Moderators: firepowerjohan, rkr1958, Happycat, Slitherine Core
I agree. At least if you rename a sub you can still see that it's a sub. Renaming a sub to "Battleship Group 1" or something like that would just make you look stupid.leridano wrote:Renaming units to the same name (u-boats, for example) is part of the strategy. Renaming a garrison to an armour sounds a little bit shady but there´s almost no way of ckecking if your opponent have changed the name of the units on that way unless he unloads the unit. The anonymus option sounds better.
Personally, I would say that the Axis hadn't foggiest idea of what was being loaded and unloaded in the UK or USA. Every single German spy in the UK was captured and subsequently turned or shot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MI5). I would imagine security in the USA would have been equally tight.joerock22 wrote:I've only skimmed the comments so far, but here are my two cents. I don't have a problem with renaming transports using general names like "transport 1" or "transport." But I do think renaming transports to be outright deceptive is shady; for example, pretending a garrison is an armour. The biggest reason why is that it assumes the other side's intelligence network is too stupid to realize what the transport is really carrying. Intelligence in CEAW is something abstract, mostly contained within the fog of war and spotting ranges, but it's still there.
Let's say the Allies launch an invasion of France and rename all their transpotrs as carrying armour units. Are we to assume the Germans would have no way of knowing what type of unit is carried on which transport? No flyover missions would give them a clue? No spies in England would alert the Reich as to which units were being sent where? I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the Allies could fool the Germans every time, or vice versa.
Having transports with general names (i.e. "transport 1") means that the other side can't see what the transports of the other side are carrying. Renaming them to be deceptive means that the other side sees the wrong thing. These are two very different options, and the first is obviously more realistic than the second. It would be a lot easier to hide the identity of a unit on a group of transports than convince the enemy it is an entirely different unit type altogether.
In conclusion, I will be asking my opponents to refrain from renaming units deceptively. I have no problem with renaming transports to make them anonymous.
This is really an interesting question but we have to keep in mind that in the real war the deception units were corp size units: II british corps, VII british corps and US army XV corps as part of the fictitious british Fourth Army and on the other hand the also fictitious Fourteenth US army with the XXXIII and XXXVII US corps. So we are talking of 5!! Corps fictitious units and the germans were firmly convinced that they really existed. All of these units were subordinated to fictional 1st US army group.jlopez wrote:Personally, I would say that the Axis hadn't foggiest idea of what was being loaded and unloaded in the UK or USA. Every single German spy in the UK was captured and subsequently turned or shot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MI5). I would imagine security in the USA would have been equally tight.joerock22 wrote:I've only skimmed the comments so far, but here are my two cents. I don't have a problem with renaming transports using general names like "transport 1" or "transport." But I do think renaming transports to be outright deceptive is shady; for example, pretending a garrison is an armour. The biggest reason why is that it assumes the other side's intelligence network is too stupid to realize what the transport is really carrying. Intelligence in CEAW is something abstract, mostly contained within the fog of war and spotting ranges, but it's still there.
Let's say the Allies launch an invasion of France and rename all their transpotrs as carrying armour units. Are we to assume the Germans would have no way of knowing what type of unit is carried on which transport? No flyover missions would give them a clue? No spies in England would alert the Reich as to which units were being sent where? I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the Allies could fool the Germans every time, or vice versa.
Having transports with general names (i.e. "transport 1") means that the other side can't see what the transports of the other side are carrying. Renaming them to be deceptive means that the other side sees the wrong thing. These are two very different options, and the first is obviously more realistic than the second. It would be a lot easier to hide the identity of a unit on a group of transports than convince the enemy it is an entirely different unit type altogether.
In conclusion, I will be asking my opponents to refrain from renaming units deceptively. I have no problem with renaming transports to make them anonymous.
The same can't be said for the Med where the Axis did obtain a lot of information from their own spies who found it much easier to escape detection. I think it would be fair to attempt deception with transport originating from the UK or USA but not from the Med.
