mcaryf1

Hi Xwormwood Oh well that is a shame. It is not quite the same but you can set the game up so that you are the disdavantaged side in terms of experience etc and then let the AI play your first year or so by using F3 for AI v AI and then take back command when your side is in a bad way. I find the AI v AI gets through about 1 year overnight but I do use 14 day simultaneous turns. Regards Mike

Is there any way to switch sides versus the AI? It would be a useful testing feature also quite fun for a player to see if they can extricate a side that has been messed up by the AI. I often leave the AI to play itself using function F3 but would like to look at the production queue to see if the AI is adopting a sensible approach as that aspect is not included in the debug logs. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey You can use the editor to adjust both the initial hit % for a unit that is located on a resource hex and its rate of change with experience levels. I now understand your proposal re increased experience when based in a high supply home port. It is somewhat akin to the training mode that Gary Grigsby's War in the Pacific has. If SC was to implement something like that I think it would be better as a specific mode like "raiding" rather than an automatic feature just from being in a home port. One of the difficulties with SC is that physical port space is somewhat limited, thus ship units have to cluster around a port rather than all being physically within it and port space is needed for upgrades and reinforcing. For its own purposes SC gets around port space limitations by leaving a ship's supply level at 10 even when it is not actually on a port hex. If a training mode were implemented, then there should be a downside. For example the US suffered heavy casualties at a place called Slapton Sands in the UK when a training exercise for D Day was rudely interrupted by a flotilla of e-boats which attacked some of the ships and landing craft taking part. Thus you could make it so that any unit in training mode might have its defensive values reduced. To be honest whilst a training mode might be fun for some players, there are probably other new facilities that I might want to see first. I think we have previously discussed a suggestion that any brand new unit should be treated as "green" with a negative experience rating and take say 3 or 4 turns to get up to "normal" experience. This would be automatic, so less work for a player, and would not apply to re-built units as these would be regarded as having a cadre of experienced survivors. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey The only thing you seem to be asking for that is not possible with the editor already is that CV experience is only deteriorated by one set of reinforcements rather than both. I do not think that is an unreasonable suggestion but I typically start my scenarios with CVs having pre-existing experience so that CV units can maintain experience levels if managed carefully. You can of course choose which aspect of a CV you reinforce first and sometimes it is possible to build up elite strength in the less damaged aspect before taking the experience hit. I tend to make elite reinforcements an equal price to normal ones for carriers to help players build back up again. My own opinion is that air power should not be capable of doing so much damage that it can entirely destroy army and corps sized units. In my own scenarios I typically give CV's a base SA attack rating of zero and TA of 1, whilst my army and corps units have a BD/CD rating of 2 although the Chinese are typically weaker. My AA research increment is 2 and I have quite a few AA units so that it is not usually a good idea for CV's to attack land units too often as their main impact is de-entrenchment rather than strength loss. I use some minor country CV units to simulate the type of US CVE TFs that were primarily focussed on ground support and they do get an SA of 1 but they are only available later in the war. The question of strike numbers is a difficult one with CV's - they do need 2 strikes so they can escort themselves but despite this I do only give the British carriers a single strike as their escorts would have been fairly poor fighters anyway. I usually treat multiple strikes as being required when a unit is representing a substantial force that could reasonably attack more than once e.g. my army units usually have 2 strikes. Allied air forces ended the war with enormous numbers of planes so it is necessary to allow them multiple strikes as it is not physically possible to locate enough Allied fighter units in the squares available. In contrast Axis fighters only have one strike. I do however give both German and Allied land based fighters the ability to make 3 intercepts and as mentioned before I have plenty of powerful AA units so the skies are a hostile environment. I am not sure that I understand your suggestion re supply - if, for example, the Japanese CVs are attacking Chinese land units they can often be doing this from a harbour location so supply will stay at 10. Quite wrong realistically speaking because most carrier aircraft would not launch from a static ship, however, one can assume that the CVs are near port and can return there after their strikes have been launched. To summarise I think it is possible to use the editor to achieve a lot of what you want - you will then need to find someone to play your modified version with you. I am still refining my own scenarios and playing against the AI to do that. Regards Mike

Hi Bill It is the same for me as Amona - the USSR units are nowhere near Berlin in fact the SU is losing badly and her units are grouped near her final capital. I think it probably is a side effect of the territory entry event although it might be because some remnant USA air units were in Northern China and could have fled into USSR territory. I remember something like this before when US units operating out of USSR started to attack Japanese units in China. Regards Mike

I am playing a game as Axis versus AI and Japan has just conquered China - it is a modified standard scenario but I have not changed any war entry aspects for Japan or USSR. I got a message saying that Germany could now use Chinese teritory and subsequently I discovered that Japan was at war with USSR. USSR is anyway on its final capital and would hardly make a sensible decision to add to its troubles. I have looked at the Decision Events and I cannot see one that says USSR should DOW Japan if she conquers China. What am I missing - is it just the territory enter permission to Germany and if so should this not be a DE under player control? Regards Mike

