BoA

[battlevonwar]

How balanced do you feel it is? I find that in the early years the U-boats with good RNG do well. By the time '42 Convoy Escorts come into play that weakens fast(I don't see U-boats able to stand up to 43 USN/UK Convoy Escorts too-too well). Depending on Allied Investment of course. This happens about early to mid '42 if the Allies haven't dropped the ball or you see like 300 or 400 sunk Merchants and a bunch of lost escorts.

Also there should be U-boat Pens?(the map isn't quite large enough to properly make the mechanic of to sea and repair to work) The Pens laid out in France were extremely thick and would give value to those places?

Should U-boats be more viable through '42 and into '43 like History? Also to stop gamey play by the Axis should Escorts be dropped in more to prevent a total rufflestomp of Merchant Marines?

[AlvaroSousa]

BoA was won in 1942 by the UK.
Sadly the USA poo-pooed their wisdom, thus 2nd happy time.
By 1943 the BoA was won completely by the UK and USA.

If you do the math 1939 was the year the uboats did the most damage in terms of tonnage per uboat. It went down from there.

The BoA seems fairly balanced in my games. It was the Russian front that was a little top heavy and could fall one side or another very easily.

[battlevonwar]

It true things were getting tough for the Axis at sea very early. Hedgehogs, Radar on the Surface, Air Cover ... I generally find that Atlantic War is going to go South in '42 which I suppose if you consider the investment by the Brits is everything. More DDs, Escorts, more CVs, more Air coverage ... just not an easy battle for them at that point!

[sillyflower]

After my BoA travails with ncc where I lost about 80 MM before damaging a single uboat, I actually damaged one on T3 in a new game. This is a record because the subs had spent the 1st 2 turns sitting adjacent to but not on a convoy route[:D].

He's a forum contributor but I won't name him if he returns his uboats back to port at once..............

[AlvaroSousa]

As the Allies you need to know how many Uboats the Germans should have, and how many are out at sea by looking at combat logs. I generally at least try and build 2 escorts every 3 turns until I get 30-40. I assume the Germans are going to build a lot of subs. I always have on the map 10-11 by 1941.

[baloo7777]

Although I'm not an expert like most of you, in my most recent PBEM games, I've had a very different experience in the BOA. I think the UBoats take exceedingly large amounts of damage in 1939-1940. By early 1941, the UBoats had almost starved and brought England to its knees in the real war. Then beginning in the summer of 1941, the RN got the upper hand, and as more and more experienced UBoat Captains failed to return from hunting missions, the demise of the UBoat threat just snowballed...
I have about 30 screenshots with at least 4 sinking of UBoats pre-summer '41 and extensive damage to the subs. In one of my only 2 PBEM games as Allies, an opponent sent me the following text complaining about sinking and damaging his subs. I might just pick a few screenshots and post in a separate thread rather than hijack this one.

[ncc1701e]

January 16th, 1942 in my current PBEM.

Casualties report:
. 288 MM sunk
. 27 escorts sunk

I think my BoA is not too bad. [:)]

[battlevonwar]

baloo7777,

In my last several games as Axis(except one vicious one where I let my U-boats get smacked in port early on) I have destroyed at least a 100 to 300 Merchants possibly. Patch version you're using? How are you sending them out?

The Allies only have a few merchants/escorts to begin with. Plus they are short on oil for 3-4 months...

If you drop your U-boats on a raiding hex they lose like 50% of their hitting power. Plus there is dice. I cannot imagine you're getting that bad of it? Are you checking if your putting your U-boats in Air Range? Trying dragging them out to sea out of Hunter Range in Hotseat and attack your own u-boats and figure out what you're doing wrong. No way with the lastest Betas and recent Patches you cannot at least hit 75-100 Merchants with your base 3 subs so long as you use them wisely.

A 4 hit on a sub with '43 tech is tough... I haven't been seeing that bad in awhile but it does happen. . . Are you researching U-boat tech????

[WraithMagus]

In my current game against the AI as the allies, I basically destroyed the entire Kriegsmarine, U-boats and all in 1940. I did lose 20 merchant marine and 1 escort, and I had been building a lot of escorts (being basically the only thing Canada did with its production), but the AI was dumb enough to just send everything to the North Atlantic convoy and only occasionally the Pan-American one, so putting 10 escorts to North Atlantic worked fine.

My biggest source of frustration - and I think this affects other players who want to argue how effective the BoA should be - is that there is so little the player can actually do to change what happens. You can assign escorts, and that's about it. Sure, you can order more escorts built, but that's 14 turns until they actually arrive, so you don't feel like you have any control over that. Even as an Axis player, all you can really do is move a token to the convoy you want to attack and hope the enemy didn't put too many escorts there. It's so hands-off it feels like the game is playing itself and then telling you that you did a bad job.

[AlvaroSousa]

There is a lot of strategy in the BoA if you read my posts on it. It is part deception, part positioning, and attention to your units.

Ask Hadros how he feels about his convoys in our games.

[stjeand]

Something is wrong with the games I am playing against baloo7777.
And I am not sure anyone could convince me otherwise.

My Uboats have taken 1 or 2 damage each every turn they are at sea. I Have played a few dozen games and never have my Uboats been damaged every single turn.
I have taken more damage than I have destroyed MM.

In the mirror game he has sunk 5 of my escorts already and it is not 1940 yet, and I think I have done 1 point to his Uboats...might have been 2.

In both games the BOA is pretty much over for me.

