mcaryf1

Before I start on the main subject of this post I would like to add another couple of further comments on The Tonnage War. Some people may feel that I am being unrealistic in applying immediate supply penalties when a player chooses not to pay the MPP fee that equates to new MS construction as the effect of not paying that would normally be felt in the longer term. My idea in applying it immediately is that by refusing to pay the charge the player has effectively decided to reduce or suspend shipments in that turn to avoid the MS losses so the effect on supplies is immediate. Of course Winston Churchill did suspend Arctic convoys for several months after the catastrophe of PQ17. I should also note that with respect to penalties for non-payment I also occasionally use morale hits on the supplying country e.g. US/UK workers go on strike after suspension of shipments to the Soviet Union. The second point is that I did not indicate the size of MPP penalty that I would apply. I intend to cover unit pricing in a later post but I will make the following observations. During WW2 German U Boats alone sank about 14m tons of Allied shipping. Constructing 10,000 tons of merchant shipping during WW2 cost very approximately 4% of the cost of building a battleship. In SC there might typically be 2 real battleships in one BB unit so providing 14m tons of replacement merchant shipping for MS sunk by U Boats alone would cost the equivalent 56 x SC BB units so there is plenty of justification for high penalty charges. Naval Patrol Aircraft Whilst I was pleased to see the introduction of the recce mission I was somewhat disappointed that it was accompanied by a reduction in the standard spotting range. In the last post in this series I made the case for adding features to represent the effects of a Tonnage War. This would make submarines and other raiders far more dangerous and increase the importance of naval reconnaissance aircraft. In this post I will make the case for patrol aircraft being made more effective with much longer ranges. This would also make naval warfare somewhat less of a lottery. Before discussing appropriate aircraft ranges I need to establish the approximate distance represented by a square in SC. The standard map is comprised of 256 x 64 squares. The circumference of the earth is approximately 21,000 nautical miles. The earth is of course a globe but is represented in SC as a rectangle so considerable distortion applies towards the North and South Poles. A further distortion occurs if you move diagonally through a series of squares as opposed to travelling at right angles through their sides – the diagonal being approximately 1.4 times longer than the sides. With only 64 squares representing the distance from North to South Pole any transit heading on a North South axis will traverse real terrain at 4 times the rate of an East West journey. Clearly it is impossible to come to a single statement about the true distance represented by a journey through a number of SC squares so I have tended to use a very broad approximation that the distance would not be less than 60 nautical miles and not more than 300. I generally use a rough average of 150 nautical miles per square for naval missions. The IJN Emily patrol plane had an operating radius of over 3,000 nautical miles or 20+ SC squares. This does not mean that an IJN Emily should have a spotting range of this distance as spotting operates over the entire area of the circle covered by the spotting radius. This would require hundreds of individual Emily planes each flying out and back along different radii to cover all the sea area implied. Thus I would allow a specific recce mission for an Emily unit to fly up to 20 squares but the spotting value would be something like 60% of that – remember also that an SC standard scenario mission gives 28 elapsed days between player turns so aircraft could theoretically be flying a significant number of missions in that time. The Allies had their own recce aircraft such as the PBY Catalina or the Sunderland which only had about half the range of an Emily, but certainly longer than bomber aircraft in the standard game scenarios. There is a problem in creating these units in SC because the appropriate bomber slot is used for strategic bombing. The ordinance carried by strategic bombers made their range that much shorter and the number of WW2 bombers which those units represent (e.g. 500) requires a much higher MPP cost than is appropriate for a recce unit consisting of many fewer planes. The solution I have adopted in my own scenario experiments is to use bomber units from minor country allies to provide naval recce aircraft or to create new countries such as USA West to own them. Unfortunately the AI is not really aware of the new specialised function of these types of aircraft and will try to use naval recce planes as very long range bombers operating against land targets. I can counter this to some extent by giving the recce aircraft low attack values against land targets and relatively low rebuild costs and times so if the AI loses them to fighters or AA it can restore its capability cheaply. The enhanced recce capability is an important defence against submarines and this was a key element for the Allies’ victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. The AI certainly seems to grasp the importance of keeping its SS units outside the search areas covered by my enhanced recce units and in my experience it tries to operate its subs in the mid-Atlantic gap which was what the real U Boats did. It is not difficult to modify the combat characteristics of existing units for specific countries. Open the scenario with the editor click on the menu header “Campaign” and select “Edit country data”. You will see a list of countries on the LHS – select Canada then click on the lower middle button entitled “edit combat target data” then select Bombers from the unit list. Under the General Heading that appears you can adjust variously the spotting range for land and sea as well as the action points and strike range. For the Allies I might use 7 for sea spotting range and for the Japanese I use Thailand as a minor Ally and give its bombers an initial sea spotting range at 12 and strike range at 18. You can edit the production cost and production delay using the same “edit country data” menu. For example I make the Canadian naval recce unit 40% of the price of a unit for UK Bomber Command. I allow the Canadians to build 4 recce units and typically base one in Iceland, one in the UK, one in North America and one in Bermuda to keep the U Boats in check. However, once the US is in the war there is a temptation to move some of these long range planes to the Pacific which is what really happened in WW2 and partly explains the U Boat Happy Time off the US East Coast. In my scenarios extra Allied patrol aircraft only become available a year later as in the interests of realism I wanted players to face the same decision as the real US Admirals had concerning Pacific versus Atlantic priorities. Regards Mike

