Matrix Games Forums

July 4 1941

In the Northern front I start to retreat 1 hex row so the infantry corps cant get a full round of attacks. The arm corps have left so now only inf in the north.

In the south we are on the banks of the Dniepr. A fair amount of reinforcements from the north and army reinforcements the line look alright. But those German mech units represent a lot of pain so doesnt feel good at all. Also some air and infantry finally showing up. There will be at least 5 likely 7 turns of clear weather still.

Here for fun is the supply overview. Hopefully the supply situation wont be that great next turn for the Axis.

In Finland the Finnish seems a bit intimidated from my forward set up and they havent done a thing so far.

The UK takes advantage of a rare mistake and invade a empty port in Norway. Could be a base for further exploits later. At least it will be a headache to take it back.

Not going to lie. When I opened this turn and read the report I felt a bit sick, not really but still [:)].

13 escorts, sub hunter bonuses, landbased air (trying but failing to find the subs) and I get this result. 5 escorts sunk in one turn and not a single submarine factor lost. How is such an outcome even possible? There is unfortunately a serious snowballing effect now in the Atlantic so even though the Soviets are doing fine for the moment this game will be a struggle for sure.

Also in my other game as the Axis I think I have sunk like 0,66 escorts for each subfactor lost at sea. I am not sure but could something be off with the sinking of escorts? Could also of course just be coincidences. If anyone else play pbems right now I would be glad to hear any opinions.

Anyway enough crying have to get back to the fight [:)].

In the east in the north the Finns get going a bit otherwise just facing infantry so hold my ground.

And in the south the Germans dont do that much. It is a very careful approach. Not much combat and not much losses for either side.

August 1 1941

It seems fairly clear that the Soviets will manage this summer fairly well. Might even have some retreating space for the summer of 1942 which would be nice [:)].

Still no attempt to breach the Dnepr riverline.

Just to show how bad the situation is for the British. Here is their building queue not very sexy [:)]

And Canadas as well as the situation in Norway.

That turn was insane. And this is said by a guy that managed to sink 80% fof the allied merchant marine in our game.
The BoA can have a snowball effect if the UK loses too many escorts, but not because why some players could thing.
The critical issue with the escorts loses is not the cost to replace them, its the time. New escorts need 200 days to be built, so what happened to you will need around 250 days to replace those loses unles you put several escorts per turn in production. So during that time not only your convoys will be more vulnerable, but also the german subs will suffer less damage.
In previous versions you could have compensate that escorts shortage with an agressive CV campaing. But under the new rules, your only source of damage are planes and the amount of escorts in the lane. So an unprepared allied player can face himself without the tools to put the subs at bay and face close to a year of carnage in the merchant marine.
As far as I can see the BoA now, the UK needs to keep building escorts until reach 30+, and I think that the USA should build some too in order to have an escort pool able to replenish loses as soon as are received.

+1 with malkarma
I'm just wondering with the new rules whether a calculation is off. This reminds of the time 9 sub wolfpack skewed all the calculations.

ORIGINAL: malkarma

The BoA can have a snowball effect if the UK loses too many escorts, but not because why some players could thing.
The critical issue with the escorts loses is not the cost to replace them, its the time. New escorts need 200 days to be built, so what happened to you will need around 250 days to replace those loses unles you put several escorts per turn in production. So during that time not only your convoys will be more vulnerable, but also the german subs will suffer less damage.

If by "your convoys will be more vulnerable" you mean that an unescorted convoy will suffer more losses than an escorted convoy than I don't think that is true. Unless a change has been made that I am unaware of, escorts have no effect on how many MS are sunk. Their only effect is to score hits on subs. This will indirectly reduce MS losses as these damaged subs will need to be taken out of the battle to repair. But IMHO the fact that escorts do not directly reduce MS losses is one of the biggest weaknesses of the U-Boat war system. Historically of course the presence of escorts forced the U-Boats to stay submerged once detected giving the MS time to escape. Accordingly, well escorted convoys generally lost far fewer MS than poorly escorted ones.

Yes I felt the subs where doing fine in our games as well. But I looked in the AARs and actually number of sunk escorts not that high and a lot of subs were sunk as well. So I feel these two games are worse but it is such a small statistical sample so hard to know if it is coincidence or if something has changed. But maybe the subhunter bonus just is not as good as the very random chance of hitting subs with CVs.

Yes it is not about the production points and more about the huge time needed to replace them. 7 months. In this game I started to build them from turn 1. If I calculate correctly I have so far built 25 escorts with another 16 on the way as well as 90 mms. I think escorts should not get eliminated easily rather see increased mm losses. And 5 in one turn for 0 losses is just too much [:)].

I dont think I could have changed much either. Built/converted 3 bombers to detection tech have 14 range (so far not a single hit on subs) built 41 escorts. Also it is not so much about Gibraltar. The worst from Gibraltar is the cut of the south atlantic route. The Italian subs could have been German so there is not so much difference there really. I have also been a bit unlucky in tech progress as I am still on 41 tech whereas for example my heavy armour is already 42 tech.

After all UK army at 700 and airforce at 140 is not so bad, And maybe this is what is needed for game balance. I really think western allies built up a bit too fast before. So I will reserve judgement until the game is over [:)].

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana


If by "your convoys will be more vulnerable" you mean that an unescorted convoy will suffer more losses than an escorted convoy than I don't think that is true. Unless a change has been made that I am unaware of, escorts have no effect on how many MS are sunk.

If in the combat calculator there is no aspect of the equation where escorts reduce the chance of sinking an MM then this is contrary to the manual (p.22 & p.83).

August 29 1941

Move my airforce up north again as I realised Petsamo garrison is in range to bomb and outside fighter cover.

Central fron 4 mech units suddenly showed up so now there are 13 mech units all German in the East scary .
But 7 of them are mech corps and only 6 arm corps. Rightly or wrongly I have never liked the mech corps and fear the arm corps more but 13 is a lot. I had to shift up some units to meet them so weakened my defense further south.

How quickly things change now the Germans are not that far from Moscow after all. But at least at the most 2 more clear turns.

And in the south still no real attempt to get across the Dnepr river. Think it will come though.