Fatherland - Deutschland über alles

[Lord E]

The American Navy sure is getting more and more annoying, and still it seems like we haven’t seen their most modern and powerful ships yet, so there is probably more to come. In the Middle East progress is very good, I think that with continued progress both Turkey and Persia should be annexed soon. I just wonder how is General Lord E doing? Fighting hard, or just sitting on his ass drinking champagne and celebrating former victories?

 

[Kanitatlan]

Von Uber Realistically I think landing 11 panzer divisions has to be done one tank at a time. Against a single French militia division this seems to be an effective strategy.

noobermenschen, Lord E Don't get too hung up on the US navy. They may be annoying but they haven't achieved any real success yet.

Leader reports at the end of the month

 

[Kanitatlan]

October 28th 1940

06:00 October 28th 1940​

With Izmit captured I can finish of clearing up western Turkey, which will allow all the forces in Istanbul to redeploy to more useful locations. The Turkish campaign is beginning to move towards its conclusion in a satisfyingly effective manner. Soon we will be reduced to amphibious campaigning in the Mediterranean with no land fronts west of the Middle East. This is if nothing else the first step in turning Europe into a reasonably secure power base for future operations.

11:00 October 28th 1940​

The central Mediterranean is now subject to constant u-boat patrol and naval bombing. This should wear down the Italian merchant marine and all the navies present. Some time soon I should have achieved naval concentration in the Mediterranean and be able to seriously approach the task of clearing it of enemy naval forces. There are a lot of them here and this is going to be a much longer process than in most games. The game mods and the true world conflict have resulted in many many more ships being here than is normal.

14:00 October 28th 1940​

This overview of the Turkish campaign shows the strength of my position and the lack of any realistic strategy for the Turkish defence. As ever Trebizond is going to be the last province to be taken as my forces sweep round to isolate it before the final attack.

20:00 October 28th 1940​

Air naval operations (both land and carrier based) continue around the Irish coast. I am not happy about the continued use of the fleet here and feel it must be sent to the Mediterranean as soon as possible. Whilst US operations have completely failed to achieve any of there local objectives (I have not lost a single ship or division and I have regained all Irish territory), they have achieved a major diversion of my resources. The main Kriegsmarine fleet and thousands of aircraft have been diverted to fight them rather than progress operations elsewhere. So far the AI has retained the initiative and that of itself is significant. If the air and naval forces could all concentrate on the Mediterranean then events there might be progressing a little more like the traditional Kanitatlan steamroller. As it is I am content to take a more relaxed approach to conquest to minimise the risks inherent in trying too hard.

I suspect there are other more optimal strategies that I could pursue. The one that appeals is to allow the US to build a base in Ireland before trashing them once more (have I already mentioned this?)

23:00 October 28th 1940​

This is extremely impressive. Apparently our relations have got even worse. Under the circumstances this is hard to believe.

Germany showing its irritation.​

 

[Kanitatlan]

October 29th-30th 1940

08:00 October 29th 1940​

The US has finally come up with a decent fleet but all it manages to do is provide target practise. A morning engagement with my carrier fleet leaves it pretty beaten up for bombing in the afternoon by land air power. Actual losses are minimal but the damage is widespread and results in more losses to air attack as they retreat. (see end of month naval losses for enlightenment)

03:00 October 30th 1940​

Another novelty attack by a ludicrous Italian fleet leads to some naughtiness from Kasakka but night time air attacks on our transports during a rain storm are pretty ineffective even from our excellent forces.

Meanwhile the motorised division (seen a few days ago) in Mashhad continuous to be pointlessly bombed by the Japanese.

06:00 October 30th 1940​

Another u-boat success in the Mediterranean. The limited forces here compared with the Atlantic are being far more successful but it must be admitted that the supply runs in the Atlantic must be quite limited due to the low level of allied forces that need supply.

