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July 4 1941
In the Northern front I start to retreat 1 hex row so the infantry corps cant get a full round of attacks. The arm corps have left so now only inf in the north.
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In the south we are on the banks of the Dniepr. A fair amount of reinforcements from the north and army reinforcements the line look alright. But those German mech units represent a lot of pain so doesnt feel good at all. Also some air and infantry finally showing up. There will be at least 5 likely 7 turns of clear weather still.
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The UK takes advantage of a rare mistake and invade a empty port in Norway. Could be a base for further exploits later. At least it will be a headache to take it back.
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Not going to lie. When I opened this turn and read the report I felt a bit sick, not really but still .
13 escorts, sub hunter bonuses, landbased air (trying but failing to find the subs) and I get this result. 5 escorts sunk in one turn and not a single submarine factor lost. How is such an outcome even possible? There is unfortunately a serious snowballing effect now in the Atlantic so even though the Soviets are doing fine for the moment this game will be a struggle for sure.
Also in my other game as the Axis I think I have sunk like 0,66 escorts for each subfactor lost at sea. I am not sure but could something be off with the sinking of escorts? Could also of course just be coincidences. If anyone else play pbems right now I would be glad to hear any opinions.
Anyway enough crying have to get back to the fight .
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August 1 1941
It seems fairly clear that the Soviets will manage this summer fairly well. Might even have some retreating space for the summer of 1942 which would be nice .
That turn was insane. And this is said by a guy that managed to sink 80% fof the allied merchant marine in our game. The BoA can have a snowball effect if the UK loses too many escorts, but not because why some players could thing. The critical issue with the escorts loses is not the cost to replace them, its the time. New escorts need 200 days to be built, so what happened to you will need around 250 days to replace those loses unles you put several escorts per turn in production. So during that time not only your convoys will be more vulnerable, but also the german subs will suffer less damage. In previous versions you could have compensate that escorts shortage with an agressive CV campaing. But under the new rules, your only source of damage are planes and the amount of escorts in the lane. So an unprepared allied player can face himself without the tools to put the subs at bay and face close to a year of carnage in the merchant marine. As far as I can see the BoA now, the UK needs to keep building escorts until reach 30+, and I think that the USA should build some too in order to have an escort pool able to replenish loses as soon as are received.
+1 with malkarma I'm just wondering with the new rules whether a calculation is off. This reminds of the time 9 sub wolfpack skewed all the calculations.
The BoA can have a snowball effect if the UK loses too many escorts, but not because why some players could thing. The critical issue with the escorts loses is not the cost to replace them, its the time. New escorts need 200 days to be built, so what happened to you will need around 250 days to replace those loses unles you put several escorts per turn in production. So during that time not only your convoys will be more vulnerable, but also the german subs will suffer less damage.
If by "your convoys will be more vulnerable" you mean that an unescorted convoy will suffer more losses than an escorted convoy than I don't think that is true. Unless a change has been made that I am unaware of, escorts have no effect on how many MS are sunk. Their only effect is to score hits on subs. This will indirectly reduce MS losses as these damaged subs will need to be taken out of the battle to repair. But IMHO the fact that escorts do not directly reduce MS losses is one of the biggest weaknesses of the U-Boat war system. Historically of course the presence of escorts forced the U-Boats to stay submerged once detected giving the MS time to escape. Accordingly, well escorted convoys generally lost far fewer MS than poorly escorted ones.
< Message edited by Harrybanana -- 12/3/2020 3:41:50 PM >
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Yes I felt the subs where doing fine in our games as well. But I looked in the AARs and actually number of sunk escorts not that high and a lot of subs were sunk as well. So I feel these two games are worse but it is such a small statistical sample so hard to know if it is coincidence or if something has changed. But maybe the subhunter bonus just is not as good as the very random chance of hitting subs with CVs.
Yes it is not about the production points and more about the huge time needed to replace them. 7 months. In this game I started to build them from turn 1. If I calculate correctly I have so far built 25 escorts with another 16 on the way as well as 90 mms. I think escorts should not get eliminated easily rather see increased mm losses. And 5 in one turn for 0 losses is just too much .
I dont think I could have changed much either. Built/converted 3 bombers to detection tech have 14 range (so far not a single hit on subs) built 41 escorts. Also it is not so much about Gibraltar. The worst from Gibraltar is the cut of the south atlantic route. The Italian subs could have been German so there is not so much difference there really. I have also been a bit unlucky in tech progress as I am still on 41 tech whereas for example my heavy armour is already 42 tech.
