ORIGINAL: Michael the Pole
So essentially, what we have is a situation where the game is unquestionably not producing historical levels of damage, but the levels being produced are still adequate to ruin the Allied strategic position. I'd reply with two observations:
I am not so sure about the levels being off... and I literally mean I am not sure I would need to do some other analysis to support/refute that statement.
In my opinion there are several things wrong with the Air/Naval interaction as it exits. Firstly though I will state unequivocably what we have now is 1000 times better than what we had (which was no interaction).
1. The damage is too smeared out. You do 1 point of damage with a successful air attack. Even if we keep the AVERAGE amount of damage the same over many air attacks EACH air attack should have the possibility of doing more than one damage point.
2. Land Based air units currently take way too few losses in attacking. Land Air against Naval is basically as it works now a war of attrition and the Land Based air has a Huge advantage.
I will actually make some proposals for how I think some of this could be fixed later, because this is a complex issue.
ORIGINAL: Michael the Pole
1) It looks to me like the Luftwaffe doesn't have enough to do against the French. Historically, the Germans would never have deployed most (or,in your example) all of the Bomber force against the RN before defeating the French. For one thing, they were very badly needed to act as the artillery of the armored spearpoints in breaking the Meuse line, but, more importantly and less well understood, the LW was instrumental in paralyzing the French rail system. Gamelin began moving reserves into the center of the French line as early as May 10, but as Hitler discovered in 1944, modern armies move by rail, and you cant move by rail under a cloud of hostile bombers! So either the German tactical advantage is ahistorically great (which I have consistantly maintained from all my repetitions of the 1940 scenario) or, we need some way to simulate the effect of air attack on strategic movement (probably not workeable.)
Agreed. In essence the ROI of using your Tactical Air against France is too low. This is just my observation but for the most part your superior Tech/Doctrine units can overwhelm France without much need of Tac Air. You do need your fighters to supress French/British Air but that is it. You will take more losses to your land forces, but those are cheap to repair by comparison, and when you attack more with your land units your getting more exp for commanders which will serve you well in SeaLion or Barbarossa (or both).
Especially considering what you can do with the air against the Allied Naval forces it seems you would be missing a huge opportunity not to bloody their noses or worse during 39/40 with your Tac Air. Even if you have NO plan for a SeaLion, the UK doesn't know that, and attriting the RN will be a very welcome Godsend to the Italians. And even if the Allies denude the North Sea of RN and use French Ships, those French ships aren't in the med harrassing the Italians.
I don't know how to fix France, maybe it is too weak maybe not. I know I usually start my attack well before the historical date, but I rarely defeat france in as little time as the Germans historically did.
ORIGINAL: Michael the Pole
I think that we tend to view the French Army with 20/20 hindsight, and forget that for twenty years it was invariably seen as the preeminent ground force in the world, by everyone. The Germans were as suprised by its colapse as everyone else, and if the French hadnt been caught off balance and cold-cocked by the combination of armor and airpower, (for example, if the Germans had retried the von Schlieffen Plan, as they had originally wanted to. I've tried this, btw, and the result is invariably the same -- which I believe supports my position that the French are too weak!) they'd probably have given the Germans a much tougher fight. In all my run throughs, I've never seen the French get past 1940 unless it's in North Africa (hence, Chuck, my use of the rope-a-dope French withdrawl to North Africa that you dislike so much.) So heres a suggestion for you modders: how do we make the French stiff enough as to require the Germans to use the Luftwaffe to achieve a quick victory in France '40?
2) My second observation is this: As was pointed out in opposing the arguement that Chuck found so convincing about the number of RN heavy ships lost to air power, the British didn't expose their ships to German airpower! In fact, you'll discover that they were sure that the Sealion invasion forces would get ashore. Their plan was to only sortie the Home Fleet into the North Atlantic after the invasion to cut off the invasion forces like so much low hanging fruit and destroy them when they were ashore, out of gas and unsupplied. They felt that the Fleet would survive long enough to strangle the Germans in England, and went to great lengths to insure that they would not be able to capture enough food or petroleum to move far inland. And thats what I do when playing the English -- shuttle just enough ships in and out of the North Sea to keep the LW amused but my losses down, and have the hammer hanging in my hand at Skappa Flow. The English Admiralty were IMHO at least as good as the German General Staff, and made damn few less mistakes then they did.
In the European theatre of WWII I think you will find in analyzing the historical conflicts that when Land based air was used against Naval Vessels that it was devestatingly effective. However, you will also find that because both sides knew this, their maritime operations were planned with avoiding those land based air as one of the if not the most important operational parameter. Getting under land based air cover (typical from occupied France) was considered paramount for German raiders when they fled allied forces. In fact both sides in the Bismark confrontation knew that if the KMS Bismark reached range of luftwaffe bases in occupied France that it would most likely escape destruction, even with the large number of ships including CV's assigned to it.
As for the British plans against a SeaLion, there were many plans and contingencies depending upon how an invasion might have been carried out and from whence it came. But under no circumstances would they routinely have left the North Sea unpatrolled. To do so would have allowed German surface raiders near unfettered access to the commonwealth convoys. They might not have met the kriegsmarine at sea in an invasion scenario, I assume it depends on how things actually went. But the Battle of Britain happened in the air because BOTH sides knew that a neccessary condition for a German invasion was that the Germans have air supremacy over the channel. If the British even had parity in the air over the channel the British home fleet would have made quick work of the supply lines to an invading force (just as you stated).
So now with that out. What could be done to fix the problems I see in the air-naval war? And note these interlock so you would need to essential do them all or none
1. More sea zones, to represent coastal areas and deep water areas
Currently that Tac bombers in the Netherlands can drive the RN out of the North Sea is a very very bad thing. Keep them out of the littoral waters near Amsterdam YES by all means... but to force them from around Scapa Flow?!?!!!!
2. A much more violent combat chart for air-naval. So you sunk alot of ships if they decided to come into coastal waters
we need to be able to sink ships, not just slowly reduce them via attrition
3. Allow fighters to provide CAP in/over coastal sea zones to gain air superiority (allow CV air to do the same)
So that invasions can occur provided you can dominate the sky enough to bring your ships in close
Now the real crux of it all.. will something like the above happen? Probably not, alot of work has already been done on ToW, I certainly do not expect Wastlands to redo the game. And this would be a major change.
What might be more reasonable to do?
1. Add fleet types of Invasion and Shore Bombardment. If you want to do either of those things, you have to be that type of fleet as opposed to Raider/Regular.
2. Change the Air-Naval chart to allow multiple damage points on a single successful air strike
3. If your raider or regular decrease dramitacally the chance of an air strike hitting
4. If your Invasion/bombardment leave the chance as it is.
5. If a fleet has a CV decrease the chance of it being hit by land-based air and increase the chance it damages land based air attempting to strike it.
These 5 I think might have a chance of being implimented, the key is can a couple more missions (you could even make it one mission called Invade/Bombard) be added then incorporated into the Invasion Bombardment routines as well as the air-naval combat routine.