08:00 October 30th 1940​

We hate light carriers and this looks like bad news for this one despite the poor weather. These CAS are the focus of anti-naval operations in the Mediterranean with the hope that they will seriously suppress enemy naval activity and make further landings relatively safe. I haven’t had problems so far but “exposure” has seemed a little high and I absolutely hate losing any ships. My ships are precious as I gain so few every year (well it is few compared with the enemy)

09:00 October 30th 1940​

This is where we found that BB fleets are not useless against submarines. The range has closed to 5km and although this means there are torpedoes flying all over it mostly benefits the depth charges being liberally scattered around. The u-boats escape without actual loss but were not doing well. Yet another batch of u-boats heads to port for repairs.

21:00 October 30th 1940​

Here, however, we have an unusual success with a u-boat fleet as they actually succeed in sinking a transport flotilla. It is tempting to say u-boats seem a little underpowered these days but the complete loss of half the transport force and major damage elsewhere is probably fair. Nothing worse than this actually happened to any British convoy during the war.

23:00 October 30th 1940​

Finally an overview of the active combat zones shows the position at the end of the month. In Italy the mainland has been cleared and we await sufficient naval dominance for crossing into Sicily. In Turkey we can see the end coming with the defences all fragmented, in Syria and Lebanon the result seems inevitable and in Persia I am finally (after a lot of driving) closing in on the last VPs.

The Russian activity doesn’t really show but they have advanced in the north to take a handful of undefended provinces. All German forces are hanging back behind the Volga and running air attacks to inflict some damage on the Russian army. I know I am eliminating a few divisions but it makes no discernable difference to their overall strength. The day length and weather is beginning to seriously deteriorate and air attack cannot be expected to achieve a great deal during the winter. In fact the weather will probably do more to slow them down.

The defence behind the Volga is extremely weak and I will need to respond in some way when the Russians move forward in significant numbers, either sending massive reinforcements or evacuating my airfields. I am loath to abandon my airfields as they are currently being expanded from production.

 

[unmerged(51967)]

Germany showing its irritation.​

With a penisrock? I would dare think that means arousal rather than irritation.

In any case, The Soviet buildup in central asia and the fact you have little forces on the ostfront seem to be worrying D:!

 

[Kanitatlan]

With a penisrock? I would dare think that means arousal rather than irritation.

In any case, The Soviet buildup in central asia and the fact you have little forces on the ostfront seem to be worrying D:!

I prefer to see it as a shaken fist (to keep it clean).

 

[Kanitatlan]

These are the accumulated naval losses report for October 1940. This is what I call a well-balanced month. The loss report provides a much better indication of the state of the naval war than the months narrative. The majority of losses have been at least finished of by aircraft and the constant minor air-naval actions don’t get much coverage.

October 30th n1-n4

According to the naval battle reports (not ship losses) I have lost 11 screens (actually all u-boats) since the beginning of the war. This is an interesting lie since reviewing the losses list shows I have lost 10 u-boat flotillas and the Schleisen (BC1). This suggests the naval battle loss reports are slightly incorrect and don’t count all types correctly. Unfortunately there does not seem to be any easy practical method for adding up total enemy ship losses due to their outrageous numbers but I can see 13 BBs going in the last month. This works out to 150 a year, which is beyond even the USA’s replacement rate. However they only lost 2 CVs which is well within their monthly replacement capacity.

 

[Kanitatlan]

BB vs CA

BB vs CA

As requested by Brad1 here is a short analysis of the use of BBs against the use of CAs. All figures are based on my current build costs and models (level 4). Brad1 did ask about SHBB but I haven’t researched those and hence cannot give an analysis from current models.

The first issue is the cost differential between the two. BBs have a significant cost disadvantage as the cost 2100 IC days each against 630 for the CA. This is already a big difference but is affected further by the slow rate of gearing for BBs. This will, for example, mean that a 2 year building program will give an average –2.5% cost for BBs but an average of –7.5% cost for the CAs. This simply heightens the difference in cost.

