mcaryf1

Hi SeaMonkey I understand why you have picked up on evasion because I mentioned that the German raiders were 100% successful at evading the British patrols until the Bismark as part of my suggestion. However, that was not the main reason for my suggestion. The main issue is the number of tiles between the German ports in the Baltic and the sea areas they raided in the Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic. For example if the Battle of the River Platte occurred in the game and the Graf Spee got away from the Allied cruisers she would be something like 150 tiles away from any friendly port. It would take the Graf Spee unit 8 turns or 8 elapsed months to traverse that distance even assuming she was not intercepted. The actual distance in nautical miles is about 9,000. The Graf Spee was an extremely long ranged ship and could easily do that trip if she had her tanks a bit more than half full. Her cruising speed would be around 15- 17knots to achieve maximum range and at that speed she could do the 9,000 miles in less than the one month of elapsed time that a standard "alternate" game turn represents. The use of very expensive warships as surface raiders was a questionnable strategy by the Germans but without loops to get out and home it has to be seen as one that is doomed to fail if tried in SC. I mentioned the 100% successful evasion point because I thought people might object that it would be unrealistic to have a loop from the Baltic to the S Atlantic when in fact it is not unreasonable. Part of the trouble with interception in current implementations in SC is that the unit that has an encounter is stopped at that point and even if it has some level of evasion other enemy units can rush in and overwhelm it. The use of loops is a reasonable way to get round that for the period 1939 to early 1941 before better radar made interception of German raiders breaking into the Atlantic more or less certain. The other points in my post were an attempt to enable naval forces to move around the globe as they did irl which necessarily involves loops but still provide some opportunities for interception albeit in a somewhat stylised manner. The current AOD loop to the Mid-East terminates in a restricted area of the Red Sea which it would be rather too easy for Allied players to block off from any possibility of naval interception simply by using 2 or 3 naval units to block Axis access to the Red Sea. I might mention that moving to the Red Sea from the UK using normal AP around S Africa would take nearly 1 year of elapsed time or nearly 1/5 of the total playing time for a game going from 1942 to 1947. Moving a naval unit from the UK to Singapore would also take about a year making it impossible for Prince of Wales to fight the Bismark North of the UK in May 1941 and be available to be sunk off Malaya in Dec 1941. Thus loops are essential it is just a question of making their impact less artificial in terms of possibilities for interception where those potentially existed. The location for Naval battles was quite limited in WW2. In terms of the surface units represented in SC there were 3 engagements in the N and S Atlantic combined, one in the wide open spaces of the Indian Ocean, and 2 in the open spaces of the Pacific but many in the "island waters" of the Indian & Pacific Oceans, the Mediterranean and off the coast of Norway. The game mechanism has to provide a reasonable way for units to travel between these theatres of naval warfare all of which could actually be reached one from another in the equivalent of one game turn irl. Similarly with respect to land forces, Australian and NZ troops made a major contribution to the fighting in the Middle East but it would take over a year to get them there with troop transports' movement regulated by APs. Decision Events can be created to make units appear where they served irl but that destroys a player's opportunity to follow alternate strategies so again a number of loops to alternate destinations are the better compromise. Regards Mike

