Naval Bombardment

[Timian]

Has a rule ever been proposed ref allowing Naval Units to Bombard similar to Air and Artillery Units? If so, what did it say? Thanks, Don.

[composer99]

Do you mean bombard like ground strikes?

Or bombard like shore bombardment (equivalent to ground support) during land combats?

The former is not a thing, while the latter is a standard part of the rules.

[Timian]

Yes / Ground Strikes. Don.

[composer99]

OK.

I can only speculate, since I know not whether past rules included such a feature, or whether it was suggested for the WiF rules that have been coded for MWiF, or the upcoming revision to the boardgame rules.

[Ur_Vile_WEdge]

Shore bombardment as ground strikes only came up with Leaders in Flames, the kit that nobody likes to play with.

Put simply, it's absurdly powerful, especially for naval powers like the CW, U.S. and Japan. You'd be able to get a truly ridiculous number of "naval strikes" against anything sitting on the coast.

[brian brian]

I think a very old issue of Lines of Communication, like when it was still printed in Canada, had a proposed Naval Ground Strike rule too, but it has never gained any traction, nor should it in my opinion. In WiF 7, shore bombardment is still too powerful anyway. World in Flames is somewhat saying that 6 cruisers are just as valuable for a land battle as an entire corps of veteran infantry. This will be changing in the future of the game.

[AlbertN]

I agree than its current for Shore Bombing is way too strong and effective; to the extent that the defensive Shore Bombardment is one of the very few optionals I do not use with my gaming buddy.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: brian brian

I think a very old issue of Lines of Communication, like when it was still printed in Canada, had a proposed Naval Ground Strike rule too, but it has never gained any traction, nor should it in my opinion. In WiF 7, shore bombardment is still too powerful anyway. World in Flames is somewhat saying that 6 cruisers are just as valuable for a land battle as an entire corps of veteran infantry. This will be changing in the future of the game.

Any small tweak to this would be easy to code. For example, if the contribution of each naval unit were cut in half, or limited to half of the strength of the attacking forces, etc., there would only be one or two lines of code to modify.

[delatbabel]

The change that has been made in v.8 of the rules, which is quite a good one IMHO, is that there can only be the same *number* of ships shore bombarding as there are corps-sized land units in the side of the combat. i.e. if you are attacking with 3 corps, then only 3 ships can shore bombard. It makes the big battleships a bit more useful, and combined with the "spotting bombarding fleets" rule really limits the amount of impact that shore bombarding ships can have in the combats occurring along the edge of their sea zone.

I'm not sure how hard that would be to implement.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: delatbabel

The change that has been made in v.8 of the rules, which is quite a good one IMHO, is that there can only be the same *number* of ships shore bombarding as there are corps-sized land units in the side of the combat. i.e. if you are attacking with 3 corps, then only 3 ships can shore bombard. It makes the big battleships a bit more useful, and combined with the "spotting bombarding fleets" rule really limits the amount of impact that shore bombarding ships can have in the combats occurring along the edge of their sea zone.

I'm not sure how hard that would be to implement.

Fairly easy to code. Enabling the Undo capability would be the only concern.

But I am not changing the rules at the moment (or in the foreseeable future).

[Centuur]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: delatbabel

The change that has been made in v.8 of the rules, which is quite a good one IMHO, is that there can only be the same *number* of ships shore bombarding as there are corps-sized land units in the side of the combat. i.e. if you are attacking with 3 corps, then only 3 ships can shore bombard. It makes the big battleships a bit more useful, and combined with the "spotting bombarding fleets" rule really limits the amount of impact that shore bombarding ships can have in the combats occurring along the edge of their sea zone.

I'm not sure how hard that would be to implement.

Fairly easy to code. Enabling the Undo capability would be the only concern.

But I am not changing the rules at the moment (or in the foreseeable future).

Can we make this an optional rule, if that's easy to code? I also think that this is a reasonable rule change...

[Courtenay]

Well, putting a new optional rule is well down the list of things to code.

I also find it a very strange rule. Consider D-day: Six divisions invading, plus three airborne divisions, plus some specialized units. Three corps, plus some divisions. In WiF, one might get six corps, representing follow up forces.

