Loss of all STPs in a single turn?

[Chocolino]

Should you loose all 70+ Italian STPs in a single turn and in a single sea zone even though this sea zone is well defended by your own naval force? (Preceeding naval battle was about even)

I propose an upper limit of how many STPs you can loose in a single turn based on ratio of naval forces present. Just to throw in a number here - say - 20% if forces are even.

Loosing all STPs at once make your overseas forces completely defenseless for at least one turn no matter how many STPs you have saved. At the very least STP losses should be less erratic and closer to average each turn to avoid these extreme situations.

In our PBEM, Gary is now cheated out of the pleasure of beating me in desert the real way. Now he can just shoot the Italians down like sitting ducks. (They were not quite so bad).

[Uxbridge]

We're using a house rule that no more than six naval units can be in a battle fleet. This has saved us from many unrealistic slaughters and maybe "max stacking" of similar kind should be implemented in the game.
 
Not sure if it would have helped in this case, though, but fewer ships might not have caused such havoc.

[Joram]

Well, it is attacked by 15 ships so I don't see that as a problem in itself.  I think the bigger point is that you don't have a good way of 'escorting' the convoys.  There should be a better pitched battle similar to what appears to happen when you are escorting troop transports.  At least in my game they always seem to be hit last...

[gwgardner]

ORIGINAL: Uxbridge

We're using a house rule that no more than six naval units can be in a battle fleet. This has saved us from many unrealistic slaughters and maybe "max stacking" of similar kind should be implemented in the game.

Not sure if it would have helped in this case, though, but fewer ships might not have caused such havoc.

to clarify, is that six ships per sea zone? or can there be more than one battle fleet in a sea zone? Does the game system care about 'battle fleets?' (I had the impression it simply chose for battle any ship in a sea zone)

[willgamer]

ORIGINAL: Joram

Well, it is attacked by 15 ships so I don't see that as a problem in itself.  I think the bigger point is that you don't have a good way of 'escorting' the convoys.  There should be a better pitched battle similar to what appears to happen when you are escorting troop transports.  At least in my game they always seem to be hit last...

I'm going by memory here, but I've seen the situation where just 1 raider destroys much or all of the convoys even when there are significant naval forcess friendly to the convoy.

I do think some kind of accounting for escorting should be made.

[Uxbridge]

ORIGINAL: gwgardner

ORIGINAL: Uxbridge

We're using a house rule that no more than six naval units can be in a battle fleet. This has saved us from many unrealistic slaughters and maybe "max stacking" of similar kind should be implemented in the game.

Not sure if it would have helped in this case, though, but fewer ships might not have caused such havoc.

to clarify, is that six ships per sea zone? or can there be more than one battle fleet in a sea zone? Does the game system care about 'battle fleets?' (I had the impression it simply chose for battle any ship in a sea zone)

It's six units per battle group. There was no limitation as how many groups there could be in a zone.

You may be right about your impression. I thought that only one battle group could face another, but that was just an assumption. Since it wasn't possible to see what happened in the sea warfare, I don't know. And for the same reason, we quickly lost interest in the sea warfare and no one cared to move naval units after a while.

[gwgardner]

Calling all developers: is there a mod we can do quickly to resolve this issue of an entire merchant fleet being lost in one battle?

[doomtrader]

The only thing that comes to my iomnd is to reduce STP killed by one Group
consts.csv file at line 227

[gwgardner]

ORIGINAL: doomtrader

The only thing that comes to my iomnd is to reduce STP killed by one Group
consts.csv file at line 227

excellent

I was just doing a wee bit of research on the net concerning merchant shippling losses in the Med during the NA campaign. One source said that in all of 1942 the Italians lost 50% of the supplies sent to NA.

Doing VERY ROUGH extrapolation (I'm bad, very bad, at math), if the Italians started out with 72 STPs, and all STPs were committed to convoys, then per turn they should be losing more than 1 or 2 STPs max. I'm sure someone who understands math better will correct me.

Line 227 looks like this for the '39 campaign:

#Effects of convoy iterception (destroyed STP);;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
#Unit type:;Carrier Group;Battle group;Patrol Group;Submarine Group;Transport;Amph. Fleet;;;;;;;;;;;
Maximal;10;5;5;10;0;0;;;;;;;;;;;
Minimal;2;1;0;5;0;0;;;;;;;;;;;

So I'm going to suggest to Choco that we reduce that maximum way down across the board, and the min too.

[Joram]

It's a bit beside the point but the mistake is it's 72 STPs of supplies per turn. Thus if you lost half, you'd lose 36 STPs worth of supplies in a single turn. If it was 72 STPs worth of supply in a year, then it'd be 3 STPs per turn (similar to what you were calculating). I'm not quite sure what Doom means by 'group'. If group=ship then long story short, you'd have to reduce those to tiny fractions <0.1 in order to reduce 15 ships from making short work of your supplies.

