Thank you very much for the reply. We’ve been trying to nail all these rules down. I’m sure questions more will come!
Does the entire navy have to stop to destroy an unescorted transport?
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On page 11, bottom paragraph last sentence it states “However, if a warship chooses to sink an unescorted transport that warship must end its movement in that sea zone.”
Question #1, does the sentence portion “that warship” mean that you can drop one combat ship out of the fleet say a sub while the rest of the fleet moves on?
The wording seems to suggest to me that it could. However, it does seem to somewhat contradict something on page 15 near the top of the page under the heading of Step 1. Sea Combat
From what I read it says if you do an amphibious assault and the only enemy units are subs and/or transports you don’t have to attack them and can ignore them but……next sentence…if you do attack the transports and/or subs then ALL ships must fight.
What if the only ships along the coast of the territory you are assaulting are transports? That seems to be a similiar case to page 11 whereby you can ‘drop one warship’ to kill the transports? A sub could do the job while the battleships and/or crusiers to offshore bombardment?
What are your thoughts and interpretations?
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You can drop units out of a moving convoy to do battle with non-surface warship sea units (i.e., subs and transports, those sea units that don’t block your movements), but those selected units need to stay there while the others continue to move.
The warships you leave behind all need to be declared as attackers, if you want to kill the transport.
No ‘drive-by’ transport killings, in other words. :wink:
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Question #1, does the sentence portion “that warship” mean that you can drop one combat ship out of the fleet say a sub while the rest of the fleet moves on?
Yup.
The wording seems to suggest to me that it could. However, it does seem to somewhat contradict something on page 15 near the top of the page under the heading of Step 1. Sea Combat
From what I read it says if you do an amphibious assault and the only enemy units are subs and/or transports you don’t have to attack them and can ignore them but……next sentence…if you do attack the transports and/or subs then ALL ships must fight.
Correct, but there is no contradiction.
What if the only ships along the coast of the territory you are assaulting are transports? That seems to be a similiar case to page 11 whereby you can ‘drop one warship’ to kill the transports? A sub could do the job while the battleships and/or crusiers to offshore bombardment?
It’s not the same thing at all. In the first case, one ship is stopping while the rest continue to move to another sea zone. In the second, all the ships end up in the same sea zone. In both cases, all of the ships that are in the sea zone with the transport(s) must do combat in order to sink them.
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Perhaps not a contradiction in the written rule but as to the rationale for the differences in rules. I guess the contradiction for me is WHY in 1 case 1 single unit can clear transports while in the other it requires the entire navy. In the first case a single unit can move 1 seazone and by itself clear out an infinate number of transports. In the second case, in theory, a navy could find itself in the same sea zone as a single enemy transport, and just because 1 or more units assault an enemy coast, it now requires the entire navy to hunt down a single enemy transport even though no ships even have to move to a different seazone, easier me things then having to move across an ocean to do the same thing as in the first case.
So, I am in sync with how everyone else plays the rules, that is good. I just question in this case the logic behind the different rules in these similiar situations.
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If there were a single enemy destroyer in the sea zone, the entire fleet would have to do battle with it, preventing bombardment. The same principle applies with the transport, with the exception that the fleet may choose to ignore it in favor of bombardment. If there is a battle in a sea zone, all units within that sea zone participate in it.
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Well I understand that about a combat ship, after all, you often have to sacrafice a destroyer to block an enemy fleet from attacking a vulnerable fleet. I wouldn’t want to get into the complexities of figuring out what proportion of fleet is required to trackdown a given target. But introducing a combat ship on defense into my scenario is changing everything. My point was. Case #1, 1 combat ship can move 1 space with a fleet, kill 1 million undefended transports while the rest of the fleet moves on. Case #2 1 combat ship while not even having to move in theory, cannot seem to track down a single transport and thus requires possibly dozens of surface ships to manage this task thus preventing 1 single battlship from being able to forgo the pursuit of said single transport and provide bombardment to support a landing.
What is it about the nature of offshore bombardment that all of a sudden makes this transport require all the ships to kill it rather than just one?
Obviously, I will play by the rules as stated. I’m just saying……it doesn’t quite seem to make sense to me, but rest assured, I will get over it…:-)
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But introducing a combat ship on defense into my scenario is changing everything.
No, it isn’t. The principle remains the same.
My point was. Case #1, 1 combat ship can move 1 space with a fleet, kill 1 million undefended transports while the rest of the fleet moves on. Case #2 1 combat ship while not even having to move in theory, cannot seem to track down a single transport and thus requires possibly dozens of surface ships to manage this task thus preventing 1 single battlship from being able to forgo the pursuit of said single transport and provide bombardment to support a landing.
Yes, just as a single destroyer will prevent a million battleships from moving through its sea zone.
What is it about the nature of offshore bombardment that all of a sudden makes this transport require all the ships to kill it rather than just one?
It has nothing to do with offshore bombardment, per se. If one battleship attacks twenty transports, it takes one battleship to sink them. If ten battleships attack twenty transports, it takes ten battleships to sink them. Again, the point is that when a battle takes place, everything in the sea zone participates. Once a sea unit participates in battle, it can’t do anything else in that turn. That precludes moving or participating in other battles, including offshore bombardment.
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Again, why do you keep changing an undefended transport to a defending combat ship, I mean why stop there, why not change it into a tank or a conversation about strategic bombing….
OK, let me make it a bit more absurd.