Using the base cost (with no gearing akllowance) the CAs have 75% more naval attack per IC than the BBs. This is a significant difference and if you can usefully apply this advantage it is sufficient to overwhelm BBs. It is worth considering the stacking cost of using CAs since you will have significantly more ships than using BBs. This probably compensates for the different gearing in building them (ie same sort of scale of effect) and hence we can ignore both as approximately balancing.

BBs do have much better naval defence than CAs which if taken into account probably reduces the CAs combat advantage to around 60% rather than the original 75%. However, defence does not mean it takes a lot more hits to sink, it just means that more shots get through. The number of hits to sink is simply based on unit count and therefore CAs have a massive advantage. I get 3.33 times as many CAs as BBs and this means they take a lot more firepower to sink and should be rated as 3.33 times better than BBs.

This brings us to an evaluation where CAs have about a 5:1 advantage against BBs which is quite a spectacular difference. It is time to consider why this apparent advantage is not so good. The key issue here is range and ability to close. The CA advantage is only useful if it can be applied and this requires us to close the combat to CA range. If this is a major issue then BBs may well be useful but otherwise CAs are very attractive. The second issue is CAs will sink more easily. This means that a BB versus CA battle may end with the BB side taking a lot more damage in terms of IC cost but with all their ships still afloat whilst some CAs have been sunk. This sort of situation can quickly lead to a serious attrition advantage to the BB side. The third issue is for very large fleets stacking becomes very significant and BBs (or SHBBs) have huge attraction in terms of being able to field a single super-powerful fleet.

Combining all the issues and bearing in mind the size of fleets I am facing I consider CAs to be a much more economical solution to the problem than any sort of BB. You might, however, like to bear in mind that without the range rules in naval combat the seas become dominated by giant stacks of destroyers (as in HOI1). The key issue in naval battles is being able to control the range of engagement and when you can’t being able to escape before any ships actually sink. Since screens tend to get sunk first the CA / BB difference is probably unimportant.

I guess that explains the basis of my opinion on this issue and nicely demonstrates how it is based on theory rather than experience. The simple fact is that I don’t play the game anything like as much as other people and am therefore dependent on my analytical skills for getting things right.

 

[Kanitatlan]

Armed Forces Status

Armed Forces Status

This is just a quick report on current unit “damage” to give an indication of how well reinforcements are keeping up with losses.

Firstly, the Luftwaffe 34 aircraft below full strength out of a total of 19,000. This seems close enough to full strength for me.

The Kriegsmarine is in very good condition with 4 damaged carriers – Germania (83%) with real damage and Wispering Death (99), Lifeless (98) and Ghostwriter (93) with scratched paintwork. There are lots of damaged u-boats and a handful of other damaged ships.

The Army only has one division below full strength, a motorised division retreating from Kars.

Organisation levels are a different matter with very low levels widespread in both the army and the air force. I am constantly threatened with the suspension of both air operations and the progress of ground spearheads. The naval air war doesn’t result in many aircraft losses but there are constantly issues with air fleets being reduced to very low organisation as a result of attacking powerful enemy task forces.

Our tank loss for the month​

 

[Khaosliege]

Our tank loss for the month[/CENTER]

:rofl:
This is very impressive!

How many NAVs have you to wreck such havoc to your enemies' fleets?

Are you also using CAS and/or TACs as naval bombes?

 

[Brad1]

BB vs CA

As requested by Brad1 here is a short analysis of the use of BBs against the use of CAs. ........

Thankyou very much for your analysis. Do you think that it would be more realistic if paradox integrated a "hitpoint" type system into their naval simulation? Paradox could assign a set number of hitpoints that varies on the unit type and model, with the larger ships like SHBBs having much more hp than smaller ships like destroyers. This would seem realistic to me. Also, I would think that you are at the point in your game where you have much excess IC, and that IC day expensive units would start to make sense if it would save manpower.

