Why Don't Fortress Guns Fire On Enemy ?

[GamesaurusRex]

Union Fleet sails up to Ft. Pulaski and unloads invasion force ON Ft. Pulaski...
AND THE FORTRESS GUNS REMAIN SILENT DURING THE WHOLE PROCESS ?

Is there some trick to get the guns to fire on the approaching enemy ?
I tried setting the guns to "offensive" stance in early turns, but when the turns were processed, I found that the game had reset them to "defensive" mode during the processing. So I guessed one had to rely on the fact that the fortress info on the guns says that they will automatically fire on "passing ships".
Is there a bug in the game that fails to interpret LANDING SHIPS as equal to "passing ships" ?
Is this why Fortress guns remain silent when the Union lands on them ?

[GamesaurusRex]

Well... My opponent Wheat has posted the same question on the Ageod forum and only one gamer has ventured an opinion. He seems to think that the gun emplacements at the Forts will only fire on enemy ships that occupy two adjacent water bodies in the same turn... i.e. "passing ships", as the popup info box seems to show when you mouse over and select the guns in the fortress and examine the firing commands under the crossed-rifles button. If this is so, then any Union fleet can land and unload troops directly onto the land surrounding any Fort and the guns WILL NOT FIRE ON THEM.

This is patently absurd... and should be added to the list of needed program corrections..

[Symple]

Sorry to be so slow in reply. Once your artillery is entrenched (level 3 or more) along the river with the bombardment order then it fires at everything.
So make sure it is entrench at level 3, then provide the order.

[GamesaurusRex]

Interesting about the supposed level 3 entrenchment effect on gun emplacements... but in the case I was asking about, the guns are IN ft. Pulaski, which is a level 4 entrenchment... and they did not shoot even once in the two turns it took the Union to land a force and take it... in fact, the whole fort surrendered without firing a shot in the two turns.

I think it's a bug.

[Pocus]

Gun firing is triggered by moving from region A to region B, where both are under fort fire. If an enemy fleet shows up from the high sea and then land troops onto the fort, the fort will only fire as part of the assault of the fort. And here, I'm pretty sure the batteries participated in the battle.

[GamesaurusRex]

No, Pocus, when the enemy lands on the beach in defensive mode, the guns do not fire on the invading force...
UNLESS the defender does something that is ridiculously counter to reality.

What he must do is to move the locked garrison infantry (which clearly belongs inside the fort) OUT of the fort onto the beach ( preferably before the invasion occurs so it has time to entrench). This will "flip" the invading troops onto the attack and cause a battle and the guns may fire. If you don't do this, there will be no defending battle until they have landed and actually attacked the fort from the beach. This is so because units inside a structure will not flip invading forces to attack.

The guns should be able to fire on ships that attempt to land troops on the beach. They were historically able to fire on passing ships. So by what stretch of imagination are they not able to fire on landing troops ?

[Captain_Orso]

ORIGINAL: GamesaurusRex

No, Pocus, when the enemy lands on the beach in defensive mode, the guns do not fire on the invading force...
UNLESS the defender does something that is ridiculously counter to reality.

What he must do is to move the locked garrison infantry (which clearly belongs inside the fort) OUT of the fort onto the beach ( preferably before the invasion occurs so it has time to entrench). This will "flip" the invading troops onto the attack and cause a battle and the guns may fire. If you don't do this, there will be no defending battle until they have landed and actually attacked the fort from the beach. This is so because units inside a structure will not flip invading forces to attack.

The guns should be able to fire on ships that attempt to land troops on the beach. They were historically able to fire on passing ships. So by what stretch of imagination are they not able to fire on landing troops ?

Do you have an example of the "reality" of troops landing under the guns of a fort?

[GamesaurusRex]

Do you have an example of the reality of fortress guns not firing on the enemy when they are right under the guns ?

By this game's logic, none of the battles around any of the forts happened in reality. Futhermore, the game mechanics makes one wonder what point there is to having guns in the forts or even having the forts at all for that matter.

[Captain_Orso]

The reality of invading where there is a fort exists. Research both battles of Fort Fisher. In both cases troops were landed ashore without being fired on by artillery from Fort Fisher once.

Now it's your turn. Give me an example of troops landing while under fire from a fort during the Civil War.

[GamesaurusRex]

So... two months later and that's all you got ?

Your logic escapes me. The game mechanics render the fortresses essentially useless and you think that's just fine. In fact, the fortress game mechanics actually make it more advantageous to position the garrison troops and batteries outside of the fortresses and have them entrench on the beach rather than rely on the fortress bonus. This increases their defense factor. This is patently absurd game modeling mechanics.

As for Fort Fisher... Yes the Union troops assembled out of range of the guns... but if they had landed within range of the guns, they would have been shot to pieces... and this is the crux of the problem with this game. You will note that the designers seem to have attempted to make distinctions on the map between forts that are "on land" and forts that are surrounded with water with little beach area. Unfortunately, they gave up on providing any mechanics enforcing these distinctions and negated these differences by the rule that troops "in forts" (structures) do not trigger enemy assaults when they are landed on directly. The net result is that , aside from supply values, forts are irrelevant.

Try again.