Case #1 A fleet moves from SZ 10 to 11 finds an enemy transport (no friggin DD OK), one sub stays in SZ 11 to dispatch it, the rest of the fleet moves to SZ 12 and performs an amphibious assault and the battleships can bombard as they didn’t have to fight the transport in SZ 11
Case #2 The same fleet starts out in SZ 12 fully loaded with an enemy transport present. Now to dispatch this same undefended transport it requires all the capital ships?
Again, the only difference is, case #1 the fleet was moving through then doing an amphibious assault . Case #2 the fleet doesn’t even have to move. Even if you forget the movement issue, which in theory should favour the stationary fleet (more time to perform search and destroy if you don’t have to move into the territory to do it…just saying…). Why in case #1 can a single ship accomplish the task and in case #2 it cannot. Just keep it simple and don’t add in enemy combat ships…
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Yeah I’ll buy that one Yoper, nice distinction between combat movement and combat phase, it does alleviate about half my issue :-). It’s a better angle on explanation of why the rule is the way it is than we’ve come up with locally on that I have heard on here so far. It still bothers me somewhat that the bottom line explanation however is, “Because that is the rule” rather than a more reality based one. I mean I played dungeons and dragons, if you say there are fireballs in your world then I will run with it. But I would have a problem if there was a rule that said fireballs don’t ignite paper because THAT is the rule. I still think that in the make believe world of AAA, if a transport can kill an unlimited amount of transports by itself in one scenario, then it should in the other scenario but like you said KISS.
Of all the rules I think are questionable, ummm actually I think this is the only one. That is pretty damn awesome me thinks. I would like to see a change of rule on this one personally.
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Thanks for helping to clear up that issue, Yoper. Now back to the other issue…
Again, why do you keep changing an undefended transport to a defending combat ship, I mean why stop there, why not change it into a tank or a conversation about strategic bombing….
The point that I’ve been trying to make is that it doesn’t matter whether the defending ship is a transport or a warship. You can sink transports automatically, but you can’t sink them for free. It requires a dedicated combat action by the attacking unit(s). No matter what the defending unit is, all of the attacking units that are in the sea zone are attacking it.
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The point that I’ve been trying to make is that it doesn’t matter whether the defending ship is a transport or a warship. You can sink transports automatically, but you can’t sink them for free. It requires a dedicated combat action by the attacking unit(s). No matter what the defending unit is, all of the attacking units that are in the sea zone are attacking it.
Which is why you can have surviving transports after a battle if the remaining defending units were able to kill the remaining attacking units in the final round of battle, correct?
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If it was a combat and ship and not a defenseless transport then in Case #1 the fleet that could move through the SZ now would not be able to and would obviously have to stay in it’s entirety for THAT sea battle. So yeah, I think changing my defenseless transport into a combat chip unneccesarily changes my scenario into something entirely different. A defenseless transport and a combat ship really are two different things in this case. Yoper’s explanation worked fine without having to change my scenario and add red herrings. Breaking it down into combat movements, then actual combat seems obvious in retrospect. You know a great idea (or explanation in this case) when you think “I should have thought of that!”. Thanks again Yoper for pointing out what should have been obvious to me.
Still, that being said, I would like to see a rule modification whereby defenseless transports do not prevent offshore bombardment by requiring the entire fleet to fight. Put even a single defending sub which could then just submerge would negate this even if you came in with 100 battleships.
Luckily this is a fairly rare situation I would think.
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As to SAS’s point, I initially wondered why you would put transports on the battlestrip (has anyone actually used it?). Had I thought more about it I probably would have answered my own earlier question. You put them on because they could be lost in an offensive battle if the defender does more hits in a round then you have combat pieces.
You do an amphibious assault with 3 loaded transports, 2 DD and 4 bombers against 3 defending subs. If the defender gets that 1 in 216 roll and gets 3 ones you would have to take off the 2 destroyers and 1 transport then retreat the other 2 unless you cleared the SZ. I forget where I read a similiar example I’m basically just paraphrasing it.
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@SAS:
Which is why you can have surviving transports after a battle if the remaining defending units were able to kill the remaining attacking units in the final round of battle, correct?
Correct.
If it was a combat and ship and not a defenseless transport then in Case #1 the fleet that could move through the SZ now would not be able to and would obviously have to stay in it’s entirety for THAT sea battle. So yeah, I think changing my defenseless transport into a combat chip unneccesarily changes my scenario into something entirely different. A defenseless transport and a combat ship really are two different things in this case.
The transport that I “changed into a combat ship” was the one in the second sea zone, not the one being passed through. It would make no difference in that sea zone, except that it could not be ignored in favor of bombardment, as I pointed out.
Yoper’s explanation worked fine without having to change my scenario and add red herrings.
Since Yoper “alleviated half your issue”, I was still attempting to address the other half. However, I can see that either you’re sufficiently satisfied or I still haven’t made my point. Either way, I believe I’ll bow out.
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The other half of my issue would require a rule modification, I thought I made that clear in my recent example. I guess this may be a good time for me to figure out how to initiate a poll on the topic.
Do you think in the special situation of amphibious assault whereby only defenseless transports are present in the SZ that a single combat piece could be designated to destroy the transports and allow the remaining units to perform offshore bombardment?
I suspect the poll would show most are not in favour of this. I wonder if comments can be supplied as well as the poll answer? I guess I will find out.
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