[WarInEur] Re: Alliance Issues

[sgminfo]

John Pace wrote:
> Maybe rather than the complete loss of supply, air points, production, 
> etc.  the impact of the strategic air war could somehow impact the 
> ability of the Axis to recover attrition points.  i.e. if the the 
> allied strategic air Germans cannot produce a single panzer, then they 
> cannot produce the panzer's shells to replenish their tiger tanks........
> John
>
> --- On *Wed, 1/13/10, Kent & Sue Haunschild /<kentsue at cox.net>/* wrote:
>
>
>     From: Kent & Sue Haunschild <kentsue at cox.net>
>     Subject: Re: [WarInEur] Re: Alliance Issues
>     To:
>     Cc: "WarinEur at mailman.halisp.net" <warineur at mailman.halisp.net>
>     Received: Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 2:28 PM
>
>     >Another thing I feel is mandatory is immediate replacement of
>     lost SB points or if you prefer after three months. That
>     represents the REALITY of the situation facing the Reich. The
>     allies had many many planes.
>
Actually...it's a deal more difficult to represent than at first it 
would appear.
The allies did have a lot of materiel.....and could replace losses 
almost overnight...
But that wasn't the problem....

The real problem was the human part of the equation...

You can indulge in ww1 style grinding attritional losses in the air 
_/*IF*/_ you think you are achieving something.

The SB campaign often seemed obscure and pointless to the crews, they 
rarely saw the direct effects of their work.

Schweinfurt deflected 8th Airforce,
not so much because the losses couldn't be replaced,
they rapidly were,
but persuading the crews (who'd survived the first foray) to go back was 
a might more problematic....

Commanders of the various groups were having increasing difficulty in 
maintaining discipline in the face of repeated heavy losses....

After the second run at the target,
such was the reaction,
there was a serious risk of outright mutiny at the airfields if ordered 
in again...

If we allow replacement of the materiel to be the guiding factor, then 
the bombardment groups get flown at a rate that exceeded their 
historical abilities to grind down the German airforce...


Bomber command also had increasing problems over Germany in 1944...when 
the raid on Nurnburg in March was slated...crews openly questioned their 
orders and there was a vitriolic response at mission briefings...most 
experienced crews considered the routes that they were being given, were 
one way tickets to a flaming coffin over Germany...

It was touch and go with the Nurnburg raid, getting the groups to fly 
the mission...very similar to the crew responses for Schweinfurt.

So, replacements for  the groups, simple. Getting them operational again 
as a weapon of war, not simple.

>      
>     My first question is, "At what point in the game do you think the
>     SB campaign should cause the economic collapse?"  My second
>     question is, "Does the SB campaign in WiE-win allow you to achieve
>     this objective?"
>
The economic collapse 'should' be modelled for an expected date some 
time just after the Allies began fastening their hold on the West bank 
of the Rhine, So we are looking at a historical position of March 1945.

As Others have said (Kent), the destruction of barge traffic upon the 
Rhine, was actually the nail that started the collapse, crippling the 
water-borne transit system and forcing reliance upon rail traffic just 
as the allied airforces were  wrecking rail traffic.
>
>      
>     The reason I ask the question is that, most of the actual game
>     play experience to date has been through the WiE-dos version of
>     the game.  It was miscoded and allowed accelerated repair rates
>     making it almost impossible to force economic collapse on the
>     Germans.  So most players have a flawed understanding of how
>     effective the SB campaign can be.
>      
>     Looking at the Battle for Germany campaign/scenario instructions
>     it does not appear that SPI anticipated a German economic collapse
>     until 0-4-45 at the earliest. (In the 45 Campaign instructions
>     they have reinforcements arriving up until 0-4-45).  And admit in
>     their explanation that the rule is just a device to accellerate
>     the German collapse by denying the Germans all supply to insure
>     they can't form "a redoubt and hold out in a bitter end game."
>      
>     My experience to date with the properly coded repair rates is that
>     German economic collapse can occur as early as 0-12-44.  So
>     contrary to your suggestion that we increase the number of SB
>     available through accellerated recycling, I am considering either
>     extending the campaign by inserting a negative number in the
>     accuracy table so that more hits are required before economic
>     collapse is achieved;  editing the Flak table to make the Flak as
>     effective as Intercepters an shooting down a SB (The economic cost
>     is about the same and historically the flak shot down more planes
>     than interceptors did);  Or, maybe a combination of both.
>
The accuracy table specifically caters for negative accuracy columns, 
allowing you to postpone the movement to 'move off' the initial column.
Indeed it was specifically added to allow us to 'handicap' the accuracy 
if we felt we needed to, to fine tune the bombing campaign.

  Fred & I have been game testing my Bomber command variant.

Bomber command opens the SB campaign in the early months of 1940....they 
have an agonisingly slow increase in their bomber counter mix,
a very limited (non-existent) escort range that slowly grows to coincide 
with the ranges in the tables at 1943).
Meanwhile the Aixis interceptor rates are also lousy, reflecting the 
difficulties needing to be solved in nightfighting over Germany.

 All in all in the games playtested so far, it works extremely well....

The Allies can't do much more than pin-pricks, whilst the germans, stung 
to react, find that the only profitable m,ethod of defense is to build 
flak, setting interceptors up, is just too unprofitable to start with.

The recommended (by test) handicap with the start of the SB campaign in 
1940 is an accuracy column of -20.

Seems to work quite well.....


The costs of building the bombers as they appear in the counter mix 
neatly back-handedly 'solve' the  perceived overbuild rates of the 
British Army in the early stages of the game, as raised by several in 
the discussions.

Note since the bombers are always an optional build, you only build them 
when you think they can be afforded in the British war economy, the two 
act quite nicely to produce a competing balancing act... A dilemma you 
are never entirely free of...

For the Germans...building interceptors is the obvious thing to do....

With the interceptors it rapidly becomes apparent that scores of 
airpoints tied up on interception work is totally unprofitable, until 
the interception percentages start to rise in 1942 (simulating the rise 
of the Kammhuber Line).

This 'neatly' drives the German commander into the Flak arm as the only 
effective method of dealing with the bombers(very historical)

In the standard game, flak tends to get ignored, as it manifestly 
doesn't achieve anything useful, seemingly. Yet the Germans were not 
fools...flak was built for many reasons, not least its effectiveness in 
supporting morale.

Flak was visibly seen as 'doing something'. It did not matter that is 
was quite problematical shooting down a bomber..it was a very visible 
and noisy confirmation to the populace that someone was fighting back 
and doing something instead of just sitting there and taking it.



-|steve|-
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