Coastal Forces - A Key Part of the Stategic War

[Cybvep]

Maybe coastal defence efficiency and range depends on the level of the harbour?

We all know of a building type called "coastal fort". Why not make them more useful and important to the gameplay? Coastal forts could be renamed to "coastal defences" and would represent coastal batteries, mines, motor torpedo boats etc. in an abstract manner. Escort-to-capitals ratio, minesweeping tech, shore bombardment value of ships and the level of coastal defences would determine how dangerous it would be for a fleet to operate in a given sea-zone. Dangerous zones could be shown in red colour in the naval map-mode.
IMO it would be simple, effective and require little micromanagement.

 

[Klausewitz]

We all know of a building type called "coastal fort". Why not make them more useful and important to the gameplay? Coastal forts could be renamed to "coastal defences" and would represent coastal batteries, mines, motor torpedo boats etc. in an abstract manner. Escort-to-capitals ratio, minesweeping tech, shore bombardment value of ships and the level of coastal defences would determine how dangerous it would be for a fleet to operate in a given sea-zone. Dangerous zones could be shown in red colour in the naval map-mode.
IMO it would be simple, effective and require little micromanagement.

Exactly my thoughts.
+1

 

[Secret Master]

I agree. It puts an IC cost on those kinds of defense (they aren't free) and makes coastal fortifications a bit more useful.

 

[Chromos]

In the past for HoI3 we had already the idea that coastal forts should additionally give a higher attrition lvl to the sea province they're bordering.
So in that way it would reflect coastal guns shooting at ships or e-boats patrolling the area. Doing Invasions would get an even bigger attrition modifier. This could be paired with mining and so on..
Not that much new stuff to implement, just a modifier to the building that affects seazones.

Having a new type of waterprov called "coastal water prov" would help in adresing that feature maybe and would add possibilities for more cool stuff..

 

[farlite]

I think allot of these ideas are very good. May I suggest a future DLC that would implement some of these ideas and add things relevant to amphibious operations and naval things they don't have time to implement before release. They could call the DLC Overlord. Just an idea

 

[Porkman]

Cybvep's idea is a good one. It would make coastal forts something worth building and the damage mechanic could also replicate the occasional lucky hit like the sinking of the Blucher. It would also serve to reduce the ability for ninja invasions since you'd need to spend some time suppresssing the coastal forts or risk significant damage to the transports.

 

[Midden]

1. I get that destroyers are dangerous due to their speed and torpedoes, however, you would never win a battle with destroyers vs capital ships, as their guns have a much greater range. Destroyers in battles would have been used after larger ships would have knocked out the guns of the enemy's capital ships. The torpedoes could then finish him off. Destroyers would not have been effective in a stand-alone force (correct me if I'm wrong). To assume that destroyers have torpedoes and therefore MTBs are dangerous to enemy naval forces is sort of a logical fallacy: they are not the same type of ship, so the premise does not hold.


I suggest this is incorrect, as destroyers do win battles over capitals, the two engagements at Leyte act as sobering examples as to what happens to a Battleship line when the torpedoes start coming in towards them. Admirals operating their battleships near enemy coast without air supremacy and naval supremacy in the area should expect to lose their battleships, example Force Z and the Japanese at Leyte.

I like the suggestions above to make coastlines have consequences.

 

[jesperj13]

We all know of a building type called "coastal fort". Why not make them more useful and important to the gameplay? Coastal forts could be renamed to "coastal defences" and would represent coastal batteries, mines, motor torpedo boats etc. in an abstract manner. Escort-to-capitals ratio, minesweeping tech, shore bombardment value of ships and the level of coastal defences would determine how dangerous it would be for a fleet to operate in a given sea-zone. Dangerous zones could be shown in red colour in the naval map-mode.
IMO it would be simple, effective and require little micromanagement.

Yup, definitely agree (comes close to what I suggested, so no surprise there!)

