A lot of things in WW2 history were bad ideas but progressed thorugh the war. With hindsight you should think if the "historical addon" would destroy the game as a wargame, improve it, or simplify it. Since this is a wargame and not a historical recreation use judgement.
SOME EXAMPLES.
Giving germany full capacity to production in 1939: Germany had very little of their industry toward the war effort until Speer took over. It was inefficient and full of coruption. Altering this not to be historical would completely change the game and consequently would also affect how other countries would react to such a massive amount of industry devoted to war before 1939. Keep it the same.
Malta historical add on was a good idea of the supply affect if its controled by the english. Its a small adjustment, makes the island significant, and doesnt add complex code to the game.
Well trained and poorly trained pilots: Adding something like would only make the game more complex while really doing not much. Pilots were the key to any airforce, not the plane. So it would be prudent and simple to keep planes as is because with hindsight we would all train our pilots well. Adding training programs would complicate the game and add nothing in return as no one would build crappy pilots. But a player can use tech later in the war to build crap planes if he wants repping pilots.
Targeted strat bombing: In the war the allies bombed many targets not realizing if they focused on either oil or power stations they could wipe out the german war machine. In a game like this stat bomb should stick to history... spread out bombing to different areas which are repped simply by production point reduction. If oil was in the game it would only add one target that the axis can easily defend.
Convoys: The uboat war consisted of 3 areas, convoys, technology, code breaking. The single largest factor was how ships sailed, alone or in convoy. In the early part of the war (the US did the same in early 1942) merchant ships sailed alone. Many in the navy felt a merchant had a better chance vs a u-boat alone then in convoy. This allowed u-boats to find ships more frequently and alone in the ocean because single ships were not escorted. As the allies created convoys they realize the more ships in a convoy the better they could protect it with a reasonable # of escorts. In fact you could double the size of a convoy while only increasing the # of escorts by +50% and have the same effective coverage. With few convoys sailing across the atlantic being escorted it was harder for the germans to find them. A large group of 50 ships does not appear much larger on the ocean than 1 ship. 50 groups of 1 ship can be found easier (some of them) than 1 group of 50... and better protected in 1 big group. But for simplicity sake you can just use ASW technology. Which at start should be pathetically low where escorts can barely damage subs and as the years go on they build tech in it to represent how the convoys were implimented (Source: Black May, Michael Gannon) If you look at the ratio of subs at sea compared to tonnage sunk you will see what I mean. Each instance of massive sinkings were when the allies didnt know crap about how to run a merchant fleet: early war vs brits, and early 1942 when the US came in and did the same stupidity the brits did. 1939 each german sub sank more tonnage per ship than in 1942 where there were 10x the # of subs out there. The tonnage sunk was more but not 10x more. The efficiency of tonnage sunk per sub went down as time went on. Early 1942 was the 2nd happy time but only because the US came in without a clue how to run merchants and they suffered. They made the same mistake the english did.
Intelligence: Hard to implement in this game.
Norway invasion: historically the germans got lucky. Do you really want to recreate historical luck? You dont need an event for that. The only reason Norway got invaded by Germany is because the Brits were going to do it 1st to cut their winter iron ore line from Sweden.
Barbarosa: Should the soviets have their units up front to represent their poor position and bad placement? But then again would a german player also make the same mistake of indecision the germans had in 1941? Would he not go for leningrad and instead seige it like hitler? Would he not bolt for moscow? I think the 2 balance out if the russians pull back from the borders.
I hope these examples put things in perspective for the designers taking requests for special modification.
---- ok so on to the tactical recommendations.
naval / u-boat suggestion: replace CA with DD. Convert BB to simply battle group of BBs and CAs. A very simply solution is to add a modifer section in the csv files of ship vs submarine effectiveness. CV, BB/CA, DD, Tr, Amp, Sub. 0,0,20,0,0 (percent of strength attack) in the 1939 scenario. This is just an example which can be modded for proper balance. The effectiveness goes up with technology for CV and DD units. Subs didnt fight subs in WW2 generally. BB/CA had no anti-sub warfare devices. Also make a specific mission called ESCORT. Ships in escort do not intercept any units at sea. All they do is engage units that find convoys. OPTION make an extra group of DDs and keep BB and CA as is but for a game this scale, eh its not really needed... I think most gamers would like it though. If you use DDs scale it to 16 DDs per counter.
allow invasions and bombardment to be intercepted or counter intercepted (Sealion) by air. Easiest way I could think is make a condition that enemy air auto intercepts within X number of hexes within the target area (perhaps 5) just like in a ground strike with an air unit. The air unit can be intercepted automatically like in air combat. This means that an opposing side can attempt to have air surpremacy by going after airfields of the enemy before they invade (D-day, sealion). For sealion the germans move to sea, pick an invasion spot 5 hexes from their air. When the naval intercept happens air combat is fought and if the brits cant KO the german air its allowed to attack the ships... for example.
Now allowing air units in sea zones is a tricky one since some sea zones were quite large and air units didnt have the range or training to navigate over water only. Yes naval pilots were specially trained and differed from land based pilots. Usually an air division would have a small attachment of pilots who knew how to fly over water. Most used land based markers for navigation. I would stick interception only when missions were performed.
Air: divide the fighter into bomber and fighter, keep strat bombers the same. Gamers like that and it allows more flexibility.
Land: I really can't think of anything to improve, looks damn good.
Political: Just make sure its moddable so players can adjust what they want.
Oil: Difficult to impliment. But if it was implimented I would suggest that oil resources be counted as increased PPs If you decide to implement oil then to make things simple have a minimum amount of oil a country needs to operate. If the level of oil is dropped below the minimum units like armor and air get affected accordingly. For example lets say Germany has 120 oil PPs with romania and its own plants. If the level falls below 100 then air and armor start to suffer efficiency. This will actually make the russian oil and iraq oil more important. For the allies oil wasnt a problem, plain and simple. They could have 200 oil somewhere well hidden where the germans couldnt touch it.
Fortresses: eh not needed on this scale. Atlantic wall? Eh build more units. Once again this comes to hindsight. Why wouldnt the russions build fortresses around moscow, leningrad, and other key spots.
Special Rules for Barbarosa: not needed, bad winter rules are good enough. We have hindsight of how it was fought so the whole outcome and battles are different from history anyways.
Weather Zones: place them in please so we can see them.
Sealion: see naval rules
Production chart and totals chart: we should have a report that shows # of units in play, and what is coming out when.
German blitz: I feel this is fine the way it is. Germans have a tech advantage at the start of the game and the allies need to catch up. The tech represents tactics and better weapons. The Germans had the best training and tactics of all armies in this war. No special rule is needed.
France: no special blitz rule is needed here once again because is a historical hindsight. I feel someone playing the brits and french correctly while the german player screws up deserves to hold on to france as long as possible. As is the french are fairly easy to beat and it can be modded that way
Final thoughts: beyond what I mentioned above for tactical improvements I feel this games mod power really comes into play. Players can tweek the game any way they want or make any special situation rule for PBEM. Like a PBEM example would be historically setting up the Russians forward. You can make a player to player rule for PBEM and just give extra units or PPs to the Russian player to compensate for the slaughter.
Enjoy.
