Naval coastline bombardment...will it be possible?

[spiritofatlantis]

In a game i recently played, Hearts Of Iron 2, it was possible to execute a coastal bombardment, will this also be possible in SR2010?
For example if the adversary player has an array of AA-installations(or any other unit for that matter, like factories etc) along the coastline, will it be possible to bombard them "with the big guns" on naval ships that are equiped to do coastline bombardments?

[Balthagor]

Yes, but this is not AT ALL easy.

It depends on the stats of the unit. If a ship has a ground attack (soft/hard/fortification) value then it can attack units or facilities on land but, other than the Iowa battleship, their range is very short. Plus, ships that approach shore usually sink fast under an artillery barrage.

[red]

Anti-ship missiles are effective at long range and cheap artillery kills ships very quickly at close range, and most things of value are often dispersed from the beach nowadays (e.g., AA has >100km range), so I don't think shore bombardment will be very popular.

[Balthagor]

I do like keeping some Aegis destoyers off the coast in a map like California, keeps enemy air well away from L.A.

[CptBritish]

Might be hand for allies that us the Military Maxim 'Divide and Conquer'.

You split an enemy and push him to the beach you could bring in the heavy guns to harass them if they retreating along the beach or if u beat them into a dunkirk...

But as for first attack I think its gonna have to be Rolling Thunder while my Hordes of Men under the Union Jack Destroy all in there path MUAHAHAHA

[Juergen]

As Balthagor already pointed out artilly barrage is very dangerous to ships ,keep in mind that a single "unit" of artillery is meant to represent about 18-20 pieces of actual equipment,a ship is just one and not a fleet like in HOI.

And then there are also land based aicraft loaded with Anti-ship missiles which could be fired outside the ships AA cover range...meaning that the planes will get away scott-free while you will have to deal with say 20+ missiles...have fun.

Some countries might also have land based launchers that can fire ASM missiles into the fray.

Depending on the state of the feature (?) a coast might also be full of mines.

Id say we nuke the whole place from orbit !

No seriously...the safest way to perform a shore bombardment would be to use a missile capable ship and load it with land-attack missiles.
In case that you have the full "Tomahawk" series at your disposal you can also select from a range of different variants with different payloads.
HE warhead against facilities,cluster against units and in case you still want to nuke something today there is also a nuclear variant.

And of course all missile tactics work with missile capable submarines too.

[CptBritish]

but still wat would you want ur artillary firing at:

A-The Hordes of Infantry and **** loads of Tanks that are hounding ur ass as u retreat ur forces.

B-The 2-3 Destroyers that u could just avoid by trying to push inland (as u may have guessed i'm not one to give up )

P.s i wouldn't be using Destroyers to fire inland anyway i would just buy the design to the American Iwoa class battleship.

Britannia Will Once again rule the Waves with American Battleships

[Balthagor]

Um, you wouldn't be able to buy the Iowa design, the World Market does not sell everthing to everyone and certain units never come up. The scenario designer decides who a player is offered equipment from by specifiying the region code (discussed in some of our equipment file discussions) but only certain units in the game where marked above a zero availability. German ships and subs are often exported but the US don't even use the Iowa anymore, they're not likely to go selling the design around.

As an aside, mines (land and sea) did not get added at this time. Their effect in game was still somewhat of a question that was never resolved to our satisfaction.

[Juergen]

"As an aside, mines (land and sea) did not get added at this time. Their effect in game was still somewhat of a question that was never resolved to our satisfaction."

What was wrong with mines :( ?

And what about the notes on the nukes?

[CptBritish]

God damn americans spoil my chance for shore bombarding fun.
I may be down Balthagor but u can't stop me for Ruling to waves oh yes I will do this. With slightly lower range... BUT! I will do this.

I Hope will Mines be added in future as they are still a big political thing now a days, Maybe mine clearing treaties where you send in engineers into another (maybe poorer) country and your relations with them will go up and maybe a DAR boost???

But on the strat side of things mines could be an important for maybe:
A border that u share with some1 that u aren't at war with but they are been quite aggressive in there approach with every1, mine the border intensively, if they do start attacking they gonna take a few casualties if they don't disarm the mines and if they do start disarming ur mines, thats shows they going to attack you and it gives u time to muster some reserves to the front...

Sea mines could be useful too but we've all seen this argument and no where it goes so i'm not going there

[doggie3]

I recall playing a board game many years ago by the name of Light Division which simulated a US invasion of Iran. The Iranians had a horde of Silkworm missile sites along their coast ready to launch at any US ship silly enough to get within shore bombardment range (by guns) and to protect the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf.

I suspect anyone in SR2010 with a sizeable coastline will have similar defences, as Silkworms and Exocets are much cheaper than a ship. It wasn't for nothing that the US battleships were refitted with cruise missiles.

Cheers

[Draken]

In scenarios like Australia with lots of action on the coast line and few missiles the shore bombarding is useful to support land operations... But only if you have air superiority...

