Naval/Air Revisions and the new patch
Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 7:31 pm
I was disappointed to read the list of revisions for the new patch (now for release Monday?) To my mind, they seem like "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." The game, imo, handles the ground war very well but thats really the easy challenge and has been done a hundred times before. For all the new ground that the game covers, we could all still be playing Panzergruppe Guderian or DNO/Unentschiden or running around an empty parking lot pushing shopping carts and shouting BANG at each other (an attempt to simulate the Desert campaigns sponsered by the University of Texas Wargamers society that I had the misfortune to be involved in in 1972) The real challange in simulating the war in Europe is in the interaction of the three main arms -- ground, air and naval forces. And, imo, here Road to Victory clearly fails. The good news is that some relatively simple fixes would go a long way twoards repairing the situation.
There has to be a way for airforces to interact with naval forces. This is critical! There are entire campaigns that took place historicaly that never happen in the game, and the reason is that airforces have no effect on navies. As has been discussed elsewhere in this forum, the Danish and Norwegian campaigns (and Norway was important enough to Hitler that he was willing to wager the entire Kreigsmarine on its capture) are pointless under the present rules set. In fact, if it wasnt for an arbitrary "house rule" restricting entry into the Baltic to the player who controls Copnhagen, the Royal Navy could easily establish the Baltic as an English lake and hold sailing regattas off Gdansk. This is quite simply, bad simulation![:-] Again and again, the side with naval superiority (usually the Commonwealth) found itself unable to utilize that superiority because of the severe losses it would sustain from enemy air forces. Examples of this are so numerous that its almost pointless to list them, so I'll restrict myself to just one. In 1940 - 41, the Royal Navy didn't dare conduct major unit operatios in the English Channel because of fear of German airforces. In fact, the situation was so bad that the vast majority of Englands imports were restricted to entering the country through the port of Liverpool, which was a major bottleneck to the Commonwealth supply problem. The Royal Navy based itself in Scapa Flow (as it had in WWI,) but only dared to enter the Atlantic by going the long way around north of Scotland.
So whats to be done? Fortunately, I think the solution is relatively simple. All navies were terrified of their opponents airforces, so I dont think that air superiority, per se, enters into the question (after all, Germany hardly could be said to have ever had air superirity over the Channel or the North Sea.) Lets establish a method for allowing air units to adopt an anti-shipping role.
I suggest that placing an air unit in a coastal hex would allow the player to assign an anti-shipping mission (using a button on the console) to the entire sea zone. (It would probably be necessary to subdivide the larger sea zones such as the North and South Atlantic zones to keep units in France from attacking naval units off Iceland or the United States.) This would then allow the use of an attrition table to assign damage steps to enemy naval units each time an opposing naval action takes place. The table should crossreference the number of air unit points assigned to the sea zone (minus the number of enemy air points assigned maritime missions to the same sea zone) with a die roll. The result would be the number of steps (points) of damage suffered by the enemy ships. These steps of damage could be spread randomly throughout the enemy fleet - keeping in mind that the majority of ships sunk by air power were usually smaller vessels, although damage to battleships and carriers was not unknown. It is significant that until Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by the Japanese in the opening days of the Pacific War, no capital ship had ever been SUNK by airpower while underway in open water. These damage steps should be inflicted at the end of naval combat resolution, as most damage of this sort was suffered while the naval units were leaving the combat area. The number of enemy air points in a sea zone should also affect the results of losses to transport movement and convoys. Carriers should also be included as contributing air points to a sea zone (aircraft carriers are much too powerful, imo. They should be worth no more than a cruiser plus a single air division, rather than being more than half again more powerful than an entire air-force or luftflotte which might contain as many as 1000 aircraft. English carriers were espescially weak in number of aircraft carried. The reason why battleships feared carriers wasnt their strength in the battle line, it was their ability to strike from afar without fear of counterattack. A good example of this is the fate of HMS Glorious, sunk by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the Norwegian campaign. I suggest that carriers be given the value of a cruiser plus the points of an airdivision.)
This leads us to another major flaw in the naval system. The problem with repairing naval damage was not so much the actual cost in coin or resources, it was TIME, and to a lesser extent, place. Examples are rampant of vessels which were removed from action for months or years by battle damage. The vast majority of the histories of Tripitz, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were taken up by repair time. Several British vessels were left at dockside for more than a year because priority was given to ships that could be repaired and returned to action more quickly. The ability to repair any amount of battle damage in a single turn is a gross distortian of the naval game.[:-] It should require a month to repair each single step of damage to a naval unit. I realize that this would require some bookkeeping, but after all, THIS IS A COMPUTER GAME!!![:D] It would also be historically acurate to restrict repairs for major fleet units to certain major ports (the amazing flight of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau up the English Channel was due to the inability of the Germans to repair damage at Brest under the constant harrassment of the Royal Air Force.) Perhaps a better way to handle it would to halve the repair time in certain fleet ports.
Another major flaw in the game is the restriction on strategic bombing to strategic bombers. While this was certainly Allied doctrine, it wasnt Axis. The entire Battle of Britan including the Blitz on English production and port capacity was carried out by the same medium bombers that chased the French out of France and the Soviets accross half of Europe. This could easily be remidied by providing a "Strategic Bombing Mission" button. When taken together with the Air Superiority mission and the Maritime mission button proposed above, this button would encourage the production of air divisins rather than air fleets (which is probably more accurate.) Units which are performing one of these specialized missions COULD NOT BE USED for normal operations or interception missions.
