Equipment: Leaps and evolution

[Klausewitz]

A lot of equipment development in WW2 is evolutionary.
Tanks slowly becoming more heavily armored and armed.
Artillery simply becomes able to fire a little further or a little more precise or be produced at a little less cost.
MGs become cheaper and better.

There are however a few areas where there is no slow evolution, but a sudden leap:
The XXI u-boat is an example.
The Me 262 or any jet fighter qualifies (allied planers assumed that one Me 262 was worth approx. 8 mustang, as in you need 8 Mustangs to keep one Me 262 from the bombers).
The StG 44 might qualify.


EU4 (and the whole EU-series) has done a pretty good job of modeling sudden leaps (mostly through the 'tactics' value).
I think that would be a good thing for HoI4 too.

 

[bruebottom]

Not really sure what your point is, but a evolutionary and revolutionary concept is an interesting topic. Everything is evolutionary in nature as it's build on the past, but revolutionary is a whole new way of doing doing something.

I've never played any of the EU series, but I understand the game occurs over a longer time span than the HOI series. In this sense the WWII period was a 'leap forward'. Tanks in 1939 not only look different than late war tanks, but they are also used differently. The idea of tank warfare evolved over the course of the war, and it's use was still debated by German Generals right up until the end of the war. By the end of the war we have heavily (sloped) armoured tanks, that where fast, with high velocity tank guns and night fighting capability. This would more than likely not have happened by 1945 with out the war. In EU game series terms it might just as well be the 'leap forward' that you discuss.

The Type XXI u-boot is considered a precursor to modern subs due to its hull design. The hull is of a hydrodynamic design and this allows for an improved underwater sustained operations. Previous u-boot are considered to be surface vessels with underwater capabilities. The Type XXI is still evolutionary in its nature as it has torpedoes, electric batteries, a periscope, and other u-boot characteristics. The Type VII itself was revolutionary from it predecessor by being able to carry out sustained operations through out the Atlantic Ocean. This differs from the Type II as it was limited to the North Sea or the immediate area of operation. It's unlikely that the Type XXI would have changed warfare in the Atlantic.

The Me-262 is not revolutionary in its nature, but its engines are. Jets engines have allowed us to break the sound barrier (not sure if this is possible with piston driven engines) – or just simply go much faster! However, the Me-262 had disadvantages. The war was being fought over Germany. German pilots of the Me-262 could come under attack while they where landing or taking off. The Me-262 engine themselves were of a limiting factor in combat when at low speeds. By the end of the war the nature of air combat was not changed by the Me-262.

The Stg-44 assault rifle may be more evolutionary as it's not the first automatic weapon. But its entry into warfare does not go unnoticed as it changes the logistics of warfare as ammunition needs to move forward to the fronts lines at a faster rate. On the front lines when one German officer was ask by Hitler what he need the most his reply was the Stg-44 for his men. In the history of firearms this weapon may be evolutionary and not revolutionary as it does not change how warfare is fought. If we were to compare the TO&E of military units prior to 1944 and after 1944 this weapon more than likely did NOT cause any changes to units and unit tactics. It simple caused more ammunition to go down range.

An excellent example of revolutionary design is the V-1 and V-2. These weapons, the rocket not being new to history, introduced a new way of carrying out strategic warfare. The pinnacle of change to strategic warfare is the atomic bomb. The atomic bombs use in WWII is one that has never been seen in all of history. Combing these two technologies is truly revolutionary!

 

[Geredis]

What I think he's suggesting is that, going from, say, a Submarine IV to Submarine V is relatively minor, you know, +1 or +2 to most statistics, in exchange for higher supply and fuel consumptions in most cases. HOwever, when you look at it in detail, and realize that the Submarine IV is a Type IX, and the Submarine V is a Type XXI, (just using examples here, people will know what I mean), there's a big enough leap that it being 'simply' +150km range, and +1 or +2 in a few stats makes it almost...underwhelming. Sure, when yo ucompare, a Type II with a Type XXI (Submarine II vs Submarine V), there is a huge leap and huge difference in capabiilty...but the individual model changes, teh individual upgrades, often seem underwhelming.

Of course, I hope here in HOI4 that with the hands-on approach to model building for your ships and planes and divisions, I think this will be less of an issue, since we'll be researching and modifying the designs sufficiently that every time we create somethign new in most cases there WILL be a noticeable jump than the pre-designed benchmarks and all of HOI3, or the simple model-names of HOI and HOI2.