I suggest this is incorrect, as destroyers do win battles over capitals, the two engagements at Leyte act as sobering examples as to what happens to a Battleship line when the torpedoes start coming in towards them. Admirals operating their battleships near enemy coast without air supremacy and naval supremacy in the area should expect to lose their battleships, example Force Z and the Japanese at Leyte.

Again, I don't want to get dragged into this discussion again as I know that destroyers/MTBs were useful (hence my suggestions to implementing their importance in the game without micromanagement), and I am sure you can find examples were larger ships were fended off or defeated by destroyers. Fuso and Yamashiro are the only two examples I can think of (however they were both WW1-era ships, damaged after bombardments, and facing the much more modern Fletcher Class destroyers).
Force Z was definitely not sunk by destroyers.

 

[Klausewitz]

@jesperj13
The point that nettles most people were is probably your idea that certain things just don't happen.
You have big guns so small ships are no danger.
You have fast guns so even smaller boats are none.
Etc.
It might be unlikely for an escorted battleship to be sunk by a lone torpedoboat, but it can happen (the argument would then be over the exact percentage assigned to that event).
It is also unlikely that a battleship is sunk by a few destroyers, but those destroyers still carry guns and they carry torpedoes which are extremly dangerous even to battleships.
etc. pp.

 

[Axe99]

I agree. It puts an IC cost on those kinds of defense (they aren't free) and makes coastal fortifications a bit more useful.

Aye, if coastal forts were expanded to be 'coastal fortifications and artillery, and coastal command base (incl minelayers/sweepers)' it'd cover it off. There'd still be the issue of modelling Singapore accurately (good coastal fortifications, virtually no minelayers or torpedo boats), but maybe put in some kind of special case for it or something, to avoid the macro? Otherwise the Japanese invasion boats invading Malaya could well crash and burn.

Would also be good to have a supply cost if these things are now more like 'units' (like province AAA should have a supply cost as well) - or could be exploitable by anyone with a coast to have insanely good but free-once-built coastal forces.

 

[jesperj13]

@jesperj13
The point that nettles most people were is probably your idea that certain things just don't happen.

I'm sorry if that is what people read into it, but that is not what I am saying. I have acknowledged the danger of destroyers etc to larger vessels in my posts (maybe not enough). My point is that generally if a CA/BB comes across an MTB/DD, it is a pretty one sided affair. But of course there are factors at play in the real world (surprise, skill, experience, technology, space to manouvre, luck (?), etc) that will cause the capital ship to lose.

I think it started with my comment that the Channel Dash was not daring because of a few MTBs alone, and to stress that there shouldnt be too much emphasis on the effectiveness of MTBs. Also the OP claimed that if there are individual planes, there could also be individual MTBs. Due to their size and impact I was just guarding against too much micromanagement. This was apparently interpreted in me claiming that they didnt pose any threat at all to larger ships. This was of course not my intention.

To clarify: of course anything that carries a tropedo has the ability to sink a ship, so destroyers and MTBs are dangerous. I fully support the idea of including them and mines into coastal defence. Preferebly with supply cost (as suggested by Axe99).

 

[Porkman]

Aye, if coastal forts were expanded to be 'coastal fortifications and artillery, and coastal command base (incl minelayers/sweepers)' it'd cover it off. There'd still be the issue of modelling Singapore accurately (good coastal fortifications, virtually no minelayers or torpedo boats), but maybe put in some kind of special case for it or something, to avoid the macro? Otherwise the Japanese invasion boats invading Malaya could well crash and burn.

Would also be good to have a supply cost if these things are now more like 'units' (like province AAA should have a supply cost as well) - or could be exploitable by anyone with a coast to have insanely good but free-once-built coastal forces.

A supply cost for coastal and land fortifications is a good idea. Not as much as troops but it did cost something to maintain.

Also, why would mess with the Japanese invasion of Malaya?

The Japanese mad landfall in Thailand and at an unfortified part of the peninsula in Khota Baru. The amphibious part of the invasion of Singapore was across the channel on the Northwest part of the island where it's less than a mile across. The easy to fix this is to make the map so Singapore isn't technically an island, instead make the northern border a "Big river" for combat purposes.

So the map would be like this...

