@shadowhawk but then you would need to utilize more aircraft which you couldn’t use against the British navy and you would be more likely to lose more higher valuable units (mechs suck to lose more than infantry for example)
G1 SBR
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Why not also use a tactical bomber on the UK to damage the Navalbase there. If you combine that with taking normandy round 1 there is a good chance of either trapping the 110 fleet or forcing him to further spend cash on repairing the naval base.
Interesting idea. Instead of having two tacs in 111. It would mean England would be more likely to scramble in 111, but he’s likely to do that anyway if he suspects you of retreating to 112, which you should. The biggest problem with that though is you won’t be able to bring it back to W. Germ to protect your fleet. And that fight is already a close one. If you lose your fighter to an interceptor, that tac might be the difference between keeping your fleet or not.
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Thank you for the detailed reply, Mr. Eames.
“The scramble should be out over 106, since that guarantees the death of all your subs round one no matter what happens.”
I assume you mean 109, on the west of UK/Scotland. You lose your subs, and 3 planes, but England loses 4 fighters. By building a sub and destroyer, you won’t have a whole lot of fodder to clear out the rest of the royal navy, but you won’t need much, since he won’t be able to scramble more than two planes, and probably won’t considering the amount of luftwaffe you can throw in second round.Yes, sorry. Now I see you are addressing the issue of a 109 scramble with some overkill. SZ 106 is the stronger move because UK can bring those reinforcements. Unf, the team you are sending to 109 is nearly powerful enough to kill SZ 110…but not quite.
“If not, he should scramble against the SBR with 3 fighters and 3 AAA shots he has x2 the chance causing a casualty you do.”
You have equal odds of creating a casualty on the interception: 3 on 3. After that it just comes down to whether you think SBRs are worth the risk against AAA guns. There’s been a few posts floating around that did the math that justifies them.Part of my point here is that what is not being considered in this trade is the fact that any killed SBomber does not go on to deal damage. This is what makes the trade worth it, or at least posing 6 rolls against 3.
“It might be a sound idea, if what you traded made it worth it. But trading 2d+4 damage against his factory is not worth 2 cruisers and a battleship (44). No where close.”
The idea isn’t to trade IC damage for his fleet. The point is to either kill his fleet G2 or make it run away so that it’s not a factor in the sealion. If it runs away, fine. If the sealion is successful, he’s not building that fleet up anyway. So you’ve got a rogue British fleet of 1 BB and 2 cruisers roaming about. The only place where it can hide within reach of 110 for a counter attack is inside the Med on 92. And Nippon-Koku pointed out England can combine his Med fleet there with it. But you can still block that counter attack by putting your destroyer in 104. That gives you a turn to use London’s treasury to build up some protection for cheap (with a couple destroyers and an airbase). I haven’t worked out what it would cost to protect your transports against that fleet on UK3 after sealion and if it’s worth spending that cash instead of buying inf against Russia’s advance. But since his fleet first needs to kill off your blocker, it’ll be out of hiding and you’ll have 2-3 subs to take hits as you counter-attack (England still won’t have any destroyers, assuming he’s been building a stack in London).
The negative of letting UK keep a sea stack is that once it has an unkillably large fleet in 110, sea lion cant happen. As you are pointing out, one turn of UK income is not going to make 2 cruisers and a battleship into an unkillable stack. The UK also doesnt have enough punch on UK1 to attack the German carrier, 5 planes and cruiser that he has, though it gets close.
The bigger problem comes later. Based on your analysis, the UK should simply run like hell since you have found many ways to finish them off. But if they come back with a better, bigger fleet after UK 4 than they would have had vs the standard plan (of wiping out 110 111 and 91) this option wasn’t productive.
“It can hide in SZ 119.”
If he hides in 119, Germany will still have 2-3 subs, a destroyer, and a fig/tac pair (from your carrier) to take him out. You don’t need to kill it off; you can just strafe it until all you have left is your planes so that his fleet is whittled down to something harmless. This assumes he didn’t scramble in 109. But if he did, then the sealion is so much easier that you can afford to use some of your planes in 110 on G3 if he moves it there to block the invasion.