Winston Churchill commented “…the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril'. The SC implementation of convoys is an elegant way for scenario designers to put various countries income at risk but submarine raiding does not usually generate great fright amongst players. The main reason why this should be is because the SC convoy implementation only really addresses the loss caused by the sinking of cargoes and omits the full implication of the “tonnage war” which was waged by both the Germans against the Allies and the USA against Japan. Doenitz’s strategy was based on the idea of sinking more cargo ships than the Allies could replace. Thus his U Boats were not only depriving the Allies of the cargo lost when an MS went down but also all the potential future cargoes which that ship might have carried. The Germans might not have been able to damage the massive industrial and agricultural production capacity in the USA but they certainly tried to prevent the output of the factories and farms from being deployed where it was critically needed. Doenitz narrowly failed in winning the tonnage war he waged against the Allies but the US won the similar war they waged against the Japanese. By 1945 virtually the entire Japanese fleet of tankers and cargo vessels had been destroyed. From 1944 onwards Japanese factory production was severely impacted, warships had to be based near the oil wells in the DEI rather than being deployed to defend home waters and much of the population were reduced to subsisting on roots and berries. Had Doenitz been successful this could have been the fate of the UK as like Japan the UK was not self-sufficient in oil or food. The standard scenarios in SC do provide somewhat random facilities for short range blockade but do not address the type of strategic blockade created by a tonnage war. Personally I think that there is a case for a short range blockade to cause a port to have reduced supply but I am not convinced that blockade of port cities on developed land areas with associated infrastructure should result in the city supply being reduced as happens with for example Australia and India. I realize that this is just a method to represent the cost of lost shipping by depressing city revenues but it has side effect of reducing the effectiveness of air units based in these cities and that is not appropriate. India did suffer very severely as a result of the lack of Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean with over 4 million dying of starvation in Bengal in 1943 but this was as a result of the tonnage war rather than a temporary port blockade. One of the key features of the tonnage war is that it did not really matter to Doenitz where his U Boats sank Allied shipping. It was the total quantity available that he wanted to reduce. Thus when the USN belatedly introduced convoys for the shipping on the US East Coast, Doenitz was happy to move his raiders to easier targets elsewhere. In order to simulate the effects of a tonnage war I have used SC Decision Events which are triggered by the number of Axis raiders operating in relevant parts of the various oceans and sea areas. A DE can be created that checks for enemy presence within a specified radius of a chosen point. When the DE is triggered I give the country concerned a choice of spending MPPs, effectively to rebuild the lost shipping, or to suffer supply hits in those cities to which goods are effectively being carried. Thus cities in the UK or Allied owned areas in France might suffer supply losses if the Allied player chooses not to pay the cost triggered by a U Boat presence in the Atlantic. Similarly the Soviet Union would suffer the supply hit if the raiders were off the Persian Gulf (interdicting lend lease) and Australia or India would legitimately suffer if the Indian Ocean has raiders and the UK will not pay. Axis supply sources in North Africa suffer if Allied raiders are operating South of Malta and either Italy or Germany refuses to pay the resulting MPP cost and Japanese cities suffer if there are raiders in the S China Sea and other relevant areas. This proved to be more complicated to implement than I anticipated because I felt it reasonable for countries suffering from raiding to have early warning of raider presence in the relevant seas or oceans. With respect to the North Atlantic I went further to try to pinpoint the raider more accurately. To achieve this I changed the standard convoy route so that it actually followed a wide zigzag route across its normal path. In fact the real North Atlantic convoys followed a variety of different routes so this was not unreasonable as reflecting a convoy area even if the route seems strange. The advantage is that the location where the raider(s) struck the route is given by the standard convoy routines in SC. There are still substantial areas of the North Atlantic and other sea areas where raiders are counted as active even when they are not on an SC convoy route. Again this is historically accurate as many MS captains chose to sail independently of the convoy system and a lot of these were sunk without being able to give warning of a raider’s presence. To give a player early warning of Raider presence in a sea area, I use Popup events triggered at the beginning of their turn whilst DEs applying the charge because of a raider presence apply at the end of a turn. Thus the player has a chance to locate and destroy some or all of the raiders before they strike. I apply an escalating MPP cost depending on the number of raiders present. In the Atlantic the number of raiders can go up to 7 but in most other sea areas it is either 1 or 2 raiders to trigger and then anything more than the trigger number will switch the DE to a higher charge. If there are 7 or more raiders active in the Atlantic then I apply some degree of supply penalties on the UK or the SU regardless of whether or not MPPs are spent although they will be worse if MPPs are not spent. In my test scenarios I have not personally found it too onerous to respond to a few DEs each turn indicating whether I will pay the rebuilding cost and it certainly encourages a strategy to counter raiders. I might say in a sneak preview that in a future post on Naval Patrol Aircraft I will be arguing for much longer spotting ranges and this helps to keep the U Boats in check. This of course was a major factor in their real defeat in WW2. There might be some of you that would not like to have to take these extra decisions but, if you want to play the role of Churchill, it was a burden that he faced. Clearly by applying these various MPP penalties I am eating into the amount of MPPs that players have available so in the interests of balance I have increased the income for all major countries except Italy. I have done this by increasing the revenue from oil wells to 4 per strength point and created a few additional wells – for example Germany has a well to represent its synthetic fuel plants and Russia has a well in the Urals that it did actually develop. I am not really sure if I have yet properly balanced the MPP income with the likely loss from raiding but I think increasing the importance of oil is entirely historic and it should be possible to strike a balance with raiders so that they have some possibilities to be a real threat that could destroy the war effort of the UK the SU or Japan which again would be historically correct. For scenarios that start with the US war entry I judge that there is a big backlog of British MS losses to make up so I apply a large cost on the US to cover their initiation of the Liberty Ship building program. This helps to balance their increased oil income until the Axis raiders start to do that job. I regret that this modification is quite complicated to apply as you need to understand how to write various scripts for different event types as well as to re-route convoys. I hope I have said enough so experienced scenario designers can see what I am trying to do. Finally I should say that for naval realism there should also be specific interdiction points where supply convoys were running to active war zones. To simulate this I include a series of 3 sea squares to the East and 3 to the West of Malta through which the RN would have attempted to pass supply convoys to the island. If an Axis warship is on any of those squares at the end of an Allied turn then Malta suffers a supply hit to Valetta (squares to the East) or The Grand Harbour (squares to the West). I have created a convoy route from Alexandria to the UK which passes through these squares to encourage the Axis AI to place its warships on those locations. The Malta interdiction of Axis supply only happens if there is either an Allied air unit on Valetta or a naval unit in The Grand Harbour. If the Axis has captured Alexandria then Allied units in either location in Malta are subjected to random strength point losses to simulate massive air raids. As Tobruk was a vital port for supply purposes to whichever army controlled it, I also add two adjacent sea hexes where Allied warships can interdict it and 2 where the Axis can do the same. Finally I have created a group of sea squares in the Indian Ocean near the mouth of the Red Sea where the presence of an IJN Carrier TF will impact Allied Middle East supplies. In my view one of the biggest strategic opportunities for the Axis was for the IJN to interfere with Allied troop and other transports running up the African coast to fight Rommel. This is somewhat of an indulgence on my part because the Axis AI does not fully understand the importance of these squares although a convoy route does pass through them. I adjust other port or island locations to provide facilities for military blockade where I think these realistically existed – one example would be Midway, another would be Guadalcanal. I am sorry this was rather long – congratulations if you have read this far! Regards Mike