This is the final naval topic in this series on increasing realism. Unfortunately I have not yet fully grasped the intricacies of programming the AI so it is possible that things can be done more elegantly than I am about to suggest. I would appreciate anybody proposing better methods. The key thing I would like to achieve is some strategy to keep a fleet in being rather than risking it whenever strong enemy forces enter its range – this is a particular problem in my scenarios as I have increased naval unit ranges to be closer to reality. Keeping a fleet in being is a well known naval strategy and is typically one adopted by countries with weaker navies in particular theatres. A human player has access to a report which gives the relative strength by land, air and sea units for all the major countries – it is not unreasonable historically that this type of information should have been available to military planners although perhaps not always 100% accurate. Unfortunately as far as I can tell the AI does not have access to this information whilst the human player does. The AI Fleet command has to rely on knowing whether particular locations are friendly or not and some detail about the number of enemy units near a tactically important location. The Fleet facility specifies the number of enemy units in a max min range and I am not entirely sure how this is evaluated – e.g. does the number of enemy units have to be within this range or exceed it? Ideally I would like the AI to adopt a strategic offensive or defensive stance for its naval units depending on the overall situation. I will use the German campaign against the Arctic convoys as an example. The Germans based major fleet units such as Tirpitz in Norway to threaten and occasionally raid convoys. The Germans knew the Royal Navy had overwhelming naval superiority both in numbers of BBs and in having carriers. By operating their own ships within range of Axis land based air they could hope to negate this and they did achieve some successes. Unfortunately, if I place Tirpitz in Norway with fighter cover, the Axis AI will typically move the fighter away and/or sally Tirpitz forth to do battle with the Royal Navy somewhere near the UK. I presume she sallies as soon as intelligence reports spotting any ship. The only way I have been able to provide some sort of permanent air cover in Norway is by substituting the fighter for an AA unit, with range 2. I have had to adopt the drastic strategy of transferring Tirpitz to be owned by Finland and giving Finnish BB units only 2 action points for movement. This is actually quite accurate from a historic perspective as Hitler ordered the German naval high command to keep Tirpitz near Norway. Historically Tirpitz was frequently damaged by various forms of Allied attacks but was maintained as a genuine threat until November 1944 when she was destroyed by Tallboy (earthquake) bombs. I have modified the map to include a road between Finland and my new port of Tromso in Northern Norway so that Tirpitz can be rebuilt there cheaply if the Allied player does succeed in sinking her whilst in port. I allocated Tirpitz to Finland so that the Axis player can still build BB units with normal movement if that is thought to be a sensible strategy. As I have a 4 year production time for BBs I make the choice about building more German BBs into a Decision Event. This also allows me to make it only a 10% chance that the AI would adopt this probably doomed approach. Adjusting the movement allocation for units is easily done via the country menus in the editor. I give AA units a range of 2, 2 strikes and attack values that increase by 2 for each research level. The impact of research is another value that can be modified in the editor. This makes AA units quite formidable and helps restrict free ranging opposing air units particularly as AA tends to build experience and not suffer many losses. Clearly the Arctic campaign was a special case and I have had to adopt a different strategy for protecting the US when her fleet is the weaker one in the Pacific. Historically the US enjoyed a great deal of luck in the decisive victory at the Battle of Midway. If the US had lost that battle, then the Japanese would have enjoyed a year or so of clear naval supremacy in the Pacific whilst the Americans were building their new fleet units. This situation often occurs in my scenarios which typically start a few weeks before the historic date of Midway in June 1942. Thereafter, if the Japanese capture Midway and base a strong fleet there, as soon as the Allied AI has acquired new ships, it commits them in ones or twos against this strong IJN fleet with typically disastrous results. I have been compelled to adjust the historic arrival dates of major US fleet units (e.g. the Essex carriers and Iowa BBs) so that they at least come in batches and will stand a chance if the AI still insists on committing them as soon as they are available. If someone could advise a better way to do this I would be grateful. Sadly I have not yet found a way to programme the AI to capture Malta. I have created a Decision Event that gives the Axis player a choice after capturing Tobruk whether to use the notionally captured supplies to assault Malta or continue to Egypt. Kesselring wanted to take Malta but Rommel went over his head to Hitler and got permission to try for Egypt. In my scenario, if Egypt is chosen, then Kesselring arrives as an extra HQ in North Africa, if Malta is chosen he plus an SF unit arrive near Naples and Malta suffers severe strength losses reportedly from massive air raids. It turns out that these strength loss events will reduce a unit to 1 but not entirely destroy it. This actually serves my purpose quite well so it is then possible (but not guaranteed) for a human player to take Malta by amphibious assault. Unfortunately I have not yet worked out how to get the AI to even try to do it. I should note that in my scenarios I try to give much more importance to the issue of supply by severely limiting the number of HQ units available to players and making those they do have the most expensive units in the game. However, players occasionally get rewards e.g. for capturing specific locations or oil wells, in the form of the arrival of a free HQ unit. The fall of Tobruk, which really yielded huge quantities of supply to the Axis, is one such event. Similarly if the Italians capture the Iraqi oil well this gives them an extra BB unit, the Impero. The Italians really did stop work on this almost finished BB because they knew they did not have enough oil to operate it. I am not entirely sure what tells the AI to place its naval units on the various squares that have been designated as being minefields or at least locations that cause supply losses to the opposing side. I have, however, created some locations at sea where supply routes can be interdicted. Examples of this are the Axis supply routes to North Africa and the Allied supply routes to Malta and to Russia via Persia and to China via Calcutta. Where possible I have created new convoy routes to encourage the AI to place its naval units in these locations as I presume the AI is programmed to interdict convoy routes wherever they are. Some of the changes I have recommended in earlier posts also help the AI. In particular making it possible to rebuild a DD or SS unit for 30% of the original cost goes some way to address the AI’s over bold use of naval units. Giving transport units 80% evasion against naval attack helps make up for it not providing escorts. In so far as I have given naval units extra capabilities, e.g. 2 hits for BBs and generally longer ranges, the AI seems to cope remarkably well. I have had a bit of fun with some new units, such as immobile minor country DDs as minefields, which the AI does tend to blunder into. However, so far it has seemed to avoid building minefields in ports. This was an error I made because I had not realised that players cannot sell naval units so I effectively blocked my own ports from receiving transports! The AI has been confused by some of my new units such as rockets as Kamikazes – I guess it thinks they are for strategic attack and so often wastes them on cities. However, ultra cheap late war minor country (I use Thailand) CA units to simulate real Japanese plans for explosive Kamikaze launches do work okay. I will conclude this series by saying that I think Strategic Command provides a really interesting set of editor tools which can greatly increase realism. It is well worth playing around with them and I hope I might have encouraged more of you to try it. Regards Mike

Hi gunnergoz In some cases, such as liberated ports (Antwerp is an example), I think there is more of a problem with ports being repaired too quickly. I cover using engineers to clear ports in one of the last posts I made in my series on using the editor to make naval aspects more realistic. The particular post is about using modified minor country DDs as minefields. Players can leave these in ports they are about to lose. I provide players with a modified engineer unit that can clear these obstructions. The whole series of posts might be of interest to you as they explain relevant aspects of the editor for naval modding. Regards Mike

I am not 100% sure whether having fighter intercepts prevents AA from intercepting as well but I think an AA gun would engage the bombers rather than the escorts. Historically Germany had some enormous FLAK towers in Berlin loaded with 88mm. Personally I edit an upgrade to AA units in my games and give them two strikes like fighters as well as heavier hits and I find these are quite effective at making bombers pay a price for their mission. If you have read my series of posts on using the editor to improve naval realism you will see I have provided some information on the true cost of the Allied Air offensive which was enormous. Heavy bomber units should really cost many times the price of a BB unit in the game. Every heavy bomber squadron needed a dedicated all weather airfield and each of those cost approximately 10% of the cost of building a real battleship. The bomber units in SC equate to at least 25 real squadrons of heavy bombers so before you build any actual planes a heavy bomber should be more than the cost of a battleship! Regards Mike