I should perhaps explain to those for whom English is not their first language that “loopy” can mean something concerned with loops or something slightly mad – I leave you to decide which this is! I have been experimenting with loops to see how best they might be used for a Player v Player scenario although there might be aspects an AI could handle. This is what I have found although Hubert or Bill et al please tell me if I am wrong. A loop can have more than one destination some distance apart. The second or subsequent destinations are for use if the first and its surrounding tiles are completely filled with either friendly or enemy units. Thus loops do not need to fail as you can specify alternate locations short of the original destination. It is possible to set the loop delay to be various numbers from zero upwards. If the delay is an even number “0”, “2” etc then the unit will appear at the beginning of the opposing players turn, if it is an odd number “1”, “3” etc then the unit will reappear at the beginning of a turn for the player using the loop. A unit can emerge from a loop adjacent to an enemy unit. Thus if the loop has used zero or an even number for the delay the emerging unit can be attacked by the adjacent or nearby enemy units whereas if the loop has used an odd number the emerging unit can choose whether to attack or move away. The destination for a loop can be a port tile. Loops are country specific except where the country is set to equal zero in which case any country may use it. Loops can be disabled either by specifying that a specific location must be under friendly control or by being subject to a decision event. Loops also have a Trigger % which ought to give a chance of failure but from my tests it appears that this does not work – Hubert? I have three ideas for utilising these various features to improve naval warfare aspects. I will give them reference numbers to assist other posters in commenting on them because I would welcome a discussion before I do more work to put them into a scenario. 1. I would like to give the German player more opportunity to use raiders as they did irl (in real life). Up until the Bismark’s ill-fated mission the Germans enjoyed 100% success in getting raiders past the British patrols and into the wider Oceans. They had somewhat mixed fortunes in getting their ships home again. The Graf Spee was caught but Deutschland (Lutzow) which was at large at the same time as Graf Spee managed to return safely as did Scheer and Hipper in subsequent voyages. The Scharnhorst and Gneisnau (the Twins) made it as far as France but then had to undertake the Channel Dash to get home and only did so after suffering some damage from air dropped mines. To make these events possible in a scenario, I would establish single tile loops from the Baltic to the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. These loops would be of the variety that enabled the emerging ship to either attack enemy units or move away. I would also provide something like half a dozen return loops to facilitate raiders returning safely to Germany. If the Trigger mechanism is repaired then I would set the chance of a return at about 50% with zero delay for failure so the Raider would remain at large at the location of the Loop entrance if the trigger failed and could be attacked by the Allies. I think this should give the Allied player a reasonable opportunity to try to catch Raiders attempting to use these loops but with 6 entrances to guard it would not be easy – I would also place loops between the Oceans so both the Raiders and the Allies could move between them. Following the fall of France a new 100% loop would allow the Raider to get to Brest as the Twins did irl but obviously they would be vulnerable there. I would use DE events triggered by date to shut down the loops from the Baltic around Feb/March 1941 so that Bismark would have to fight her way out but I would set up two or three German loops just past the area of the British Northern patrol which Bismark could use to get well into the North or South Atlantic if she broke through. The return loops to the Baltic but not the ones leading to Brest would also be disabled at about the same time. 2. The following is one example of how I might use loops where one side or the other would be using them to transport land units to a warzone where they own a port – the example is for the Allies getting troops to the Mid-East. I would aim to allow the Allies to loop move from various locations to a position off the East African coast not far from Madagascar – this loop would have a zero delay which would give the Axis player the opportunity to attack the emerging units. Within AP range of here there would be entrances to further Allied loops to port locations in Egypt. This would enable a transport to be immediately ready to unload on the subsequent turn if it survived the move from near Madagascar to the loop entrance but the Axis player would have already had some opportunity to try to intercept it. Clearly if the Axis captured Madagascar, as the Allies feared they might, then that opportunity could be enhanced by stationing Recce aircraft there. If I set the loop delay at zero the net effect of the two stage loop is that the Allies might be able to get their transported unit from a land tile in the UK to being unloaded in Egypt in 3 turns. First move to load and get to the 1st loop entrance, second move to get to the 2nd loop entrance and on the 3rd turn the unit is ready to unload and go into action. In the standard game this would represent an elapsed time of 2 months before availability for combat in Egypt (2 x 2-weekly alternate turns = 8 weeks). This is not unreasonable as the actual voyage would have taken less than 1 month irl but the troops ought to be given some time for training and adjustment to the new environment. I have previously posted that delays in the standard AOD WW2 scenario are too long and in my view this would be about right. I would use this technique for the Allies moving troops to India (break near Ceylon) and Australia (break near Fiji) and eventually some of the islands near Japan as they are captured. Similarly for the Japanese some locations such as Rabaul might become staging areas for attacks on the Allies but getting troops to an active warzone such as Guadalcanal would need transports to run a risk of interception. Thus a transport “looped” into Rabaul could carry on to Guadalcanal as a transport or unload in Rabaul to become an amphibious unit. 3. Attacking enemy held locations will also need assistance via loops as the distances are now so large compared to AP values. My intention here would be to create loops that would bring an attacking force within AP range of a potential target such as Midway but have those loops of the type that meant the attackers would be vulnerable when they emerged. The side that owns the location that might be under attack would benefit from loops that would enable their units to attack immediately they emerged and these would be adjacent to the target with some possibly going into a port if one is available. These defender loops would be utilising the ability to nominate a friendly location condition for a loop to work. The “defender” would lose their ability to use their “non-vulnerable” loops if the target location changes hands but they would also have another set of loops, like those of the attacker, which would have their units emerge vulnerable but further away from the target. Thus the positions become reversed once the location changes hands. The defensive player would of course have the opportunity to use either or both of the loops available to place forces in the theatre so there is good potential for ambush as happened at Midway with stronger forces waiting out of spotting range. Some of you reading this (well done for getting so far!) might think that there will be too many loops and too much abstraction. However, my view at the moment is that this would actually give a better representation of WW2 naval warfare than currently exists in SC variants. In SC Gold I experimented with giving naval units longer ranges to match the distances they could have travelled in the elapsed time of a turn. However, I did not like the way that naval units could then jump into an ongoing battle from effectively much too great a distance. One of the advantages of AOD is that naval units effectively cannot travel as far as they used to when coming to join a battle. In my proposal a lot of the naval movement will be undertaken by loops so there will be some sort of a delay before players can bring more units to participate. Opposing units will effectively get an extra chance to move away before naval reinforcements can attack them if they are arriving via loops rather than speeding in using AP movement. Another possible objection is that the map will be filled with entrances and exits to loops. I should say that I favour marking the exits as experienced players will already know where they are and newbies need all the help they can get! It is true that the map might get somewhat cluttered and some areas of sea might become so full of loops that for example the British units could not effectively guard the sea and loops near the UK from U Boats as their own ships would loop away if placed on loop entrances. However, that should not be a problem because, for example, the Allied player could utilise Canadian ASW units to guard these tiles and they would not use these British loops. This ASW role in fact mirrors the part Canadian ships actually played. Sorry this post is so long but I do hope it stimulates interest and debate. I am beginning to think that an imaginative use of loops might be a way to significantly improve the naval aspects of the SC series albeit mainly for PvP games. I will have a think about what advantages the AI might be given for its likely sub-optimal use of loops – most likely it could be compensated by having more units “appear” via events for it to use in far off locations such as the Mid-East and India. Regards Mike