I do not know if this is actually the case but I suspect it is. If you allow the situation to be effectively continuously re-evaluated after each partial move and partial resolution of combat then this could make the processing far more lengthy and complicated for the AI. Human beings already have much more ability to see the big picture and probably already gain a big advantage in terms of sequencing their combat execution. I think your suggestion might result in a big increase in thinking time for the AI and quite a lot of work for the AI coders but still a poorer performance for it versus a human player as compared with the current situation. Regards Mike

I have been experimenting with some of the many facilities which are made available to scenario designers in the excellent editor. My objective has been to see whether it is possible to increase the historical realism of naval aspects of the game. All computer war games have to make compromises with realism in the interests of playability and balance and I guess we will not all agree where these compromises should be made. The scenarios I have created need quite a lot more work before they will be ready to be published and I would appreciate some feedback on my ideas to help me identify those with which I should persevere. I have grouped the ideas into headings and I will cover these in a series of posts which I will make a few days apart to allow for any comments that readers want to make. The topics are: Rebuilding naval units Battleship unit capabilities Map adjustments Naval patrol aircraft The tonnage war CV CVL CVE Variation in national unit capabilities Production times and costs for naval units Range of movement for naval units In each case I will also give a brief outline of the editor facilities utilised to indicate how easy or difficult it might be for someone to implement these changes to the standard scenarios. Rebuilding naval units In my post relating to facilities for SC3 I have described my approach with respect to rebuilding for SS and DD units to take account of the large number of these types of craft which participated in WW2. My proposed rebuild facility would apply whatever those units’ supply level was when they were sunk. I also mentioned in connection with attacks on ships in ports that I would allow vessels sunk in port to be rebuilt at a fraction of the original cost and timescale. There is, however, a problem in that the game engine does not register whether a ship was actually in port or not when it was sunk. Vessels currently retain supply 10 until they engage in conflict or raiding and supply level is the trigger for allowing rebuilds. Port capacity is anyway limited in SC as compared with the real world, so it would not be possible, even by checking coordinates, to confirm whether ships ostensibly at sea near a port were intended by the player to be in port. Personally I am happy to allow cheaper and quicker rebuilds for all BBs, CVs and CAs with supply 10, which will necessarily include those that were actually sunk away from any port. This rebuild facility does allow for a situation which was actually quite common for major ships in WW2 (Pearl Harbor, Taranto, Alexandria and others). I also think it makes a more fun game when naval units are not quite so vulnerable to total loss. Consequently in my view this is a better compromise with realism than the current no rebuild policy for ships in the standard scenarios. I will not fully discuss the percentage reduction which I actually use for the cost and timescale for rebuilding as I will be addressing historic costs and timescales later. However, in broad terms I would apply a rebuild timescale of 6 months and a cost reduction of about 70% compared to the standard scenario price per unit. This can allow some improvements to be applied to the ships at a reduced price but it was, for example, the case with the Pearl Harbor casualties that improvements (e.g. in AA) were able to be conveniently fitted whilst the ships were in the repair facility. Implementing rebuilds is relatively easy in the editor – as this is the first post in the series I will explain it in some detail for those of you who may never have tried editing a scenario. To edit a scenario go to the “file” heading in the editor and “open” the file which has the name of the scenario you wish to modify (note the scenario file is separate from the scenario folder but has the same name with a suffix .cgn). The map for the scenario will then appear. Be careful not to inadvertently click your mouse pointer whilst it is on part of the map image otherwise you might change the map. If you do make this or some other mistake just exit the file and start again without telling the editor to save. You need to select the menu header “campaign”. You will see several options in the menu and the one you want is “Edit Reinforce/Reformation data” so click on that. You should now see a box which contains a list of all the unit types used in this scenario. If you click on any unit it will then show you the current percentage costs to repair for both standard and elite reinforcements. However, the data you want is below that where you will see a tick box indicating whether this unit type can be reformed. Select one of the naval units listed and in the standard scenarios this box will not be ticked. So you need to tick the box and then below that set the % supply that the unit must have in order to qualify to be reformed. If you are trying my suggestion for SS and DD you can make this value zero which will mean the unit can always be rebuilt. If you want to try my “sunk in port” idea you need to make the qualifying supply value 10. You then need to set the percentage values for both the % of the cost and the % of the production time that reformation will take. For SS and DD I use 30% for the cost and 0% for the time – thus subs and DDs could be instantly rebuilt by the owning player although of course they will need to arrive in a home port regardless of where they were destroyed. For other naval units I use supply 10 as the criteria for rebuilds and some suitable percentage of the cost and a rebuild percentage that is aimed at about a 6 month delay. As for SS and DD the unit will be rebuilt in a home port and not necessarily where it was sunk – note some of the ships that were raised at Pearl Harbor limped back to the US for full repairs so this is not too unrealistic. Finally having made the changes to the scenario use the “Save as” command in the “File” menu to give your modified scenario a new name (e.g. just add a number to the standard name). This will create both the scenario file and its associated folder so that the standard version will still be there and usable. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey In fact DDs do currently have a "first shot" opportunity, and probably too much of one, in that all ship units have an inititial opportunity to exchange fire albeit one may have attacker advantages. In a strict realism sense in most engagements DDs would have had to risk fire from the guns of larger naval units before getting within their own gun and torpedo range. Regards Mike

