Pacific lend lease to Russia

[BenTaylor]

Hi I wondered how the game can reflect US lend lease across Pacific to Russia at Vladivostock.

Historically this was successful and accounted for half of all supplies according to one source

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=2 ... 19.12.2007

I have against the AI done something like this using transports up to Kamchatka which only occasionally get attacked by a Jap sub since either the IJN is tied up or destroyed or maybe is masked by FOW.

Haven't tried this against a human yet, or right up to Vladivostock.

It also takes a long time to get the supply there since it needs to move twice over land to reach Vlad.

I wondered what way there is to model this in the game. I thought soviet flagged transports could be created which are frozen in certain sea regions when US enters war, as long as Russia and Japan are not at war - a correspondong number of US transports would dissapear for balance. I am not sure if that works since that could interefere with normal sea combat from US to Japan. I understand that all the ships doing this were soviet flagged and mainly left alone by Japanese. Of course a set of transports can be strung out that inevitable gets some attack from an AI opp but I am sure a human player can easily stop such a tactic.

Thanks for any thoughts on worthiness of the idea and executability.

[Lebatron]

Hi Ben,

I toyed with this idea back in 2006 for the original game. However, I felt it was ill conceived and here's why. In this game, the historic Pacific lend-lease route made it far to easy for the WA's to pre-stock Russia with lots of supply. For AWD, pre-stocking Russia with supply before war breaks out was removed. That's a plus. This change affects any modders attempt to make a scenario with Russian transports linking Kamchatka to Alaska, because the US would not be able to send supply over them until Germany is at war with Russia. Therefore the number of turns these transports could send supply would be limited to just a few turns. Say from Summer41 to Winter42, when Japan usually enters the war. Yet some may see this as still worth it. However the biggest problem I have with the Pacific lend lease route is that it diminishes the importance of the Atlantic one, and therefore the importance of U-boats hitting the Murmansk convoys. In other game designs, a Pacific lend lease route works well because the Allies have to use ALL avenues to get supply to Russia, therefore the Murmansk convoy is still in use and the Germans still have a target. However, in this game, one route is generally sufficient, and if the Pacific route was set up by a modder to have transports, I'm afraid it would be all the WA would use to move supply to Russia. See my point? But I've had the idea to modify transports to have a more limited bandwidth in this area. I'm trying out 5 supply per turn over this route. If it works without causing other problems, look for it in Uncommon Valor 3.0. Downloadable from the link in the Mods and Scenarios section. 

[BenTaylor]

Hi

Yes good points. The issue of balance is important as you say in order that the lend lease is not a walkover for WA.

I sometimes find that just via Persia is very effective and means sea route to Archangel is ignorable.

I look forward to trying out the mod

Ben

[ba8858]

What about made this route requires more transport fleet?

for example,in the Bering Sea and sea of okhotsk,the capability of transport fleet is 10(or 5), this route is safer,yes,but need more transport fleet.WA player need to decide which route is better, the dangerous but effective route or the safe but inefficiency route.

[Lebatron]

Ba8858, Thats exactly what has been done in Deluxe AWD. That is I set the limit at 5 supply per transport.