Normandy Invasion Messed Up?

[GeneralDad]

Has the Normandy invasion been messed up in a recent patch? If I try the historical D-Day start and AI air; the Germans take control of the sea. Just after the invasion, the Naval TFs have 12-31 damage. Shouldn't AI air at least do a reasonable job of keeping the sea lanes open in a somewhat historical manner & protecting the Naval assets? German interdiction results are almost off the charts, see the pic. Not bad for a small LW and a small Kreigsmarine. AS an aside, actual Allied ship losses seem to be 116 of 6900 for June thru August; not '31' in one turn.

While I generally do better with my own air setup - even that is not solving the Naval Loss problem. I expect some attrition - but this seems over the top. I can get interdiction values down with my own ADs; but the transports still get hammered.

Memory serves that older patches did not have this issue; but Steam won't let me downgrade to try it.

Gen Dad.

(The pic is AI air just after the LW invasion - the TFs are hammered.)

[Joel Billings]

Not sure what might have changed. Has anyone else noticed a change? What play level are you playing at? BTW, the "ships" are not actually full ships. They represent a certain amount of cargo capacity. Given cargo ships hold 1250 tons of cargo, that makes them just a fraction of a Liberty Ship (maybe 10%?).

[GeneralDad]

I am playing May start at the very basic level. I figure if I can't make that work, I can't try a higher game level. Normal difficulties, no fog.

I have tried AI air and my own A/Ds. Unintuitively, it seems that naval interdiction works a little better than air superiority to intercept German air attacks & I at least get interdiction superiority. Still, German interdiction is too big; thus the losses. Generally after my post invasion air phase I wind up with 10-25% loss for most of the amphibs (May start, invade T3, losses after T4 Allied air).

I have tried:
Mass AS missions w/ 4 air commands at Normandy tight over the amphibs. Or...
Mass NI missions w/ 4 air commands at Normandy tight over the amphibs.

Even tried lowering German pilot quality with the editor.
Reorg the airforce with the editor to have more Allied planes available in-range.

Nothing seems to work to protect the amphibs.

Lowering German pilot quality via the editor may be a controversy, but German losses had been severe in the year before Overlord and pilot training had declined badly. In Jan-Jun 1944 the Germans apparently lost a staggering 251% of their fighter strength. Replacement pilots have less training than their Allied opponents, especially in high performance aircraft. A statistical look at the game editor's pilot csv seems to indicate near equal German pilot quality in spite of the lowering standards of training and high losses. Lowering German pilot quality in the game thus seems justifiable.

But, neither the unmodded or modded game has resulted in a near historical result for air & sea over Normandy. And, I will submit that if the AI air cannot handle this, then the game is much more inaccessible to the new player. As noted in other posts, the AI seems to get advantages that the player does not. Using AI air and playing as Axis did not work for me either - even though the AI player somehow comes up with the interdiction points against the Allies.

Please see the chart and links on German air losses and the training decline.

If you have a set of game saves that work for May or D-Day start, I'd love to see them; or images as to what was done air-wise to get that good result. IRL losses at sea for June-Aug seem much lower than what the game produces for just the first week of the invasion.

Gen Dad.

See:
https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/AA ... fe-LXX.jpg
https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/AA ... ffe-8.html

[Joel Billings]

Are you damaging the German ports in the area? The project naval interdiction but it can be reduced by damaging the port. Hopefully one of the frequent players/posters like Cary can answer and give some suggestions. Based on the patch notes I don't think anything has changed in some time re how the air system works. I'll move this to the main forum area as I'd want to hear from some others that something's changed in a recent update. This may also make it more likely that someone will comment on the issue.

[GeneralDad]

I had not thought of damaging German ports in the area; mostly I went after the rail depots. I will give this a try. If damaging the ports is so important, then it remains a question as to why AI air did not go there. The game manual is huge, but in looking at naval interdiction I did not see this suggestion, though I could have easily missed something.

I will try attacking the ports with the May start and report back, I will try my own air directives, no AI for my air. I would doubt that the D-Day start gives enough time to hit the ports hard enough, unless they are starting with damage.

Gen'l Dad.

[Joel Billings]

Le Havre and Cherbourg start heavily damaged in D-day but not in the May start, so you have to bomb the ports. Sounds like the Automated AD creation isn't that smart, although you could order a short effort to go after ports using the AI. Not sure if it will read your targeted invasion hexes and look for ports nearby or not (I'm guessing not, can't remember though).

[cfulbright]

I ran through Turn 5 of the May 1944 campaign. I bombed Cherbourg and LeHavre to 100% the turn before the landings. I also ran Naval Interdiction with heavy Air Support over the channel and into the Seine Bay in both friendly and enemy air phases starting in Turn 2. As you can see I have naval supremacy. Damage to the TF's were 9, 12, 13, 21, and 27.

As Joel pointed out, the key things are 1) heavy damage to the ports, and 2) Naval Interdiction with Air Superiority in support

One anomaly is that if you hover the pointer over Cherbourg it shows "Hex Isolated", the units themselves aren't highlighted in red to indicate isolated, unlike the units in the Channel Islands.

Cary

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: GeneralDad

I am playing May start at the very basic level. I figure if I can't make that work, I can't try a higher game level. Normal difficulties, no fog.

