Courtenay
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quote:
ORIGINAL: brian brian
quote:
ORIGINAL: Orm
My main trouble with shore bombardment is with the sea box system. The ships are close to the shore bombarding enemy troops yet they are very hard to find for short range aircraft. No mines either. No torpedo boats.
There are no risk involved with shore bombardment im WIF that was a present danger and a deterrent during WWII.
This is a great point and it has been brought up many times over the years I think. For a good example of this, read up on what happened to the USS Savannah. In general though, the Allies operated with such air and naval superiority at any and all amphibious operations that the defenders rarely were able to hurt the supporting naval ships. But that was in history … the game is much different as humans commanding cardboard will take greater risks and operate on more of a shoe-string. The game can reward this at times in ways that reality would not.
The not-yet-public rules edition 8 attempts to address this but fails in my opinion. The ships that shore bombard have to drop to the 0 box after they do it .. in theory this makes them more vulnerable to enemy NAV units at sea, as the enemy NAV would get a surprise point bonus attacking the 0 box. But I disagree, as dropping to the 0 box just allows any short range FTR on the invading side to cover the ships, from any base touching the sea zone. Not realistic at all. And in terms of striking at an invasion ….. your infantry can see the enemy battleships bombarding them and the landing craft disgorging troops in their binoculars, but your bomber pilots have to roll a 3 or 4 to attack those same ships?
My suggestion to the Rules 8 process was to place shore bombarding ships and ships unloading invading troops (only invasions) on the adjacent sea-dot during the enemy impulse (one impulse only), where they could be subject to a Port Strike mission (still subject to search dice and the random chaos of war, but hex-dot considered to be 0 box instead of a 3 or 5 as in port). And the invading side would have to figure out how to get fighter cover over that sea-dot. This was rejected in favor of the now many years old proposal of moving them to the 0 box instead.
Invading an enemy shore outside of the range of your own land-based air would be a serious thing. Carriers could cover things to a degree of course. But WiF has this problem everywhere due to the sea box system. The best US strategy in the Pacific, in my opinion, is to use Wake and the Marshalls for an airbase for fighters to cover the invasion of the Bonin Islands (Iwo Jima). Which would be completely impossible in the real Pacific.
It is my sincere hope that the MWiF project will be finished, then WiF8 and Days of Decision can be put on a computer, and some day after that the power of computer technology can be put to use to solve some of the realism problems that creep in to the otherwise highly playable sea-box system. And Fog-of-War in production too, and other things that get lost in realism in the interest of playability in person. Computers can help improve that trade-off. But I'm not holding my breath that any of that will ever happen.
If you say that the naval bombardment rules have a problem in that it is too difficult to force a combat against bombarding ships, I agree completely.
However, this does not mean that one should limit shore bombardment to just a handful of ships. That fix does not address the problem, and prevents what was actually done from being done.
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