Friendly Fire

Curry, I didn't sign up but it is getting interesting. If you have a drop out consider me an alternate... thx FF

I personally like the catch up rule, it help reduce the overall impact of a tech superiority, which I believe reduces the need for good generalship. Also it is very realistic, you can bet the remains of the fast jet that just got shot down are going to be sent back for analysis... just my2c

ya, I'm guilty of that, asking someone to search instead of just posting. Then nobody posts a question because they either found the answer by searching, or they don't want to make a post for fear of getting a "just search for it dummy" rebuttal. perhaps there is some middle ground, newbies please read the sticky post on strategy, and if you don't find the answer there, by all means post! I've also noticed a real drop in AAR postings from when I first joined. Come on guys, let us know about some of the more interesting games! I'm sure the forum will pick up once SC2 is released. FF

Thanks to Dragon for a great match, I thought I was toast when the Allies got pushed out of the low countries in 42, but the Russians manged to hold on long enough for a second try at the second front. In case anyone is curious, at the end of the war, production levels were; USSR: 500+ MPP, UK about 340 MPP, USA 190 MPP. Tech: USA: J5,LR1,IT2,AT3 USSR:J5,LR0,IT2,AT4,HT4 UK:J5,LR2,IT0,AT1 I'm pretty sure Axis had AA tech to go with the L5 jets and LR2? Appreciate all the kind words, and glad you liked the AAR. Kurt, please advise how we proceed. thx FF [ April 02, 2004, 03:36 PM: Message edited by: Friendly Fire ]

Hi Edwin, I can't imagine that Peace with Japan could be a politically viable option for the USA after Pearl Harbor... the basic idea of different strategies for the USA re the pacific is interesting tho.

Update. Finally the Allies win the air war. Two turns of air clashes over France claim four air fleets (2 allied, 2 axis). Production shortages force the Luftwaffe to disband all but one air unit, presumably to be used for scouting. The Soviet Air force continues to grow. A Soviet armor division charges into Vichy France from the Atlantic port and hammers the garrison. The helpless French unit quickly surrendurs under heavy air attack by the RAF and US Army Air Force. The city is occupied by Soviet marines. Simultaneouly Algeria is invaded and captured by the Russians. Vichy falls. The undefended cities of Copenhagen and Athens are liberated. On the ground, USA and UK forces are digging in west and south of Paris. A well entrenched armor division holds the city. In the USA the press rip Eisenhower for slow progress towards liberating France. In the East the motherland is completely free of invaders! The bulk of the Soviet army is forcing its way towards the heart of Germany just south of Warsaw. The Italians guard the mountain route to the rich oil fields of Romania and have managed to hold off any Russian advance there. European minors: Switzerland, Yogoslavia, Poland, France - held by Axis Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Greece - liberated by allies Vichy - conquered by allies Finland - Helisinki captured by soviets, but they are very stubborn, no surrender yet. Turkey, Spain, Portugal - neutral One game year to go. Can the Axis hold out? [ April 01, 2004, 02:19 PM: Message edited by: Friendly Fire ]

Rambo, piss off. Do you have a truck to haul your ego around in? Why in hell anyone wants to play you is beyond me, you have no class. update on the game Massive air battle over France. Allies lose a couple of airfleets during intercepts to more experienced German pilots. The ground troops push on and knock off a Germany heavy armor division, and once again occupy a hex adjacent to Paris In the East the Soviets attack several points on the front without success. The Germans have defense in depth and it will take some time to break through. The Soviets continue to build up air strength. Behind the front lines Odessa falls, with Riga and Helsinki soon to follow.

Hey Kurt, do you mean that this game is similar to the one we are playing? It sure is in the sense that the allies have stopped the German expansion and are grinding away towards Berlin. Only major difference is that Germany has the Balkans in this game, but in ours she has Spain and Scandanavia instead. In both games Allies have have recently opened a Western front.

