Matrix Games Forums

What do you think of a "Battle of the Atlantic" version of the game design? I know that the scale might have to be adjusted; but the more I play this game (and greatly enjoy it, I do) I find myself wondering what it would be like defending or attacking the Atlantic supply lines on this kind of scale.

Maybe a better name could be, "Wolfpack." any opinions? Just curious.

could be pretty easy to mod

already there is a "War in the West" mod being made by Dali

also there was a WITP: War in Russia Mod for witp original

You're talking about a much longer game, but completely lost by Axis by middle of 1943.

In the Atlantic it's all about the convoys. According to Clay Blair's "Hitler's U-Boat War", it was hopeless for the Germans from the start. Yeah, you shove your convoys across the Atlantic and lose some ships. Every now and then you shove a convoy up to Murmansk, and lose some ships. The Med might be interesting, because you have to shove a convoy through Luftwaffe / Regia Aeronautica opposition.

If the Germans had snorkel at begin instead of in last stages of war it was far from hopless. In WW2 submarines were in surface mostly and vulnerable.

ORIGINAL: jazman

You're talking about a much longer game, but completely lost by Axis by middle of 1943.

In the Atlantic it's all about the convoys. According to Clay Blair's "Hitler's U-Boat War", it was hopeless for the Germans from the start. Yeah, you shove your convoys across the Atlantic and lose some ships. Every now and then you shove a convoy up to Murmansk, and lose some ships. The Med might be interesting, because you have to shove a convoy through Luftwaffe / Regia Aeronautica opposition.

But we have a fine game where the japanese had no chance from the start!!

I think it would be a good game, I had lots of fun with the old SPI Wolfpack.

IFF the Kriegsmarine sank enough shipping, didnt get on the radio for everything including birthdays thereby allowing HuffDuff & Enigma to track them etc etc etc .

The Med campaign was long and hard fought, generally ignored by peeps in the US because the Pacific was THE USN's war.
I think it would make a most interesting game especially if it were broadened to include a detailed North African and Balkans campaign on land.
Regia Maria and the Royal Navy sparred for two and a half years with lots of air/land/sea stuff going on until shortly after Italy left the Axis.
There were epic battles like Cape Matapan and the Malta convoys. Lots of special forces actions both British and Italian. The USN and the Vichy French Navy got in near the end.
If somebody made a decent game on this I would buy it in a minute. There was a game called "Bomb Alley" back in prehistory but I only saw adds for it, never had a copy.
cheers

Mediterranean is the most difficult game to do. Air, Naval , Land plus special forces - that destroyed about 100 aircrafts(LRDG) and sunk 2 battleships and an heavy cruiser(X Flotilla), (there was also an Italian cruiser being finished sunk by the British late war copy of X Flotilla) plus several merchants need to be done well.

No one in this industry ever made a game with air, land a naval warfare well done at same time.
It is mostly 1 done well and the others 2 - to not even talk about SOF - hacked, bumbled. The best like WITP only pull 2 of 3(4 with SOF): Air and Naval

Somebody with the know how please oh please take up building this MOD!!![:D]

ORIGINAL: Dili

If the Germans had snorkel at begin instead of in last stages of war it was far from hopless. In WW2 submarines were in surface mostly and vulnerable.

Snorkels were an expedient to aid a U-Boat's survival in an ocean dominated by Allied aircraft. They were hardly useful for the sort of wolfpack tactics that Doenitz desired. A U-boat running submerged with a snorkel raised was limited to six knots to avoid breaking the tube, and its sound-detection gear was useless with the loud diesel engines running. A U-Boat running with a snorkel was deaf, dumb and worse yet, noisy. Most dramatically, snorkels were equipped with automatic valves to prevent seawater from being sucked into the diesels, but when these valves slammed shut the engines would draw air from the boat itself before shutting down, causing a partial vacuum which was extremely painful to the ears of the crew and sometimes even ruptured eardrums making life miserable for the crew.

german submarines were basically unchanged since WW1, and they were pretty good at grinding it out against allied ships, and they built a large number of subs, so that was quite good for them

in an AE experimental mod I did once to test different designs, it was determined:

1) the best defence against ASW patrol planes is a float fighter on CAP above the submarine

2) the best defence against ASW ships, is a decoy midget sub to absorb 50% of the asw attacks


for next generation concepts, japanese submarines were a lot more advanced

a japanese wolfpack of carrier submarines can defend itself with float fighters, launch torpedo planes to attack convoys, use midget subs to distract enemy ASW or attack ports, and fire Typ95 torpedoes and Kaitens from long range

if yamamoto lived, they would have built 20 or so SenToku or just more AM class submarines,
would have been a real pain for allied convoys in 1944/1945

ORIGINAL: jazman

You're talking about a much longer game, but completely lost by Axis by middle of 1943.

Warspite1

Pacific War December 41 - August 45 = almost 4 years and lost to the Axis in June 42 (6 months) if indeed it was not lost on day 1.

Battle of the Atlantic September 39 - May 45 = almost 6 years and lost to the Axis March 1943 (I assume you are taking the battles for convoy SC122 and HX229 as the climax of that battle) (3.5 years).

In my opinion, for what its worth, the appeal of the Pacific War is that if you are interested in the naval war you get to "play" with great carrier fleets and their aircraft, the biggest battleships (Iowas and Yamatos etc), the heavy cruiser engagements etc etc. The Pacific 1941/1942 is just so interesting - ABDA, The Indian Ocean Raid, Coral Sea, Midway, the whole Guadalcanal campaign - I love reading about this period.