The Rest of Malaya

Big River

Sea Singapore Island Sea

Sea​

 

[Axe99]

Also, why would mess with the Japanese invasion of Malaya?

The Japanese mad landfall in Thailand and at an unfortified part of the peninsula in Khota Baru. The amphibious part of the invasion of Singapore was across the channel on the Northwest part of the island where it's less than a mile across. The easy to fix this is to make the map so Singapore isn't technically an island, instead make the northern border a "Big river" for combat purposes.

So the map would be like this...

Sorry - should have used the term 'Malaya' instead of Singapore - you're spot on about the actual capture of Singapore (and I agree about the 'big river' thing re the gap between Singapore and the Malay Peninsular) - but in the case of ports exerting a radius of control based on the various assets available there, MTBs could operate upwards of 250km from their base of operations and longer-range designs used by the US and Germans over 500km. The British were aware of the Japanese convoy heading south, and had there been a significant MTB presence in the area then they could have potentially caused a significant amount of disruption to the invading force, either operating straight out of Singapore or using ports further up the peninsular to extend their range to intercept the invading force. The Japanese invading force was a light cruiser, a handful of destroyers and three troopships - you'd only need a handful of longer-range MTBs to cause significant disruption, and a sizeable force of smaller vessels available for interception could have turned back the invaders entirely. It wouldn't have been possible with British boats built for shorter-range work in the English Channel, but would have been by longer-range designs (and even the shorter-range British boats extend Singapore's area of 'influence' out from port by a factor of around 10 relative to just it's guns).

As it was, all Singapore had was it's fixed armaments, which were great if the invading force came straight at them, but hit anywhere more than a few kilometres away and they were useless.

So, in-game, if you had Singapore garrisoned with 'coastal defence assets' (a proxy measure that piles minelayers, minefields, MTBs, MGBs, coastal artillery and what-have-you) to a level similar to that in IRL of Cherbourg in 1944, say, it would have a much longer potential range in terms of intercepting incoming fleets (and not even need to piggy back off other ports up the Peninsular to intercept fleets arriving at Khota Baru). On the other hand, if you give Germany's and Britain's ports the equivalent of Singapore's 'coastal defence assets', and their capacity to intercept anything is very, very limited (Not that the D-day landings were a great thread, but it would be impossible with this kind of mechanic for the German player to even decide to go over-the-top with E-Boats as a coastal defence strategy).

So you've got two very different models of 'coastal defence assets', and if the game adopts a 'one size fits all' approach (where higher level = better and possibly greater range) it will make it harder to balance different theatres vis-a-vis historic OOBs and capabilities.

I'm not saying it's not a reasonable enough approximation to do the one-size-fits-all thing, as giving player's the kind of choices the different nations had in the war in terms of developing appropriate (or, in the case of Singapore, inappropriate!) coastal defences does add micro-management, particularly to people playing the US, UK and Japan, and to a lesser extent Italy, Germany and France. That said, I'd be in favour of splitting coastal defence into 'coastal defence buildings' and 'coastal vessels', to differentiate between the two different types of defence (as well as to make it possible to whittle down the coastal vessels defending the broader area, but not need to attack a port supported by coastal guns head-on, for example, or shift the MTBs to a nearby lower-level port that was under threat).

Done like air warfare, it needn't be anything too complicated or fiddly, and be largely hands-off, but it'd still be another thing to track, so I'm not getting all 'OMG, the game wouldn't work without independently modelled MTBs/E-Boats/etc;', but I think there's the potential to add meaningfully to the naval component of the game by having them in there.

 

[Cybvep]

@up Frankly, I think that these things are just details. The basic setup would have the most balanced values, given the capabilities of the forces involved in a given scenario. Who the hell knows whether Singapore had 5 lvl coastal fort or 10 lvl coastal fort? It's just an in-game value.

 

[Axe99]

@up Frankly, I think that these things are just details. The basic setup would have the most balanced values, given the capabilities of the forces involved in a given scenario. Who the hell knows whether Singapore had 5 lvl coastal fort or 10 lvl coastal fort? It's just an in-game value.