Hi Hubert I will be delighted if you are able to consider my proposals for a speed attribute in SC3. I will give you a specific argument in favour of it. The German raider strategy really depended upon their having a speed advantage over the much more numerous Allied warships. The Panzerschiffe design (Graf Spee etc.) was specifically aimed at producing a ship that could outrun the slow old RN BBs whilst being able with its 11” guns to outshoot the British cruisers that might have been able to catch her. The same was true on a larger scale for the twins, Scharnhorst and Gneisnau, and of course the Bismark. It did have occasional successes – Graf Spee sank a lot of merchant shipping as did Admiral Scheer and the twins. Also Bismark was within an ace of getting into the Atlantic without serious damage where she could have caused chaos to the convoy system. However, in Strategic Command, once a raider has been spotted, the old British BBs can close in and finish her off without any need for a lucky torpedo hit from carrier aircraft. The possibility of evasion through superior speed at least gives raiders some chance of success. Regards Mike

The naval aspects of SC GC provide an entertaining game but are probably the weakest in terms of the way they match the reality of WW2. This post contains 3 recommendations as to how they might be improved in SC 3. Actually the third recommendation can already be implemented by scenario designers in the current game so it is really a proposal for it to be implemented in the SC 3 standard scenarios. The main problem with the current naval system is that conflict occurs too frequently and it is often too drastic in its outcome and all three recommendations address different elements of that. The first recommendation is that naval units (and possibly aircraft) have an additional attribute which would be a speed rating in knots. When a naval conflict situation occurs i.e. opposing vessels are adjacent to each other then the defending unit if it is weaker (measured by comparing values for naval warfare x strength suitably adjusted for experience etc) would be given a dice roll to see if it can evade the conflict. I should note that both the unit surprised whilst moving and the unit that surprised it would be treated in this context as defending units. There would always be a minimum chance of evasion of 20% this is to allow for it being night time, foggy or their just missing each other within the 10,000 or so square miles of an SC GC square. Thereafter for every speed advantage of 1 knot the weaker unit would have 10 more percentage points to add to the possibility of evasion up to a maximum difference of 6 knots. Thus the maximum likelihood of evasion would be limited to 80%. This is to allow slower units to achieve a surprise attack on a faster but weaker unit again in conditions such as a night time engagement. A classic example of this was when slower British BBs surprised faster Italian CAs at the Battle of Cape Matapan. If this recommendation is accepted then the more normal situation of weaker Italian TFs withdrawing and evading conflict with stronger RN ones could occur in the game, similarly defending DDs would typically have a good chance of running away from BBs. I should note that some scenario designers already give naval units a damage evasion factor, however, this is not the same thing because conflict is not actually avoided and in effect the evading unit gets a free hit on its adversary. There are some additional possibilities if this idea of speed attributes is adopted. First, surprise encounters, where evasion is achieved, might be treated as if they had not happened and the travelling unit could pass on without the players necessarily being aware of the encounter. Second the speed differential between surface vessels and submarines would give surface vessels a good opportunity to evade submarines which of course they enjoyed in WW2. Third if the concept of speed also applied to aircraft then ships would have some possibility (20%) to evade air attack which again could be thought of as night time evasion or just the aircraft not finding the ship. If speed were an aircraft characteristic then perhaps jet aircraft would have that as their advantage and ME 262s might avoid interception by escorting Allied fighters whilst attacking Allied bombers. I should note that any damage to a craft should have a proportionate but then randomised effect on her speed. The final feature of this speed proposal is that any ship in a port should not gain any evasion benefit against submarine, aircraft or surface attack. A significant number of the capital ships that were damaged or destroyed in WW2 were in port when attacked. However, I would recommend that any ships sunk whilst in port should be given an opportunity to be rebuilt at a relatively low cost and a delay of, say, 6 months. Italian BBs at Taranto and US ones at Pearl were refloated and repaired so there is a clear historic precedent for this. The second proposal is in recognition that it was extremely rare in WW2 for CVs and troop transports to be engaged by surface units. The speed proposal above goes some way to address that as troop transports were typically high speed liners and CVs usually also had high top speeds, but it does not go quite far enough. I would like therefore to suggest the concept of an escort for such valuable units. It