Is the Trade War a little skewed?

[dpabrams]

This is my second or third go around with the US and I'm beginning to wonder if the trade war and the sinking of auxiliary ships is a little skewed? I usually run 1.5 to 2 times the required ships for trade protection have two to four cruisers on raiding missions and as you can see from the results below the US loses hundreds of auxiliary ships. Am I doing something tragically wrong here?

[WLRoo]

1. You're on low intelligence spending for all opponents - and it's still in the process of working up against Italy. This will cripple you, as you are less likely to intercept the enemy whilst they are more likely to intercept you.

Personally, I switch to Low when tensions are Olive, Medium when tensions are Yellow and High when tensions are Orange in order to give the intelligence department time to ramp up their spending and develop their networks.

2. What ship mix are you using and how are they equipped?

My TP ships are mainly a mix of 1000t KEs equipped with Minesweeping gear and 900t KEs loaded with every piece of ASW gear I can fit (post-1945 KEs end up larger to accommodate Enhanced Sonar and a Helicopter), supported by 2-4 CAs for the anti-surface raider role.

3. Have you deployed PBs to your Airbases? PBs are capable of killing Submarines whilst on patrol

[dpabrams]

Good point on intel, I missed that. The mix is KE with ASW assets and mixes of 4-5 in guns. I also use all the AV (later AV with helicopters) I have on TP, usually 4-6. I will be more aware of using Naval patrol aircraft for ASW also.

Thanks,

Pete

[mrchuck]

To take a contrarian view, I wouldn't even worry about it. I usually lose hundreds of aux and nothing much seems to happen except for grumbling on the home front every now and then and the occasional fuel shortage. If you're not actually blockaded--and only surface units can do this--it doesn't seem to matter. Trying to prevent it takes a lot of resources best used for something else, e.g. sinking your opponent's fleet.

On the other side of the coin, I've tried a Donitz-style tonnage war using masses of subs with research set high, to very little or no effect except to sacrifice loads of subs. This is because I don't like unrestricted subs--you may swap tactical success with them for strategic disaster, as Germany did in WW1. With prize rules they're sitting ducks. This part of the simulation at least is reasonable.

The game does not seem to track merchant losses vs. ability to replace them, so it's hard to see any justification for pursuing this strategy in the game--though the AI seems to like it a lot. To this extent, the trade war model in the game only has one 'leg' so no wonder it falls down. I don't recall ever getting a message along the lines of 'LOL UR out of aux' and I'm pretty sure the messages about unrest due to loss of merchants are more or less randomly generated, or at least only look at losses in a turn and not pools of remaining transports. Could be wrong about that though--no evidence either way.

The AI does pretty OK with subs; I never have. So I usually build as few SS as the politicians will allow, stick em on fleet support, and hope for the occasional lucky hit on something tasty. As for what the SS are doing to me, don't really care.

Spend the rest on fleet (and planes later), which win wars in a way that subs just don't in the game. Enemy SS which sink fleet is very annoying, but building lots of DDs, which you should be doing anyway, minimises this over time, and the merchants don't appear to count overmuch.

[thedoctorking]

I've had enemies collapse before, after seeing regular reports of their people suffering because of shipping losses. I think you are correct, the message is clearly related to sinkings that turn, but I think it also jacks up unrest level and can lead to government collapse.

[dpabrams]

I am generally running trade protection at the recommended level plus 10 to 25%. I have high intelligence on all my opponents and have a very beefy fleet of naval patrol craft in squadrons of 12 to 14 aircraft. This seems to have changed my auxiliary losses not a bit. At this point I would suggest someone take a look at this? Is it normal to lose 7 times more auxiliary ships then your opponent?

Pete

[WLRoo]

That looks about right, especially if you manage to blockade your enemies.

I've just checked a game where I was Britain, ran High intelligence almost continuously and was able to blockade in every war that I can remember.

I was on the receiving end of a 5:1 loss ratio of Aux ships. One of the issues being, you can't sink ships if they're tied up in port.