European Theatres of Operations Game 2

[GrumpyMel]

Finaly, in regards Play Balance...

Maybe it's just bad luck...but in all the games I've seen so far, Italy seems to be coming into the war later then they really should. So I'm going to tweak thier activation numbers up a bit to try to get them in sooner.

I also think Germany could use a bit of a Production Boost at least in terms of naval capacity for play balance sake. So I'm going to look into some modest increases in the Production capacity of some of thier port cities.

This combined with tweaks to Italy's activation numbers...I think should address any potential balance issues....other then those caused by plain old rotten luck.

[Bombur]

ORIGINAL: SMK-at-work

The current system is constrained by the characteristics of AT as a game - "in real life" you could take an old BB from between the wars, add torpedo bulges, radar and 40 x 40mm AA guns and turn it into a floating fortress that was pretty good at shooting down a/c without actually improving much else.

In AT you can not.  But upgrading the AA of battleships was a lot cheaper than building new battleships - so for me buildign cruisers as AA is just a surrogate for what happened - it doesn't really matter to me that they are "separate ships" - what matters is that the BB's they accompany have better AA cheaper than building new BB's.

Oh and as for the effectiveness of dive bombers vs armoured warships - the LW was actually pretty useless vs armoured ships until the Italians taught them torpedo bombing, and they got AP bombs! Neither of which they had at the BoB (which is why the RN would have massacred Sealion...), but both of which they had by Crete.

So in terms of dive bombers not sinking BB's - tough - the game has anti-shipping aircraft - use them.

-You´re right, dive bombers shouldn´t work well against Battleships, their armored deck prevents them from taking significant damage from bombs. On the other hands, dive bombers are simply deadly against cruisers and destroyers, as far these ships aren´t protected by fighters.

[Bombur]

Some ideas about naval and air units.

1-Flak should be far less effective.
2-Naval bombers should be very vulnerable to fighters (I think they are, in this mod)
3-Surface units without air cover should be extremely vulnerable to torpedo bombers and dive bombers, while level bombers should be more or less useless against this units. The high HP value of BB´s should protect them against dive bombers.
4-Carrier groups shouldn´t be able to operate with impunity near enemy land bases. I think this should be fixed by decreasing the number of aircraft in aircraft carriers (in the game scale, each CV should carry no more than 2 planes)
5-Naval aircraft should be able to do naval interdiction, this is very important to simulate the war in the mediterranean area.

On research.
I think the idea from Grumpy Mel to decrease research costs as time passes is brilliant. I would also increase the number of steps to develop aircraft (1 level/year), and create different paths for fighters and bombers.

[LazyBoy]

With the research tree, could you not make the upgrades dependant on other tech upgrades as in some other scenarios.

[82ndtrooper]

Personally I do not understand the desire to reduce naval units so much that they are unplayable.  Land based aircraft already have a huge advantage over naval fleets in that they have a long range and you can attack with as many planes as you have available and in range so you could attack a fleet with 30-40 or even 100 planes if you had the planes.
Carriers have already been reduced by the number of planes they can carry, the high cost to build a carrier and the limited and weak planes available to put on the carriers. In test game 3 I am not even using my carriers in 1939-40 because of these changes. I will not use them until I can put viable planes on them.
aircraft carriers are the most powerful weapon platform ever invented and in WWII they ruled the seas and they still do. They should be the most powerful weapon in this game also.
I would bet if you could find the statistics that you would find that 100's of planes where lost for every capital ship sank in the 6 years of WWII.

The lopsided wins by airpower where only in the first couple years of the war after that naval doctrine changed and they made advances in AA and most importantly RADAR and the tide turned. Even in the Battle of Midway the USA took horrible horrible losses of planes and pilots to win that battle, whole squadrons where lost, wave after wave was shot down until one last wave got lucky and got through.  we lost 150 planes and sank 4 carriers and a cruiser.  the Japanese lost 248 planes and sank 1 carrier and a destroyer.

this idea that planes just devastated whole fleets with no losses is completely wrong. Planes took terrible losses when attacking fleets. People only point at the handful of isolated incidents in 1940 and neglect to look at the rest of the war. the french fleet and pearl harbor where lopsided because of surprise and both fleets where docked. 

The two British battleships where caught unescorted and in the open , plus they where not equipped to defend from air attacks and it still took hours and dozens of planes to sink them.

my point is that for every battle you can point at that planes won a easy victory i can point at more where they took terrible losses. Fleets where far from easy targets for aircraft.

[Jeffrey H.]

Well, take the battle for Midway island for example. Those TBD's from torpedo 8 were wiped out by CAP and AAA, but the Japanese carriers were destroyed by dive bombing SBD's with escorts.