seems to me that the CA unit does not have all that well defined a role and being an escort to CVs or troop transports would be an ideal additional role for a CA unit. My suggestion is that whenever a friendly CA is adjacent to a CV or a troop transport (including an amphibious assault unit) that is being attacked by a surface naval unit then the CA automatically switches places with the attacked vessel and becomes the defending unit. Given the relatively high speed of CAs it would have a reasonable opportunity to avoid the conflict given proposal one, but, if it has to fight, it is likely to be a less valuable unit than that which it is protecting. I would allow the CA unit to continue to interpose itself for any number of attacks but it would lose this ability if its own strength fell below, say, 8 or possibly 7. This would help to address the situation that the swap of a CA with a CV might possibly put the CV into worse danger if the CA was already itself alongside enemy units. This recommended change addresses the current somewhat improbable situation where, once a CV is spotted, enemy units can travel to attack it avoiding any spotted nearby units friendly to the CV whilst doing so. These enemy units may even have approached over long distances thus heightening the unreality of the situation. If the proposal is adopted it does not add significant complexity for the game player as the swap would be automatic. However, it could offer interesting considerations as to possible sequences for an attack if, for example, one CA unit was trying to escort two friendly units that were not themselves contiguous. The sequence the attacker adopted might cause the CA to be swapped out of supporting range of one of the two friendly units. The defending player would need to remember to keep all 3 units adjacent to each other although of course a damaging attack on the CA could destroy its ability to escort. My final proposal is to address the problem of SS and DD units having to represent very large numbers of real ships which are effectively all hazarded in a single engagement. As the Germans built well over 1,000 U Boats a typical SS unit might conceptually represent 40 or 50 actual U boats in any realistic historic deployment and the same might be true for the DDs deployed by the Allies. It certainly seems unrealistic for such large numbers of actual vessels to be potentially lost in any single action or month of elapsed time. However if we create more units, it would desperately clutter the map and make the game more tedious to play. My solution is to treat DD and SS units built and sent to a theatre as representing a number, let us assume 40, of craft now available there rather than the number on patrol at any one time. If a unit is lost in action then the assumption would be that that only represented the 30% (i.e. 12 actual boats) that might be on patrol. This sort of number would be right for U Boats as they were typically travelling to and from their patrol areas as well being off patrol during rest, recuperation and training. I would therefore allow players owning destroyed units to rebuild them with no delay during their next or subsequent turns at 30% of the cost of a new unit. I have tried this out in my own scenarios and it works quite well and does not seem to confuse the AI. It does give the Allied player an opportunity to attempt to blockade the rebuilt units in German ports but that is not dissimilar to the Allies real efforts to interdict the Bay of Biscay. My speed proposal above reduces but does not remove the threat of submarines to surface craft. This suggestion, which would have the effect of maintaining U Boats as a threat to the Allies throughout the war, would not therefore seriously change the current balance but would better match the reality of WW2. A further effect of this proposal is that the DD becomes more expendable and as such an ideal reconnaissance tool which was an important real task in its WW2 fleet role. In this post I hope I have suggested ideas that might not be too difficult for Hubert and his team to implement as some of them are not dissimilar to current facilities. Thus existing units can exchange position on player command and there must be calculations about ship visibility that may not be dissimilar to introducing an assessment of relative speeds. I will conclude by pointing out that speed was a critical attribute for BBs in WW2 and largely determined how effective they might be. Thus the RN had to give up control of the Indian Ocean because the inadequate speed of their old R Class BBs meant that they could not operate with CVs. Similarly the US survivors of Pearl Harbor were repaired soon enough but again could not be risked until the USN was already dominant in the Pacific. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey You can of course use the editor to change the combat values for various air units, however, only fighters can intercept and only bombers can interdict convoy routes. Thus you have to choose what the fundamental type of the unit is but within that you can give units some enhanced capabilities. If you are really desperate to have the ability to deploy extra aircraft you can always give a minor ally some rather weak CVE units but with instant and cheap rebuilds for the hull and park them near the island where you want to have multiple aircraft types. Regards Mike

