a much better chance to tack, then the French will

so there best chance to try and maintain there line, or turn and sail into me

which over all, is no chance or bad chance, some may turn and sail past me, but I can turn faster and get on there stern

that one is pretty much a do or die battle

Large 3 mast square riggers could not sail into the wind. It simply wasn't possible. They had to make severe right angle tacks to make any headway into the wind and even then it was very small bites of distance for each tack, so the notion you turned into the wind to bear down on smaller sloops and frigates is even worse than I thought.

And even if you were making those right angel tacks to try and move into the wind towards them, it would take hours to cross the gap and the other line would have sailed far away before you ever reached their original point on the ocean.

But I still stress, the captains of those ships would never have just sat there and waited to be boarded, they had the maneuverability and speed, they would have easily avoided your ships of the line and blasted them to smithereens as they attempted to close the gap.

There is a reason Nelsons maneuver was so *dramatic* and unusual. But he made it against other slow and ponderous ships of the line. I doubt you can find an action where SOL’s closed and boarded sloops and frigates… ever. Perhaps a daring frigate captain closed on the SOL, but they were never forced to engage, it would have been the captain’s choice.

There was a reason having windage on an opposing fleet was so important in the age of sail, without it you had no hope of closing with them to force a fight. Gaining windage meant you chose whether there was a fight at all and if so how it would be fought (at range or boarding actions).

Crew experience or morale played no part in the dominance of the wind, it powered your vessels and only powered them if it was behind you, sailing into it was IMPOSSIBLE, you had to tack and keep it at your back in order to move forward, and square riggers were the least maneuverable vessels when it came to maneuvering in the wind.

Jim

[Joram]

While this isn't WSIM Jim, be rest assured that ships cannot sail directly into the wind, they can only tack across it (well for the larger ships at least, don't remember the smaller ones offhand).  You have to allow that certain concessions were made such as for instance there is no infinite battlefield where the quicker ships could simply disengage by sailing on forever.  There is however a retreat button. 

[Hard Sarge]

Still, I got to say, the French Fleet couldn't turn and sail away any better then the English fleet is trying to close with them, the French are worse sailors in poorer ships, and would have to be sailing into the wind also, to try and run away, I only have a few SOLs in my line, so most of my ships are 3rd rates, 4th rates and Frigates, the French have 3rd and 4th rates and Frigates, that are not as good or as well manned as mine are, so they are not sloops, and they are not going to be able to turn and sail into the wind away from me

bad part is, I agree with most of what you are saying history wise, but don't think that matches up to what I was trying to show



that said, I think I got to point out, this is not a Naval Sim on Sea battles in the age of Nappy, it is a game, and while Eric has tried to add in as much of the REAL stuff as he can, it is still a abstract combat system of a complex action

it is good, it is fun, but it is not a totally realistic replay of a Nappy Area Naval battle

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

Still, I got to say, the French Fleet couldn't turn and sail away any better then the English fleet is trying to close with them, the French are worse sailors in poorer ships, and would have to be sailing into the wind also, to try and run away, I only have a few SOLs in my line, so most of my ships are 3rd rates, 4th rates and Frigates, the French have 3rd and 4th rates and Frigates, that are not as good or as well manned as mine are, so they are not sloops, and they are not going to be able to turn and sail into the wind away from me

bad part is, I agree with most of what you are saying history wise, but don't think that matches up to what I was trying to show



that said, I think I got to point out, this is not a Naval Sim on Sea battles in the age of Nappy, it is a game, and while Eric has tried to add in as much of the REAL stuff as he can, it is still a abstract combat system of a complex action

it is good, it is fun, but it is not a totally realistic replay of a Nappy Area Naval battle

I realize this isn’t going to be a detailed naval simulation, but trying to get realistic behavior in battles should not be overlooked because of that.

I based my assumption that they were frigates and sloops strictly by the size of the ship icons. They appear much smaller than the British ships, so I assumed they were frigates and sloops. Ships that can maneuver into the wind far easier (and much faster) than large cumbersome 3 mast square riggers could.

