mcaryf1

Hi Steel32 The big problem with allowing naval units a longer range is you have TFs jumping in from too great a distance to join in a battle so naval conflict can too rapidly degenerate into a mass fight and weaker surface navies have little chance to contribute. The difficulty with naval war games is to balance tactical movement which might relate to engagements spread over 2 or 3 days at most as compared with the repositioning of units during the 1 month typical elapsed time between a Strategic game's player turns. If you think of Loops as being similar to operational movement for land and air units then it is actually less of an anomaly than those features. A WW2 Cruiser TF could actually steam to Australia from the UK in the equivalent time interval of one elapsed turn without stressing its crew. Transferring the equivalent of 500 aircraft from UK to Australia would be a very major undertaking in comparison. It would require substantial infrastructure to be ready and waiting and even then the pilots and ground controllers would require further periods of training to be effective in the new environment. It will be interesting to see what SC3 offers but if it spreads beyond the ETO I will be very surprised if it does not feature Naval Loops. Regards Mike

Hi Norvandave Part of the issue with AOD (and SC in general) is that once a naval unit encounters an enemy unit its journey is ended and it stays where it is until the opponents turn when it can be destroyed at leisure. This seriously inhibits the ability of German surface units to break out into the North Atlantic which they successfully did until the Bismark in 1941. Even then the Bismark survived its first encounter with Hood and PoW and was eventually destroyed many SC tiles away from that location. I have previously suggested that Naval units should have a speed characteristic that could be used to check for evasion or continuation of its move with a higher chance for units with a greater speed than the unit(s) it had encountered. Note speed would be a different characteristic to range as DD units should be fast but typically shorter ranged. In my Seaways development I represent the German's ability to get into the North Atlantic by having a Loop from the Baltic to the Atlantic that has a reducing probability of getting safely to the Atlantic after the start of 1941. Loops really are quite a powerful mechanism for scenario designers who want to provide a similar challenge to that which faced the naval commanders of the time. It is too easy to dismiss them as "warp" drive whilst ignoring that the sorts of ranges given by the standard AP allocation would be less than achieved in the age of sail. When Nelson pursued Admiral Villeneuve's fleet from the Mediterranean to the West Indies he set off on 11th May and was near Barbados on the 29th May - this is a distance that no AOD naval unit could achieve! Regards Mike

Dear All I have not posted for a few months as I have been rather busy with some voluntary work but seeing comments about Loops has attracted my interest. A while ago I created a scenario as a proof of concept in enhancing the way loops are used in AOD - for those interested search on the word "Seaways" and you will find my posts describing what the scenario delivers. I decided to stop further development work on it until AOD error correction/enhancement releases were finished as I did not want to have to keep updating my scenario to keep it in line with other changes to AOD. So please note the scenario I published does have old AOD bugs in it. One of the issues with Loops in AOD concerns the elapsed time that the designer sets for the execution of the Loop. Thus if the designer allocates an odd number of turns then the looping player's ships will emerge on one of their own turns preventing most opportunities for the opposing player to intercept them. Clearly if 0 or an even number is selected then the looping ships will emerge on the opposing players turn giving them an immediate opportunity to attack with any ships that happen to be in range. I have looked at the US to Japan loop and that takes 3 elapsed turns thus giving the US the opportunity to arrive and immediately attempt to land on the Japanese coast. In my view this would be better changed to an even number so the Japanese can respond. A further point about the elapsed time of loops is that AOD has taken a somewhat unfortunate design decision to put unrealistically long delays into the operation of loops to make them more compatible with the AP's allocated to ships. Given the notional elapsed time between players turns and the speed of WW2 shipping it is very hard to justify any loop being as long as 3 even if it includes passing through a canal! In my Seaways concept I have implemented some of the ideas suggested in this thread thus some of the Loops will only operate if the player controls some nearby islands. For example if the US control Midway they can Loop in forces arriving on their next turn whilst Japanese forces looping in to attack Midway will emerge on the Allied turn and hence be vulnerable to ambush/interception. If the Japanese capture Midway then the situation is reversed and the Japanese Loops arrive on their own next turn whilst attacking US units would be vulnerable to interception. My own opinion is that Loops are absolutely essential to preserve a realistic range of movement for naval units on a World scale map and they avoid giving an ability for naval units to join a current battle from unrealistic distances. When I experimented with allocating higher APs to naval units in SC Global I found that naval conflict became quite unrealistic with reinforcements rushing in and this was made worse by a ship such as Bismark becoming frozen in position when she encounters enemy units. It is important to remember just how vast the oceans of the world are. The possibility of mid-Ocean interceptions was pretty low and the disparity of speed between U-Boats and surface vessels such as liners acting as troopships meant that you would be extremely unlucky if a sub sunk such a ship whilst it was in transit and in practice virtually no Allied troopships were sunk by subs. One final comment which concerns the Red Sea loop - I really do not like the ability to Loop past a constricted sea area where an interception might be theoretically possible. In Seaways I set up my Loops so that there was an intermediate stretch of sea which transports or warships had to traverse off the East African coast where they might be intercepted between the exit of one Loop from the UK and the entrance of another that took them through the Red Sea to Egypt. I do think Loops are much better for realism but designers need to think quite carefully how they should operate. Regards Mike

