Shipping losses

[Seminole]

Not familiar with the WA campaign side of things, so I'm hoping someone with experience can chime in.

It's April of '44 and as the Axis I'm showing 385 troop ships and 1437 cargo ships have been lost by the Allies.
Is this good, bad, or middle of the road?
Is there any rule of thumb for what kind of losses in these categories can start to cause concern for the Allies.

After the games I have now are finished I'm planning to switch sides for a bit I'm curious how to gauge losses in this category.

[Joel Billings]

Figure there are 40 turns to get to April 44. The Allies get 4 transports per turn, so about 160 transports. They start with 256, so that means they have around 416 to work with (AI gets 2 more per turn, so it would have 496). Unless I missed a change note re reinforcement levels, or something else about the rules, 385 sounds like terrible losses for the Allies. A human player would have almost nothing to work with. The AI would have something, but you really want 200 or more transports to put together a major invasion. Lifting the forces on D-day takes over 100, and that's just for the invasion forces. You need to be able to lift your follow up forces on the same turn as you order the invasion, so you need the 200-250 to get everything out to sea (especially the armored divisions). Based on analysis above, I wouldn't want to lose more than 200 transports before D-Day (over 300 would be bad).

[Q-Ball]

IMO, those losses are so disastrous that as a human it would be game over. Without the ability to move 3-5 divisions a turn via sea, you would never get the French landing built up enough to break out.

[Seminole]

IMO, those losses are so disastrous that as a human it would be game over.

Interesting. Not having played the Allies outside of BGI and Husky I hadn't paid particular attention to troop/cargo ship pools.
I'm going to have to compare those losses to another game I have that is almost at the same point, but has played out very differently (much more conservative/cautious WA strategy than in this one).

What's the primary factor in generating losses like this? I'm presuming he hasn't lost hundreds of troop ships manually moving units across the sea.

If his TFs stay at sea after amphib invasion and suffer damage, can that cost him troop ships?
Aside from the invasion turn are troop ships subject to other attrition effects? I'm really curious how to generate/mitigate these kind of losses.

Checking the rules I notice this:

The number of troop transports required for
amphibious movement is equal to the number required
for the naval strategic movement of land units for the
land units that are invading. The number of cargo ships
attached is equal to the number of troop ships. These
ships will remain attached to the amphibious HQ unit until
it is in a permanent port hex during a friendly logistics
phase, at which time they will be placed back into the
pool. If while at sea, the number of troop or cargo ships
falls below 10, then the appropriate ships will be taken
from the pool and attached to the amphibious HQ to
bring the number of troop and cargo ships back up to 10
(10 for each, although if there are not enough ships in the
pool to reach 10, no ships will be moved from the pool).

I suspect that his TFs being at sea for extended periods post-invasion is the source of his shipping attrition. Do I understand correctly that if a TF finishes a turn in a friendly port it is 'scrubbed' of troop AND cargo ships and can go back out to exercise sea control without incurring this kind of attrition? Or are a 10 cargo and troop ships accompanying TFs at all times?


I'm clicking through turns trying to test the FB swap to TACB issue I was experiencing and I turned off all auto naval patrol on both sides to speed up the turn resolution. I noticed that the Allies, without moving a single soldier from their starting positions, suffer serious cargo fleet attrition if they don't have the umbrella of naval interdiction paving their way. From turn 2 to turn 5 there has been a net reduction in Allied cargo ships (they produce 30 per turn, not sure if this stays constant throughout the war).

Allied players min/maxing their naval patrol may want to pay attention to this factor before it creates a problem for them.

[Seminole]

I confirmed that when committed to sea a TF takes 10 troop and cargo ships into its TOE. It will leave 'empty' if not part of an amphib invasion, but on the subsequent logistics turn it will acquire the ships required. It appears that as cargo and troop ships are damaged the TF takes additional ones from the pool to reach the minimum 10 threshold, but it does not release the damaged ships. Looks like you have to return to port during a logistics phase with them to drop them off for repair.

In my other game that has reached April '44 the naval losses are more modest.
Allies have lost 98 troop transports and 967 cargo ships.

Looking at production rates of 4 and 30 per turn respectively I should be able to derive the allied transport status.

In Game A (heavy losses detailed in first post) the Allies should have 43 troop ships and 1861 cargo vessels (it is late April '44, turn 44).
This represents 17% and 93% of the forces they had in week 1.
It only represents 10% and 56% of their notional force level (assuming no losses - but you will have losses in cargo ships each turn regardless of what you do from normal attrition)

In Game B (lower losses) the Allies should have 318 troop ships and 2241 cargo vessels (early April '44, turn 41).
This represents 124% and 112% of the forces they had in week 1.
It also represents 76% and 70% of the notional force level (assuming no losses).

[Joel Billings]

Aggressive use of Amphibs, especially on permanent stations can be very costly. From the manual:

16.6.2.1. Number of ships Attached to
an Amphibious HQ
Troop and Cargo transport ships must be attached
to amphibious HQs to allow amphibious transport
movement. Transports are moved from the ship pool to
the amphibious HQ unit at the moment units are told to
launch an amphibious invasion and can be seen listed
on the unit detail screen for the HQ unit in the same
place where other elements in the amphibious HQ unit
are listed. The number of troop transports required for
amphibious movement is equal to the number required
for the naval strategic movement of land units for the
land units that are invading. The number of cargo ships
attached is equal to the number of troop ships. These
ships will remain attached to the amphibious HQ unit until
it is in a permanent port hex during a friendly logistics
phase, at which time they will be placed back into the
pool. If while at sea, the number of troop or cargo ships
falls below 10, then the appropriate ships will be taken
from the pool and attached to the amphibious HQ to
bring the number of troop and cargo ships back up to 10
(10 for each, although if there are not enough ships in the
pool to reach 10, no ships will be moved from the pool).

Thus the player's note:
Player Note
Since maintaining a temporary port requires that
an amphibious HQ unit must be in a water hex
adjacent to the temporary port or in the temporary
port, using one amphibious HQ unit to maintain
several beachheads will reduce shipping attrition
as opposed to having to use multiple amphibious
HQ units. So there is an advantage to having
contiguous beachheads that can be serviced by a
small number of amphibious HQ units.

[Seminole]

Aggressive use of Amphibs, especially on permanent stations can be very costly.

Game A has an Allied player that is still finding his legs on generating Allied naval interdiction. Landings at Foggia and Salerno were captured and withdrawn respectively after several weeks. There have been additional landings to support the efforts to capture Sardinia and Corsica.
Game B's Allied commander has taken less interest in the Med. So far only an unopposed landing in the toe and an invasion of Sardinia.

I wasn't tracking shipping losses each turn, so I'm not sure when/where the bulk of those losses occurred.