How the sub war SHOULD pan out......

[Guest Mike]

http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsAtlanticDev.htm

A great read....now if only wargames would read like this! :cool:

Of particular interest is that subs could pass Gibralter without much bother, and the vast numbes of UK merchant losses in "home waters" - ie close to the UK in 1939 and 1940 - not way out in the Atlantic - both of which are not replicated in any recent WW2 game.

[Blashy]

Given the size of the map of SC2 that is simply not possible.

You would need a map that is at LEAST 4 times bigger to be able to represent all the tactical possibilities of naval maneuvering. You would then be able to roam around UK waters and raid.

[Timskorn]

Yeah, the only way you'd be able to get subs that close in SC2 is altering how spotting works with subs. Ie, bombers, fighters and ships don't automatically spot subs but have a % chance to spot each turn if in LOS.

Then you'd have to have a reason WHY you'd want them that close.

Would be interesting to give subs a % chance to slip by Gibralter. RN would need to keep a ship there or nearby, and Axis could take a chance on sending German subs to the Med.

[Guest Mike]

Blashy I agree - no way to do this with hexes & moving individual units.

so instead you'd have to go the other way entirely, and do sea combat, roles, etc, by sea zones - US Coastal, Newfoundland, Mid Atlantic, Western Approaches, UK Coastal, Nth Sea, Skaggerak, Coastal Europe Allied, Coastal Europe Axis, Norwegian Coastal, Straights of Denmark, Baltic, Gulf of Finland, Bay of Biscay, Eastern, Central & Western Med, Aegean, Black Sea.......etc

There's an intersting article on USAAF airgroups helping to guard the straights of Gibralter from Morroco - here

According to U-boat.net Germany sent 62 boats to teh med - 9 were sunk attempting passage, and 10 turned back

[ July 30, 2007, 10:09 PM: Message edited by: Stalin's Organist ]

[Bromley]

Expanding on what Timskorn says, the way to do it might be:

1. Subs are invisible.

2. There's a base chance that units/resources will spot them if they're within range.

3. That chance is modified by ASW, Sub tech, sub posture (silent or hunting).

4. If it's ship that spots them a surprise encounter is initiated.

5. I'm unsure about what to do with air. Maybe a surprise attack that doesn't reveal the location of the air unit?

6. The "pull" incentive to move subs closer to land might be an increased chance of convoy interception vs. hunting in the middle of the Atlantic.

7. Except for (6), convoy routes have to be kept as they are. Otherwise at this scale the sub hunt becomes either too involved or too difficult.

You'd also need a rule to allow subs to move through occupied ports, othrwise Gibraltar could be blocked. Either that or you move the port and allow fortresses opportunity fire against surface ships.

[pzgndr]

no way to do this with hexes & moving individual units. so instead you'd have to go the other way entirely, and do sea combat, roles, etc, by sea zones

And that's the dilemma. A choice between some abstract sense of operational maneuver or a more abstract strategic resolution. I like being able to move subs and fleets and having that operational feel.

The other piece of the sub war is how convoys are handled and how they can be raided. SC2 has fixed lanes defined by script, GGWAW has lanes defined by transports in connected sea zones, and CEAW has actual convoy transports which can be attacked directly. Each has its merits in their own way.

For a grand strategy game like this, there's no way to get around having to abstract the sub war to some degree. If you want more tactical realism, you need another game model.

[Lars]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

According to U-boat.net Germany sent 62 boats to teh med - 9 were sunk attempting passage, and 10 turned back

Er, 30% failure rate is not exactly slipping by with ease.

[Edwin P.]

For the sub war, the USA convoy routes should start at the Port of New Orleans and travel north along the Atlantic coast.

Why? Losses to subs were especially high along the Atlantic coast and in the Carribbean, until the USA navy learned from the British how to protect the convoys, and coastal cities turned off their lights at night as the glow from coastal lights highlighted the outlines of merchant ships and made it easy for Axis ships to target them.

With this change the Axis player would have a wider range of targets and the Allied player would find the job of protecting the convoy routes to me more challenging.

Chart of USA Merchant Shipping Losses by Region

I would also like to see a navy fleet's ability to avoid surprise encounters influenced by its experience and the experience of the opposing fleet.

[ July 31, 2007, 10:17 AM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]

[Timskorn]

Interesting, why was the Caribbean so high? Bermuda Triangle?

[Lars]

Time scale and skewed stats.

Between Drumbeat (early easy targets) and what gets counted as Carib or Atlantic, you can make the numbers work anyway you want.

Also note, it's only showing US merchant shipping.

[Edwin P.]

