All of that is precisely (such as unseen reserves ect…) why I am trying to duplicate the
condition presented in the game and not second guessing the historical context.
When I have been using the term “historical” I was refurring to the situation
presented in the game with out the Allied production rules.
bruce
-----Original
Message-----
From: warineur-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:warineur-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of SGMINFO@xxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 11:28
AM
To: warineur@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [WarInEur] Question
on WIE Allied production
In a
message dated 17/06/2005 16:50:42 GMT Daylight Time, jbdenney@xxxxxxxxxx
writes:
The
spreadsheet assumed "historical" U boat builds, which I think was
defined to mean enough to put them in the middle of the one to the left of
middle column at all times with some gradual adjustments when the table shifted
gears, and also had an inbuilt assumption in respect of an historical rate of
attrition, meaning the mean result of the vanilla attrition die roll for the
columns as applicable based on the first set of assumptions. It took into
account that the game seems to assume the Allied player will get ahead,
substantially, after US entry, as to which note where the pre Overlord reinforcements
start out. ( 6 plus months worth of extra A results spread over 31 cycles was
about 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 double cycle lots IIRC)
The
problem with this is that the U-boat war is anything but logical and
historical.
It
doesn't work...simply taking the number of boats commissioned, relating that
back to the sinkings rate, and coming up with a combat table, if that was what
was done. The Tonnage per u-boat calculation is also a very dangerous precedent
to use, concealing many avoidable factors in the performance of this arm.
Add to
that the bursts of successful codebreaking on both sides which flexes the
Sinking rates massively and almost at random, and even the margin of safety for
the UK economy is far more variable than is given credit for...
Churchills
famous dictum on the War in the North Atlantic was not based on actual
performance so much as the realisation on his part, dodgey forecasting it was
going to be, and if the Germans did strike the mother lode in terms of
intelligence, or deploy correctly, or several other factors, how rapidly the
game would get away from the british despite all their best efforts.
In the
game, the British player does not wage war on the map whilst looking over his
shoulder, there is more than an indication that Churchill was doing just
that...
The
problem is...
The
U-boats were deployed an anything but an optimum manner, with direct and in
some cases nonesensical interventions by the "Greatest Military Genius
since Napoleon".
Thus
the effectiveness of the U-boat arm is crippled by deployments to Norway ,
deployments to the med, and dispersions on other "critical"(??)
missions on the personal orders of the Fuhrer.
Again
on the allied side, the formation of hunter killer groups is as much a function
of overall naval strength rather than a smoothly increasing capability.
Defensive convoy protection came before all else, and it was only at the pojnt
when there were sufficient escorts to go around, was it possible for the Allies
to form such groups and go after the U-boats, the point at which that happens
in any replay of the war is likely to be dependent on many things, but the
point at which it does happen is a fulcrum point in the naval war, and could
occur at many different possible points, but when it does the attrition
rate for U-boats takes a steep turn for the worse...
The
great unknown is what the orginal designers did over such events...
For
example we all know how the Polish campaign went...
But
suppose Hitler had ordered 3/4 of the Army to the West to watch the allied
camp on the Rhine. The polish campaign would have been entirely different,
but how would the game designers have coded the counter strengths and
units in those circumstances, with a seriously less well performing
(apparently) Wehrmacht?
The
U-boat war might, to be historical, have anything but linear additions to the
force structures during the first 4 years of the war, a serious departure from
the average players builds in the game.
So
which is the historical output? And how did the designers treat it? Did they
cater for the daft deployments and factor those in? Or were they excluded as
you were taking the place of OKH and Hitler...
Once
you start examining and replaying the assumptions in the game, what turns
up looks anything but clear...a degree of judicious fudging must have
taken place...
That
the British are short of productive capacity may be true, indeed is likely to
be true, but probably no more than that, and there would be a devil of a job to
establish that to any reasonable certainty.
Much of
this will involve rule of thumb calculations, and inspired assumptions and
guesstimates.
Bear
this in mind when attempting to replicate anything in the game...
-|steve|-