Cargo ship losses in Baltic due to winter weather (0 interdiction) are absurdly high, even with ports etc secured

[Beethoven1]

So in my StB game with Stamb, we are on turn 4. I am Axis. I only just looked now to check how many ships I have.

Here is turn 2 (the first Axis turn):



Turn 3:



Turn 4:




This is obviously utterly ludicrous. That is a reduction from 101 ships to 78 ships in a space of 2 weeks. That is ~25% losses of ships.

By comparison, the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Battle of Midway had 21 ships (not counting submarines). They lost a total of 5 of the 21 ships sunk, roughly the same 25% losses as the German merchant marine is suffering here merely from sailing through a few raindrops and snowflakes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway

It would be one thing if the Soviets Air force or navy were as potent in the Baltic as the US navy was in the Pacific, and if they were responsible for sinking all of these ships, rather than them merely being lost to the weather. But that is absolutely not the case. Just compare the losses in the Baltic to the losses in the same save in the Black Sea, where the Soviets obviously had a much better naval presence with the Black Sea Fleet. But only 1 ship was lost there.

This is the beginning of the Stalingrad to Berlin scenario. The Axis has control of the Baltic except for Leningrad itself, which is under siege, and the closest port that Axis delivers supplies to is Tallinn. The Soviets are also running 0 naval interdiction missions of any kind. These ships are being sunk en masse by raindrops and snowflakes, not by Pacific aircraft carriers.

Even notoriously dangerous U-boats would have a much higher rate of survival over a 2 week period than these cargo ships.



Here was the weather:

turn 2 weather -

turn 3 weather -

turn 4 weather -

As you can see from that, it wasn't even blizzard for 2 of those 3 turns (just cold/light snow/light rain), and for the one turn where there was blizzard, it only was even over a tiny part of the Baltic around Memel.



Something is clearly very wrong here and needs a fix.



And here are saves where you can verify this for yourself:

Axis turn 2 (mislabeled): https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... 1_Axis.psv

Axis turn 3 (mislabeled): https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... 2_Axis.psv

Axis turn 4: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... 4_Axis.psv

[GoodbyeBluesky]

Yea, that stuff is extremely overtuned. Cant even say that the few soviet subs could do so much damage

[dankhippos]

41 GC results in ludicrous losses for axis shipping by the end of Barabarossa. They system needs a re work. Maybe the naval interdiction should result in supply lost, but not ships lost. In any case it is too high of a loss rate

[Joel Billings]

This is supposed to represent not just losses, but ships needing repair/refit time. They are also not "ships", but actually fractions of ships. Now we may not have the true tonnage of available ships right, including reinforcement/replacement ships, but then we also aren't dealing with mines and other issues that were a huge concern, especially in the Baltic.

[Beethoven1]

This is supposed to represent not just losses, but ships needing repair/refit time. They are also not "ships", but actually fractions of ships. Now we may not have the true tonnage of available ships right, including reinforcement/replacement ships, but then we also aren't dealing with mines and other issues that were a huge concern, especially in the Baltic.

If they were being repaired and I was going to get them back later, that sounds like it could be reasonable and would be fine with me. HOWEVER, what happens from the player perspective is that the number just keeps going down and never goes up again as far as I am aware. Basically, you have fewer and fewer ships (or tonnage, if it is technically tonnage rather than ships).

There is no indication that you ever "get the ship/tonnage back" after it has been repaired. If this is supposed to happen, then maybe the code that repairs the ships is not working properly and they never get added back or something.

What I was going to do, out of desperation to avoid losing all my ships in a handful of turns, was to turn all of my ports to import ports to try to save my ships from mass suiciding themselves into the gauntlet of deadly raindrops/snowflakes. However, if it would be useful to test it for you, I can keep running normal ship supply and keep reporting my numbers here every turn as they plummet.

[AlbertN]

For a game like WITE it would just be better to have a 'Fixed' shipping amount per turn, per specific sea.
Sparing the system all the need of producing, repairing, damaging, etc ships.

[Beethoven1]

For a game like WITE it would just be better to have a 'Fixed' shipping amount per turn, per specific sea.
Sparing the system all the need of producing, repairing, damaging, etc ships.

+1

Please implement that. It should be very easy to do, and it is clear that there is some sort of problem here. It would be a much easier and quicker fix than sorting through a complex system inherited from a different context (WITW, where there was more of an actual naval war), and I am pretty sure everyone would be happy enough with it.

Take the quick and easy fix for a major annoyance - it is one of those things that has been bothering a lot of players for at least the last year or 2, and then you can have time to move on to the next thing.

[Wiedrock]

This issue was discussed https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 3#p5079883 for those with patience reading.

[DarkHorse2]

Here you go.

This is from T9 (from a game a while back, and AFAIK, nothing has changed):

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WiTE2_SU_Shipping_T9.JPG (15.26 KiB) Viewed 459 times

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WiTE2_GE_Shipping_T9.JPG (10.82 KiB) Viewed 459 times

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Now, considering that Germany had a merchant marine fleet at least 4 times that of the Soviet Union in 1939, this is comical.

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WW2_DataBook_MerchantNavies.JPG (32.59 KiB) Viewed 459 times

SizeOfSovietMerchantFleet.JPG (43.67 KiB) Viewed 459 times

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I love this game