HOLF Players' Guild Forum

This is a design question getting ready for the October ROTD game. We're not making many changes to the ROTD software right now (development is focused on NWOL for another month or two, getting ready for NWOL-4) but there are a couple issues from the last ROTD game we're tidying up. This one is to do with river movement.

On the ROTD map, rivers are squares on the same scale as the land map, that is, about 10 miles per side, and ships sailing on rivers move square by square. Combat happens at the start of the turn, as it does in PATE, so if a ship sailing on a river encounters an enemy ship, it stops for the rest of the turn until the battle is fought at the start of the next.

This leads to the following unhistoric defensive strategy, which is to place one low-value ship in every square of the river, forcing the enemy fleet to stop in every square for combat, limiting their movement to one river square per turn. Between Cairo IL and Vicksburg MS, for example, there are 46 river squares. Via this strategy, one side can require the other to spend 46 turns, which three campaigns or something on the order of eight or nine months, sailing between the two places. This is not the Right Thing.

To prevent this strategy from being used, I plan to impose the following rule. After a naval combat, the surviving ships on the losing side must retreat a reasonable number of squares downriver, probably about 8 or 10. Any friendly ships they meet during the retreat must move along with them. Those ships are then prohibited from going back towards the enemy during the turn, and further, no friendly ships may pass them. This ensures that a side winning a river naval battle is able to advance at least 8 or 10 squares (whichever number I choose) downriver on the rest of that turn. At that pace, even if they have to fight every turn, they can get from Cairo to Vicksburg in 5 or 6 turns (assuming they can win all the battles), which seems reasonable to me. Some delaying should be possible, but not too much.

There is also the question of placing river batteries every square along the river, and the long-retreat solution won't work there because river batteries are immobile. I think the best solution will simply be to require that river batteries cannot be placed closer than 8 or 10 squares along a given river. Here I will want to look at where the Confederates actually had defensive river batteries and make sure that historical placements are allowable, but I am pretty sure 8 or 10 squares, corresponding to 80 or 100 miles, spacing between river batteries is historically reasonable. (It only applies along a river, so placing batteries at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, 2 squares apart but on different rivers, will be permitted.)

Anyone see any problems with the above proposal?

Steve