If I was to change the map in a major way then it would probably be to increase the number of squares in a North South direction. The standard map has a 1 to 4 ratio with East West. This would have an effect of increasing the area available in the UK, the English Channel and the Arctic convoy route. One of the problems with the current map is that there is insufficient room for units in the UK but changing the map to that degree would be a fairly major exercise which I have not attempted. Thus my changes are concerned with correcting anomalies, such as the true size of Midway which should not exceed one square, and providing additional ports where they could be relevant to campaigns that did or might have occurred in WW2. There was a fair amount of naval activity in the Black Sea including evacuations, small scale naval battles, amphibious actions etc. To facilitate this I have created extra ports for the Rumanians at Constanta and for the Russians at Poti near Tblisi. This gives both players additional potential and additional risk from amphibious operations. I base a Russian Cruiser unit and a destroyer in the Black Sea. If the Axis captures Poti, they can acquire two similar ships in a damaged state. The Rumanians can build a weak U Boat unit at Constanta to represent the various small U Boats that were actually transported overland to the Black Sea from Germany. Naval Mines The Soviets also had a substantial fleet at Leningrad including submarines which were prevented from operating in the Baltic by anti-submarine netting and mines strung across the Gulf of Finland. Once the Finns withdrew from the war the Soviets could deploy their submarines and caused heavy military and civilian casualties by sinking several German ships in the Baltic evacuating troops and refugees in front of the advancing Soviet army. I simulate the net by giving Finland some DD units that have no action points but a high naval defensive rating and high evasion values against land and sea attack. The Soviet naval units are therefore trapped in or near Leningrad and comprise initially one immobilised (zero AP) BB unit in the port and one SS that has normal movement. The Soviets did use heavy naval units to provide fire support during the battle of Leningrad and their subs tried and failed to break through the net and mine barrier. I give the Soviet BB some defence against land and air attack and have reduced the naval attack rating for most land units with the exception of Engineers. I have modified all Engineers to have high naval attack values and 2 strikes so they can be effective against the naval mines which can be placed in port locations. The mines have 50% evasion versus land attack and can cause some damage to land units so with 2 strikes the engineer unit will typically clear mines in two turns - other land units trying to do this would take longer and suffer some losses. If the Germans capture Leningrad and destroy the BB in the port then they get a Decision Event offering an opportunity to rebuild captured Soviet ships comprising a cruiser and a sub. I use the idea of DDs with zero AP as naval mines more generally than just the Gulf of Finland. Minor country navies are useful for this, thus, in 1942 scenarios, DDs from the Baltic States can provide naval mines for the Germans. Using a non-home builds setting in the Editor’s country menu for the Baltic States allows the Axis to place their mines (DDs) in any mainland European port owned or controlled by Germany. I really like this feature as it delays ports such as Brest from being returned to action too soon after liberation. In 1944 it actually took 2 months before the port of Cherbourg was cleared of mines etc and other Channel ports were denied to the Allies for similarly long periods. Removing the home build restriction on minor countries allows mines (DDs) to be placed in locations where there is a land connection to the country capital. Thus by using Rhodesia as a British supplier of mines, players have the opportunity to place mines around ports on the African coast such as Alexandria. I use these mines to blockade the Red Sea so that the Axis does not effectively get use of the Suez Canal until these mine units are destroyed. Clearly if Suez had been captured by the Axis the canal would not have been left in an immediately useable state as it is in the standard game. I do a similar thing with the Kiel canal where I have made an extra port for it on the Baltic. I have found in the standard game versus the AI that it is rather too easy to knock Italy out of the war by mounting amphibious assaults on Rome and her alternate capital, Venice. Italy was a major naval power and as such needs all her own naval unit types so I create Libya as an Italian minor using an appropriate country slot and give Libya the capability to build DD mine units. Like other mines these have zero AP so cannot be moved once placed. In the initial scenario set up I can place mines anywhere at sea, so I use some to block non-Axis access to the Aegean and others to guard landing beaches near Rome. I give mine units a high defensive value to damage naval units that blunder into them but also some naval attack capability to avoid players simply moving units alongside them once they are spotted. Conceptually this represents mines that could drift into nearby squares. I use Thailand as a minor for Japan and that provides mines for use in mainland Asian ports controlled by Japan but not Japanese owned islands or Japan herself. I think it is reasonable to exclude quite a lot of the map from the ability to create new mines. For example the English Channel and various routes around the South China Sea could be too easily blocked. However players and the AI can lay new mines in quite a few sea locations during the game so players can achieve the sort of surprises that did occur in WW2. The Italians were big users of mines in WW2 and temporarily halted RN surface raiders operating from Malta when the RN’s Force K wondered into a newly laid minefield and lost several ships. I set mine units to cost just 30 MPP with 1 month build and, as they are effectively DD units, in my scenarios this means they can be instantly re-built and put on the map again at any valid position if destroyed. Clearly a Minesweeper unit is needed to clear mines laid at sea. I use a modified minor country cruiser unit that has 100% naval evasion when attacking to counter the high defensive value of the mines. It has reasonable but not excessive attack values itself so should deal with a mine unit in 2 or 3 turns but has relative low defence ratings so that it should not become a killer unit versus non-mine naval units. For the Allies I use Iceland to provide this capability and for the Axis it is Libya. I have made no attempt to change the symbol of the minefield unit from being that of a DD. The best solution would be concealed minefields but I cannot do that, so I prefer to leave players unsure as to whether a spotted DD unit is a real DD that could be attacked or possibly a deadly minefield that should be avoided. Having made Libya a minor ally of Italy, this also allows the creation of a convoy route running from Africa to Italy. Very few MPPs actually go along this convoy route but I make it pass through my designated Allied raid areas for Italian and German supplies going to North Africa and this encourages the AI to interdict these, simulating the real losses Rommel suffered. Thus even if Malta has fallen to the Axis, the Allies can still try to reduce Rommel’s supplies. Map Changes Returning to map issues, in my opinion the Indian Ocean was the great lost opportunity for the Axis in WW2. If the IJN had tried to dominate that rather than attack Midway, then they might have interdicted Allied supply convoys both for the Middle East up the East African coast and for Lend Lease to the Soviets via Persia. In both cases the whole course of the war might have been changed. If the Japanese had attempted to establish a long term presence in the Indian Ocean, rather than the single successful raid which they did conduct, then they would have required one or more naval bases. There were actually 3 possibilities for this although they were probably only aware of two of them. The two of which they were aware were Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Madagascar. The one they may not have known about was the secret naval base which the British had constructed at Addu Atoll in the Maldives, near Gan. I have therefore added a port to represent Addu Atoll and a second port on Sri Lanka to facilitate a possible Guadalcanal type campaign there. There were actually two major ports on Ceylon – Colombo and Trincomalee so this is historically accurate. I also place a Japanese garrison unit on Madagascar to represent the Vichy French force which fought the Allies there from May until Nov 1942 which Axis players could choose to reinforce. I also create extra ports along the coast of Norway so there are Trondheim and Tromso in addition to Narvik. There were of course many possible harbours/fjords where the Germans could shelter the ships and submarines they used to attack the Arctic convoys and it is historically accurate to add these and create more uncertainty for the Allied player as to which might be in use. You have to be careful when using the editor for map changes as it is quite easy to make mistakes. I suggest you always copy and rename any scenario before attempting changes. You will also find that most changes to the map itself require the editor to run through a lot of the AI and Event scripts to make sure they are still valid before saving the new scenario. This is a time consuming process but you cannot batch together too many map changes before checking the scripts as that makes finding errors harder. In fact I would not recommend you to try changing the map unless you have some important modifications you wish to implement. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey I think you have made some very interesting suggestions but I guess the issue would be how difficult they might be to implement. There is, however, one actual WW2 success that your system has not yet catered for and that was the successful use of subterfuge by the Germans to get troops into Norway on cargo vessels. Perhaps there could be a DE with a slightly randomised date that would switch the ownership of Norweigian ports so that German transports could enter them and unload. It would have to be tweaked so that Germany could not subsequently build U Boats in Norway but I think it should be possible - I will try it out. I wonder how easy it might be to set a build limit for amphibious units that could apply to each research level - that would help to address your point. Even an absolute limit on the total number regardless of research level would be a step forward. Hopefully Hubert might be reading this and could think about what would be straightforward to implement. An initial thought might be that only major countries could be amphibious, China would be allowed 0, Russia and France 1 each, Germany and Italy 2 each, Japan and UK 3 each and USA 4. That would allow a total number of 7 Allied (UK and US) units to participate in D Day which is about the number of Divisions used in reality. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey They did not necessarily travel apart see here from Wikipedia This is an example of a transport ship carrying its own beach landing craft. I do not think it would be worth separating the moment of transfer into the beach landing craft in SC. We effectively cover that with the order to unload and the opposing player can only respond with whatever units are already in place to meet the invasion. Regards Mike

Hi Seamonkey My posts are a mixture of ideas about how the game/editor features can be exploited and one or two suggestions for enhancements. Where I point out that something can be achieved via the editor that also means that it could be incorporated in the standard scenarios if that would suit popular demand. I have also in my last post introduced a suggestion for house rules as another way of achieving things that the game itself cannot currently deliver. The suggestion re "house rules" for amphibious transport could be extended to include agreed maxima although it would be good if the game mechanics could enforce them. Thus you could decide that each research level equated to both the type of unit that could be carried and the number of units of each type that could be carried at any one time. Thus you might say that each amphibious research level gave you the ability to carry an extra 4 x SC or Division sized units this would include artillery, AA and A/T. A corp and a Tank Group would equate to 4 x SC and an army 8 x SC. Thus if you had research level 3 you could simultaneously carry 16 x SC or 4 x Corps or 2 x Army or some mix and match. Clearly these restrictions would apply to the global deployment so the Allies would have to consider Pacific versus Europe for amphibious resources as did the real Allied commanders. The limits would have to apply to amphibious transports used at any time throughout a turn thus players should not unload an amphibious unit and regard it as immediately not counting against their limit and create a new one. I am not sure I understand your suggestion that Transport units might develop an amphibious capability once they reach their destination. Historically very different types of ships were used for transporting troops for an amphibious assault. Long distance transports were typically ex-liners capable of 30 knots or so whilst amphibious assault ships would carry specialised beach landing craft and would not normally be as fast as standard transports. Regards Mike