I do understand why the scenario designer has chosen to implement the Malta impact the way it is. In reality the Italian Navy managed to deliver over 90% of the supplies that were despatched to N Africa and there were no serious supply problems during the initial Italian campaigns as they had huge stockpiles. However, the scenario designer needs the UK to have some way of initially beating the Italians if the game is to have any resemblance to what happened. This is made difficult because country units are all pretty much the same and the UK tanks cannot have too much tech because they have to be inferior to the Germans. The battle winning weapon for the British in their first campaign against a much larger Italian army was the Matilda tank. The Italians had no weapon that would penetrate its frontal armour and this caused panic although the tank itself was pretty slow moving. I have an idea to simulate this in a future scenario by using the Light Tank unit actually as a British Heavy Tank. I would give it reasonable attack and defence values whilst the Italians would have very little capability against "tank" units. I would also give the Matilda variant of the LT unit a degree of evasion possibly 35% to represent its invulnerability to Italian weapons. I need to try it out and see what the values should be but with care the Germans ought to be able to cope with the Matilda (Rommel used the 88mm AA to stop them at Arras) but the Italians should not. I would only allow the Brits to build one or possibly two such units and, as it could not be upgraded, it would soon be obsolete compared to teched up German Tank Groups. Another possibility for the LT unit is for it to represent a late war German Heavy Tank (Schwere Panzer) Battalion e.g. the 501st. Here the CTVs would be increased to really punishing levels and the evasion factor might be up to 66%. They said it took 4 Shermans to knock out one Tiger and this could be the way to simulate that. The trick again is that the Germans should only be able to build very few of them and like the Matilda they would have low APs but unlike the Matilda the German unit would remain a threat until the end of the game. I would leave the unit as an LT for the Russians as that is a good way to simulate the way the Germans destroyed literally thousands of Soviet tanks in the early days. Any suggestions as to what it should be for the US - perhaps a specialised TD unit to hunt down the Tigers? I would of course need to rename the unit type just as Tank so that might make it less appropriate as a TD. Regards Mike

Actually the Chinese could have had tanks if the Soviets had decided to give them some. A variant I have used in a scenario is that if the Chinese have been driven right back to near the Soviet border and the USSR is not yet defeated then there is a DE which allows Soviet Volunteers in the form of Chinese tank units to come and help their comrades. I do allow the Japanese AI to decide whether or not this should be treated as an act of war by the USSR. I do agree, however, that if the Japanese had reduced the US aid to what could be flown over the hump then it is somewhat unrealistic to think that tanks could have arrived by air. Regards Mike

Hi Ludi Concerning your lament about the short range of amphibious operations, actually amphibious transports are the only naval unit in the game to which you can allocate a range greater than 25. This is because their range can be increased by research. Thus for each level of amphibious research you can set the transport's range to increase by up to 5 x AP. So you can have an initial setting of 25 x AP for amphibious transports and by giving the country a research level of 5 you can add 5 x 5 = 25 AP to its range so it totals 50 x AP. I have used this technique in my Axis Triumphant scenario for Gold and I have tested that it still works in AOD. An excellent feature of the SC Editor is that you can adjust every country's unit characteristics and research independently so you can give the USA a realistically huge range for amphibious ops, Japan a lesser range but still reasonable for its island conquests and Germany a minimal range so that it can do Norway and Sealion but not much more. In my view the Editor is a tremendous feature of the SC series and the main reason why I have purchased the AOD expansion. In Axis Triumphant I make amphibious research very expensive (300 MPP per chit) so it is not cheap to get the longer range but then I make the actual cost of using an amphibious transport very low on the basis that the research paid for the creation of the specialised shipping and after that it should not make much difference in cost terms how often you are able to use it. Regards Mike

