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At the third attempt, I've finally captured Leningrad [:D] though rather meanly I was only awarded a minor victory (1.83x).

a) The fly boys at the LtW seemed very content to sit back in the fleshpots of Riga and beer halls of Koenigsberg despite my urging to get the fighters and Stukas in range of the Leningrad front.

Reviewing the game, I see that I did get a group to move up to a forward base at Kingisepp (189,107) on turn 8, when I promptly lost 80 planes that turn...

The fighters seemed to love their base at Tartu, which was nicely (for the pilots at least) just out of range of the front.

Is this my error or does the LtW react to going on suicide missions? I have only just started to get to grips with the air war. I consistently tried to get air groups to deploy forward but they seemed to just slink back from the front or wouldn't go.

b)

Shipping. I'm still learning the game but I recall you start this scenario with 20 cargo ships.

By the end of the game that 20 cargo ships had been sunk yet supplies were still been delivered to Tailinn (depot set to 1 priority).

Upon review I see that actually these supplies (from around turn 13) were actually coming by rail via Pskov and the Leningrad front(!).

Evidently a fighter squadron based around Tallinn might have been a good idea...

Questions i) is there a way to easily monitor shipping losses each turn?
ii) I had set the Tallinn depot at priority 1 to attract supply from the Fatherland. Would shipping supply have flowed to the front depots (set priority 4 obviously) via the rail line along the coast of the Gulf of Finland if I had set priority at Tallinn to 0 - (this would stop the unnecessary rail shipments that ended up at the Tallinn depot)

b)

start with the easy one ... 'ships' are actual a block of cargo capacity, so its probably 5-8 actual ships with the capacity to move 20* base freight

you can track losses in the logistics log or the combat losses report

generally rail is more efficient than shipping so it tends to use that, sometimes you'll see both

a)

I presume you are using the AI Assist? Sensibly its supply aware, so will tend not to move air groups to poorly supplied bases, so the key is to get them into better supply. A pri 4 depot nearby will help, certainly pri 3, that should generate a local stock. Also double check they are on an advance stance and hooked to a HQ that is in the area you want them to be located.

ii), key here is freight cannot move between depots at the same priority, so set say Stettin to pri 1 and it will pull in freight from Berlin, set Talinin to pri 2 and it will claim from Stettin (subject to shipping assets), if Talinin is pri 1 the only place it can claim freight is direct from one of your National Supply Sources

Okay, thanks for those insights.

Point ii) is really interesting on supply routes. First Tallinn at 1 is taking supply from NSS, even though the rail supply is routed via the front depots which are on 4 (i.e. it doesn't go from NSS-front-Tallinn, but is determined as NSS-Tallin, if I am correct)

What seems to have happened is that on turn 13 I finally got my rail network connected (i.e. the North with Pskov) and the rail system takes over from shipping. The is still some shipping that continues on turn 13, presumably ships sent on turn 12 but didn't arrive till turn 13. In subsequent turns there was no more shipping of supplies.

On the air war, yes I was using the AI assist. The bases I was transferring the air units seemed to be in supply and category 2 bases. That said this was the first game that I've used air, so it may be may bad.

yes you are right, its going pri 0 (ie the NSS) to pri 1 (Talinin), at #1 Talinin can't claim freight from any other type of depot

also double check the airbases for their supply state, its not size as such, but how much is in the nearest depot and so on - in effect it checks for a transfer, finds there is no supply there (WAD, an empty base holds no supply), sees if it can solve the gap by pulling off a nearby depot (if so, makes the move, if not holds back till it can resolve the issue that way)