Matrix Games Forums

I have a question about naval supply. If I have naval units out to sea (not adjacent to a port), do I manually have to move supply points to a transport in their area in order for them to be in supply? Shouldn't they be able to use supplies just by having link of transports with a land area with supplies?

You have to move them.

If you have Auto-Supply 'On', they will generally move automatically. With it 'Off', you are responsible for getting the supplies to the right place.

Personally, I play a lot of hot-seat games, so we tend to leave Auto 'On' so that our turns dont take forever. Sure, it has some quirks, but even with them, our games go MUCH faster than when we were experimenting with it 'Off'.

Have I really understood you correctly that a transport fleet has to run supplies out to any naval unit not next to land rather than the naval ship loading up in advance?

The German raider Graf Spee had a range of 12,000 miles and operated in the South Atlantic. OK there were the odd supply ship like the Altmark to take off prisoners etc but she got most of the way on her own resources and plainly it would be difficult with the current game mechanics to send lone supply ships past the UK.

As each turn is a three-month period, it could be assumed even a ship with a 12,000 mile range would have trouble without fuel. Supply also represents arms and food, of course.

I understand the point about the 3 month duration although the fact that the turn is that long does not have to mean that the individual mission needs to be thought of as taking place continuously throughout that period.

It is also the case with GGWAW abstraction of units that a fleet represents mixtures of ships. Funnily enough the light fleet is given speed 12 whereas the heavy fleet has speed 10. Since speed actually means endurance this is quite the wrong way round for German ships. The German DD's were notoriously short legged and the CL's not much better whereas their major fleet units such as Bismark and (outstandingly) the Graf Spees (really Deutschland class) had good endurance. On this basis a German Light Fleet probably should have an endurance of 6 or less whereas a German Heavy Fleet should probably be well into the teens!

A much longer heavy fleet endurance would facilitate quite interesting raider missions for the Germans as was successful irl for Scharnhorst and Gneisnau but only attempted by Bismark. However the limitation of one combat per mission would really negate the benefit of doing that. Perhaps a bonus type capability for heavy fleets might be the ability to fight anything less than another heavy fleet without it being counted as engaging in combat. This would accurately reflect the way Allied convoys escorted by slow old BB's managed to deter the Germans. Oh well perhaps I am talking GGWAW II!

Mike