Hi JonS I do of course realise that a BB unit actually represents a Task Force rather than a single ship. In the scenarios I create for my own enjoyment I have done the work of allocating every ship of DD size and above that existed in 1942 or later to a specific naval unit. My BB units comprise of the order of 80,000 to 90,000 tons of shipping and contain at least one ship with gun calibre of 14" or more and at least 6 x DD units to give it a defence versus submarines. After that I try to group ships together that have a similar performance. Thus I would not assign Pennsylvania to the same TF as South Dakota because the speed characteristics are dissimilar. The nature of the ships within the TF will determine what level of naval warfare and what strength and experience I assign to the unit. Thus Iowa would be the only BB in its own TF but would be augmented with cruisers up to the necessary tonnage its TF would have naval tech 3 with strength 12. Pennsylvania would be in a TF with another similar BB and have naval tech 0 or 1 and typically strength 10. It is extremely expensive in my scenarios to upgrade naval tech so a player might choose to upgrade Pennsylvania once which might reflect addition of improved radar etc but it would not be cost effective to upgrade 3 times. This reflects the fact that no matter how much training or bolt on goodies you give a Pennsylvania it still only has 14" guns and cannot exceed 21 knots. I also look at the different characteristics of individual countries BBs and adjust accordingly. Thus Italian BBs were typically fast and their doctrine tended to be risk averse so I give them a higher evasion factor but less hitting power to reflect the likelihood of their withdrawing from an engagement before they suffer much damage. Turning to aircraft I think it is hard to simulate the deployment of kamikaze by use of the tech tree. If you compare the outcome for the Japanese air attacks during the Battle of the Phillipine Sea and the battles around Okinawa there is no way that a gradual progression in air capability can handle that. Also a tech advance would require you to spend money to upgrade the unit but in fact kamikaze was a relatively cheap option as they used pilots with minimal training and aircraft that were becoming obsolete in terms of performance. Thus kamikaze does need to use a different unit type. Having checked back on Fritz X I see it was actually deployed in 1943 rather than 1944 and it took the Allies about 6 months to develop fully effective radio jamming counter measures. It was of course deployed at a time when the Allies enjoyed substantial air superiority and were on the offensive so in a position to retrieve samples from crashed or captured units. If Fritz X had been ready to be deployed against the Malta Convoys in 1941 or 1942 it could have had a very major impact on the progress of the war and, like the kamikaze, represented a potential step change increase in the likelihood of achieving a hit. I have not tried to implement Fritz X in any of my scenarios yet but, if I did, it would probably have to be given to a German minor ally as I already use all the units available to Germany. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey The standard game tech tree does not really cope very well with step change enhancements. Thus you can progress a German fighter through various marks of Me109 and FW190 but when you get to the Me262 you cannot really carry on incrementing the capability by 1 as it should be a much bigger jump. I have played around with adjusting the German Tech Tree so that air warfare can go up to 5 whilst the Allies only go to 4 but Me 262 should really be a different weapon system altogether. I try to emulate the Me 262 by allowing the Axis to get one or two experience 5 strength 5 fighters by means of events in mid 1944 but it is not ideal. There is a similar problem with BBs. It should not really be possible to enhance for example the Oklahoma so that it becomes an Iowa class. It can be dealt with slightly more elegantly and with greater historical accuracy because of the long historical build time for BBs. Thus a typical WW2 era BB would take at least 4 years from order to commissioning. I allow the US and Japan to have Naval Warfare level 3 immediately but make the cost of upgrading a ship so high that in practice it is not worthwhile to upgrade existing BBs. I either place the historic Yamato's or Iowa's in the build queue with tech level 3 or have them arrive by means of events. I have to tune the % repair and rebuild costs because the very high tech upgrade charge would be a factor in those. By this means I can have the USN operate its historical mix of old and new battleships without having to assign some of them to Mexico or some other minor ally. I was not aware of the AZON ever being used as an anti-shipping weapon and the Bat I think was pretty late war effort whilst the Germans deployed their anti-ship missiles with some good results in 1944. It is interesting to consider what impact those might have had in the Mediterranean if, for example, they had been available in 1941 or 1942 or in the Pacific if the Germans had given the technology to the IJN. I think there were a number of circling devices and of course the Germans originally introduced the magnetic mine but I do not think these were potential game changers like kamikaze or Fritz X but rather a progression on existing technology. The Germans actually developed the technology for missiles (V1 and V2) to be launched from submarines with the intention of attacking New York but it was too late as US patrol aircraft dominated all the approaches. Again it would be difficult to match this real historic capability into the SC GC sub tech tree. If you wanted to try to match the true German capability it would have to be by giving V weapons a tech upgrade to ICBM style range but that would inhibit allowing lesser tech upgrades and stop the actual defence the US effectively deployed against encroaching submarines although I do not think they were aware of the submarine launched missile threat. All in all I think there are ways to provide historic capabilities but some of them are less elegant than others. Having the two unused research slots made available for those units, such as subs and fighters, that do not already have 3 types of upgrade could be a way forward. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey Going back to your earlier post about guided munitions I presume you are talking about the Baka kamikaze system for the Betty and the Fritz X system for the Luftwaffe. I am not sure that the Allies had that type of technology in the timeframe of WW2. The Baka was not actually very effective for the Japanese although the Fritz X did have successes. I think it would be quite difficult to add that technology to a standard upgrade for a Betty. I tend to use V Rockets to simulate Kamikaze operations for the Japanese and that is the route I would go to simulate the Baka. You can play around with the increments for tech upgrades but Naval Warfare applies to ships as well so you cannot isolate bombers and give them one big increment. One method I have used where I want a plane with a special ability is to change the characteristics for a minor ally. Thus I generally equip each side with a very long distance plane type for recce purposes. In the case of the UK I use Canada and give them a long range plane (the Sunderland). Japan is a bit more difficult as they do not have minor allies. I modify Thailand so that it is a Japanese ally and it provides the ultra long range Emily bomber (strike at 18 spotting at 12) for use as a recce plane but with relatively low offensive capability and rebuild costs as it was typically deployed as a single plane unlike the masses per unit in UK Bomber Command. For Germany and the Fritz X I cannot use V weapons as they are needed for real so it would need to be a modified minor Ally. That is not too difficult as none of them actually had anything in the way of Heavy Bombers. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey I think you may be thinking too literally about an individual aircraft operation rather than the deployment that occurs in SC GC. In the standard game the time period elapsed between turns is 4 weeks in the summer and longer in the winter. If you assign a bomber unit to be attacking ships during that period then you have to consider that they will notionally undertake a number of actual sorties. As standard bombers are virtually useless against naval ships they will put themselves at risk several times but will achieve very little. The risks are not just combat related because some equipment malfunctions will result in the loss of planes. In 1942 the US Douglas A 20 Havoc bombers based in the continental USA were averaging 1 accident for every 500 flying hours with 40% of accidents resulting in total loss of the aircraft but this would be worse for deployments over water. Perhaps you might like to give examples of the attrition rates that you consider unreasonable when deploying bombers against ships. Regards Mike