Hi Pzgndr Your suggestion re limiting rebuilds to a number of factors could be implemented quite neatly from a user interface point of view by somehow throwing such units back into the production process but that could be a lot to code. Another possibility closer to the current method would be to change unit strength, for example, so that typically naval unit max strength was still 15 but with only 13 to 15 representing the elite experienced element and 11 - 12 available as a repair to any unit in a major port regardless of experience but only achieved in single increments. Thus "normal" repair from strength 9 or below could take up to 3 turns/months and elite repair another 3 months on top of that. Amphibious and transport unit realism I mentioned changing amphibious units’ fire power in a previous post and as you might imagine from my discussions of naval ranges I also modify that for them but there are more fundamental issues with respect to the realism of amphibious assaults and that is due to the very high degree of abstraction used in SC. In some other games more focused on naval aspects such as Gary Grigsby’s Pacific War there is a specific ship type the AP or APD used to provide the amphibious capability and land units can be loaded on or off these vessels. Clearly there are advantages to the SC approach concerning simplicity and lack of map clutter when these vessels are not being used. However, in SC the cost of providing the amphibious assault capability can only be allocated between research and temporary deployment and the actual ability to deploy a unit type does not vary by research level. In the standard scenarios the cost of making a land unit into an amphibious one is set at 30% of the unit cost (it is the same for all countries and set in the “movement cost” menu header under campaign data in the editor). The cost of researching amphibious capability is set at 100 per level, there are 5 levels available. Research levels adjust both combat target value for the created unit and its action points both changing by 1 point per level – the maximum range that can be achieved (by a fully researched US) is 11 squares. If I were looking to increase the realism of amphibious assaults I would change the following aspects. I would make the unit types deployable amphibiously depend on the research level. Thus at research level 0 only the special forces unit would be deployable. Personally I use this unit to represent a standard division sized unit as I think most peoples’ idea of WW2 special forces, such as commando units and LRDG, were too small too usefully recognise in a game of SC’s scale but you certainly need division sized units in most theatres. The German invasion of Norway was partly facilitated by means of concealed troops on merchant vessels that entered Norway’s unsuspecting neutral ports. Their planned invasion of England was to be conducted using river barges and other craft that were at hand. It was probably fortunate for the troops involved that they never actually tried it but it was possible that they could have succeeded if a couple of amphibious divisions backed up by parachute landings had seized a port. A problem of physical room on SC maps prevents the inclusion of many real ports on maps. One of the great strategic advantages of Great Britain as a country is that it has many more natural harbours all round its coast than for example the Northern coast line of France but standard SC has no English harbours on its South coast. Fortunately the SF unit in SC does not need harbours so this problem is averted to some extent but I add two towns to the South coast of the UK to give some access to supply for units that succeed in taking them to simulate both the many UK South Coast ports and the possibility of air supply. Similarly I add two towns on the coast of France, Calais and Bayeux, to provide a similar function. I have noticed that the AI tends to accumulate US units on Java often without supply. Rather than trying to change what the AI does I have added two towns on Java so the AI’s US units can be somewhat more effective. Whilst this is not concerned with naval warfare a desirable enhancement would be for bombers to be able to run supply missions. They would have a possible mode “supply” and would be targeted on a friendly unit, they would deliver supply equal to their research level plus 1, times their strength divided by 10 the total being rounded up. Thus the maximum supply they might deliver would be 5 and the minimum would be 1. Supply would be calculated on the following turn as if the friendly unit were sitting on a town of the relevant strength. Clearly the plane making the supply run would be subject to interdiction but could be escorted as for a recce or bombing mission. A player expecting that a unit might become isolated or wishing to boost supply could mount supply runs to units even if they were not yet cut off. I would allow corps units, ART, AA and A/T to be added as potentially amphibious at research level 1 and this reflects having more landing craft as well as a technology leap with specialised beach landing craft carried on davits by converted ferries or purpose built ships. Tank units would be added at research level 2 as this now would represent the swimming DD tanks and beach tractors that were used successfully at D Day and in the Pacific. I have some conceptual difficulty with respect to armies and amphibious assaults as my Army units represent some 200,000 troops. Even the massive D Day landings on 6th June hardly totalled an SC Corps in the initial assault. However the SC standard game turn represents 28 elapsed days and by D + 28 the allies had the equivalent of 2 x SC army and 2 x SC tank units ashore. I suppose therefore we cannot rule out the possibility of army units conducting amphibious assaults. Thus whilst I do not think there need be more technology improvements, something has to represent the enormous investment and associated delay in building all the assault ships needed so I would require a further research level, 3, before armies could be deployed amphibiously. Finally I think that HQ units should be a special case as they represent a mechanism for the landed force to achieve supplies without owning a port of which the Allied Mulberry artificial harbours would be virtually the only example. This should be yet another level of technology so I would need research level 4 for HQ units to be allowed to conduct amphibious assaults. I should comment that I have fairly radical views concerning HQs for land combat. They effectively represent the supplies available as well as command and control so I allocate far fewer HQs to each side and make them expensive to acquire. I compensate for this by giving them a wider radius of command and the ability to control more units. I will leave further discussion of HQs to a later series on land warfare Unfortunately it is not currently possible to use the editor to specify which units can be used amphibiously so that has to be done by means of house rules with the AI getting a probably needed advantage that it does not have to play by those rules! Looking at the costing, SC effectively charges players for an amphibious capability that is discarded when the unit lands. In reality of course the capability still existed in terms of virtually all the shipping and probably most of the beach landing craft. I have suggested cutting down the research levels to 4 but I make them more costly. Thus I set each level at 300 so full research now costs 1200 rather than 500. However, I reduce the marginal cost of amphibious transport to 10% from 30% and ordinary transport from 10% to 5%. I also reduce the increment in combat ratings to 0.5 per research level as the provision of two strikes has already increased hitting power. I now move to the subject of range. Operation Torch included landings in Morocco on Nov 8th by troops who had embarked in the US on the 18th Oct. This time interval could be less than that between a player’s turn in SC but the distance is around 30 x SC squares. Clearly once the Allies had developed their techniques for amphibious assault the permissible ranges in SC should be vastly greater than those in the standard game. The amphibious assault ships typically could sustain speeds of the order of 15 knots and were equipped with beach landing craft to deploy for the actual landings. Thus their range was similar to that of naval vessels operating at cruising speed. I look at amphibious warfare research increments of between 2 (Germany) and 4 (USA) in action points so a fully researched US amphibious assault unit can traverse 22 squares as it starts with an AP of 6. To change the increments achieved by research click on the research box in the edit country data screen and click on the advanced button, which is on the lower right hand side. The Action Points’ increments per research level are in the second box you see and you can adjust the entry for amphibious, third one down, for each country in the game. You may want to use the facility that allows you to adjust all countries at the same time for example up to 2 or 3 and then revise those for specific maritime countries such as the US e.g. up to 5 . Here is one final thought on amphibious assaults to justify the improved capabilities that I have applied. Given the scale at which SC operates in both time and distance, virtually all amphibious assaults actually conducted in WW2 were successful. The only real exception to this was the relative failure of the landing at Dieppe as the Japanese assault on Wake Island was eventually successful within the 28 day period of an SC game term and their Midway and Port Moresby operations were aborted, without significant troop casualties, before the landings were attempted. Troop Transports very rarely experienced losses in WW2 as they were often ex-liners capable of speeds that made them very unlikely to succumb to submarine attack. Thus I give them a high naval evasion factor (e.g. 80%)but I should note that Hubert has provided me with a beta release to achieve this as the current release does not allow transports to evade. A Transport should not be immune to land attack, which includes land based air, so I only allocate 10% chance of that which is my usual uncertainty setting. On the other hand, evacuations did sometimes result in very heavy losses as they tended to use whatever shipping was to hand – the low evasion versus land based air allows the opposing player some chance to destroy evacuating troops that may have been delayed in the vicinity by the presence of submarines or surface craft. One last comment on the changes I make to transports – the AI seemed to be rather poor at providing escorts for troop convoys and used to suffer enormous casualties in the standard game. Giving a high evasion factor for transports is both historically accurate and helps the AI to be a better opponent. Regards Mike