[Poopyhead]

Coastal forts and land forts use the exact same rules. Move into a region with a manned fort and you stop movement, but you aren't forced to assault the structure which takes up a small fraction of the region. If you have a strong enough garrison, then an assault will fail. What you describe would be a special coastal fort rule where the fort's guns would get in the first shot. This might damage some ships, but the assault would most likely still win through if the Union player knew what he was doing.

The fort system was developed after the War of 1812 in response to the British burning of D.C. Most of the forts were still undermanned by the CW. I think that the game reflects this fact that the forts were hardly a Maginot Line of deadly kill boxes.

Here's a link to the actual forts:

http://www.northamericanforts.com/

[Captain_Orso]

ORIGINAL: GamesaurusRex

So... two months later and that's all you got ?

Your logic escapes me.

Maybe you should open a history book or two.

ORIGINAL: GamesaurusRex
The game mechanics render the fortresses essentially useless and you think that's just fine.

The game mechanics reflects the reality of the history.

ORIGINAL: GamesaurusRex
In fact, the fortress game mechanics actually make it more advantageous to position the garrison troops and batteries outside of the fortresses and have them entrench on the beach rather than rely on the fortress bonus. This increases their defense factor. This is patently absurd game modeling mechanics.

And exactly this was done at times. Read up about the battle for Fort Morgan. Don't take my word for it, inform yourself.

ORIGINAL: GamesaurusRex
As for Fort Fisher... Yes the Union troops assembled out of range of the guns... but if they had landed within range of the guns, they would have been shot to pieces...

IF!, if is a big word. The reality is that the invading troops did not land in a suicidal frenzy within range of Fort Fisher's guns, because that would be stupid. Why are you arguing that the game should act stupidly?

ORIGINAL: GamesaurusRex
and this is the crux of the problem with this game. You will note that the designers seem to have attempted to make distinctions on the map between forts that are "on land" and forts that are surrounded with water with little beach area. Unfortunately, they gave up on providing any mechanics enforcing these distinctions and negated these differences by the rule that troops "in forts" (structures) do not trigger enemy assaults when they are landed on directly. The net result is that , aside from supply values, forts are irrelevant.

Try again.

There are some issues with certain forts which the game does not in my opinion take properly into account. Fort Sumpter could be--and was--bombarded by batteries from neighboring forts. There is no way and troops could land on the island without being subject to fire from forces within the fort. The game does not address these issues.

The question is, what affect does this have on the game? I would say none, because it doesn't come into play.

I've heard a colloquialism often used, 'forts are like speed bumps'. You can bypass them, but then you have an enemy force and base in your rear. If you understand anything about military history or how military forces in the field actually work, you will know how bad that can be.

This game reflects that quit well.

[Captain_Orso]

ORIGINAL: Poopyhead

Coastal forts and land forts use the exact same rules. Move into a region with a manned fort and you stop movement, but you aren't forced to assault the structure which takes up a small fraction of the region. If you have a strong enough garrison, then an assault will fail. What you describe would be a special coastal fort rule where the fort's guns would get in the first shot. This might damage some ships, but the assault would most likely still win through if the Union player knew what he was doing.

The fort system was developed after the War of 1812 in response to the British burning of D.C. Most of the forts were still undermanned by the CW. I think that the game reflects this fact that the forts were hardly a Maginot Line of deadly kill boxes.

Here's a link to the actual forts:

http://www.northamericanforts.com/

Actually, if your force is large enough you might be able to move past a fort during 1 turn. It depends on how quickly you gain MC in the region.

The fort adds a high police value to the defender, which prevents the attacker from leaving that region to enter another region, in which the attacking faction has too little MC.

Increase the friendly MC in a region behind the fort or gain enough MC in the region of the fort, or a combination of both, and the fort will not prevent moving through the region.

BTW I know that site and have used it extensively at times

[Poopyhead]

If one wants to make the coastal forts defendable, then spend the equivalent of a Division and a half in WS to fill out the heavy shore batteries and add a Division and a half worth of infantry elements parcelled out to each site. This is not worth it and a rule change won't fix that.

[Captain_Orso]

That you can try to play whack-a-mole with the Union.

In the end, by the time the Union has enough troops to spare for any major offensives on the coasts, the South can mostly just protect the important cities like Charleston, Wilmington, Mobile, and Galveston, and let the smaller inconsequential cities fall, simply because the Union has enough troops to take and garrison the poorly held, out of the way coastal locations, while nobody has enough troops to really fight a big fight for them.

[GamesaurusRex]

Look guys.. I am fully aware of the historic value of fortresses in the civil war and other time periods ranging from Caesar at Alesia, through the Great Wall of China, to the Maginot Line in France.

My complaint stems from the simple faults in the game mechanics... like the fact that the forts get to shoot at passing ships, but not at troops landing directly on the forts.
Yes, forts are essentially speed bumps in this era because they suffer the basic fact that they are immobile, but to deny them even the minimal damage that they might do to an enemy that chooses to land troops directly on them under their guns is laughable. All the more so, when the same game allows for the forts to shoot at passing ships (via the two zone passage rule).

This just seems like an oversight in the game mechanics to me. For example, I wonder why the the movement required when the ships move onto the the fortress zone from the Sea Zone is not counted as a "second zone in the field of fire" of the forts. If it was, then the forts would get at least one shot at the landing troops... just like troops do when simply passing through two adjacent zones do.