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loki100 -> RE: Questions on aerial isolation... (11/27/2019 10:35:55 AM)
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I think its a weakness but in practice its a waste to bomb HI/Resources/fuel if your goal is to disrupt the German economy. HI is a good target for the RAF as its large (so less chance they miss and gives you VP). I think this models the effect that what brought the German economy to its knees wasn't lost of productive capacity as such but the loss of the means to match up elements of production (especially as the Germans had done a lot of dispersal earlier in the war).
I may be mixing WiTW with WiTE2 here so treat what follows this with some caution. Railyards do a number of things. They hold rail capacity, they determine how an accompanying depot works and make loading/unloading easier.
So lets say the Germans have 100 railyard pts that gives them 100 trains (I'm making up the numbers). If only 90% of their railyards function (remember the formula is die(100)-2*current damage for each railyard - if this is 0 or less it doesn't work), then they only get 90 trains. Now in the game, rail capacity is roughly geographical, so when you take out the railyards in Italy there is some substitution of trains say from Germany but its still stressing their total capacity (so use 8AAF to hit some of the really big German ones as well)
Now the second effect is on a depot, that loses capacity as you damage the associate rail yard so it can take/pass out less supply - that means any units near it may need to use their trucks to go and get supply from further back
Rail interdiction effectively raises the movement cost of the hex - you can't block it (even if the rail hex is already at 30k usage). So you have less trains (you've bombed the railyards) and those trains pay more to move (interdiction) so overall less freight (& units) can move. I look for hexes that are near one of the movement cost thresholds (from the manual) or are >20k usage to maximise this effect. Its a matter of taste/resources how you set this up but even the Allies in mid-44 lack the aircraft to really sustain this, so on balance rail yards give you better returns, but there are a few Italian rail hexes where almost everything passes along.
Ground interdiction, I'd say you want 3-4 as a good base for serious interdiction. That creates higher movement costs and truck attrition, it won't really harm moving units (go for 6+ when you want to do this). Its all about adding to the stresses, none of this works quickly but the ideal is by 1944, the German mobile units are weaker and slower simply as you forced the axis to use up their truck stocks.
Its quite good to test this using the breakout scenario, play it solitaire, don't do many attacks, just set up what you think is a good interdiction box and track the supply of the axis units within it. Just do a few attacks to simulate them having to burn off to hand supplies. Then just so you can see what interdiction can do, set up a cluster of #8-9 and move a Pzr division through it (useful as its hard to see interdiction losses in the combat results).
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