 

[SpanglishEmpire]

There were no major leaps really as in abilities wise, Tanks there guns got bigger to take out other tanks, In response the armour was made thicker, then it was realised sloped armour was like doubling the thickness.

Planes got faster throughout the war, The me-262 was revolutionary in that it was the first jet plane, It was not a huge success or a great threat like you say. Initially it was a shock but then the allies realized that a diving P-51 could catch it and changed their tactics (after the war jets went super sonic but not during.) The problem with the me-262 was it was too quick it never got great stats at air to air combat V other fighters or bomber formations.

In times of war technology progresses but actual leaps ahead in technology are rare. Think the F-117 now that was a shock to the world when it was first anounced and by then it had already been flying for over 10 years.

The STG 44 was a good progression but it would not have won the war. In urban combat it gave a big advantage. All the allies started pumping out their own smgs (many cheap fabricated variants) as the advantage of having that much firepower within a squad was noticed

 

[Secret Master]

As always, we tend to view things through the lens of HOI3.

I partially agree with Klauzewitz. But let me say this:

There are some techs in HOI3 that meet your criteria. I wouldn't want to fight an enemy who has RADAR guided bombs, air to ground missiles, air to air missiles, drop tanks, and acoustic torpedoes without having comparable techs myself. You don't need 40 TACs to disintegrate divisions once key techs are in place, and I can murder enemy aircraft or convoys with missiles and acoustic torpedoes.

But some other revolutionary techs were kind of meh. Jet engine is probably the biggest example.

Regarding submarines: the weird offsets for submarines in HOI3 provided a kind of revolutionary effect, until you hit zero visibility via hull. However, when the game says you have Elektoboots as Germany, they are awesome submarines. They have incredible range and murder convoys. But the "jump" in effect just comes as a result of progressive submarine techs.

EDIT: Surface to air missiles for province AA is also a lackluster tech. It certainly gives province AA more hitting power (I've measured it), but because of how province AA works, the effect is minimal. The province AA still dies a horrible death before it kills too many bombers.

 

[Axe99]

Radar (its use) would probably qualify as one of the revolutionary techs that happened relatively early in the war - it was a huge advantage to the RAF in home defence, and a substantial advantage to the RN when opposing vessels without radar (I'm pretty sure the Italian navy never got heavily into radar, but am not an expert).

Another that many have mentioned in other threads was Japan's long lance torpedo.

The tricky thing becomes modelling these in-game. How do you not make it that everyone automatically piles full-bore into the 'good stuff' straight away? Without some kind of mechanism, you'll have every navy with long lances and decent early-war radar. One way to get around it is to give nations 'bonuses' at the start of the game. Another may be to make technology development less certain - so maybe you have techs that are 'difficult' or 'easy' to research - so researching better tank armour or better tanks is relatively easy, but researching kick-arse torpedoes less so, so there's a higher probability of spending a lot of research points but getting no-where. I'd probably prefer the historical path m'self, particularly as it would stop the AI doing kooky things, but if the dev team were going for a more sandbox approach, it may be an option?

 

[1alexey]

Problem is more the way HOI3 research was made.

Tech took very short time to finish, and any major could have most of the important techs be constantly up to date. The practical difference was only in that some majors could field more fancy stuff than others like armor, and dedicated bombers/CAS instead of multi-roles, but basic units were always the same, and it was next to impossible to gain any meaningful edge for more than 2-3 month, and then stay almost 2 years at equality anyway.

There were also some really good techs in doctrine department:
Spearhead doctrine tech and combined arms warfare actually made your tanks far, far better than without them.
Superior firepower is quite self-explanatory.
Grand battle plan had clearly visible effect.

Problem is, none of those techs were particularly difficult to get, you always got them, so look at point above.

There were also the already mentioned Radar guided bomb, radar guided missile, and air-to-air missile, that made very large difference, but unfortunately, they just came too late to be a game decider.

Jets were always a disappointment. Yes, ME-262 wasn`t hugely successful due to a number of things, most of which didn`t even had anything to do with the plane, but take a look at Korean war, MiGs and Sabres were so much above the propelled planes, it was ridiculous, and those two are pretty much only a slightly outside of HOI time frame.
American F-80, that was developed around the same time as ME-262, was also very strong contender.

