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.