Clearly you think that having more units would be an advantage so that is likely to impact gameplay. However, you could consider taking another Japanese unit, such as a Corps, deleting that and replacing it with several garrison units. My rule of thumb is that 6 to 8 garrison units might be equivalent to one Corps unit in terms of troops deployed. Garrison units cannot be improved so you can work out how much offensive power your are giving up in order that you can spread your resources more thinly across the landscape. In my view there is a somewhat unfortunate design choice in the standard scenarios whereby all unit types have pretty much the same basic combat capability across different nationalities. In reality the Chinese had far weaker units as they had virtually no artillery deployed within Divisions or Corps but they did have potentially a great deal of manpower. Thus a Japanese Corps should be able to do pretty much what it likes versus Chinese equivalent units but the Japanese did not have enough Corps to conquer the whole of China and barely enough to hold onto what they already had. The big missing element in the standard scenario in AOD is that the Japanese had of the order of 1m low grade Chinese troops "fighting" on their side effectively as mercenaries. I put "fighting" in inverted commas as these units typically changed sides if confronted by serious opposition. Thus if you choose to reduce the number of Japanese Corps and/or army units and increase the number of garrisons that might be a better historical approximation to the real situation although you might need to retune the standard game in other ways as well e.g. reducing offensive values for Chinese units. The great strength of the SC series is the editor and the flexibility it gives you to try different options vis a vis relative unit capabilities, however, you will then need to find some human players to try your scenario out with you as the AI will have been designed to expect the standard deployments and unit capabilities. Regards Mike

It is interesting to see British carrier aircraft being used apparently very effectively in an anti-tank role in 1940. I do not recollect them ever having much success in ground attack throughout WW2 but they have the same underlying anti-tank ctv's as a German tactical bomber which is I guess intended to represent a Stuka. In fact if the wind was blowing hard in the wrong direction the Swordfish might have been hard pushed to catch up with a light tank driving into the wind along an open road let alone hit it wirh a bomb! Regards Mike

Hi Battlefield The Tiger of course did not appear until 1942 but the KV1 was around in 1941 and proved a nasty surprise for the Germans being hard to destroy but not deployed very effectively on the offense. Having created a USSR minor it is quite useful to be able to deploy a limited number of Heavy Tank units with high evasion alongside lots of cheap light tanks whilst leaving the traditional Tank Group unit to be available for development into a T34 style Tank Armies. This can mirror the actual Tank situation in the Soviet Army in 1941 going into 1942. By the way do you visit the SC3 forum and have you read my enhancement suggestions for scenario designers there? Regards Mike