Overall I would say that the HOI3 tech tree had the evolution-revolution thing right, but due to idiotic setup of the way techs worked, the tech tree in itself was quite meaningless. The devs could make it so that at low practicals it would take more than 2 years(typical offset) to research a tech, and something like 1.3-1.5 years at high practicals, allowing countries to actually have a meaningful edge in places where they specialize.

I really hope HOI4 will implement tech race much better.

 

[Zinegata]

I really wish that people who have no engineering knowledge would stop writing articles and making documentaries about engineering. This is how the pretty dumb meme of how technology "evolves" and it's this evolution where we get "advancements" keeps getting perpetuated even though engineering isn't like that at all; leading to poorly informed "Hitler's Secret Weapons" "documentaries".

Real engineering is not about simply getting new technology. Real engineering is in fact about systems integration - which is putting together both new and existing technologies together to make a whole, working system. This is why a modern computer - while perhaps having the latest micoprocessor or video card - still relies on steel for its casing that has been largely unchanged since the 19th Century, and has a keyboard attachment that is the outgrowth of the typewriter.

And because people do not understand real engineering, they hence fail to realize where great advances in military operations were actually made in WW2, in favor of the shiny high tech things that actually by and large were not as good as advertised.

The Me-262 for instance? Not only was it actually deployed later than the Allied Meteor, it was also by and large highly ineffective to the point that prop-plane fighters on the Allied side were competing with each other for the novelty of shooting down a jet.

Meanwhile, artillery, which is dismissed as having merely minor improvements, in fact improved enormously during the war. Yes, the guns were by and large the same, but what's actually important is the integration of radio and motor transport to the artillery arm. Motor transport allowed artillery to advance as quick as the tanks did (contrary to popular belief, tanks were almost as road-bound as trucks, because all the fuel and ammunition of tanks are carried on trucks), without which the tanks couldn't have achieved their lightning advances. Radio meanwhile - once an integrated fire mission system was developed - allowed infantry in small numbers to call down artillery fire on much larger enemy forces.

The latter is in fact the bigger reason why WW2 didn't end up a trench war - far more than tanks. In the First World War, without radio, the entire frontline had to be manned to slow down an enemy advance, simply because it took so long to get word to the artillery that a fire mission was needed. In the Second World War, all you needed was a handful of foxholes - so long as one of those FOs survived with a working radio you could now call down artillery on much larger enemy forces and destroy them.

====

Similarly, a lot of hay has been made of the Type XXI, but by and large it was a rushed development that had a lot of advertised features which never really worked. The snorkel may seem revolutionary, but the reality of WW2 boats is that they spent most of the time on the surface anyway to recharge their batteries. Allied submarines operated just fine without it - though in part that's because Axis aircraft had no radar to detect surfaced Allied submarines at night.

Meanwhile, the real revolutionary war-winning combination of submarine + radar practiced by the American submarine arm has been almost totally ignored; even though this resulted in the US submariners - who consisted less than 2% of the entire USN in the Pacific - sinking 5.5 million out of the 6 million tons of Japanese pre-war shipping and one in three Japanese warships sunk.

This success is often attributed to poor Japanese ASW, but it ignores the fact that American submarines had far superior performance to their German counterparts due to radar because the "search for targets" portion of the equation was in fact more difficult and important than the actual submerged attack portion; and radar helped in this enormously in the vast expanses of the Pacific. Indeed, several Japanese capital ships - including the world's largest carrier - were all detected and sunk by US submarines only because of radar.

===

Hence, when looking at WW2 "tech", what's important is not to look at individual technologies, but at how they were used as a system. Radar alone for instance didn't win the Battle of Britain - it was an integrated system that combined coast watchers, anti-air batteries, and a centralized fighter command. This is also the big reason why none of the German wonderweapons were ever going to be decisive - almost all of them were developed in a vacuum without regard for systems integration; because most were just placebos for people still not wanting to face the reality that the war was lost.

 

[1alexey]

The latter is in fact the bigger reason why WW2 didn't end up a trench war - far more than tanks. In the First World War, without radio, the entire frontline had to be manned to slow down an enemy advance, simply because it took so long to get word to the artillery that a fire mission was needed. In the Second World War, all you needed was a handful of foxholes - so long as one of those FOs survived with a working radio you could now call down artillery on much larger enemy forces and destroy them.

