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CmdrWilkens wrote:Where the fuck is he going to find spare carrying capacity for heavy shells used ONLY by his fortress guns unless he shorts on sending troops in?

He can move in 100mm Cannon/Guns that outrange all your pack howitzers by 10 to 15 kilometers; and then keep them fed by trainloads -- you can fit a crapload of 35 lb shells and their propellant on your typical train.

Dumbshit.

The Gap is a bottleneck of all bottlenecks and EVERYTHING he is sending needs to go through there.

Ha, funny that you're the one to talk about logistics, when you're launching an amphibious operation in the era before widespread mechanization/motorization. Who the fuck is going to move all the artillery, food, water, and ammunition across the beach? Magic Pixie Fairies? A rail line, no matter how horribly bottlenecked, beats men lugging shit across a waterlogged beach by several miles.

I don't know where you missed my overland advance that is bringing the heavy guns with them

Too bad they'll get there just in time to see your amphibious force annihilated.

Siege wrote:I though an amphibious landing just a case of driving a flat-keeled landing barge up to the shoreline until it beaches itself and disgorge troops, but clearly I am missing something...

There are a whole bunch of factors:

1.) Are the tides and currents favorable? A beach may look nice, but if it has a horrible rip current on it; then you can't use it as efficiently.

2.) Is the slope of the beach favorable? Some beaches have a nice shallow slope that enables beaching landing craft, etc. Others have steep slopes that drop away pretty fast.

3.) Is the sand on the beach sufficient to support heavy loads? I mean, you can walk people across 99% of the world's beaches, but can you drive trucks or drag heavy stuff across them as easily?

4.) Is the terrain beyond the beach favorable to movement of troops/equipment -- a large portion of beaches in the world have beyond them sandy marshes, making them unfeasible for large scale troop movements.

The LCAC gets around all of these by being air cushion -- it can move across the beach and deep inland before it drops off it's cargo; is much less affected by currents, the slope of the beach is largely irrevelant to it -- unless it's something really steep like a 10 foot cliff...

Ah, I see. Thank you, that's very informative. I didn't think much beyond 'get infantry guys ashore', which upon further consideration is really quite silly of me because after all once you get there, where are you gonna go and how are you going to get there?

Siege wrote:Ah, I see. Thank you, that's very informative. I didn't think much beyond 'get infantry guys ashore', which upon further consideration is really quite silly of me because after all once you get there, where are you gonna go and how are you going to get there?

Yes, that's the big problem with most amphibious landings. Okay, you've landed the equivalent of a light infantry company or battalion.

Now What?

You don't have the firepower to take on a serious first rate opponent right off the bat, and if you sit back and consolidate the beachhead to allow heavy firepower and supplies to come ashore -- that gives the enemy time to counterattack you.

Isn't the Panama area notorious for waterlogged swamps etc.? Much of the problems with building the canal in the first place was the constant plague of malaria.

So the landing at Almirante is okay, I guess, but the 14th Army's landing near Santiago will have to be moved East, I suppose.

Maybe not, try a topographical map as well to be sure.

Ryan Thunder wrote:So the landing at Almirante is okay, I guess, but the 14th Army's landing near Santiago will have to be moved East, I suppose.

Ok? It's right parked right next to a swamp in an enclosed area, with a forest behind. Assuming Wilkins brought enough men, let's hope they are incredibly resistant to mosquitoes.

Norade wrote:Maybe not, try a topographical map as well to be sure.

He used Google Maps. They have a pretty good topographical map and it checks out as far as I'm concerned.

Ryan Thunder wrote: So the landing at Almirante is okay, I guess, but the 14th Army's landing near Santiago will have to be moved East, I suppose.

Its seasonally flooded and late August would be a period of lower rainfall and generally dryer terrain. Looking at the overheads on google there are a couple towns in the are indicating regions of dryer terrain south of the seasonally flooded areas which is what I tried to align my assault with. Looking at the modern road network there is some indication it may be better to run straight up to Puerto Mutis but that would be so dependent upon river depth that I chose instead to attack near but the difference in axis of attack would be minimal. The landing to the East of Tonosi should also be effective though I've scaled back the length of advance there ( I had them doing 75mi in 4 days which is doable but probably too much, they now only move 55mi in 4 days).

