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ORIGINAL: bklooste

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ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl



The problem is that you aren't talking about established Coast Defense Systems. Yes, there was artillery on the coast in Normandy..., but it was emplaced simply to drop shells along the beach. True Coast Defense Artillery is tied into a sophisticated naval-style Fire Control System.

Most Pacific islands had some guns mounted to use direct fire under local control against naval targets..., but when you are talking about Oahu or Singapore or the Tsushima Straits the Fire Control systems could bring down accurate directed fire on moving targets the guns themselves could not see.

The basic difference is between guns that could fire on Higgins Boats and Diahatsus along the beach---and guns that could sink the transports before they could put those boats in the water.

The spread of 16" guns is still going to be 100 yards or more compared to 200 yards at least for a BB which is still significant. The Normandy guns did have quite a good accuracy and hits some BBs NO..., THEY DIDN'T. THAT OCCURRED LATER WHEN US BB'S ATTEMPTED TO ENGAGE THE COAST DEFENSE INSTALLATIONS AROUND THE PORT OF CHERBOURG TO SUPPORT VII CORPS ASSULT. AND THEY WERE DRIVEN OFF QUITE QUICKLY.( I dont think they fired much on the beach) , another point is how effective is firecontrol anyway here. On a ship your dealing with roll , the ship moving coordinating , the salvo but for CD guns you know the range and the angle the only issue is predicting how the target will evade/ move which i dont think any WWII FC system takes into account and which target you fire on which is of some benefit but a radio can do this ok eg "fire on the first battleship" . Also CD guns have lower traverse and elevation rates ( because they are not needed) . STill even if you are 10* as accurate as a Battleship that is still not great as BBs mount 8-12* the guns , and if like Rodney it takes 17 Salvos ( you dont get great crews on CD guns) to get a hit your not going to hit many ships before your out of ammo ( I dont know PH but most had limited stores else they become vulnerable to a magazine hit) .
. Anyway this OT as these guns will only really engage large capital ships and save their mostly AP ammo for them

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

Perhaps I am wrong about this, but IIRC the terrain type is taken into account when landing over the beach. Meaning mountains and swamps, for example, are not treated as flat sand. It's possible that further adjustments might help.

BTW, amphibious TF's do unload faster at heavily congested friendly ports because they get to use their landing craft.

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ORIGINAL: castor troy

lol, and how many casualties due to "accidents"? 300? With 10 troops dead and 2 guns destroyed?

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ORIGINAL: herwin

What I was suggesting was a marginal change to the current code: first determine who won the ship versus shore gun duel, allowing for the relative advantage of CD artillery. If the duel goes to the ships, the landing force can land as currently. If the duel goes the other way, the landing force gets chewed on. I was positing that the duels in the late war invasions after Tarawa went to the ships. This can probably be checked (and the relative advantage of CDA calibrated) by looking at those invasions.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: herwin

What I was suggesting was a marginal change to the current code: first determine who won the ship versus shore gun duel, allowing for the relative advantage of CD artillery. If the duel goes to the ships, the landing force can land as currently. If the duel goes the other way, the landing force gets chewed on. I was positing that the duels in the late war invasions after Tarawa went to the ships. This can probably be checked (and the relative advantage of CDA calibrated) by looking at those invasions.

This might have some merit, but if I understand you correclty, not after the first 12-hour phase. After that the troops are ashore, or nearly so, and the ships are unloading supplies. And, as I said above, the game doesn't allow the troops ashore to specifically over-target CD, which they would do if it were chewing up their only way home. CD gets to respond until the entire defense garrison is eliminated, or the CD runs out of supply, or is device-disabled in turn with the infantry and armor LCUs in the attack resolution queue.

This proposal also ignores the historical record of Allied island invasions where few transports unloaded assault troops while under sustained shore fire.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

Perhaps I am wrong about this, but IIRC the terrain type is taken into account when landing over the beach. Meaning mountains and swamps, for example, are not treated as flat sand. It's possible that further adjustments might help.

BTW, amphibious TF's do unload faster at heavily congested friendly ports because they get to use their landing craft.