That is, assuming your artillery was still functioning, and not dead or without munition, due a combination of enemy counter-battery fire and air attacks, that the enemy would fail at reconnaissance to send too many people against a few pillboxes, and besides, much larger force tended to have much more artillery. Your entire example is an exercise in tunnel vision.
You also ignore wired phones, largely used in WW1 and WW2 to great effect, so radio wasn`t nearly as revolutionary, and it took quite some time to fully deploy.

But what made WW2 a non-trenched war was not radio. It was much higher proliferation of trucks and their much better quality then in WW1, and aviation, that allowed to seriously hamper enemy`s maneuvers and logistics.

Meanwhile, the real revolutionary war-winning combination of submarine + radar practiced by the American submarine arm has been almost totally ignored; even though this resulted in the US submariners - who consisted less than 2% of the entire USN in the Pacific - sinking 5.5 million out of the 6 million tons of Japanese pre-war shipping and one in three Japanese warships sunk.

This success is often attributed to poor Japanese ASW, but it ignores the fact that American submarines had far superior performance to their German counterparts due to radar because the "search for targets" portion of the equation was in fact more difficult and important than the actual submerged attack portion; and radar helped in this enormously in the vast expanses of the Pacific. Indeed, several Japanese capital ships - including the world's largest carrier - were all detected and sunk by US submarines only because of radar.

Code breaking, that was probably at least as important. Also, German subs managed to spot the convoys just fine, engaging them, however was much more problematic.

 

[Zinegata]

The tricky thing becomes modelling these in-game. How do you not make it that everyone automatically piles full-bore into the 'good stuff' straight away? Without some kind of mechanism, you'll have every navy with long lances and decent early-war radar. One way to get around it is to give nations 'bonuses' at the start of the game. Another may be to make technology development less certain - so maybe you have techs that are 'difficult' or 'easy' to research - so researching better tank armour or better tanks is relatively easy, but researching kick-arse torpedoes less so, so there's a higher probability of spending a lot of research points but getting no-where. I'd probably prefer the historical path m'self, particularly as it would stop the AI doing kooky things, but if the dev team were going for a more sandbox approach, it may be an option?

There are two things not modelled in the game at work here:

First of all, most technologies have trade-offs. Jets may be faster, but they consume more fuel (which really brings to question why a fuel-starved Nazi Germany thought the 262 was a good idea) and are much more expensive. Long lances have incredible range, but they're rather explosive and on occassion proved dangerous to their own ships. A lot of system integration in fact revolves around trying to find the right combination of trade offs to make a reliable, working system; or to create a highly specialized system with very specific risk factors taken into consideration (e.g. Japanese cruisers accepting the risk of Long Lance explosions in exchange for much better firepower especially in night actions - a risk that by and large paid off in 1942).

The second issue is that some nations simply plainly do not have the sort of industry needed to make certain techs. It's not that Germany didn't want radar - they certainly made a lot of their own sets for protecting the Reich during the CBO - but their electronics industry simply lagged far behind Britian and America's (being basically just the Siemens company) and no amount of investment was going to change that quickly. Same thing applied to German capital ships, or the misbegotten idea that they could have a working aircraft carrier. The differences in tech available to each nation were far more pronounced than they are in-game.

 

[1alexey]

Jets may be faster, but they consume more fuel (which really brings to question why a fuel-starved Nazi Germany thought the 262 was a good idea)

Because Jets use different type of fuel, so transition actually helps alleviate fuel shortage somewhat.

 

[Zinegata]

That is, assuming your artillery was still functioning, and not dead or without munition, due a combination of enemy counter-battery fire and air attacks.

Which shows your ignorance of the importance of motorized transport, which allowed artillery to shift positions more quickly to avoid counter-battery, and get ammuition more consistently. Again, system matters, not mere pettyfogging of exemptions.

You also ignore wired phones, largely used in WW1 and WW2 to great effect, so radio wasn`t nearly as revolutionary, and it took quite some time to fully deploy.

Wired phones broke very easily under artillery fire; and when they broke you're back to using runners.

Anyone with an even basic knowledge of how trench warfare in WW1 actually happened would know this and understand this is the reason why radio was so important.

Code breaking, that was probably at least as important. Also, German subs managed to spot the convoys just fine, engaging them, however was much more problematic.

US code breaking didn't reveal where the Shinano exactly was; that's again what radar is for.

Also, "German subs managed to spot convoys just fine" is simple denial of reality. The vast majority of Atlantic convoys - something like 80 to 90% - were never even detected by the U-boats. Radar would have helped in this regard enormously.

 

[Zinegata]

Because Jets use different type of fuel, so transition actually helps alleviate fuel shortage somewhat.

