Using the editor to improve naval realism

[mcaryf1]

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

[mcaryf1]

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

[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

[mcaryf1]

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

[crispy131313]

Hi Mike,

Will you be releasing a downloadable mod when you are complete?

[mcaryf1]

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

[SeaMonkey]

The reason you're probably not getting much reaction is because most of us agree with your variants and there's a lot more we hope will be incorporated into SC3 so that we don't have to resort to these manipulations.

You've already brought up one of my pet peeves, which is the disparity between CAGs and LB air groups. One of the big revelations of WW2 was the ability of LB air to trump naval units and islands were a primary projector of this reality, something that SC has not yet been able to capture to the historical degree.

[mcaryf1]

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

[SeaMonkey]

If you want to protect your bombarding naval vessels just be sure they have air support. Fighter intercepts can take a decent toll on attacking planes but with CAGs being able to strike twice the capability to soak off LB air intercepts is skewed.

I would much rather see air units able to provide multiple sorties until they reach a minimum strength level set by the owning player in the case of auto intercepts and of course the only limit to the number of attacks is decided on by the phasing player.

Just like IRL, if you continue to send your attacking planes out they start to suffer fatigue as well as casualties which will sap their efficiency and morale. Multiple sorties would work well with recon missions where air units could not only disclose enemy locations but also attack in the same turn.

Multiple use units will diminish the unit density and provide more flexibility in the limiting deployments that is a characteristic of SC maps and help offset the inability to stack. What does it matter if you attack with 5 units once or one unit five times?

[SeaMonkey]

One other thing about multi-task units, the ability to perform numerous missions should also be based upon the strength, morale, readiness and of course supply status of said unit(s). The players should have the ability to build units at certain strength levels, to not only economize on MPPs, but to also customize them to be task specific. Think of it as a sizing allocation, bigger, stronger units are capable of more tasks, but also have a denser footprint and their evasion characteristics are not as high as a smaller organization that is more agile and able to disperse.

[PowerGmbH]

mcaryf1:

I have read and re-read your posts on the Naval Issues, and i wonder following:

how would you adress the problem that a player can reassemble almost all ships of the north atlantic to bog down an ennemy ship.

isn't the main idea that Battle groups where meeting ennemy battle groups in their set formation and that there where no way in a given Time of the Battle, of joining in other Groups?

I thought of a possibility where there would be a sort of "same-level-chance-encounter" and after that BOTH units would be randomly replaced on other tiles ( range 1-4 ) in order to make it impossible ( or less possible ) for the player who is owner of the turn to bog down a single ship.

This is not a 100% feature, but i wanted to ask if you have thought of the above mentionned problem of assembling the Whoole North Atlantic Fleets in one single turn and how this problem could be minimized...

The Speed Factor would clearly be accounted in the calculations of a Same-Level-Chance-Encounter.

[pzgndr]

I've also been reading these posts. I think a big issue is how SC is limited to single unit stacking and doesn't use sea zones. At least for grand strategy scale. There's a lot we can do in customizing the naval units but if you try too hard to create an operational-level naval game then you can easily get bogged down with too many units and you lose a sense of subtlety with the war at sea.

I did two things with my Advanced Third Reich mod. First was keeping the naval unit density fairly low but increasing movement ranges. In 3R players simply moved naval units into a Front during quarterly turns and range wasn't an issue, and naval action was resolved once after all friendly and enemy units were committed. Second was making CAG and LB air CTVs different, emphasizing their relative strengths and weaknesses. These seem to have helped, at least for me relative to the generic campaigns.

We'll have to wait and see what Hubert has planned for the future to address some of these ideas.

[Hubert Cater]

Some excellent feedback and ideas here as well and I just wanted to thank you all as this will also give us some items to think about for the future.

Hubert

[mcaryf1]

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

[SeaMonkey]

All I can say is it sure is nice to have someone else beat this drum about "pass through" and evasion, of which long have I been an advocate. It would seem that with the new recon ability of SC air units, especially carriers, and a greater disparity in fast and slow naval unit movement capabilities, "the search" naval mechanism should gain greater prominence in future SC editions.

