ORIGINAL: InfiniteMonkey
Late war, someone fell off a ladder and dumped chocolate into someone else's peanut butter.
Love peanut butter cups.
Now is this unfair? No. Is it "fair" for the Allied player to wait to avoid a carrier battle in 1942 despite the fact they pursued them historically? Is it fair for the Allied player to use his submarines conservatively until the USN torpedoes become reliable? We know what happened. We learn from history. We apply that to the game. It is a two way street and the same omniscience that aids the Allied player aids the Japanese player, but in different ways.
In fact I argue the same idea, but with slightly more nuance. Both sides of the game don’t have the same opportunities with regard to airframes. This is one area where agreements have to be made.
Welcome to time travel. We are not simply replaying history here. We are starting on 12/7/1941 and re-fighting the war with knowledge of the mistakes both sides made. We make different decisions and those decisions have implications for what happens after them. Expecting the Japanese OOB to stay the same in the absence of historical results is folly. The Allied OOB is more set, not for balance, but because of the Europe first approach the Allies took meant the PTO's resources would be more limited. We cannot talk about how to increase Allied assets in the PTO without simulating the ETO. The game is about the PTO and assumes the ETO occurred as it did historically.
Firstly, I do not advocate playing the game historically but I do think in specific cases historical capabilities should be considered so that gameplay is not out of whack (nightbombing comes to mind).
Following your logic you are also leaving out half of the argument. Assuming the PTO is
different and in fact more difficult for the Allies, the US in specific would most likely have thrown them a few bones. This is taken on by some mods where the Allies can buy more airframes.
I do not think this game is about balance. Balance implies that both players have an equal chance of winning. The Japanese do not have a snowballs chance in hell of winning against a competent opponent (Scenario 1).
Here you are flat out wrong. The Japanese have a good chance of winning
the game. Some players forget the game includes a Victory Point assessment of who has won. Tokyo could be burned out, my fleet gone, T-34s sitting in Korea, but I could still
win the game. It’s about the VPs in the end, and I play that way. Every point matters.
So the sweeps by a group of N1K5 in late 43, if possible to get them up that far, do matter to the winning and losing of the game, and therefore the Allied player should know a bit of what is possible. (They can also check the Japanese R & D anytime by looking at the in-game database. The date of arrival of an airframe will change as it moves forward with research!)
When I play a PBEM, I will play with house rules that are mutually agreed upon. If I adhere to those house rules, my opponent has nothing to complain about. If my opponent does not want me to research aircraft, he must suggest and get me to agree to a rule that states I do not modify aircraft research factories. If my opponent does not want me to skip aircraft in the research sequence, he must propose and get me to agree to a house rule on that.
This is the main goal of what I’m arguing, and it sounds like you’re doing that already, so need to belabour it all. Just agree with your opponent on how you both are going to play. The only reason to talk about this R & D issue is that most Allied players don’t understand the Japanese economic or Research side of the game. If they get it, they can negotiate a game they want to play, but this part has to be figured out in the beginning, obviously.
"You should know better than to do that" is a subjective statement that can only cause issues between players.
Is someone here saying that? I don’t see that in the posts.
It relies upon each player knowing the history and systems with equal levels of knowledge and then requires that they interpret the results the same way. If the game allows it and it is not a bug of some kind and it is not house ruled, then it is allowed. Honestly, I'm not interested in playing an opponent that starts a game without carefully considering the house rules they want in place. If you agree to a set of house rules, you should not get bent out of shape unless they are violated.
You may think that now. Have you ever played into 45? It’s a long game. Your knowledge, your ideas, and your opponent’s, change, evolve. You both see how things work together and you have to resolve issues along the way. This one though is something that has to be agreed in the beginning. So the Allied player has to know what is possible.
Having said all that, there are things that are permitted in the game system that I would not do. I will not put Jakes on subs, for instance. They were too big to operate off subs and were not designed to be stored in the small hangers the subs possessed. I know that and would not do it. As another example, I probably will not put the Grace on most carriers (wingspan would not fit in elevators of most carriers). However, if no house rule governs the tactic and I think the tactic was possible, I will do it. I'm not going to ask permission.
Self-governing is useful, but your opponent may have different ideas about what you’re choosing to self-govern.
How do you feel about your Allied opponent using 40 single ship TFs of DDs in front of his Death Star before an engagement? Or 30 single PT boat TFs to guard an important forward airbase from bombardments so that your bombardment TF gets held up in all of those combats and decimated by DBs in the day air phase? How do you feel about Sending 250 4E on a night bombing of a port like Rabaul in 43 and sinking everything in the port (when in fact this was not even remotely possible in the war due to targeting and navigation issues at night)?
They may feel that your idea of what is possible is different than theirs, so it can be a negotiation throughout the game as you each discover what the other actually does.
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill