Are navies basically a bit useless at preventing invasions?

[James Taylor]

And remember that using your CAGs for recon eats up supply!

[nnason]

Oxford Guy thanks and good comment SeaMonkey.

[Goodmongo]

ORIGINAL: James Taylor

And remember that using your CAGs for recon eats up supply!

You can do this while right next to a port and not have to worry about dropping below 9 supply.

[majpalmer]

In three games I've had navies stop amphibious invasions.
Game One: Axis, conquered the UK, used submarines, surface, and air to annihilate amphibious transports coming from the US and headed toward Devon and Cornwall.
Game Two: Axis, conquered Egypt which forced the RN from the Med,used Italian navy to annihilate Allied transports trying to invade Algeria. For some reason the AI never seems to invade Morocco.
Game Three: Ditto, Game two.

The only game I invaded the UK as the Axis in 1940, I didn't even have an amphibious transport. I seized a port with two airborne units and ferried troops across, despite the presence of the RN.

[OxfordGuy3]

ORIGINAL: majpalmer

In three games I've had navies stop amphibious invasions.
Game One: Axis, conquered the UK, used submarines, surface, and air to annihilate amphibious transports coming from the US and headed toward Devon and Cornwall.
Game Two: Axis, conquered Egypt which forced the RN from the Med,used Italian navy to annihilate Allied transports trying to invade Algeria. For some reason the AI never seems to invade Morocco.
Game Three: Ditto, Game two.

The only game I invaded the UK as the Axis in 1940, I didn't even have an amphibious transport. I seized a port with two airborne units and ferried troops across, despite the presence of the RN.

Yes, but everything is easy vs the AI

[The Land]

I wonder if a naval equivalent of Interception and Escort might be a good idea. E.g. if you move a suitable target within a certain distance of a naval unit, the naval unit has a chance to engage the target, and in turn be engaged by an enemy naval unit within range. So if you land transports next to a port that has a battleship in it, the battleship can (probably) do serious damage to the transports before they land. If the transports had a carrier supporting them, then the battleship would be engaged by the carrier, and if it survived it would then engage the transports. Just as with interception you'd have the option to not have your ships sortie.

However this would need a fair bit of thinking so that ships only attempted to engage targets that are suitable for them (e.g. no subs trying to engage destroyers or destroyers engaging battleships), and what the right ranges were (1 hex for subs, 3 for capital ships, 4 or 5 for carriers?)

This would help address a number of issues with naval combat that stem from the fact that the game presently models naval units very similarly to land units.

[OxfordGuy3]

ORIGINAL: The Land

I wonder if a naval equivalent of Interception and Escort might be a good idea. E.g. if you move a suitable target within a certain distance of a naval unit, the naval unit has a chance to engage the target, and in turn be engaged by an enemy naval unit within range. So if you land transports next to a port that has a battleship in it, the battleship can (probably) do serious damage to the transports before they land. If the transports had a carrier supporting them, then the battleship would be engaged by the carrier, and if it survived it would then engage the transports. Just as with interception you'd have the option to not have your ships sortie.

However this would need a fair bit of thinking so that ships only attempted to engage targets that are suitable for them (e.g. no subs trying to engage destroyers or destroyers engaging battleships), and what the right ranges were (1 hex for subs, 3 for capital ships, 4 or 5 for carriers?)

This would help address a number of issues with naval combat that stem from the fact that the game presently models naval units very similarly to land units.

If you try to move an amphibious transport next to a naval unit in port, think the naval unit will already fire at the transport before it can disembark, though leaving naval units in ports within air range of the enemy tends to be very bad for their health...

The problem is more that naval units nearby (but out of range of enemy air) can't intercept amphibious transports as they cross the sea (assuming they can cross and land in one turn), only when they're in port on the turn they embark, which doesn't seem very realistic. In real life, the Royal Navy likely would have slaughtered any attempted invasion of the UK, as well as re-supply/reinforcement attempts.

[The Land]

ORIGINAL: oxford_guy

The problem is more that naval units nearby (but out of range of enemy air) can't intercept amphibious transports as they cross the sea (assuming they can cross and land in one turn), only when they're in port on the turn they embark, which doesn't seem very realistic. In real life, the Royal Navy likely would have slaughtered any attempted invasion of the UK, as well as re-supply/reinforcement attempts.

