Frigates or ships for blockades?

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Frigates or ships for blockades?

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All Forums >> [Current Games From Matrix.] >> [American Civil War] >> Forge of Freedom: The American Civil War 1861-1865 >> Frigates or ships for blockades?

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Frigates or ships for blockades? - 12/14/2009 3:24:42 PM

SlickWilhelm

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From: Rochester, MN
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Frigates are cheaper and quicker to produce than ships. Are they as effective as ships in blockades?

Also, which type is better for hunting down Confederate blockade runners?

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RE: Frigates or ships for blockades? - 12/14/2009 3:42:16 PM

Randomizer

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Frigates are fine, a minimum of three per fleet is needed but they will do the trick nicely. You can also get get them out to the blockades much quicker to get those 4-VP's and cut off the South from Europe.

What works against the AI however might not be as effective in a PBEM contest but I would still prefer ironclads to ships to back up the blockading frigates.

Too bad the naval game within FoF is so superficial; ironclads cannot operate on rivers and some of the big naval guns available as upgrades have a siege factor but never seem to be used during sieges.

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RE: Frigates or ships for blockades? - 12/14/2009 4:36:10 PM

SlickWilhelm

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From: Rochester, MN
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Not to mention that you can't have a gunboat in an enemy-occupied hex without a land unit in the same hex! How am I supposed to relive my Capt David Farragut fantasy on New Orleans with that limitation!

Btw, did you notice that if you give a fleet blockade orders via the blockade drop-down window, it won't actually blockade that city/port until you click on it's "check orders" button? Not the "Blockade" drop-down window, but the actual "check orders" or "examine orders" button over to the left of that. I think that's a bug, but can't be sure unless Ericbabe confirms it.

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RE: Frigates or ships for blockades? - 12/14/2009 8:09:15 PM

Randomizer

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Had not noticed the "check orders" thing, my blockades seem to become effective without further input although I have never noticed any of the blockading squadrons actually engage Southern Runners. Odd...

Tried modding the movement classes for ironclads and frigates to Class 3 so they can enter rivers individually but they don't do any good while they are there for some reason, even when refitted with weapons that have an effective siege value. Never modded the Fleet container unit movement class though, maybe that's why they did not add their siege values. Unfortunately it appears that movement class 3 allows movement anywhere so this could be a deadly exploit even if it worked so I restored the original values.

One naval mod that I have stuck with though is reducing the cost and time involved in building a Fleet container. It is difficult to know what a Fleet container in the FoF/CoG systems are supposed to represent since navies lacked the service support elements that followed land units at the division, corps and army command levels. So because four turns to build seems excessive, I reduced cost to 10-Money and time to one-turn.

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RE: Frigates or ships for blockades? - 12/14/2009 9:30:24 PM

SlickWilhelm

Posts: 1854
Joined: 7/22/2007
From: Rochester, MN
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Randomizer

Had not noticed the "check orders" thing, my blockades seem to�become effective�without further input although I have never noticed any of the blockading squadrons actually engage Southern Runners.� Odd...

Do your blockade fleets actually go up and "hug" the port it's blockading after you end the turn? Or do they just sit out there in the general vicinity. Mine don't go and hug the port until and unless I click on that "examine orders" button.

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RE: Frigates or ships for blockades? - 12/15/2009 11:22:19 PM

Larry Reese

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Hello guys,

I'd like to share my two cents on this. I think the costs of the fleets are appropriate. This would represent the cost, facilities, and infrastructure to home port the collection of ships in the fleet, procure, warehouse, and tramsport supplies and repair materials while the fleet is on station (particularly coal for the steam powered vessels), provide naval hospitals and the like to treat the wounded, and the staff, both ashore and afloat to coordinate everything and make it all work (both logistically, tactically, and operationally). But that's just me.

LR

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RE: Frigates or ships for blockades? - 12/16/2009 4:08:55 PM

Randomizer

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Larry Reese

Hello guys,

I'd like to share my two cents on this.� I think the costs of the fleets are appropriate.� This would represent the cost, facilities, and infrastructure to home port the collection of ships in the fleet, procure, warehouse, and tramsport supplies and repair materials while the fleet is on station (particularly coal for the steam powered vessels), provide naval hospitals and the like to treat the wounded, and the staff, both ashore and afloat to coordinate everything and make it all work (both logistically, tactically, and operationally).� But that's just me.

LR

If the Fleets represent infrastructure, specialized buildings in ports would more accurately reflect the costs involved. Collection of the ships is handled through the costs of building the ship units while coal and munitions costs are in the turn by turn upkeep costs for those same units. If that is not what it's for, why continually pay since it costs the same whether the ship is deployed or not?

Unlike armies, the existance of a naval "staff" was vestigal at this point in fleet development. There was no fleet train, coal and consumables were shipped in chartered merchants to forward locations for trans-shipping to the warships or more frequently, the blockading ship would rotate to port on a schedule. FoF does not model merchant shipping at all, if it did it should cost something to transport ground units but this evolution is free in the game so there is no cost in gathering, chartering or modifiying the transports that carry the troops, horses and guns. Therefore, why should there be a one-time cost for assembling virtual ships that would not be attached to any particular fleet perminantly?

Provided the warships were available, a squadron (read FoF Fleet) could sail easily within one turn and in the event delays in launching naval operations were virtually always due to factors modelled in the game already and that have little to do with the attributes that you apply to the fleet container units. A Civil War fleet in game terms is little more than a flag officer, a small collection of staff officers and ratings (often friends or family) and a mission so paying 20 Money and waiting two months for one to appear seems excessive in my view.

It is easy to visualize what an army container might consist of, the large collection of sutlers, administrative personnel, vets and horse traders, camp followers, blacksmiths and logistics types that have been part of armies since Phillip of Macedon. For navies, even those at the cusp of mechanization as was the case during the Civil War, none of those are reflected in the Fleet container unit or its cost to build since they were already included in naval port infrastructure or were not relevant.

For what it's worth, although I lowered the cost of fleet construction in money and time I also significantly increased the cost of fleet container maintenance per turn in Money and Iron just to reflect my interpretation of the actual factors involved.

Cheers

(in reply to Larry Reese)

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