In HoI3 it's a strait, and I really fail to see why it is not treated as a river seeing how narrow it is at some points.
It was easily crossed by the both sides in the Yom Kippur War with floating bridges equivalent to what was built over an average European river in WWII.
When you compare Suez just to the other straits present in the Med it really baffles the mind how a 200m wide canal is put in the same category as other gaps between islands. Then you compare Suez to straits in the Pacific and ... :wacko:
IMO straits should be reserved to bodies of water where a floating bridge cannot be built, thus requiring barges/boats to ferry vehicle and personnel.
A "strait" is an in-game mechanic for allowing land units to cross a sea zone. Suez is a sea zone, not a river. That means naval units can pass through Suez and even engage in combat in the canal (however unlikely that seems). If you treat it as a river then naval units won't be able to pass through the canal.
You can see this with the St. Lawrence Seaway, where IRL large ocean-going ships can navigate through it, all the way to the Great Lakes. But because in vanilla HOI3 it is a river and the Great Lakes are "lakes" (completely impassable areas of the map where neither land or naval units can pass), then naval units can't use it. I think some Mods changed this to a sea zone(s). That would be more realistic, but I guess Paradox originally never bothered because it was unlikely to feature within the game. But I think that is a mistake with some other major rivers in active warzones, where naval units did feature during the war, such as the Yangtze River in China.
I don't see any problems with the strait mechanic for Suez, and some of the other straits in Europe: Messina, Kherzon and Bosphorus. The game allows land based units, to move and engage in combat across a strait. And as you point out, this was very possible with Suez, even though it never actually happened during WWII. Combat takes place similar to a river crossing, that the attacker has penalties, and gets benefits from having engineers.
I'm not certain, but think it is likely that the combat over a strait is handled identically to over a river. If so, a combat over Suez will be exactly the same as combat over a major river like the Volga. The pictures/video show that this makes sense. But Messina and Kerch are both 3.1 km at their narrowest points, and attacking over them was very very difficult.
But there is a problem with some straits which are much wider than this, and where even with huge numbers of engineers and materials, you could not bridge them, either because of the distance, or because the bridge could not withstand the effects of the currents, and heavy swell. Even using small boats in these straits would be extremely difficult, even under very good weather conditions. Note even to this day there is no permanent bridges over Kerch or Messina straits because of the cost and engineering challenges of doing so.
Those in the Pacific are particular problems. Some of them we put in for supply purposes - to allow supplies to get from a port to an island province in the same chain. This allowed us to have island chains like the Marshall Islands, where every small island didn't need it's own port. This was primarily because the original concern was that ports were also naval bases and that this would give unrealistic numbers of places where a major battle fleet could be based and get repairs/re-supplied. But given that later patches and upgrades gave so many additional ports in Europe, so most coastal provinces got a port to nerf the supply system, then it would make sense to give level 1 ports to all of the islands in the Pacific chains, and remove the straits. Supplies then have to be provided to these islands by convoys, and land attack is not done like a river crossing, but as a full scale amphibious invasion requiring transport ships/landing craft. That seems to be more realistic.
Suez also has a special "strait" status, that control over certain provinces can prevent naval units of enemy countries using the sea zone. This is a strategic thing, and is not directly linked to the "strait" mechanic that land units can cross over. The Gibraltar Strait is 14.3 km at the narrowest point. It can be "closed" (IMHO) not because it is narrow, but because of the location of the Gibraltar naval base/air base and coastal fort. Though I think this could only be achieved while Spain (which controlled the northern shore at the narrowest part of the Strait and all of the southern shore) was neutral. I don't believe that UK control of Gibraltar could have maintained a one-way blockade of the Strait if Spain had joined the war. This is regardless of whether Spain actively assaulted Gibraltar. The loss of total air supremacy over the strait for instance would have been important, as well as the danger that Allied ships would be in range of coastal batteries in mainland Spain or in Morocco. I think the outcome would be the strait would have been largely blocked to both Axis and Allies.
My view is that in the new game:
- some straits should be removed from allowing land units to cross where these are very wide, especially in the Pacific
- there should be new sea zones to replace some large navigable rivers and then these added as straits so that land units can still cross them
- strategic straits can be blocked to both Allies and Axis, depending on control of the adjoining provinces
- straits should have a level, say 1-3, which determines how wide/difficult it would be to cross them. Making Messina and Kherson 3, St Lawrence 2, Suez 1 for example, where only level 1 would be fought the same as a river crossing, and the others would have greater penalties for the attackers.