Hi Pzgndr and PowerGmBh Actually the ability to rebuild is a setting in the editor and you can change it for any unit type and for any level of supply. It is in the "campaign" menu and you open the Edit reinforce/reformation data tab. You can then set whatever supply level you wish for allowing rebuilds and whatever rebuild cost % that you want to apply. The real situation in WW2 with respect to obsolete tank types was that they could be salvaged, fitted with bigger guns and converted into Assault Guns or Tank Destroyers. If you ever played Gary Grigsby's War in Russia or the even earlier Second Front you could see the "tank pools" being converted to Marder III and the like - very neat. Thus it is not unrealistic to have a cheap upgrade in SC to a better tank because the old ones are effectively going to make upgraded infantry units. I would not say that my rebuilding approach is getting too much into detail. For DD and SS it is actually intended to be a simplification so that there are not too many units on map but you still have a link to the real numbers of such vessels in WW2. Regards Mike

Hi PowerGmBh Actually you omitted one of my important ones which is to allow naval unit rebuilds for DDs and SS always and for other ships in ports. Apart from that there are 4 more issues I plan to cover in this series. The first of which concerns BB unit capabilities: Battleship unit capabilities Whilst BBs were actually superseded by CVs as masters of the seas in WW2, I am still inclined to think that they are undervalued in the standard game. I construct BB units in my own scenarios by assembling something like 90k tons of actual warships from WW2 including typically 4 or more DDs as antisubmarine escorts and one or more actual WW2 BBs. A typical CA unit in contrast might have 45k tons of warships. Given the number of units in the standard game this cannot be too far from the original thinking. I feel that allocating a better naval combat value to a BB versus a CA does not sufficiently recognise the superiority of the real units that make up the two TFs. Therefore I give BB units a better naval combat rating, two strikes (partially reflecting that BBs had multiple fire control directors and both primary and secondary guns and could typically get in extra shots whilst lesser warships closed the range) and a higher damage evasion factor in recognition of BBs greater ability to absorb damage. I should note that having 2 strikes is mainly an advantage in terms of being able to engage two different targets. The way SC combat works means that a defender can respond to multiple attacks albeit maybe in a weakened state. Thus a BB attacking twice will provoke two responses even from units that are themselves only capable of 1 strike. The BB owner does have the slight advantage of being able to decide whether it is in their best interests to fire again. Whilst I think BBs are undervalued in surface combat I feel they are overvalued in their ability to damage land units and this might be made worse with a BB having two strikes. Coastal map squares will include land areas well out of range of any BB’s largest guns so I think it is unreasonable to assume that a BB could always damage land units seriously unless they are located near the coast ready to repel an invasion. Currently a BB can bombard a unit in a coastal square whether the BB is participating in an invasion or not. My solution to this is to weaken BB attacks versus land units but give amphibious assault craft the sort of firepower versus a land unit that might have been provided by an accompanying BB, thus assault craft also get two shots. I have tried this out in my scenarios and the AI seems to cope pretty well with this new capability. For those of you who think it unreasonable to give “landing craft” this type of firepower you might like to consider the massed rocket launchers which were mounted in some landing craft for shore bombardments. My other big issue with BBs is that some of the major powers operated BBs that were virtually obsolete (e.g. the RN R-class) as well as much more modern BBs and I do not want to give players the possibility of upgrading the old ships to levels which were historically impossible. I have identified two possible approaches to achieve this. The first is to give the powers most affected, actually the UK and USA, naval warfare level 3 from the start of my scenarios but make it prohibitively expensive to upgrade the old BBs. The problem with this is that it then becomes equally prohibitively expensive for players to build the new BBs that were a real feature of WW2. I have devised two solutions – the first is to put a number of the historic new BBs into the player’s production queue with naval warfare rating 3. However, if I did this for all capital ships, it would proscribe the player’s production strategy and not allow them to experiment with different investments in weapon systems. As a consequence I also give the player a number of Decision Events where they can choose whether to invest in more capital ships at level 3 but of course at a suitable cost which is less than what they would have to pay if using standard production. I also have to tune the cost of BB repair so that is not prohibitive for level 3 ships. This does make older BBs relatively cheap to repair but it seems to me to be a reasonable compromise to prevent a Colorado class from being magically transformable into an Iowa. This is I am afraid a rather clunky solution which does do the job for BBs but leaves the problem that the naval warfare research upgrade also applies to other ship classes and aircraft. Another approach and the simplest to implement is for the US older ships to be assigned to other countries such as Mexico or The Philippines but I find it is unappealing for well known US ships to be flying another country flag. It would be better in my view if each major country had two variants of every unit type as this would allow interesting variations in land and air units as well as naval but perhaps it is too much to ask Hubert to do that when it is possible to go some way with the current editor. Thus for the USA you can create a new minor country that comprises part of the existing West USA and one port on the Atlantic coast so that units can be launched into either ocean. There is already a spare country in SC called Nanjing but you could also combine some French overseas territories and free up country slots without a great loss of realism. The UK is more problematic as its relatively smaller geography could make it too easy for an opposing player to target the new minor and knock it out of the war. Perhaps in this case I could accept the idea of some older British ships being operated by Canadians. Japan and Italy also have some problems with respect to ship mix but not quite so acute as the US and UK. In the case of Japan I tend to assign the 4 x Kongos which were partially updated Battlecruisers into heavy cruiser units as they were fast. I also give IJN CA units 2 hits but with a lesser NA rating on the basis that real IJN heavy cruisers had very powerful arrays of torpedoes. So my IJN CA unit typically consists of about 45k tons of real ships being 1 x Kongo plus 2 x CL (light cruisers) plus 2 x DD, the other composition being 3 x CA (heavy cruisers) plus 1 x CL plus 2 x DD. Thus Japans BB units end up being Yamato, Musashi, Nagato (+ a CA), Mutsu (+ a CA), Hyuga + Ise (+CLs), Yamashiro + Fuso (+ CLs). I give Yamato and Musashi strength 12 and NW 2, Nagato and Mutsu NW 1 and the others NW 0. If the Axis player decides to invest in NW then can get up to 3 and up rate any of the ships if they wish which reflects things like improved radar. I am not too bothered from a realism perspective as the IJN offset their initial lack of radar with excellent night fighting training. Each unit represents 90,000 or so tons of heavy units. With respect to Italy she also had a big disparity in her BBs some having 12” guns and some 15”. Even her modern 15” BB’s had a very poor rate of fire so I am happy to limit them to a maximum NW of 2 and to start her with 1 and her smaller BBs can be rated at NW 0. Fortunately Italy never has many MPPs so excessive up rating is not a major issue. If you want to use the editor to give BB units 2 strikes then open the scenario with the editor as described in my earlier post. You go to the “campaign” menu header and click on “Edit Country Data”. A new box will appear and at the bottom left hand side of the box you will see two sets of 3 buttons each. You want the top button in the second column “edit combat target data”. Click on this and you will get yet another box with its left hand column a list of all the countries and the column next to it a list of all the unit types. Select Japan as your country and Battleship as the unit type. You now see the combat attributes for a Battleship. The number of strikes entry is in the middle box (General) second one down in the right hand column. For standard scenarios it should currently be set at 1. Adjust it with the arrow key to 2. You can either select specific countries such as UK, USA, Germany and Italy and adjust their values individually or you can use the apply data button to propagate values throughout all countries. This is a powerful tool and you might want to be cautious about using it. Essentially the button causes a new list of all countries and all unit types to appear and you can select individual countries and unit types on the lists or all countries and all unit types. When you press the OK button then all the countries and units you have selected will be changed to be the same as those for Japan because Japan was the original country we were modifying – as I said before be very careful when using this feature. I also reduce the soft attack of BB’s to 0 and you can do this in the same way as above but look for “soft attack” entry at the top left of the combat values box. However, I leave the de-entrenchment and morale impacts as they are so BBs do still have an impact against land targets. If like me you also want to set amphibious assault units to have two strikes then go through the same process as for BBs but this time choose amphibious transport. I will deal more fully with amphibious units in another post. Regards Mike