Hi Battlefield I do already use some of the ideas you just posted for example my armies have the same attack values as Corps but they get two strikes, my BB units also get 2 strikes as do IJN CAs in that case because of the strength of the IJN CA torpedo batteries. I am not so happy that a unit that does not have 2 strikes can fire back twice when attacked but I can live it because typically my army and BB units will have a higher evasion. I have mixed feelings about SS having much evasion as they already have the potential to dive when defending. I agree that they ought to get some benefit from a surprise attack but I consider my BB units as having an integral destroyer screen so if the SS attacks the BB it is the BB's screen of DDs that will be counter-attacking. I do usually give the subs some offensive evasion but only 5% and no defensive evasion as diving is enough. One unit I have enjoyed making was converting the "light tank" for some countries so that it is actually a "heavy tank" such as a Tiger or KV series and then it has a very high defensive evasion. It cannot have tech upgrades but its basic values are good especially the Tiger and its evasion still works however much the opponents have improved so I do not need to convert to King Tiger. For the Soviets I have Ukraine and a few other Republics grouped to create a separate USSR minor so that the USSR can deploy both Light Tank and Heavy Tank variants of the new Tank unit which is a good representation of the mix they really deployed in 1941 and 1942. Strategic Command has very interesting possibilities even where the game designers tried to close off some development paths for a unit. Regards Mike

Hi Battlefield The way I try to get round the diversity of soft units (there are not many hard) is by using evasion. Thus an army will have a higher evasion value than a corps which will have a higher value than a division. What I found was that the army might evade actual strength loss but still sometimes be forced to retreat - I quite liked this as it is similar to some games I used to play with die rolls having a variety of results including just retreat. Regards Mike

Hi Battlefield In the Defence Bonus Menu you should see a list of terrain types on the LHS and then a series of bonus values for different types of attack that might be inflicted on a unit occupying that type of terrain. The standard value for city is 3 for tank defense and 1 for soft defense. I assume that this means if your unit is being attacked by a tank or hard unit in a city then you will enjoy a defence bonus of 3 which reduces your losses. If you are being attacked by a soft unit such as infantry you will enjoy a defense bonus of 1 which will also reduce your losses but not by so much. So the attacking unit type determines what defense bonus the defender gets and it does not matter what type the defending unit might be. If you are the attacking unit then I think you get no defense bonus by being in a city until it is your turn to be attacked. I do not think this is unreasonable as a tank on the defensive in a city can hide in side streets or even inside buildings if they have broken through a wall. On the other hand a tank that is offensive and therefore revealing itself is vulnerable as you describe and gets no bonus. Personally I do think that in general the defensive capability of a unit should have an effect on the losses it suffers when it is attacked but as I understand it that is not the way SC currently works and an army or a division with similar experience and morale and terrain potentially suffer the same strength losses although one unity type is potentially of the order of 8 times the size of the other. The defensive values of a unit in SC are used to determine how much loss is inflicted on any unit attacking them not how much loss they themselves suffer. Regards

Hi Battlefield Good luck with trying my scenario in AOC - I would be quite surprised if it works. With respect to differentiating unit bonuses you are overlooking a setting in the editors that adjusts defence bonus between hard and soft targets etc. It is menu called Edit Defence Bonus Data as a sub menu under Campaign. With respect to different unit types within that classification there is no further distinction apart from the settings you give to the unit itself which apply to all terrains. Thus you can give a mountain unit an extra action point as compared to vanilla infantry but it will go further in clear as well as on a mountain. Regards Mike

Hi Hubert That makes sense. Mike

Hi Al Thank you for that. Mike

Hi Bill or whoever Could you please clarify how the "RANGE =" qualifier should be used in the AI scripts? I notice for a lot of Japanese scripts it has a value of 30 but in European ones it is more typically 10. Regards Mike

Hi Battlefield Have you looked at the Loop system I created for AOD in my "Seaways" variant? It is a bit clunky but gets round some of the problems you are now thinking about. For example the RN patrol in the area between UK and Iceland was not all that effective up until early 1941 because their RADAR was very rudimentary. In fact no German surface raider was intercepted until Bismark. I simulate this by having a loop system that works to get German raiders into the North Atlantic but switches off early in 1941. I posted that scenario just to show how it might work for human players as I had not modified the AI to use the new loops. I am just at the stage of programming the AI now for my 1942 scenario which has broadly the same loops (some switched off post beginning of 1941 so are not relevant in 1942). I have tried to position my inter-ocean loops so that the ships using them emerge in areas of the ocean from which they will need to make another normal move before they can attack an enemy port or raid a convoy area. The AOD standard 1939 scenario has a loop that enables US ships to emerge within 4 tiles of Japan without any condition on its use. I do not think this is a good approach as such a move ought to be dependent on the Allies controlling various islands such as Midway and Iwo Jima so that IJN recce planes would not have detected and attacked the US ships sooner. I think that your "Forced March" ought to operate under similar constraints and by the time you have taken all those limitations into account you might find that the sort of discipline imposed by fixed loop entrances and exits is not so unreasonable. This is so long as what I term "attack" loops that emerge near targets such as Guadalcanal, Midway, Pearl or the Aleutians are dependent on ownership of any appropriate intermediate locations. Regards Mike