The landing at Alimrante is actually further south at Casas Viejas which is on mixed scrubland and forest.

MKSheppard wrote:

CmdrWilkens wrote:Where the fuck is he going to find spare carrying capacity for heavy shells used ONLY by his fortress guns unless he shorts on sending troops in?

He can move in 100mm Cannon/Guns that outrange all your pack howitzers by 10 to 15 kilometers; and then keep them fed by trainloads -- you can fit a crapload of 35 lb shells and their propellant on your typical train.

Dumbshit.

Fine he gets his 100m guns (though why they outrange my 105s I'm missing) while Ft Sherman fires off all its heavy shells after a day or two of fighting. He might or might not sink my ships (thought they will undoubtedly be heavily damaged). Why do you ask? I take my information from the hit count on the Bismarck available here Over ranges starting under 25,000 yards she was hit between 300 and 400 times of which (on a percentage basis) somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 would have been 14" or 16" shells from more than 700 fired and yet she did not sink from that volume of fire while still evading a huge number of hits at relatively close range. Certainly his land based guns will have a better stability and accuracy but even assuming this doubles (and there are a host of reasons to suppose this is generous) then he would need to fire off roughly 350 shots of heavy guns in order to achieve roughly 80 hits...which would not be against just one ship but against dozens of targets. In order to place say 60 shot aboard all of my front line battleships (those with the protection best able to take it) this would require somewhere in the range of 1,600 shells, to place say 50 on the second line would require 1,700 shells.

Again that is if we take accuracy from an engagement at ranges that quickly dropped under 10,000 yards to be doubled for a land based unit working north of 25,000. So in order to disable my ships would require something northwards of 5,000 shells (adding in the next line of battleships, the two lines of battlecruisers ) and if I stayed at range we'd be looking at northwards of that by a pretty significant margin. Which brings up the point of consideration on this is that the Bismarck suffered these hits mostly at under 10,000 yards with damaged steering so I think the accuracy estimates would be ridiculously generous. So anyway as a summary, yes he could damage my fleet and do so severely. But at ranges of 30K yards plus his accuracy would degrade further and I could still target his monitors and sink them well out of their effective range. All of which comes back to my original point which is Ft Sherman could easily fire off all its shells and still leave me with a fleet (though one which would need a year or so to refit) and plenty of heavy units left that outgun his monitors.

Now Fort Panama I have no means of taking that save by costly assault over land.

The Gap is a bottleneck of all bottlenecks and EVERYTHING he is sending needs to go through there.

Ha, funny that you're the one to talk about logistics, when you're launching an amphibious operation in the era before widespread mechanization/motorization. Who the fuck is going to move all the artillery, food, water, and ammunition across the beach? Magic Pixie Fairies? A rail line, no matter how horribly bottlenecked, beats men lugging shit across a waterlogged beach by several miles.

Doing it the same way it was done at Gallipoli, only if I assault to the north it would be shallow draft steamers moving up the river while in the south it would be shallow draft steamers partially beaching themselves since I only need 2-3 days of supplies in order to advance to a point where road/rail resupply links back up with my main axis of advance. Troops can typically carry 5 days or so of food, water, etc on hand while associated horse/mule transport isn't heavily burdened if packing for less than 10 days. I'm not using the beach as my main axis of supply which you seem to be assuming. You have repeatedly failed at reading the map where each of these hooks is designed to be short forward jumps that quickly re-unite with the overland advance.

I don't know where you missed my overland advance that is bringing the heavy guns with them

Too bad they'll get there just in time to see your amphibious force annihilated.

Since they would be reaching the line of the Canal concurrent with the assault that would be rather difficult. See previously in regards to the opposing division counts.

Ryan Thunder wrote:

Norade wrote:Maybe not, try a topographical map as well to be sure.

He used Google Maps. They have a pretty good topographical map and it checks out as far as I'm concerned.

