Transport Ship/Convoy functionality and Sea Port Raids/Defense

[HistoricalAccuracyMan]

I might've already brought this up in an earlier post, but here it goes:

I think a good way to add some variety, strategy and interesting tactics into UAD would be to add in some sort of defenses for sea ports. What I'm talking about is adding Coastal Artillery or Naval Forts that would help defend a port if it comes under attack. How I'm envisioning this working is essentially these Coastal Guns would be similar to casemate guns on ships: they would have limited firing arcs, variable armor values and a wide range of calibers, shell weight and propellant ( I think the largest Coastal Defense guns implemented were 16 inch, or 406mm, back in WWII). The actual bunker/fort that the guns would me mounted in wouldn't actually be armored themselves (so that way it wouldn't be like having to penetrate two layers of armor and to sort of simplify the mechanics) but rather once the guns were hit and destroyed, the bunker/fort would effectively be destroyed. This could also add to strategy and tactics of the game because then if you were to raid an enemy port, you would have surface threats to deal with as well as coastal defenses to consider, because you could choose not to destroy these coastal defenses and then employ them in the defense of a newly captured friendly port.

Now, how it would play out in-game:

You take your force and go to raid a distant enemy port. All enemy ships are destroyed or retreating, and a few coastal guns were destroyed...you've captured yourself a sea port. Now, this is where the "casemate nature" of the coastal guns, comes into play. You now have the power to set up these coastal guns as you see fit, and it would essentially be like setting up casemate guns on any other ship. For the guns you didn't destroy, you could either leave them as is, or change them up a bit: you could change gun caliber, shell weight, propellant, add/subtract armor, etc. For ones you destroyed, you could go ahead and set them up, but then you'd have to reconstruct them, right? Enter the transport ships! This could add functionality to the transports/convoy ships by giving them the purpose of carrying the materials needed to set up coastal defenses on sea ports: materials such as ammunition, tools to help rebuild/install guns, they could carry a new gun itself if you choose to swap out the caliber of coastal guns, etc. And then, you would just have to wait for the ships to arrive in port, then construction could begin and after a little while of in-game time, the guns would be repaired/installed.

I don't think this is too far fetched of an idea, seeing as how this was an actual tactic used in the World Wars. The construction timer on coastal guns makes sense as the ships themselves have build time estimates, you would need funds for constructing a new ship--you'd also need them to install new coastal guns. The transport ships would finally have a function other than being sitting ducks in a custom battle or as targets in a Naval Academy mission. I know that this probably isn't a high priority for the dev teams right now and may never be a priority for them, but I feel like this would be an interesting addition to the campaign and add functionality as well as strategy/tactics when playing through the campaign.