Additional Japanese ships

Please post here for questions and discussion about scenario design, art and sound modding and the game editor for WITP Admiral's Edition.

Moderators: wdolson, MOD_War-in-the-Pacific-Admirals-Edition

Post Reply
Buck Beach
Posts: 1974
Joined: Sun Jun 25, 2000 8:00 am
Location: Upland,CA,USA

Additional Japanese ships

Post by Buck Beach »

I'll preface this by saying I know very little about the Japanese side and/or production system and limits.

Sometime back I surfaced that I had found many new Japanese ships (between 700 and 800 mostly merchant type) that I was trying to put in my Mod. Mose were built during the war and most have two sources of vetting, Miramar Ship Index (a comprehensive Internet Pay site) and the listing of actual Japanese ships sunk during the war.

Assuming, in the case of argument, these ships existed, how would it effect the game. Aside from requiring more movement of resources to the Japanese homeland and HI sites, my thoughts are that it would help with any Japanese ship shortages for their movement of supplies and act as cannon fodder to the effect of the Alllies needing to use their assets (ships, fuel, supply and ammunition) for this purpose.

I welcome any thoughts from all of you and especially those having concerns about Japanese production output.

Buck
User avatar
Hotschi
Posts: 548
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2010 4:04 pm
Location: Austria

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by Hotschi »

That's of interest to me as well - and I know nothing about any production systems, not to mention Japanese ones [:D]

I don't think - or hope - that putting additional ships into the Japanese building queue during the war has any effects on HI or additional supply needed - when playing against Japanese AI, that is. I have completed a grand campaign vs. Japanese AI and played it right through almost to the end of the timeline of the scenario just for the fun of it, and it looked (!!) to me that all ships of Japan which have a entry date in the scenario appeared, regardless of supply or how much merchants they still possessed for moving any suplly at all.

But as you, I am absolutely no expert on this matter.
"A big butcher's bill is not necessarily evidence of good tactics"

- Wavell's reply to Churchill, after the latter complained about faint-heartedness, as he discovered that British casualties in the evacuation from Somaliland had been only 260 men.
User avatar
JWE
Posts: 5039
Joined: Tue Jul 19, 2005 5:02 pm

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by JWE »

Just a quickie comment. There shouldn't be very many merchies >1000 tons that are missing. Lots of them had names that could be spelled two or three different ways. For the game, we used the transliteration style that was used by LLoyds and ONI, in 1940. Different from translteration spelling used today. Several of the Std As, Bs, and Cs started as bulk cargo but got finished as tanker versions. Just FYI [;)]
User avatar
PaxMondo
Posts: 9796
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:23 pm

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by PaxMondo »

I might also add that I have heard that Japanese trading ships changed names up through the 40's more commonly than in the West.  If there was a bad voyage (encountered a typhoon, or grounded, or something like that), they would change the name so that the ship's "luck" would change.  This was told to me anecdotally, but the person telling me (at the time) was a retired IJ chief.
Pax
User avatar
JWE
Posts: 5039
Joined: Tue Jul 19, 2005 5:02 pm

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by JWE »

Digging back through my stuff from years ago, and found:
Image
Now, this isn't completely dispositive, but it's a good 'big picture' view. Doesn't account for vessels <750-1000 GRT, so there will be a bunch more xAKLs in the actual 'number of ships' totals, but in terms of capacity, they represent less than 2% of tonnage totals for the entire period of 1936 to 1945. But insofar as anualized number of ships and aggregate tonnage is concerned, we targeted these values and hit them (and went a bit over, because we included as much <750-1000 GRT new construction that we could.
Attachments
JapanComm..Shipping.jpg
JapanComm..Shipping.jpg (99.26 KiB) Viewed 248 times
User avatar
jwilkerson
Posts: 7900
Joined: Sun Sep 15, 2002 4:02 am
Location: Kansas
Contact:

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by jwilkerson »

For those who care ... I've posted this numerous times ...

We added thousands of hulls to AE that were not in WITP. Yet there are still FAR more missing hulls in AE than are included ... yet all of these are small ... for example there are around 8,000 motorized Ocean going Japanese fishing vessels that are not included.
If we added all of the missing vessels we might have 20 times as many hulls as we have now ... but we do not think the game would be improved a whit. So we left them out on purpose - not by mistake!