At last, in January 1942, Donitz was given the long-for permission to strike at the USA. "Operation Paukenschlag" ("Drum Roll") began in the middle of the month, and initially involved only five U-boats, manned by veteran crews, operating off the North American coast between the Gulf of St Lawrence and Cape Hatteras. In the space of two weeks the five U-boats sank 20 merchant ships totaling 150,000 tons. This was merely a foretaste of the massacre to come.

Though a hell for the crews of so many merchant ships, the eastern US seaboard in the spring of 1942 was a paradise for U-boat men. There was as yet no convoy system ; vessels sailed individually, making free use of their radios, fully lit at night, against the brilliantly illuminated backdrop of coastal cities where a blackout would not be fully in operation for another five months. During daylight hours the U-boats remained submerged, and surfaced at nightfall to wreak havoc with guns and torpedoes. On an average night, a U-boat might hope to claim three victims, with resulting immense losses in supplies and munitions.

For the U-boat men, these six months in what they termed the "golden west" were the high point of the submarine campaign. In May 1942 the number of U-boats operating on the Eastern seaboard reached a high point of 30 vessels, for the first time supplied by U-tankers (Type X and supply U-boats or "milch cows", (Type XIV). Each of these could keep a flotilla of a dozen Type VII's at sea for an additional month.

But by now the crest of success for "Operation Drumbeat" had peaked. In April 1942 the USA began to implement a convoy system for its coastal convoys, and this fully operational by August. The great slaughter, which had cost 360 merchant ships totaling about 2,250,000 tons, for a loss of only eight U-boats, was over.

But out in the Atlantic, the climax of the U-boat war was only just beginning.

[Edwin P.]

[Edwin P.]

Originally posted by Timskorn:

Interesting, why was the Caribbean so high? Bermuda Triangle?

Oil from South America

[Lars]

Which, if you will note, most of those red dots lie outside the Antilles Chain. Not what most people would call Caribbean.

[targul]

The present system of sub vs convoy is okay but I must admit the CEAW system is significantly better. The inability for both sides to find eachother while convoys pop up and disappear.

But our present ability to dive is also really kewl. I am hoping the lack of randomness for convoys will be overcome in the expansion by the new dive rules. Only time will tell.

[Timskorn]

Cool info guys. I like the map, I had no idea so much U-Boat activity happened around Cuba and South America.

[Lars]

Noticed the German warship loss on the map, got curious, had to go look it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_auxiliary_cruiser_Michel

They got blown away by a US submarine in Japan.

[arado234]

Just think what would have happened if donitz had the 300 uboats he said he would need.

[Blashy]

Originally posted by arado234:

Just think what would have happened if donitz had the 300 uboats he said he would need.

I've always said that was Hitler's number one big mistake of WW2... not listening to Donitz and wasting resources on surface vessels.

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by Lars:

Which, if you will note, most of those red dots lie outside the Antilles Chain. Not what most people would call Caribbean.

Sea zone grog alert!!

It's within cooeee and msot people would not be so picky!!

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by Lars:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

According to U-boat.net Germany sent 62 boats to teh med - 9 were sunk attempting passage, and 10 turned back

Er, 30% failure rate is not exactly slipping by with ease. </font>

[Guest Mike]

While looking up stuff for this I came across the reason the UK went straight to a convoy system - the sinking of hte SS Athena - aparently the U-boat thought it was an armed merchant cruiser, so a legit target - but it was only a passenger ship.

so the UK thought that it was all on, and went straight to convoys - as opposed to the US at the start of 1942.....

the first Brit convoys were actually outbound, and organised from about 7 September 39 - they would convoy to about 750 miles from lands end then disperse on their individual courses durign night.

[Lars]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Lars:

Which, if you will note, most of those red dots lie outside the Antilles Chain. Not what most people would call Caribbean.

Sea zone grog alert!!

It's within cooeee and msot people would not be so picky!! </font>

[Guest Mike]

more groggy stuff about shipping - numbers, tonnages, losses, value of LL and reverse LL to various countries, stocks of food, munitions, manpower - getting pretty deep...

Hyperwar

[SeaMonkey]

Good stuff SO and you are so right. Perhaps seazones could be better, but I kind of like the manuevering of my naval assets in the tactical role and after all the sea is nothing but a desert of water.

Eventually we'd like to entertain the thought of having the Pacific theater, so if seazones are a better fit, then I'm all for it.

I just don't have any experience with seazone mechanics. How do they work?

I used to play a board game called "The Hunt for Red October", coupled with "Red Storm Rising" had some nice strategic features of both land and sea.

I would really like a naval system to capture the essence of "The Search", since it seems that was the most influential dynamic of the sea battles.