Naval Bases and ship range

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    • Naval Bases and ship range

      One of the limitations (especially in WWII era) to navies was supply. Most nations lacked the ability to send their navies around the world; indeed most were confined to fairly small regions due to insufficient supply arrangements. Ships need fuel, food, munitions, etc. and could not operate effectively too far from their supply sources.

      In CoW it seems every ship has an unlimited supply range. Shouldn't a range limitation be programmed in, similar to aircraft needing airbases? Certainly some ship types (submarines come to mind) should have longer ranges than others.

      I would not suggest that ships be unable at all to move out of range of their supply, but that they lose some functionality when they do, or when their supply source is damaged or gone (giving another reason to target naval bases than just hinder the production of new ships, or slowing embarkation/disembarkation). Perhaps naval bases of different levels should have an increased support range percentage.

      There could be diplomatic arrangements to get supply from someone else - making another item that could be traded and treatied. Right of Way and Shared Maps give air units the use of airbases, I believe. Why not do the same for naval bases? Or have a separate means of granting use of airbases and naval bases to other countries, perhaps automatic for coalition members and shared maps.
    • But why..?

      CoW is (or was once..) a wonderful clear strategy board game (a thinking and logic game) but neither a tortuous simulation or a trivial shooter -- and fortunately much of the otherwise "time and click intensive" micromanagement is automated ..

      .. all units here are permanently fully supplied automatically >> this also applies to planes both in patrol mode as well as in direct attack because refueling mainly serves that they can not do (much) more than one attack per hour, also like all other units ..
      (Planes in pat mode can perform a maximum of one (one full / 100%) attack per hour, as all other units can do.
      So a permanent plane patrol corresponds to the "normal mode" as by other units.
      Only planes in direct mode can do sometimes (rare) more than one attack per hour, demonstrating the planes superior speed and range -- but to do so they need to be stationed in developed air bases near the front, which makes them very vulnerable >> during the time of necessary "time/attack-delaying"-"refueling".)


      .. so why now should this system be changed ..?
      What advantage would that bring..? And why change the system for the Navy only..?

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    • BeorntheBold wrote:

      In CoW it seems every ship has an unlimited supply range. Shouldn't a range limitation be programmed in, similar to aircraft needing airbases? Certainly some ship types (submarines come to mind) should have longer ranges than others.

      No. During such period in history, naval movements would cross oceans and take bounty as necessary.
    • So you really think (in a game, where the goal is to conquer as many countries / areas of other players as can) it'll be better, to seek cumbersome for "abroad" opportunities for supply to keep up the operational capability of own (maritime-) units -- and maybe further, also to manually manage and divide it .. -- better than it's now, where it happens for all units automatically and independently of other countries / players, AI, weather or whatever ..!?

      Then let me prophesy that, later in the game when you laborious have to "manage" hundreds units scattered at friend and enemy territory / shores all over the map, you will quickly lose clarity and pleasure of the game ..!

      Browser games are an ingenious business idea to lure out money ..
      ..... >> more or less cleverly camouflaged as a real game <<
      .... .. so beware of caltrops, spring-guns and booby traps. :00008185:
      Warning! Texts above this signature may contain traces of irony! :D
    • I would point out that one must already deal with a similar situation regarding aircraft - your argument applies equally there, why have airbases at all - why not just let planes use any friendly territory without the need to build bases? So, we remove airbases. Then, why should we have industrial complexes? Shouldn't we just assume all territories can produce units? So we remove them. Then lets remove infrastructure, resources, hey why not remove terrain? It just gets in the way. Lets just use a checkerboard. Oh, why not remove all the unit variations while we are at it, and just use checkers? There we have it, much simpler and easier to play.
    • You can't compare planes with ships. Planes have little weight, fuel and cargo that they can load as they need to be able to lift of. Ships in the other hand have huge fuel tanks and a lot of storing space this means they can easily sail to the other end of the world.
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    • Sure a ship can sail all over the world. But it won't be effective very long if it can't resupply. Remember too we are talking WWII era, which was even more so than now. The allies in WWII had the advantage of access to bases all over the world; the axis did not. That is why the germans mostly used submarines, and even with their longer ranges they were still limited and had to return to base to resupply. Most ships of that time were diesel - they had to refuel somewhere, either from naval stations or tending ships. Even the raiders, such as the Bismarck, had problems - and got caught - because they had to resupply and used friendly ports in South America to do so.

      At the very least, ships shouldn't repair unless within a certain range of a naval base. Realistically, it should require returning to port. I understand games need a balance between realism and playability, so I'm not suggesting that.

      It would be a simple enough change - make ships lose morale and not heal while they are out of range of a friendly naval base.

      As far as the comparison of planes and ships, I'm simply pointing out that we already manage a supply requirement for planes and since it would be even simpler with ships (no patrol circles, etc.), it's not hard for players to manage (That was one of the objections).
    • While the concept has merit as a "stand alone" idea, imho, the way CoW has been developed / structured, requiring ships to pull into a port in order to refuel / perform repairs, etc., won't work for the following reasons:

      Too cumbersome. How do I cross the Atlantic Ocean if there are distance limitations? Those couple two or three islands out there would become very very valuable indeed.

      Too restrictive to smaller countries. One of the beauties of the game is that if a smaller player chooses bold moves at the appropriate time, there can be some great rewards won. Having to "arrange port of entry" schedules with third-party countries sort of defeats the ability to perform a "surprise" attack imho.

      What about convoys? How would that work?
      wb