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Does anyone besides me think that naval transport is to slow? I may have been doing something wrong, and I haven't had an opportunity to review the process yet, but it took me four months to transport a corp from Cadiz to Naples. This is a trip that a ship moving at a mere two knots could make in less than a month.

Yes, I figured that the transports should be slower than fleet ships but not 3/7ths. Maybe a 5 for transports.  On the flip side, Heavy ships can transport 1/2 as well as transports and lights can carry some inf at 7 so all is not lost.

I think it would be reasonable to increase the move for transports to 4 but im inclined to think its unwise to give them more moves.
 
As stated heavy fleets are clearly viable for long range transports.

...and safer, too, since a single enemy warship will capture any number of unescorted transports without needing to stop.

Isnt it:

Transport takes 2 pts
Heavy takes 1 pt
Light takes 1/2 pt

where

Inf is 1 pt
Cav is 2 pts

Correct me if im wrong dont have the manual here to check atm

dunno if this is relevant or if it is thought about but shouldnt artillery be like 3 pts or something as they probably have horses and the pieces are quite heavy...

ok, i know all corps to a certain extent have artillery but still this is supposed to be pure artillery, it should be heavy.

"...and safer, too, since a single enemy warship will capture any number of unescorted transports without needing to stop." - Grognot

The key word in your statement is "unescorted". Anyone transporting army units by sea without escorts deserves what he gets.

Playing as GB a few times now, I found the transports mostly useless.  Unless I just wanted to transport some troops across the chanel or for other very short hops I couldn't use them to move troops from GB to places in the Med very well.  I pretty much rely on the heavies now for most transport duty and just use the transport fleet to provide invasion supply.
 
Dude

Transports are useless as is, IMO. I agree, though, that they should be slower.
 
What I would opt for, instead of giving them 1 or 2 extra movement points, is making entry to open ocean from a controlled port free, rather than 1 MP. And, vice-versa for entering controlled port (free). This would allow five MPs, but only controlled port to controlled port. Speed would be four leaving a controlled port and dropping from sea, and three open ocean to open ocean.
 
I think that if transports are made speed five normally, they run the risk of becoming too valuable?

No we wouldn't want the humble transport to become to valuable. For every tank in Iraq there are probably a 1000 trucks or humvees (at least). For every Battleship in WWII Pacific there must have been a 1000 transports (at least). I'll have to look at WitP one of these days to count them. No I guess we wouldn't want the unglamorous transport to become to important.

We wouldn't. As a matter of fact I object to the whole transport concept as unneeded complexity. This isn't Huge Napoleonic Sea-Borne Invasions in Arms Which Didn't Even Happen Anyway - any invasions which need to be made can be handled by heavies, and besides, it's not like there aren't crossing arrows to get you everywhere.

If there was one thing I would change, it would be that corps loaded on transports would not be required to land during the land phase but instead would pay $3 or forage at zero.

The naval transports needs to be fixed to 4 movement and on a naval transports you would not have to unload, and you would have to pay for the transported units or forge at 0 value!

Just out of curiosity was there naval transport in the boardgame?
 
Did anyone who played the boardgame use naval transport? Was it really that useful?
 
 
 
GSB

ORIGINAL: Grapeshot Bob

Just out of curiosity was there naval transport in the boardgame?

Did anyone who played the boardgame use naval transport? Was it really that useful?



GSB

EIA? No it only had 1 kind of ship - it did the transport duty (& no "piracy" options either)

The board game has Fleet counters of no specified type. The intention of these fleet counters was to represent the main battle lines of each country's Navy, and could be compared to the heavy fleets in this new computer version of the game. These fleets did however have a transport capacity. Each fleet counter, regardless of the number of ship factors in the fleet, could transport a corp. The fleets had a movement of 7 whether they were doing transport or not. The first time I was confronted by different types of fleets was when I got involved with a Empires in Harms game that was started up in the old Battlegrounds forum. An intersting side note to this is that Empires in Harms included the Americas as well and had as an 8th player the USA. Also, all of Spain's American colonies were in the game as well. Very interesting.

There was an optionl rule in TT EiA that reduced capacity of a fleet to 10 factors per fleet, so 25 factors required 3 fleets, 11 factors 2 fleets, etc.  It seems this rule has been added via the restrictions on heavy and light ships.
 
There was another optional rule that when fleets traveled in stacks, they lost one movement point for each fleet over (some number I forget...2 fleets?  four fleets?  Hated the rule...) one, to a minimum movement rate of four.  This slowed massive armadas down drastically.
 
yamma

Did anyone who played the boardgame use naval transport? Was it really that useful?

Yes, and please let's not start increasing the movement of transports.  Doing so makes them too overpowered and breaks a lot of other things that would take 20 pages of dicussion, and still not get close to being solved.

Just out of curiosity what do the 3 numbers listed beside a port mean?
 
 
GSB

Trade values, and port defence guns. The number like 2/3 are trade... GB gets the value on the left, you get the value on the right (if GB owns the port he gets both). The guns are for shooting at enemy fleets that try to attack you in port. They get a free shot at the attacking fleet before the fight starts.

Ok,


So (using your example) if the trade values are 2/3 then GB gets 5 if it owns the port, 2 if it doesn't (??) and any other country gets 3 if it owns the port.

Does GB somehow get some kind of tax from ports I control?



GSB

Trading is supposed to be mutually beneficial...

If the domestic trading doesn't happen, because it's not requested or the request is denied, then neither party gets it.  Allying with France is a good way to tell GB not to trade with you.