Good point…there is no-where to hide.
“This plan adds risk and spreads you thin”
True. This is the most sound criticism. You really need the dice to roll with the odds on 4 separate fights: 106, 109 (if he scrambles), 111, and the SBR. Any one bad roll of those 4 could leave Germany very vulnerable. And I suppose that alone might make it not worthwhile. I’ve never played a low luck game, but I wonder if that would make the difference.
If you are going to try all this, I would suggest a G1 buy of a strategic bomber. The second (and subsequent) turns of bombing have to be fully productive despite any losses, in order to merit the earlier risks taken to add an extra turn of strategic damage. If you can hit him early and consistently, it certainly wastes a huge amount of his productivity, at the expense of pinching USSR instead. Good Luck buddy.
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The risk seems to be too great. I just tried this gambit 10 times on TripleA, and was satisfied with only 4 of them. The other 6 times, most everything went the way it should have gone, but one exception ruined everything. Like not taking out the destroyer in 106, leaving my subs in 109 vulnerable. Or having my fighter (or even one of my SBs as well) killed on the SBR without killing one of his. Or losing a plane in 111 without taking out his cruiser. In which case my 112 fleet couldn’t withstand a British attack. Even if the odds for each fight were 80%, if you roll for 5 fights you’ll lose 1, and you can’t afford to lose one.
I was trying to stretch out my resources for maximum utility, but I suppose there’s something to be said for overkill. This plan is high risk, medium-high reward. I’ll look into the viability of this strategy for low luck games. And I’ll try sending my tac into London instead of my fighter to see if that increases the odds of my fleet surviving a bad roll. That’s a good idea, ShadowHAwk.
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Thanks eames for playtesting it, I certainly wanted to attempt this next game if the results were promising.
Based on some of the conversations with YG and SH, and things other people have said, I think the big takeaways are
- anything that adds risk to the Axis dilutes their initial advantage
- skilled players can minimize the impact of an SBR on their medium-term economy, so frontloading that damage isn’t as productive as making a more straightforward choice
- the OOB set up has obviously been parsed so thoroughly by playtesting that any variation in the Germany opener requires that you short one or more battles, intentionally leaving you with too much on your plate to devour in one turn.
- a battleship and 2 cruisers aint worth much, but its better than what you usually have, which is a single destroyer and transport.
Still, it has potential.
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Then it is settled. The name of the Operation?
Operation Sea LOIN.
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well it sounds better than Fall Krautenblitz, which was my backup suggestion….
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When I said 5 fights at 80%, I was only using that as an example with simple math of how events with low probability will occur if you play often enough. The actual probabilities for success in this scenario are a little more grim:
(Note, I listed the stats here accumatively. So in SZ 111, for example, it’s not 87% of killing only his destroyer, but the combined probabilities of also killing his cruiser, and of killing his cru and BB as well, and of his cru, BB, and fig.)SZ 106: 92% killing his destroyer, 88% also killing his transport
SZ 109: if he doesn’t scramble 67% keeping both subs
if he scrambles all 4 65% winning with at least 1 plane left, 45% winning with at least 2 planes left
8% mutual annihilation
28% he’ll have ≥ 1 plane left, 15% ≥ 2 planes
SZ 111: w/ 2 figs, 1 tac, he scrambles 93% keeping ≥ 2 planes, 63% keeping all planes
(1 round of combat) 87% killing his destroyer, 57% killing his cruiser, 22% making a 4th hit
SBR interception: 93% keeping ≥ 2 planes, 58% keeping all planes
(same odds for England) 42% killing ≥ 1 plane, 7% killing ≥ 2 planes
SBR actual: w/ 2 SBs + tac 93% keeping ≥ 2 planes, 58% keeping all planes
w/ 2 SBs only 97% keeping ≥ 1 SB, 70% keeping both.SZ 112: England attacks your fleet
