War in the West

[Historiker]

ORIGINAL: Sneer

no matter how witp is suited to handle WITW / poorly IMO /
the amount of work / higher than WITP / knock outs simply speaking
it is full time job for few players for few months
not countng inevitable testing before it will be playable ....

Yes, quite a lot of work. But it's also just a question of requirement. If I want to have every single historical batallion and fishing boat from the beginning, it will be too much work and the slots will get short.
But if I try to make a playable version, there's no need to add 20 different types of PC if their only difference is 100 endurance. Also there can be worse things than starting the game with Japanese commanders and Divisions simply named "1. Division", "2. Division" etc.

All this can be added later but its not needed for playtesting.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: hueglin

if you put many U boats at sea - it will NOT be boring - and if you put them in locations convoys are likely to enter - you will get regular action.

This is where I think the `passageways` may actually be a benefit, it will canalize the convoys into a limited number of areas.

It surely works - but it does not seem a good simulation. The main defense of a convoy is unpredictable routing.

[Historiker]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: hueglin

if you put many U boats at sea - it will NOT be boring - and if you put them in locations convoys are likely to enter - you will get regular action.

This is where I think the `passageways` may actually be a benefit, it will canalize the convoys into a limited number of areas.

It surely works - but it does not seem a good simulation. The main defense of a convoy is unpredictable routing.

As long as both surface groups and subs don't automatically follow and chase detected ships, this will be necassary.
IRL, a surface group would keep contact with the convoi by PA or its own FP and steam af full speed to the target.
What happens in witp?
The enemy convoi gets detected by FP just in the next hex - but if you consider it will march two hex per phase, it can be everywhere within 4 hex range in the next turn, so you have to choose one hex just to finde out the next turn that you've lost contact or that it is just one or two hex away again...
As soon as "follow and attack detected ships" is a mission order, there will no channels be needed any more.

[hueglin]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: hueglin

if you put many U boats at sea - it will NOT be boring - and if you put them in locations convoys are likely to enter - you will get regular action.

This is where I think the `passageways` may actually be a benefit, it will canalize the convoys into a limited number of areas.

It surely works - but it does not seem a good simulation. The main defense of a convoy is unpredictable routing.

It would be relatively easy to increase the number of passageways, to add more unpredictability. Another relatively easy option would be to just get rid of the passageways altogether and accept that the distances are inaccurate. The inaccuracy is most pronounced in the passage from South America to Africa, which is not really that big f a factor in this scenario.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Historiker

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: hueglin



This is where I think the `passageways` may actually be a benefit, it will canalize the convoys into a limited number of areas.

It surely works - but it does not seem a good simulation. The main defense of a convoy is unpredictable routing.

As long as both surface groups and subs don't automatically follow and chase detected ships, this will be necassary.
IRL, a surface group would keep contact with the convoi by PA or its own FP and steam af full speed to the target.
What happens in witp?
The enemy convoi gets detected by FP just in the next hex - but if you consider it will march two hex per phase, it can be everywhere within 4 hex range in the next turn, so you have to choose one hex just to finde out the next turn that you've lost contact or that it is just one or two hex away again...
As soon as "follow and attack detected ships" is a mission order, there will no channels be needed any more.

But that is what really haqppens - so it is good simulation. Because IRL a confoy does NOT get chased effectively by submarines at all. It is true that Donitz had a radical idea - not found in other navies - and it kind of sort of worked for a while - but in general, submarines are baly restrited by their speed and limited horizon. What Germany utterly failed to do was support its submarine and raider fleet with long range maritime patrol aircraft. Air power had curious advocates who ended up using planes for things less effective than they could have - on both sides. Finding the enemy is the primary mission of air power (the offucial USAF definition of air power contains the phrase "obtaining information about the enemy").

WWII era submarines were submersable surface raiders. The raiders became untenable when the Allies finally did put out sufficient long range patrol planes.

The ocean is trackless - and it is not channeled - and I am a literal rather than abstract modeler - so I don't understand how one can model this sort of naval warfare using channeles in the ocean. Makes no sense to me.

[Annagil]

Wouldn't a Mediterranean scenario be both more feasible and more interesting? After all, the Mediterranean sea is the only place besides the Pacific where serious aeronaval operation were conducted during the war (even if, on the Italian side, with planes taking off from land bases)

I'd be interested in helping with that.

G

[Historiker]

There is already a WitM - and it's looking fine - but doesn't offer what I want...
You can find it here:
http://mathubert.free.fr/

[Annagil]

DUH

Thanks for pointing that out, I had no clue (pretty newbie here, if it wasn't clear)

[hueglin]

Hi Historiker,

Are you still actively working on this scenario?

[Historiker]

It's delayed atm, as the slots are far to few.
I have found solutions for many problems and used my possibility to get books from the bavarian university network to get 80 books over warships of that period. That'll help me not only for a little unknown navies like the russian, it'll also helps me to create realistic own ships, where necessary (depending on scenario).

I had all "Axis" warships of the HKD-scenario in DB, but that were already 2200 without PTs and without freighters and tankers - so it made no more sense to continue the work without AE.

Nevertheless, inventions by me can be found in RHS now, so there's already a benefit from the work

[hueglin]

I'm kind of feeling the same way way with my mod. Although the prospect of completely redoing the map is not something I really want to think about - the amount of new slots in AE will be hard to resist.

[Venividivici10044]

While looking through some old threads...I found this one.  It leads to the question...not so much a mod, but a world map.  Is this possible...it would be nice to have the rest of the world for the purposes of moving ships about the globe.