This is just you thinking you're being clever and yet in reality demonstrating how little you actually know. But sure, let's pretend high octane jet fuel was totally in abundance for Nazi Germany that was in some cases already resorting to using peanut oil to fuel its forces and on average even their regular aviation fuel was already significantly lower in octanes than American fuel because their refineries were so primitive and overworked.

 

[1alexey]

Which shows your ignorance of the importance of motorized transport, which allowed artillery to shift positions more quickly to avoid counter-battery, and get ammuition more consistently. Again, system matters, not mere pettyfogging of exemptions.

You throw the word ignorance around too much, with little knowlege. Atrillery has to remain stationary for a number of reloading cylces, that allows counter-battery fire. Also, lo and behold, aviation may actually search for it on the roads, where it is more vulnerable and visible than in field.

The reason, why rocket artillery was largely introduced, precisely that it didn`t had the shortcoming.

US code breaking didn't reveal where the Shinano exactly was; that's again what radar is for.

Us code breaking allowed to get subs in radar range.

Also, "German subs managed to spot convoys just fine" is simple denial of reality. The vast majority of Atlantic convoys - something like 80 to 90% - were never even detected by the U-boats. Radar would have helped in this regard enormously.

So Germany would be out of boats in 1942, as opposed to 1944?

This is just you thinking you're being clever and yet in reality demonstrating how little you actually know. But sure, let's pretend high octane jet fuel was totally in abundance for Nazi Germany that was in some cases already resorting to using peanut oil to fuel its forces and on average even their regular aviation fuel was already significantly lower in octanes than American fuel because their refineries were so primitive and overworked.

It just allows to get more from oil. Again, personal attacks more than actual knowlege here.

 

[Zinegata]

You throw the word ignorance around too much, with little knowlege.

Maybe you should actually give good information instead of this new set of misinformation you keep throwing around, because nothing you posted in "reply" to me stands up to any serious analysis.

Atrillery has to remain stationary for a number of reloading cylces, that allows counter-battery fire.

Counter-battery fire, which you clearly are not knowledgeable in, is not instant even with 1980s technology. It requires calculations and plotting. This is why your entire tangent about artillery requiring "reload cycles" is pointless. It takes time to move artillery yes, but it also takes time to plot counter-battery.

And besides which, you're comparing WW1 artillery moved around by horses with WW2 artillery moved by trucks. And the fact that they had to use horses in WW1 is why artillery is mainly "stationary" in WW1. Horses cannot move 30kph while lugging artillery. Trucks can.

That you ignore this tangent and instead pretend counter battery is instant simply demonstrates how little you actually know of artillery systems; and how you're just selectively cherry-picking facts to cover up the fact that your assertions were plainly misinformation.

Us code breaking allowed to get subs in radar range.

Again, Shinano and very many other capital ships were sunk even without needing US code-breaking to "get them in range". Very many detections were simply by regular patrols of knowns sea routes. Read up on US submarine operations before pretending you know anything about them please.

So Germany would be out of boats in 1942, as opposed to 1944?

Given that U-boats were sinking merchies at a ratio of around 3:1 in their favor in '42, that's a better trade off for the Germans than spending them in '44 when most U-boats were simply getting sunk without killing any merchies. "Fleet in being" is not a doctrine for submarines.

It just allows to get more from oil. Again, personal attacks more than actual knowlege here.

There are no personal attacks, just observations that you clearly have no idea that jet fuel requires much more sophisticated refining than ordinary fuel, hence your assertion that jet fuel "freed up" more oil capacity for the Nazis is clearly both ridiculous and born out of ignorance.

Really, "ignorance" is an appropriate term when you clearly have no idea that fuel does not simply spring up from the ground and requires further refining into usable products; and that in this refining process to create jet fuel you use up capacity that can be used to product other fuel.

Read up more before commenting - as in things like basic oil industry operations - and stop getting mad because I simply point out the massive inaccuracies you keep trying to peddle.

 

[Zinegata]

In that case, I suggest you do the same.

I have not peddled any inaccuracies; precisely because I read often and broadly and don't comment on matters unless I at least have some actual knowledge of the subject. Again, trying to be clever with your word play does not change this.

 

[1alexey]

Counter-battery fire, which you clearly are not knowledgeable in, is not instant even with 1980s technology. It requires calculations and plotting. This is why your entire tangent about artillery requiring "reload cycles" is pointless. It takes time to move artillery yes, but it also takes time to plot counter-battery.

