Islands of Destiny: RA 5.0 Japanese Side

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JohnDillworth
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RE: April 1944

Post by JohnDillworth »

Sigh.......Gratuitous post to put you on top

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John 3rd
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RE: April 1944

Post by John 3rd »

There is no gravity there! Oooopps...I meant gratuitousness...
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John 3rd
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RE: April 1944

Post by John 3rd »

There are some thing in the game that I wish simply couldn't be done. Here is an example of one that dates back to my match with Dan in the original WitP. In that game he took Iwo Jima (Sz-1 Port) and disbanded 1,100+ ships into the Port to protect them. No BS. That happened...

Take a look here:


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John 3rd
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RE: April 1944

Post by John 3rd »

Am beginning to make notes for my next game regarding limits to things that in 1941/1942/even 1943 aren't real issues but can become so in 1944/1945...
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AcePylut
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RE: April 1944

Post by AcePylut »

Mod in Port stacking limits perhaps?
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Chickenboy
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RE: April 1944

Post by Chickenboy »

John, do us all a favor and blow those ****ers up.[:-]
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bradfordkay
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RE: April 1944

Post by bradfordkay »

You need to think about a fair rule if you want to limit the number of ships that can be at anchor in a port. Late in the war the allied player has thousands of ships that have to be at anchor somewhere - so a limit that is designed to keep a forward small base from becoming an invulnerable storage depot has to be flexible enough that it doesn't prevent the allied player from having enough anchorage somewhere for all his ships. Perhaps allowing level 7 and larger ports unlimited anchorage?
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alaviner
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RE: April 1944

Post by alaviner »

One thing to remember is that a port (size 1-3) refers to the size of the port facilities not the size of the anchorage. Ulithi comes to mind from the RL where the Allies anchored hundreds of ships there but the actual port facilities were meager at best.
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Bearcat2
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RE: April 1944

Post by Bearcat2 »

Port size and anchorage space are not the same thing. Anchorage space in real life for Legaspi and Naga is huge.
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DRF99
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RE: April 1944

Post by DRF99 »

Looking at a map, Legaspi is on Albay Gulf which looks to be at least 25 mi long x 5 mi. wide and sheltered. Naga is on San Miguel Bay and is about 10 mi wide x 25 mi long. Each is not too different in size from Ulithi.

So, lots of ships could anchor there but on the other hand, they would make a huge target if attacked.
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crsutton
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RE: April 1944

Post by crsutton »

ORIGINAL: DRF99

Looking at a map, Legaspi is on Albay Gulf which looks to be at least 25 mi long x 5 mi. wide and sheltered. Naga is on San Miguel Bay and is about 10 mi wide x 25 mi long. Each is not too different in size from Ulithi.

So, lots of ships could anchor there but on the other hand, they would make a huge target if attacked.

Well, it would be very hard to fix properly. Most Australian ports on the same coast with Townsville were severely restricted because they all were blocked by reefs and had very narrow channels that allowed limited ship passage. There is really not much anchorage at most of them and sea born invasions would be all but impossible. If you wanted to put port restrictions in the game you would really have the monumental task of researching every dot on the map to do it justice. How many bases would be suitable for invasion. Not Rangoon, Calcutta or Chittagong. In fact when you consider the requirements of a major invasion would even ten percent of the non atoll base hexes really qualify.
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Panther Bait
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RE: April 1944

Post by Panther Bait »

I don't disagree that some sort of protected anchorage limit (possibly independent of port size as mentioned above) would be a good idea for a WitP2 (or maybe a house rule), if you look at Legaspi on Google Earth, the Albay Gulf (20+ miles long and 4 miles wide) and Poliqui Bay (maybe 9 sq miles) look like they could hold a lot of ships, if needed them too. Especially if a good portion were things like LST, LCI, etc. (not that I know what has been in his invasion fleets). Opposing ships would have to make a run up the Gulf to get at anything sheltering in Legaspi. They would probably all be considered in the Legaspi hex.

Another (smaller) example was Kerama Retto off Okinawa. Although relatively small and not a traditional harbor (maybe 7-8 sq mi), the interior waterway of the Kerama Islands was used as a roadstead by the USN during the Invasion of Okinawa. Morison talks about it quite a bit in his history (he visited the area during the war) and mentions that the Navy thought it could hold up to 75 ships with at least submarine protection (i.e., nets). If I remember correctly, a lot of DDs/DEs damaged by kamikazes (including the USS Laffey and the USS Aaron Ward) were first sent to Kerama to be repaired sufficiently to be sent on to the States for repair (or decommissioning/scrapping just as often).

