Defending coasts with ground forces

Hans A. Pils · Apr 13th 2018, 11:41pm

Back in the days of WW2, it was a highly risky manoeuvre to land at an enemies shore. Most famous example of course D-Day with (often overrated, but still) significant Allies casualties in spite of massive naval and air superiority.
Why is this not reflected in CoW? Wouldn't it be an easy change to give also other ground units than artillery a minor attack and defense value against naval targets?
Like, for example, if they had 0.1 attack and 0.2 defense against naval targets, 1 unit disembarking at a place with one defending ground unit would lose 0.3 * 4:30 hours = 1.2 HP (<=> 20%).

Would make the game more realistic (you would no longer merely chose planes, but a greater variety of units as coastal defense) and a lot more interesting as it opens new strategic decisions... would be more challenging to decide where to place your ground forces, since they would then have one further use.

I only see two more adaptions that should be done:
1.: Best if naval units (disembarking ground units or ships) could have the option to just retreat from such a battle back into open sea - of course not without suffering fire from the other side during embarking time.
2.: Since it might happen that destroyers become involved in such a battle at the coast, they should get a small defense value against land units (about 0.5 or 1.0).

Hans A. Pils · Apr 13th 2018, 11:43pm

Assuming the above change was done, possibly also landing crafts might be introduced to the game.
I would propose them not to be a unit on their own, but to be research levels for improving the features of land units on the water similar to the transport ships research levels.
They might either shorten the time required for disembarking at a hostile province, or increase the hitpoints during disembarking.

Hans A. Pils · Apr 13th 2018, 11:45pm

Maybe even a new building "coastal fortification" might be invented. It could be built on coast points where no harbour is constructed yet and would give ground forces at that spot a defense bonus (which would become useful the moment that an enemy finished disembarking there, since then the battle would continue as a regular close combat at land).

VorlonFCW · Apr 14th 2018, 1:24am

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Like, for example, if they had 0.1 attack and 0.2 defense against naval targets, 1 unit disembarking at a place with one defending ground unit would lose 0.3 * 4:30 hours = 1.2 HP (<=> 20%).

A regular level 1 artillery does .7 damage against ships.
A level 1 Self Propelled artillery does .8 damage against ships
A railroad gun does 2.0 damage against ships

Given that the normal artillery options already do what you suggest, I don't understand the need for additional units that do less?

MontanaBB · Apr 14th 2018, 1:55pm

Hans A. Pils wrote:

Back in the days of WW2, it was a highly risky manoeuvre to land at an enemies shore.

And it still is, Hans. And the game reflects that in a variety of ways, especially during the 4.5-hour disembarkation time for invading ground units in an amphibious landing. During those 4.5 hours, the ground units are effectively caught in an in-between state, and they are neither mobile ground units that are able to maneuver on land, nor are they mobile sea-going convoy units that are able to instantly retreat via the water. They are stuck on the beach during those 4.5 hours, and the hit points of every unit in the landing stack (or stacks) is reduced to only 5 hit points each ---- meaning they are extremely vulnerable to air attack by tactical and naval bombers, massed artillery bombardment, naval gunfire, submarine attacks, rockets and nukes of all kinds. Those vulnerabilities should suggest to you a variety of strategies and tactics that you might employ to defend your coastal provinces from amphibious invasions. It should also strongly suggest how important it is to confront an amphibious invasion force during those crucial 4.5 hours.

As an example of how vulnerable amphibious landings are, I will share this personal anecdote . . . .

I have used a fair number of nuclear rockets over my last 14 or 15 games that I have played (and even when I am not producing them and using them, I usually maintain the research and industrial facilities to produce them). A nuclear rocket will usually completely destroy 20 or 25 units in a single stack (with some variation depending on unit types, hit points, condition, etc.), but rarely will a nuke destroy more than 30 enemy units in a single stack. The last time I had an opportunity to target an enemy stack during the crucial embarkation/disembarkation state, I destroyed over 70 units with a single nuke. I have also stopped amphibious invasions of 35+ enemy units by attacking them with tactical bombers in multiple 5-squadron wings, albeit with some loss of TB squadrons ---- but that is a worthy sacrifice under the circumstances.

