Naval Interceptions ?

[AlbertN]

Greetings,

I am on a quest for clarity. In the T8 of a PvP game my troops were about to smash Talinn.
Since 2 turns the Luftwaffe was running naval patrols, and the dedicated heavy siege SU units were ferried there, and infantry units were getting rested and CCP'ed up.

But in the wake of T8 the Talinn Fortress is recon'ed totally vacant! - Screenshot is post Axis air phase. (When I realized the ordeal).

The Air Combats out there signaled me no Soviet losses at all. (I assume any Soviet turn originated Combat still persists through exactly any other. I can see their land attacks, their air supplies, etc). So I thought either my air units are idiotic or inefficient.

I PM my opponent and he tells me that he has slipped away with everything (There was a nominal 76 defence the previous turn in there) with just 3500 troop losses. - I am quite puzzled as that has not shown up on my screen at all.

I assume it is impossible to disband units in the situation. - But at the same time I am definitely puzzled (and feel wrong if it's working as intended) that a whole Army Corp and extras of the Germans sit and 'waste' 2 turns to then have the enemy merrily disengage scott free (At least 3500 manpower is scott free for 2 turns of time gained - from my perspective).

[APrusty]

On the picture U see the Fortress-counter. So one way it all works in my mind is:

I think your opponent spent admin points to fortify the town.
Then he redecided his strategy, and abandoned town by ship, or possibly even left befor you had the town surrounded.

Now this is all based on the assumption that you might have missed out on him leaving some turns earlier,
due to thinking the fortress counter had troops in it.


For how long have you been keeping up the Naval interdictions?
He could have performed Naval I. himself, so he was able to skip town.

Or MY favorite;
He used admin points on a fortress-counter to make you think the town was defended.

[AlbertN]

The fortress was manned with 76 notional combat factor the previous turns (Plural).

So the evacuation happened on T7 of the Soviets.

I had already naval interdiction ongoing albeit it was contested by enemy air units (and I have fighters in the air base by Talinn that were providing AS missions before to send in the navals).

[carlkay58]

Supplies will not ship through interdicted sea hexes with a 2 pt majority or better for the enemy. You can ship out troops through this zone but you will usually take transport ship losses with the units themselves taking the appropriate losses too.

[Hardradi]

If he lost 3500 troops slipping away by sea, you should see some transport ships losses. They will appear in the Ground losses list at the bottom. There may be a one turn delay before it appears. I try to track this turn to turn so I have some idea of what is going on.

As for the ineffectiveness of your interdiction, I do not know maybe you were unlucky. I have been in the opposite position where I controlled the seas with high interdiction as the Soviets. I was shuttling troops in and out of Odessa and losing men each turn (even lost an entire weakened cavalry division).

[Skritshell]

Seems about right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ev ... of_Tallinn

^^ most of those casualties were naval personal which is not modeled in game.

Not to mention it was the minefield that did the most damage, something else that is not modeled in game.

[HardLuckYetAgain]

If there were losses they should have shown up. At least that is what I have seen in the past.

[AlbertN]

I am not sure why they're not show in the log but actually I think I can solo-replicate a situation in a Road to Leningrad quick fake-play for sake of testing.

If all is regular, I'll bite the bullet - but I hope if it's 'regular', it will be fixed because at the moment it is quite ridiculous for me that there was such shipping to move away that combat factor amount!

Anyhow testing time!

[Hardradi]

The Forgotten Story of the Red Army's Insane 'Soviet DUNKIRK' in WW2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWhfZ-hZf-E

[AlbertN]

Hardly a Dunkirk - they saved not much personnel, and with massive losses in accord to Wikipedia (I've not read books on the details).

My opinion is that in the game the system is presently bogus.
My tests confirmed that to me.

The type of test done? Litterally T1 of Roads to Leningrad. Setup the LW to shank the fighters of the Soviets in their airbases, and then save. Set then your naval patrol missions. One can tinker to spread it all at various ports (so lightweight interdiction). Or mass it off Ljetpaja for maximum effect. (Heavy interdiction!)

I did these two runs depicted above.

Then I pass the turn to the Soviets (no real need to do ground stuff for this test).

With the Soviets I just embark the units and move them around.
I litterally moved the Soviet units back and forth through the interdiction, using their whole 200 SMP allocations.

In the case of the 'lightweight' interdiction nothing happened. 0 losses. Nothing. Nada.
In the case of the localized, heavy interdiction, over 200 SMP spent moving back and forth through the hexes out of the port, 50% of the unit was sunk. - Now bear in mind that when one moves out of the port for a REAL destination traverse that hex -1- time, not 200.

Since that confused me - being clearly not working as intended otherwise naval shipping is virtually immune to losses - I tried again and sent the Soviet ships hugging Danzig.
And surprise surprise, they arrived there unschated, in plain sight of Danzig and surroundings!

And ... Naval Losses are not show as Combat, they are simply 'invisible' to the opponent.
That needs reworking as well.