I have to admit though, I always have to build SHBBs in my games just because I like the thought of massive battleships dueling on the high seas.

 

[Baneslave]

I haven't read this AAR lately, so I have little bit to read now... About 40 pages.

 

[TheExecuter]

The admiral stood calmly on the bridge, legs apart, his terrier squatting at his feet. He contemptuously guestured at the German CAS futily attempting to pound his proud fleet.

"Is this all you can conjure, Kanitlan? Is this it?"

The raid over, he marched to the bridge and demanded a status report. 30 minutes later he heard the worst.

"Casualty report sir. The CVL took major damage."

"What about the battlewagons?"

"No shipboard damage, no casualties."

"Good, now I hope those asses at the War Department can take advantage of this situation...in the meantime, tell some destroyers to tend to our Jeep..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Again, the US navy shows promise and not simply rolling over and sinking before the might of Germany...room to hope once more. I assume that if you are unable to sink Allied ships faster than they are built, that this problem might grow if German naval production is not fast enough. The Americans can slow you down and provide inefficiency in your movements by forcing you to win naval victories over their ever replaceable fleets...an interesting strategy. They are using their numerical advantage in the most inefficient way possible (spreading out the fleets) and still have the potential of creating a disastrous moment...I'd wish you good luck with the problem...especially when you will want to cross the Atlantic and invade...but then I'll be commanding against you... ...and so must wish you many return engagements with CVL's escorted by SHBBs.

Out of curiosity...whenever the allied fleets have gotten close, have you been escorting transports?

 

[Kanitatlan]

Research

Research

The following images give an indication of my current research status. I can’t claim to have a very sophisticated research policy at the current time and the wide spread of research indicates this.

The Advanced Oil Refining was being pursued so that I had a surplus of energy (by reducing input to conversion) that would then be available for trading. Since that time I have gone to war with the whole world making it a little pointless. Apart from that current focus is on improving my deployed forces and developing access to some new types. All research is focused on current dated technologies with no push on into the future. I could push the envelope in some areas but my interests remain too divers.

As soon as Advanced Destroyer is complete I will be building them in large numbers. They will become the long-term staple for my naval screens. The strategic bomber research is so that I may build a few of this type for potential use where extreme long range is required. They are likely to find use in deep ocean naval reconnaissance.

We are up to date in relevant infantry tech except for marines. I have 2 marines techs which need researching, especially since I have some blueprints. These techs will be essential for long-term effective amphibious operations so they will soon have priority. With 1941 fast approaching it is also time to upgrade the mountain divisions. Deep repair is also on the cards and frontline supply will become a tempting ahead of time development.

Currently I am planning to ignore the mechanised branch of research since I have enough forces with my armoured and motorised divisions. Whilst mechanised divisions might be a better investment it is too late to go back and change things. With my early start it was completely impractical to research mechanised before the war.

There are only very limited areas of interest on this tech tree. The only research I will pursue is Tanks (with the objective of upgrading my divisions), artillery and SP artillery. Everything else is irrelevant since I will not be building any other types of unit. This means this area is idle since all of the next generation are dated 1943 with the following in 1945. The 1945 generation requires a lot of heavy tank research to get to Semi-Modern armour so this might be inserted ahead of time. It is however so distant that this is a foolish waste of resources if done anytime soon.

The only types I have interest in here are destroyers, heavy cruiser, carriers and light carriers. The big CA build sequence is geared up and not worth disrupting so the focus is the destroyers (followed by builds), light carriers (followed by builds) and than fleet carrier to get the CAG upgrade. This means there are only 3 more techs here that I am interested in pursuing prior to 1943 (although I could go 2 steps in CVL).

I am interested in u-boats but that next tech is dated 1944 making it a little far off to take any notice of just now.

Currently I am filling out naval bombers and strategic bombers which will give me a full set of units. The next generation is 1943 which is when the air tree really takes off with rapid progress into jets and rockets. See below for rocket/jet research.