The beauty of SR2010 is that you can try different tactics and doctrines and you will have to! Because of the type of unit available to you are different and because of the terrain you will have to adapt your tactics to what you have available and where you have to fight.

This is not a case of "one-size-fits-all"

[spiritofatlantis]

As Balthagor already pointed out artilly barrage is very dangerous to ships ,keep in mind that a single "unit" of artillery is meant to represent about 18-20 pieces of actual equipment,a ship is just one and not a fleet like in HOI.

That is actually a darn pity, you know, that's the main disadvantage games in the genre of HOI(Hearts Of Iron and SuperPower) have.
1 icon represents more units.

With this you lose the control to put your units in formation(s) by hand.
Imagine this situation:
Suppose i wanted on my west-coast shoreline an array of 5 artillery guns in the form of a < , it's like a V turned on it's side pointing to the left.
If now a ship approaches the shore only the first gun in the tip of the formation-point will be able to hit the ship because the range of the other 4 artillery guns won't suffice.(and thus preserving ammunition)
The shots of this first artillery gun will act as a sort of deterrent, not enough to sink the ship, but damage it enough for it to take some more distance.
Now...suppose the ship ignores the artillery gun firing at it and still comes closer to the shore, then suddenly it will come in the range of another two artillery guns in the formation.
Now it will have 3 pieces of artillery firing at it, that'll be alot more inconvienent for it so it'll have more incentive to leave.
If this is still ignored and the ship still comes closer, then it would have 5 artillery gun firing at it, if you give the artillery teams some time, it'll be enough to sink the ship.
So in the end it'll have 5 artillery guns firing at it.
And maybe place the last 2 artillery guns on higher ground, like a mountain which has trees growing on it to a certain hight where the 2 artillery guns have less chance of getting spotted and have better sight.
Increasing the chances of survival for the 5 artillery teams/units/guns as a whole...so the whole formation benefits of stuff that YOU as a commander order them to do.
A player in my opinion should have the control of this.

The thing is, if the 18-20 units are combined in 1 graphic/sprite...then you can also do this, but it'll cost you about a 100 pieces of artillery, while 95 of those i would actually would want to use for other things.
I rather micro-manage every unit myself, so i can be more efficient, i think something like this should be an option in games of this genre, but often it's not...this makes battle in these kind of games more statistical, while statistics are fun in games like HOI, i would like so much for it to become more tactical.(Adding another dimension to the statistical dimension of the game)
This is the main point with games of this genre...by reducing the graphics...the tactical aspect shifts to the statistics. Then it becomes watching statistics change.
Tactics like mentioned above become impossible this way, while they're often the gist of fun in RTS games.(The better ones where this works convincingly, like for example Starcraft, you can do it too with Command and Conquer, but in my opinion it's less convincing in C&C, the units in C&C have too much a mind of their own, which takes away the fun of micromanaging them)

I don't know if it's possible, but i would like very much to see an option in SR2010 to split up unit's like those consisting of 18-20 artillery into pieces of 1.
This will show me as a player 18-20 sprites, which i can micromanage myself.
Because sometimes 20 pieces of artillery is just too much for certain tasks.
Like for example guarding valley passages, where paths are very narrow, if in that valley 4 units of artillery were hidden and a few snipers...a migrating division would have second thoughts about passing through it.
They'd have to call in air support to blanket the mountain surfaces with bombs to take them out.
And bang...you have forced your opponent to do something and it corresponds to realistic situations in todays warfare.
Again i take the example of Starcraft, it's possible in Starcraft and you can really force your opponnent to invest in air force units...which takes away some of his funds for ground units.
So you as a player yourself can go mass ground units...while he's there building expensive factories and researching tech for an air force to take some lousy few units out on a mountain ridge.
So his funds would then be distributed to aspects of his army that he'll hardly need when fighting my main army...if he doesn't have planned or anticipated these sort of moves, then chances for the opponent become pretty slim.
Starcraft players(the good ones) to my opinion are quite nifty in tactics, because on the pro-maps funds are often quite low, you have to work and plan very efficiently and tactics are a central point in this.
To win from top players you almost need to know every tactic possible, your plan on battle-tactics and economy managment should be able to branch out quite effeciently at any time...meaning if my opponent does this, then i'll do that, but if he does this, then i'll do that...but if he does it a little different like this...then i'll do that.(Most often you have to think like this on the fly while doing other stuff, often you need a great deal of experience and insight into (the possible) tactics)
This way playing a game becomes quite a high-end task, which can be mighty fun.

[Balthagor]

We have addressed this issue somewhat in that indirect units do less damage the farther they fire.

Doing units down to a single tank or artillery piece would not have worked for a game of this scale. We're simply at too large a magnification because we cover such large areas. It's also not what we where trying to model, we want the larger scale battles.

[CptBritish]

In a thread ages ago one of the devs said that u can construct a battlion at full, half or quarter strenght...

Is this still in?

I'm sure 5 units of 5 wouldn't be that much of a problem spiritofatlantis, if ur after small (but highly effective) defence forces