Invasions - Max Range

[mavannis]

On HOI3 if you want to invade by sea you had to transport divisions in transport ships that had a specific max range. Beyond that you can't simply invade.

On HOI4, in the last WWW, iirc the UK invaded somewhere in Latvia that to me seems a bit off range from main land England. I saw the USA invade main land Japan too, but i can't really know if they invaded directly or not but, if you can invade anywhere independently of how far it is, that seems to me a bit dumb and OP in some cases.

If the USA or Japan can invade directely each other main lands, the pacific war doesn't make any sense. You can just send all your army and pray they don't get caught on the middle of the ocean.

 

[Vidkjaer]

So the IRL US invasion of Africa from Britain should not have been possible?

Uk invaded the Baltic area from Gotland in the WWW video.

If you dont defense your sea shores or put ships on patrol on the high seas, then all should be possible.

 

[Cpack]

There should definately be a max range for invasions, changeable by tech or something else.
I think and bet that mainland Japan was invaded from Guam, which wasn't conquered by Japanese Player (I hope).

If there is no range limit, then there should be an increasing time penalty with increasing range, a slow travel over the seas and an increasing possibility of detecting the Invasion fleet by size (the bigger, the easier to detect).

Edit: Typos and better explanation

 

[Alex_brunius]

Invasions should not be able to launch like the do in WWW agreed.

 

[crabby]

On HOI3 if you want to invade by sea you had to transport divisions in transport ships that had a specific max range. Beyond that you can't simply invade.

On HOI4, in the last WWW, iirc the UK invaded somewhere in Latvia that to me seems a bit off range from main land England. I saw the USA invade main land Japan too, but i can't really know if they invaded directly or not but, if you can invade anywhere independently of how far it is, that seems to me a bit dumb and OP in some cases.

If the USA or Japan can invade directely each other main lands, the pacific war doesn't make any sense. You can just send all your army and pray they don't get caught on the middle of the ocean.

I'm going to assume the US had a friendly port much closer to Japan. The UK invading Latvia does not seem like a stretch me at all. It's what? A thousand miles by boat?

Why is that a problem. If you can't even invade from a thousand miles away that would cripple the pacific war.

 

[bkuepers]

There should be a max range although it should be pretty far. The biggest thing should be Naval supremacy. I had no issue with the distance of the UK Latvian invasion, only the fact it was done through a strait. Devs did state this would be fixed though, so that invasion would not have been possible.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

A good part of the ships in the initial Torch landings sailed from the US east coast, and this was at a time when the US still had a lot of painful lessons about naval invasions ahead of them. Like in the Torch landings, the ships weren't packed so that the troops going ashore could actually access many of the supplies they would need in the first hours and days. If they had faced strong resistance they would have had trouble, but not much of that was due to the distance of the voyage. The tricky part seems to be getting the troops ashore quickly in an organized and combat-ready fashion. The sailing from A to B is not a big deal.

 

[GeneralPetrov]

Well, bear in mind that the invasion of Japan was likely launched from one of the pacific islands, and the invasion of Latvia was likely supplied from Gotland so I don't really see a problem. And as others have pointed out: Operation Torch was also very long range.

 

[ingwe]

Hmm...does anyone know of a list of invasions with their distance and number of men? I am thinking that the more men, then the max distance should be shorter. I don't know if that is true but it does seem easier to drop 15,000 men across the world than 150,000.

 

[Krovkolosh]

I don't think there should be a hard cap on the distance. But with increasing travel time, organization levels should suffer and the number of convoy ships needed to transport enough supply should increase. This way, a long distance invasion is only viable on a poorly defended coast, while a heavy guarded coast should make a long distance invasion suicidal.

 

[scroggin]

Long distance invasions have been possible since sailing ships first crossed the atlantic. Basically if you need to do it the navy would work out how. Trying to supply the beachead before ports are captured would be more difficult than the invasion itself.

There are a couple steps in the ease with which an invasion can be done. For very short range invasions the first wave of troops can be loaded directly onto the landing craft, no need to transfer them at sea. For medium range invasions the landing craft would be towed or carried then the troops transfered to them at sea. For very long range invasions you would have to start thinking about refueling the fleet at sea.

 

[Anichent]

There are merit to both the first two posts.

On one hand there should not be a max range. Heck even in Victoria II I invaded the US from Europe. Obviously crossing oceans would be easier in 1936 not harder than in Vic2 and EU4.

But on the other hand cross-ocean/long range sea invasions should NOT be handled the same as say Tunis to Sicily or Cornwall to Brittany. There should be some difficulty that arises out of longer distances. And so far I have not see this properly reflected in WWW.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

Since naval invasions now have to be planned ahead of time, maybe you could vary the number of convoys needed for the invasion depending on the distance? A single-sea-zone hop might have the same ship dropping off multiple waves of troops, while a cross-ocean voyage would require you bring food for the trip and not back troops in so tightly, stow things against the possibility of rough weather, etc. I could see a bigger org hit as a possibility as well.

 

[BeauNiddle]

In HOI4 invasions are limited by naval superiority and recon knowledge of the invasion point.

If you have those two things why SHOULDN'T you be able to invade?

Now how easily Johan and USA managed to get those things is probably a balance issue they'll sort in Beta but I'm not sure why adding hard limits is a bonus.

Although I do like the idea of more convoys for longer distances

(also note that Johan was having issues supplying his forces in Africa. Getting the landing is only half the battle, supplying the landing is the other half)

 

[Axe99]

As others have well mentioned, Torch was a cross-Atlantic invasion, so the distance can be quite long. For context, the operational radius of an LST Mk 2 (the most common type by some margin, they built over a thousand of 'em) was 24,000 miles at 9 knots, and the Bayfield Amphibious Transport (Landing Ship, carried landing craft and around 1500 troops) was 10,450 miles at 12 knots.

The trick is protecting those transports - the Allies were very much concerned about the U-boat threat to the Torch invasion fleets, and I think went to some effort to conceal them and distract the Germans with other things.

 

[Mannstien]

I'm going to assume the US had a friendly port much closer to Japan. The UK invading Latvia does not seem like a stretch me at all. It's what? A thousand miles by boat?

Why is that a problem. If you can't even invade from a thousand miles away that would cripple the pacific war.

Gotland should have been out of supplies a while back buy I believe someone mentioned that straight blocking is not working in the current build which was why Italy was getting supplies to East Afrika.

 

[xtfoster]

I personally have no problem with unlimited invasion range...for the simple fact that in order to conduct a naval invasion you have to have 'intel' on EVERY sea zone that the invasion path goes through.

 

[keynes2.0]

There shouldn't be a limit on naval range, the need to maintain naval superiority should be the limit. If you can keep a large task force constantly patroling the waters for weeks before the invasion, you should be able to invade all the way from San Francisco to Tokyo if you want. If you can't maintain a large task force in the waters before the invasion, you shouldn't be able to invade Calais from Dover.

 

[Oriflamme]

I think the only reason why Britain didn't invade Latvia during World War II was because they had no reason to, not because they couldn't.

 

[Sir Garnet]

Consider also that voyages are bad for troop condition and morale, especially if the waters are not like a flat glassy pond. I assume this will be reflected in game, probably in ORG.

Being detected and brought under attack is a huge concern.

But a cross-ocean invasion is possible.