Aye, but they're not an inconsistent level of detail with building divisions at the battalion level, placing individual aircraft on airbases/carriers (aircraft were smaller and had smaller crews than MTBs) and building individual units and their variants . Singapore had five 15" guns in its coastal batteries with a range of 24km, and 46 guns of smaller calibre (mainly 9.2 inch and 6 inch guns) - I'm not aware of any other coastal fortifications during the war of that magnitude (although that doesn't mean they didn't exist - so by all means pipe up and note that Tokyo had six 18" guns or something like that, and Toulon came close ). On the other hand, most ports in Britain had nowhere near that degree of fortification, but were well covered by MTBs, minefields and the RN.

In terms of naval combat, the high-level coastal forts were the equivalent of a battleship in firepower, more or less. A flotilla of 5-10 MTBs, on the other hand, is probably the equivalent of a small fighter squadron. It's wikipedia stuff, so take with a grain of salt, but it's likely to be close enough to give an idea of significance - Coastal command at its peak had 25K personnel and 2000 vessels, sunk 400 enemy vessels (mainly smaller craft) and knocked out 32 aircraft. To be consistent with the level of detail that the game approaches in land and air combat, they probably deserve some kind of role, abstracted or otherwise. They're a good deal more important than divisional leaders, and plenty of people still want them in the game . Of course, not suggesting they should be added into the base game if not already part of the plan, but with strategic regions, coastal sea zones and the kind of 'basing' mechanics available in the air war, PDS has what it would need to do a pretty good, nicely abstracted set of mechanics to represent coastal defence.

 

[Porkman]

Sorry - should have used the term 'Malaya' instead of Singapore - you're spot on about the actual capture of Singapore (and I agree about the 'big river' thing re the gap between Singapore and the Malay Peninsular) - but in the case of ports exerting a radius of control based on the various assets available there, MTBs could operate upwards of 250km from their base of operations and longer-range designs used by the US and Germans over 500km. The British were aware of the Japanese convoy heading south, and had there been a significant MTB presence in the area then they could have potentially caused a significant amount of disruption to the invading force, either operating straight out of Singapore or using ports further up the peninsular to extend their range to intercept the invading force. The Japanese invading force was a light cruiser, a handful of destroyers and three troopships - you'd only need a handful of longer-range MTBs to cause significant disruption, and a sizeable force of smaller vessels available for interception could have turned back the invaders entirely. It wouldn't have been possible with British boats built for shorter-range work in the English Channel, but would have been by longer-range designs (and even the shorter-range British boats extend Singapore's area of 'influence' out from port by a factor of around 10 relative to just it's guns).

As it was, all Singapore had was it's fixed armaments, which were great if the invading force came straight at them, but hit anywhere more than a few kilometres away and they were useless.

So, in-game, if you had Singapore garrisoned with 'coastal defence assets' (a proxy measure that piles minelayers, minefields, MTBs, MGBs, coastal artillery and what-have-you) to a level similar to that in IRL of Cherbourg in 1944, say, it would have a much longer potential range in terms of intercepting incoming fleets (and not even need to piggy back off other ports up the Peninsular to intercept fleets arriving at Khota Baru). On the other hand, if you give Germany's and Britain's ports the equivalent of Singapore's 'coastal defence assets', and their capacity to intercept anything is very, very limited (Not that the D-day landings were a great thread, but it would be impossible with this kind of mechanic for the German player to even decide to go over-the-top with E-Boats as a coastal defence strategy).

So you've got two very different models of 'coastal defence assets', and if the game adopts a 'one size fits all' approach (where higher level = better and possibly greater range) it will make it harder to balance different theatres vis-a-vis historic OOBs and capabilities.

You've been fooled by Mercator projections.

Khota Baru is 566 km as the crow flies and 766 if you have to drive there on water from Singapore. That's the same distance as between Scapa Flow and Oslo and no one would seriously suggest that Scapa Flow small craft are going to be able to cover all or even most of the North Sea. .