I think some of the complaints made about loops in the posts above are not fully justified from a realism perspective. In fact I expect that I will try to create several more loops when I work on scenarios for the AOD map. You need to consider where and why naval engagements occurred in WW2 and then judge whether loops add or subtract from the likelihood of these occurring. There were significant naval battles associated with attempts by both sides to move men and supplies in the Mediterranean - the loops do not impact that aspect. There were battles in the Pacific with respect to amphibious operations and supplying the two sides engaged in the resulting land conflict. Again loops are not really going to change that. There were battles to protect convoy routes from surface raiders - again loops not a major problem. My issue with the loops as implemented in AOD is that the settings used for the delay to vessels passing through the loops is way too long. Thus naval ships and troop transports effectively might take half a year getting from Port A to Port B when it should be 1 month at most. My other issue is that in a couple of cases the loops end in areas that make it too safe for the Allied player. The IJN did not actually use surface vessels to interdict the Allied supply and troop movement route up the East coast of Africa to the Middle East and USSR but they could and probably should have done. Thus I would prefer that the "Red Sea" loop emerged somewhere in the Indian Ocean so that the units using it might be subject to intercept in the last leg of their journey to Mid East or USSR. Similarly for units travelling to Australia. There could be an issue with players knowing where loops emerge and lying in wait there. My solution to this would be to have loops emerge near a port or an island with spotting ranges that enabled the "looping" player to see whether there were enemy forces in the vicinity before using the loop. Of course if the island or port were lost then the loop would disable. I am not sure if a delay of zero setting for a loop would work for instant moves but if it does I would use that setting. A player currently has to move a unit to the start of a loop and then move it on again after it has been looped. Effectively utilising a loop occupies two player turns or 2 months elapsed time before any other looping delay occurs. I also like to create some ocean tiles which impact supply, similar to tiles adjacent to ports so that there might be a reason for naval forces to engage each other in that vicinity and to create the effect of a distant blockade which was a real feature of WW2. Judicious placement of these tiles which would cause serious disruption to critical supply sources relating to some current land battle should give players reasons why they would not always use loops to pass through large areas of ocean. Some board games use a concept of boxes to represent sea areas where players can choose to deploy whatever naval forces they are allocating to that sea area. Use of my suggested interdiction tiles could effectively define a reduced area in a large ocean where the battle for local sea supremacy might be fought out. I would also like to pick up on a point made by MonsterClaude about naval battles with units jumping in from great distances. I think this is a very good point and would suggest for SC3, or AOD if at all possible, that there should be a mechanism so that any naval unit joining a battle or attacking a ship from a distance of more than 8 tiles should suffer the effect as if they had been surprised regardless of whether the enemy was effectively spotted. I choose 8 tiles because at around 400 nautical miles that is the sort of distance most Naval units could travel in one day so they might stand a chance of joining an engagement still in progress with some knowledge of precisely where the enemy forces were. In truth the fact that any naval units in adjacent squares automatically engage each other is a much bigger anomaly than loops. Conflict is potentially taking place in any one of 9 squares which comprises around 20,000 square miles of sea and the encounter might be taking place in the hours of darkness. The likelihhod of an actual engagement in this situation is certainly not 100% so my surpise suggestion for units travelling from a distance is not unreasonable.. Regards Mike