Replying to both PowerGmBh and SeaMonkey - I think it is quite apparent if you do an economic analysis that the strategic bombing campaign failed to achieve its objective which was to win the war on its own. However, you have to ask yourselves what other strategy could the UK follow before first the Soviets and then the USA entered the war. Strategic Bombing was the only method that Churchill could offer as a possible war winning strategy. There was no way that the British Navy could win the war it could merely prevent the UK from losing it. The UK manpower resources were never going to threaten the Axis in a land army. We know now that Strategic Bombing would not have won the war but at the time it was the only game in town. After the Russians and then the US came in, it served as a method of demonstrating to the Soviets that we were at least doing something. The difficulty for SC is that players know that Strategic Bombing will not win but it is a method of somewhat weakening the Axis. If players were asked to pay the true cost that Britain and the US invested in heavy bombers then they would not do it. My compromise with respect to prices is that I make heavy bombers the same price for the UK and the US as a a BB unit. The Axis never produce a successful mass production 4 engined bomber so I make their units relatively cheaper but less capable. I also provide minor Allies of the US and UK with a much lower cost bomber unit which is less capable in terms of strategic attack but good for long range recce over water. I will discuss a possible solution to making the bomber unit more useful in a later post but essentially my idea is that bombers are given an additional mission type to deliver supply to cut off or low supply units. I do not have a better idea than speed evasion for your lone unit but I would point out that this was what really happened to German Raiders in WW2 so I cannot argue against it happening in SC. Regards Mike

Hi Colin It is an interesting idea but in fact bombing had much less impact on civilians than the politicians thought it would. Clearly nobody liked being bombed but it tended to make people hate the enemy even more and thus motivated to fight harder and perhaps less likely to surrender. In my own scenarios I have created atomic weapons that are more under player control (they are heavily beefed up rockets) but any side making substantial use of them suffers morale problems amongst their own population due to a moral back lash. Regards Mike

As it is Christmas and I am going to visit family for a couple of days, I will give you another post to think about this time concerning unit costs and production timescales. The key thing to note here is that SC is an entertainment loosely based on WW2 as both relative pricing and timescales are well adrift of historical accuracy. However, that being said it is possible to make it somewhat more historically accurate without necessarily detracting too much from its entertainment value. It is far easier to review historic production timescales than costs and a reasonable period from order to commissioning for a battleship in the WW2 era would be 4 years rather than the standard SC 15 months. Thus Bismark was ordered in the first half of 1936 and commissioned in August 1940. The production of a new range of BBs (the Iowa Class) was approved by Congress in May 1938 and the first Iowa was ordered in July 1939 and commissioned in Feb 1943. The RN battleship Prince of Wales was ordered in July 1936 and commissioned in January 1941. Looking at similar historic data would give us 4 years for a CV (except where conversions were used), 2 years for a CA, 15 months for a DD and 9 months for an SS. The much shorter timeframes for SC are quite understandable in terms of allowing players to have more influence over the composition of their fleets. However, it is possible to have more accurate construction times whilst adding a degree of choice and the mechanism already exists to do this. The Axis player can for example choose whether Shinano completes as a BB or a CV. In my own scenarios I give a historically accurate choice for the USA between more CAs and more carriers. Other Decision Events to turn partly completed warships into MPPs would not be against history – both Germany and Italy had on off periods with respect to the construction of CVs so it is sensible to give them a shorter production time and lower cost to reflect work already done. My own preference is in the main to go with history so I populate the production queues with warships to emerge at the appropriate times but I can fully understand those who would not want to do this. Establishing the true cost of warship production in WW2 so that it can be compared with that of other unit types is far more complicated. A government’s spending in war time often includes aid to strategic industries that are needed to develop critical weapons for the future. Quite how much of this spending should be associated with the production of any specific unit is clearly debateable. Different governments followed different policies, thus the US statistics seem to indicate that US BBs cost typically 5 times as much as those built in the UK. The IOWA class were larger ships and superior in other ways to the RN KGV class but not by a factor of 5! In order to obtain reasonable comparisons between SC unit types, I have tried to compare in country data for those units. The first thing that this comparison indicates is that by far the most expensive unit should be the heavy bomber. As an example, each squadron of heavy bombers deployed in the UK required its own dedicated all weather airfield. The UK constructed over 180 airfields for Bomber Command alone without counting those for the US. The construction cost of each of these airfields was immense, approximately equivalent to 10% of the cost of constructing a battleship. Unlike port facilities they could not be used for any other purpose so their cost should realistically be spread across the units deployed. Thus the cost of the UK heavy bomber force is already equivalent to 18 real battleships or at least 9 x SC BB units even before we have built any planes! The heavy bombers deployed by the RAF each cost around 2.5% of a battleship. Given the actual strength of Bomber Command with its penchant for 1,000 bomber raids the two units allowed in standard SC are each representing at least 500 actual planes. This adds the equivalent cost of another staggering 25 real battleships or at least 12 x SC BB units. I could go on and give you the statistics of fuel and bombs used by the bombers but I will just add a simple estimate produced by the British Admiralty that calculated the cost of deploying 53 medium (not heavy) bombers was broadly equivalent to that of deploying one battleship. Thus the true relative cost of a BB unit in SC should be one tenth that of a heavy bomber. You might like to pause for a moment and wonder whether at least some of the truly enormous investment the UK made in its Bomber Command might have been better spent elsewhere (anti-U Boat planes for Coastal Command?). Part of my enjoyment of war games is because of the opportunity they can give to evaluate the consequences of different weapons’ strategies. I should own up that I do not use an MPP value that recognises the real cost of heavy bombers as it would never be sensible to build them but I do make them more costly than in the standard game and broadly equivalent to a BB unit. Any attempt to compare the cost of naval versus land units in SC brings us to the difficult issue of what part running costs should play in SC pricing. Just as an example if we examine the number of units actually deployed by the UK, US and German armies and the number allowed in SC, we come to a broad brush figure of an SC army equating to about 200,000 troops and an SC corps 100,000. Thus an army might be between 10 and 20 divisions (German divisions shrank in size as the war progressed) and a corps between 5 and 10. For the convenience of most readers I will work in $ and use a broad brush figure of $2 per day for pay cost in an army (US soldiers got more, UK ones a bit less!). This gives us a monthly pay cost for an army of $12m. Even if we choose to ignore the ongoing costs of maintaining an army we need to allocate some time for initial training and the SC standard production delay of 4 months for an army might serve for that. We have therefore $48m training cost. To this we must add rifles at $30 per infantry man, machine guns and mortars at $80, anti-tank and AA guns at $5,000 and artillery at $10,000 per gun. Further expenditure must be added on uniforms, communications and transport even in non-motorised units as horses at about $50 per head were not cheap to purchase and expensive to maintain! By the time all these are added you get to approximately the cost of 1.5 to 2 x WW2 era battleships for a US motorised infantry division – I should note that the crews of an SC BB unit would not amount to more than about 5,000 men so the manpower cost is not such a significant factor. Thus SC motorised army and BB units should be broadly equivalent in cost of production but the army ongoing running costs will very rapidly exceed those of the BB. Moving on to consider the relative production cost for naval units themselves. I use the following broad brush approximations for naval units – 90k tons for BB units containing 1 or 2 actual real battleships plus a few escorting destroyers, 45k tons for CA units typically containing 2 or 3 heavy cruisers plus some light cruisers and destroyers, 40k tons of shipping for CV units typically containing CV, CVL and light cruisers and destroyers plus the cost of the aircraft. Destroyer and Submarine units are special cases in my scenarios as the actual units at sea at any one time are judged to be around 30% of those in the unit and I allow immediate re-builds at 30% cost. This means that the initial build cost has to somewhat higher as the number of real destroyers represented per unit is around 30 and real submarines about 36. I should mention that some capabilities of my BB units are enhanced – for example as it has twice the tonnage of a CA and better gun range I give it 2 strikes but will cover this more fully in a later post. My relative costs per unit are CV and BB about the same, CA about half a BB or CV, DD about 90% of a CA, SS about 30% of a CV/BB. I give these figures as approximate because I apply some country variation e.g. to recognise that Germany would get some economies of scale by building many submarines. Costs and production timescales can be adjusted in the “edit country data” menu. Regards Mike