I think that if a minor Ally such as India is conquered but then liberated by US forces then the US can pay for and equip Indian units. I am not 100% sure of this as I am almost always messing about with my own variant scenarios but I think it is the case. Until the new version of SC GC some time ago the French and Italians were treated as minor allies and there were only 6 major countries. In some aspects, and research is one of these, this worked better. regards Mike

The trouble is if you reinforce a carrier's ship element I think it also depresses the experience of the air component as there is only one rating. This is not entirely logical but I suppose harder to implement. I usually allocate a higher starting experience rating to CV units on the basis that they are likely to lose it faster. One way for IJN CV's to gain experience is to attack weak Chinese land units where there is little likelihood of losses to either the ship or air element. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey High level bombers were largely ineffective against naval vessels in WW2 at sea. At the time the various US strike units operating out of Midway claimed a significant number of hits against the Japanese TF's approaching the island. In reality they achieved very little. The damage to naval units was typically done by dive bombers and torpedo equipped aircraft both of which had to attack at low level. High level bombers did have some success against slow moving convoys and static warships such as those at Pearl Harbor. Even in this latter case the number of hits achieved by the Kates equipped with modified 16" shells was quite a low percentage. If you read accounts of the Japanese attack on POW and Repulse you will see that it was the torpedo bombers that caused the real damage. For example the first wave of 8 x Nells armed with ordinary bombs achieved one hit that did trivial damage whilst 5 of their own number were hit by AA fire although not actually downed. The next wave of 17 Nells armed with torpedoes achieved only one hit but it was a devastating one that crippled the POW's ability to maintain speed, knocked out a significant amount of AA due to the list and electric failures and reduced her ability to manoeuvre. Thereafter subsequent torpedo attacks sank both ships and the Japanese only had 3 or 4 aircraft actually downed although a number were damaged. In my own scenario adaptations I tend to treat the Japanese bombers differently to those of the Allies. First they had very much longer ranges, second they carried relatively small bomb loads and third the naval bombers were equipped and trained to carry torpedoes. In the case of the Allies I give bomber units relatively low capability against shipping but do give TAC Bombers higher values as these are equivalent to dive bombers such as the Dauntless (which sank more Axis shipping than any other aircraft type) and various types of torpedo carrying aircraft. The heavy bombers deployed by the Allies were virtually useless against warships except in situations like the Tirpitz when they were immobile in ports. Regards Mike

Hi Bill The turn has been sent. It was 4mb and I did not compress it so I hope it gets through. Regards Mike

Hi Bill I can send you a save but I am running a slightly non-standard version of the game as Hubert gave me a fix for an issue I had with Transports so it might not work for you. Regards Mike

I am interested to understand how the surrender of the USSR is handled when it is caused by morale loss. I had a 1942 start game against the AI with a titanic struggle between the USSR and Germany (I set myself up as the Axis with various disadvantages and let the AI play both sides until the Axis was in real trouble before resuming command) . Germany had fought back, driving the Allied invaders out of France, taken Moscow and Sverdlovsk and was battling towards the final Soviet capital. Japan had conquered India and China, from which some US air units and an HQ had fled into the USSR and suddenly the USSR was also at war with Japan. Some fighting occurred between Japanese and Soviet units near Vladivostok and some Japanese forces chased after the US air units which were flying from Soviet territory but still attacking Japanese units located in China. During the Japanese pursuit of the US units a couple of Soviet corps got in the way and were destroyed whereupon the USSR surrendered to Japan who took over 3,000 MPP's in booty. The Soviet morale was virtually zero before this happened so it is possible that the two units destroyed by Japan were the ones that took Soviet morale below zero. However, even if this was the case, it seems eccentric for the Soviets to surrender to the Japanese who had never taken a single Soviet city. The last Soviet capital was still standing and I had a German PZ unit poised to capture it when the surrender came. Am I right in thinking that the surrender went to Japan because they killed the last unit or did Uncle Joe come to some secret deal with Hirohito to have the last laugh on Hitler and thwart him from getting the booty? Regards Mike