Hi Battlefield Could you clarify whether your Forced March for ships would require a player to trace out every tile through which the ship might pass and would that path be subject to interception? Tracing the path could be somewhat tedious for players. I think one of the advantages of the current loop system is that interception does not occur as that would potentially add complications. If your forced march would allow interception, then I think there should be some added refinements. First the forced march should not allow naval units to pass through sea areas where they might be subject to air interception and second there might need to be a speed characteristic that allowed the marching unit to avoid interception if it was faster than the unit trying to intercept it. By the way I have started a series of posts for Scenario Designer enhancement requests for SC3 on the Matrix forum, you might like to contribute to that. Regards

Hi Battlefield I have managed to find a few extra minutes to reply to your post. Forced March for naval units - yes I really like that idea. I use blocks of loop entrances to also serve as exits to reduce the playing space required by loop symbols. I agree they are not aesthetically pleasing but until Forced March is available they are the only way to go. The current standard scenario implementation of loops is in my view very strange as it seems to try to emulate the unrealistic slow speed of units whilst they are looping - loops should only take the player or player and opponent's turn to complete. Forced March would I think need to consider on which turn the unit arrives as deciding which side has the opportunity for the "first attack" is an important issue in naval warfare. I agree that airdrops would be a useful addition. However, my efforts on restricting supply are more concerned with trying to make players consider allocating scarce resources between theatres. The Japanese, for example, were not able to complete the conquest of China because they could not take the offensive on all fronts at once. Similarly in 1942 the Germans had to concentrate their resources on one major push and chose to go for the oil. I try to simulate this by making HQ units relatively very expensive and having fewer of them on the map for a human player. Thus in a 1942 scenario the Japanese human player might only start with one HQ in the whole of China. I set it up so they can acquire another HQ if they choose by means of a DE with staged payments to cover the cost. Allocating these scarce funds to China seriously restricts their ability to advance in other theatres such as towards Burma or even Australia. If SC3 introduces a greater role for oil and links that to the mobility of units in particular theatres than that will be another useful method to make players consider priorities. The lack of oil of course played a big part in restricting use of the Italian's big ships so some oil constraint on naval movements will be good. The trick for the designers of SC3 will be to achieve this whilst preserving the ease of game play which is an important part of SC's appeal. One of the reasons why I wanted to increase the impact of artillery was to address problems in the IGOUGO approach. Units in my front lines can often receive fire support from other nearby units with artillery capability - I typically give them permanent availability of 3 shells. It may seem strange that I am arguing for more realism in terms of range for naval units but also allowing artillery units to fire as far as 2 tiles. Clearly no artillery in WW2 was capable of firing over the 50 or so miles that 1 tile represents let alone 100 miles if units were located towards the edges of their tiles. My concept here is that the artillery fire should be considered as representing the response of the defensive commander in rushing reserves to a threatened point. Thus my artillery units can intervene from both alongside and behind the front line units. To recognise that these units are not pure artillery I call them Army Group Reserves (in fact AG Reserves) eg for the Soviets Don Front AG Reserves and for the Germans Army Grp A AG Reserves. The Soviets have more than a dozen of these units and have the ability to research artillery to a higher level than any other major if the Axis gives them enough time to do that. Your suggestion of various layers for maximum strengths is an interesting one but might need to be wider than you suggest. I use a rough guide of an army as 8 divisions, and a corps as 4. My division units actually represent 2 real WW2 divisions and my garrison units are 1 division or less. Thus each of my units is twice the "size" of the next one down so I might need strengths of 16, 8, 4, 2 or even 32, 16, 8, 4 if you want to allow units to take damage without being totally destroyed. Perhaps units of damage could be measured in 0.1's and then the strengths might be on the 8 to 1 scale with some opportunity for elite units being higher. The use of evasion to represent larger units, which I described in my earlier post, is also quite a good way of representing small but elite units. My BB units are TF's of 90k tons and my CA units 45K tons (I have tried to model all the actual ships in WW2 in the tonnage allocated) so strength ratios of 2 to 1 might work for them. I currently give BB units two strikes as a way of distinguishing their greater ability to inflict damage and that works for me conceptually. Unfortunately in SC defending units can shoot back any number of times so my BBs can shoot at other units twice but correspondingly receive the same double return fire. I again address this by giving BBs a higher level of offensive evasion - it is a bit clunky but naval warfare has always been influenced by lucky hits. I treat DDs and SS in a different way. In order that the playing area does not have too many units DDs and SS each represent flotillas of around 30 actual ships. Because I do not want 30 ships to be potentially lost in one engagement I allow any lost DD or SS unit to be rebuilt instantly at 1/3 of the cost. My logic is that only 1/3 of the SS flotilla would actually be deployed for combat at any one time, another 1/3 would be in transit to the theatre and another 1/3 resting or training or refitting in port. I have been very pleased with the way this works in the game. I agree with you that a submarine would have a fragile hull if hit by a heavy calibre shell but actually so did WW2 BB's when hit by a torpedo. My 90K BB units typically represent 1 or 2 capital ships plus a few DDs as escorts so considerably fewer individual units than my DD or SS flotillas. Thus it is right that it should be possible to destroy a BB unit whilst my DD and SS can always be rebuilt. So I would not agree that naval warfare is so much about the allocation of strength units - even the largest ships were vulnerable to lucky hits whilst flotillas containing lots of smaller units could not so easily be destroyed. Regards