That said, it would still be impossible to close the gap against any opponent (even larger SOLs) unless you had windage. They can move away from you at the same speed you are trying to close with them. So the error here is in the fact the AI failed to turn away in an obviously outmatched situation and simply sat there and allowed you to overwhelm their force.

You should have been required to engage broadsides at range in an attempt to de-mast a few vessels first before you had any chance of closing on the ships for boarding actions.

I guess if the ships were somehow mathematically weighted so the AI could compare fleet values and judge whether to engage all out, try and keep range (refuse boarding actions by staying at a distance) or flee based on the weighted difference in fleet strength.

Things like windage, crew experience/morale and leadership could all be additions/multiples to that weighted scale of course.

Jim

[Hard Sarge]

Jim
the ships look difference, basicly because the French don't have there sails up

this is more a battle of the Nile then a open sea action

plus, I am set up using near action, so I "pop" up almost on top of the enemy, for better or worse, if you want to set up with far, the enemy would have a chance to get there sails up and sail away, but then, you don't have much of a fun battle, just wasted time clickin the end turn button

[Erik Rutins]

Jim,

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
The problem I have with this is your opponent has smaller and faster ships. Realistically they would simply turn away and keep the range from your ships easily.
You should NOT have been able to close with him so easily and he should have picked you apart by bringing his guns to bear, firing and then turning away to reload. Then bringing his guns to bear, firing and turning away… rinse and repeat until you’re sunk or until you break off the action.
This shows a real weakness in the naval system I fear.

What the opponent could do and what the opponent actually did are two separate things. First of all, there's a chance to evade combat on the strategic level before you get to the detailed battle. If you end up in battle, then you were outmaneuvered strategically. You can then attempt to play keep away in the detailed battle if you like and of course faster ships would be better at that, but if you decide to fight then you will fight. In this case, the opponent decided to fight and Sarge took advantage of that. Add in Sarge's Near Start and he as a player is deciding that he wants the system to let him fight things out. That's within a player's options to decide.

You're taking a situation out of context. I think you'll find the detailed naval battles are quite realistic compared to other period naval games on the market.

[Randomizer]

Just another $0.02 but I think that the actions in Hard Sarge’s screenshots do not look at all unreasonable given the level of complexity and scale of the CoG-EE naval sub-game.

There seems to be two separate issues here, the sailing model and the naval A.I.

As for the former, the comments that square-rigged sailing ships could not sail into the wind is disingenuous at best and technically wrong. While they could not sail directly into the wind, as noted by Joram, they could and did ‘beat’ into the wind tacking across it as needed to maintain whatever base course was ordered. Charts of Trafalgar clearly show the Combined Fleet steering roughly North with the light breeze coming from the port quarter, about the 10 o’clock position relative to their course. Accounts generally agree that they were making between one and two knots and since this included the 130-gun Santissima Trinidad, the largest warship in the world, a statement that ships of the line could not sail to windward is clearly wrong.

Given the limitations of a hex-based system, allowing movement into the 60 and 300-degree hexsides relative to the wind is certainly reasonable. As is the tendency to fail tacking across the wind (“going into irons”) was also a fact of life for Napoleonic sailing masters. In this, training was everything and even the French conceded that they usually lacked the seamanship skills to sail toe to toe with the Royal Navy. This training shortfall was one of the factors that lead Admiral Brueys to fight Nelson at anchor at the Nile in 1798 rather than risk a fleet action at sea with his inexperienced crews.

The A.I. problem is a bit different though and what follows is purely WAG’s based on the published screenshots and battle narratives.

In land combat it is possible that a smaller force can find a position that increases it’s combat effectiveness and allows it to defeat a larger force, other things being equal. This however is not true in a sea battle of that era, there was no positional advantage other than holding the weather gauge (being upwind) that allowed a fleet to choose whether it would fight or flee. Unless land was present (in the form of a lee-shore) the downwind force could almost always flee successfully.