I enjoyed reading MonsterClaude's post about realism in the Tournament thread but I did not think I should respond to it there as that thread is for the tournament. I understand entirely that Hubert and his team have as a priority to produce an enthralling and balanced game at a reasonable economic cost to them and realism has to be sacrificed on occasion. I try in my comments to identify aspects where I think the balance has swung unnecessarily far away from realism. This is largely because I would like to influence their thinking for the future (SC3) and to give other modders ideas as to how variants might treat the aspect in question because I do not think it reasonable to ask Fury Software to make major design changes in a just issued game. In previous versions of SC I have noted the unrealistic size of Midway on the map. I understand the SC issue is the difficulty of basing enough units there given that SC does not have stacking. However, the truth was that Midway itself could only be defended by naval forces. If the US fleet had lost the naval battle of Midway, then the island would have fallen. However, the more interesting consequence thereafter would have been how might the Japanese have attempted to defend it as the same dilemna would have existed for them. As it is players now have a different option to pile up land and air units which seems to me to be an unnecessary additional invention which I would prefer not to be carried forward into future variants. I guess adjusting loops possibly would make a significant difference to play so my next suggestion might also be ruled out but I will try it anyway. My objection to loops is not that they prevent transports from being intercepted but that they take units out of the game for too long. Hubert actually made an amendment at my request so that transports can be set to have an evasion in the editor. I am not sure if any other modder has used that yet but it is a step towards reality because extremely few troopships were intercepted in WW2. Speed made them almost invulnerable to U Boats and escorts were provided if there was any chance of surface ship intervention. It seems to me that the design of the loops in AOD has been too much influenced by the in game logic rather than the reality of what they might represent thus they are set to take too many turns. There is an interesting web site here http://ww2troopships.com/crossings.htm that gives many examples of journeys made by particular units travelling via troopships in WW2. One for example shows a unit travelling from Brooklyn NY to New Caledonia via the Panama Canal in around 1 month of elapsed time. The elapsed time between a player's game turn is actually 28 days (14 days alternate). A troop transport moving at say 18 knots would travel about 12,000 nautical miles in that time. The loops seem to be set to match how long a transport unit might take at 21 squares per turn to reach a destination rather than how long they would have taken in real life. Even a slow convoy of merchant ships would get across the Atlantic in less than the elapsed time between player turns let alone a "fast" troopship. Unfortunately the scale of the map means that loops are necessary but in my view with 28 days elapsed none of them needs to be longer than 1 turn delay. I have said few troopships were intercepted by naval forces in WW2 but undoubtedly they might have been if carriers had been available to the opposition. Thus I would recommend that the loop which emerges in the Red Sea should actually be shifted to the Indian Ocean so that the Allied player has to worry about whether a Japanese carrier TF might be lurking there to ambush them and whatever escort they might have. The same argument might also be true for moving the Australian loop exits further from safety. However, I would also give the transports an evasion factor to reduce the risk of sub attack. Regards Mike

It seems to me that the Malta effect on supply is too strong and should certainly be switched off if the Axis has captured the ports at Alexandria. If this had happened Axis supplies would be run into there without ever having to go anywhere near Malta. You could possibly argue then for a Cyprus effect but if Alexandria was in Axis hands the British position in Cyprus and the Med in general would be very precarious. regards Mike

Hi Hubert Surely there are possible solutions to the Pacific and Chinese Theatres. Now that you have additional Division and Corps (Cavalry) unit types you could convert the Japanese to the real size of forces they deployed in China by switching most Japanese Armies to Corps and possibly using the Cavalry unit with poorer ctvs to represent the 1 - 2m Chinese warlord mercenaries who fought alongside the Japanese forces. The real problem is that you have given Chinese units similar ctvs to any other countriy. In reality virtually no Chinese unit, other than Chiang's 10 elite Divisions, had any artillery of its own thus all their offensive and defensive values should be scaled right back to vitually militia type levels. You could either do this by changing the ctvs and still leaving the Chinese with notional armies or you could swap the Chinese Armies to lesser units (Divisions at best). If you did either of those things then the Japanese would still be quite capable of dealing with the Chinese with Corps and Divisions instead of Armies and Corps. However, at the end of the day this is intended to be a game and has been designed to give reasonable challenges to players on both sides. The fact that the capabilities for both the Chinese and Japanese are overstated probably cancels each other out and only starts to matter when their units get heavily involved with those of the other major powers. Regards Mike

Hi Hubert Thank you for confirming my thought about the determination of damage between unit types. I think the combat calculations have had some changes since the manual gave the formulae as you have introduced a mechanism to check if both units have been upgraded and reduced the damage if they have. Thus your combat evaluation routine is already doing something to compare the actual units rather than just taking the attack value in one case and the defence value in the other to determine each units losses. I think that land unit combat will need to be considered in this light now that you have essentially 3 units - army, corps and division all being similar types of force differing essentially in notional size. I know this is not the model you have used because the MPP cost would differ by more but let us just say for relative size Div = 1, Corps = 2 and Army = 4. A combat resulting in a loss of one strength point for an army essentially should be equivalent to a loss of 4 strength points for a Division but as I understand it the combat resolution will give the same resulting value whichever unit type the enemy was fighting. A quick fix would be to make the reinforcement cost for the "larger" units proportionately less but in the longer term SC3 will ideally need a combat formula that also evaluates the differences in combatants' ctvs rather than just their absolute values. Regards Mike

Having looked at the Editor for the Solomons campaign I see the Light Carrier is given an operational range of 2 but I presume this is a typo for the number of intercepts. For a minute I thought the Light Carrier was going to have an Assault Ship variant with bolted on airborne landing capability - perhaps in SC3?! Regards Mike