I've generally tried to align my lines of advance with either existing roads (since Ryan if Inf 5 I assume he has a much greater road density though era quality might be lower) or with generally congruent terrain where viable roads would be located. At some point there s gonna have to be a cap on this because, and for all the bickering about Sherman aside, Ryan and I are freaking digging up maps, running terrain simulations, calculating out timetables and a shitload of other stuff that is turning this in to a massive data mining game rather than an actual STGOD.

In other words there is a point at which everybody else needs to stop adding even more complexity to the situation. I'd have far preferred to simply go "I launch 8 Corps with 6 in reserve against Panama" and leave it at that. Now I don't mind providing more detail, I don't mind mapping out my assault plan but there is going to come a point soon when it gets ridiculous.

I did a quick and very dirty run-down of the disposition of Union forces. I emphatically state that I am not an expert, so by all means if you think there's something particularly wonky about it please don't hesitate to yell at me. I based this partially on Karmic's spreadsheet and partially on numbers for Union forces agreed upon by Thanas and me. I have further subtracted 6 divisions worth of losses in the first 2-3 days of fighting, not counting the 200,000 men of the Army of Luxembourg who are a complete write-off (meaning they probably fought the Germans and the French, and got promptly annihilated -- presumably they inflicted some losses but to me that theatre is a total loss so I'll leave it to Baerne and Thanas to determine their losses).

Quick and dirty rundown:

Army of the Netherlands: 2 million men / 130 divisions
13 motorized infantry divisions
2 armored divisions
25 garrison divisions
30 infantry divisions
30 cavalry divisions
30 artillery divisions

Fortress Holland (principally Waterlinie & Grebbelinie)
2 motorized infantry divisions
1 armoured division
18 garrison divisions
4 infantry divisions
5 cavalry divisions
12 artillery divisions

Army Group Brabant
10 motorized infantry divisions
1 armoured division
7 garrison divisions
18 infantry divisions
17 cavalry divisions
14 artillery divisions

Army Group North (Harderwijk pocket)
1 motorized infantry divisions
8 infantry divisions
8 cavalry divisions
4 artillery divisions


Army of Flanders: 2 million men / 130 divisions
13 motorized infantry divisions
2 armoured divisions
10 garrison divisions
40 infantry divisions
35 cavalry divisions
30 artillery divisions

(Location of armies to follow.)

EDIT: Note that at day three of the fighting probably not all these are at full strength and battle-ready yet.

CmdrWilkens wrote:I've generally tried to align my lines of advance with either existing roads (since Ryan if Inf 5 I assume he has a much greater road density though era quality might be lower) or with generally congruent terrain where viable roads would be located.

Yeah, going with what's there is a pretty safe bet. If anything there's probably more roads because I have more people than there are in the region today.

At some point there s gonna have to be a cap on this because, and for all the bickering about Sherman aside, Ryan and I are freaking digging up maps, running terrain simulations, calculating out timetables and a shitload of other stuff that is turning this in to a massive data mining game rather than an actual STGOD.

Yeah, that is true. I think it boils down to how much effort both players are willing to put into the attack and how much effort the defender put into his defenses before hand.

While we're on that, I worked out the organization of the Coastal Fortress Artillery Brigade at least a week ago. I haven't been "adjusting" anything.

In other words there is a point at which everybody else needs to stop adding even more complexity to the situation. I'd have far preferred to simply go "I launch 8 Corps with 6 in reserve against Panama" and leave it at that. Now I don't mind providing more detail, I don't mind mapping out my assault plan but there is going to come a point soon when it gets ridiculous.

Strangely enough, I actually sort of enjoy doing this in some twisted way...

Having Shep help you attempt to nitpick Wilkens into submission.

Steve wrote:Having Shep help you attempt to nitpick Wilkens into submission.

That was helpful, but you'll notice he was talking about the general case; SD.net World 3 Panama is not as easy to take as Wilkens seems to think it is.

"Death by Minutiae" is a strategy, of sorts, I suppose.

Coyote wrote:"Death by Minutiae" is a strategy, of sorts, I suppose.

