Ottoman Naval Defection During the Oriental Crisis

[Xylephony]

Historically, virtually the entire Ottoman navy defected to Muhammed Ali during the Oriental Crisis. I represented this in an extremely minor way in the P&E Patch by giving the Egyptians an Ottoman Admiral, but that's peanuts compared to the entire naval capacity of the Ottomans and how that would influence the war. Some studies suggest that the naval defection was what convinced the European powers that the Ottomans were in an existential crisis and once again compelled them to assist.

The downside to all this is that I don't really know how to represent this, as I don't believe there's a way to destroy units that are already on the map. If there is then it would be as simple as deleting the starting Ottoman ships once a certain base warscore amount has been reached and creating an equivalent number of new ones for the Egyptians (I know that can be done at least), but if not then it gets trickier. Giving the Egyptians the ships at game start would force them to pay for them, and would probably just lead to them being deleted anyway since the Egyptians would be so far over their naval capacity (more naval capacity might actually need to be added to Egypt somewhere to prevent them from deleting the ships whenever they get them, maybe by increasing Alexandria's port to level 2 and giving level 1 naval bases to Acre, Beirut and Antioch). But getting rid of Ottoman ships at game start and then only generating them for the Egyptians during the defection event would reduce Ottoman military power ahistorically in the early game, and would also buff them pre-war, since they wouldn't have to pay for them.

I personally think this is important enough to warrant representing, and think if it comes down to it the better option would just be to delete Ottoman starting ships and have them generated for the Egyptians if they get the defection event, and if the defection event never fires before the Oriental Crisis ends having an event which gives them to the Ottomans after. That's not ideal but it's better than saddling Egypt with an unsustainable number of ships prior to the war beginning.

[ujtcelvn]

I don't think it's possible to destroy units already on the map. Maybe this could be represented using the stockpile? Like, have a bunch of clipper ships and artillery vanish from the Ottoman stockpile, giving them to Egypt. I don't think there can be NEGATIVE goods in the stockpile though, so this would only work if the Ottoman Empire have ships in construction.

[Xylephony]

I fear that would have a negligible effect for just the reasons you said, whereas this was a huge deal both militarily and in terms of prestige. I think starting the Ottomans with no navy and spawning their starting navy in for the Egyptians during the war if a warscore limit is reached, plus maybe some stockpile to keep naval spending down for Egypt, might be the way to go. Then if the Ottomans win the crisis without the Egyptians ever getting enough warscore to trigger the event for the defection the navy can just be spawned back to the Ottomans after the war. That's not ideal by a long shot, but it would be the most realistic way of representing the impact the defection had on the war.