Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: RedArgo

How detailed is the naval combat? Is it individual ships or squadrons? The land combat seems pretty detailed so I hope the naval combat is similar.

Thanks,
Bill

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ORIGINAL: Gil R.

Having just spent four hours working on the naval combat part of the manual and still not being close to done, I'll say it's TOO DAMN DETAILED!

Well, not really. But there is a lot detail. One controls individual ships one at a time. Wind and weather have an impact on movement; the player must control sails to affect speed, which in turn affect movement and maneuverability; ships can fire canister, chain or round shot, aiming either high to damage the rigging or low to go after the hull; ships can grapple other ships, sending boarding parties of marines and capture ships, or just blow them out of the water; damage can involve cannons getting loose, fire on deck, destroyed rudders, basic damage to hull and rigging (tracked in terms of hit points), etc.; ships have crews and marines, and as these are wounded/killed their ships become less dangerous and loss the ability to maneuver; and so forth. We even have a chance that ships that have dirty hulls from being at sea for too long will lose movement points. This doesn't really do it justice, but gives you an idea of what naval combat it like.

A month or two ago I read on a gaming blog the observation that naval combat isn't fun because there's no terrain. I think that people will not find that a problem here, because of the interaction of the elements as well as the numerous options and possibilities during battles.

quote:

ORIGINAL: briny_norman

Naval combat sounds great - more than I had hoped for.
Here are some questions:

I assume there will be different ship types that will have different strengths and weaknesses...?
YES, 1st and 2nd SOL, 3rd rate, 4th rate, Frigates, Merchants, Privateers, upgrades can improve the Merchants and Privateers, and another one for the Frigates, also a number of skills that can be bought for each ship, and YES again, size, number of men, guns, sails and stuff, speed, all that good stuff is there
Will weather influence ship combat?
YES, you have the way the wind is blowing, and it can change, you also got how fast the wind is, you got rain and can get fog, really one of the most fun battles was a massive battle in a fog bank, there is also shorelines and you do get Ports and gun banks
And if so, will it be in a detailed way, for example by certain kinds of weather being extra good/bad for certain ship types?
overall, I would say yes, depending on the ship type, some can handle different weather better then others and sail like it was nothing wrong, while others wallow away, which training and skills can help here also
Can you capture enemy ships and use them for yourself in later battles? YES, you can capture ships, but alot of those will be sold off for timber, but you will get to keep some of them, Eric or Gil will have to go into the rules on how that part works, I know I just go out and try to take what I can, and then see if I get to keep any of them
Are there different ship types available for different nations? (would be cool to be able to capture a rare ship type from the enemy that you wouldn't be able to produce yourself)I'll save this one for Gil
Will we be able to buy abilities for ships/captains?
Upgrades from exp and skills for ships, like other combat units
Can we assign captains for the ships (ie. generals) or will there perhaps be a generic captain for each ship? Or will there only be admirals than can be assigned to fleets?
still in debate, beta stage, so don't want to go into too much detail here
I think it could be a really cool detail to have a captain's name associated with every ship built (coming from a realistic pool of names relevant to the specific nation), apart from the admirals I assume are in the game. I would be happy to supply realistic captain names for the Scandinavian countries...!
Do ships have names? Can we rename them? (again, realistic ship names would be sooo cool, but I know this might be quite a bit of work... but as I said, I would be willing to help gather them and I'm sure other people would too... Sort of like the generals biografies project in FOF.
some of the starting ships are named, built ships will be named for type, which you can rename them as you wise (I had a Doom Fleet, so every ship in the fleet had Doom in the name) Which leads me to my last question...)
Will (some) admirals/generals be historical and will they have biografies? (same paranthesis as above...)
again, will leave this for Gil

And for Sarge:
How long does a typical detailed battle take compared to FOF?
ahhhhhhh, most of the battles in my AAR were pretty much done in real time, I would take a snap, come out of battle and make a post and then go back in, so really for me, I can play them out and it don't seem to bad or long for me, but, I also can play a good chunk of time in one sitting, I don't know how much time others can spend on it, like I do, a good battle can take some time, but once you are used to it, it really can be a big one and it can go fast
Is the AI easier or harder to beat than in FOF? (I know Sarge might be the wrong person to ask this question as his HW abilities are pretty ridiculous...!)thanks :), but overall, I like the AI, at times, I have been impressed with what it has done, in fact at times, it does things right, and then I spank it and feel bad, as the AI itself did what it should of done
How big (no. of soldiers involved) are the battles typically? Most of the battles in the AARs seem awfully big...well, one hassle is, when we got the go ahead to write up some AAR stuff for HW, my game was in the final stages, so the enemy was pretty much massed and I was massed, so my AAR does not really give a good feel for the starting game, you can and will have some 20-30,000 man battles, a full Army with out Corps, is around 80,000 men, if they have not been marching around or fighting, you start to lose men quickly on the march or in battle
You mentioned that not all units might make it to the battlefield for a specific battle - could you elaborate on this? Is there a maximum for participating units? What mechanics determine the cahnces of a unit appearing in detailed combat - container ratings, weather, generals, terrain...?there are so caps for large battles, we still in debate over how it all really works, so can't go into more detail
How often will you fight battles that are small enough for brigade level detailed combat? most of your early battles, I should of tried, but maybe even some of my bigger battles could of been fought that way, but they would of been bigger then I wanted for showing off HW, maybe down the road I will look to see how large you can get away with and still have a manageable battle
In COG renaming units was a bit difficult as you only had very few letters available (8-10 or something). This was expanded in FOF, has it been expanded in COG:EE too?it has been expanded for EE, not sure if it is the same as FoF or more, most of my names fix, some of them don't, but I tend to come up with some off the wall names, I know I had Totenkopf for one of my Prussian guns, lets see, 1st Russian Heavy, that one fit, so there is some room

Drowning you in questions, I know. But you asked for it yourselves...! (at least Sarge did)
no hassle from me, it is easier to reply to something then to think of what people would want to know about :)

quote:

ORIGINAL: terje439

And some more Qs:

-is the battleorder of your troops still anoyingly poor? (Artys alone far to one side or ahead of the rest of your army, thereby inviting a charge on turn one)
Supply moves first now, containers pretty much set up as one unit/group, we are testing now, what distances for the opening of the battle to be, so over all, if unit is not in a container at the start of the battle, something bad could happen to it, but for the most part, no
-in FoF you will see the range each unit can fire and how well it does so at each range (Napoleon arty for example states something like 800/600/300/250/125/50/25), anything like this implemented in EE? Range is shorter in this game, 2 for Cav, 3 for Inf and Arty, One hex should also be seen as being melee and gun fire, lots of different things going on, so really is HARD to be sure what is going to happen, damage wise, plus smoke plays a major part of damage, besides skills/ungrade helping out
-an ability to dismiss diplomats? (from what I can tell this is not doable in CoG)LOL, I have never looked or tried, but for the French, each guy has some things they are good at, and things they are not, and each is needed
-is CAV still a royal pain to get back into formation?
ahhhh, other then it is a die roll, and you can get a lot of bad rolls, or a lot of good rolls, they do go disordered and they do reform, and they do miss there rolls, so HARD to say yea or nay, but we got a lot of new rules/stuff for how units form and or go disordered, so in the long run, much better, very much better then before

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ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

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ORIGINAL: terje439

-an ability to dismiss diplomats? (from what I can tell this is not doable in CoG)LOL, I have never looked or tried, but for the French, each guy has some things they are good at, and things they are not, and each is needed