old Potzblitz thread (discontinued)

[nehi]

Personally I find #6 quite logical

yep, its logical, but admiral can just go boat to boat like anywhere, 2 turns off means 2 months, he can go all around the world during that time, fine compromise would be he could be attached to ships in some radius, but its too complicated i guess

[Robotron]

BTW, does anyone know anything abouts subs?

Let's just delete one French sub in the Med Sea then, okay?

[Vokt]

BTW, does anyone know anything abouts subs?

Let's just delete one French sub in the Med Sea then, okay?

In this site http://www.naval-history.net/WW1NavyFrench.htm, I found some significant WW1 French navy info. Specifically, related to Mediterranean French naval forces is mentioned the following: "In the Mediterranean on the other hand was the 1st Armée Navale under the command of Adm de Lapeyrère with 21 battleships (including four newly-commissioned dreadnoughts and 6 "Danton" class pre-dreadnoughts), 15 cruisers, around 43 destroyers and 15 submarines".

Keeping in mind that the French had 55 submarines at the start of WW1 but that only 15 of those were deployed in the Mediterranean Sea, it would make sense to remove the French sub. Apparently, French submarine effort was focused on the Atlantic whilst surface ships units would be mostly deployed in the Med to face a possible Austria-Italy coalition.

[Zombo]

Interesting. The Germans started with 28 subs, although 9 more were commissioned before the end of 1914.
Austria started with 6! I don't know if it's enough to justify a sub, really.

I guess that from the numbers what would make sense would be 2 French in the Atlantic and one in the Med.

Russia starts with 8 in the Baltic and 15 in the Black Sea. The strongest fleet, by far, was the Black Sea one, with 3 dreadnoughts and 5 pre-dreadnoughts. There were NO DREADNOUGHTS in the Baltic, only 3 battleships larger than cruisers. It confirms what I always thought: the Russian fleet in the Baltic is really overrated.
Also, regarding the Baltic, active naval operations were confined to the period from roughly May to October of each year. The ice in the Baltic during each winter confined ships to harbour.

[Vokt]

With that data, Austria sub should be removed either IMO.

[Robotron]

Okay, so should the Russian Baltic dreadnought be removed without replacement then or maybe replaced with a 2nd fleet of pre-dreadnoughts?

During winter I'd could mod in impassable hexes representing passages blocked by ice.

And what about the Austrian sub? Delete or replace with German sub?

[Zombo]

Delete the sub.
The Germans only started to "lend" subs to the Austrians after Italy's declaration of war.

Delete the fleet.
this will also give the opportunity for the Germans to concentrate on the North Sea, as historically.

[nehi]

And what about the Austrian sub? Delete or replace with German sub?

and once again, historians vs gamers

game is just abstraction of reality, it cant be 100% accurate

so i prefer some kind of balance more than deleting austrian sub, just because they hadnt 10...

[Zombo]

Well, this is still supposed to be an historical game, so at least part of the fun should come from recreating history as accurately as possible, within the limits imposed by playability...

[nehi]

Well, this is still supposed to be an historical game, so at least part of the fun should come from recreating history as accurately as possible, within the limits imposed by playability...

one sub is still max good as harassment and can provide some defense for surface fleet, no real deal

but when green dots will be reduced, subs removed, what can ah fleet do? just sit in docks and wait for end of the war, great game

they had some, they should have some

[Zombo]

just sit in docks and wait for end of the war

Actually, most of WW1 navies did just that

I respect all players' inclinations, but honestly I don't see the point in even using the Podblitz mod if it's not to try and get as close to history as possible, 'cause for what I understood that's the whole point of it.
The vanilla game is as much a game as the modded one: a irretrievably flawed simulation, grossly incompetent at conveying an historical feeling, but a game all the same.

In the same line of reasoning, you could argue in favour of the vanilla air system, as it provided opportunities for exciting and bloody air battles and bombardment campaigns à la 1940 and later as early as 1914, while the current mod confines the airforce to a passive recon role until much later into the game

[Robotron]

Just wanted to chime in and say the new update is progressing nicely with almost all of the aforementioned suggestions getting implemented except magazine explosions and player-controlled convoys.

AH will lose their sub but get a light cruiser as a compensation and Russia will lose their Baltic dreadnought in exchange for a second Armoured Cruiser. France will lose the submarine stationed at Sfax.

Naval battles between capital ships (BB, BC and pre-BB) will now cost 1 ammo for the attacker (not for the defender). Attacks without ammo will be cut half in strength representing bad planning. Naval bombardment costs have been reduced to 3.

Furthermore there will be a new battle-effect icon: muddy terrain. Mud can take effect during the first month after the winter season has passed or in November, it will reduce movement and attack strength for land units.

Nis and Gallipoli have been downgraded from fortresses to cities. Nis was notorious for permanently preventing the "Constantinople Express" from happening and Gallipoli had to be downgraded because of the port which I found to be responsible for some freak crashes when being attached to a fortress.

The Macedonian Front will now only activate after an Entente unit has been shipped to Salonika (after the "Greek Schism" event). As long as the railroad from Salonika to Skopje stays open the Serbian Army will regain some manpower and PP per turn.

