Aha, some substantial calculations. I went ahead and modded the transport and escort costs and times to be 3 times higher each. Not enough from the looks of that!
Cheers,
Sword
Cheers,
Sword
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I'm Persuaded
I have been persuaded that the benefits don't measure up to the costs. But yhere may be occasional exceptions. I'm playing as the US, and I found that there were extensive convoys between Fascist Germany and Fascist Japan. The convoy routes were forced to converge around the Cape of Good Hope. South Africa was an ally, so I sent my subs there, and they feasted pretty well, racking up large-scale convoy losses. I did have to pull them out occasionally for repairs, but there were no German warships that could reach down there, so only the escorts were a problem. By Feb 40, my 6 subs (4 IV generation and 2 III generation) had sunk 40 transports and 23 escorts without any sub being completely lost. My point is that if you can find a relatively safe place to use subs, they can have some value.
I have been persuaded that the benefits don't measure up to the costs. But yhere may be occasional exceptions. I'm playing as the US, and I found that there were extensive convoys between Fascist Germany and Fascist Japan. The convoy routes were forced to converge around the Cape of Good Hope. South Africa was an ally, so I sent my subs there, and they feasted pretty well, racking up large-scale convoy losses. I did have to pull them out occasionally for repairs, but there were no German warships that could reach down there, so only the escorts were a problem. By Feb 40, my 6 subs (4 IV generation and 2 III generation) had sunk 40 transports and 23 escorts without any sub being completely lost. My point is that if you can find a relatively safe place to use subs, they can have some value.
Exactly how much does it cost to repair a sub? That's the IC day cost that needs to be calculated.
nope, this is wrong -at least on the paper (for the first part I refer you to the answer to Alex). You can have 2k base IC, but without resources you cannot use it. If stockpiles were reasonably small (which means they should be only a very small fraction of what they are now), sinking a couple of convoys in a row -you must differentiate between convoy and convoy ships, I noticed that the info you get from the game isn't precise, I surely didn't receive messages for 200 convoy ships sunk, but my subs stats show that they did sink as many- should mean that IC availability should lower in a matter of a couple of weeks. The more IC availability lowers, the less convoy ships they can build, so it is a chain effect.
Yep, I propose this. Because AFAIK, the situation in reality is much closer to this one than to the current game one. In HoI3, even if UK would stop any commerce and import, it would have stocks for years. Ridiculous. I don't think this would mean much to the AI, there isn't really anything different to do to react to such a change from what is normally done now. Increasing the IC cost of convoy ships on the other hand, does change the strategic value of these ships when the AI has to decide what to build; it's this change that should make you worry if the AI can cope with it.
Good, so this link proves once more that you have a distorted conception of strategic warfare.
Tactical Warfare is the one that involves the battlefield, Strategic Warfare is the one that involves grand scale operations, such as for example the Battle of the Atlantic and Battle of Britain -these two are strategic battles.
The goal of a strategic battle is to achieve superiority in a certain field, be it naval superiority, air superiority, industrial superiority, etc. The costs of such operations are already included in the goal itself. For example if Germany would have won the Battle of the Atlantic, most probably it would have caused the surrender of UK. It doesn't really matter how much IC Germany would have invested in this if it was successful, as long as it could still invest in other areas of course, without dedicating 100% industry and research into this, but I think this is obvious. Here is a quote from your link that backs up my statement:
These losses and the loss of valuable cargo are the direct effects of the Battle of the Atlantic. In the end, however, the U-boats did not prevent the U.S. from supplying England with military and industrial goods or food, nor from building up U.S. forces in England (Operation Bolero), nor from providing Russia with substantial material help. Thus, most historians see the Battle of the Atlantic as a German failure.
What does this tell us ? That Germany lost the Battle of the Atlantic because it failed to achieve the strategic goals, not because the ratio of tonnage sunk : tonnage lost was negative. If it was positive but Germany wouldn't have achieved the strategic goal (which was not to sink more than to get sunk, as you can read above), it would have still lost the Battle of the Atlantic. If it was negative but Germany would have achieved the strategic goal, it would have won anyways the Battle.
Hence this confrontation between IC invested in subs and invested enemy IC destroyed does have a sense from a decisional/strategic pow in the game, but you shouldn't use it in relation to real life strategies because that's a distorted view of what really strategic goals were (or are) in reality. The confrontation also has logical flaws because it only works among equal powers, but it doesn't scale in other situations, like AlanC9 said above when he said it was obvious I'd win because Japan has far more IC than China (although he is wrong in this particular instance, because I repeat once more that I invested a really laughable fraction of my IC to do the few repairs needed). I don't know if I won my strategic goal because I didn't load as China, however they often had troops out of supply, which suggests me the goal was reached. Thanks to this, I didn't need to send a gazillion troops in China which would be left out of supply more than likely.