- further strategic straits, such as Kerch and Messina
- most of the inland lakes that were impassable in HOI3 should become sea zones with some straits where they were quite narrow, so that land could cross them if necessary, but even where this is not possible air units at least should be able to cross them
Although Messina can't strategically block a whole sea, nevertheless control of the provinces on each side should prevent enemy convoys and naval units passing through, and convoys would therefore have to go round Sicily.
Following the battle of Sicily, the Allies decided not to launch their main attack across Messina - it was too wide and the currents too strong for a "river crossing" by infantry in small boats, and impossible to bridge. An assault did take place using landing craft launched from the Sicily coast, and consisted of two Divisions, more as a diversion for the main invasion at Salerno. The strait crossing was successful in capturing the area, but Kesselring anticipated landings further up the coast and that Messina would be a diversion. So the Allied Divisions were only opposed by a single Panzergrenadier regiment, who were not really intent on preventing the landings, but instead to delay the progress of the Allies north by blowing bridges etc. A determined Italian/German defence of the area could probably have prevented the strait crossing, or at least inflicted very large losses on the scale of Omaha. But the Italians were in a political mess and the Germans were concerned that their Divisions in the "toe" of Italy would have been cut-off.
Of course, there might be a completely new strategic strait mechanic. In the DD's for East v. West you can see screenshots showing colouring and hatching of sea zones, with much more clearly defined coastal zones. That implies to me that there was going to be the concept of a country controlling a sea zone, and I would imagine that could be extended outside of coastal zones by air and naval patrols. In that situation, the narrow straits might just be treated as special cases of coastal sea zones, controlled by the owner of the adjoining land province(s). And, unless I am very much mistaken, the convoy system should automatically try to avoid sea zones controlled by an enemy where there is very high risk of being sunk, if there is an alternative route. So if the Axis can impose some control over the sea zones between Tunisia and Sicily, and control Messina, then Allied convoys should go the safer route round Africa, and also keep away from the coast of Axis occupied France. It was not a good idea in HOI3 that convoys from UK to Egypt/India etc. would set-out from the nearest port, which was Portsmouth on the south coast, and pass through the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay, where they were easily interdicted by Axis forces.
This DD had discussion about giving more attention to straits, though nothing about combat mechanics:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?756154-East-vs-West-Developer-Diary-10-Strait-Talk
And the first map (of Africa) and a later map (of Yugoslavia) you can see screenshots in this DD of colouring and hatching of coastal sea zones, matching the colouring of the adjoining country:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?654409-East-vs-West-Developer-diary-2-Our-vision-for-the-map
And also very clearly on the first map of India in this DD:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?683539-East-vs-West-Developer-diary-6-Forces-the-Order-of-Battle
And the hatching on the last map in that DD along the coast of Netherlands and the Baltic Sea/Gulf of Finland.
But coupled with the discussions in this DD:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?669564-East-vs-West-Developer-diary-4-Master-of-the-Seas
It is possible that the hatching is only showing areas where ship movements can be easily detected (by radar, coastal watchers, and from patrols by small coastal ships), rather than actual "control". Nevertheless, if it is represented on the map and can therefore be easily handled by the AI, then convoy routing should take this into account.
Of course, someone will point out that this is (1) a different game (2) another developer team and (3) a slightly different era. But alot of work must have gone into developing the principles in E vs W before it was cancelled, and at least some of the new game features can and should be re-used in HOI4. If they don't use the ship design system for instance (of course with WWII armaments, not long range missiles) I'm going to be very very very surprised. It will be the obvious extension to what they have done with land Divisions. You can have a "template" for different ship types, discovered by naval combat experience/tech research, and then fill out the template with your own weapons and ship-based air units. And if you can base non-combat air units (radar planes) on ships in E vs W, then HOI4 should include float planes etc. for reconnaisance even on non-carriers, to extend the range where they can discover the locations of enemy fleets. And you have a clear design choice, for instance to include the float planes, include some additional AA guns or include more heavy guns to attack other ships. And this can adequately cover the variations between countries, and even within countries of different battleship designs for instance, and how these developed during the period.
And from our original discussion, straits need a little more work from the original HOI3 implementation, both in strategic terms and in developing how and where land combat should be possible over them, and it seems to me that E vs W gives some possible pointers to the strategic direction that this could go, as most of what I read in their DD's made alot of very good sense, and applied to WWII as well as the Cold War era. But also some work on the actual land combat mechanic to reflect the historical experience of Kerch, Messina etc. and how this would have been applied if there had been combat over Suez.