I also plan to re-activate the deactivated button on the diplomacy screen where nations can invest about 10 PP for a slight chance to positively influence other countries already leaning towards them. The chance for a postive result will be modified by the number of factions that have already joined an alliance or the number of capital cities already conquered by an alliance. Also there's a "donate" button to transfer PP to an allied nation at the additional cost of some morale.

That's all for now. ^^

[Zombo]

Good news!

on the donation thing, I'd recommend not allowing minor countries ( and AH) to donate to major countries. (I can see Belgium donating its unspent points to France, etc)

[operating]

It's ironic as to the reason why I planned on posting today about subs only to find it is already being discussed.. Getting back to basics: This game v1.2 or so originally had a German class I or II sub to the west of Sicily, in a sometime later game version it was deleted, can't remember why. I do recall that prior to war there were German manned subs that were assigned to the AH navy flag, also that at some point the Germans were dismantling subs and shipping them by rail to AH ports. There used to be only one if not 2 French subs in the Med. with only one French surface fleet to the east of Sicily and that there were no dreadnaughts on either side, they were BBs (battleships).

As far as game purposes go, the Russian Baltic surface fleet is no threat to the German convoys from Sweden no matter what their composition was. It's the spamming of Entente (English & Russian) subs to the Baltic that is the real threat especially over time. Early on Many would scrap their Russian ships for PP to build subs, which were far more effective interfering against German convoys. That is why it is now a -30 NM to nations who scrap their dreadnaughts, it was far less -NM or no effect on NM scrapping BBs before.. With only 2 Entente subs the North Baltic can be choked off for the entire match, if Entente has 4 subs there, Germany might as forget about ever having a convoy getting through, if Entente has 6 subs in the Baltic just about every German surface fleet is vulnerable to being sunk (if isolated and singled out).. I have had matches where the Entente became so bold as to try sinking German fleets (in their own green dot sea hexes) and almost succeeded in sinking all my surface fleets..!!! Again it was because of the number of Entente subs, although there was assistance from the Russian surface fleet... Other than that the Russian surface fleet was ineffective... It's hard to expect this game to be played in a strictly historical sense, after several game turns historical game play just about goes out the window, be it you play SP or MP... Plus don't forget the map screw-up where Tallinn's port was placed blocking CP access to St Petersburg, for Tallinn's port was not introduced till a later game version, but never corrected...!!!!! Making it virtually impossible to attack Helsinki or St. Petersburg... Durrrr!!!!

[operating]

Should add this too: Helsinki originally did not have a port either (it was added in later version) making it even more difficult for Germany to do an end run around a Eastern Front, not only that: The brainless designer/programmer decided to reduce Germany's 2 transports down to one from the original management window, hogtying Germany's ability to only one theater of war at a time as far as transports go. What this does is: If England or France sees that if a German transport is being used in the Baltic they do not have to defend its coastal hexes and perhaps disband whatever units are in the defense mode there to made use of at another front or wherever, same goes if Russia knows that the single German transport is being used somewhere in the Med or Atlantic. So now let's backup a little bit, There's only 1 sea hex from which Tallinn can be attacked from where it used to have 2 sea hexes it could have been attacked from before, Helsinki cannot be attacked at all, nor can St. Petersburg be attacked, meaning those 2 cities do not need to be occupied with defenders, thus a savings to the Russian economy and those 2 cities also had their PP increased from original game and Russia get's to keep it's transport, however Germany has it's transports reduced by 50% with less eligible Russian cities available to attack . Russia can hide a loaded transport in Helsinki's port, whereas CP cannot do the same within the same radius. The Russians (if they want to) can see what is in every German Baltic port, but not all the German Baltic cities. To me, these factors all tilt in Entente's favor, and reduces CP's chances of success. Is it historical? I do not know...

[Robotron]

The very idea about a German naval raid up the Gulf of Finland with the aim to land troops at St. Petersburg being possible at all without the neighbouring cities having been taken before is even more hair-raising in my opinion.

[operating]

The very idea about a German naval raid up the Gulf of Finland with the aim to land troops at St. Petersburg being possible at all without the neighbouring cities having been taken before is even more hair-raising in my opinion.

Not really, Don't forget Helsinki is a capital city, originally it was not designated a capital city, a forced march from there to St. Petersburg would be at full supply, clearing a path for another possible transport disembarking close to St' Petersburg. Actually Helsinki might be harder than St. Petersburg to capture, either way it would be prudent to capture Tallinn to let the German navy into the Finland Gulf, neither transports or German navy can go east past the Tallinn port without it's capture..

The cure for the Tallinn port would be is to move the Tallinn port one sea hex to the southwest of it's present location, thus opening up the entire Gulf of Finland to naval traffic (as it should be, and as it was originally)..

[Robotron]

I strictly oppose the idea of any CP transports being allowed to enter the Gulf of Finnald before those port cities are taken.

Anyway that wouldn't do much good since in my mod the Baltic is heavily mined and your transports might very well take horrendous casualties while approaching the target.

[nehi]

scifi amphibious german operations are ok? then ah should have fleet of subs in adriatic

[Robotron]

Yeah a sub would indeed be most useful there to dive under the ice floes that mysteriously appeared in the Adriatic.