[WarInEur] The concept of Aerial re-supply

[sgminfo]

ITRW, after the first few months of WW2 this became an increasingly 
important tactical innovation, as countries descovered the immediate 
desperate need, and then descovered that the capabilities they had 
enabled them to  address this gap in their inventory.

Mostly this capability was acquired by trial and error, with the 
foundations laid by a few far sighted officers. with some 'imaginative' 
additions to the OB, and some 'flexible' interpretations in exercises.

The experimental nature of the whole thing led to some serious 
"mistakes" and miscalculations along the way, by no means confined to 
one country.

 From the successes in France in 1940, supplying the advanced panzer 
spearheads on an adhoc basis, the Germans built up a competent and 
efficient aerial resupply organisation. Lack of a proper appreciation of 
its capabilities led to an over estimation of its capabilities, 
resulting in Stalingrad, Arnhem, and the French lesson in Indo china. 
Yet there were many close run things, such as Imphal & Kohima, then  Khe 
San in more modern times.

The problem in the game, is how one might portray it?

The big problem in the game is this. The airside of the equation, is 
essentially abstract, but the supply system, is essentially corporeal, 
and any attempt to bridge them is quite difficult, particularly with 
regard to coding.

So these proposals might be found favour with, both in the board game, 
and then perhaps wih coding.

During the air-drop phase, if you have ATPs available, and committed to 
a front for air transport, you may place an airsupply marker (a sort of 
speudo amph marker (as a source of existing code). This functions as a 
supply source during supply determination.

now for the tricky bit. How much supply? Any direct relationship with 
the volume of units is both time consuming in the board game, and very 
difficult to code, in the computer.

So perhaps an abstraction is the way forward...

Reverse the logic, and instead of quantifying the number of units 
supplied, we quantify the quality of supply....

So to work as a supply source, the counter on the map must be backed in 
the air side of the game by committed ATPs. The number of ATPs provide 
the quality of the supply.

So the supply source functions as beachhead supply, if  5 x ATPs are 
committed, or Minor supply if 15ATPs are committed.

Each ATP committed, suffers a standard attrition rate of 1/6 each turn 
that the supply source is functioning.

This war and tear rate, simulates the hazardous nature of the ops, with 
the high rate of loss to enemy interferance. This simulates and 
restricts the over use of this fragile asset. At the same time uses lots 
of existing routines to simulate the effect we want.

It is a possible way forward, for Stalingrad,  Demyansk, and Arnhem and 
Crete.  It would allow us to simulate the wider use of paradrops, but 
with the penalty of heavy wear and tear on the ATPs which will 
effectively restrict their use in this role...

i.e.You could support panzer spearheads deep in France in 1940, but as a 
result lose the capability to airdrop in Britain immediately afterwards...



-|steve|-