An idea about Naval Battles

[oudysseos]

I know that this topic has been flogged before, but I have been wondering about possible ways to portray ship battles that you could actually fight as opposed to auto-resolve.

This is a question, not a suggestion or an "I need this..."

Basically, would it be possible to have a battle on water where each ship, with all of its rowers and marines, is one unit, i.e. one animation? I put it that way because I recall that when this topic was raised before, the biggest problem seemed to be how to turn a ram or siege tower into a ship and how to use the seperate unit of soldiers with it. If the ship and soldiers were one unit, like the archers on an elephant or chariot, then would it be easier? My thinking can be broken down as follows;

1. Water exists on battlemaps already: men can fall into it and drown or swim.
2. Take a swimming unit, make it look like a ship with people on it. Could you not then manoeuver it and fight with it?
3. Primary attack = ramming secondary attack = marines boarding (they couldn't actually do so I know) or perhpaps a secondary attack should be a missle attack- bows for smaller ships and catapults/ballistae for larger ones.
4. The fact that rough seas and storms probably can't be modeled isn't much of a problem as sea battles didn't take place during storms: it's actually realistic to have sea battle only taking place during periods of calm flat seas. I rowed the reconstructed trireme Olympias in 1989 and it was pretty tippy in any kind of sea. Also very cramped and smelled bad.
5. would require 5 or 6 unit slots, maybe. Bireme Trireme Ligurian Quinquereme.
6. Might only be possible for custom battles. Would still be fun.

Am I bonkers? PLease remember that this is a feasibility question and not a 'Put this in 0.8' question.

Related issue- is it possible to stop armies being transported by warships? Putting a full stack onto a squadron of triremes doesn't seem very historical to me: during the Civil War didn't Caesar have to commandeer civilian transport to cross the Adriatic? And triremes didn't have a lot of extra room on them. Or perhaps I am mistaken.