AE Project Lead
New Game Project Lead
Commander Stormwolf
Posts: 1623
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:11 pm

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by Commander Stormwolf »


yep.

only things of military value need be included in the game
"No Enemy Survives Contact with the Plan" - Commander Stormwolf
User avatar
JWE
Posts: 5039
Joined: Tue Jul 19, 2005 5:02 pm

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by JWE »

And then we crawled through just about every reference there was about Japanese ship construction;
Heal, S.C. 2003. Ugly Ducklings: Japan's WWII Liberty Type Standard Ships. Naval Institute Press. IBSN 1-59114-999-X;
Parillo, Mark P. 1993. The Japanese Merchant Marine in World War II. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-677-9;
ONI-208J-S3, 1945;
http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/; that depends on the above;
and my favorite;
http://homepage3.nifty.com/jpnships/; This one is Fumio Nagasawa's site. In Japanese, but with some Google translator help, you should be able to find what you need.

And then you get all this.
Image
But, as you can see, all of the Std/Kiso E types were way less than 1000 GRT. Nontheless, I would say that many, if not most (>50%) were included in game. Some of the 'merchie' E types went right off to PB duty, and are included in game as their PB penant numbers.

Mention all this because I don't think there's 700-800 missing ships, not unless they are 150' tuna boats. Missing 20 or 30, of course, but we hammered this very, very hard and I would be quite disappointed at an error of such magnitude.
Attachments
Construction.jpg
Construction.jpg (33.75 KiB) Viewed 246 times
Buck Beach
Posts: 1974
Joined: Sun Jun 25, 2000 8:00 am
Location: Upland,CA,USA

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by Buck Beach »

Pointing out a discrepancy is not the purpose of my post and not trying a gotcha. It is for my own mod, however, I was/am interested in the conscience of the potential impact by including them.

I think we all know that the Japanese were facing a merchant shortage at a certain point in the war. It takes x times the material and x times longer to build a larger merchant with x times the capacity of a smaller xAKL yet it still only takes one torpedo/bomb to sink either.

Again not trying to out think you Dev's. I'll never be able to hold a candle to what you guys know or even have forgotten about history or this game, and, I wouldn't know an algorithm from shinola. However, even in the animal Kingdom the safety in numbers logic prevails and the need for these ships makes sense in my mind.

Buck


User avatar
JWE
Posts: 5039
Joined: Tue Jul 19, 2005 5:02 pm

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by JWE »

ORIGINAL: Buck Beach
Pointing out a discrepancy is not the purpose of my post and not trying a gotcha. It is for my own mod, however, I was/am interested in the conscience of the potential impact by including them.

I think we all know that the Japanese were facing a merchant shortage at a certain point in the war. It takes x times the material and x times longer to build a larger merchant with x times the capacity of a smaller xAKL yet it still only takes one torpedo/bomb to sink either.

Again not trying to out think you Dev's. I'll never be able to hold a candle to what you guys know or even have forgotten about history or this game, and, I wouldn't know an algorithm from shinola. However, even in the animal Kingdom the safety in numbers logic prevails and the need for these ships makes sense in my mind.

Buck
Buck, I don't believe for a minute you were doing a 'gotcha'. Know you too well to think that.

Just wanted to show you what, and where, we got our info, so you can start from the same basis. Heck, I've been helping Andy add stuff to Hakko Ichiu and Ironman, so I got no issues with 'mo stuff.
User avatar
LargeSlowTarget
Posts: 4800
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2000 8:00 am
Location: Hessen, Germany - now living in France

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by LargeSlowTarget »

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
for example there are around 8,000 motorized Ocean going Japanese fishing vessels that are not included...
ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf

yep. only things of military value need be included in the game

Well, that are 8000 hulls for conversion into MSW, PC, picket boats etc. [:'(]
User avatar
fodder
Posts: 2159
Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2010 9:27 pm
Location: Daytona Beach

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by fodder »