[Bombur]

Personally I do not understand the desire to reduce naval units so much that they are unplayable.

-I don´t want to make the unplayable, I want to have them played like the were historically. Surface ships are still important, but they must avoid areas where the enemy has air superiority.

  Land based aircraft already have a huge advantage over naval fleets in that they have a long range and you can attack with as many planes as you have available and in range so you could attack a fleet with 30-40 or even 100 planes if you had the planes.

-I actually want land based aircraft (except specialized ones) to be LESS effective against warships, but also take less losses.

Carriers have already been reduced by the number of planes they can carry, the high cost to build a carrier and the limited and weak planes available to put on the carriers. In test game 3 I am not even using my carriers in 1939-40 because of these changes.

-But you should be able to use these carriers against ships (like in the Taranto raid, or Norway operations) or to hunt submarines. What they cannot do is to keep air superiority over the battlefield.

I will not use them until I can put viable planes on them.
aircraft carriers are the most powerful weapon platform ever invented and in WWII they ruled the seas and they still do. They should be the most powerful weapon in this game also.
I would bet if you could find the statistics that you would find that 100's of planes where lost for every capital ship sank in the 6 years of WWII.

-Actually aircraft carriers were the most powerful weapon only in the absence of significant land based aircraft opposition, as the Japanese learned in Midway even if land based aircraft usually don´t sink carriers (there only one case in WWII), repeated attacks by LBA could disorganize your defenses enough to make your ships easy targets for CV based planes....the USA actually avoided carrier operations against Japanese land bases until late 1943, and their raid on Rabaul just happened when the bases was significantly reduced. It´s true that 100´s of planes were lost for each capital ship sank, but many of these losses were the result of fighters, like in the Marianas Turkey shot.

The lopsided wins by airpower where only in the first couple years of the war after that naval doctrine changed and they made advances in AA and most importantly RADAR and the tide turned.

-And also advances in fighters....

Even in the Battle of Midway the USA took horrible horrible losses of planes and pilots to win that battle, whole squadrons where lost, wave after wave was shot down until one last wave got lucky and got through.  we lost 150 planes and sank 4 carriers and a cruiser.  the Japanese lost 248 planes and sank 1 carrier and a destroyer.

-The vast majority of bomber losses in Midway happened to Japanese Zeroes, Japanese ships had weak flak. And also the vast majority of Japanese losses were planes destroyed in the hangars of their carriers (although the attacks against USA carriers also resulted in heavy losses to IJN, but these were small attacks). When the enemy lacked enough air cover, ship losses to aircraft in the end of war was also massive (the USA attack against Japanese carriers in the Marianas Turkey shot, the repeated attacks against Kurita´s central force and the battle of Cape Engano). So, my point is that air cover above the fleets make all the difference

my point is that for every battle you can point at that planes won a easy victory i can point at more where they took terrible losses. Fleets where far from easy targets for aircraft.

-Right, but in all these situations the fleets had air cover (even the Repulse and POW also had some air cover-a few Buffaloes). Another event you can quote as a victory for surface ships is the crossing of the Channel by Gneisenau and Schanhorst-again the battleships had air cover) Maybe the only exceptions are Japanese attacks against USA surface fleets in 1944-45 (but I doubt if the USA had a large surface fleet without air cover in 1944-45). But then there is a small trouble ...kamikaze losses are always 100% regardless of enemy opposition....

[82ndtrooper]

I can agree with all your points bro.

But I still don't understand how you can achieve a historical balance when you want to reduce the number of planes a carrier can carry to 2. Especially when they cost so much to build. 2 planes in the scope of this scenario is nothing and basically a total waste.  You want to reduce the flak from ships and make it so carriers can not bring enough planes to the fleet to provide cap and that will make the navy useless.

I think 5 planes per carrier was fine and now its 4 with much worse planes.  Reducing the aa defense of ships combined with 2 planes per carrier would leave them helpless. Plus how can a carrier damage another fleet with just two planes ? You would have to make the planes do a ton more damage then they do now and then that would make LBA that much more powerful  because even if only naval air was made more powerful all any player would have to do is build the naval planes and base them on land.

The way you want to do it just cant be done and keep the navy viable.  You would have to reduce the cost of carriers low enough that you could make tons of them to provide enough CAP. 

To be historically correct 1 carrier has to be a serious threat to any fleet and with only two planes it wouldn't be a threat at all. Plus one attack on anything and all your planes would be lost and your carrier completely useless.

So I don't understand how you could make it work.