Hi Bill Thank you for your comment. Hi PowerGmBh I understand your concern about the possibility of excessive interaction for a player trying to slip a fast ship through a congested area. I think the player would need to choose at the beginning whether their mission was such that the ship needed to get to a target point (e.g. raiding a convoy route or a port) or whether they were prepared to engage in conflicts where the odds were good. Thus they would put themselves into a "silent" type mode in the first case and just aim to go through and automatically stop if the odds were opportune in the second. In the silent mode case the player would not even be told if they had a near miss as one could imagine they saw some sort of ship, might be an MS or a warship, and they headed rapidly away before identifying what it was. Of course there should always be some possibility that an encounter might take place whatever the mode to take account of night or storms. Regards Mike

When you consider both the elapsed game time between player turns and distances represented by each square then it is apparent that the range of naval units is too low. I have discussed the sorts of distances a square in SC might represent in my post on Patrol Aircraft. However, for the sake of simplicity let us assume that each square’s sides are 100 nautical miles long. This would mean that a vessel moving diagonally between the central locations of two adjacent squares would travel 140 nautical miles. Let us take this as a reasonable maximum travelled per square and compare that with the capabilities of WW2 warships. In the standard scenarios each player’s turn is 14 days long and turns are alternate and hence sequential. Thus the elapsed time between the start of two turns by the same player is 28 days. WW2 warships had typical cruising speeds in the range of 15 – 20 knots. Many of them could steam much faster than this but increases in speed had a serious impact on the distance they could travel without refuelling. In the later war years refuelling at sea became a well established technology so, for example, the US Fleets could stay at sea virtually indefinitely and still steam fast if the need arose. However, for the sake of this analysis we do not need to take account of that as even the cruising speed will do to make my point. There is one caveat to this which is that, whilst DDs were typically the fastest ships, their relatively small size compared with CAs and even larger ships meant that their fuel carrying capacity and hence their range was much lower. German DDs were particularly short ranged thus they could not for example accompany Bismark on her foray into the N Atlantic. Disregarding DDs we can assume that most WW2 warships could steam continuously at 15 knots for 24 hours per day for the entire game turn period of 28 days. Thus a warship might travel just over 10,000 nautical miles or 72 of our worst case diagonal squares. Even if we limited movement to the elapsed time in a player’s own turn that would still be 36 squares and even WW2 DDs could achieve that. To give a couple of real examples from WW2 the Japanese fleet which attacked Pearl Harbor departed Northern Japan on Nov 26th and attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th. Historically this ought to be possible within an SC game turn being less than 14 days but actually the distance is around 30 SC squares so not possible. Parts of the Pedestal Convoy which relieved the siege of Malta had assembled in Scapa and set off on 31st July. The first ships of the convoy reached Malta 14 days later having travelled in SC terms through 37 squares – again not possible in the game. I have tried out scenarios with longer ranges for warships but there seems to be a restriction at 25 squares. I can understand this as I presume the AI would be under some pressure to evaluate so many options if units could be moved to potentially huge numbers of different squares. However I do think longer ranges would be more realistic and I tend to use numbers in the range of 15 – 18 for SS; 15 – 20 for DDs and 18 – 24 for BBs, CVs, CAs and troop transports. I also use 14 day simultaneous turns so my elapsed time between a player’s turns is only 14 days thus my maximum ranges are not too far from reality. I should note that my experimental scenarios usually start in May 1942 so effectively doubling the number of turns actually makes them closer in total turns to a scenario starting at the beginning of the war. I have looked at modified maps and other approaches used by scenario designers that address this range issue which is particularly relevant to the vast Pacific Ocean. One I liked was Nupremal’s map which locates the line of discontinuity, where the map rolls round, to be near Midway Island rather than through the middle of N America. In Nupremal’s implementation players cannot pass through parts of the Pacific centre line or map edge unless they own the islands nearby. This is clever because it actually demonstrates why the Japanese wanted to own that space. It also removes the anomaly that players cannot operate across the US whilst they can across Europe and the USSR. However, I am not sure how it impacts the actual engagements that might take place in that vicinity since I have not actually played it. Nupremal’s map is to an even larger scale than the standard scenarios and measures 512 x 220 squares. Thus unfortunately his larger scale actually makes the naval range problem even worse as he only allows a CA unit to move 18 squares which would be less than 1500 nautical miles which it could complete in reality in less than 5 days out of the 28 available. If you want to give naval units longer ranges this is not a difficult modification and you can use a similar approach with the editor to that which I described in my earlier post concerning Patrol Aircraft. I have not encountered any obvious problems with the AI being able to handle this sort of increase in naval unit range. Regards Mike

Hi PowerGmBh Thank you for your comments. I agree with you that the turn structure can mean that naval units can be effectively trapped and this is of course a big problem for the side with a weaker navy. It was what really happened to the Bismark. My proposal for SC3 to allow faster units to evade combat gives one possibility. It would then require the slower but stronger fleet to attempt to slow down the faster unit by use of faster lighter ships or air attacks which was again what happened with both Bismark and Scharnhorst. One of my suggestions with respect to speed evasion was that the evading unit should ideally be allowed to continue as if there had been no contact if evasion succeeded thus effectively pass through opposing units in SC. I think I prefer this to your idea of a random replacement as there would be an objective such as a convoy lane or a port which the evading ship was trying to reach. In reality of course Bismark was detected by RN cruisers and then shadowed until Hood and PoW intercepted her and subsequently after the battle she evaded the shadowers. I guess there is too much complexity to introduce the concept of shadowing but on balance I think a chance for evasion followed by continuation of mission would be a reasonable compromise. If the target say, Bismark, encounters a faster but lighter ship then she might be potentially stopped to engage that ship giving an opportunity for the opposing players to bring up heavier units to engage when it is their turn. I think this is a reasonable compromise although it effectively elongates the engagement timescale. It could be implemented in SC with surface ships having a silent mode similar to submarines indicating that the player wanted the unit to try to evade rather than stand and fight even if that player's unit was stronger than the interceptor (although there would have to be a chance that it might have to fight). However, in the case of surface vessels there should be no reduction of range for ships in "silent mode". Your point about other ships joining in the battle is partially addressed by my suggestion for ships (e.g. CA units) to be designated as having an escorting role so that they would interpose themselves if a transport or CV unit was threatened. It would be an improvement on the current situation where each defending unit is effectively on its own when attacked. Hi pzgndr I understand your point about naval unit density but I think you lose a lot in a war simulation (particularly a naval one) when you do not have a reasonable number of the famous named units to deploy. I have tried to address the idea of deploying units to a theatre with my suggestion of treating DD and SS units as if they are a theatre allocation rather than all the vessels actually at sea at any one time. Thus they can be instantly re-built for 30% of the unit cost. This can provide a few anomalies because the rebuilding has to be in a home port but in my view gives a better feel for WW2 in terms of the number of ships represented without cluttering the map and without the risk of having a country's entire fleet of submarines wiped out in a single turn. I agree with your point about tuning combat target values to address the difference in capability between land based and sea based air. In fact I tune ctv's to address individual country capabilities and even differences within a country. Thus my IJN carrier fighters are very long ranged from the start to reflect the capability of the Zero but Japanese land based fighters are relatively short ranged to reflect the capability of the IJA's Oscars and Nates. Any Japanese research into longer ranged aircraft does not benefit their carriers but does apply to land based fighters. During the early war years land based air was typically superior to that on carriers as they could sustain greater weight on take off so could be better armoured and so on. However, in the later years fighters carried on CVs were much more comparable and fighter control techniques and radar aboard carriers enabled them to vector plenty of fighters to repel attacking aircraft so the distinction should be less and I allow carrier based air to improve its air warfare ratings by suitable research to match that of land units. Hi Hubert I am glad you are finding these posts useful. I have several more prepared covering other aspects but will wait to post those in case this current discussion continues. Regards Mike