After all UK army at 700 and airforce at 140 is not so bad, And maybe this is what is needed for game balance. I really think western allies built up a bit too fast before. So I will reserve judgement until the game is over .
< Message edited by MagicMissile -- 12/3/2020 5:52:12 PM >
If by "your convoys will be more vulnerable" you mean that an unescorted convoy will suffer more losses than an escorted convoy than I don't think that is true. Unless a change has been made that I am unaware of, escorts have no effect on how many MS are sunk.
If in the combat calculator there is no aspect of the equation where escorts reduce the chance of sinking an MM then this is contrary to the manual (p.22 & p.83).
< Message edited by ago1000 -- 12/3/2020 8:16:10 PM >
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Central fron 4 mech units suddenly showed up so now there are 13 mech units all German in the East scary :). But 7 of them are mech corps and only 6 arm corps. Rightly or wrongly I have never liked the mech corps and fear the arm corps more but 13 is a lot. I had to shift up some units to meet them so weakened my defense further south.
How quickly things change now the Germans are not that far from Moscow after all. But at least at the most 2 more clear turns.
If by "your convoys will be more vulnerable" you mean that an unescorted convoy will suffer more losses than an escorted convoy than I don't think that is true. Unless a change has been made that I am unaware of, escorts have no effect on how many MS are sunk.
If in the combat calculator there is no aspect of the equation where escorts reduce the chance of sinking an MM then this is contrary to the manual (p.22 & p.83).
Alvaro posted a few months ago that escorts did not reduce the chance of sinking MMs. If this has been changed than that is great, but I don't think it has been changed.
Yes I felt the subs where doing fine in our games as well. But I looked in the AARs and actually number of sunk escorts not that high and a lot of subs were sunk as well. So I feel these two games are worse but it is such a small statistical sample so hard to know if it is coincidence or if something has changed. But maybe the subhunter bonus just is not as good as the very random chance of hitting subs with CVs.
I did do a limited test using 1939 through May 40 using 9U17. I built one additional U-Boat unit so the number starts at 2 and increases to 4 by Jan 40. During that time the UK lost 8 Escorts. The Germans only suffered 7 hits to subs. Considering the Germans only need to repair while the UK has to build new Escorts, the German kill ratio would eventually destroy all the Escorts. It is a snowball effect as well since as more Escorts are killed, fewer subs will be damaged so the German player will have more U-Boats out killing Escorts. And these are numbers for 1939/40 when the Germans have to operate out of German ports.
I couldn't tell if loss of escorts had any effect on Merchant kills or not. During the 9 months covered the UK lost 90 Merchants. That is an average of 4.5 per turn. The UK lost the ability to put ten Escorts in both the North and South Atlantic pretty early but they had a least 7 or 8 (with French help) most of the time. I didn't attempt any avoidance tactics by the Germans. They just sailed out and put one stack on North and one or South Atlantic and stayed there until they needed to refuel. In May I did see a rise in kills (7 Merchants per turn) but I stopped my test then.
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Nice that someone makes some testing I might try it too later. Might be we have a small problem in the Escort losses I dont know. Also Supply oilers might be a bit too good. 30 pp every 5 turns you can stay out at sea forever.
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Yes a bit lucky but there were other lines. so no real effect. As can be seen by the complete lack of garrisons basically the partisan threat is rightly not taken particularly seriously. This area too possibly should be looked at. Partisans fairly toothless nowadays.
UK oil was fine with both Persia and Iraq but with the South Atlantic line off it is a bit worse but I think UK still ahve about 75% 300 oil or so.
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An attempt of a huge Dnepr river pocket almost suceeds. Spy reports from Berlin stats that the plan was to force the front eastwards even if there might be some casualties. And in this respect it suceeded. Rostov might well fall and oilfields might be hard to defend in 42.
The classic case of knowing when to run and knowing when to stand. With only two turns of clear weather left I feel I should have retreated from the river. The river alone is not defense enough when facing 9 mech units standing next to you. Think I was a bit distracted by the mech units in front of Moscow last turn so didnt give the riverline much thought. Ah well live and learn.
I am not sure I might have forgotten screenshots of the last turn of september but I managed to eliminate one arm and one mech corps as a revenge. A small success but in all honesty I feel pretty outplayed in both games for the moment but it is not over .
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September 26 1941
I did not forget screenshots . Now follows some crazy turns which showcases why I really like this game. How you can be thrown from despair to hope and back to despair again (or not).
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