addressing a few points that may not have been discussed to death in previous posts: 2) Provision should be made for re-supply at the beachheads. If you land an HQ on the beach it will offer supply, albeit minimally until you can take a city. 3) I think re-supply should be re-worked a bit. If you surround a unit, even in a city, you will be able to crush it. If you leave a hex open to a supply source, then yes, the unit will re-supply. Consider the scale of the map, that one hex is a big supply avenue. 4) I would like to see "edit unit move rate" added to the right click menu in the editor. Ships/subs should have lower move rates. Why? Consider the time frame between moves. The distance seems about right. Moving either air or ground units involves moving a lot of support infrastructure. Navies are by nature mobile... 6) Just as in the PC game Third Reich, I'd like to see the "armoured breakthrough" concept employed; whereby, if a breach is established, a player can push his armoured units through it (depending on action points available). Whats the problem? Open a hole in the front line and pour armor in, just like in Third Reich. Do this at two points in the front and connect both advances in a sweep to cut the enemy out of supply. Then mop up with follow up units and do it again! This is standard practice for the Axis in the USSR! 8) Research: I'd like to see additional fields added, such as: * Infantry weapons (takes into account rifles, MG, bazookas, etc). - this is covered by AT tech, infantry max strength and armor defense increases with this tech. * Artillery - at low levels think of rockets as artillery divisions. At the game scale arty is also an inherent part of any unit * Separate Medium and Heavy armour research in my opinion, since it is a strategic game, this is too low level a distinction. It doesn't add anything to the game to bother with a detail like if you have lots of medium tanks or fewer heavy tanks. * Nuclear research (this should be expensive) - there is another huge thread on this one Plus, the soft attacks for Infantry and armour should improve with more research. - max strength increases, therefore so does soft attack BUGS 2) In the purchase screen, I can't scroll the HQ for the Americans using the Up/Down tabs. the scroll buttons for the HQs only matter if there are more HQ choices than fit in the window. Yanks only have 3 HQs...

no clue how to proceed. Sorry that TCP/IP is a problem for me. quick update on game: Russia almost completely liberated. Allies have the French Atlantic ports and have formed a line just west of Paris. There is a bunch of allied air behind the line. Dragon is likely setting up several layers of defense: in the west the roadblocks will be Paris and then the Rhine. In the east I expect the first line of defense to be set up from from Konigsburg to Bucharest. If I can breach this then the final obstacle will be the River Oder. I have something like 20 turns to accomplish this in.

Anyone interested in a tourney for this league? Needs to be a modified scenario, something short. One idea I had is to use the standard 39 scenario with modified victory conditions: Axis must take UK by the end of 41 to win. Play balance could be addressed with MPPs FF

Hey JerseyJohn, actually an opponent of mine did use this strategy recently... But I think they won't do it again.

You are talking about how to launch a successful sealion against the AI on the hardest level. I just tried it out, it can be done but it isn't easy. - Send your subs NW to hide - Throw everything at Poland, try to minimize losses - Take the LC and Denmark, Buy a good HQ and another air fleet - Take France (it will be a slog with the +2 bonus the AI gets). Again try to minimize damage. I think I lost 3 ground units, and my air was beat to hell, but France fell in July - Throw a bunch a chits into Jets. Avoid intercepting the British air strikes on your ports, it cost too much - Take Norway, then Sweden - Add more chits to Jets, and if you can afford it LR and IT - Once you get some jet tech hassle Malta. If the AI is dumb enough to leave the air there keep hitting the port it and forcing it to re-enforce. You need a couple of air units and a HQ in Sicily. This will eat up his entire production. - Once you have some decent Air operate a bunch of units to Bergen along with an HQ and try to sink some ships - With Italy buy a Strategic Bomber (for knocking down London entrenchment) - Start an air war with the UK. Your tech advantage should outmatch his experience advantage. Goal is to kill enough air to let your transports survive - Pull your subs out of hiding to pull the UK fleet away -Launch everything at him. Take London, then drive up to Manchester. - You probaby can't take Manchester before the USA and USSR join, but once you land in force it is only a matter of time before you take it. Then you need to go on the defensive for a while and hold off the angry bear. The AI won't do anything with the USA once the UK falls. stupid AI Better yet, forget it and start a game against a human opponent. It is way more fun. If you want a PBEM game let me know. FF [ March 26, 2004, 12:34 AM: Message edited by: Friendly Fire ]

and Curry cites just one instance. some data at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm I cannot confirm accuracy of this data, but the numbers are incredible: MILLIONS of deaths attributable to Japan during WWII.

August 5th 1945. Dramatic events in the East. After repeated (and expensive) poundings a German army unit South of Moscow is withdrawn and replaced by a corps. The opportunity had arrived, the Russians take full advantage! This helpless unit is destroyed by a pair of full strength armies and the line is breached. An armor unit occupies the vacant hex, and Moscow is soon thereafter recaptured. Sensibly the entire Axis army falls back. The Soviets rush forward, and once again the invaders withdraw save for a sacrificial defensive line. The line barely slows down the surging red army. Smolensk and the mine is recaptured & units reach the outskirts of Minsk. The pace of the advance seems limited by the ability of the HQs to keep up. Worth mentioning that the red army is protected by the Royal Air Force and fledgeling elements of the Soviet Jet Force. In the West, after securing Scandanavia, the Americans build up forces near Brest in preparation for a second offensive: "Operation Flush". The troops are experienced and better equiped than the ill fated Overlord expedition, and Ike promises to liberate France by Christmas. In the Med, all is quiet. A Soviet Armor division occupies Sicily, but is seems like the combatants have agreed to enjoy the fine summer weather in peace

