Slitherine

Plaid wrote:Its very argueable, that Sealion add any single PP for germans.
You need a) ship lots of forces to conquer isles b) ship them back for further campaigns c)build garrisons d)ship garrisons to the isles
Together with casualties owning of Britain for couple of years will not even pay back this expenses. And if you keep there only garrisons, it will be very easy for allies to liberate the place, so you need some real forces, which will not fight in actual campaigns and can be also considered "wasted" PPs.

I agree, there should be a few more benefits to the axis for successfully conquering britain. The redirection of the convoys is quite a downside for the Germans as they effectively become unattackable moving along the north american coastline.

schwerpunkt wrote:

Plaid wrote:Its very argueable, that Sealion add any single PP for germans.
You need a) ship lots of forces to conquer isles b) ship them back for further campaigns c)build garrisons d)ship garrisons to the isles
Together with casualties owning of Britain for couple of years will not even pay back this expenses. And if you keep there only garrisons, it will be very easy for allies to liberate the place, so you need some real forces, which will not fight in actual campaigns and can be also considered "wasted" PPs.

I agree, there should be a few more benefits to the axis for successfully conquering britain. The redirection of the convoys is quite a downside for the Germans as they effectively become unattackable moving along the north american coastline.

I think it would make sense to reduce the amount, and send it to the USA instead. The convoys for the UK were mostly raw materials that were needed by the industry. While the raw materials are still there and can be shipped, the industry to process them is largely gone with the UK in German hands. Sending the raw materials to Canada would realistically result in a massive heap of raw materials there, and not in tanks, aircraft or ships.

While the USA could use the raw materials, I don't think there was ever a shortage of them, was there? So they should not simply all go the USA either. Most realistically, I think the convoys to the UK should stop completely, because the industrial base to use the raw materials is gone.

schwerpunkt wrote:

Plaid wrote:Its very argueable, that Sealion add any single PP for germans.
You need a) ship lots of forces to conquer isles b) ship them back for further campaigns c)build garrisons d)ship garrisons to the isles
Together with casualties owning of Britain for couple of years will not even pay back this expenses. And if you keep there only garrisons, it will be very easy for allies to liberate the place, so you need some real forces, which will not fight in actual campaigns and can be also considered "wasted" PPs.

I agree, there should be a few more benefits to the axis for successfully conquering britain. The redirection of the convoys is quite a downside for the Germans as they effectively become unattackable moving along the north american coastline.

Agreed, this has been the sore downside of Sealion for me as well which does not really make sense. Basically, and especially after US entry, the convoys are almost immune to attack along the North American coast. A net gain for the Allies to lose UK?

Solution I think is to reduce convoys to UK (Canada) by 50% or so if Britain has been conquered.

trulster wrote:Solution I think is to reduce convoys to UK (Canada) by 50% or so if Britain has been conquered.

Or at the very least reduce the convoys by the amount of the lost UK PP revenues.

Plaid wrote:

I do not agree that lab specialization is an issue. This is game and you should be allowed to max British in AIR, Germans in ARM and USSR in INF.

Specialization is an issue, because allies collect ~3 times more PPs then germans and with specialization allied units are even to german one. Its pretty obvious, who will win this way?

Specialization is not an issue. This is actually desired as USA and UK are logically one country which have 2 separate PP pools. The issue is that Western Allies (UK) can use it as early as in 1940/41 to prevent Germans from gaining space to defend during 43-45 period. This happens as there is no real threat to UK war effort even early in the game. If there is such threat (Britain fall has disastrous effects) than:
1. Western Allies will use their specialization very often in offense till 1942 (as was in reality)
2. UK would need to difersify research in order to organize defense of Britain without US support.

Case that fall of Britain brings actual benefit for UK in terms of convoys is really curious...

I am travelling at the moment and am coming late into this discussion, but both the RAF and USAAC flew bombing missions from Russia. RAF fighters were based in Russia, in the early days, to protect the Russian end of the Artic convoy route and in one of the early visits that Churchill made to Russia, Stalin requested British divisions to fight in Russia (which Churchill could not supply).