[Uxbridge]

Gw, don't put too much reliance on that source. During 1942 the Axis lost about 16 % of the goods shipped from Italy to NA (november and december excluded). During the entire period mid-1940 to october 1942 (a period maybe more interesting for game purposes) 13 % of the goods leaving Italy were never signed for in Tripoli. This loss doesn't necessarily mean ships sunk.
&nbsp;
The largest loss month ever for the Axis was november 1941, when 49 365 tons of goods&nbsp;were lost out of a sent total of 79 208; roughly 62 % loss. This is the only month during the above mentioned period that the loss exceeded 50 %.
&nbsp;
I'm not so sure that we can use real figures and compare with game results, but for anything, the loss of all the Italian STP in one blow seems a bit too much. [:)]

[Joram]

Yup, agreed. Maybe damage should be as a percentage of encountered STPs instead of a flat number. That's probably the simplest fix though would require a code change, so maybe not.

[gwgardner]

I know people here don't like house rules that much, but what I'm thinking of proposing to Choco is:

1) a one-time infusion of PPs to Italy to buy back those STPs (minus one or two);
2) a fix to the consts.csv, to more reasonable losses within the constraints of the game system;
3) a house rule that if more than a generally historical amount of losses are suffered in a given turn, then the country involved gets to buy back the excess loss with free PPs.

I just want to avoid fantasy situations (such as the loss of a country's entire merchant fleet in one week!).

[Andrew Loveridge]

I don't see it as a problem, if it happens once.&nbsp; If it happens every turn, then it could be something that needs to be fixed.

As mentioned elsewhere it may be more realistic to make the out of supply rule less harsh.&nbsp; So a week without supply doesn't reduce your units to almost nothing.

[doomtrader]

Could you also tell me what Allied forces were in the area? (in terms of size)
If it was a stack of death, then it's nothing strange in the results

[gwgardner]

That would be a state secret. The Italian naval command would just love to know the Allied dispositions. Did Choco slip you something under the table?

Suffice it to say that his estimate of the Allied fleet was in the general ballpark of approximately 15 ships.

A more accurate accounting will be sent PM via neutral party.

[Chocolino]

Thanks to everybody for the excellent suggestions.

Gary, special thanks to you for your gallant suggestion of retroactively fix the STPs of Italy. I am ok with fixing it for the future (which will at different stages of the game benefit both of us) but I won't consider changing what has happened up to now. But it was a very chivalrous offer indeed.

Limiting the maximum STP loss per turn is a good short term fix. In the long run I would consider it a better solution if the balance of escorts vs attackers has an influence.

If the convoys are unescorted, I think a somewhat larger convoy loss is fully ok.

But even if the attacker force is large, it is hard to believe they focused on destroying convoys while a large escort battle fleet is firing at them.

Doom, I will email you the approx Italian navy size present in the zone. It was not insignificant and neither was Gary's.

[Chocolino]

Just to show it is not a single occurence with high the STP loss. This is the convoy of 1 week later (luckily I did not have replaced the STPs yet, so I just lost all what was left). Again, naval battle preceding was balanced (Italy actually won by a small margin)

[cpdeyoung]

This is not very ahistorical. The power which did not control the seas had great difficulty supplying troops by sea. The Japanese had to resort to throwing supplies off the decks of high speed destroyer runs. The British would disperse a convoy and take very heavy losses, at the threat of a force much smaller than you are facing. You have a huge force in North Africa, and without control of the central sea zone you are in big trouble. Your heavy losses are to be expected and the Royal and French fleets would have handled the Italian merchant fleet very harshly. You are actually better off than reality for you can buy STP, and the Italians would have had to punt.

It may be time to fall on the defensive in North Africa, and not run convoys till France falls, at least.

I do not think the Italian Fleet would have done a lick better give this situation. There are times going in harm's way means getting harmed. In this case the system is telling you "Don't do that!" It is advice I think you must take. Warship infested waters are no place for freighters.

Chuck

[Chocolino]

Chuck,

This is not very ahistorical.

Historic loss ratios have been discussed above already by others and I am not an expert in this area anyways.

The power which did not control the seas

But I beg to differ that I have no control of the Central Med. (otherwise I would agree with you). I have - and that is hard for me to judge exactly of course - about the same control as the Allies based on Naval battles fought so far. Hence I would accept a certain amount of loss but within reason. I even welcome some raiding loss to convoys as raiding should have a noticeable effect in the game. There is little else that ships are good for after all.

It may be time to fall on the defensive in North Africa

It is hard to overlook that Italy has to go on the defensive in N. Africa. Since I cannot leave N. Africa without STPs I will have to stay and fight there but will have to get closer to the settlements first. Hey, the Italians will recover. They love life. I am not too concerned yet.

and not run convoys till France falls, at least.

In our game France refused the Vichy offer which is a very good decision by Gary in my opinion. An African Campaign before the fall of France is hence one of the options to achieve this surrender in the first place.

Edit: I should add that you are fully correct that my inexperience with the convoy system in ToW is my own fault and that I could have planned better. It is a good lesson to apply in the next game. Once you know how it works you can adapt to it. But I still feel that the losses are way too high and wanted to post this for the sake of future enhancements only.