Threads of gold worth noting here: Terif's Guide for Intermediates wanting to play real people, not the AI. http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=18&t=002198#000000 Supply Explained! http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=18;t=003404#000000 Strategy Guide and Errata http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=18;t=002863#000000 if you have others please email me and I will add them to this post so we can keep these goodies in one handy index friendlyfire@fastmail.fm

Hey Col Kurtz, welcome the really short answer... Any HQ within 9 action points of a strength 10 city is at supply level 5+, and therefore acts as a level 10 supply source. So it doesn't really matter if you put those HQs in Minsk or Kiev as far as supply is concerned. Things get a bit more complicated when you move further east. Check out this thread, and in particular the excellent post by PZGNDR http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=18;t=003404#000009 cheers FF [ March 23, 2004, 01:11 AM: Message edited by: Friendly Fire ]

huh? it took me thirty seconds to ask him to search, would take a lot more to answer the question

I suspect you did not try to search for previous posts, because there are lots of them on this topic.

message to forum moderators. this thread is sticky, but obsolete. there is another thread for the active PBEM league, Curry keeps having to bump it. Suggest you replace this with that. thx FF

Damn Luftwaffe!

If those guys are playing TCP/IP then there is no rush, Dragon and I will be fighting for a while yet!

Hey Liam, I share this experience, but really the only reason that LR and Jet research should go any faster is because of the catch up rule... I find that Italians are great at getting AT and all the major powers do pretty well with Jet tech. All the other techs are really dicey. (I just ended a game where USSR had 4 chits in rockets for the entire war with no advances, fortunately for me the war didn't depend on that) All of this must be an illusion caused by the way the game handles tech, there is a very large statistical distribution... [ March 17, 2004, 01:20 AM: Message edited by: Friendly Fire ]

JerseyJohn, this is the whole point. The table clearly indicates that the investment is best for USSR and Germany, those are the nations with the largest economy. For the USA with an economy of around 200, it takes a long time for the investment to pay off. Beside, the USA already has IT advances.

IT tech, is it worth the investment? I asked this question of my dear friend, Economist Eddy "So Eddy, it is a good idea to research IT? With every point I save 5% on all my toys! But 250 MPP is a lot to spend!" "Well FF, it all depends. And really you are only spending 125MPP, because you can sell the point later." "You know Eddy, it will surprise no one that an economist comes up with such a wishy washy answer" "No really, it depends! Lets look at some numbers! Economy Payoff Payback Period 100______5______38 200_____10______26 300_____15______21 400_____20______19 500_____25______18 600_____30______17 700_____35______17 800_____40______16 900_____45______16 Column 1 is the size of the economy, in MPP per turn. Column 2 is the amount you save, assuming you spend the entire economic output on units" "But that's not quite true, what about research? We spend on that too!" "Good catch! Forget about it, lets just go with the assumption okay? You can't get anywhere in economics without assumptions. Now, where was I?. Oh yeah, column 3 is the expected time it takes for the benefit of the investment to reach the cost of the benefit. After this time period you can sell the research point and you are still ahead!" "How did you calculate the payoff period?" "Okay, that's some pretty simple math. It takes on average 13 or so turns for a single R&D point to generate a tech advance. And it takes 125MPP/payoff additional turns to reach the balance point" "Wow, it doesn't take long to pay off the investment when you have a large economy! A little over one game year!" "You got it FF, so next time you play Axis in the 39 scenario throw a point into IT, it will payoff big time over the course of a long war" "But you know Eddy, I really hate to fall behind in the jet tech race. I could have used that point to get ahead it jets, that's got to be worth something" "Well FF, that's up to you. See if I care when you can't afford to repair those fancy jets!" "Umm, okay thanks Eddy! I'm going to write this up in the forum and see what everyone has to say about it. I bet someone will think you are full of s##t!" "Believe me FF, when you are an economist, you get used to that. But FF, you know what would really payoff" "No, what?" "Giving up that game and focus on the real world!" "Uh, okay Eddy, I'll get right on that. Just want to post this first. And I have a few turns to finish, can't let anyone down, you know" [ March 16, 2004, 02:12 AM: Message edited by: Friendly Fire ]