Ps: That can easily enable some cheap naval invasions that are pratically non stoppable by present airforce or so as natural reaction. For the sake of gameplay in a grand campaign Romanian Ports ought to see added some token garrison unit or so ontop of the (presently insufficient) air units stationed there. Like a permanently frozen Costanta Garrison Brigade (Given a player can issue a regiment or not send one of these 'Fortification Brigade to the Antipartisan Garrison box)

[jubjub]

ORIGINAL: AlbertN

Hardly a Dunkirk - they saved not much personnel, and with massive losses in accord to Wikipedia (I've not read books on the details).

My opinion is that in the game the system is presently bogus.
My tests confirmed that to me.

The type of test done? Litterally T1 of Roads to Leningrad. Setup the LW to shank the fighters of the Soviets in their airbases, and then save. Set then your naval patrol missions. One can tinker to spread it all at various ports (so lightweight interdiction). Or mass it off Ljetpaja for maximum effect. (Heavy interdiction!)

I did these two runs depicted above.

Then I pass the turn to the Soviets (no real need to do ground stuff for this test).

With the Soviets I just embark the units and move them around.
I litterally moved the Soviet units back and forth through the interdiction, using their whole 200 SMP allocations.

In the case of the 'lightweight' interdiction nothing happened. 0 losses. Nothing. Nada.
In the case of the localized, heavy interdiction, over 200 SMP spent moving back and forth through the hexes out of the port, 50% of the unit was sunk. - Now bear in mind that when one moves out of the port for a REAL destination traverse that hex -1- time, not 200.

Since that confused me - being clearly not working as intended otherwise naval shipping is virtually immune to losses - I tried again and sent the Soviet ships hugging Danzig.
And surprise surprise, they arrived there unschated, in plain sight of Danzig and surroundings!

And ... Naval Losses are not show as Combat, they are simply 'invisible' to the opponent.
That needs reworking as well.

Ps: That can easily enable some cheap naval invasions that are pratically non stoppable by present airforce or so as natural reaction. For the sake of gameplay in a grand campaign Romanian Ports ought to see added some token garrison unit or so ontop of the (presently insufficient) air units stationed there. Like a permanently frozen Costanta Garrison Brigade (Given a player can issue a regiment or not send one of these 'Fortification Brigade to the Antipartisan Garrison box)

Your interdiction levels are very low. If you want to see results, you need to get it up to 6+. Then it will hit the transports about 1 of 8 hexes moved.

Agree about the second point. Naval invasions should not be able to happen west of Sevastopol after it's been captured.

[AlbertN]

These are en-route interdiction levels though, not 'arrival' interdiction levels.

Still about 1 in 8 hexes moved is silly - because the air units tend to patrol the 1-2 hexes outside a port. Not the whole sea alltogether.
Thus a unit gets embarked and is pratically guaranteed to get through 1-2 hexes without damage, or eventually with minimal damage.

It may not be perceived as a problem here - but it probably will explode like a purulent pile of bile if the same model is applied to any theather with considerable naval / seaborne operations action.

[jubjub]

ORIGINAL: AlbertN

These are en-route interdiction levels though, not 'arrival' interdiction levels.

Still about 1 in 8 hexes moved is silly - because the air units tend to patrol the 1-2 hexes outside a port. Not the whole sea alltogether.
Thus a unit gets embarked and is pratically guaranteed to get through 1-2 hexes without damage, or eventually with minimal damage.

It may not be perceived as a problem here - but it probably will explode like a purulent pile of bile if the same model is applied to any theather with considerable naval / seaborne operations action.

When the weather is nice and the interdiction levels are high, the interdiction spreads 5+ hexes from the interdiction target. The interdiction is only constrained to one hex in bad weather. If you want to keep them from getting out, you need to bomb the port. You can half the amount they can evacuate with minor amounts of damage.

Try a mission with 200 ju-88's with mines flying 4 sorties over the week.

[AlbertN]

I believe you're grossly overstimating what is needed to punish severely naval shipping.

One can think of Dunkirk - where manpower was saved out a minor water arm, with proper air cover from the RAF, where any heavy equipment was litterally left behind.

Another is an example in Talinn. Even more so the game does not model enemy pressure at all due to the IGO-UGO system - no rearguard was left, heck not even airbase personnel or so when I marched into Talinn.

I assume in '44 or so when a besieged Brest or Cherbourg will be sea evacuated by an Axis player, saving an amount of German troops and artilleries under the nose of the ... oh wait probably the Allies will have a bazillion of planes by then. But will they all be on Naval Patrol? But if the problem is not addressed it will come out in other situations.

IF there is not a problem perceived - that's another tale.

[Joel Billings]

This are different in WitW. Gary and I remember running tests running Germans from Brittany to Holland. There are naval patrol assets in place that keep high levels of naval interdiction so IIRC it was very hard to move without losing many transports. Regiments couldn't get out alive, large divisions might survive with many damaged elements. The system was balanced in WitW and I'm not sure it's changed much since then. It's possible that it's too lenient. In some ways one could argue it's too easy to close down a port from being able to ship freight and keep units from isolation, while it is too hard to hit transports from getting troops away in an evacuation. For now, it's WAD. Maybe down the road with more scenarios with heavy focus on naval situations, the system will get another look.