Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Klydon

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ORIGINAL: jzardos

I agree 100% with the thread starter's points. I feel this game is drastically unbalanced for the Axis. Italy is made out to be a 4th rate minor when as already stated they had a large armored forces, but an overall lower quality and motivation than the other major counties involved. The Italian navy was a very modern navy, but was not used effectively. But that should not be a consideration in game play, since the human or AI are now making the decisions how to use the navy. Axis supply in the Soviet Union has many issues and I'm not going to beat a dead horse here.

I do understand there were deadlines to be met here, but I'm a little tired of games being released with out proper debugging and play testing. The designers can say they did there research on WW2 and tried to model the key players armed forces properly but they did a C+ job on it. They don't understand about digging a little deeper for the truth as the victors (namely the Soviet Union) wrote their own history on WW2. For those that have any clue, it was the allied lend lease that kept the Soviet Union from collapsing in 42-43. Take away the bad leadership, Hitler, and the Germans have an even greater chance for victory in the east. Stalin learned to start trusting his generals on matters of strategy, but Hitler never did and actually became more obsessed with lower level details as time went on.

Another very significant issue with this game is the lack of a battle history. Didn't anybody ever speak up in testing and ask why the heck there's no how, what, where for previous battles? There's no excuse here. Shame on the entire team releasing the game without this feature.

I know people will respond and kiss ass here on the game, there's always that element on the forums. But the truth is this game in it's present condition is only worth $9.99. I bought the game and have my right, just like the ass kissers, to speak frankly about the game. Many fixes need to happen until it's worth what I paid. I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Huber and company will try and fix many of these issues. IMO the play balance needs to be a concern for a recent planned patch.

I am not so sure how the Regina Marina rates as a "modern" navy to a point, especially against the Royal Navy.

The Italians had some impressive ships, but outside of the Zara CA's and the Littorio class battleships, the Italian ships were mainly glass jawed light weights with light armor that compared very poorly to their RN counter parts. On the other hand, the Italian ships mainly compared very favorably to the ships the French had. The rebuilt WW1 Italian battleships were much better than anything the French had outside of the new ships the French were building, but 12.6 inch guns and 10 inches of belt armor compares very poorly to most anything they may have run into from the RN.

Most of the Italian cruisers were very weakly armored and were not that much faster than their CW counterparts and battle after battle, although the Italians often fought bravely, they usually came off second best.

That is part of the issue with the game (but not one I really brought up because to fix it means a ton of extra work and is perhaps beyond the scope of the concept of the game). A battleship is a battleship. If it is the same tech, the Bismark is the same as a French WW1 battleship, etc. Same with the cruisers and on down the line.

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ORIGINAL: Cohen

That is actually -entirely- wrong.

Italians had Littorio and Vittorio Veneto which were far better than any RN BB fielded in the Mediterranean.
Their cruisers were better than the UK counterparts.

Then why the Italian navy is renown to be bad?

Given, Italians never lost a single battle that involved gunnery, surface vs surface in daylight.
Italians thought lacked radar, and lacked carriers.
The philosophy of "Italy is a not sinkable carrier", a precept of the Fascists, simply proved non efficient because the C3I of the Italians was extremely poor, where their command of the airforce (including naval bombers) was linked to "Aereo Supremo" meanwhile the navy entirely answered to "Supermarina" (The respective supreme headquarters). Add in service rivalry, delays in passing of informations, Italian planes pratically never got in time to help the surface squadrons or offer CAP.

The defeats of the Italians are the "Night of Taranto" (The first surprise carrier strike on a naval base, well before Pearl Harbour), and Capo Matapan, where a cruiser got damaged by airplanes (like the Bismark) and lost maneuverability. The Italians detatched other vessels to pull the cruiser back home meanwhile the damaged main BB was safely being brought back at the docks.
Brits intercepted the cruisers coming to rescue the one immobilized by night. That is radar vs non radar equipped ships. And BBs vs CAs. The outcome was written already. (Also the Italians here did a maneuver mistake with the CAs in front of the DDs in their night journey to rescue their crippled vessel).

Thus, to repeat and resume:

Lack of Coordination of Navy & Airforce (Italians had excellent torpedo bombers actually!)
Lack of Radar
Lack of Carriers (which though was not a necessity in the Mediterranean IF the first point was null)

For the same reasons Genoa got bombarded by ships - they were in front of Genoa. They did not got intercepted by airplanes (which move much faster than ships) simply because to get the planes in the air took so long that when they did the British formation was already north of Sardinia on their way back to Gibraltar.

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The Germans never made it close to Leningrad, got stuck at Smolensk and barely got past Kiev. In '42 there was no "Blitzkieg" at all, more a sluggish war of attrition where the German units slowly (against the limits of an AI, I underline) made relevant advances here and there; and had to give grounds there and elsewhere. (Forfeitted Moscow attack to take Rostov and Kharkov, established possession of Tula and reached Leningrad. Conquered Sebastopol)

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ORIGINAL: Dunkelheit87

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The Germans never made it close to Leningrad, got stuck at Smolensk and barely got past Kiev. In '42 there was no "Blitzkieg" at all, more a sluggish war of attrition where the German units slowly (against the limits of an AI, I underline) made relevant advances here and there; and had to give grounds there and elsewhere. (Forfeitted Moscow attack to take Rostov and Kharkov, established possession of Tula and reached Leningrad. Conquered Sebastopol)

In Barbarossa scenario it is easy to take Leningrad (even if you can't reach it in 1941) and advance in the south in 1941 (much easier and farther than in history), but in 1942, yes, there is always positional warfare, especially under Moscow.