It looks a bit like the A.I. is acting something like what we see in the screenshots of some of the land battles posted to date. I wonder if there is a completely separate Naval A.I. or are the sea combat routines appended to the land combat A.I. code?

One thing for sure is that the player has almost infinitely more control that was available in real life. Essentially, once close action was joined, the senior commanders could see little of what was happening in the smoke and confusion and it was usual for action to continue until the individual ships settled there own local fights or some great event (Achille blowing up at Trafalgar for example) to pause the action and allow the losers to escape. In any event little positive control could be imposed by the admirals on either side.

The ‘god’s eye’ point of view and level of control afford the player huge advantages and opportunity to exploit situations that would probably never have occurred in real life but the alternative, where the player turns total control of his fleet over to the computer for a naval action would be unacceptable to most players. As Hard Sarge noted, it is fun and it certainly looks like it.

Typically ships of the line did not engage frigates and a force of the latter would almost certainly flee as noted by Jim D Burns and this suggests the A.I. has a land-combat bias. One can always impose house-rules on ones-self to avoid exploiting the A.I. too much and overall I have seen little in the screenshots that is historically implausible or unreasonable even if the decision to face down a greatly superior force at sea was almost always a guarantor of defeat.

BTW, Nelson’s maneuver at Trafalgar was hardly unusual and breaking the line in column was the preferred fleet tactic of the RN from the time when Rodney did it at the Battle of the Saintes in 1782.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Randomizer
the largest warship in the world, a statement that ships of the line could not sail to windward is clearly wrong.

I never said they couldn’t maintain a course to windward, I said they couldn’t sail “into” the wind. In the screenshots shown, sarge turned his fleet directly towards the French line and was amongst them in short order. I saw no indication that a tack/change of course was ever made once he turned into the wind.

Even if we assume tacking is abstracted into the movement rates of the vessels, the fact he was into their line before they even moved more than a few hexes along their course shows they are moving too fast for vessels moving into the wind.

1 or 2 knots means it would take hours to cross the distance the fleets started at and there would be many, many tacks to accomplish that move. All the while the French line would simply sail along on their course with the wind giving them far more energy than the advancing British would have been getting, and eventually they’d be far out of range.

Jim

[Jim D Burns]

Let’s do the math. Assuming the battle lines started 600 yards apart, that’s a little over 1 mile distance between the two lines. 5 knots = 5.8 MPH so 1 knot is about 1 MPH, so we can assume if they make a windward progress of 1-2 knots, it would take 30 minutes to an hour to cross the gap assuming no *problems* cropped up to deal with like large iron cannonballs smashing through crew and equipment.

If the battle lines were only 300 yards apart, it would still take about 15 to 30 minutes to cross the gap in a perfect situation.

Now let’s assume the French line is only making 4 knots (3rd rates averaged 8-12 knots in a perfect situation http://3decks.pbwiki.com/Knot ) due to their sails not being fully deployed.

So 4 knots means their line would move about 4 miles in the time it took the British to move across the gap. Now we all know it would take far less than an hour for the ships to get their sails up, so chances are the French line would be 8-10 miles away by the time the British reached the point on the ocean where the French began.

Actually it would be even further away, since the British battle line would be sailing in the opposite direction to the French battle line for 50% of the time during the period they were tacking across the wind to try and close the gap.

Jim

[Joram]

For the wind point, I think you can't see it very well but the wind shifted so it doesn't look like he ever went directly against it.
 
I think I understand the AI point you are trying to make but once the battle is joined, the AI will not run away on the tactical scale.  If it did this would turn into a massive game of whack-a-mole.  It makes the decision to fight or not on the strategic scale which is the point I think Erik and Randomizer et al. are making. 
 
For your example, 600 yards is 1/3 a mile, not a whole mile a you state.  And again once detailed battle is joined, I do not believe the AI will try to evade, it will do it's best to fight the battle.