Transport Damage

No, I think you're truly on to something.
Especially considering that a transport unit is not a single huge ship that can ferry an entire division but rather a fleet of troop-ships and transports a badly damaged unit must have had several ships sunk.

The strength of a unit is very abstract, for all that we know all of your transports could have survived but be in horrible condition.

Black Lotus said:

The strength of a unit is very abstract, for all that we know all of your transports could have survived but be in horrible condition.

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some sort of clown car, i guess...?

germanguy said:

Awww come on..... your kidding right??


You mean to tell me that 16000 men their equipment, cannons, and vehicles where all clinging to the last few transports? I would love to see that picture.

Or do you mean that all the transports are not sunk but are so heavily damaged that they are on their last leg? I would like to see a 99 percent damaged transport in real life. Hehe

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I'm just playing Devil's Advocate, honestly I agree with you that they should lose some strength however the example I offered you is pluasible.

Black Lotus said:

The strength of a unit is very abstract, for all that we know all of your transports could have survived but be in horrible condition.

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What kind of weapon would put a transport in a "horrible" condition without doing the same to its cargo?

Alex_brunius said:

What kind of weapon would put a transport in a "horrible" condition without doing the same to its cargo?

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A sofisticated super-smart-anti-ship-missiles-that-will-spare-all-cargo-no-matter-what-it-is.

Very good for intercepting porcelin-transports and glass-deliveries

I like this idea.

A problem of the AI in HOI 2 was the weakness to defend against a human invasion. You could send huge amounts of troops far away in a region with a lot of enemy ships, without a risk of really losing the troops, as long as you were monitoring the transports and you had enough reserve transports just in case some of them were sunk.

So it was possible to sneak around with a large transport fleet and invade enemy islands without ruling the sea, making naval warfare somthing optional.

With such a rule sending invasion forces or reinforcements over the sea would be much more challenging and realistic.

Two good points mentioned here.
Firstly, damage to transports should also damage the division aboard.
Secondly, divisions should be assigned to a single transport unit, so they cannot just "jump" to a reserve transport.
I doubt it would be technically possible, but it would be neat if some of the manpower would be saved if the fleet as a whole survives, to represent the survivors being picked up by other ships.

last i seen transport capacity is now calculated based on wight
so if u sink enough ships the units will probably go with them.

Isn't the damage done to transport ships forwarded onto transported units in EU3?

If that is the case (I can't remember and can't check right now), it should also be in HoI3 I think.

Given how typically dumb the AI is with transports, I'd rather not.

I disagree on assigning a division to a specific transport ship. It sounds more reasonable to me that the divisions would spread aorund the available transports, the troops would sure have a thing to say about getting crowded like tuna while the ships next to them only transport air.

My suggetsion would be:
damage to all transports = damage to all division times used space divided through available space.

This way, loosing 20% of five transports (either loosing 1 of five ships or loosing 20% of five ships) will cause five division to loose 20% of their strength.

Acheron said:

I disagree on assigning a division to a specific transport ship. It sounds more reasonable to me that the divisions would spread aorund the available transports, the troops would sure have a thing to say about getting crowded like tuna while the ships next to them only transport air.

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The German definitely spread out divisions when transporting them to Africa because the they didn't want to lose entire divisions and there was a very high rate of sinking by the British.

I just think that the AI probably wouldn't be able to handle a lot of the things that you are talking about. That said, I wish the AI could. The transport system is archaic.

ingwe said:

The German definitely spread out divisions when transporting them to Africa because the they didn't want to lose entire divisions and there was a very high rate of sinking by the British.

I just think that the AI probably wouldn't be able to handle a lot of the things that you are talking about. That said, I wish the AI could. The transport system is archaic.

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It depends on how you think about a ship and the damage indicator. 1% strength doesn't necessarily mean full of holes and over 98% of the ship is damaged. 100% would be full fighting capability of the ship while 1% would indicate its still floating but severely reduced so that the very next hit would sink it or make it unfeasible to operate in wartime. Plenty of ships were not sunk by enemy outright but damaged so much their owners decided to scuttle.

So for transports 1% would mean it absorbed a hit maybe or near miss which warped the rudder or holed it but it can still make way, I've seen pictures of a few ships with the bow shot off or a huge hole just above waterline etc. It would effectively take the ship out of the fight and would simulate something less than 10% health in the game but still floating.

I do think the way warships can fight 100% effectively down to 1% health is unrealistic as that would mean its almost done completely yet still fighting at 100% ? I think it might be more realistic to say that ships that go under 50% suffer some large battle malus as and when its down to 10% its basically running for its life and trying to avoid engagements.

If it were a decision to fight to the end perhaps that could be very cool... simulate the Japanese fleet when it decided to attack with everything and there was no reason to preserve the ships anymore. So when ships at 50% damage a nation with that decision implemented would suffer only small malus and would keep fighting till it was sunk as it wouldn't try and run to preserve the ship.

Ichon said:

It depends on how you think about a ship and the damage indicator. 1% strength doesn't necessarily mean full of holes and over 98% of the ship is damaged. 100% would be full fighting capability of the ship while 1% would indicate its still floating but severely reduced so that the very next hit would sink it or make it unfeasible to operate in wartime. Plenty of ships were not sunk by enemy outright but damaged so much their owners decided to scuttle.

So for transports 1% would mean it absorbed a hit maybe or near miss which warped the rudder or holed it but it can still make way, I've seen pictures of a few ships with the bow shot off or a huge hole just above waterline etc. It would effectively take the ship out of the fight and would simulate something less than 10% health in the game but still floating.

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Well I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment of the damage model with regards to warships, transports are a flotilla. There was no single ship that held 16000 soldiers and equipment. Instead there were flotillas of transports. If you extend this damage model to a single unit that represents more than one ship, what you are saying is that at 1%, every single ship is just barely floating while at 0%, every ship simultaneously sinks. It's sort of ridiculous.

But let's say we do accept the model, for the sake of argument. Wouldn't severely damaging and crippling the entire transport fleet still cause significant damage to the soldiers on board? People would be killed, equipment would be dumped overboard, command and control would be be smashed.

I would support a model where the first 10% of strength damage didn't carry over on to the embarked divisions but after that it carried over directly. So a transport reduced to 1% would be carrying an 11% strength division after the battle.

Porkman said:

Well I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment of the damage model with regards to warships, transports are a flotilla. There was no single ship that held 16000 soldiers and equipment. Instead there were flotillas of transports. If you extend this damage model to a single unit that represents more than one ship, what you are saying is that at 1%, every single ship is just barely floating while at 0%, every ship simultaneously sinks. It's sort of ridiculous.

But let's say we do accept the model, for the sake of argument. Wouldn't severely damaging and crippling the entire transport fleet still cause significant damage to the soldiers on board? People would be killed, equipment would be dumped overboard, command and control would be be smashed.

I would support a model where the first 10% of strength damage didn't carry over on to the embarked divisions but after that it carried over directly. So a transport reduced to 1% would be carrying an 11% strength division after the battle.

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I don't know how often an entire flotilla was used... most often probably 3 ships would suffice for a division. Several troops ships could carry in the thousands and its rare for the men to take full equipment on the same ship. I'd be more likely to support different ships for amphibious assaults as that would be more realistic anyway and transport caught at see and an entire flotilla sunk would be very rare though spreading out the damage past a certain point might make sense. Especially for Italians or Germany trying to dash across the Med it would show how harrowing that journey could be without air superiority.