I would like to add two comments to this discussion. First I really do not understand the reason for putting any delay into a loop other than arriving on the opponent's turn or the looping player's next turn. Most of the ships we are dealing with here are not slow merchant men but warships or fast transports either of which could typically get to the other side of the world within the span of the standard AOD player and opponent turn. My second comment is that it is actually quite unrealistic for players to know how many ships their opponents might currently have - pilots were particularly poor at identifying the types of ships they had sunk and even whether they had sunk anything at all. The Germans claimed to have sunk the Ark Royal several times before they eventually did, they also claimed the sinking of HMS King Alfred which was the name of a shore based training establishment where my father spent part of his WW2 service. I should not single out the Germans as being mistaken - Winston Churchill did not beleive the Japanese had as many aircraft carrying ships as was actually the case. I guess this was because he was unaware of the IJN "shadow fleet" construction programme which subsidised some pre-war merchant shipping construction to have facilities included to enable rapid conversion to CVEs. I would personally argue for a degree of disinformation to be included in the standard reports rather than they should be made 100% accurate! Regards Mike

Hi Battlefield That was a very interesting analysis and I would never have guessed that English is not your first language having read it! Unfortunately I have 3 important presentations I need to prepare for the next few days and I am trying to deal with the consequences of a leaking water pipe in my home so I do not have enough time to address most of your points. However, I will pick up on combat target values. I only realised relatively recently that the way SC calculates damage only uses the CTV from the unit inflicting damage. Thus it does not matter whether the unit receiving damage is a division, a corps or an army the damage received calculation is the same. Of course when these 3 different units return fire their defensive CTV is used and the original attacker will take more harm from the units with better CTV's but for me that is insufficient distinction. This is a big weakness in the way the current versions of SC handle the proliferation of unit types of varying size and I hope that SC3 will have a more sophisticated damage calculation algorithm that takes some account of the different unit types that are all classified as SOFT. As a current solution to this weakness I am experimenting in my scenario with the "bigger" units having increasing levels of evasion. I quite like the results so far but it is very early days. One final point - I do like the garrison unit but in my scenarios it is possible for most countries to build or rebuild them instantly. My USSR in particular has lots of these and my intention is to give Axis players some experience of what the real Axis Generals must have thought about the seemingly inexhaustible supply of Soviet troops. Regards

