Are riverboats too powerful?

[mdsmall]

I thought I would start a new thread on this hot topic, since the previous one has the very cryptic title "Luka, MS" (and the thread of the discussion there seems to have gone off into the long-grass...).

I would start by asking: what are the main functions of riverboats (river gunboats, timberclads and river ironclads)? It seems to me that their main functions are:
- securing routes along navigable rivers for friendly transports and amphibious transports
- scouting enemy land units and resource hexes along riverbanks
- attacking enemy forts to open up river lines
- attacking enemy riverboats in order to gain control of rivers
- harassing enemy land units along river-banks.

The first four of these functions seem essential to me; the last seems more like a nice to-have. I will leave it to keen students of this conflict to explain how much damage to defending infantry riverboats were actually able to do. But my two cents worth is that that all three categories of riverboats seem over-powered in their attack against infantry because the latter's defence strength is unchanged against them regardless of the size of the defending unit. So a gunboat has the same odds of killing a strength point against a defending regiment as against a corps. This does not make sense to me.

All three types of riverboats have the same attack strength of 2 against infantry. My recommendation to the devs would be to raise the defence strength against Wooden and Ironclads of regiments and brigades from 0 to 1; of divisions from 0 to 2; and of corps from 0 to 3. I would recommend raising the defence strength of soft targets (ie HQs) from 0 to 1 as well. This would mean that riverboats could do some damage to brigades and HQs; would sometimes get a lucky hit on divisions and would basically never do any damage to corps.

The Union would then be obliged to use their huge advantage in riverboats mostly for scouting and clearing Confederate controlled rivers in order to open them up for amphibious attacks, rather than using riverboats in combined arms attacks against defending infantry. The Confederacy will still find them useful for defensive purposes.

I would make the same adjustments in infantry defence strength against coastal gunboats as well. Their main function seems to me to be disrupting enemy shipping and attacking coastal forts and secondarily attacking defending coastal units. The issue does not arise for stronger naval vessels, as interestingly, their attack strength against infantry is always 0 but they inflict increasing levels of demoralization instead - which makes sense to me.

Cheers,

Michael

[Duedman]

Yeah. Even with the huge scale of this map it is very often not possible to place your units in a way, that Gunboats can not attack them. There are just too few hexes in certain spots.
In the overwhelmingly majority of cases I do NOT want to put my HQ in a spot where gunboats can hit it. USA is huge. HQs are tinytinytiny. But these hexes always count as "unit is directly at the shore, waiting for gunboats to fire"

How about decreasing gunboat defense for units directly ON river tiles? And making them nigh invincible if only at the shores?

[BiteNibbleChomp]

As I was saying in that other thread before it went silly, I am currently testing some changes to this, particularly for the infantry. So by all means, let's keep this discussion going, I'm watching with interest

- BNC

[Beriand]

My recommendation to the devs would be to raise the defence strength against Wooden and Ironclads of regiments and brigades from 0 to 1; of divisions from 0 to 2; and of corps from 0 to 3. I would recommend raising the defence strength of soft targets (ie HQs) from 0 to 1 as well. This would mean that riverboats could do some damage to brigades and HQs; would sometimes get a lucky hit on divisions and would basically never do any damage to corps.
Michael

Well, I would also recommend +/- such changes (although bit lower), but I'm not sure it works as You think it works Defence values on units influence losses of the attacker, not of the defender; increasing defence of units hurts attacking gunboats, but they do all the same damage to their targets. Still, it is good...

How about decreasing gunboat defense for units directly ON river tiles?

I have never seen CSA units standing on river tiles, maybe with exception of New Orleans approach.

[mdsmall]

Yeah. Even with the huge scale of this map it is very often not possible to place your units in a way, that Gunboats can not attack them. There are just too few hexes in certain spots.
In the overwhelmingly majority of cases I do NOT want to put my HQ in a spot where gunboats can hit it. USA is huge. HQs are tinytinytiny. But these hexes always count as "unit is directly at the shore, waiting for gunboats to fire"

How about decreasing gunboat defense for units directly ON river tiles? And making them nigh invincible if only at the shores?

That is an ingenious idea. Major river hexes could have a negative defence bonus against Wooden and Ironclads of say, -1; while the attack strength of riverboats against infantry and soft targets could be reduced to 1 or even 0. That would focus the combat effectiveness of riverboats on clearing the major river hexes they travel through.