VorlonFCW · Apr 15th 2018, 9:24am

To show that you can engage disembarking units with any land force I have this screenshot of one infantry doing a good job on a disembarking tank.

The trick is to make sure that your unit is within a few KM of the water's edge. If you can't zoom in enough to get the precise placement due to the "snap" of 10 pixels then press the Ctrl key to when giving the move command to disable the "snap" to target feature.

Hans A. Pils · Apr 19th 2018, 10:42pm

VorlonFCW wrote:

Given that the normal artillery options already do what you suggest, I don't understand the need for additional units that do less?

Well, you don't always have artillery nearby. Or at least not enough.
But of course you're right there is no actual need. Nonetheless I am still convinced it would make the game more realistic - in reality you'd not defend coasts exclusively with artillery, ships and planes (and certainly not with rockets, but that's a different issue), but just as well with tanks, infantry, AT... in short, you'd just use everything you've got in the area. So I don't see the point, why short-range unit types just have to stand there idly watching the opponent disembark. Which they do, in my experience: Last time I gave a stack of land forces (lacking artillery) order to attack a landing enemy, a message popped up saying none of my units would deal any damage. Or similar... was not in English version.
Does my memory mislead me here? As your screenshot shows, it is possible to trigger such a fight... possibly you already have to be waiting at the coast before the enemy arrives (sorry I'm not having a game running at the moment, so I cannot test)?
Well, wouldn't be ideal, but I could live with that. So that would reduce my request in this thread to merely the question to Bytro: If land forces other than artillery actually can fight landing opponents as in Vorlon's screenshot, why is their attack and defense strength against naval targets as shown in the unit detail screen 0 (or NULL, more precisely)?

MontanaBB wrote:

Those vulnerabilities should suggest to you a variety of strategies and tactics that you might employ to defend your coastal provinces from amphibious invasions.

Agreed. Making amphibious invasions even more difficult is not my intention. I only want the coastal defense options to be more balanced and more realistic.
Additionally, it would make strategic decisions more interesting. Now it's easy always send all your tanks, infantry, AT and AA to the front. With my proposed change, you might want to leave some behind if you have a coastline.

Also think about small islands, which you in many cases might want to defend with 1 ground unit (and often other than artillery). Would be nice and realistic if that unit had an advantage against an invader.

BjorniXL · Apr 20th 2018, 10:34am

VorlonFCW wrote:

To show that you can engage disembarking units with any land force I have this screenshot of one infantry doing a good job on a disembarking tank.

The trick is to make sure that your unit is within a few KM of the water's edge. If you can't zoom in enough to get the precise placement due to the "snap" of 10 pixels then press the Ctrl key to when giving the move command to disable the "snap" to target feature.

As Vorlon said and showed, it is already possible. I do not see any problem with the current mechanics as you can already use land units for coastal defense.

VorlonFCW · Apr 20th 2018, 10:25pm

Hans A. Pils wrote:

it is possible to trigger such a fight... possibly you already have to be waiting at the coast before the enemy arrives

No you don't have to have them waiting there before disembarking starts, but the key is moving them close to the intertidal zone rather than have them attack.

I think if you tell them to attack something that is in the water they will attempt to turn into a convoy themselves first, which won't work all that well. You just need to move them into combat range.

Hans A. Pils · Apr 21st 2018, 1:35pm

OK; thanks for the answer, Vorlon!

So if Bytro would display the strength of ground units against sea targets in their detail screen, so that everybody understands they can be used for that and we all know how much damage can be expected, I'm all content. I would withdraw this thread, then.

Well, maybe it should also be possible to give a direct attack order against a disembarking convoy (then really nobody would need any knowledge or experience to get that done), but that's not important.

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