Scenario Outline: Civil War ´41

[Christian Schwietzke]

I just had an idea for a hypothetical - well, alternate history - scenario I´m going to build in SAS, and I´d like your thoughts on it.

The basic idea is that the US Civil War happens 80 years later. We have the Union and the Confederates (with some other nation, probably the Brits, standing in for them). The Union is blockading Confederate ports, and the Confederates have to run that blockade.

The catch is that, for the Confederates, their home port has little industry, but lots of resource production; for the purpose of this scenario, they also own a number of ports in Europe - probably Liverpool and one or two French Atlantic Coast ports, which have highly developed industry, but little or no locally available raw materials - so they need raw materials from the Confederate home port. These European ports also all have shipbuilding facilities.
Now the Confederates are in the situation that they will have relatively few resources available in their homeport to sink into infrastructure and stuff; they can outsource shipbuilding to the European ports, but not aircraft production, infrastructure, technology and intelligence investments.

The campaign would very probably have troops disabled, just like the stock Atlantic campaign, and it might benefit from having at least carrier aircraft disabled, to make those convoys harder to find and stop.

So, what do you think? Does this idea have potential? Any major flaws I´ve overlooked?

[tony_glazebrook]

I just had an idea for a hypothetical - well, alternate history - scenario I´m going to build in SAS, and I´d like your thoughts on it.

The basic idea is that the US Civil War happens 80 years later. We have the Union and the Confederates (with some other nation, probably the Brits, standing in for them). The Union is blockading Confederate ports, and the Confederates have to run that blockade.

The catch is that, for the Confederates, their home port has little industry, but lots of resource production; for the purpose of this scenario, they also own a number of ports in Europe - probably Liverpool and one or two French Atlantic Coast ports, which have highly developed industry, but little or no locally available raw materials - so they need raw materials from the Confederate home port. These European ports also all have shipbuilding facilities.
Now the Confederates are in the situation that they will have relatively few resources available in their homeport to sink into infrastructure and stuff; they can outsource shipbuilding to the European ports, but not aircraft production, infrastructure, technology and intelligence investments.

The campaign would very probably have troops disabled, just like the stock Atlantic campaign, and it might benefit from having at least carrier aircraft disabled, to make those convoys harder to find and stop.

So, what do you think? Does this idea have potential? Any major flaws I´ve overlooked?

Chaos - sounds like an amazing idea! BTW, you can play US vs US, so you don't have to have say Britain standing in for the Confederates.

You probably want to be careful about spacing the union and confederate home ports sufficiently far apart, otherwise you'd find the union would be bombarding the confed home port all the time.

The Atlantic Map has these US/Canadian ports available for selection - Halifax, Boston, NY, Norfolk and Bermuda. There are also 2 south american ports (Montevideo and Pernambuco). One option might be to say that the confederacy got into bed with the really deep south (as in south america), and their home port became Pernambuco, with perhaps a base further north at Bermuda (or perhaps Norfolk if you wanted them to have a physical US presence in terms of bases). When you see the map you can fine tune ther plan. It sounds really interesting. It's certainly do-able.

[Christian Schwietzke]

Chaos - sounds like an amazing idea! BTW, you can play US vs US, so you don't have to have say Britain standing in for the Confederates.

You probably want to be careful about spacing the union and confederate home ports sufficiently far apart, otherwise you'd find the union would be bombarding the confed home port all the time.

The Atlantic Map has these US/Canadian ports available for selection - Halifax, Boston, NY, Norfolk and Bermuda. There are also 2 south american ports (Montevideo and Pernambuco). One option might be to say that the confederacy got into bed with the really deep south (as in south america), and their home port became Pernambuco, with perhaps a base further north at Bermuda (or perhaps Norfolk if you wanted them to have a physical US presence in terms of bases). When you see the map you can fine tune ther plan. It sounds really interesting. It's certainly do-able.

Thanks for the praise. This new year is certainly starting well...

Norfolk and Boston sound far enough apart. If I gave Norfolk size 10 Defenses, what kind of force would be needed to make a bombardment worth it - i.e. do more damage that the bombardment force takes? The Union wouldn´t keep bombarding the place if doing so wrecked their battle line every time, for disproportionately small gain.

Plus, if carrier aircraft are disabled and land-based aircraft are not, that would be an additional deterrent making sure the blockade is suitably far off-shore.

[tony_glazebrook]

Thanks for the praise. This new year is certainly starting well...

Norfolk and Boston sound far enough apart. If I gave Norfolk size 10 Defenses, what kind of force would be needed to make a bombardment worth it - i.e. do more damage that the bombardment force takes? The Union wouldn´t keep bombarding the place if doing so wrecked their battle line every time, for disproportionately small gain.

Plus, if carrier aircraft are disabled and land-based aircraft are not, that would be an additional deterrent making sure the blockade is suitably far off-shore.

True enough Chaos - and of course surrounding the port with mines would also help keep out those pesky enemy ships. You may need to do a couple of iterations to get the play balance right, play testing in between. But it sounds like a really interesting idea.

[Scott Chisholm]

Harry Turtledove would be proud! ;)

[Christian Schwietzke]

Harry Turtledove would be proud! ;)

Harry Turtledove would have come up with something better... in fact, I think he already did. ;)

And you just wait until I get *really* creative... you ain´t seen nothing yet! :D

[Stratos]

Looking forward to it, maybe we can limit the size of the carriers or limit for the confederates only as they will need escort carrier for the Atlantic convoys!

[Christian Schwietzke]

Looking forward to it, maybe we can limit the size of the carriers or limit for the confederates only as they will need escort carrier for the Atlantic convoys!

For human vs human games, we can certainly introduce a house rule. If we assume that there is nothing like a London/Washington Naval Treaty here, both sides will probably have battleship-centered navies - without limits to battleships, experimentation with carriers and carrier aircraft should be less appealing.

We could say that both sides are limited to escort carriers only, until there has been an event in-game that showed the effectiveness of carrier-borne aircraft against capital ships - an event which would make carriers appealing as the mainstay of the fleet. If neither side can start building fleet carriers until some time into the war, it will be a long time until they show up.

Good suggestion, Stratos, thanks.