ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn
ORIGINAL: Mogami
(TF spot one another at 20k yards. In time pursuit moves 20k yards Transports move 10k yards. But every transport has taken a different course so the surface ship has only closed the range on 1 transport. Other transports depending on course might now have opened range to 30k. )
In order for the surface ships to fire broadsides thay must assume a course that results in opening of the range or take a course 15 degrees or so from the target ship and wait. Each surface ship will be able to do this to 1 target. The transports are no longer in formation. The surface ships speed advantage allows them to manoveor to avoid the transports fire and of course the larger surface ships can begin firing while out of range of return fire but any DD that uses guns or torpedos is in range for return fire.
If there are 6 transports and they each upon contact with enemy TF assume a course 60 degrees (12 transports do a 30 degree course difference) from one another they will be running in all directions. A surface ship cannot close the range with one without opening the range with all the others.
Your points are somewhat valid but onesided.
Why would a ship need to turn broadsides on a slow merchie? Chasing rounds could bring it to a half fast. And why would the combat fleet continue to sail as a unit? More likely its commander would send individual ships after various merchies and collect quite a haul in the process. Plus, assuming chasing rounds early in the conflict a warship could cripple more than one merchie (in theory), thus leaving these bobbing on the water to deal with at leisure later.
I don't pretend ot have any definitive answer to all these questions of the thread, but it's apparent the naval model at present can't handle daylight actions well. Which is the overall point of this thread.
Hi, I think if you run tests where the TF has a aggresive flag officer in command and run the same test with a cautious ship captain in command you'll find the flag officer does at least 4x as much damage. The question as I see it presented in this thread is "is that enough damage" I really do not think a TF that opens fire on another TF is going to inflict a lot of damage where only the forward guns are employed against targets presenting the smallest angle. (This is where ship ratings would matter most) When does the surface TF decide to break formation? At start it likely does not even see entire enemy TF. The major mistake in the surface combat routine is showing the player too much info in the animation. Because the player sees every ship he thinks that every one of his ships sees every enemy ship. (Even when a ship reveals it's name in the animation not every other ships sees it)
So one of my problems remains that the surface TF cannot breakup in pursuit of ships it does not see. And it can't damage ships it does not fire at because it cannot see them. If each ship goes off in pursuit of a target then the excess transports will by default escape.
It is true any ship spotted should risk damage but if a major portion of the transports are unspotted (except by the player knowing they are there because he sees them in the animation) they will not be damage.
This applies even to daylight combat. Where the hrozon can be anywhere from 5 to 25 miles. If you spot the rear ship in a TF 25 miles away and alter couse to pursue (and it changes course to evade while all the unspotted ships do the same) you will catch that ship but never know you missed encountering the others.
In WITP we know that if a surface TF is in the same hex as a friendly transport TF that any enemy surface TF will be engaged by the surface TF.
However the routine is designed where any TF commander enters an engagement not knowing complete details that we find out before the turn is over.
(Forgive my art) I just want to show what I refering to. If the surface TF (black) spots the rear ship in transport TF (blue) and rear ship comes left 90 degrees to evade and surface TF does the same to follow. The surface TF will never see the rest of transport TF. (the distance between all but the pursuit and the transport being followed will open not close.)
The result of such action would be the single transport getting all the fire from the surface TF.