Furthermore, Japanese boats were operating in Thai territory which wasn't formally at war the with the Allies, so the British MTBs could do

A) Jack

and

B) Shit

There's a reason the Japanese invaded from the top of the peninsula, it was to stay entire out of range of any British naval protection. The British couldn't rebase small craft further up even if they had had them because they lacked the aircover.

 

[Chromos]

We all know of a building type called "coastal fort". Why not make them more useful and important to the gameplay? Coastal forts could be renamed to "coastal defences" and would represent coastal batteries, mines, motor torpedo boats etc. in an abstract manner. Escort-to-capitals ratio, minesweeping tech, shore bombardment value of ships and the level of coastal defences would determine how dangerous it would be for a fleet to operate in a given sea-zone. Dangerous zones could be shown in red colour in the naval map-mode.
IMO it would be simple, effective and require little micromanagement.

Ah now I see that somemone else is remembering the old discussions around that topic.

I like to add, that with such a building and modifier, also Gibraltar could be represented much better. As we could drop the "closed provs" feature and just have hefty penalties crossing that area if you sail there.
AI need to know when to avoid such of course too then.

But overall you could break through with e.g. "heavy units"(BB or if that area gets no air/navy support etc.) and would not be forced to take Gibraltar first..

 

[Axe99]

You've been fooled by Mercator projections.

Khota Baru is 566 km as the crow flies and 766 if you have to drive there on water from Singapore.

There's a reason the Japanese invaded from the top of the peninsula, it was to stay entire out of range of any British naval protection. The British couldn't rebase small craft further up even if they had had them because they lacked the aircover.

Fair call (there was a RAAF base at Khota Baru, so there was some air cover, but it wasn't enough against the Japanese airpower arrayed against them at the time). That said, what do you think the best way to go about balancing coastal defences of the 'capital ship guns' style vs the 'flotillas of torpedo boats and minelayers' vs both would be if 'coastal defences' are lumped into one value, and is it based on port size, coastal defences or both? Does Singapore get mines and a 'patrol area of effect' that it didn't have, or do the large ports on the European/British coasts grow naval guns (prior to the Germans giving them quite a few anyways)?

You could make the naval guns dependent on coastal forts, and coastal defences on port size, but then you'd have 'patrol/mine' effects all over the place where they weren't.

 

[Porkman]

Fair call (there was a RAAF base at Khota Baru, so there was some air cover, but it wasn't enough against the Japanese airpower arrayed against them at the time). That said, what do you think the best way to go about balancing coastal defences of the 'capital ship guns' style vs the 'flotillas of torpedo boats and minelayers' vs both would be if 'coastal defences' are lumped into one value, and is it based on port size, coastal defences or both? Does Singapore get mines and a 'patrol area of effect' that it didn't have, or do the large ports on the European/British coasts grow naval guns (prior to the Germans giving them quite a few anyways)?

You could make the naval guns dependent on coastal forts, and coastal defences on port size, but then you'd have 'patrol/mine' effects all over the place where they weren't.

How much do we need the flotilla of torpedo boats? They sank a German auxiliary cruiser and a British cruiser and that's it. As far as patrol/area denial, I think it would be good to have that localized to the coastal fort with adjacent sea provinces having some effect based on the port size.

So, let's look at the best case, Singapore. Huge naval guns, well fortified, huge port. A 10 on port level and a 10 on fortification. That would have a huge effect on any naval forces next to Singapore proper and should have a half effect on anything adjacent to those sea zones provinces.

Essentially, fortification level determines the how damaging the sea zone would be to enemy shipping and port size would determine how far it could project the effect. (Though never more than one or two sea provinces away)

 

[Cybvep]

I think that we can safely conclude that even a simple system which I proposed would be much better than the lack of any representation of naval mines, MTBs etc. In fact, it seems that every poster here so far likes the proposal. Even Secret Master, who likes to argue with me just for kicks . Anyway, I hope that the devs will pay more attention to the naval war than in the previous HOI games. It seems that they are on the right track in case of the air war, so there is hope that the naval aspect of the game will get some love, too.