Yes, that's exactly the issue my suggestion is trying to solve....

[Sugar]

In real life, the Royal Navy likely would have slaughtered any attempted invasion of the UK

In real life it takes 1.5 hours from Dover to Calais, not much time to intercept.

Not the RN stopped Seelöwe, the RAF did. That`s the reason why Churchill named it their Finest Hour. This fact is represented perfectly in the game as it is now.

The RN is not useless, however, but it`s limited due to the lack of speed and range, compared to aircraft.

[The Land]

In real life it takes 1.5 hours from Dover to Calais, not much time to intercept.

Not the RN stopped Seelöwe, the RAF did. That`s the reason why Churchill named it their Finest Hour. This fact is represented perfectly in the game as it is now....

If only an amphibious invasion was as simple as steaming from Calais to Dover!

In reality, the English Channel would be full of invasion shipping for most of a day. For Operation Overlord ships left in the morning of June 5th to commence the landing before dawn on June 6th. A 1940 Sealion would have been much slower, as towed invasion barges are even slower, indeed sometimes unable to overcome the currents in the Channel - I have seen 2-3 days mentioned. Overlord required close to 6,000 vessels, not counting the naval escort. The 1940 Sealion plan involved 2,400 barges. So there is plenty of time for the RN to intervene and there are plenty of targets. Also, a fair part of that "plenty of time" is at night when there is no realistic prospect of the Luftwaffe intervening (not that the Luftwaffe had a great record of attacking warships, of course, but at night they wouldn't even try).

It would only take a handful of the Royal Navy's 200 or so destroyers to cause serious damage to the invasion force. Of course each destroyer only has several hundred rounds for its guns, so that might be a limit on how effective they are. Barges or landing craft do not even require the use of munitions to destroy, they can be swamped by the wake of a destroyer going at 30 knots, or rammed.

Then there is the need to keep supplies flowing to the fraction of the assault force that manages to land, despite increasingly bad weather (again, stopping the Luftwaffe intervening), despite the Royal Navy's significant submarine fleet lying in wait outside whichever port has somehow been captured intact, despite the RN having dozens of cruisers and destroyers that it can afford to lose to mines or bombs if it has to...

In short, a 1940 Sealion is basically a myth. The Kriegsmarine and Heer said "this is only possible if beaten down in its morale and in fact, that it can no longer display any appreciable aggressive force in opposition to the German crossing" because they knew they were setting an impossible bar to meet, and could blame the Luftwaffe instead of owning their own inability to conduct an impossible operation. Churchill and the RAF found the myth suited their purposes - it made the Battle of Britain a victory instead of an irrelevance.

[Hubert Cater]

Just to clarify one point here, a naval unit does not have to be in Port to automatically attack an incoming Amphibious Transport. Rather, so long as it is adjacent a coastal tile, and since Amphibious Transports need to be along the coast to disembark, the defending naval unit will take one free shot/strike against an Amphibious Transport as it attempts to move to an adjacent coastal tile and unload.

Typically a Battleship with Level-1 Naval Weaponry can knock an AT down from 10 to 1 in such a situation. However, the flipside is that you need to expose your defensive Navy likely to air and other enemy naval units when guarding the obvious and vulnerable landing/coastal positions.

Hope this helps,
Hubert

[Sugar]

Hehe, I agree the "what Ifs" are suspiciuos, but the time frame is hours or days compared to weeks in the gameturns length.

But that`s not the point in this thread: "Are navies a bit useless at preventing invasions?"

I guess they are usefull, maybe even more together with an adequate Air Force. It`s in players hand to take care of it, and I guess that`s the best one can say about a game, which doesn`t want to be a simulation.

[nnason]

Sealion can work with strong Luftwaffe and 3 airborne. London is easy Manchester hard. BUT unless capitol goes to Cairo and Afrika Korps takes Cairo Sealion is a mistake. With the British Navy still alive and the USA comes into war 6 or more months early to much has to be invested in England to protect from the USA in 1941 to make a concentrated effort in Russia. Of course there are other strategic plans that might work like building up the Kriegsmarine to keep USA out.