Attacking fleets with armies

[Guest Mike]

What is teh rationale behind making attacks by armies on fleets in port so efective?

I can understand it if it is from the cit to which the port is attached, or if there is no city such as at Casablanca, but how do you attack something like Krondstadt from Finland??

[Blashy]

Artillery!

[Guest Mike]

Most land-based artillery is light in naval terms, and lacks armour piercing .

The amount of damage done is massive - even a corps with no expereince can knock 3 or 4 points off a fleet without any problem - I'd rather attack a fleet in horbour with infantry than with the Bismark, which seems pretty daft.

[Concord Dan]

"All in all, the German artillery alone is responsible for sinking 44 naval units, including, except of those covered above, submarines L-1, M-72 and M-96, torpedo boats N 103 and N 123, trawler N172 and many other."

This was just at Leningrad.

Link to article.

http://www.1jma.dk/articles/1jmaarticlesWW2artyleningrad.htm

[Guest Mike]

Yeah but look at what they sank - subs, trawlers, torpedo boats - units that aren't even in the game.

Major warships mentinoedin the same paragraph are the "Petropavlovsk" - incomplete ex-Lutzow hit by 210mm artillery - and old shps dating back to pre WW1 that were training hulks or historical monuments!!

What's more that list is for the ENITRE 900 DAY SIEGE - compared to an atack by a corps taking a week.

The battleship "Marat", which was ostensibly "sunk" by Hans-Ulrich Rudel on September 23, 1941, but soon repaired so that turrets N3 and N4 became active again, was hit by 5 shells on 15.09.1941, piercing the decks and blowing up the engine, on 12.12.1941 it suffered 3 more hits of the 203 mm shells and on 28.12.1941 3 direct hits and several German shells exploding near the battleship. The deck was reinforced by the granite plates of the Neva embankment, and yet the ship was targeted again successfully on 25.10.1942 with 3 305 mm shells, one 203 mm shell on 06.11.1942 and one 203 mm shell on 08.10.1943.

so there again we have damage done by specialist heavy artillery, but over the period of a YEAR, with exactly _5_ hits - or roughly 1 every 2 1/2 months!!

So certainly damage was done, but nothing like hwat can be done in SC2.

and

On the other hand, the Soviet battleship "October Revolution" was hit by German artillery fire on several occasions(6 direct hits on 8-10.10.1941, one hit on 14.12.1941, two hits on 23.03.1942, several hits on 16 and 18 April 1942), and as a result of these episodes the vessel was siginficantly damaged, as probably any other Soviet ship based in Leningrad or Kronschtadt. The reason they eventually survived was the germans usually employed 105-210 mm artillery systems not capable of sinking a heavily armoured cruiser or battleship, but causing enough damage to make the vessels inactive for long periods of time. Moreover, the crews often performed remarkably in salvaging their vessels after direct hits and resulting fires.

I rest my case!

Edit: Nice article BTW

I have no problem with armies etc beign able to inflict SOME damage - mayb e a small chance of 1 point.

however I also think it is silly that fleets can stay in port if the city is taken by teh otehr side!!

[ May 29, 2006, 06:02 PM: Message edited by: Stalin's Organist ]

[Concord Dan]

" but causing enough damage to make the vessels inactive for long periods of time"

This is the key. The damage prolly represents the effect we are seeing in the game. IMO, This could also represent damage to docks and facilities etc. which would make your 10 ship a 3 ship.

I agree about the ships in port not leaving when city captured. In one game my opponent tried to see how long he could keep alive a Brit destroyer in Brest after the fall of France. ( He was hoping for 1944 lol )

[Guest Mike]

dmage to docks and facilities is presumably represented by damage to the port level, which of course limits how much of your ship you can repair, which seems fine.

The time it takes to repair ships is another issue IMO - repairing fleet units in a week or a month (depending on season) is silly too.....

[Concord Dan]

Could be a programming thing since as far as I know Armies can not damage port level.

Maybe we can get a Q&A with Hubert someday.

[Guest Mike]

sorry - yes I meant that is how it is represented and the effect seems fine when it is done, not that armies can do it.

[Fartknock3r]

I've always wondered how a research that adds artillery to a unit, most probably an army and a corps, would work out in a situation like this.

Perhaps when a naval unit is heavly damaged you can pay for it to be reproduced (at the cost it takes to repair the unit now) in the production Queue at a shorter rate. That can prevent the way ships are able to be repaired in a turn.