I wasn't specifically speaking to the terrain type "sand", but rather just "land." Forgive me for artistic license. I just meant "room."

I haven't been to many of the invasion beaches in the PTO, but I lived on Oahu, spent six weeks on Guam, three days on Saipan, landed on Rota for an hour, and flew over Tinian at 1000 feet. On Guam and Saipan, where I spent full afternoons at the invasion beaches, I can say that there is not physically enough space, room, sand, etc. to get 300 transports worth of anything ashore in 12-hours, CD or no CD, landing craft or motor whale boats. These are pretty small beaches. both in width and depth.

On your last point, I think Alfred's main point was not that it can be faster to to combine piers with lighters, but that there is an AE constraint on pier unloading, but essentially unlimited capacity to land amphibiously, if the player is willing to tie up hundreds of transports at a time. That primitive unloading out of landing craft can achieve results impossible to get at modern, well-stevedoored ports with cranes, trucks, paved roads, warehouses, etc.

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ORIGINAL: castor troy

And while landed troops donīt take on the CD, there is a routine that letīs you hit the CD: PORT ATTACK. Thatīs the way you were supposed (at least in WITP) to take out the CD. Ground attacks to take out the defending LCUs. Put everything toghether and you have a knocked out CD (or heavily disrupted) and heavily disrupted LCUs. Both together would have meant that you can land without getting chewed up if the "preparation" for your invasion was good enough. If not, it went bad. Throw in some random factor. This all went overboard in AE.

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ORIGINAL: John Lansford

The 2nd day of PH invasion AAR's indicates "batteries" firing at individual ships, barges even, all the way up to 14" and 16" guns.  I could see the 5" and 155mm guns firing at incoming assault boats, but 14" guns?  16" guns?  They would be better served firing at the transports or the warships providing naval support for the troops on shore.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: castor troy

And while landed troops donīt take on the CD, there is a routine that letīs you hit the CD: PORT ATTACK. Thatīs the way you were supposed (at least in WITP) to take out the CD. Ground attacks to take out the defending LCUs. Put everything toghether and you have a knocked out CD (or heavily disrupted) and heavily disrupted LCUs. Both together would have meant that you can land without getting chewed up if the "preparation" for your invasion was good enough. If not, it went bad. Throw in some random factor. This all went overboard in AE.

I use port attack, both as softening up and during invasions. I know that's how you're supposed to address CD, and the same in WITP. But in my experience, port attacks mostly result in port damage and port supply degredation, and not much CD damage. Occassionally I get a "1 gun disabled" line in the attack print out, but usually just port damage (which I have to repair once I own the place.)

Is this historic? Probably yes. CD was cammoed from air attack and piers weren't. The way to get CD was the way it was done on D-Day. Get close and shoot the gunners dead with your rifle.

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ORIGINAL: John Lansford

The 2nd day of PH invasion AAR's indicates "batteries" firing at individual ships, barges even, all the way up to 14" and 16" guns.  I could see the 5" and 155mm guns firing at incoming assault boats, but 14" guns?  16" guns?  They would be better served firing at the transports or the warships providing naval support for the troops on shore.

I agree with Herman; if the defense guns are suppressed, they should only fire back at the warships firing at them, and if they aren't, they can fire at whatever they want.  No sane navy would send patrol boats or DD's to duel with battleship sized shore based weapons; that's why BB's were in invasion fleets, to knock out heavy guns that outranged smaller ships' weapons.

As for what constitutes a "fortress", that's easy.   Look at the LCU names; any of them that say "fort" or "fortress" is a fixed installation and has the sophisticated, built-in, dedicated coast defense system, complete with preregistered firing locations, dug in positions, fire control systems, and lots of ammo.  The others with just "CD" or "coastal defense artillery" are the mobile LCU's and don't get the benefit that the fixed LCU does. 

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ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

There was an interesting occurrence during the Iwo Jima invasion.

