• I was just thinking about convoy zones and aa50 when it struck me that In Aa50 there isn’t really no naval forces around much of Africa. I don’t know where the convoy zones are going to be but I do suspect a great many of them are going to be around Africa and maybe some in Mediterranean sea. If I am guessing correctly then I suspect it would probably in the axis’s best interests to have subs convoying the ipcs out from under the uk and then forcing the two loses of income for the allies 1. the convoy loses 2 the cost of building some sort of navy to stop the convoying


  • Maybe, but I think it would be in Italy’s best interest to take the African territories rather than just attacking their convoys, so I doubt they would go sub heavy, unless the allies clearly win in Africa, and even then they’d probably just help Germany in the USSR.  Maybe they’d make a few subs, but I doubt they’d go sub heavy.


  • From a custom Europe map I got off the internet a few years ago, there were only allied convoy zones in the atlantic where part of the US income and most of England’s income were spread out there.  There was also 1 Russian convoy.  You had to have a transport in each one to get the income or if you were the axis you just moved an attack vessel into them to deny the allies the cash while not taking it yourself.  The US could put transports in the allies zones to keep them going so the UK and Russia could use their transports for other things.  One exception being that when the US entered the Russian convoy, they gave an IPC for each transport in that zone, up to a total of 4 bucks which was the worth of the convoy.  In the Med. there was an Italian and a few UK zones to fight over.  I liked playing with convoy zones like this because it made it more fun to build ships and do naval engagements cause there were essentially sea zones of monetary worth now instead of just wide open nothingness.


  • When I mentioned sub heavy I meant maybe one every turn or every other turn


  • @fanofbond:

    When I mentioned sub heavy I meant maybe one every turn or every other turn

    That doesn’t sound very sub heavy and they would need some support.


  • Sorry that my definition of sub heavy for Italy is diferent than yours  ( hard to use perspective words and have eveyone think the same way). I meant sub heavy for Italy since in aa50 Italy pretty much never builds them. Then supporting them would be a waste for Italy because the entire purpose of this idea us only to cause an allied economical headache


  • @fanofbond:

    Sorry that my definition of sub heavy for Italy is diferent than yours   ( hard to use perspective words and have eveyone think the same way). I meant sub heavy for Italy since in aa50 Italy pretty much never builds them. Then supporting them would be a waste for Italy because the entire purpose of this idea us only to cause an allied economical headache

    How do sunken submarines cause an allied economic headache.


  • Who really ever invests in subs


  • Whoever wants to win AAP40…


  • I would think there will be convoys near Egypt, S Africa, Brazil, Central America, Gibraltar/Morocco etc. It will behoove the axis to go after them, and sub warfare would be a good way to do it as they can’t take you out with air only. If you can tie up allied war ships in remote areas making them chase you down off the coast of S. Africa then that’s a win win situation for you. They won’t be able to concentrate there efforts if their all spread out. If they don’t take the bait then you cost them $. Subs now being able to take out transports that were deemed to be unescorted on the transports turn could also be rather costly, or at least tie up war ships as escorts. This too should aid the axis, in Europe anyway.


  • Planes are better ship destroyers that subs.


  • I hear you, Wild Bill.

    It tickles me pink to think of an Axis sub or two just squatting off of the coast of Brazil, eating up IPCs, then dragging at least two destroyers away from the US fleet to go and hunt them down.

    With the new subs rules in effect, and the elimination of those corny ‘convoy boxes’, we’ll finally see shipping disruption effectively modelled in the Atlantic. Can’t wait :)


  • hmmm I dunno. I still think that to effectively model the Battle of the Atlantic, the convoy income should be somewhere beyond the air cover range.

    #515


  • @Brain:

    Planes are better ship destroyers that subs.

    Yea but planes can’t hover in enemy convoy zones and cost $, and can’t take out subs alone either.