Hi Battlefield Thank you for your supportive remarks. My main interest in Strategic Command at present is its ability to represent every theatre in WW2. Thus I acquired SC Global and subsequently Gold and then AOD. I have not yet chosen to acquire AOC as I do not really have time to work with that as well as developing and trialling my own scenario which is based on the historic world situation in May 1942. The three objectives I have set myself are first to enable realistic naval movement for turns covering 2 elapsed weeks (this involves a major system of loops), second to build in more constraints for a human player making them take note of supply costs and limitations and third to restore artillery to its rightful place as one of the main determinants of late war land battles. My artillery units operate at an Army Group/Front level, comprising effectively a corps of infantry as well as the artillery that might be allocated by an Army Group - Soviet ones in particular can become very powerful and my front lines typically see large scale exchanges of artillery fire. The trouble with changing so many fundamental concepts in SC is that the AI needs a huge amount of development and testing. I wish you well with your own scenario development - I find it is quite challenging to understand how and why the AI does what it does based mainly on reading lots of scripts. It must be even more difficult if English is not your first language. Good luck Mike

Hi Battlefield In the standard AOD 1939 scenario the maximum infantry tech level is 2. So in the case of Finland you could effectively build Tech level 1 into their standard units on the basis that they are likely to enter the war in 1941 when quite a few major's units will also be operating at Tech 1. For Finland specifically you would adjust its infantry tech level increment to be 0.5. Thus they could subsequently be upgraded by 2 x 0.5 increments totalling a 1 point increment and so effectively be the same as other country units that have enjoyed 2 x 1.0 increments. Obviously it might be that Finnish units after a subsequent 1 level upgrade would be .5 better than, say, USSR units also with 1 level. It really depends where you think the greater anomaly might be. If you have another country, for example Turkey, that the scenario designer thinks might not enter the war until late 1942, then you could build in 2 infantry tech increments to the basic values for say Corps and place some of these on the map but use the Editor to prohibit these particular unit types from receiving any infantry tech upgrades. Thus their infantry tech upgrade could still be 1 for other unit types such as divisions and armies that would still be upgradeable. The cost of the units and upgrades could be fine tuned to make the resulting price not too dissimilar to the current values e.g. add 8% to the price of the enhanced Finnish units and reduce their upgrade cost to 5% so 2 increments cost around 10%. I do not in any event think that the game is currently so finely tuned with respect to MPPs that it would make a lot of difference. The AA attribute has a maximum tech level of 3 which makes it a bit more complicated but it should still be possible to improve the Finns so that they are not too vulnerable to an early USSR attack. In general where a choice is to be made, I would tend to favour the minor countries in boosting their combat values as I prefer to be on the side of the little guy! Hi Hubert As you know I am not a fan of gamey mechanisms that give readiness boosts for ahistoric behaviour such as the UK attacking neutral Ireland. In addition to improving Ireland's ability to resist as above, I would probably look at a likely historic response to counter such an attack which might be random sabotage bomb attacks on UK industry lasting the rest of the war rather like the situation in India. Regards

Hi Battlefield The solution I have suggested has the advantage that it can actually be implemented now by any player or pair of playing partners who are confident enough to use the editor. It took me less than 10 minutes to make relevant changes to the neutrals when I first thought about the implications raised in this thread. I do not think the weakest major should be the criteria as that would most likely be China or possibly France neither of whom would have what might be called the going rate in terms of technology in the later war. Certainly both the Allies and the Axis supplied weapons to Turkey at various times in attempts to bring her to favour their side so she had some modern weapons. Regards Mike