And besides which, you're comparing WW1 artillery moved around by horses with WW2 artillery moved by trucks. And the fact that they had to use horses in WW1 is why artillery is mainly "stationary" in WW1. Horses cannot move 30kph while lugging artillery. Trucks can.

That you ignore this tangent and instead pretend counter battery is instant simply demonstrates how little you actually know of artillery systems; and how you're just selectively cherry-picking facts to cover up the fact that your assertions were plainly misinformation.

Batteries don`t change position after each shot fired, and if they do, they cant fire on your infantry at the same time. Yes, counter-battery fire is not an instant, and I never said that, but it does reduces enemy artillery power noticeably which is especially important when you`re on offensive.

Does the artillery have trucks or not is irrelevant, counter-battery fire, or even possibility of it, would force it not to fire, which is most important when your forces attack, and obviously you did ignore air force impact, so much for "selectively cherry-picking", and you ignored that with increase of coordination, not only did the capacity to defensively deploy fire rose, but also offensively, to disrupt enemy defensive fire for duration necessary to break through.

Again, Shinano and very many other capital ships were sunk even without needing US code-breaking to "get them in range". Very many detections were simply by regular patrols of knowns sea routes. Read up on US submarine operations before pretending you know anything about them please.

Pretending that code breaking was not important is curious, please cite your sources.

Given that U-boats were sinking merchies at a ratio of around 3:1 in their favor in '42, that's a better trade off for the Germans than spending them in '44 when most U-boats were simply getting sunk without killing any merchies. "Fleet in being" is not a doctrine for submarines.

According to Denitz, it is, as grouping in convoys greatly reduces efficiency, or so they though.

There are no personal attacks, just observations that you clearly have no idea that jet fuel requires much more sophisticated refining than ordinary fuel, hence your assertion that jet fuel "freed up" more oil capacity for the Nazis is clearly both ridiculous and born out of ignorance.

Really, "ignorance" is an appropriate term when you clearly have no idea that fuel does not simply spring up from the ground and requires further refining into usable products; and that in this refining process to create jet fuel you use up capacity that can be used to product other fuel.

Read up more before commenting - as in things like basic oil industry operations - and stop getting mad because I simply point out the massive inaccuracies you keep trying to peddle.

I`m pretty sure that in late 1944 and 1945 Germans didn`t had the oil to refine, not the capacities to refine it, as Romanian oil was lost at that time.

 

[Czaristan]

Objectively I would say you're both right about some things and wrong about others. Example: Modern shoot-and-scoot tactics didn't really exist for most of WWII because the vast majority of artillery was not self-propelled. Even a skilled crew would take a fairly long time to set up/break down static artillery of any size.

Back on topic though: Even if we agree that giant technological leaps did occur between different models (i.e. Germans going from KAR-98s to MP-44s, which theoretically would be a big stat bump for infantry divisions) It still took significant time to reequip entire division sized units. Furthermore, upgrading small arms would have only been a small part of the divisions firepower. Machine guns, grenade, anti-tank weapons, mortars, howitzers, and other attached artillery would still be hugely significant portions of that unit's firepower (hard/soft attack). Therefore even assuming instant upgrades of a weapon type, overall division stats wouldn't change all that much.

I think exceptions can be made in the case of aircraft and potentially ships though. For instance Me-262 squadrons will have massively increased stats over earlier interceptors (especially if upgraded from Bf-109s). Something like 50% speed increase, much higher air defense ratings to simulate their ability to outrun any allied fighters, 50% or more upgrade in firepower, etc.

Ships are an interesting case because often they went through retrofits. This was simulated well in HOI2 with the ability to upgrade attachments on ships without upgrading the hull itself. For the type IX to XXI example, I'm not convinced that the type XXI was overwhelmingly better. Sure it had significant improvements but it shared the same core vulnerabilities to being spotted by aircraft while surfaced.

 

[Zinegata]

Batteries don`t change position after each shot fired, and if they do, they cant fire on your infantry at the same time.

I never said they did "after each shot fired", that's your fiction and thinking that it's modern shoot-and-scoot. What I did say is that counter-battery takes time and that you now have the mobility of trucks moving at 30kph+ to shift your guns relatively quickly when needed.