Thanks for the answers - I have only really played with the AOD 1939 campaign so far. Obviously I do favour naval evasion and I also like each country's units to have their own characteristics so I applaud Al's damage control differentiation. Just as an aside I have read that the Japanese originally thought that their sailors typically smaller stature than Americans would give them an advantage in that they could cram more decks into a similar space than the US Navy by making the deck ceilings lower. However, it turned out that less headroom made damage control more difficult. There is one other general question I would raise under this topic. My reading of your combat resolution formulae is that the amount of damage a defender does to its attacker depends on the defender's ctv ratings but not those of the attacker. Thus would it be right if either a BB or a CA or a DD all with the same supply and morale and other factors were attacking a DD then the DD would theoretically do the same damage utilising the same randomisation element to whichever of the 3 ship types was actually attacking it? My point being might evasion be the only method of recognising that more heavily armoured ships such as BBs should suffer less from the defensive fire of a DD than, say, a cruisers or other DDs might? Regards Mike

I see that in AOD naval units do not have an evasion factor whilst they did in Al's Brute Force scenarios in Gold. I guess that the AOD implementation was a team activity with several contributors. I am interested to understand whether evasion was considered and if so what was the thinking behind the exclusion as naval evasion seemed a good innovation to me to simulate the uncertainties of naval combat. Regards Mike

Hi Hubert Thanks for the answer. I can in fact get round the lack of a fighter bomber by using minor country fighter units modified to have bombing characteristics. I can also make CVLs of different characteristics for different countries with the higher ASW variant to appear in 1942 so to some extent I can create ASW CVEs in the right time frame. The one thing that is harder to work round is the lack of a development path for the Light Tank unit. If you look like having to make new releases of AOD and AOC that is the main change I would really appreciate just because there is only one other tank unit type and it could help solve the problem of representing a 2 Panzer Division capability in the North African theatres without needing 14 German tank units elsewhere in Europe. I have previously used modified A/T units as tank divisions but they are of course rated as "soft" rather than "tank" and I rather suspect that the AI considers them as defensive units regardless of their actual ctv rating. Regards Mike .

Dear All I see that 40 or so of you have downloaded my scenario Axis Triumphant. Now that AOD is available I guess you will mostly concentrate on that but before you do I would very much appreciate any feedback you choose to give me. I intend to create a version of Axis Triumphant on the new map and using the new units provided by AOD and it would be helpful to know what you liked or disliked about the Gold version. I think that the far larger scale of the AOD map will be good for it so I do already realise there were probably too many units in the Gold version. Regards Mike

