Not everything is kept on "historical" rails regardless of player choices or achievments, e.g. Soviet counter offensive in December 1941 being less lethal if Moscow is captured by then, D-day not happening if Sea Lion is successful, etc. There are of course a lot of speculation in these but I think they are more or less plausible. I just think that claiming that the Allies would have sent even more help to the Soviets had the Germans were less enthusiastic about attacking the Atlantic convoys may be a bit too far-fetched. As they could have used their extra unused resources to many other things such as a more effective blockade of the continent like they did in WW1 or an even stronger strategic bombing campaign.
Well, that's probably (partially) true, at least in the single player version. There could be some more balancing reaction in that case, it is just hard to find the right balance and to implement it. So that there could be different outcomes whether or not the Axis player engages in the Battle of the Atlantic and if he does then to what extent and to what success.My primary concern is, that "war production" reaches the front lines. And if there is no Battle of the Atlantic, then imho both Allies and Axis would certainly find a way to shift their war production to existing (or new) front lines.
At the moment, practically only the player is able to do so, without balancing "reaction" on the Allied side.
For sure, the only question is, what it means to "underperform"? Compared to what? Since most of the Allied naval movement is randomized it is also a matter of luck, to be honest. Some players may be more lucky than others, only because they may attack with less u-boat units but those may find and destroy more Allied convoy units. Then of course the problem if someone plays with or without normal (random) dice rolls. Then the highly randomized and hard coded submarine evasion event. There are just too many variables here to balance it "correctly". As again, what should be regarded as "correct" when we only know for sure what happened historically.Thus Allied units would have to be added on top of the existing ones (to the eastern and/or western fronts), which would then only spawn if the player underperforms the "Battle of the Atlantic".
It is really hard to find the balance here. My rough estimate, if I remember well in my "historical" playthroughs (when testing the actual latest version and when I played more or less historically) was that I could usually destroy only around 10 or even less Allied convoy units in the scenario. In these I only used the U-boats, and not the Kriegsmarine, with limited air support (only the two starting "sea planes", the Condor and the BV 138) and of course no recon-undo cheat or save reload or things like that. Which in effect can also distort the result quite significantly, if we are here.On the other hand, if the player overperforms in the "Battle fo the Atlantic", some of the currently existing Allied units can be taken away.
So perhaps I could say there could be like 10 extra Allied units on top of the current number and then if the player can wage a more effective Atlantic campaign by destroying even more convoy ships than even less Allied units would appear, like one after each additional convoy unit destroyed.
Or perhaps it could be even more drastic and each convoy ship unit would affect the spawning of two Allied units at some point. But there is a catch here, it should not be overdone as in that case players would behave the opposite by giving dispropotionately high priority to the naval war in order to win more "easily".
, while they were pressing towards Archangel !
I guess it may have something to do with the historical Allied landings elsewhere in the Mediterranean. That is, if the other historical Allied campaigns in the Mediterranean are unsuccesful (like Tunisia and Sicily) then it may not happen. But I might be wrong. 