Naval Transport: Bug or Feature?

[K62_]

Naval supply is one of WiR's well-known features. It just now appears to me that some people don't know of a related feature: it is possible to transfer units out of a naval-supplied city by using rail transfer.

I don't know if this was intended by the programmer. But I consider it's nice anyway, since:

1. Hundreds of thousand of troops were actually evacuated by sea on the East Front. The Russians evacuated Odessa in '41, the Germans an entire army from the Caucasus after Stalingrad and then Sevastopol in '44 etc.

2. Who the heck would leave units in a naval supplied city if he can never get them out of there?! :p

3. If supplies get in, then it means there are ships going in. After delivering the supplies, the ships are empty and can get troops. So, if we accept that naval supply is an integral part of the simulation, then we accept there are simulated means to actually evacuate the troops.

4. The cost in rail points is there because troops need to move by rail from the destination port to the receiving army. Since you can, for instance, transfer troops from Odessa to Moscow, it is only reasonable that you would need some rail points for that. The assumption of the game is that there are always enough ships and you don't need 'ship points'.

In conclusion, this is a historical feature that makes sense and it is very nice to have it implemented. It is also a good complement for naval supply, which doesn't make much sense without it. I couldn't know if the programmer actually intended it, but if he had it would be exactly the way it is now.

However, my current opponent strongly considers this is a bug and not a feature. As I praise Arnaud (or Gary?) for his subtle wisdom, my opponent blames him for blunt neglect.

While I understand my opponent's concern, I cannot help but notice that he hasn't given me any arguments for his view. He just says I should "believe him that it's a bug".

So I thought I'd put this up on the forum and see if somebody will actually make a little effort and enlighten me as to why it is such a bug. Please don't leave me in this ignorant state and give me a reason, will ya people?:rolleyes:

[bgiddings]

Personally I did not know about this ...never tried but it is good to know and I agree with your arguments to a certain extent.

Yes it is logical.

The only logical problem that I would have and I do not believe that it is programmable is that such an evacuation would require some troops left behind to allow it to happen.

[Alex Gilbert]

Well, I do not claim to be a historian, but I would raise 2 objections:

1. Sure, it is pretty easy to load troops into just about any type of ship (especially if it is a short voyage--longer voyages would require at least some minimal preparations for sanitation, sleeping, provisioning etc), but what about their equipment. It is not nearly so easy to load a tank or artillery piece or truck. These require failry specialized knowledge to load (how to use the dock cranes etc) which the combat troops would not have. The merchant sailors MIGHT have SOME of that knowledge (how many would know how to operate a dock crane--that is normally handled at their home ports by dockworkers), but the number of sailors would be fairly small in comparison to the job. Finally, how long would all this loading take (I ask this rhetorically, I have no idea how long it takes to load a ship).

2. Lets not forget that if the city needs to be supplied via the sea, it is cut off and likely surrounded and perhaps even being assaulted by enemy forces. Lobbing artillery at the port would seem to be an awfully effective way of stopping the loading of civilian transports. Again, I am talking about loading heavy equipment--troops can be taken out to the ships as they are anchored off shore if need be. Add the potential for air attack and even loading troops becomes problematic.

Bottom line, while you could make an argument that they could get the troops out, I do not think that a fighting force could be removed to be immediately available elsewhere as an effective force. That being said, if it is a bug, it is IMHO, a fairly minor one.

[Chairman]

About loading a ship that depends if you want to bee able to take the heavier weapons with you.
A tank would take about quarter of en hour WITH skilled dock workers, perhaps tripple that time with unskilled labour or even more.

But to only walk tropps up the gangway, perhaps 2 hours to get a medium passenger ship loaded.

But to take medium to heavy tanks on a ship, there want bee much space or tonnage to play with.

Rember one time for about 17 years ago when I worked on 1200 ton cargo ship, 800 tons of iron isn´t much, but the boat went up one way on the waterwave and after 2 seconds the darn ship keeld over 30 degrees to the other side, was almost thrown overboard one time, brr cold weather it was to.

[matt.buttsworth]

German withdrawal to the crimea was a masterpiece - units, men, equipment withdrawn while under Soviet attack. And those units were immediately available for fighting ...

[Chairman]

About the withdrawal from Crimea want that from Sevastepol?? If so Germans could have used Rumanian dockworkers to speed it up a lot.

[Mist]

Originally posted by K62
Naval supply is one of WiR's well-known features. It just now appears to me that some people don't know of a related feature: it is possible to transfer units out of a naval-supplied city by using rail transfer.

I don't know if this was intended by the programmer. But I consider it's nice anyway, since:
<skip>

Please don't leave me in this ignorant state and give me a reason, will ya people?:rolleyes:

well. i belive it was possible to get units out of isolated but naval supplied city by ... railroad. Those cities have railroad operating and game did not check rail path.
I did not try it in wir 3.3 though. It may not work because of the further changes which prohibit to use rails which have supplies les than MAX(10 with blitz and 6 with usual supply)

[Josans]

Please Rick or Ed, could you please clarify me if the question of K62 is a bug or a valid feature?

Nothing in the rules talks about naval movement. The use of Rail transfer feature to move units in and out of a port by "sea", evry week, freely, with no any possible interception allowed ( by air mainly ) is very strange to me.

The rules about rail movement is broken with this "sea movement" because you can do it at supply level 5 and not 6 as would be normal.

I see clearly a bug here but now...

Just confused:rolleyes:

[K62_]

I happen to be a programmer myself, so I know that in the jargon "bug" means "logical error". As opposed to "syntax error", this means the computer actually understands your program, but it goes out and does things you definitely don't want it to do.

So the only possible way one could tell this is a bug would be if Arnaud came to this forum and said something on the lines of: "Guys, I've made a mistake. I don't want the program to be used this way. I'm going to do something soon to fix my mistake so don't use naval transport in the meanwhile".

Or maybe he has already said it to someone. Then please come out and let us know.

[K62_]

Originally posted by Mist
well. i belive it was possible to get units out of isolated but naval supplied city by ... railroad. Those cities have railroad operating and game did not check rail path.
I did not try it in wir 3.3 though. It may not work because of the further changes which prohibit to use rails which have supplies les than MAX(10 with blitz and 6 with usual supply)

If you believe they go out by railroad then I understand why you have a problem with it. I prefer to think they go out by ship.

Don't worry, it works in WiR 3.3 just as well as it did before

[K62_]

Originally posted by Josan
The use of Rail transfer feature to move units in and out of a port by "sea", evry week, freely, with no any possible interception allowed ( by air mainly ) is very strange to me.

The Luftwaffe was notoriously bad at preventing sea evacuations. I don't recall a single instance where it succeeded, but I can think of Dunkirk, Greece, Crete and Odessa where it failed spectacularly. (In the case of Odessa the Soviets didn't even leave troops behind, everyone just left.) I see no reason to believe the Red Air Force was any better.

[K62_]

By the way, I recently found out that in the initial versions of WiR (that ran on Amiga/Atari or something:rolleyes: ) naval transport was implemented explicitly. You could transfer one division per turn between two ports, both in the Baltic or in the Black Sea.

One division per turn also sounds like a nice house rule

[Brutus]

A house rule for naval movement could also be that it is allowed to move 3 stacking points per week. That would reflect that it's much more difficult to move an Panzerdivision by sea

[JagdFlanker]

found this yesterday while looking at your link, mr K62!

[Greg J]

I played the original board game, and I am pretty sure it had naval transport between certain Baltic ports, and certain Black sea ports. I think I still have a copy of the board game floating about, I must remember to check.