Does the artillery have trucks or not is irrelevant, counter-battery fire, or even possibility of it, would force it not to fire,

That's just you not knowing how artillery works. Counter-battery does not "force enemy artillery not to fire" because you're scaring them into moving in the context of the two World Wars. Counter-battery in the First and Second World Wars was again a slow thing. Days in fact if we're talking about most of World War 1 - requiring air recon in addition to plotting and calculations.

Counter-battery in both wars in fact was mainly about hitting static and known artillery park locations with massive amounts of artillery - utterly crushing the enemy artillery that there's almost nothing left to throw back. It's not at all the same as the Cold War version where your counter-battery is remaining silent so that it can hit enemy artillery as soon as it reveals itself - and in any case that sort of counter-battery was partly NATO fanfiction.

Thanks to trucks, the static artillery park was now a thing of the past. An artillery battalion parked beside a village today can be in a village 60 kilometers down the road within a few hours, rather than taking a week using horses. This, aside from the speed advantage, protects the artillery from counter-battery which again is largely limited to static locations that require long observation time. That again represents a much greater leap in capability than anything mentioned in this thread so far.

Again, the very simple reality that switching from an unreliable, temperamental horse that can maybe move a gun at maybe 10 kph on a good day as opposed to an uncomplaining, reliable truck that can move the guns at 30 kph or more is far more significant to the changes in WW2 combat; and no amount of pettyfogging by extremely wrong ideas about counter-battery will change this.

Pretending that code breaking was not important is curious, please cite your sources.

And there you go again with outright putting words in my mouth. I never said code breaking was not important. What I did say is that very many IJN ships were found without code-breaking using only radar; something which you have failed to disprove.

According to Denitz, it is, as grouping in convoys greatly reduces efficiency, or so they though.

Who is this "Denitz" and what does it have to do with the fact that 90% of allied convoys got through undetected, and in the few convoys they did find in 1942 they had a 3:1 kill rate in the U-boat's favor as opposed to the utter massacre of U-boats in 1944?

And really, you're saying that the U-boat arm didn't need radar to extend their detection reach when they were practically begging for recon assets from the Luftwaffe to helo them find the convoys? What kind of bizarre alternate version of World War 2 are you talking about?

I`m pretty sure that in late 1944 and 1945 Germans didn`t had the oil to refine, not the capacities to refine it, as Romanian oil was lost at that time.

LOL. That's a new level of ignorance. All of the Third Reich's oil came from Romania?

Given that you don't even know there are oil fields in Germany, Austria, and Hungary - the offensive at Lake Balaton for instance being aimed specifically at recapturing the oil wells in that area - you're not really helping your case when I say you're completely ignorant about the oil situation of the Second World War and shouldn't be making comments like "Jet fuel is a different kind of fuel so it doesn't make things harder for Germany".


====

Objectively I would say you're both right about some things and wrong about others. Example: Modern shoot-and-scoot tactics didn't really exist for most of WWII because the vast majority of artillery was not self-propelled. Even a skilled crew would take a fairly long time to set up/break down static artillery of any size.

I never claimed shoot-and-scoot, that I point out that alexey is talking about 1980s style counterbattery should make that pretty clear.

My point is that artillery was not as static in WW2 because artillery can move via 30 kph trucks. It may take some time to setup or break down artillery, but in WW2 that can be measured in hours. In the First World War, it took days and weeks precisely because horses are basically dragging the guns at marching pace (and the horses kept dying in huge numbers), which is why they largely kept their guns static to begin with.

The days when you can simply crush an entire army's artillery park was simply over in WW2 because it no longer took days to move an entirely artillery park to begin with. The exception being in the latter portions of the Eastern Front, when the German army was so reliant on horse transport that the Russians were able to start consistently burying the increasingly static German arty positions.

 

[Zinegata]

I think exceptions can be made in the case of aircraft and potentially ships though. For instance Me-262 squadrons will have massively increased stats over earlier interceptors (especially if upgraded from Bf-109s). Something like 50% speed increase, much higher air defense ratings to simulate their ability to outrun any allied fighters, 50% or more upgrade in firepower, etc.

The thing is, the 262s were honestly very overrated. They couldn't consistently go fast and when they slowed down they were worse than prop planes. The engines only had about 9-10 hours of life in them because of its rushed nature. And that's before we get to all of the other structural problems.

Jets certainly became the mainstay post-war, but in the context of WW2 they were an extremely new technology that still required more development. And Germany, which went from no real air industry in the 20s to one of the largest air industries in the world, was simply trying to make a leap too far.