Slitherine

I've noticed that DD's can be surprisingly effective at attacking ground troops. In a recent game , allied Navies were just as effective as the Allied Tac Air on the coast. In one example, on three successive turns the DD took two steps off the Corps. !

While six steps over three turns is unusual, you would normally expect to inflict some losses to a unit with this attack, and of course the target will lose effectivness and entrenchment.

I don't think that this is realistic. It's my understanding that a 'unit' of DD's represents about 15 Destroyers, which I imagine would total about 60 5 inch guns. That's a lot of firepower, but of course it's going to be far less effective than the equivalent number of land based Artillery guns.

The destroyers will often not have their own spotters, the ships are moving, there are navigation hazards to disrupt the routine, and concentrating lots of shells on a particular target much more difficult. If two steps is about 4000 men, can we really be saying that a group of destroyers could ever kill this many soldiers in a 20 day period, even under ideal conditions.

In contrast to this Capital Ships often became specialist at shore bombardment (e.g HMS Warspite), with their own spotter planes, and much bigger shells. This bombardment should do some (occasional) damage.

Currently a player can keep the entrenchment of an enemy unit in a city hovering around zero indefinitely without any cost to the attacker by just using a naval unit. I think that if this was allowed , that there should be some cost for the Allies in doing this.

I propose that Ships should no longer lower the entrenchment of ground units with their attacks, and that Destroyers should have their land attack values halved.

Destroyers and battleships only have a land attack of 1. If you lower it then they won't hit at all. It's not normal to inflict 2 steps per turn for 3 consecutive turns. Some times you don't hit at all. I think 1 step per turn is more normal if the land unit is in a clear hex.

timhicks wrote:I propose that Ships should no longer lower the entrenchment of ground units with their attacks, and that Destroyers should have their land attack values halved.

One problem with that is that a DD's ground attack value is already only 1, and you can't take half of that; the game only works in whole numbers. And I think naval units should still be able to lower a defender's entrenchment because even small, not-well-placed shells could damage fortifications and other static defenses. However, I see your point about damage to the unit, especially with the DD's smaller guns. I would support a change that reduced the DD's ground attack to zero, which would mean that it would cause no physical damage to a ground unit. I believe it would also mean that they could still reduce the entrechment of the defender, which to me is desirable. BBs should still have ground attack 1 because they have larger guns and conceivably could do a good deal of damage to a defending ground unit.

thanks for the replies, reducing the attack to zero would be good, and completely agree with you that BB's should still do damage. Everything I've read about the Warspite make it clear the sheer shock value of her bombardment. The Axis went to a lot of trouble to knock her out.

Maybe it's not possible to stop the effectiveness loss , but I still think it's too easy for a player to soften up well entrenched units with DD's. Currently in this game any attack has a cost, and you have to decide whether the cost is worth it, that's one of the joys of the game.

However when you have a Corps in the Hague entrenched to Level 5, you can get rid of all that protection and easily take the port with minimal ground units, just by parking a DD next door. There is no cost to the attacker, and there is usually nothing that the defender can do about it. It's usually suicide to attack that DD with your own Navy, and the Allied player can usually ensure the the cost of an Axis Airstrike on that DD is prohibitive. (and if the ASW war is won, there are plenty more DD's where that one came from).

I think that DD units in CEAW represent not only the conventional ASW and escorting destroyer unit but also could represent light cruisers and other ships between the destroyer level and the battleship level. This way, we can find in WW2 light cruisers with 8,000 - 9,000 tons of displacement that really could effectively contribute to shore bombardment not as much as battleships or heavy cruisers but with a significant fire power. So my vote is no.

Against shore targets DDs typically came as close as they could get to shore and fired from a few to several hundred yards off shore with quick-firing guns(several times per minute) .They were quite accurate. BB main guns fired about once every two minutes or so and they did it from 5-10 miles away. Considering there were many DDs for each BB, I think they were about equal in effect.

Ideally if you have the tac bombers to spare. Rail 2 tac bombers to within attack range of the dd, but out of spotting range of any of his land air or naval units to ambush the dd on the next turn. If you think there might be allied fighter or CV cap to protect the dd, rail a fighter too.

It's just the way the rock,paper,scissors of combined arms works in this game and most games. Ideally you should be doing this to the allied players convoys and their escorts. Especially the convoy that runs closest to the portugese, spanish and french(brest) coast or the murmansk convoy after russian entry.

I could live with dd's having a ground attack of zero, but I think they should still unentrench 1 level/attack. Gotta remeber if the axis player plays his land based aircraft cards right; after the fall of france and prior to american entry, he could wind up with naval supremacy or superiority.