That said, in response to the OP, yes I would love a properly done Battle of the Atlantic game. Depends how its done but it could be an excellent game and of course would present a very different, but nonetheless interesting game, compared to WITP-AE.

However, my greatest wish would be for a properly done Meditteranean War game. How easily that could be done I don't know given the problems that some of the other posters have mentioned - but for a balanced game where there is a real possibility of either side winning - then the Med certainly provides this.

I have worked extensively on my war in the west mod for witp.

To make the game playable, you have to change a few things. England must totally rely on imports, so that every ship sunk is worth a lot. You might adjust the cargo size of freighters to give them more value, make ASW weaker, give germany's FW-200 more range or power...

You might also give Germany the chance to lay down ships by herself and decide which ships to build by using the conversion option intelligent...

There is a way to make this scenario attractive, but you have to adjust the scenario to the AE engine, not AE to the scenario.

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf


german submarines were basically unchanged since WW1, and they were pretty good at grinding it out against allied ships, and they built a large number of subs, so that was quite good for them

in an AE experimental mod I did once to test different designs, it was determined:

1) the best defence against ASW patrol planes is a float fighter on CAP above the submarine

2) the best defence against ASW ships, is a decoy midget sub to absorb 50% of the asw attacks


for next generation concepts, japanese submarines were a lot more advanced

a japanese wolfpack of carrier submarines can defend itself with float fighters, launch torpedo planes to attack convoys, use midget subs to distract enemy ASW or attack ports, and fire Typ95 torpedoes and Kaitens from long range

if yamamoto lived, they would have built 20 or so SenToku or just more AM class submarines,
would have been a real pain for allied convoys in 1944/1945

you can mod whatever you want but keep our eyes from this BS if you try to make it sound realistic

float fighters defending submarines and torpedo bombers attacking convoys, this is even sillier than your Emily fantasy or the other crap you want to sell as realism or what if history

Building a long ranged fast battleship would be more usefull than sub-carriers...

1) historically japanese built several floatplane carriers

2) yamamoto wanted to build many more


it's not fantasy, it was in the war

could have interdicted the sloc between west coast and pearl, or pearl and australia

fighters (probably a single-seat seiran with a 20mm in the propeller) could damage the catalinas on patrol,
the strike planes could attack supply convoys

the best countermeasure would be to attach CVE to all those convoys, and that would slow down operations quite a bit

3) personally i would say the sen toku program was quite ambitious, if not superfluous, and the submarines themselves would have real difficulty
if forced to operate as real submarines (firing their torpedoes, evading destroyers)

probably the best design would be a modified AM submarine, but keeping the original config of the A1 (they reduced the HP of the AM to give it more range)

a lot faster to launch and recover 2 floatplanes, than 3 floatplanes (and the AM was half the price of a sen toku)

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf


german submarines were basically unchanged since WW1, and they were pretty good at grinding it out against allied ships, and they built a large number of subs, so that was quite good for them

in an AE experimental mod I did once to test different designs, it was determined:

1) the best defence against ASW patrol planes is a float fighter on CAP above the submarine

2) the best defence against ASW ships, is a decoy midget sub to absorb 50% of the asw attacks


for next generation concepts, japanese submarines were a lot more advanced

a japanese wolfpack of carrier submarines can defend itself with float fighters, launch torpedo planes to attack convoys, use midget subs to distract enemy ASW or attack ports, and fire Typ95 torpedoes and Kaitens from long range

if yamamoto lived, they would have built 20 or so SenToku or just more AM class submarines,
would have been a real pain for allied convoys in 1944/1945

you can mod whatever you want but keep our eyes from this BS if you try to make it sound realistic

float fighters defending submarines and torpedo bombers attacking convoys, this is even sillier than your Emily fantasy or the other crap you want to sell as realism or what if history

Warspite1

Nice to see the recent pledge for forum moderation has been taken on board [8|]

ORIGINAL: shoopzee

What do you think of a "Battle of the Atlantic" version of the game design? I know that the scale might have to be adjusted; but the more I play this game (and greatly enjoy it, I do) I find myself wondering what it would be like defending or attacking the Atlantic supply lines on this kind of scale.

Maybe a better name could be, "Wolfpack." any opinions? Just curious.

Don´t get me wrong, I am very interested in a Battle of the Atlantic scenario encompassing the whole "U boote attempt to choke an economy" war.

Just not with the WitP AE system. There are probably a whole lot of game engines better able to cope with the specific situations for such a scenario.

AE clearly favors equally or similary built navies, huge bodies of water with a low resolution (the 40nm hex), atoll and island hopping warfare, and the high ammount of
different options present for the players to chose.

I think in the Atlantic none of those features would work. Just imagine a similar situation in WitP AE and you understand why: It is impossible to simulate a submarine
blockade of a body of land as large as the UK - even when reducing the granularity to 10nm per hex - with the AE system without making it extremely boring. In AE
such a situation might be a minor part of a whole campaign. In the Atlantic you would do that stuff for the whole war. Exclusively.

I would fall asleep while plotting.

Those in need of an immediate fix might have to seek out the old SPI magazine game of Wolfpack

I would not base a BoA design on the WitP game engine. Wrong time scale, wrong geographic scale, and too much fiddley subjective stuff involving subjectively determined, yet critical, numbers such as EXP and aggressiveness, that are based on no research at all.

Like LoBaron says Atlantic only just doesn't have enough wargame juice to extract from.