Lars

1. Which flag are you referring to? 2. Does it absolutely have to have a swastika? 3. Ever hear of Microsoft Paint?

The Luftwaffe launches furious attacks to free the Prinz Eugen CA, but fails. The Bismarck comes in to help, still no good. Prinz Eugen finally sinks the King Edward BB (which was rather beaten up by this point) and flees. But the Prinz Eugen doesn't quite flee far enough, and goes down to the Rodney BB. The poor Bismarck, left all alone to its fate, is sunk by the first hit from a CA. That's going to look rather sweet on the Honors board. :cool: On the Eastern Front...nothing... So the Russians form a line, settle into their new entrenchments, and wait for the reserves to come up. The Russian Baltic fleet sails to do some shore bombardment, which ticks off the Finns, but take some damage when they find the Tirpitz holed up in port. All in all, a very bad day for the Kriegsmarine.

Really, is that the best you can do? Hoch über den Wellen ob tief unter dem Meer vorwärts in ständigem Sturm hinterher. So wie der Haifisch da seien sie Blut, suchen wir sie die Feiendliche Brut Nichts kann uns halten wir trotzen Gewalten Gruß unserm Land U-Bootsoldat Wir zeigen uns würdig dem neuen Geschlecht kennen den Weg unser Eisernes Recht Der Heimat zum Schutze vor Sturm und Orkan Der Glaube an Deutschland erhellt unsre Bahn Reißt es empor uns mit starker Hand wir kränkeln nicht Engeland Und wenn du auch gehst bis ans bis ende der Welt wird dir von uns dein Weg verstellt. Die Menschheit betrügt damit ist es vorbei, wir brechen dem Löwen die Kiele entzwei Nun hört in den weiten der Ruf ist so groß wenn der Ruf erschallt Torpedo Los!

Perhaps for the Russians we could add a morale boost for liberating their own cities. Might help. In fact, I think you could make a case for adding a city based morale effect (say 3-5%?) to the country morale effect. The Brits felt pretty good both times they took Tobruk and the Germans knew they were screwed when Stalingrad went. But there's really nothing you can do to stop the German juggernaut in '41, they're on a roll. Deal with it.

And who wouldn't? You already know what happens if you stick to the historical strategy. You lose.

It's right up there with the "what if" of the Battle of Britain What if the Luftwaffe had kept pounding the RAF instead of switching targets? Funny that "what if" doesn’t seem to bother any one.

Yep. And you can absolutely forget about building any landing craft for an invasion for awhile. You got other problems. Not historical, yeah, keep repeating that. It's the whole point.

I'm not changing them to warship hunters, they always were. You keep missing that. So, RN response. At the beginning of the war, all the Brits had was the same sonars they had from the last war. ASW was woefully neglected, just like everything else in the inventory. Took a long time to develop the range of sub killing devices that they eventually had by the end of the war, like radar, hedgehogs, etc. RN responses would be about the same, only more so. Escorts would be the number one priority, forget everything else. Research into ASW likewise. Also, arm and convert more merchants into escorts. Put a deck gun and a depth charge rack on every single one of them and hope you get lucky. Good for morale if nothing else, but they're dead meat if the real escorts go. And convert the bigger ones to ersatz carriers by putting up some sort of deck structure. Forget a hanger and elevators, just park a couple of planes up there and do all maintenance in the open. Doesn't leave much for other needs though, like modernizing the Army and Air Force, now does it? Cuz building tanks is going to be way down the list, need the steel for ships. And you're pulling merchants and converting them, which sorta impacts the merchant fleet, as suddenly you're going down this spiral again…

Thanks for the sig Joe. Just what I needed for the SC2 forum today.

If you really want to do it under the existing engine, just raise the research chance to 100% and adjust the mpp cost to suit the time scale you'd like.

Really? I've found if you play with historical strategies, you'd pretty much end up with historical results. Might look a bit rough around the edges, sure, but pretty close.

You might as well just read history, it turns out the same way every time. Some of us like to consider the "what if's". If you're using the same units, but in a different way, it doesn't devolve into SF, imho.

When done right, it was highly effective. Look what happened the next day in Operation Cobra when the bombers came back again. The Panzer Lehr was toasted. Look, just because it wasn't done much, doesn't mean it couldn't be done, and done well, if they had put really their minds to it. It's called a strategic option. Try to open your mind a little bit, instead of thinking strictly in a orthodox box due to the way the history books are written.

Hey, I pushed for Med Convoys, remember? I just don't like chits in a box, rather would move units.

RN sinks one CA, bottles up the other by Trondheim. He's going to the bottom soon, down to strength 3. But the riposte might be ugly, Stalin has three AF up there. Come on carriers, do your duty. Bismarck was given up as a bad job since it was protected by the Bergen port. He can run or sortie, Stalin's choice. US gets Intel 1. And the USSR prepares for war...

You posited a model to totally abstract the sub war, and to totally abstract it to nothing more than commerce raiding to boot. I've played those systems, and found them rather limiting, as that's the only strategic option you're given. So it comes down to buy sub chits, put them in the box, or just forget about the whole idea and buy tanks. Best example would probably be War in Europe by SSI. They did the same with the bomber war as a I recall. No Operation Cobra's there.

You did, you yutz.

They also ignored advances they already had. Germany patented a turbojet engine in 1934, flew the Heinkel HE-178 in 1939. So, maybe you get really just get "lucky" (or smart ) and decide to listen to Hans von Ohain a little earlier…

I've really got no problem with the existing model either. It's more fun than putting X number of u-boat chits and X number of escort chits in a convoy box. I've played those game systems before, and that's all they really modeled, the attrition aspect. What I would like is for surface ships to keep on moving through a sub tile if the sub is set to silent running. But for that we'd need stacking. Oh, and commerce raiding for surface ships.

No, I only have to change the list of priority targets. Look at what they managed with what they had.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. I never said they all were Fleet Carriers, and I never said the RN didn't build more. In fact, I said quite the opposite. If you look at this page , which has losses by theater and year, you'll see that they lost four Fleet carriers and two escort carriers fairly early in the area we are concerned with.. And as I pointed out earlier, which you seem to have ignored, having all those carriers in 45 does you no good if you lose the war in 41.

RN bottles up the Bismarck in Bergen. Trondheim still holding. Hungary and Bulgaria join Axis.

But to take all luck out of it just leads to cookie cutter strategies. i.e - hmm, let's see here, I'll get Industrial 3 by '40, dump it all into Heavy Tank, should have level 5 by 42, and the USSR is doomed, bwahahaha... A bit of randomness makes for a better game.

Umm, a lot of British and American ports were mined by the Germans, dicedtomato. And the Brits and Americans mined a lot of German ports (and rivers). Please go back and read the Mines Away study that I linked. Never seen a bottom laying mine drift. There's more types out there than just the old moored contact mines. [ May 23, 2006, 06:32 AM: Message edited by: Lars ]

And it's already into re-runs.