(you both have dBB, E has 3 fighters)
E 2 cru, G lost 0 planes in 111 73% survival 77% if you bring your Hungarian fig up to W.Germ instead of Rome
E 3 cru, G lost 0 planes 48% 53%
E 2 cru, G lost 1 plane 77% 80%
E 3 cru, G lost 1 plane 53% 58%
E 2 cru, G lost 2 planes 49% 77%
E 3 cru, G lost 2 planes 24% 53%
SZ 111 mutual annihilation 42% 75%
The only variable that goes into it is the G1 111 fight. One fighter from 109 should land on the carrier (two if one your planes dies), but if he scrambles there, he has no chance of attacking your fleet anyways. Of the 111 fight, the biggest variable is whether or not you kill England’s cruiser, and you only have a 57% at that. Losing your planes is not that big a factor since if you lose two planes you can supplement them with 109 and your fighter from Hungary. (Of course that leaves Italy vulnerable to a Taranto, but you can read other posts about whether Taranto in this case would even be a good idea. I’ll argue that it wouldn’t be.) But he only has a 7% chance of hitting two. And you can’t lose more than 2 planes in a single round of combat; England only has 4 defending units. Note that the odds of your fleet surviving actually increase if you lose just one plane. Your tac has to land on the carrier for lack of movement, but if it dies, you can replace him with a fighter.The upshot of this is if England’s cruiser survives, he has less than even odds of destroying your fleet, but it would be close. However, destroying your fleet doesn’t prevent sealion, because so long as you have a sub, probably 2, he’ll kill off his navy before he kills the RAF. Your fleets are simply more vulnerable to a counterattack if America is prepared. On the other hand, if England killed your fleet and moved his Med fleet over to 92 to block you in 110 on G3, then sealion would get dicey, and your 1 or 2 subs in 109 would have to be augmented by more Luftwaffe than you’d be happy to commit there, especially since you’ve already lost at least 5, more depending on how your G1 fights rolled. Though he wouldn’t have any either. I haven’t played this scenario out enough to know exactly how many planes you need to take London when he loses his planes as well and is also limited by reduced production.
For the sake of argument, let’s say as England you wouldn’t feel comfortable attacking the fleet and leaving London vulnerably RAF-less against the sealion unless after G1 you had the extra cruiser, didn’t lose any of your planes (including your french fig), and then only if you killed at least 3 of his planes (fig/tac/orSB) between SZ 111 and SBR. The probability of killing at least 3 planes is 16%. (I added all the mutually exclusive probabilities listed above for every outcome that would result in 3 killed planes.) That combined with 43% of keeping your cruiser and 58% for not losing any planes in the interception gives you 4% of getting the favorable conditions to attack. But then you’ll only have between a 42-47% chance of winning (depending on which German planes died). So if those are the conditions for a fleet attack, then Germany has less than a 2% chance of losing it. You can tweak those odds depending on if you’re comfortable with Germany only losing 2 planes, but I’m guessing they’re not much more promising. They’re a lot more promising though if your conditions open up by saying screw the sealion, I don’t care how much luftwaffe he has, let it happen; I’ll make him pay for investing so much in transports with Russia. But then Germany has choices as to how many transports he needs to buy or gets to move a lot more troops over to Russia from London afterwards.
All in all, I’m more optimistic about this strategy than I was in my earlier post. I just needed to broaden what I considered an acceptable outcome in the G1 fights. It still needs to be playtested though to see how the actual sealion itself compares to the traditional method when accounting for possible plane/fleet trades and IC reduction. Actually, the biggest hiccup in the plan isn’t in any Luftwaffe/RAF fights, but in SZ 106. There’s an 8% chance you don’t kill his destroyer, and then your subs in 109 are sitting ducks, and then you can’t kill his fleet.
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I’ve thought briefly about this idea but never really developed it. A few quick things:
I dislike attacking SZ109 - all those planes to take down 1 DD and 1 TT?