The germans can't repair 12 Uboat hits in 1939...that is 2 new Uboats.
And 5 Escorts lost in the other game is 200 points already along with over 10 MM...so 300 points.
And it is NOT 1940 yet.

At sea we are both doing the same thing with escorts and CV/DD...so something is off...just not sure what.

I believe he is using the Steam version and I am not. Not sure if he is using Beta...I am using the 1.09 release.

[baloo7777]

Hey stjeand... I also posted another thread. I did start our game using Steam and 1.09. After your message, I deleted Steam and made a fresh download from the Matrix site of the game and have been playing 1.091 on that computer laptop.
The only other change is I use one of the units.png mods found in the forum (Panzer Mike's). I have asked previously if this could affect the game and was told by Alvaro that units cannot affect the game.
Also, in a separate game as the Germans I sank 6 merchants and 3 escorts with 2 attacks on one turn by the same 2 UBoat Fleet... my opponent was also of the opinion that he's never seen that before... but when I asked about it, several experienced players said a lot of luck is involved in the BOA and one gave an example of his own mirror games (on a thread several weeks ago or so).
Bottom line is I don't know what I can do other than delete the game and download it again... but this has been 2 different computers and 1.09 on one and beta 10u3 on the other. So, I really don't get it.

[kennonlightfoot]

I have found the BoA results very random and prone to extremes. Sometimes it seems the U-Boats are sitting ducks and can't aim. Others they are slaughtering Merchants and Escorts. I haven't played enough games to say there is a definite pattern one way or another. My last two games where I kept detail logs of kills show both extremes. As Axis I averaged a 2 to 1 kill ration of Merchant/Escorts to U-Boats. There were no U-Boat full unit losses until 42. But I did see extremes like 8-12 Merchant+Escort kills in a single turn. If you get a few of these you are winning.

Playing as the Allies I did worse. I think some of that was due to not building enough Escorts but also if you have bad luck with Escort deaths in 39 and 40 it is hard to recover because of the long build times. In this game I suffered a 4 to 1 loss ratio. And, I took an unusual large Merchant loses in early 41. This is probably the odd swings in random results. I didn't see 10+ Merchant kills in my other game.

[baloo7777]

Thanks kennonlightfoot... I have felt like there must be something wrong with my game, despite multiple downloads, and 2 different computers. I have seen comments similar to yours on other threads. At least I can say I've done everything I know how to put a clean download on my computer short of re-formatting the hard drive. Perhaps there are others who have seen the wild swings of luck in different games (1.091 or the beta's). I can't even use my favorite unit mod for fear it might be the cause, so sticking with plain vanilla units.

[AlvaroSousa]

I just did tested the BoA in the 1941 scenario with 10 escorts each + surface ships adding to the lane.... I repeated this test ~10x

Everything was normal.

[ComadrejaKorp]

ORIGINAL: sillyflower


He's a forum contributor but I won't name him if he returns his uboats back to port at once..............

LoL! It is a new tactic that I am testing !! (:

[stjeand]

Weird...I am unable to repeat any of the scenarios that have occured in my games with baloo7777

I can't sink 3 escorts with 2 subs on turn 1...nor on turn 20...nor when the entire Kriegsmarine and Italian navy is in the convoy lanes.

I also can't damage subs ever single turn. There is always multiple turns that I miss...especially in 39. IO might get 2 or 3 hits by years end...never 12+...
NOW if there air was doing the damage I could understand that...

Maybe he won't be able to hit a sub now till 1941...

I am in mid 1940 in multiple other games and have about that name hits on subs. So being 6 months ahead is amazing and improbably, especially in mirror games.

[baloo7777]

stjeand... I believe I sent you a PM several days ago offering to end our mirror games and either start a new set with the fresh download from Matrix, or just call it quits.
Alvaro PM'd me and had me create a testData file and send to him, and after checking it he said my game was working correctly and that it hadn't been tampered with (which I guess a savvy tech person could do). None of these games mean enough to me to not play honorably, and I have PBEM in other games where they have methods in the game to prevent any funny stuff (ATG for example), so I hope that Alvaro will see this and think about installing those type of safeguards.
As to the things that have happened in my games with the BOA, it has been going on for as long as I've been playing the game PBEM in the past month or so (after a long layoff and the change to 1.09 from my previous 1.08, where you couldn't find a sub, let alone hit it).
I have been very vocal in this forum stating that my experiences with the BOA are much different than those mentioned by many other players, both in threads I started and on others threads.
I specifically asked about that particular 6 convoy 3 escort happening. In one game I am in as the Axis now, I have about 65 points of damage to my UBoat fleet including a sunk sub while only sinking about 80 mm and a few escorts and Barbarossa has just begun. In a game I just started with the clean download of 1.09, it's turn 4 and I've sunk 11 mm and 1 escort only losing 1 point sub damage. There, as has been pointed out by at least a couple people, is a large swing of possible outcomes in the BOA.
My apologies if I seem a little raw about this, but I feel I've been saying something might be wrong with my games for several weeks, up until a day or so ago when Alvaro took a look for me. I don't even dare use one of PanzerMikes unit mods in case that did something to my previous games, using the plain vanilla units and constantly searching for my subs or tanks.

[stjeand]

2 more escorts sunk...down 10...Feb 1940

2 more hits on my subs...and 1 MM.

I think I have hit 10 MM and taken 14 sub hits.


Just crazy.

[baloo7777]

I gave Alvaro the testData file from our PBEM games. After checking it out, he sent me an email that says, "Game looks normal to me". So I can only assume the results we have seen in our PBEMs are allowed for by the mechanics of the game.