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget
ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
for example there are around 8,000 motorized Ocean going Japanese fishing vessels that are not included...
ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf

yep. only things of military value need be included in the game

Well, that are 8000 hulls for conversion into MSW, PC, picket boats etc. [:'(]

Wasn't it a naval radio equiped fishing boat that spotted and reported the Enterprise and Hornet forceing Dolittle to launch early. I do beleave that's a military value, but I wouldn't like to see 8,000 more hulls in the game.
Image
User avatar
Shark7
Posts: 7936
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 4:11 pm
Location: The Big Nowhere

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by Shark7 »

ORIGINAL: fodder

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget
ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
for example there are around 8,000 motorized Ocean going Japanese fishing vessels that are not included...
ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf

yep. only things of military value need be included in the game

Well, that are 8000 hulls for conversion into MSW, PC, picket boats etc. [:'(]

Wasn't it a naval radio equiped fishing boat that spotted and reported the Enterprise and Hornet forceing Dolittle to launch early. I do beleave that's a military value, but I wouldn't like to see 8,000 more hulls in the game.

Just think of them as 8,000 VPs when you get em all sunk. [;)]

By my guess they'd only be worth a point each. Its the great Pacific trawler hunt. [:D]
Distant Worlds Fan

'When in doubt...attack!'
User avatar
PaxMondo
Posts: 9796
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:23 pm

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by PaxMondo »

ORIGINAL: Shark7


Just think of them as 8,000 VPs when you get em all sunk. [;)]
I think you can add more, but I don't even build all that are available in stock for just this reason. After mid '44, the entire IJN is just VP's for the allied player to pickup. Not interested in providing him any more than I need to.
Pax
User avatar
Shark7
Posts: 7936
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2007 4:11 pm
Location: The Big Nowhere

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by Shark7 »

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Shark7


Just think of them as 8,000 VPs when you get em all sunk. [;)]
I think you can add more, but I don't even build all that are available in stock for just this reason. After mid '44, the entire IJN is just VP's for the allied player to pickup. Not interested in providing him any more than I need to.

By late '44, he's getting all the VPs he needs from my crumbling ground forces anyway. [:@]
Distant Worlds Fan

'When in doubt...attack!'
User avatar
PaxMondo
Posts: 9796
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2008 3:23 pm

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by PaxMondo »

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Shark7


Just think of them as 8,000 VPs when you get em all sunk. [;)]
I think you can add more, but I don't even build all that are available in stock for just this reason. After mid '44, the entire IJN is just VP's for the allied player to pickup. Not interested in providing him any more than I need to.

By late '44, he's getting all the VPs he needs from my crumbling ground forces anyway. [:@]
True, I just don't want to add to the pigpile.

Actually, in my games, it isn't the ground force VP's, its the strategic VP's with those B29's
Pax
el cid again
Posts: 16980
Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2005 4:40 pm

RE: Additional Japanese ships

Post by el cid again »

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

For those who care ... I've posted this numerous times ...

We added thousands of hulls to AE that were not in WITP. Yet there are still FAR more missing hulls in AE than are included ... yet all of these are small ... for example there are around 8,000 motorized Ocean going Japanese fishing vessels that are not included.
If we added all of the missing vessels we might have 20 times as many hulls as we have now ... but we do not think the game would be improved a whit. So we left them out on purpose - not by mistake!




The problem is that this forces players not to use forward supply in the historical sense - and prevents riverine operations close to historical.
While I do agree that the vast majority of small vessels are not of military significane - in a game with even PT boats present per each - as
well as small langing craft - it seems improper to ignore sea trucks - logistic landing craft - and various other small vessels. Instead I propose
that a fraction should be included (as for example is the normal case with landing craft - most landing craft are either organic to ships or are
local logistic vessels not used outside the port they are in - but some could be - and AUS as well as IJA made actual OCEAN voyages in them).
The IJ approach to small ships was they should do forward supply - bigger ships deliver the cargo to a base - and then little ones move it from
there to the forward positions. They were masters of camo - some vessels looked like islets - and would stop if approached - and might be
not identified as targets at all. Sometimes in good visibility it wouldn't work - so some pictures show the "islet" burning after attack.
Post Reply

Return to “Scenario Design and Modding”