I dislike not attacking SZ91 - weakens Taranto or at least lets a DD and TT survive for Italy if SZ96 is not attacked with the Cruiser there.If you modify it slightly to:
1BB, 1Sub, 1Ftr, 1Tac to SZ111 (even with a scramble)
1Ftr + 2SB to London
3Tac + 3Ftr to SZ110
2Sub to SZ91
2Sub to SZ106This tends to promote scrambles in both SZ111 and SZ110 - therefore why not strip down the London raid to remove the fighter escort and bolster the SZ110 attack? Probability is that all three defending fighters will miss in the interception anyway (although the probability that both bombers survive is only 40%). Or you could send a sub to SZ110 and strip that from SZ91 (can’t strip it from SZ106). An interesting possibility is attacking SZ109 without fighter escort instead of SZ106. If any fighters join the combat they are then drawn off from defending against the SBR. That may indeed be the best way. You could even sink the DD. You really don’t want to retreat from SZ110 because the BB there is repaired UK1 without them having to react.
Attacking the naval base with a Tac doesn’t stop the BB in SZ110 from being repaired UK1 for a minimal expense.
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Operation Eagle Attack can certainly be tweaked, and you’ve offered a couple good suggestions.
But attacking 110 with only 3 fig/tac pairs is not a good idea. You only have about a 20% chance of winning that fight if he scrambles, and even if you manage to win, you’ve lost 5 planes to his 3. But more than likely, you’d lose 6 planes, he’d have one leftover, and his BB would repair.
As for all those planes in 109 just to kill a DD and TT, don’t forget that by killing his destroyer, you get to keep your sub(s) and immediately disrupt convoy. Whereas leaving that destroyer to kill his cruiser results in an almost automatic loss of two subs in 91 on UK1.
Both bombers surviving an unintercepted SBR is ~70% (5/6*5/6) not 60%. But on the other hand, the odds of 3 fighters intercepting at least one of them is ~42%, which isn’t insignificant. Bombing the harbour with a tac made more sense when I thought you could use tacs as fodder against AAA, which was its primary purpose; hitting his harbour was just a fringe benefit if it worked. I’ve since been corrected, and I’m now more in favor of sending a fig escort in. It lowers my 112 fleet’s defense by 1 (defending with a tac instead of a fig) but I would just suck that chance up or leave Rome undefended if his 110 cruiser survived.
You may be on to something by not sending any planes into 109 and forcing England to choose between scrambling in 109, 110, 111, or intercepting. (Though I would still need to send subs into 110) If nothing else, it creates a hard choice for him. But whatever the choice, it means Germany is going to lose more planes than I’d be comfortable with. As England, I would probably end up scrambling 1 in 109 and 3 in 110. But that depends on who I’m playing and whether I think he’ll overcommit to an Atlantic build up.
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Yeah, I’m not completely happy with it either.
Regarding SZ91, I’d say that destroyer would normally be better off attacking the subs off Quebec which are already causing convoy disruption. I guess if one lives off Quebec and two live in SZ91 then it becomes a bit of a coin toss.
If London scrambles to SZ110 then they aren’t defending the industrial complex. In that event, I’d probably withdraw after one round. Although I’m in two minds about it being worth bringing in the fighter. Maybe I should have put “Devil’s Advocate” at the top of my last post. BTW, the 40% odds is of surviving against 3 interceptors and 2 AAA in a SBR.
Why can’t you lose the tac bomber if it’s raiding the naval base? I thought a twin attack on a naval base and IC was intercepted as a single group? Is that not correct? Indeed, the rules state that a single combat occurs per territory.
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The tac can serve as fodder for the interception, but for the bombing run each plane is called out and rolls against AAA one at a time. So while it can still (practically) ensure that both SBs will make it past the interception, the SBs still have a 30% chance of one or both of them getting shot down. I thought the beauty of ShadowHAwk’s tweak of escorting with a tac vice fig was to almost guarantee a successful SBR at the cost of maybe a tac, but the whole strategy looks a little more grim now. Incidentally, I understood the rule correctly when I first started playing, but after I saw that Triple A allowed you to choose your SBR hits, I assumed I had it wrong. That’ll teach me how much to trust second hand sources.
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Still, I love the idea of doing something slightly useful rather than escorting with a fighter which goes home once the air battle is over.
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