First I should say that I am delighted to see AOD with its big map and additional unit types – congratulations to all those involved. However, I am going to be a little bit cheeky in making some enhancement requests for AOD although I only acquired the game yesterday and have not actually played the scenarios yet. My interest is in the underlying new unit characteristics and I wanted to raise the possibility for changes before any bug clearance releases. The way I use Strategic Command is to create scenarios that match as well as possible the actual and potential capabilities of WW2 participants and then see how various alternate strategies might succeed or fail. Relatively minor changes to three of the new unit types would considerably help scenario designers to model the real WW2 OOB’s. These changes are as follows: Light Tanks The creation of a second unit type whose combat is evaluated on the basis of being a “tank” is very welcome. However, I was extremely disappointed when I found that it has been set up as a dead end development with no possibility to change its potential to receive research upgrades via the editor. Changing this would have no impact on the existing AOD scenarios as the editor can always exclude any particular unit type for any or all countries from upgrades. The modelling of tank units has always been difficult in SCGC with the previous single type. Representing the extremes of Germany deploying over 30 Panzer Divisions in total but only 2 in North Africa has required unsatisfactory compromises. The Japanese only formed 3 Armoured Divisions throughout their Empire and the Rumanians and Hungarians 1 each, so some form of Light Tank unit capable of a degree of upgrading would represent these far better than awarding the Japanese a weakened Tank Group. Having an extra upgradeable unit would allow more flexibility and ironically represent what really happened. Many existing light tanks were actually converted into Tank Destroyers and Assault Guns so this was one area where the SC upgrade model actually happened. Medium Bomber The new Medium Bomber unit is mainly useful to distinguish the enormous investment made by the US and British in Strategic Bombers. The other participants in WW2 either did not make such investments or, where they did in the case of the Germans, the development failed to produce a useful aircraft. I believe that the role played by Medium Bombers for the British and US can reasonably be modelled using Bomber and Tactical Bomber units and the new unit I am proposing below. The lack of a Fighter Bomber unit represents a significant gap in matching the real WW2 capabilities amongst those currently on offer. Certainly all the major participants did deploy Fighter Bombers. The JU-88 is quoted in the Expansion Notes as an example of a Medium Bomber and that very plane was actually used by the Germans as a night fighter thus demonstrating the potential usefulness of a Fighter Bomber unit. There would be another advantage of having a Fighter Bomber unit which purely relates to the way Strategic Command has been implemented. Since SC does not allow stacking, a Fighter Bomber unit could actually represent a mixed force of fighters and bombers based in a single hex. This would help to reduce the necessity to vastly inflate the apparent map size of locations such as Midway so that both bombers and fighters can operate from it. In order for the Medium Bomber unit to become a Fighter Bomber it would need to be changed so that it could intercept and escort if required as well as being given an air warfare research attribute. This might entail some re-tuning of the AOD scenarios although of course fighter units can be set not to intercept and not to escort and a choice of suitably poor initial combat target values might make that the sensible option in the early years and would match the poor capability of fighter bombers such as the Me110. Thus initially the unit would just perform as a Medium Bomber. It would be great if the unit could be given 2 strikes like a carrier so it could escort itself but that might be asking for too big a change! Small Carriers I am very pleased to see at least one new naval unit amongst the plethora of new land ones but I think in selecting the CVL you have chosen the least interesting variant for your new small carrier. In WW2 CVL’s were principally developed as a stopgap in view of the very long production time for CVs. Thus the US chose to convert a number of cruiser hulls that were already under construction rather than wait the 4 years needed for a new CV. Production time is not so much of an issue in your SC scenarios as you already set that at less than half the real length. More interesting options for the new small carrier unit could be created if you regarded it as a CVE or group of CVEs rather than a CVL. CVE’s were deployed early in the Japanese offensive to provide a small but critical extra amount of air support to their land operations. In the later war years the US created the Taffy’s which were Task Forces of several CVE’s to give more substantial air support to landings in The Philippines and other places. They were never intended to operate against warships but of course did so heroically in the action off Samar. The British and the US more critically used CVE’s to close the air gap both in the North Atlantic and for the Arctic Convoys where they operated both in an air defence and ASW role. CVE’s were much cheaper and quicker to build than either CVs or CVLs because they used Merchant Shipping components and did not have to attain the speed required to participate in fleet operations. The change I would like to see with respect to the current CVL unit is that it should lose its Naval Warfare research attribute and replace that with an ASW one. Research was critical to the ASW battle with improvements in radar allowing CVE’s and their aircraft to detect submarines on the surface and eventually just the periscope. Thus players could decide what type of CVE they wanted by giving it Tech upgrades for air warfare to support landings or upgrades for ASW and some air warfare to fight the convoy battles. I would suggest that the role played by CVLs could be adequately represented by CV units. Certainly in the late war years the US tactic was to deploy CVLs in considerable numbers so, apart from them being built more quickly, their impact was much the same as a CV. The quicker building can be dealt with by giving players one or more Decision Events to convert existing cruiser construction into CVs which would be available in 6 months. If it is too difficult to change the CVL to have ASW as an upgrade I could live with that as I would modify specifically Canadian CVL’s so that they started with better ASW capability and use them for the convoys with RN and USN CVL units for the landing support role. I hope that these suggestions for possible changes are useful and I do understand that there might have been implementation issues which caused the development team to make the choices they did. I would be interested to know if there is any likelihood of any of my ideas being accepted as I will be setting about developing my own 1942 scenario for the new AOD map and units and some of the decisions I take will depend on what is likely to be done. At some stage it might be a good idea to have a discussion on the unit types and characteristics that people might want to see in SC3 where I guess there will be more room for manoeuvre. Congratulations once again on AOD. Regards Mike

I do not object to the Allied player being able to invade wherever they want but I think the suggestion that there is a reward for doing it is the issue and what makes it "gamey". The Allies certainly colluded in the invasion and occupation of Persia but I am not sure that would have resulted in a morale boost for Allied or Soviet troops. Interestingly despite the implementation in AOC Bulgaria never actually declared war on USSR and did not send troops to fight her but that did not prevent USSR from occupying her so I am not sure how the morale boost should work there. There were of course arguments both ways as to whether the Allies had violated Norway's neutrality prior to the German invasion but there is a degree of difference to mining territorial waters and sending troops to occupy a capital city so I think that was effectively a declaration of war. On the whole I would prefer the Allies not to get any morale boost from declaring war on a neutral and occupying them. Although of course there is a good case for a morale boost for the UK when Axis forces attacked both USSR and USA. Regards Mike