Yep, I've already been saying this about ship upgrades or ship building from scratch. In reality, recyling something or building something new are two very different things in terms of resource consumption. In HoI, they are pretty much the same thing.
I think the difference among resources should not be in the stockpile but in production and availability (as it is already). In reality, rare materials are rare and may need more elaborated and longer processes to be made usable, hence the production is slower, while making big quantities of steel is a far easier process. Though, not because of this countries produce a ridiculous amount of surplus. Normally production is based on demand.
Yes this is glaringly obvious to anyone, included PI I'd assume. But like I said above increasing the IC cost of convoy ships might screw up some balances for minor nations. At the same time, it will only make more likely that your definition of strategic warfare could be successful, but the real strategic warfare moved from GER to UK would still fail due to the stockpile problem and the unrealistic resource flow and consumption system.
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I had a nice idea for this in the dev diary days: "... how about limiting the amount of total materials (energy, metal, rare, oil) that can be stored? It should probably depend on IC..."
It got disregarded. Tough.
First thing that should be done is to change the convoy/escort production to building 1 ship at a time, not 10. That should help smaller nations to build at least some of them still, after the overall costs of convoys/escorts has been raised (maybe 50 times higher for a start)
Are you kidding me, at least read the thread. your 6 subs sunk like half the IC costs of 1 sub.
Well I would firstly like to point out that I'm not really arguing that cost of convoys should be raised 70 times, that would be well over the top.
But you could reach the realistic factor 70 by a combination of other things.
For example:
Half cost of subs: Factor x2
Increase starting convoys by four times: Factor x4
Thus you only need to increase the cost of convoys by a much more moderate x9 times to reach a balance (2x4x9=72).
Also all minors could be given enough convoys for their base import needs (and a little more) at the start of the game. Only if you need to import substantially more for say a greatly expanded Industry base, or send troops overseas, would further investment into convoys be needed.
Also, yes I'm arguing that the German submarines were successful weapons. Imho from a German perspective, resources they invested into submarines were much better spent then say resources invested in battleships or in aircraft to win on the west front.
It's not really accurate to say that all German campaigns and weapons were unsuccessful because they ultimately lost the war or the weapons in the end were defeated. Other examples like some of their tanks & machine guns were also very good and successful weapons on their own.
I think any campaign that improve the general situation more then skipping it altogether would have done should be regarded as successful. And I think we both agree that for Germany to skip submarines altogether would not be a wise decision from their point of view.
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so,
+ cheaper subs
+ more expensive convoys
+ more convoys required per trade/resource route
+ cheaper subs
+ more expensive convoys
+ more convoys required per trade/resource route
Correct, except for the last one that should be more convoys required per amount of resources shipped. Currently only distance is used and shipping 1 energy require the same amount of convoys that shipping 1000 energy do. I think this applies to both supply & resource convoys.
Also I haven't studied in detail how much resources are actually lost when a convoy is sunk (since its so hard to do). I suspect that if 10% on a route is lost 10% of the daily amount is lost.
That would be completely wrong. A full convoy roundtrip could take 1month, If one of ten merchants in a convoy were lost you would historically lose 10% of that months resources shipped, or 30 times as much!
That only works if stockpiles are effectively zero and the current convoy setup, including trades, is equal or below what the country's IC requires. Otherwise there's no production effect at all. Most Hoi3 majors simply don't operate at the ragged edge like that, and I'm not sure that a country that can trade freely with the rest of the world ever could be made to. Edit: barring AI instructions to never try to trade for a surplus (deliberate bad planning), or a total restructuring of the world economy so global IC outruns resources. Like I said upthread, that would work, but it would cause nations to underproduce in peacetime too.
Edit: OTOH, this is easily moddable, if a bit tedious. I'm considering porting an approximation of the CORE setup over just to see how it works.
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I'm not sweating that one. The Paradox production AI is so fundamentally broken anyhow that you're better off not using it. And if you're using something like the AIIP, you can set up transport production however you please.
That wasn't quite my point; my fault for being unclear. My point was that China doesn't have and can't afford to build a real navy or convoy escorts. That's why you don't need to spend much of your IC on repairs.
The AI seems to understand at least some of the values in defines.lua, as changing the convoy build number from 10 to 1, makes Dominican Republic build 2 parallel builds for their first overseas trade instead of 1. Actually this one will work for them better.
This logic is flawed, I have explained it a gazillion times now. The point of submarine strategic warfare is to interdict resource flow, it is NOT to cause a collateral damage to industry like sinking more tonnage than losing it; in a real war this is a negligible result, and in the game even more because a major like UK or USA doesn't actually need convoys in 39 or a Grand Campaign and for a good number of months because it will have a 99k stockpile of everything. The goal of submarine strategic warfare is to cause direct damage to industry by cutting off its supplies and possibly cause it to shut down. The calculations of losses or K/D ratio are marginal compared to the grand strategy goal and will only be done at the end of a war. The USSR is the country that lost the most men during WW2 and probably had a quite bad K/D ratio, but in the end it won the war with Germany, if the soviet Generals would have spent their time to calculate losses and gains they would have lost.