[Bombur]

I´understand your worries abot CV´s, and actually I´m having the same troubles with a mod I´m doing in WaW. One idea would be to cchange the scale of SF´s. An air SF would be 20 planes (like in Bombur mod for random games and global domination). It would need an increase in the number of land based aircraft and, possibly, a decrease of their combat values vs. land units. So your carriers would remain with 2-4 aircraft. This is a good choice for an operational scenario, like this one. You also could increase the antiship values of CV based aircraft, and give them interdiction values. In my WaW mod, I created CV based units with half the HP´s of corresponding land based aircraft (meaning they have 25 aircraft instead of 50), but the combat values are the same and anti ship values will be higher. Idea would be to make carriers deadly against ships, but less efficient against land based aircraft. I don´t know if it will work. A carrier will have 1-4 planes. My guess is that the decrease in the number of aircraft in carriers would be followed by a big decrease in AA from ships (making carrier aircraft more effective), a increase in antiship values for carrier based aircraft, and a BIG decrease in antiship values for non specialized naval bombers (fixing the effect of these massive attacks against ships you´re correctly mentioning). The only remaing trouble I see is the possibility of large fighter sweeps against carriers, destroying their air defenses.....maybe the main trouble with the AT engine is the ability to mount massive attacks against naval forces....I will try to see how I deal with this.

[Bombur]

It seems to me that my approach to the question is wrong. The big trouble here is the ability to attack fleets with huge numbers of aircraft. Historically, carrier operations in the mediterranean and the Atlantic involved a few carriers and a few land based aircraft (as opposed to what happened in the Pacific). So the real question is how to avoid massive numbers of land based aircraft attacking enemy fleets so easily.

[82ndtrooper]

you know maybe we need to change how we are looking at carriers and approach the problem from a different angle.

instead of lowering the number of planes they can carry  how about just making it so they cant intercept ? This would greatly reduce their ability to project any kind of air superiority but they would still provide cap.

reduce the air defense of other ships against what ever plane types you think but leave it higher against fighters. this would help prevent fighter sweeps to kill off the fighter planes while leaving torpedo planes etc...  mainly having to deal with the carriers fighters.

then you could allow carriers to carry enough planes to conduct offensive operations but they couldn't interfere with LBA attacks on the battle field they would only defend the hex they are in.

This would be historically accurate too because CAP did not fly off for hundreds of miles to defend other places it stayed right there to defend the carrier.

So if you can just disable the option on carriers to allow its planes to Intercept that may allow the changes you want and still keep carriers viable without reducing the abilities of its fighters or strike planes.

another idea would be to greatly reduce the intercept range of naval aircraft.  In this scenario intercept ranges are from 10 to 15. Make all naval aircraft intercept range 3. then their air superiority would just be very limited to just their local area.

then they could actually carry 5 or 6 planes letting them have a good air strike attack, good defense and limited effect on on the overall battlefield.

this would allow a player to use his carriers to assist in offensive operations but they wouldn't automatically defend against attacking planes all over the battlefield only his LBA would do that.

what do you think ?

[82ndtrooper]

ok back to the AAR's

First a look at the Romanian 1st Guards Army which is now in contact with elements of the Greek army.

[82ndtrooper]

The Bulgarians have pushed the Turks out of Bulgaria and are advancing towards Istanbul.
If the Bulgarians continue this Success I may not have to commit the 7th Army to this front.

The Luftwaffe took heavy losses in this theater losing 3 BF110-C strike aircraft and a couple fighters in an unexpected clash with elements of the RAF. Luftwaffe command had no idea they where in theater.

[82ndtrooper]

Remember during the invasion of France where I said I had made 3 airborne armies and 21 transport planes and that they should come in handy later ?

Well I can say that both have been extremely useful and I am extremely glad I committed all those resources early on to making them.

with the transport planes I was able to move the entire 7th Army from the coast of France all the way to Romania a distance of around 70 hexes in just two turns. It would have taken 10-12 turns to move it if they had to march all the way there.

On the Swedish front my airborne armies have moved rapidly to secure vital areas, without them I wouldn't have been able to launch any kind of attack this early.

here you can see the 1st. Fallshirmjaeger has dropped around the Swedish city of Gotberg
and once they capture it we will reinforce them with regular Wehrmacht units and they will switch from an airborne role to a mostly ground role and advance into Norway.

I normally would never consider doing this but the Wehrmacht is stretched thin.

The 5th. Fallshirmjaeger is still being held in reserve.

also in the south there you see we have taken over Malmo. This was accomplished by the Copenhagen garrison with help from the Kreigsmarine. All the troops in that big stack there where air lifted from all over with all those transport planes I have. That is all the Korps assets we reassigned.

[82ndtrooper]

Here the 4th.Fallshirmjaeger has dropped onto the Island of Visby. This small island and town is important to the Luftwaffe. We need to be able to base fighters and bombers there.

With out the airborne I would have to have used the Kriegsmarine to accomplish this job.