I am eager to hear what ther community and the designers have to say to these proposals. Again, I strongly believe that improving the interaction of these three main branches of the opposing coalitions is key to making this a really ground breaking simulation of World War II in Europe rather than the usual "tanks accross the Steppes" game.
There has to be a way for airforces to interact with naval forces. This is critical! There are entire campaigns that took place historicaly that never happen in the game, and the reason is that airforces have no effect on navies. As has been discussed elsewhere in this forum, the Danish and Norwegian campaigns (and Norway was important enough to Hitler that he was willing to wager the entire Kreigsmarine on its capture) are pointless under the present rules set. In fact, if it wasnt for an arbitrary "house rule" restricting entry into the Baltic to the player who controls Copnhagen, the Royal Navy could easily establish the Baltic as an English lake and hold sailing regattas off Gdansk. This is quite simply, bad simulation![:-] Again and again, the side with naval superiority (usually the Commonwealth) found itself unable to utilize that superiority because of the severe losses it would sustain from enemy air forces. Examples of this are so numerous that its almost pointless to list them, so I'll restrict myself to just one. In 1940 - 41, the Royal Navy didn't dare conduct major unit operatios in the English Channel because of fear of German airforces. In fact, the situation was so bad that the vast majority of Englands imports were restricted to entering the country through the port of Liverpool, which was a major bottleneck to the Commonwealth supply problem. The Royal Navy based itself in Scapa Flow (as it had in WWI,) but only dared to enter the Atlantic by going the long way around north of Scotland.
So whats to be done? Fortunately, I think the solution is relatively simple. All navies were terrified of their opponents airforces, so I dont think that air superiority, per se, enters into the question (after all, Germany hardly could be said to have ever had air superirity over the Channel or the North Sea.) Lets establish a method for allowing air units to adopt an anti-shipping role.
I suggest that placing an air unit in a coastal hex would allow the player to assign an anti-shipping mission (using a button on the console) to the entire sea zone. (It would probably be necessary to subdivide the larger sea zones such as the North and South Atlantic zones to keep units in France from attacking naval units off Iceland or the United States.) This would then allow the use of an attrition table to assign damage steps to enemy naval units each time an opposing naval action takes place. The table should crossreference the number of air unit points assigned to the sea zone (minus the number of enemy air points assigned maritime missions to the same sea zone) with a die roll. The result would be the number of steps (points) of damage suffered by the enemy ships. These steps of damage could be spread randomly throughout the enemy fleet - keeping in mind that the majority of ships sunk by air power were usually smaller vessels, although damage to battleships and carriers was not unknown. It is significant that until Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by the Japanese in the opening days of the Pacific War, no capital ship had ever been SUNK by airpower while underway in open water. These damage steps should be inflicted at the end of naval combat resolution, as most damage of this sort was suffered while the naval units were leaving the combat area. The number of enemy air points in a sea zone should also affect the results of losses to transport movement and convoys. Carriers should also be included as contributing air points to a sea zone (aircraft carriers are much too powerful, imo. They should be worth no more than a cruiser plus a single air division, rather than being more than half again more powerful than an entire air-force or luftflotte which might contain as many as 1000 aircraft. English carriers were espescially weak in number of aircraft carried. The reason why battleships feared carriers wasnt their strength in the battle line, it was their ability to strike from afar without fear of counterattack. A good example of this is the fate of HMS Glorious, sunk by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the Norwegian campaign. I suggest that carriers be given the value of a cruiser plus the points of an airdivision.)
This leads us to another major flaw in the naval system. The problem with repairing naval damage was not so much the actual cost in coin or resources, it was TIME, and to a lesser extent, place. Examples are rampant of vessels which were removed from action for months or years by battle damage. The vast majority of the histories of Tripitz, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were taken up by repair time. Several British vessels were left at dockside for more than a year because priority was given to ships that could be repaired and returned to action more quickly. The ability to repair any amount of battle damage in a single turn is a gross distortian of the naval game.[:-] It should require a month to repair each single step of damage to a naval unit. I realize that this would require some bookkeeping, but after all, THIS IS A COMPUTER GAME!!![:D] It would also be historically acurate to restrict repairs for major fleet units to certain major ports (the amazing flight of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau up the English Channel was due to the inability of the Germans to repair damage at Brest under the constant harrassment of the Royal Air Force.) Perhaps a better way to handle it would to halve the repair time in certain fleet ports.
Another major flaw in the game is the restriction on strategic bombing to strategic bombers. While this was certainly Allied doctrine, it wasnt Axis. The entire Battle of Britan including the Blitz on English production and port capacity was carried out by the same medium bombers that chased the French out of France and the Soviets accross half of Europe. This could easily be remidied by providing a "Strategic Bombing Mission" button. When taken together with the Air Superiority mission and the Maritime mission button proposed above, this button would encourage the production of air divisins rather than air fleets (which is probably more accurate.) Units which are performing one of these specialized missions COULD NOT BE USED for normal operations or interception missions.
I am eager to hear what ther community and the designers have to say to these proposals. Again, I strongly believe that improving the interaction of these three main branches of the opposing coalitions is key to making this a really ground breaking simulation of World War II in Europe rather than the usual "tanks accross the Steppes" game.