It would not make corps and divisions intrinsically less vulnerable to riverboat attacks than brigades or regiments (since the defence bonus has to apply to all units on that kind of terrain when defending against a given attacking unit type). But giving the larger infantry units a higher defence strength against riverboats the odds would flip the estimated odds to 1-0 or 2-0 against the riverboats and that would certainly discourage attacks against units adjacent to major rivers.

[Duedman]

How about decreasing gunboat defense for units directly ON river tiles?

I have never seen CSA units standing on river tiles, maybe with exception of New Orleans approach.

Yes, it is rare. But Gunboats accounting for thousands upon thousands of casualties is totally unrealistic no?
What is a hex supposed to display? 12 miles wide?
If I want my unit in such an area but not close to the river it should be no problem at all. But in this game this is often not possible.
Especially in the Paducah - Nashville area I have to either pose my units as shooting gallerys or vacate all the shore hexes. In that area thats like 50% of my maneuver space.

Your suggestion of raising unit defence is ok too.
But even for Brigades.... if a Brigade can retreat like 12 miles inland. Why would Gunboats ever be able to do any significant amounts of damage like they are now?
I'd rather have them do morale damage to infantry only and some defense malus when directly on the river.

Also, gunboats do have enough purpose. The stuff mdsmall listed.
On top of that, they can trap units who ventured to far. Or, if you captured Richmond and CSA still had units north of the River you can prevent their retreat simply by putting gunboats there. That might net you perfectly fine units that otherwise would have escaped.
Even more so, if as CSA you manage to win in the Indian territories or directly west of Cairo, the gazillion gunboats can easily prevent you from crossing the river. Super frustrating to outplay someone and then to be blocked by THAT.

So in my opinion no need for these things to also do damage.

Probably fun in singleplayer I get that.
Don't know if its possible to tweak them for MP only.

[ElvisJJonesRambo]

Put ground units on hexes you want to defend. It's a war, sh-t happens. South is outmatched, gotta guess and overload where you want to stand.

Remember Saul, he was destined to lose, he held his ground and fell on his sword.
David took off with his 600 to dodge the mayhem

Don't wash your hands in muddy waters,

-EJR the Legend

I was born in Macon Georgia they kept my dad in the Macon jail
Dad said son if you keep your hands clean
You won't hear them bloodhounds on your trail
But I fell in with bad companions we robbed a man in Tennessee
The sheriff caught me way up in Nashville they locked me up and threw away the key
I washed my hands in muddy water washed my hands but they didn't come clean
Tried to do like daddy told me but I must have washed my hands in a muddy stream

I asked the jailor when's my time up he said son we won't forget
And if you try to keep your hands clean we may make a good man of you yet
I couldn't wait to do my sentence I broke out of the Nashville jail
I just crossed the line of Georgia and I can hear them bloodhounds on my trail
I washed my hands...

[Bobo2025]

Well, I would also recommend +/- such changes (although bit lower), but I'm not sure it works as You think it works Defence values on units influence losses of the attacker, not of the defender; increasing defence of units hurts attacking gunboats, but they do all the same damage to their targets. Still, it is good...

Oh, well this explains why some of my attempts at mods haven't worked...

[Bobo2025]

Riverine craft artillery would have an effective range of what? 1500 yards during the ACW and that could also be reduced by banks, intervening obstacles and what not. Really gunboats did little to no damage to units ashore other than forts as the artillery batteries they fielded were small compared to land batteries and most units were not stationed convieniently along the shores.

The effectiveness of gunboats on forts is reasonable since those had to be in range (the effectiveness of forts might be overstated truthfully) but vs other land forces it should be reduced and focus more on morale losses than material losses.

[ElvisJJonesRambo]

What you forget, dudes on ships, got off the ships and hit key spots.

Mangos to be found, oh, and a tiger

-Legend

[Bobo2025]

What you forget, dudes on ships, got off the ships and hit key spots.

Mangos to be found, oh, and a tiger

-Legend

They did send guys ashore but usually as raiders or to engage small/isolated Confederate units not engaging larger CSA formations. The full complement of the Mississippi River Squadron was < 10,000 men mostly of limited utility in land combat functions and no heavy weapons so even imagining the full flotilla dispatching a preposterous percentage of their total crews ashore at one time isn't a major land combat contribution.