I am looking forward to trying out the new units when I port my Gold scenario Axis Triumphant to the new map. In thinking about this it would be helpful to know if the AI has any preconceptions about how the new types should be deployed. For example in Gold the AI works on the assumption that a Garrison unit is the best to use for defending important cities (of course it actually is not), it also assumes that a rocket unit is best used to cause strategic damage even if it has been given combat value characteristics to represent a Kamikaze attack. Another example is that if a bomber unit in Gold is given long range recce capability with good spotting over sea tiles the AI still thinks it should be used for bombing land resources. So my question is does the AI have some built-in bias concerning how the new units should be used regardless of the CTVs they may actually be given in the editor? I realise that it would be very difficult to program an AI to really comprehend differences in ctv's so I am expecting that it must have a bias. I am interested to know what, for example, will be the typical roles assigned by the AI to Light Tanks and Cavalry and CVL's e.g. will CVL's be expected to be CVE's to be deployed versus subs? One final example - in Axis Triumphant I used the A/T unit to represent a Tank Division whilst the Tank Group was effectively an Armoured Corps. My impression of the AI use of my Tank Division unit was that it seemed to prefer to use it in a defensive role which would be right for an A/T unit but not so good for a tank division. Regards Mike

I noted in the AAR above that the Allied player had the UK attack Ireland and the Chinese attack French Indo-China in order to get morale/readiness boosts. Clearly that is within the rules and as such a legitimate tactic but it seems to me to be very gamey and I would like to see some method of switching this feature off for the Allied side excluding USSR. In the real world either event would be more likely to have resulted in a significant morale decrease at least in the USA particularly with respect to the UK attacking Ireland. On the subject of morale it would be a nice enhancement if there were a feature in the editor to adjust the starting morale in some situations. One example would be the large number of Chinese warlord armies who fought for the Japanese but were equally likely to switch sides if given the opportunity. I guess switching sides might be tricky but low morale would be a good way to represent these types of unit. Regards Mike

Hi Hubert When I was calculating the units for my own scenario, where I created divisions instead of having SF units, I worked very roughly on the basis of 3 infantry divisions per corps and 2 corps per army so within the historic OOB you could effectively trade 1 x army for 6 x division and this played into my pricing per unit. I came to the conclusion that it would only work for CTVs if I gave armies two strikes otherwise the value for money in purchasing an army versus 6 Divisions was too hard to make balance. I know you have not done 2 x strikes for an army in AOD or AOC so it is probably too late to think about that now (maybe SC3) but it does work quite well and gives a good reason/benefit for players having armies as a unit type as well as corps and divisions. Ideally with bigger scale maps and units ranging from divisions up to armies it would be neat if the armies could be converted into corps and corps into divisions within the game by the player if the front to be held required that. I guess I am influenced by the old Gary Grigsby game Second Front/War in Russia where corps sized units could be spawned out of divisions located in HQs. That was probably the wargame that got me really hooked on military sims and one of my all time favourites. Interestingly his sequel Western Front was less good as the focus on corps sized units did not seem to work as well and certainly the developments that have come from Strategic Command seem to show that SC was a better base from which to evolve variants to cover more WW2 theatres. Regards Mike

Would it be possible to post the editor "unit build" screen for each of the major countries? I am interested to see how AOD has adapted the number of units to match the larger scale map - I would expect there to be at least double for land units as compared with standard Gold scenarios so that continuous fronts can be maintained. This would mean fewer army sized units and more corps and divisional ones. I realise that the OOBs might still be being adjusted to fine tune the balance but having some idea of the numbers and break down of unit types would be interesting. Regards Mike

It is a bit cheeky to suggest enhancements to AOD when I haven't even tried it yet but my own Axis Triumphant scenario has shown me an issue that might be relevant to AOD. I am assuming that because of the increased size of the map there will be more naval units to manage in AOD. I have quite a lot of naval units in Axis Triumphant and it is easy to lose track of which might be getting low on supply. I would suggest that there should be some way of highlighting ships getting low in the same way that AOD now indicates units that can take elite reinforcements. The second suggestion is somewhat related and occurred to me because I have recently been researching the Arctic Convoys for a talk I was giving. This research reminded me how short ranged destroyers were because the convoys had to take fleet oilers along with them to refuel the destroyers. In Strategic Command the range of ships seems to be more determined by their relative speed thus DD units are not usually given short ranges. If it is easy to do, it might be an idea for supply degradation to be used to cater for range as well as combat for naval ships. Thus any DD more than so many squares, possibly 10, from a port would have its supply cut by 4 - I am not sure about the number of squares because I would need to see the AOD map and judge the implications. I would want a DD to be able to get across the North Atlantic in a couple of turns but it would not be able to hang about in the middle of it for too long. Perhaps increasing levels of naval technology might reduce this penalty to, say 2, to reflect ship to ship refuelling. Regards Mike

Thanks Bill. mike

Can enemy ships count towards the 4 adjacent to a resource? Regards Mike

Hi Lofty Did the enemy capture it at some stage? Regards Mike