Some UK fighters & bombers fought in Murmansk in 1941 and 1942.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._151_Wing_RAF

trulster wrote:Agreed, this has been the sore downside of Sealion for me as well which does not really make sense. Basically, and especially after US entry, the convoys are almost immune to attack along the North American coast. A net gain for the Allies to lose UK?

Solution I think is to reduce convoys to UK (Canada) by 50% or so if Britain has been conquered.

The Germans also gain quite a bit by taking England. One is 10-11 extra PP's per turn (half of the available PP's in Great Britain). Another is 20-22 less PP's per turn to UK and not British reinforcements placed in England.

Maybe the biggest advantage is that the Allies don't have airbases to bombard the German industry. Beginning late 1941 it's normal for the British and later also the US to bombard Ruhr, Essen, Hamburg, Munich, the synth oil etc. That means less PP's, oil and rail capacity for the Germans. Not having to defend against such attacks really helps the Germans.

The Germans will have to place units in England to prevent partisans and defend against an Allied invasion of England, but by taking England you can postpone the heavy clash with the Allies till probably 1943. If you build some submarines you can harass British units placed near Halifax and transported across the Atlantic.

If we want to penalize the British for something when they lose England then we have to focus on where they would suffer the most. I think the main issue would be recruiting new troops because most of the recruits would have come from England and Scotland.

The british industry was mainly on Great Britain as well, but the resources could instead have gone to Canada and some units be built there. Surplus resources could go to USA, South Africa, India and Australia for production. So one way to deal with that could be to reduce the max size of the central and northern convoys with London captured and instead send the extra via the southern convoy (that will go to USA). So USA gets stronger at the expensive of USSR and UK.
E. g. the northern convoy could be reduced by 50 and the central by 40.

So reducing the manpower capacity with cities lost in the core home country could be something to consider. Then you need to liberate your cities to increase the manpower capacity.

E. g. you could lose manpower capacity with 10 * max production of cities captured.

E. g. UK has manpower capacity of 420. So losing London will drop the capacity of 100. Birmingham will drop it by 30 etc. If you lose all cities in England then your capacity will drop by about 200 (i. e. halved).

This means your manpower level won't drop, but you gain less each turn so you can build fewer units before dropping.

I'm against special rules for separate countries and having generic rules that apply to all seem to be better.

E. g. losing cities means less production and it's normal that you also lose some manpower capacity too.

We might have to increase the Russian manpower cap from 1941 to maybe about 2100 to compensate for Russia losing about 20 PP's per turn from cities (i. e. 200 manpower cap by the end of 1941).

The other countries will not be very affected by losing cities.

Making that change to the UK manpower cap you make it hurt the Allies quite a bit because the British can quickly drop below 75% and even 50% manpower.

When we drop the manpower cap because of lost cities we also drop the actual manpower to keep the percentage at the same value. Otherwise you could see you manpower percentage increase because the cap is reduced due to loss of cities. Percentage = actual manpower / manpower capacity.

pk867 wrote:To TotalerKrieg,

That info was in the article you provided in your in post link about the French Airmen.

This is the first and second sentence under the first picture. Quote- "On the 22nd June 1941, German troops invaded The Soviet Union. General de Gaulle, keen to see the Free French (France Libre) represented on all fronts, considered sending a French division to Russia. However, problems of both a material and political nature forced him to revise his plans. In agreement with the Soviet government, he decided to send a French fighter group to fight alongside the Red Army on the Eastern Front."

pk867

Thanks for responding. Yeah, I was aware of these statements but it is open to many interpretations. Was it politically unacceptable for the Soviets to have French on their soil? Or was it politically unacceptable for the British, being hard pressed on all fronts, to spare an entire division of potential troops to help fight the Axis on their own front as well as having to finance their transfer to the eastern front? Or was it just plain unacceptable for the French soldiers to go the eastern front as opposed to fighting to free French territories? If anyone has further information on this issue I would like to read more on it. I recognize that the decision has already been made regarding restricting use of Western Allies on the Eastern front, this is just for my personal knowledge...