I agree on this, I also had thought about it.
Tanks and other land weapons achieved their strategic goal, in general (Blitzkrieg in Poland, Netherlands and France, not so well in Russia but that was also poorly planned compared to the others), submarines didn't and failed their objective... so says *your* link. However, they could have been successful, which means they aren't crappy weapons per se.
All I'm saying from the beginning of your sub campaign is that you're focusing on the wrong aspect (IC loss ratio); which means that even if fixed to your wishes not necessarily could improve the general situation of GER vs UK war. IMO the aspect that should be improved is the resource flow interdiction. The submarine doctrine is called sea lane interdiction.
First, stockpiles don't need to be zero. Convoys should not take more ships to run to longer distances, but more time to arrive. And the AI would not be given any instruction: stockpiles would have a different threshold, period.
Shutting down a major's industry should be next to impossible (none managed to do it with strategic warfare in reality, anyways), however you should be able to lower its capacity. The solution of increasing costs of convoys is so much indirect that results could be perhaps seen after 1 or 2 years, while it would have an exponentially higher impact on minors, that really don't need nerfing in HoI3.
It is NOT a negligible result at all. Read this part of the link a bit closer:
"One should note that German submarine industry employed between 30,000 and 45,000 workers.(45) However, the Americans alone employed 640,000 workers at peak just to construct merchant ships during the war."
By stating that the result of the sinking is negligible you also claim the industrial efforts of upwards to a million allied workers was "negligible". How much use could this one MILLION skilled factory workers have done to the allied war effort if they were building tanks, airplanes or trucks instead? Or if they were out there on the battlefield fighting?
I claim that 640,000 workers and the millions of tons of steel used for convoy ships is enough to build huge amounts of tanks for example (10,000+ Sherman yearly is probably an understatement)
Without the German submarine effort USA could have landed 20 tank divisions all over France in 1943, and crushed Germany even harder and earlier with their larger airforce.
They did not achieve their strategic war goals on a larger scale then submarines did in their 1940, 1941 or 1942 campaigns or various "happy times" in the Atlantic.
Victory in France, Poland, Netherlands was not total either, people fled from there to continue the fight from UK and others resisted the Germans from within. Also German tank design were not really that good until after 1942, how come this was when they started loosing? Its not as simple as you make it out.
Both aspects are important.
Im working on improving the aspect that is the easiest to actually improve (for both modders and for Paradox). Good luck trying to mod how long time convoys take to arrive...
Im not even sure its possible for paradox to patch these changes into the game without a major overhaul in the expansion class (since the resources are probably delivered instantly without time delay right now).
Is not this impact realistic? Or do you see a realism problem with the USN being able to blockade a minor like for example Cuba?
Edit: To summarize I think the submarine warfare in HoI3 should have 3 impacts to for example UK or Japan if they are subjected to it:
1.) Direct Industrial impact (to build replacements for convoys and warships lost)
2.) Indirect Industrial impact (resources lost, supplies lost & IC spent to combat sub)
3.) Indirect Research impact (research needed to be spent on ASW to combat subs)
Currently only small parts of point 2 is working and as you point out, its not even working well due to to fast convoys.
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Is not this impact realistic? Or do you see a realism problem with the USN being able to blockade a minor like for example Cuba?
Edit: To summarize I think the submarine warfare in HoI3 should have 3 impacts to for example UK or Japan if they are subjected to it:
1.) Direct Industrial impact (to build replacements for convoys and warships lost)
2.) Indirect Industrial impact (resources lost, supplies lost & IC spent to combat sub)
3.) Indirect Research impact (research needed to be spent on ASW to combat subs)
Currently only small parts of point 2 is working and as you point out, its not even working well due to to fast convoys.
You left out:
4.) National Unity impact.
Yes that's right. Another one to the list of things not working correctly... :/
Heck, like I've said, subs should also be given the option of striking ports.
That should be the primary way they do any considerable damage to enemy warships without risking being wiped out, and even then it should be dangerous if the enemy has coastal defenses and listening posts.
That should be the primary way they do any considerable damage to enemy warships without risking being wiped out, and even then it should be dangerous if the enemy has coastal defenses and listening posts.
Perhaps, but that should definitely be a low priority compared to other improvements.
Well, I was talking about the mechanics we actually have, not ones from some hypothetical version of Hoi3 that we don't have and probably never will have.
But the stockpile issue will hold true regardless of this mechanic. If the AI is able to ship more resources in than it needs for production, then stopping a shipment will only cause a production effect if you stop all the surplus.