Placement and Strength of German Fleets From the Queue

[Fubarno]

It doesn't seem realistic to be able to initially place the German fleets that are in the production queue at the start of the 1939 campaign game in a captured French port. These fleets, Prinz Eugen, Bismark and Tirpitz, were built in German shipbuilding facilities and took many years to complete and outfit and should only have a German port as an placement choice.

Subsequent production initiated by the player could then be built in captured ports on the French coast only if the port was in player control at start of production. This seems more realistic.

Furthermore, the inclusion of a seperate cruiser fleet for the Prinz Eugen seems a bit unbalanced. In SC1 I imagined that a Bismark fleet would include the Prinz Eugen as historically they sortied out together. Also, the full strength ship counters I thought represented not just one ship but a fleet, ie., a BB counter might represent a single BB, a CC and a couple DD's. An aircraft carrier fleet is a carrier and escort CC's and DD's.

Wouldn't an aditional U-Boat fleet in the queue instead of a cruiser fleet better reflect the historical strength, direction and strategy that the German navy was pursuing in WW2?

BTW the game is great!

[Liam]

probably 2 more subs and minus 2 or 3 cruisers by late 40 yes

[Fubarno]

I don't know what algorythims HC used for his order of battle or what the actual order of battle is for Germany's WW2 navy.

Maybe someone more knowledgeable than myself on the subject can comment about actual force levels of the major combatants navies, but as it is it seems that Germany is too powerful in the surface fleets.

Maybe three sub fleets accurately represents what the Germans had at the start of the war, but wouldn't they have had any appreciable numbers of U-boats in the construction pipeline when the war started?

Also, the main point, why can queued up fleets be placed in captured French ports? Did the get a big trailer and tow the hulls across the countryside on the autobahn with a kubelwagen trailing saying "wide load"?

[Cheese Panzer]

Originally posted by Fubarno:

I don't know what algorythims HC used for his order of battle or what the actual order of battle is for Germany's WW2 navy.

Maybe someone more knowledgeable than myself on the subject can comment about actual force levels of the major combatants navies, but as it is it seems that Germany is too powerful in the surface fleets.

Maybe three sub fleets accurately represents what the Germans had at the start of the war, but wouldn't they have had any appreciable numbers of U-boats in the construction pipeline when the war started?

Also, the main point, why can queued up fleets be placed in captured French ports? Did the get a big trailer and tow the hulls across the countryside on the autobahn with a kubelwagen trailing saying "wide load"?

You've come to the right shop, F, so pull up a chair and I'll bore you silly with matters nautical.

1) Queued up ship: The game allows forces to be placed in any city or port in overland communication with the home nation's Capitol. This keeps the Germans from having to build everything in Warsaw before marching it into Russia. It's OK for airfleets and armies but yes, it makes for some odd results for ships. If I had to guess I would say it was probably easier to code a general rule than it was to have to code a set of exceptions for each country.

2) The German starting U-boat force was relatively small, 40 or 50, and that includes all the small coastal subs and older boats used for training. Germany sent 21 subs to sea at the start of the war, and when they finally settled in to a regular operating tempo roughly 1/3 of all the boats would be at sea at any one time; of the rest 1/3 were in transit to or from the Atlantic and the other 1/3 were in port preparing for the next sortie. Germany did not start producing the huge numbers we associate with WWII until 1940.

3) I haven't got the game open in front of me, but even allowing that the German ships were twice as good as the Allies, the Germans would have roughly 2 BB and 4 CA (figuring 1 BB or 2 BC/CA, and a light cruiser and some destroyers in each counter). But the Allied fleets would be much larger: Britain started the war with 12 BB (6 counters) plus it had 5 more under construction (2-3 more). Add to that 16 heavy crusiers and battle cruisers (4 counters) and 41 light cruisers (say, 2 more after deducting escorts for the BB's and CA's) plus twenty more under construction (again, 2 more).

The carriers are a real problem, as Britain only had 5 fleet carriers plus two more completing in 1940 (and bad ones at that) and two useful light carriers at the start of the war. That means each of those three carrier units is 2-3 ships with less than 100 planes - keep in mind that land air fleet is about 1,000(!).

France had 6 old BBs, 2 modern BCs, and 17 assorted cruisers, say roughly 2 BB and 3 CA units. They would get another BB if they survived until late 1940.

Italy had 4 old BBs, 7 CAs, and 12 CLs (so 2 BB and 3 CA, plus one more BB complete in 1940).

Russia had three old BBs, and 5 cruisers. Russia should really only have one CA in each Sea so I suspect htey were given two for design reasons. They certainly don'ty deserve two based on their historical order of battle.

Hope this answers your questions.

[Fubarno]

This answers quite a bit, very nicely thanks. And, it wasn't the least bit boring

I'm no programmer, but it seems like it wouldn't be extremely dificult to create code that would dictate fleet placement restrictions.

So it seems gameplay/balance reasons had a strong influence on how the fleets were apportioned for each country rather than some strict historical formula.

Well, I guess we'll be looking forward to some interesting adjustments to the order of battle from scenario editors, but the placement function of queued up fleets is another issue. I don't know if others think of it is an important enough issue to be included in a patch.