Hi Konstantin Actually there are two different situations with respect to how the game works. Most neutrals or minor countries do have their units placed in position when the designer is creating the scenario. As part of the editing process the designer can change the basic combat values and set both the experience level and entrenchment for these minor units. However, they cannot allocate any tech levels to minors who are not yet mobilised on one side or the other. This is why I previously suggested that the designer can give relevant minors higher basic values to take account of tech levels they might have obtained. There are some minors where the political situation is complex such as Algeria and Tunisia where the circumstances when they might be involved are variable. In these situations the scenario designer creates UNIT events which can place a number of units for that minor on the map in the event of their being attacked by or choosing to join one side or the other. The designer has the normal choice at this stage as to whether the units arrive with full research or not - in the standard AOD 1939 scenario the designer has chosen not to give them full research. In this case the designer can also give the units some level of experience but cannot arrange for them to be entrenched. If we are to think of the real historic situation it might be reasonable for these N African units to have some level of tech but full tech might be unrealistic. This situation could be treated in the way I have previously suggested whereby Algerian and Tunisian units are given an increment of 1 in their base attack and defence values. I have tried this out with Spain, which has on map units, and it seems to work as I intended. Regards Mike

Hi Ludi The basis of my suggestion is that Finnish units be given better basic combat stats on the 4 different unit types that they actually deploy. Thus instead of their Corps being Attack 2/1 and defence 2/2 they could be 3/2 and 3/3 (soft and hard). Thus they already have effectively one level of tech improvement. If you want to be able to improve them subsequently then their tech upgrade benefit can be reduced to 0.5 thus two upgrades brings them up to the equivalent values they would have had if they started from where they are in the standard game and had 2 upgrades. You could adjust the unit purchase price to factor in the tech improvement if you are aiming for exact equivalence to the standard game. You can also use the editor to ensure that Finnish units start with reasonable experience (notionally gained in the Winter War) and well dug in - not all of them are in the standard scenario. The reality is that German units were already in Finland at the time of Barbarossa but I am not sure whether it would be possible to engineer that if you want to leave the USSR the possibility of making a unilateral attack before Barbarossa. It is not actually clear to me historically whether Finland or the USSR initated hostilities as the USSR seems to have made bombing raids on Finland prior to the Finnish declaration of war on June 26th. I have spent most of my energy with AOD on developing my own 1942 scenario so I am not sure in game terms which way round the initiation is treated but that should not make any difference to my suggested solution. Regards Mike

I think it would not be properly in accord with history if Germany was used to aid Finland in the Winter War. In fact the Russo-German accord that preceded the attack on Poland had allocated Finland to the Soviet sphere of influence and this is why Stalin decided he could risk attacking her. It is true that some German arms reached the Finns via Sweden but Hitler had this activity stopped when it became public knowledge that German arms were being supplied. The main potential allies of the Finns who had weapon technologies were France and UK but they did not have an easy route to provide aid. They were considering an intervention on behalf of Finland via Norway and Sweden partly as an opportunity to interfere with German trade but that did not come to anything before the Finns decided to settle with the USSR. Possibly the best and simplest way to implement the Finns having better combat values in the game would be to give some of their units basic stats as if they had some technology boost but then those specific unit types might have to be excluded from getting those tech upgrades again later when the Finns become a German minor. The same could be done for any other minors likely to be attacked based on the likely timeframe from a historical perspective. This is a technique I am using in a 1942 scenario to help Vichy Algeria and Tunisia versus the Allies as well as making the cost and timescale for their new unit production relatively low. Regards Mike

Hi Hubert Thank you for the answers. It is very useful that National Morale should have an impact on unit morale and hence performance. I have used it in my implementation of the Tonnage War and I have created some ongoing National Morale events that decrement National Morale by, for example 500 per turn, for every turn subsequent to the loss of a major oilfield. Unless this field is recaptured that will represent the country oil stockpile gradually running down and starting to reduce unit performance. On the positive side if a country captures an enemy oilfield or manages to hold on to one of its own fields that might usually be at risk, then I give a positive National Morale increment for each turn. Thus Japan can build up its morale from capturing the DEI oilfields but this morale boost will go the other way once the convoys coming from that area are interdicted. I am pleased to hear that the multiple use of the same DE number anomaly will not change. I am currently trying to use it in my Tonnage War implementation to recognise an increased impact on the Allies if the Axis raiders have more than one good raider turn in a 3 month period. I will explain precisely how it works if it proves successful. With respect to the negative convoy chart, I have emailed you a saved game and some other material to indicate the circumstances that caused this to happen. I should note that if this is unintended and not as a result of an error by me, I would not need this to be changed as it seems to give some quite useful information albeit sometimes from off the scale of the chart! Regards Mike