In section 2.4.2, under Overseas Supply Paths, amend the text as follows:
You cannot trace a supply path into a sea area that contains:
- an enemy CV, SCS or face-up aircraft unit with an air-to-sea factor;
- unless it also contains a surface naval unit, or face-up aircraft unit with an air-to-sea factor, controlled by any major power or minor country at war with that enemy unit.
In addition, when aircraft voluntarily abort to the sea-box they started from (during naval air combat), turn the aircraft unit face-down.
Rationale
Under RAW, maintaining supply is far too easy if you employ land-based aircraft. Even if the enemy finds your aircraft, you just need to survive one round of air combat and then you can abort back to the sea-box and supply is maintained. The optional rule, Limited-Overseas-Supply, is supposed to remedy this but does it in a very unfortunate way. By making convoys your main source of supply, LOS turns what are strategic units (convoys which carry resources & oil for production) into tactical units (supply carriers). This has a number of negative effects:
- For the Allies, it essentially imposes a convoy "tax" on overseas operations. The CW especially has to maintain a vast network of tiny convoy lines to be able to maintain operations.
- For the Axis, it discourages overseas adventurism in the Med and/or the UK. Because…
- Cutting supply becomes a game of dice. It doesn't matter how much force you defend your supply lines with, if your opponent gets lucky and knocks out a convoy or two (or aborts your Transport), you lose supply. We've seen well-planned invasions of England fail because of a little dice luck that put the Germans out-of-supply despite them building up and deploying a large fleet and a massive air umbrella. Control of the sea-area becomes irrelevant in this game of chance.
- Submarines are suddenly tactical weapons that are effective at cutting supply(!) The convoy-search bonus that submarines get makes them the ideal weapon for this role. When playing the Japanese, I would routinely flood the pacific with submarines to pick at the US supply lines to great effect. Historically, submarines never cut supply to a theater. LOS greatly enhances their effectiveness.
Not-so-limited overseas supply eliminates all these problems and places the emphasis on control of the sea area. If you want to maintain supply using aircraft, you must stay and fight. You can no longer run back to the box to try and maintain supply.
"The convoy-search bonus that submarines get makes them the ideal weapon for this role." I don't have a clue what you are talking about here - there is no specific sub rule that gives them a bonus in finding convoys that I know about.
I think LOS is far superior a rule to non-LOS and I don't mind the convoy tax. If you really want to keep supply then have 2+ TRS in a sea zone, that's usually more than enough to keep supply. Otherwise supply is way too easy.
There is no submarine-specific rule that gives them a special convoy search bonus. That's bad wording on my part. What I'm trying to say is that submarines, who are also eligible for the convoy search bonus, now have a (very effective) role in cutting supply (I should probably update the article to avoid further confusion). Under RAW supply, submarines have no role either providing or cutting supply which is very historical, at least at the scale represented by WIF. Another reason that submarines become very effective at cutting supply lines under LOS is because you usually can't intercept them. As a result, if you are defending a long supply line (a la Pacific), submarines are a virtually cost-free and easy way to get multiple shots at cutting a long supply chain.
As for the 2+ TRS tactic, this works okay in "short" front situations such as the invasion of France where you are providing supply across 1 sea area from England. It doesn't work very well when you're invading Italy or across the Pacific in which case you must provide supply across many sea zones. And btw, it's no guarantee of success even in the short-front situation. We witnessed a German invasion of England flounder because the British got lucky and aborted 2 TRS and an AMPH despite having overwhelming air and naval superiority.
The big problem with subs cutting supply is that you can't do anything to get rid of them like you can withair a scs. You could have a group of subs sit for a whole turn in a sea zone doing nothing with a huge carrier task force in the 4 box of the same sea zone all turn then decide to commit at a critical time get lucky and cut supply. I really like the idea that planes aborting back to the box become flipped, I would not flip CVP that abort back to a carrier though. You could also tweek this to make it easier to cut supply if that is desired by not requiring air to be face up to cut supply.
This idea is fine but it still has the same problem of RAW supply which is you have to clear the seazone of the enemy to cut supply which IMO is worse than actually having to find and sink the supply ships. One problem with LOS is players relying on a single CP at a crucial point when they should have 2 or more TRS. Another problem is WiF being a strategic game with a supply system that is all or nothing.
I've pretty much only played with LOS. The few games I tried without it I ended up putting out CPs just to remind myself I needed something in the zone if the enemy could reach it! Also, the CPs don't ever need to RTB and they're cheap.
As an aside much of the rationale for CVP being able to interact with LBA is the design assumption that only a portion of the LBA is out there vs the whole carrier wing. Harry has said this many times. So in fact most of the LBA is never out at sea and it's hard to justify flipping the whole thing if it aborts. Frankly I don't know how you kill a LBA if you only engage a small portion of it but that's another matter. In reality combat groups actually do launch all their aircraft at enemy TF that are spotted by dedicated recon aircraft not shown at WiF scale.
The "answer" of course to this is have more aircraft at sea in additional boxes- especially more fighters in low boxes. Personally I don't see it as a big change from RAW and while flipping ac that voluntarily abort may make it work a bit better than RAW that itself may not be a great mechanic. If you want something else I'd let CP's in any box but only those in the zero can transport resources with the rest only doing supply. I'd rather put 10 CPs in the 3 box then rely on 2 TRS for the same cost anyway- call CPs in higher boxes supply ships.
Lane