I now made the experience that if a close-combat ground unit is placed at the shore, it doesn't fire at units disembarking at that spot even if you're already at war with the invader.
In the following example, I own the infantry and the red convoy that's disembarking without being bothered is from a hostile country:


The infantry just stands there doing nothing, having a cup of tea (and I assume this behaviour is not specific to British units) unless I now actively give it an order (doesn't matter whether that's a move or attack order).

Is this intended?

I'd say close-combat ground units have to be usable as coastal defence, so they should automatically attack every neutral or hostile unit that reaches their spot.
It's
1.: Realistic to also be able to use close-combat ground units as coastal defence.
2.: Much better for gameplay, because then you don't have to check your game every hour night and day in order to be online the moment an enemy might reach your shores.

P.S.: Didn't it use to work that way... once?

P.P.S.: If this cannot be fixed without giving different fire control modes to close-combat ground units, then... give them different fire-control modes.

The answers are fully correct and logical, but not helpful with this issue.


OK, true. But equally, a unit that marches right to the location of a ground unit of a different (neutral or hostile) country should attack that ground unit, shouldn't it? Happens this way if the same scenario occurs on the ground some place away from the coast. So why doesn't that happen at a shore?
=> Correcting my first post: A convoi should attack when marching to the spot of a neutral or hostile ground unit.

You now might say that's not possible, because convois have no attack value against ground units? Well, if that's the reason, then convois should be given an attack value of 0.1 against ground units.
Anyhow what clearly shouldn't happen is no battle if a unit starts landing on a defended neutral or hostile shore. For the two reasons I wrote in my first post. Just imagine the scenario before your inner eye: The landing troops slowly getting their feet on the ground, drying their clothes, sorting their equipment and taking formation under the eyes of an entire regiment of defenders. Who calmly have a smoke and watch the sea gulls, until the invaders solemnly declare they're ready and a fair battle can start.
In reality, it looked a bit different on D-Day, didn't it? Landing forces are at a severe disadvantage and also should be in CoW - no matter whether the defender is online at that moment or not.


Yes, I could do so. So if wanting to defend a coastal landing point over 7 hours of night time with a close-combat ground unit, I would give my unit the order to march away from the coast for half an hour. Then walk back right to the coast. And would repeat these two orders with the "add target" button 7 times. So my ground unit would appear at the coast every hour and attack in case somebody is disembarking there at that moment. That would work, but is a little bit laborous doing so for every coastal spot before every night. I could imagine other things to do with my spare time.
Also would be a bit absurd.
To summarize: This issue very much contributes to people defending their coasts solely with artillery, ships and air. While keeping their close combat ground units in the interior. Which is not realistic. You know many would like to reenact amphibic invasions against infantry, AT and tanks defending the shores. Why not let them?
And, more importantly, changing this would help players who have to secure a coastline sleep calmly.

Thanks for the good answers, Restrisiko and TheNoob5659!

Close-combat ground units at land do have both an attack and a defense value against naval targets (at least against convois, so certainly also against warships... except submarines). Which is good the way it is. And yes, these values are not displayed... which certainly should be changed, but I can't tell for sure whether they actually can be displayed with reasonable effort. CoW implementation is a bit... special in this respect.

What for sure can be fixed is the popup message saying something like "your units won't damage the target" which you get when giving an attack order against a convoi with a close-combat ground unit. That popup message should be removed, because that's just not true (and also shouldn't be true).

Anyhow, coming back to why I started this topic: Convois no longer attack when reaching a foreign (neutral or hostile) ground unit stationed at the shore.
Has this been changed intentionally? If yes, should be reverted - reasons Restrisiko and I have given above.
Or is that a bug? Possibly an unwanted, negative side-effect of the changes done to get the fire-control modes right(?)

So I reported this as a bug. Wrote the following - sorry it's in German:
========================================================
Titel: [#RMP-298058]: [Bytro-Moderator] 320330: [Bug Report]: kein Kampf wenn Konvoi an verteidigter Küste anlandet


Angenommen eine Bodeneinheit befindet sich an dem Punkt, an dem
Land und Meer aufeinandertreffen (also an der Küste).

Es fährt nun eine eingeschiffte Bodeneinheit eines anderen,
neutralen oder feindlichen Landes auf genau diesen Punkt, um dort
auszuschiffen.


Tatsächliches Resultat: Es findet kein Kampf statt (es sei denn
der Besitzer der verteidigenden Einheit ist online und gibt ihr
einen Marsch- oder Angriffsbefehl).


Erwartetes Resultat: Die Konvoi-Einheit greift die an der Küste
stationierte Bodeneinheit an (und verliert somit während des
Ausschiffens eine nennenswerte Menge HP). Argumentation siehe
https://forum.callofwar.com/index.php?thread/31876-ground-units-at-beach-just-watch-enemy-disembark/.
========================================================


And this is the response I got:
========================================================
Hallo Hans A. Pils,

vielen Dank für die Meldung. Die Problembeschreibung ist nicht ausreichend, um die Anfrage zu bearbeiten. Könntest du dein Problem bitte genauer beschreiben, damit wir dir weiterhelfen können?

Weiterhin viel Spaß beim Spielen. Solltest du weitere Fragen haben, dann zögere nicht uns zu kontaktieren.
========================================================


Sorry to say so, but is not the first time I got an incompetent and/or careless answer, so I give up filing the issue via Support. @freezy, can you open a ticket for this?

I had included a link to this thread in my bug report, so it could have been read before replying. But OK, sorry I started talking about the competence of the Support staff - as far as I know these guys do the job for free, so it definitely wouldn't be right complaining about them.


Then both Restrisiko and I must have missed the News article that announced this change (about one or two years ago(?).
Which you know is not the case .


It is the current behaviour. But intended? By whom? And WHY?
It's really not intuitive or consistent with how the game works the moment two units meet somewhere in the inland.
It's fully unrealistic (both when looking at that specific moment while your coastguards watch the enemy disembarking as well as when looking at the fact it makes players to defend their coastlines only with arty/planes/ships/rockets).
And, worst of all, it's badly annoying you have to be online all day long if you want to defend your coast with close-combat ground units.
To sum it up: Current behaviour is very bad.


No. I mean that had indeed been my initial thought in my first post. But I already corrected this in my second post:

So who's going to create a ticket for that now?
A convoi must attack a ground unit, if treading right onto its feet (unless that ground unit is embarked as well, of course). Like it used to be two years ago.

I don't care if you disagree that's a bugfix. Call it a change if you want. Anyhow it has to be done.