In the standard game Malta will interdict Axis supply on a random basis (15% chance) so long as any sort of Allied land or air unit is based on the island. If the Axis has taken Gibraltar then the supply level on Malta is subject to reduction. Malta's impact on Axis supply is not changed even if the island lacks supply itself. Thus taking Gibraltar merely gives the Axis a better chance to destroy Allied units based on the island - if the Allied unit there is destroyed, then Malta stops impacting Axis supply until another Allied unit arrives or until the Axis captures it. My own view is that the Malta supply effect should be more tightly determined. I have experimented with making the Malta effect dependent on there being either Allied air units based on the island or naval units in the port rather than there being any land unit on the island. I also make certain sea hexes leading to the island from East or West capable of Axis interdiction to simulate the real convoy battles that took place. Thus any Axis naval unit on one of these hexes will reduce supply on the island (hexes to the West) or the port (hexes to the East). Finally if the Axis has taken all the ports in Egypt and Syria I make any Allied units based in Malta or its port subject to random strength loss, notionally from heavy Axis air raids. Unfortunately I have not yet found a way to code the Axis AI to attack Malta but that might just be my lack of experience as a scenario designer. Regards Mike

With respect to degrading carrier attacks against ground forces, that would be historically correct for British carriers. In the early war years British carriers (with the exception of Ark Royal) had relatively small aircraft complements (typically 1/3 to 1/2 of US or Japanese CVs) and their planes were no match for Axis land based aircraft except that they could operate at night hence the Taranto success. In my trial scenarios to improve realism I give British carriers a single strike and a soft attack of 0. A good sanction against an early French DOW on Italy would be for substantial elements of the French fleet be transferred to the Italians in reparations as part of any French peace settlement. I do not know whether it is possible to set up events based on who issued a DOW first but I think it would be historically reasonable to imagine that the French would have had to make reparations if they had DOWed Italy. Regards Mike

Hi Cantona66 I am only an amateur script writer but surely if you have #AI_RESPONSE= 0 Does this not mean there is zero chance of the AI saying yes to this decision? Hence your unit script will not trigger. Regards Mike

I note that the Chineses supply provided via the Hump used to be implemented by Decision Events (see manual) but as far as I can tell these DEs no longer exist. Is the Chinese supply now implemented by some in game code and is any cessation reversed if the Allies retake Calcutta and Ledo and is there any facility for supply to be provided (e.g. to Mao) via the USSR? Regards Mike

I have noticed that the AA improvement seems to be somewhat selective. For example an AA upgrade on a ship will give improved capability against Bomber, Air and Carrier attack whilst that for facilities such as Ports and Cities only operates against Bomber attack. Is there a reason for this or is it too complicated to effectively add to the resident unit's relevant defence bonus? I have found the AA unit to be quite useful in particular protecting the USSR against too effective German aircraft, however, like other distance defence or attack weapons, I think it should be subject to the possibility of losses when inflicting damage on attacking aircraft. Thus rather than 100% attack evasion I am experimenting with 50% so it does not just build up a huge experience advantage. I should note that I do give it 2 strikes and in some cases a strike range of 2 (in my scenarios bombers have 2 attacks largely to reflect the huge numbers in for example Bomber Command). The AA strike range is mainly to cope with unit overcrowding but in reality the Germans for example tried to deploy their FLAK in extended corridors to create safer routes for supply and unit movement into Normandy. I should also note in passing that I try to avoid any unit having invulnerable attack capability such as rocket artillery or V weapons mainly because I do not like the impact of experience gain but also rocket artillery would have been subject to counter battery fire and they are only 1 square back because SC does not support stacking. Even V2s suffered losses with rocket malfunctions, explosions on the launch vehicle etc. so some risk of casualties during its attack is appropriate and reflects expended rockets. Regards Mike

From a purely wargaming point of view I have often felt that it would be best for an Axis player to leave Italy neutral for a while as well as setting up Vichy and not invading the Balkans. That gives Germany a solid Southern flank whilst Germany crushes the USSR and the British have nowhere sensible to fight with the Germans other than in the Atlantic or in the air. A possibly more real possibility - if Mussolini had had any brains he could have entered the war by taking Malta in a surprise invasion as it was was virtually undefended in June 1940. However, he thought he would get it at zero cost in the peace negotiations and he only needed a few thousand dead troops on the French border to buy his way to the negotiating table rather than risking any of his prestige ships. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey I am not sure whether you have noticed that you can set fighters to intercept up to 25 times in the scenario editor. I am not sure how useful multiple interceptions beyond twice and possibly three times would be as the defending fighter would tend to lose strength and hence experience and therefore be much less able to maintain a reasonable defence over time. Regards Mike