Why aren't the Italian Littorio BBs in the queue?

[Elessar2]

[Applies to WIE too]

I just noticed something-or, rather, didn't notice it. For both titles I typically play Crispy's Fall Weiss scenarios, but have been working on a testbed scenario based off of WaW's 1939 scenario.

In FW there is a script to bring in the 1st 2 Littorio's once Italy is in the war. I would have sworn this was a vanilla script however and one I've seen happen in vanilla games.

Welp Italy joined, but the BBs never showed up. Checking the Unit scripts noticed there wasn't one, nor are they in the build queue. This is very strange because they were already sailing around and being tested in the fall of '39. In the case of every other capital ship laid down before the war begins, they are all in either the queue or in a script, except the Littorio's.

Needless to say this makes it rather hard for Italy to survive heading into 1941-42, since they'll have just the 3 starting prewar BB's, and their financial situation will make it difficult to spring for any capital ships early on-and of course they'll have to wait 16 months for them even if they can afford them. There is an HQ in the build queue, but frankly it isn't really needed since Italy can get not 1 but 2 from 2 DE's.

For balance purposes I'd change Italy's prewar BBs to battlecruisers [note there were actually 4, but the typical SC design philosophy is to build ~75% of all capital ships], since after their 1930's refit that is basically what they were in terms of armor, speed, and guns.

More balancing can be done by giving the RN more starting BBs of their own: they had 12 before the war started, but in SC there are only 3...

[BillRunacre]

When designing the navies the aim was to get a rough balance between the respective forces, and offhand I'm not sure if we want to add any more ships (or change the class of those they do have) because as you say, it might then require adding more to the Allies.

[GiveWarAchance]

Those are really majestic and stylish.
Look at this rare photo of the powerful Vittorio Veneto test firing her guns.

https://preview.redd.it/bf87usv54s241.j ... 0aa1d4f22c

[SittingDuck]

When designing the navies the aim was to get a rough balance between the respective forces, and offhand I'm not sure if we want to add any more ships (or change the class of those they do have) because as you say, it might then require adding more to the Allies.

I guess the question is, historically can we say there was a rough balance? There is gaming, and then there is history. And then this is history-oriented wargaming.

When doing the latter I think it's important to have to face 'historical odds'. But that's me.

[Hubert Cater]

The problem is players will not repeat the same mistakes as history, add more Italian ships and things will be out of balance unless as Bill mentions you compensate with more Allied ships. Then once that happens, maybe the Germans need (let's say) more subs and so on.

And once you do that you are essentially back to where we are currently at, balance wise, with just more ships on the map. More ships could be a good or bad thing, just depends on what you are after overall.

Then, arguably, it just comes down to personal taste at that point and players can also modify as they see fit as well via the Editor.

But just adding more Italian ships IMO, will be problematic, unless you want the Italian navy to not repeat the mistakes of history and win the battle for the Med likely every game. Again, that could also be desirable, and certainly moddable as desired as well.

On our end, we try our best to balance things out overall, e.g. the number of units, game balance and so on, and not everyone will necessarily agree, and we understand that too.

[AlbertN]

I may be wrong as I've like 2 MP games in which I lost sorely but how exactly 1 extra Italian BBs is to help assuming 1 represents both VV and Littorio?

I saw the Italian Navy just sink in 2 turns if the Allies come and eat it. The UK + French navy just get deep up into Trieste, fearless of anything. Ultimately the CV have double shot, and can provide cap.

The german submarines tickle the build points, that same UK ignored them, still invaded N. Afrika in February '41, kept Egypt, invaded a few other places just because I think it's scott free, contested air space over bay of Biscay without problems in '41 and once ASW 1 levle was hit, the German submarines as well all sank in 2-3 turns, non relevant of experience accrued over 1+ year of raiding. (It was more a problem to find them than to sink them)

I do not believe 1 or even 2 or even 3 Italian BBs would alter ewhat is to happen in the Med. The CW used 2 CVs, they start with 3. (The 3rd was bombing the hell out of some portughese colonial unit in Mozambique as the CW was aggressign that).

So allow me - which 'mistakes' exactly the Italian fleet did? The 'mistakes' may be at higher level - development (lack of radar, lack of aircraft carrier - paired up with a slow interface between navy and airforce).
Gunnery battles were 'even' with the Royal Navy. (Punta Stilo and Capo Telauda)
Capo Matapan was a CV business vs Italians, and subsequent night engagement.
Etc.

On the other hand in defense of the design I believe not all the W.Allies BBs are individually represented.
And Italy having 3 BBs is quite a generous allocation at the start of the war. That kind of includes already the VV and Littorio pretty much (Albeit I'd knock 1 of these ships to have already 1 tech level in Naval Warfare and anti air to represent the modern BBs).

[Elessar2]

The script in question provides 2 BBs when Italy enters the war. Your argument seems to boil down to "The Regia Marina is hosed no matter what we might give them in the editor, so we need not bother at all to give them a fighting chance", which seems to be a massively circular argument to me.

Note I already suggested giving the UK 2 more BBs of their own to compensate: they started with 12 of their WWI vintage superdreadnoughts, but the game only gives them 3-and Germany seems perfectly balanced to me given that it does get ALL of its capital ships, plus all 3 panzerschiffe, tho none of its light cruisers aside from one DE (most of which are subsumed into other unit counters). In what scenario does it make sense for Germany to get 4/4 of their heavies, while Italy only gets 3/7? (If I include the Roma-BTW it was an ocean liner with the same name which got converted into the Aquila)

An AAR I am following on YT by a forum member has had the RM so neutralized by 1942 that the RN can afford to move almost its entire fleet to the Pacific to battle the Japanese in conjunction with the USN. The reason why the Italians didn't secure the Med historically is that they were very sparing in the use of their major ships, preferring harassing raids by torpedo boats-and the one time they did get aggressive (Battle of Cape Matapan) they lost 3 heavy cruisers for their trouble (tho they only brought along one battleship).

[Chernobyl]

One concern is not making the seas too crowded. Adding all historical ships would make it very difficult to ever "hide".

That being said, here is what I did to the Italian navy in my mod (keep in mind I also added other ships to other navies):
Italy:
Build Limits: +1 Maritime Bombers, +2 Carriers, +1 Subs
Added modern BBs Vittorio Venetio and Littorio to production queue (Aug 1940)
Removed Guilio Ceasare BB, converted other two BB to Dreadnoughts* (and that's generous!)
Removed str 5 CA Gorizia, increased CA Pola to str 10
Added CL Guiseppe Garibaldi (Italians had some decent CL)
Added DD Ascari

*I created a new type of naval unit, Dreadnought, which is essentially an old battleship. Any battleship built before the 1920s is a DN. It's basically a BB but speed 14 instead of 16, -1 naval defense, -1 naval attack, -1 sub defense, and only upgradable to level 1 of Naval Weaponry and ASW instead of 2.

[HarrySmith]

Personally I feel that the starting units or units queued should be as historically accurate as possible. That is really the challenge in that doing things differently you can have a different outcome. This should be across the board with Land, air and naval units. Then I feel as players you can then research, build what units you would like according to what was available.