And as Bill(pzgndr) reflected upon, the seazones and patrol features of naval/air units assigned to them needs to be hashed out so that they reach a state of auto-control after initial settings by the players.

Continue on Mike, I'm firmly entrenched in your encampment!

[mcaryf1]

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

[PowerGmbH]

The "Speed" factor as a simple value could be an idea in regards to the question: What is an encounter between Naval Units?

Actually the ennemy Units pop up if your naval unit meets them in Range. Now if i make a mix between "Speed-Factor" , "Sid Meier's Pirates" and SC it could be defined as follows:

-If the engine marks up a standart "meeting" on the Sea, then a window would pop up and tell:

"Sir we have spot a "Naval Unit-Type" our Escape Chances are "Friendly-Speed-Factor / Ennemy Speed Factor" in %. Adtitionally our intelligence reports "Random-NavalUnits-Check of 1-2 Tiles around the Naval Unit Tile". A battle would have

"Possible Result"

Shall we engage? or shall we try to esacpe?"

A yes would stop your Naval Unit, while a No would use the Speed Factor difference to

escape.

Naturally this mode could become a Nightmere, if. i.e. an Axis Ship tries to make a Camouflage Transit through the Channel or through the North Atlantic filled up with DD's, and if then every 2 Tiles would come a Popup asking Yes or No.

Maybe this could be adressed with a sort or "Cruise-Mode" ( general Escape ) or a

"Patrol Mode" ( general engage )

Anyway, it could help to prevent this Ugly thing that one pops up in the middle of the Atlantic with a Ennemy Ship, ant next turn Arrives the Entire Allied Atlatic Fleet to Battle down a Simple Ship on "special-mission"...

[Bill101]

Hi Mike

I just wanted to say that I appreciate the posts even if I haven't commented on them, please keep them coming!

Bill

[mcaryf1]

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

[mcaryf1]

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

[Colin I]

Nice to see a quantitative thinker in the forums.

With bombers - its not clear to me if UK bomber command was worth the cost but we should consider national morale here. In terms of NM would like to see a revised system - its great that SC starts to consider this but its currently a bit simple. The effects of strategic bombing and rockets on morale should be greater. Maybe for each MPP production lost also reduces NM. Both sides went to a lot of effort to do this. In absolute terms the V rockets were not that effective but the degree to which such weapons shook politicians and populations was huge - even though Germany was clearly losing it may not have felt that way to a lot of people in 1944.

[mcaryf1]

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

[PowerGmbH]

mcaryf1: Well i would come back to the Naval System. If the cost of Bombers where really as you describe compared to Naval Units, how would you represent this in the Game?

If you come down to a simple game: Imagine a BB would cost 190 MPP while a BmbrCmd would cost 600 MPP... Who the heck would buy a BmbrCmd? If this Airfleets where as expensive as you said, then the whoole Allied Bombing Strategy shouold be regarded as a full failure regardless they won the war...

I had often advocated an idea of "effectivenes" Factor in this Game, where a Player ( and the AI ) is rated by the most effective way off winning, and not only by the simple Mass of production. but that's another theme.

How much would you let coste a BB? and respectiveley the other units and which Price differences could be affordable to a player? Which Units would be the "Base-Price" ?

And most of all: would you have an idea besides the "no stop if ennemy pops up" to prevent the ugly thing that All Hawks form North atlantic Attac one Simple ship after having met the ennemey the thurn before?

[SeaMonkey]

To expand on PowerG's excellent point, consider the definition of the SC unit, "Bombers". In retrospect we see that each nation had its own idea of what the "Bomber's" mission should entail and that is where it is up to the game designer to allow the customization of the "Bomber" concept to each individual player.

I ask you, given the cost estimate that Mike has laid out, would you buy a bomber if you could acquire it at minimal strength for a lessened cost?

Now, again, would the unit be more attractive if you could add embellishments such as long range, heavy(strategic mission), interdictive(supply, morale, effectiveness decreases), ground support, recon and of course the naval mission?

Seems like a pretty decent unit to add to your combat strategy and with the available upgrades to create a mission specific unit, or one that can have multiple roles but at a tremendous cost.

[mcaryf1]

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