The only surprise here is the lack of rocket research. This is waiting on the completion of my massive rocket base at which point research will leap off at a fantastic rate. This is why I am holding back and I hope to progress to jet powered flight in a ridiculously short time.

I am also ignoring radar research. Currently I have no radar stations and little intention of building any. The theory is that my fronts are never going to be sufficiently static for it to be worth building any so this will languish for some time. If I get a nice collection of blueprints from my spies then I may pursue it further.

This is a mixture of 3 trees due to them being all rather localised in meaningful content. Naval doctrines are currently an area of particular interest as I am trying to get my u-boat forces and carrier fleets up to scratch. This will require significant investment

My only secret weapons research so far is on computers and this is currently stalled by ahead of time penalties. It is quite tempting to try pushing further in this area simply because of the pay off. An additional +5% research whilst being useful represents only a 4% increase in speed since I already have +25%. This means 1 extra tech for every 25 researched which won’t pay of ahead of time penalties as efficiently as simply waiting.

Land doctrines are in a good condition with no realistic opportunity for research until 1943 (or thereabouts).

There are plenty of air doctrines I could be pursuing but most are slightly into the future. There are a good few that are not but their benefit appears quite modest.

Over all research is depressingly slow since the game moves forward so slowly. It is hard to focus on any strategy since so much seems to happen before anything reaches fruition.

 

[El Pip]

While that naval loss review looked impressive the US 18th BB. Division and 151st DD. Division are slightly disturbing. That's enough ships to lay end to end and link the US to Ireland.

 

[Baneslave]

Update! More to read! Great and great!

 

[Von Uber]

Do you expect to reach 1945 then (ignoring some Alien intervention )?

 

[noobermenschen]

Those fighter doctrines could keep your CVs in battle longer, or (especially) hitting more ports and airfields. Have you seen them running low on org yet?

Impressive progress for as many different fields you're researching.

 

[Brad1]

Thank you once again for the update on the tech progress so far. These updates actually improve my view of you by quite a bit because you have posted several quite long articles because of the request of a single viewer of yours. Have you come to a decision on whether or not to improve several AI nations and their building schemes? If I recall correctly The Empire of the Petal Throne currently has a massive manpower income.

I will indulge in a little mathematical analysis of the Empire of the Petal Throne. I would guess that the Empire is currently earning around 2 manpower per day from its provinces in Japan, and about 5 or so manpower from the provinces in China. Add to this the 5 manpower per day that you have given them in addition to their regular income and they are around 12 manpower per day, possibly higher towards 15 or more.

According to your update on page 121 of this AAR the Petal Throne is currently at 765 IC. This equates to 275,400 IC days of production per year. The Petal Throne should get 4320 manpower in this period, using the 12 manpower per day. This equates to 63.75 IC days per manpower. This is incredibly low and it is obvious that the only limitation of the size of the Empire of the Petal Thrones Army is the IC available to it.

The Petal Throne also must currently be investing in a massive Navy, which would be full on expensive ships, futher limiting the army of the Petal Throne. I could also easily see the TC of the Petal Throne easily getting out of hand.

That is why I think that the IC of the Petal Throne should be quite massively increased. You should still be able to decimate them, but I bet it would be quite a challenge to keep your casualties low while attacking the Petal Throne even without any IC boost.

Also, am I confusing anyone by using the " . " as the symbol to represent where the decimal begins in a number and using the " , " as the symbol to separate every 3 digits? I wrote the numbers how I have been taught as a child, in the U.S., I never knew that there was a different way until viewing this forum actually. I find small things like this absolutely fascinating, so I would appreciate a reply by any viewers.

 

[Timpino]

I'm from sweden and our decimal point is "," and 3 digits seperator is a blank space. But I see no problem at all in your use of the american system, I'm simply used to both ways

Example of Swedish notation:

This equates to 275 400 IC days of production per year.

This equates to 63,75 IC days per manpower.