  • @Make_It_Round:

    and the elimination of those corny ‘convoy boxes’, we’ll finally see shipping disruption effectively modelled in the Atlantic. Can’t wait :)

    Hmmm. Not sure about that. Has any one else looked at the new convoy roles with suspicion? I mean, they really don’t make sense, do they? Even if you have ships all around an island (say Japan) that island can still produce for itself. It’s not like it ships it’s own goods overseas. And if this convoy rule thing is supposed to disrupt shipments from allies, why then can it be used against Japan? Japan didn’t have any allies in the Pacific. India as well is an example. Japan can put 2 ships there, and block all income. But India doesn’t get all of it’s income and resources by sea routes. I mean, with these screwed rules, you could almost apply it to totally land purposes as well (if a country was completely surrounded by enemies, then it earns nothing.) This just does not make any sense to me. Thoughts?


  • @The:

    Hmmm. Not sure about that. Has any one else looked at the new convoy roles with suspicion? I mean, they really don’t make sense, do they? Even if you have ships all around an island (say Japan) that island can still produce for itself. It’s not like it ships it’s own goods overseas. And if this convoy rule thing is supposed to disrupt shipments from allies, why then can it be used against Japan? Japan didn’t have any allies in the Pacific. India as well is an example. Japan can put 2 ships there, and block all income. But India doesn’t get all of it’s income and resources by sea routes. I mean, with these screwed rules, you could almost apply it to totally land purposes as well (if a country was completely surrounded by enemies, then it earns nothing.) This just does not make any sense to me. Thoughts?

    I agree with you.  Convoy rules are in need of house rules if you don’t like some of the strange situations that are created by the OOB rules.
    I suppose the answer to the India and Japan situation is that they bring in income from other areas, but this especially makes no sense when India is the last remaining UK territory.  I don’t have the solution off the top of my head, but this has occurred to me as well - it doesn’t always make sense….


  • Japan relied very heavily on resources from mainland Asia, and oil from the E Indies etc. That’s the reason it wanted to expand. Your not just cutting off its allies, your cutting off its ability to wage war through its own means as well. The same would go for UK, w/o resources from it’s own Commonwealth (and the US), it couldn’t have kept its factories going. Germany had all of Europe to plunder its resources, but still relied on shipping for iron ore and other raw materials.

    BTW if the US fleet has enough ships to stop all income for Japan, and Japan can’t do anything about it, I think its time to start a new game. :-D


  • @WILD:

    @Brain:

    Planes are better ship destroyers that subs.

    Yea but planes can’t hover in enemy convoy zones and cost $, and can’t take out subs alone either.

    That is why there is this thing called an aircraft carrier.

  • Official Q&A

    @WILD:

    Japan relied very heavily on resources from mainland Asia, and oil from the E Indies etc. That’s the reason it wanted to expand. Your not just cutting off its allies, your cutting off its ability to wage war through its own means as well. The same would go for UK, w/o resources from it’s own Commonwealth (and the US), it couldn’t have kept its factories going. Germany had all of Europe to plunder its resources, but still relied on shipping for iron ore and other raw materials.

    All good points.  The convoy rules, like many things in A&A, are a bit abstracted.  Rather than trace convoy routes on the map that would create clutter and confusion, a decision was made that convoy raids would be done at the termini of convoys - where they started and ended.  Raiding the sea zone around Japan represents hitting convoys coming in from places like China and the East Indies, as well as intracoastal shipping.  Even within a single territory (say, from Osaka to Tokyo), it’s often cheaper and more efficient to move supplies by ship than over land.


  • @Brain:

    @WILD:

    @Brain:

    Planes are better ship destroyers that subs.

    Yea but planes can’t hover in enemy convoy zones and cost $, and can’t take out subs alone either.

    That is why there is this thing called an aircraft carrier.

    Yea an air craft carrier can interrupt a convoy, but I believe its air units don’t count (its considered one unit 1 IPC). An aircraft carrier with 2 planes still can’t attack a sub, because the planes can’t hit the sub (no dd), and the carrier has no attack value. Plus the sub could just submerge anyway (but doesn’t need to).

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