I have tried AI air and my own A/Ds. Unintuitively, it seems that naval interdiction works a little better than air superiority to intercept German air attacks & I at least get interdiction superiority. Still, German interdiction is too big; ...

why are you saying this? - in the build up and during the actual invasion the Allies took a lot of losses from German e-boats. There was an infamous incident off SW England when most of a battalion was lost.

Quick search suggests the allies lost 6 destroyers, 3 other naval ships, 5 LSTs and several other ships in the week after 6 June. Mostly mines but also German torpedo boats and LW attacks.

That is a lot of shipping (in game terms)

For May, as others have said the building blocks are hit the ports - if you make this the priority the auto AI will do its best even if it goes a bit wider. And the axis railyards. When you feel bored, do it again.

[GloriousRuse]

Could you show the screen with red air missions displayed? Looking at the overlap, it looks almost entirely like German naval projection from an unmolested Cherbourg and Le Havre. I' guessing you tailored in a few hundred fighters to maintain air superiority over the channel as well, so in those conditions the LW would be frankly taking a hideous beating for the effort.

[GeneralDad]

loki:
The Allies surely took losses - just not at the level apparently in the game.
Losses, all types June to Aug: 119 ships of all types.
https://www.dday-overlord.com/en/d-day/armada/losses
Out of 6939 ships total.
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-wor ... nt%20ships.

After my air phase for T4 with the invasion plotted at T3-4: My average damage is 18.6% for 1 week, with a range of 7 to 31 on the amphibs. Trial #2 gave me 25% damage.
Historical seems to be 1.7% loss sunk by the above links; add damaged ships at what 3-10x? Even worst case is a loss of ~17% from June to Aug, not one week.
So the one week damage seems unreal to me.

This is with air that killed Cherbourg, Le Harve and even Dieppe to 94%. I have Naval Interdiction and air superiority missions running and amhib support on.

Not sure what I might be doing wrong, if anything.
Gen Dad.

[GeneralDad]

Here are my air missions for the invasion. You can see the Naval, AS and port attack ADs.
The ports are damaged to 94%; so I doubt they are throwing out much interdiction - yet the Axis is a lot of 4's and lots of casualties will be taken by the transports getting to the beach.

SO what does it take to drop these to 1 or 2 Axis interdiction? (as plotted which is 1/10th)

?
Gen Dad

[GeneralDad]

Cary,

I bombed the ports (Cherbourg and Le Harve) to 94% before the invasion at the end of t3; then 100% at the end of t4 allied air. Those German interdiction 4's and 5's are exactly what I am seeing and what is causing me grief with the amphibs. My image looks similar to yours. I get BIG amphib losses from this. And significant losses to every unit crossing the channel.

Gen Dad

[GeneralDad]

Losses to Br 51st div crossing the channel...

[cfulbright]

Is that after an amphibious invasion attack on a defended beach?

Cary

[cfulbright]

The turn after the Allies land, the invasion divisions usually are in the 85-90% TOE range. That seems to be what to expect.

Cary

[GeneralDad]

Cary,

The last pic with interdiction values is just after defended beach invasion.

The damage to the 51st division is after transit through the interdiction - it was not an invasion division.

I am trying more interdiction - adding RAF Bomber planes as they have some that can carry mines. The ports are blasted to smitherenes.

I am surprised that air superiority is not more effective - I have RAF Ftr, 2 RAF Tac, 8th and 9th all flying big A/S missions. I even moded some 8th AF P-47's from FB to FB-F so they could do the mission well.

Gen. Dad.

[GeneralDad]

Rather an interesting result - major German flak 3 hexes out to sea. Given the 'Mobelwagen' - it does not look like ships.

Gen Dad.

[GeneralDad]

A much more encouraging result, right after the landing...

Better interdiction values. We will see how my air phase and reinforcements go.

Gen Dad.

[cfulbright]

Where did you ship the 51st ID from, one of the ports on the south coast or somewhere else?

Cary

[GeneralDad]

The 51st ID was shipped from the south coast. It did fine until it hit the interdiction zone. Doing much better in later efforts, though. Advice here and some experiments are helping out This new picture is after my air & the moves after the invasion.

I am playing with some mods:
Reorg air force in editor; as if I had done an April re-org.
Changed some 9th AF P-47 groups to fighter; I feel the LBs need some escorts & I knew I'd want air superiority directives over Normandy.
Repeated testing of the 9th AF with the the same air directives as 2 TAC showed that USAAF Groups are 'squishier' than RAF squadrons and lose morale faster. Even with very low aircraft losses. I see no good reason for this except some mathematical simplification in the game's code. Thus, USAAF groups were 'squadronized' by a Python script. This fixes the issue. USAAF organization was flight-squadron-group, so this feels reasonably accurate in a historical sense.

The losses to the in-transit units seem reasonable now - they get hit some but not every tile. The Amphibs still get badly beat up & I still feel that this is unrealistic. With zeroed out ports the LW is building up a lot of interdiction with less than 500 sorties/phase for the entire Western European map, especially given the presence of air superiority directives with 1500+ fighters in the Seine Bay. Examination of the combats shows that it is rare for the Germans to get jumped hard by fighters, unless there is something else I am not doing correctly.

Gen Dad.