I cant show more screen shots just now because I am stretched so thin, I cant afford to give away to Russia the exact deployment of my forces.

[Bombur]

ORIGINAL: 82ndtrooper

you know maybe we need to change how we are looking at carriers and approach the problem from a different angle.

instead of lowering the number of planes they can carry  how about just making it so they cant intercept ? This would greatly reduce their ability to project any kind of air superiority but they would still provide cap.

reduce the air defense of other ships against what ever plane types you think but leave it higher against fighters. this would help prevent fighter sweeps to kill off the fighter planes while leaving torpedo planes etc...  mainly having to deal with the carriers fighters.

then you could allow carriers to carry enough planes to conduct offensive operations but they couldn't interfere with LBA attacks on the battle field they would only defend the hex they are in.

This would be historically accurate too because CAP did not fly off for hundreds of miles to defend other places it stayed right there to defend the carrier.

So if you can just disable the option on carriers to allow its planes to Intercept that may allow the changes you want and still keep carriers viable without reducing the abilities of its fighters or strike planes.

another idea would be to greatly reduce the intercept range of naval aircraft.  In this scenario intercept ranges are from 10 to 15. Make all naval aircraft intercept range 3. then their air superiority would just be very limited to just their local area.

then they could actually carry 5 or 6 planes letting them have a good air strike attack, good defense and limited effect on on the overall battlefield.

this would allow a player to use his carriers to assist in offensive operations but they wouldn't automatically defend against attacking planes all over the battlefield only his LBA would do that.

what do you think ?

-These are good ideas, but I think I cannot change intecept range for fighters, this variable is fixed at 50% range, not sure if I could change it in the editor, but if I could, it would be done for all units. It´s possible for a player to disable interception without changing the file with the editor. Overall, I think inteception ranges are too big, and this helps to explain why players must concentrate their airforces, if we just could change interception range.....well, I must do some testings with the models I built too...my guess is that they work well in the Pacific (where distances are far bigger) but not in Europe (due to the reasons you mentioned)

[82ndtrooper]

well maybe lower the range of the naval  planes to 7-10 hexes ?

remember that I am no designer so I have no idea how the editor works and what is possible.

[SMK-at-work]

An idea for naval a/c - why not split them into fighters and strike?  That way a player can outfit his air groups to perform whatever role he likes.

Naval fighters by the end of WW2 were as good as land based, while small air groups on escort carriers would often be entirely strike types for anti-submarine work in the Atlantic, US Light Carriers usually had about 70% fighters and only a few Avengers for ASW patrols - their role was CAP.

Originally they were going to be about 1/3rd each figher, dive bomber and torpedo.

So at each air-tech level you might have 3 different air-group types for naval - fighter, strike & mixed - mixed would be similar to the Naval in WaW with some AA, some anti-ship and some general bombing capacity if the player wanted to field mixed groups.

[RufusTFirefly]

ORIGINAL: Bombur

-These are good ideas, but I think I cannot change intecept range for fighters, this variable is fixed at 50% range, not sure if I could change it in the editor, but if I could, it would be done for all units. It´s possible for a player to disable interception without changing the file with the editor. Overall, I think inteception ranges are too big, and this helps to explain why players must concentrate their airforces, if we just could change interception range.....well, I must do some testings with the models I built too...my guess is that they work well in the Pacific (where distances are far bigger) but not in Europe (due to the reasons you mentioned)

No, I dont think interceptor ranges are too large. In our game I try to reduce the German fighter screen at France by doing recon flights across the Channel. I dont know where are the airfields of German Luftwaffe. But I often dont get the Germans to intercept and have to try i which areas they show up. Normally fighters absed in Paris, Orleans or other palces in some distance to the Channel should intercept over the Channel (as long as having full AP). As they dont do they might have very low AP or the intercept range is quite low.

In case the range is decreased a good working air cover of Britain or other area is hardly possible. Look at the airborne divisions used by 82ndTrooper. They are very successful. Decrease intercept range and he is able to attck nearly everywhere. It is impossible to place enough defenders at all possible drop zones.

Concerning carriers: Having naval air with good fighter abilities and naval air useable as tactical bombers requires carriers that are able to carry more than 2 air units. Otherwise you need several carriers to have naval fighters and naval bombers available in battle. I think the idea of 82ndTrooper of giving naval fighters a small intercept range is the best way. (But land based fighters should keep the range they have now.)


At least:
Seems it pays that I deploy HQs in the main centers at the beginning. Otherwise some Swedish units would soon be cutt off from supreme HQ. Goteborg is able to fight even when the roads to Stockholm will be taken by the enemy.

[82ndtrooper]

Things appear to be under control on the northern front our airborne troops captured both Goteburg and the island. Now its a matter of getting ground forces in place to move forward.