Help me Understand the Historical Costs of Fleets and the Frequency of Engagements...

[rajpoot]

I just realized something, by the stats presented here, CA will have to give a SOL at least a crew of 500 men? I mean that's the lowest they can go without ruining it, so say, 500 men, if we bring togather 20 of our SOLs, (which is possible in the games engine, 20 ships each side remember), and so does the opponent, so it's 500*40=20000 men in all, on the map.........? If we can have 20000 on the sea at one time (I see nothing to oppose it, going by the data), then why can't we have 20000 men in one land battle?

By the way, it's nice, quite a lot of interesting facts here, I never knew so much about the big ships.

[CBR]

The Naval trailer shows a big 120 gun ships having a crew of about 320. We of course don't know if that number change if players increase unit sizes.


CBR

[AussieGiant]

I've read a fair bit about naval warfare at the time and I've certainly seen most action between ships of the line being a very nice sweet spot of between 3 to 7 ship at a time.

Hell you needed to be an very highly ranked officer to command more than 3 ships, at one time.

Many of the 64 and 74 gun variants operated alone as Sir Beane has stated. This was the best way to project naval power.

I'd expect most of the sea battles to be in the 1 to 4 ships on each side range. Monster 20 a side battles will require huge investment and resources...you'd certainly expect CA to make a concerted effort to make the scale of the engagement as realistic as possible at the time.

And I can't emphasis this enough. Frigates were in most respects far more valuable than two deckers. They had the range, speed and size to deal with just about most issues, barring a pitch fight with a ship of the line.

One account described frigates as the grey hounds of the ocean. If you put them in packs they become very dangerous.

[Sol Invictus]

I just hope the cost and upkeep will make truely large naval forces rare.

[AussieGiant]

I just hope the cost and upkeep will make truely large naval forces rare.

I would say so.

CA are going to be able to gather more than enough information in order to accurately put a price, a recruitment frequency and an upkeep cost on a typical ship of line.

There were is very accurate information available if you look hard enough.

Zenicetus's post about ship type is a classic example.

[Martok]

I'd expect most of the sea battles to be in the 1 to 4 ships on each side range. Monster 20 a side battles will require huge investment and resources...you'd certainly expect CA to make a concerted effort to make the scale of the engagement as realistic as possible at the time.

I just hope the cost and upkeep will make truely large naval forces rare.

It sounds like we should get our wish. CA has already stated that ships in ETW are expensive, and that building a decent-sized navy will require a significant investment of both time and money. I suspect that larger engagements (10+ ships on each side) will be fairly rare.

[AussieGiant]

It sounds like we should get our wish. CA has already stated that ships in ETW are expensive, and that building a decent-sized navy will require a significant investment of both time and money. I suspect that larger engagements (10+ ships on each side) will be fairly rare.

And rightly so given the historical parameters.

[Zenicetus]

I just realized something, by the stats presented here, CA will have to give a SOL at least a crew of 500 men? I mean that's the lowest they can go without ruining it, so say, 500 men, if we bring togather 20 of our SOLs, (which is possible in the games engine, 20 ships each side remember), and so does the opponent, so it's 500*40=20000 men in all, on the map.........? If we can have 20000 on the sea at one time (I see nothing to oppose it, going by the data), then why can't we have 20000 men in one land battle?

Not all hands are on deck in battle. The below-decks gunnery crew isn't visible, and that's a lot of men on a ship with 74 or more cannon, even allowing for the cannon you should see topside. There are also noncombatants like ship's surgeon, carpenter, cook, etc. that wouldn't be above deck. And from what I remember of the screen shots, they're not showing all the deck and rigging crew that would be doing the actual sailing. We'll probably see mostly marines and a few assorted ship's officers, which should substantially reduce the number of animations needed. With land armies, they have to show everyone in the battle line.

[hoom]

No, they do have the below decks crew, looks like 3 per gun.
But it looks like pretty much just gun crew, marines & officers are there, sailing crew not included or only a few.

[Zenicetus]

No, here's what I meant by the below-deck gun crew, where all you can see from the outside is the cannon sticking out of the ships' sides:

http://www.woodentallships.com/images/line.gif