A day before the invasion a handful of small Allied craft (LCIs, I think) carrying underwater demolition teams approached the beach.  The Japanese commander thought it was "the real thing."  His big CD guns opened fire and roughed up some of the Allied craft, but in doing so revealed their positions.  These guns were thus knocked out before the real invasion (fortunately for the Allied assault wave).  The Japanese gun emplacements that didn't reveal themselves were barely even touched by days of naval and aerial bombardment.

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ORIGINAL: John Lansford
Bullwinkle,

Are you forgetting the CD guns on Tarawa and Iwo Jima?  In both battles the ships knocked out the big CD guns threatening the ships offshore, sometimes using pointblank direct fire from their largest guns.  The smaller guns firing on the incoming troops weren't "CD" guns, but the usual weapons a defensive force employs and would have to be taken out by the troops.  Even at Normandy many of the guns capable of firing on the ships were destroyed by naval gunfire; the ones that fired at infantry on the beach were where naval gunfire couldn't hit them and had to be taken out by the troops themselves.

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ORIGINAL: WITPPL

1st vs 2nd Pearl Landing.

Take a look at numbers of guns firing: its down from 360+ to 14 pieces. There were no bombardments or air strikes between these landings.

Does a size of an invasion TF matters?

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ORIGINAL: John Lansford

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Bullwinkle,

I was pointing out that there are valid examples where warships destroyed what AE would call "CD guns", which you were claiming had to be taken out by infantry on the ground. Clearly not accurate given both Tarawa and Iwo Jima. Most CD guns didn't tend to fire at the men on the beach, just at the ships offshore and those approaching the beach.

I didn't say they HAD to be, only that they usually were. Some things havne't changed for centuries. Forts were usually taken by marine infantry landed up the coast who assaulted from the land side.

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ISTM that the words "Fort" and "Fortress" in AE denote fixed, defendable positions that may or may not have large guns and would provide the defenders a bonus if attacked.

 

I don't know if that's what "CD" in the list means. Maybe it's just a sortable field in the DB there for utility. Maybe it calls sub-routines when this LCU is attacked. Don't know. But by crawling into the CD lisitngs I see there is no, none, nada consistency about what "Fort" or "fortress" in the name of the LCU denotes. Again, go look. There are some really odd ducks. I don't doubt that Andy and the OOB crew are correct that the facilities bore those names historically. I'm saying that, as a trigger to call some sort of new sub-routine, as a signal that the attacker is dealing with an integrated sea-facing SOTA defense and had better bring the pain, these designations don't work. And that the "World's Most Highly Defended Island", Oahu, IS NOT a fort or fortress in the DB.

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As for the smaller # of guns at some of the Aussie ports, so what if they got a bonus?

 

I thnk the burden is on those who want to change the model to justify it. Why should they? Why are three 6-in guns worthy of any bonus, and an artillery LCU I hauled 1000 miles to Cairns not worthy? Why should Dehli get a "CD bonus" when it clearly isn't defending a coast?

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Would 3 6" guns be able to stop a large invasion force? No, but they'd inflict damage on that force and that's the point.

And my point is that right now, they do.

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Right now, CD units appear to be neutered to the point of pointlessness. If the most heavily defended port in the game can be invaded without inflicting heavy losses on the attacking force (without naval or aerial bombardment, even), then what's the point of using the Marine Defense Units which have far less capability?

And you're right back where this started a over a week ago.

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ORIGINAL: John Lansford

RE: the 2nd invasion wave.

Is there any way to tell if your infantry units have reduced the # of CD guns still capable of firing?  If you've not conducted any attacks, I don't see why there aren't a similar number of guns from the 1st wave still firing at the ships offshore.  It may be as Castor Troy has mentioned, if you have fewer men unloading from fewer ships then you get fewer guns firing at them.

Bullwinkle,

The point I'm making is there are a certain category of units called "forts" or "fortresses" that have fixed guns in CD roles, and I'd expect they would have more advanced FC systems than the more mobile units have.  If it were possible to give those units with CD guns a firing bonus against invaders, it might help reduce the problem we're seeing right now.  If you disagree with this, then what is YOUR suggestion to try and fix this?