Hi SeaMonkey I think the lack of a "night mode" plays a part in that. The real land based air on Guadalcanal forced the IJN to use night ops and make desperate efforts to bombard Henderson out of action. However, it sort of works because if the bombardment is successful then the BBs etc which have to stay next to the island are OK but if the bombardment was not fully effective then the Henderson planes get a go at the ships which was what really happened when USN ships intervened as well to delay the IJN withdrawal. The difficulty is that the IJN BBs cannot withdraw after the initial bombardment whether or not USN ships intervened so are not just targets for Henderson but also the US carriers which can move in from considerable distances or US land based air on other islands. I think you do have to accept some compromises in the interests of making the game less complex. In my view some way of increasing defensive evasion for ships against land units (i.e. land based air) for vessels capable of night ops might be a step forward. I will experiment with that but at present it would mean setting up the night ops/evasion capability at the beginning of the scenario because there is no way that I know of to change evasion in the game unless you create some new units that only become available at a fixed future date. I will let you know how I get on. Regards Mike

Hi Crispy I hope to do so but it needs a lot more work to check that it is somewhat balanced as it includes so many changes to the standard scenarios. I am concentrating on a scenario that starts in May 1942, as that cuts down some of the variations that require testing, and, whilst these posts concern naval realism, I have ideas about land and air warfare realism as well which I have incorporated in my actual test scenarios. My real purpose in posting this series at this time was to get reactions from other people to the naval ideas (so far a failure) and to give some of my ideas to other people who might incorporate them into scenario mods of their own. Regards Mike

The implementation of aircraft carriers in the standard scenarios of SC includes some nice features but in truth does not fully address the real complexity of the different types of carrier deployed in WW2. The Japanese were the real pioneers of WW2 carrier warfare. They recognised that they needed a variety of types in addition to the main fleet carriers. The two new types that they developed were essentially the CVL and the CVE. In developing the CVL they recognised that they could not afford to build sufficient fleet carriers to provide a degree of air protection, offensive air capability and reconnaissance to support all the naval task forces that they expected to deploy. Thus the characteristics of a CVL were that it should have sufficient speed to keep up with fleet units and sufficient air complement to carry out the 3 roles outlined above. The US did not have the same cost constraints as the Japanese but they too developed CVLs because they could get them into service quicker than building new CVs by converting already laid down cruiser hulls. The Japanese developed CVEs because they recognised the value of having air capability to use in support of the number of amphibious assaults and land campaigns, which they planned to happen in the same time frame, and where the potential opponent (the Dutch) only had limited land based air. CVE’s were not required to be as fast as CVs or CVLs and would typically be designed to carry bombers and fighters rather than torpedo planes. Japanese long term planning resulted in the pre-war construction of a shadow fleet whereby vessels designed and deployed for civilian use, such as liners and merchant ships, included features that would facilitate rapid conversion to CVEs once war came. The Allies were slower off the mark with CVEs but were able to achieve some conversions of their own as well as many purpose built ships which also became known as Jeep Carriers because they were plentiful and cheap. The Allies recognised the ability of the CVE to solve a different naval problem namely the protection of convoys from U Boat attack and it was the use of CVEs that finally dealt with the air gap problem in Mid-Atlantic. The problem with the standard SC scenarios is that they only provide for the fleet CV role and by merging real carriers into a relatively small number of CV units they lose the flexibility of deployment that the Japanese used to great effect in their initial campaigns. The implementation of CVs is also flawed in that it uses a one size fits all approach which it certainly does not when you compare the RN approach to carrier design with that of the IJN and USN. The RN knew that its carriers would have to fight in narrow seas such as the Mediterranean where land based air would be unavoidable. As a consequence RN carriers typically included armoured flight decks and hangars and as a consequence far smaller complements of aircraft. Effectively early war RN carriers with the possible exception of the Ark Royal were heavy armoured CVLs. This highlights another difficulty with respect to the CV unit in SC. They will necessarily come up against land based air units but problems of scale dictate that most land based fighter units in SC are effectively representing many hundreds of individual aircraft. SC CV units have the clever feature that they can provide two strikes and can therefore escort their own bombers. However, it hardly seems right that a USN CV unit supposedly representing at most two real CVs with a total aircraft complement of less than 200 aircraft might enjoy two strikes whilst a land based US fighter or tac bomber with a notional 500 aircraft can only have one. My solution to this is not to restrict the CV but to add to the capability of the land based air. Thus my land based US fighters get 2 strikes and 3 intercepts. Beefing up the capability of land based air for some countries (but not all) does make sense as there is just not enough room to deploy all the US and UK aircraft units that should historically be based in the UK. I do make an exception to the two strikes per carrier rule with respect to the RN CVs and they only get one. This was a difficult decision but necessary because RN CVs had both low numbers of aircraft per carrier and the aircraft themselves were not comparable in performance terms to those of the IJN. It is not a good solution to bunch real RN carriers together with, say, 3 or 4 real carriers per CV unit because the worldwide deployment of RN ships requires there to be a reasonable number of CV units. I should note one further feature of RN carriers that is difficult to replicate in SC. The UK was the first to develop a true night operations capability for their carriers and was the leader in fitting radar into aircraft. The success of the Taranto raid was entirely due to the fact that it was carried out at night. SC does not really recognise the difference between day and night fighting which is a pity for such naval campaigns as Guadalcanal. A naval attribute allowing a night ops mode would be an excellent addition to SC but in the absence of that I tend to play around with the loss evasion factor (you can adjust that in the editor along with other unit attributes). Perhaps a simpler enhancement to SC with respect to night operations might allow for a naval research item to vary the evasion factors. I do not usually try to implement a specific CVL unit in SC with the exception of the UK above. However, I do try to include many more CV units than the standard scenarios. Thus the UK has a build of 6 carriers in my scenarios but only 4 in the standard game. Japan starts my 1942 scenarios with 11 carriers on the map or building whilst in the standard 1942 scenario she has only 8. The CVE problem can only be addressed by allocating them to minor countries or by creating a new country such as USA West. Canada played a very major part in the Battle of the Atlantic so it is not unreasonable to give them the anti-submarine CVEs. In my scenarios I give them 4 units each with 2 strikes, a strike range of 4 and sub attack of 6. By the time these start to be allowed on the scene, late 1942, German U Boats are getting quite proficient at diving so 2 strikes are appropriate. I should note that a major benefit of CVE’s in the real war was not just the subs they sank but that their patrolling aircraft prevented the U Boats from running on the surface to keep up with the convoy and this limited the number of effective attacks the U Boat could make. For Japan I use Thailand as the source of its CVE’s and it gets 2 but they only have a single strike. For the US I use a new country and it gets 4 x CVE units. The US deployed large numbers of CVEs together (The Taffys had 6 or so actual CVEs per TF)) so they get 2 strikes but have stronger values for land than sea attack despite their successes in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Japanese experimented with some rather unsuccessful Battleship Carrier hybrids by converting Hyuga and Ise to include small flight decks. These achieved nothing of significance and I have not thought it worthwhile to attempt this conversion so in my scenarios they continue as BBs. The standard SC Decision Event to convert Shinano to a CV is not really historically accurate as the Japanese plan was actually to convert her to a super support carrier ferrying and repairing aircraft for use by real front line carriers. As SC does not have the concept of ships repairing or replenishing at sea, it is simpler to leave the player the option to deploy Shinano as a BB or CV. I do introduce a new Decision Event for the USA to choose whether or not to convert Cleveland Cruiser hulls to be developed as CVL’s. This DE results in either 2 new CV units or two new CA’s somewhat earlier. I have already explained in previous posts how you can modify unit capabilities so you can try out my ideas on CV, CVL and CVE if you wish. I will discuss unit pricing and build times in a later post. One final thought on aircraft carriers – one of the greatest operational research type improvements with respect to CVs in WW2 was achieved by the USN in damage control techniques. In the early period of the Pacific War aircraft carriers were extremely vulnerable to critical hits that might start uncontrollable fires amongst fuel or ammunition which would necessarily be exposed during the replenishment and deployment of aircraft. The US went to great lengths to minimise these risks and became far superior to the Japanese in this regard. This would be another argument in favour of making a research attribute to improve loss evasion which I mentioned above in the context of night ops. Regards Mike