[ElvisJJonesRambo]

Think we agree.
Discussing tactical, in a strategic game.
40guys sneaking off a boat at night from obscure direction/flank won't kill 400 entrenched troops.
But they could hit a wagon trail of food, ammo, pack mules, making the enemy 20% less effective.

[Patrat]

The Union also had large mortars mounted on boats and on barges. I'm assuming that the gunboat units also reflect these.

How effective these mortars were against field units, I can't recall at the moment. But I do remember reading something about confederate field units withdrawing away from a river to get out of range of the mortars.

I myself believe the in game gunboats need toning down. But I just thought I would mention the use of large mortars by the Union.

There's also the case of the army of the Potomac sheltering under the guns of the union fleet after the seven days. According the Shelby Foote, the Confederates were deterred from further attacks against the AotP because of the presence of the Union fleet.

[YueJin]

I think it's fine to just reduce the land attack of gunboats to 1, they'll still tear forts apart and allow for Lrat invasions so gaining river control is very meaningful. They could be given something like 2-3 demoralization to compensate since damaging the readiness of the land unit rather than their strength seems more thematically appropriate.

[Soulcollector]

I think gunboats should reduce morale and maybe entranchment (per upgrade). There more like mobile artillery units.

[LoneRunner]

Well, I would also recommend +/- such changes (although bit lower), but I'm not sure it works as You think it works Defence values on units influence losses of the attacker, not of the defender; increasing defence of units hurts attacking gunboats, but they do all the same damage to their targets. Still, it is good...

How about decreasing gunboat defense for units directly ON river tiles?

I have never seen CSA units standing on river tiles, maybe with exception of New Orleans approach.

OMG, that means increasing naval defense of divisions and corps would not mitigate losses by the division or corps from gunboat attacks. Sheesh, I figured that was the whole point of increasing division and corps naval defense. Thanks for pointing that out Beriand.

So the only way to protect divisions and corps from being pummeled by gunboats is to reduce gunboat attack strength which makes gunboats impotent. Dang. I can see the developers' dilemma.

By the way, CSA typically places land units on the Cumberland and Tennessee river hexes in front of Henry and Donelson. Increasing land unit vulnerability on major river hexes appears to be a great solution.

[Taxman66]

Well the gun boats will have separate attack values against different target types.

[Tanaka]

I think it's fine to just reduce the land attack of gunboats to 1, they'll still tear forts apart and allow for Lrat invasions so gaining river control is very meaningful. They could be given something like 2-3 demoralization to compensate since damaging the readiness of the land unit rather than their strength seems more thematically appropriate.

Agreed. They should reduce morale and readiness over destroying units.

[ElvisJJonesRambo]

How about this:

1) after firing a round, take 2 off supply of ship
2) reduce movement upstream

[Beriand]

OMG, that means increasing naval defense of divisions and corps would not mitigate losses by the division or corps from gunboat attacks. Sheesh, I figured that was the whole point of increasing division and corps naval defense. Thanks for pointing that out Beriand.

So the only way to protect divisions and corps from being pummeled by gunboats is to reduce gunboat attack strength which makes gunboats impotent. Dang. I can see the developers' dilemma.

Well, as I stated, when corps have some funny 8 defense value, then gunboat attacking them is always sunk I would call it a good loss mitigation. And if attacking divisions does 1-2 damage to gunboats with 5 strength points, it also slows river swarms considerably.

By the way, CSA typically places land units on the Cumberland and Tennessee river hexes in front of Henry and Donelson. Increasing land unit vulnerability on major river hexes appears to be a great solution.

Ah, ok, I was mistaken a bit about hex properties. But still, when land units attack other land units standing on river hexes, there is no crossing penalty. Only when you (counter?)attack .from. a river hex, then you suffer a penalty. So such placement seems like a poor idea.

I think gunboats should reduce morale and maybe entranchment (per upgrade). There more like mobile artillery units.

Reducing entrenchment would be more powerful than current gunboats Demoralisation sounds interesting.

Well the gun boats will have separate attack values against different target types.

Yes, but brigade/division/corps are all the same unit type and I do not think that will change