Yes, but you will notice it wasn't me who instituted it.

---

I'm still calling his assault on Fuerte Sherman auto-fail, by the way. You'd have to be some special sort of idiot to think that they'd leave a huge flank like that undefended.

So what, I'm supposed to be a humorless mod who never cracks a joke?

Fine he gets his 100m guns (though why they outrange my 105s I'm missing)

If his 100s fall into "gun" or "cannon" category (meaning a barrel 40+ calibers long) then they would easily out-range 105mm pack howitzers that by necessity will not have a barrel much longer than 15 calibers. I thought that was obvious?

Well, I for one have no real idea what the difference between a 'cannon' and a 'howitzer' is. I always kind of assumed howitzer was just a fancy name for a piece of artillery.

Siege wrote:I did a quick and very dirty run-down of the disposition of Union forces. I emphatically state that I am not an expert, so by all means if you think there's something particularly wonky about it please don't hesitate to yell at me. I based this partially on Karmic's spreadsheet and partially on numbers for Union forces agreed upon by Thanas and me. I have further subtracted 6 divisions worth of losses in the first 2-3 days of fighting, not counting the 200,000 men of the Army of Luxembourg who are a complete write-off (meaning they probably fought the Germans and the French, and got promptly annihilated -- presumably they inflicted some losses but to me that theatre is a total loss so I'll leave it to Baerne and Thanas to determine their losses).

Quick and dirty rundown:

Army of the Netherlands: 2 million men / 130 divisions
13 motorized infantry divisions
2 armored divisions
25 garrison divisions
30 infantry divisions
30 cavalry divisions
30 artillery divisions

Fortress Holland (principally Waterlinie & Grebbelinie)
2 motorized infantry divisions
1 armoured division
18 garrison divisions
4 infantry divisions
5 cavalry divisions
12 artillery divisions

Army Group Brabant
10 motorized infantry divisions
1 armoured division
7 garrison divisions
18 infantry divisions
17 cavalry divisions
14 artillery divisions

Army Group North (Harderwijk pocket)
1 motorized infantry divisions
8 infantry divisions
8 cavalry divisions
4 artillery divisions


Army of Flanders: 2 million men / 130 divisions
13 motorized infantry divisions
2 armoured divisions
10 garrison divisions
40 infantry divisions
35 cavalry divisions
30 artillery divisions

(Location of armies to follow.)

EDIT: Note that at day three of the fighting probably not all these are at full strength and battle-ready yet.

Aren't we only allowed three armored brigades? Similar question for motor infantry; I thought we only got three divisions.

Siege wrote:Well, I for one have no real idea what the difference between a 'cannon' and a 'howitzer' is. I always kind of assumed howitzer was just a fancy name for a piece of artillery.

In this era a "howitzer" is by definition a short-barreled breech-loading artillery piece, while a "gun/cannon" is simply longer than it. The howitzer's short barrel (and smaller propellant charge) allows both a higher-arcing flight that can clear nearby obstacles and provides a shorter minimum range, as well as making the weapon lighter and more compact at the expense of maximum range, though still providing far more range and firepower than say, a mortar.

However, there is no hard-and-fast definition of where "howitzer" ends and "gun" begins. Though in this era I can't think of any howitzers that have barrels longer than 25 calibers. My 15 caliber figure for 105mm pack howitzers comes from a real life example, the OTO Melara M56. Although that weapon was designed in the '50s, I see no reasons why a 20's era 105 pack howitzer would be much different.

But anyway, even as a detail-oriented person I'm also starting to find this minutiae tiresome.

Yeah, what's holding up the rolls?

Ma Deuce wrote:But anyway, even as a detail-oriented person I'm also starting to find this minutiae tiresome.

"But... but... it's important to know if the enemy is carrying 7.8 kilograms of gear in their rucksacks, of an even 8 kilograms. They'd be marching up a 4% grade, which means they might get to the village just before or just after sunrise, so the sunlight reflected off the frost that accumulated on their gunsights would still be there, making it harder to aim..."

No that's definitely something the rolls work out. But I'm so going to write it in somewhere now...