Ships represented by WiF counters that provided NGS on D-Day:

Utah beach: Nevada, Quincy, Tuscaloosa, HMS Enterprise, Hawkins, Erebus, Black Prince

Omaha beach: Texas, Arkansas, Glasgow, Bellona, Montcalm

Gold Beach: Ajax, Argonaut, Emerald, Orion

Juno Beach: Belfast, Diadem

Sword Beach: Warspite, Ramilles, Arethusa, Frobisher, Mauritius, Roberts

(I may have missed some. If so, my apologies to any ships and crews I omitted.)

Even assuming that some of these ships provided defensive shore bombardment (and yes, the Allies were using that optional rule [:)]), limiting the amount of shore bombardment to three, or even six, ships is ridiculous.

[AxelNL]

ORIGINAL: Courtenay

Well, putting a new optional rule is well down the list of things to code.

I also find it a very strange rule. Consider D-day: Six divisions invading, plus three airborne divisions, plus some specialized units. Three corps, plus some divisions. In WiF, one might get six corps, representing follow up forces.

Ships represented by WiF counters that provided NGS on D-Day:

Utah beach: Nevada, Quincy, Tuscaloosa, HMS Enterprise, Hawkins, Erebus, Black Prince

Omaha beach: Texas, Arkansas, Glasgow, Bellona, Montcalm

Gold Beach: Ajax, Argonaut, Emerald, Orion

Juno Beach: Belfast, Diadem

Sword Beach: Warspite, Ramilles, Arethusa, Frobisher, Mauritius, Roberts

(I may have missed some. If so, my apologies to any ships and crews I omitted.)

Even assuming that some of these ships provided defensive shore bombardment (and yes, the Allies were using that optional rule [:)]), limiting the amount of shore bombardment to three, or even six, ships is ridiculous.

I think the Allies used a offensive chit (or two) that day.....

[Courtenay]

Yes, the Allies used a couple of O-chits that impulse. How does that affect the new shore bombardment rule?

At Iwo Jima, bombarding ships included Arkansas, Idaho, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, Biloxi, Chester, Indianapolis, Pensacola, Salt Lake City, Santa Fe, Tuscaloosa, and Vicksburg.

To repeat, my opinion is that restricting the number of ships that can provide NGS to two (the stacking limit at Iwo Jima) is ridiculous.

[AxelNL]

ORIGINAL: Courtenay

Yes, the Allies used a couple of O-chits that impulse. How does that affect the new shore bombardment rule?

At Iwo Jima, bombarding ships included Arkansas, Idaho, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, Biloxi, Chester, Indianapolis, Pensacola, Salt Lake City, Santa Fe, Tuscaloosa, and Vicksburg.

To repeat, my opinion is that restricting the number of ships that can provide NGS to two (the stacking limit at Iwo Jima) is ridiculous.

The suggestion was to ease the limit when a chit was used in that impulse. But coding becomes very quickly more complex with these kind of suggestions....

[Timian]

Where can I get a copy (digits) of RAW 8.0? Thanks, Don.

[WarHunter]

What is really annoying about naval bombardment?

Having to click each ship to add bombardment points to offense or defense.
Especially the part when after each ship the program centers back on the stack at sea. Depending on the sea zone. Zoom setting 2 must be used. The China sea is one of those. My opponent and I bag on this whenever we use ship bombardment.

Could there be an easier way to add multiple ships to a bombardment? Is there a secret key combination we have missed? Setting?

Also restriction of the number of ships to bombard is not a good idea. The mechanic of not adding more combat factors than what is already in the hex is a limit in itself. Boo hoo, The USN and RN have lots of ships. They pay good build points for them. Let them be used in any combination they want.

[Numdydar]

Fire Control Officer: 'Captain, we have to crease firing at the enemy.'

Captain: 'Why? Are we out of shells?'

FCO: 'No. We have plenty of shells. But we have reached the maximum number of shells we are allowed to shoot.'

Captain: [&:]

Makes perfect sense to me [:'(] NOT.

[WarHunter]

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

Fire Control Officer: 'Captain, we have to crease firing at the enemy.'

Captain: 'Why? Are we out of shells?'

FCO: 'No. We have plenty of shells. But we have reached the maximum number of shells we are allowed to shoot.'

Captain: [&:]

Makes perfect sense to me [:'(] NOT.

Not exactly sure what you are saying?

The Ground combat force is the limiting factor in the game for both Air and naval combat factors.

This is not something that has changed with any edition of the game.
Maybe you can explain what you want? No matter how extreme it sounds.

[warspite1]

A really interesting debate. I think you can make cogent arguments either way, but personally I agree with those that think NGS is too powerful currently.