Mike

EDIT: Actually looking at the quirkiness of the AE map, Albay Gulf (and Legaspi City for that matter) are probably in the Naga Hex, but regardless "Legaspi" could probably hold a lot of ships in a protected anchorage. If the Legaspi hex is intended to represent those facilities, 400+ ships might very well be doable.
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Chickenboy
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RE: April 1944

Post by Chickenboy »

Agree with the discussion points about the quandry that ships at anchor in a "port=1" hex present. While the use of Ulithi may be a useful comparative, it was not able to be used as a large fleet anchorage overnight. Areas were scripted out and diagrammed for different tonnage ships, mooring bouys mapped out and placed, anchorage 'control tower' ships placed and duties assigned. This took some time.

"Disbanding 453" ships into a sizeable anchorage overnight or over a few nights in real life would have been absurdly chaotic without preparation of the anchorage beforehand. It's akin to fueling a CVTF from a dot base overnight. Remember that from the original WiTP? Nonsense.

If someone wants to disband 453 ships into an unprepared anchorage overnight, then the code should ascribe a 25-50% chance of some sort of collision (and the attendant damage) to this behavior. That would stop it in a big hurry.
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Panther Bait
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RE: April 1944

Post by Panther Bait »

CB, unfortunately AE does not really take a lot of that sort of prepwork seriously. How about most player's constant shifting of combat ships (not divisions, individual ships) and air squadrons on an ad hoc basis to make bombardment runs, bomb targets in massed hordes, etc. Can you imagine all the work required to map out radio networks, call signs, coordination areas, form up that all shift on a sometimes daily basis? And yet all these things happen with little to no degradation in performance (at least with ships, at least airplane raids can suffer from lack of coordination).

Plus CR's navy has been in the Philippines for a week or more, game time? How fast did those ships really accumulate there? Considering that the US had been in the Philippines for quite a while pre-War, it's at least plausible that they had enough information on the Legaspi area to pre-plan an anchorage.
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John 3rd
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RE: April 1944

Post by John 3rd »

Great discussion gang. You are all running ideas that make sense. Thoroughly understand the back-and-forth of each side to this.

We had internet issues on my side today so I just got the morning turn without enough time to run it. Will have to wait until after work to do the turn.
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John 3rd
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RE: April 1944

Post by John 3rd »

Another concern is simply placing EVERY ship in a single hex. I cannot begin to guess the sheer numbers that are included when he moves 'everything' in ONE DARNED HEX. There could be all sort of different ideas here regarding maximum number of aircraft in a sea hex, some sort of arbitrary maximum number, etc...

Thought here?
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MBF
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RE: April 1944

Post by MBF »

Assuming 40nm across the hex (not hexside so I may be in error) the area of a hex is approx. 1315 sq. nm

So that is a lot of ships - probably not enough for what we see in game but sill a good size area

(edits: typos and grammar - English is not my first language)
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Panther Bait
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RE: April 1944

Post by Panther Bait »

Considering the weakness of the game with integrating CAP, TF location, and the idea of raid interception (particularly later war with more radar assets), I can understand the desire to pack as much as you can into one hex to simplify figuring out CAP. Sure there is bleed over CAP, but that is not the same as how air defense was accomplished in real life.

Large scale CAP interceptions happened further out than the same hex as the carrier TF or a little into the hex next door. It's somewhat related to the phenomenon that air raids essentially teleport to the target hex, i.e. there is no possibility of intercepting anywhere between the airbase they left and the target hex, at least for the USN. I think if you could fix some of those issues, than maybe you could enforce a per-hex ship limit of some kind.

Mike

P.S. Real pie-in-the-sky wishes for this type of game would be something like a CMANO-style, no hex system, although more abstracted to handle the larger scale (i.e. not track the positions of individual ships or planes like CMANO, but do track formations/raids with actual locations and travel paths).
When you shoot at a destroyer and miss, it's like hit'in a wildcat in the ass with a banjo.

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Chickenboy
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RE: April 1944

Post by Chickenboy »

ORIGINAL: Panther Bait

CB, unfortunately AE does not really take a lot of that sort of prepwork seriously. How about most player's constant shifting of combat ships (not divisions, individual ships) and air squadrons on an ad hoc basis to make bombardment runs, bomb targets in massed hordes, etc. Can you imagine all the work required to map out radio networks, call signs, coordination areas, form up that all shift on a sometimes daily basis? And yet all these things happen with little to no degradation in performance (at least with ships, at least airplane raids can suffer from lack of coordination).

Plus CR's navy has been in the Philippines for a week or more, game time? How fast did those ships really accumulate there? Considering that the US had been in the Philippines for quite a while pre-War, it's at least plausible that they had enough information on the Legaspi area to pre-plan an anchorage.

Oh I get it about the inability of the AE engine to represent reality. There are myriad examples. My commments were in the context of the taking the plausible and making it into an absurdity because the engine 'lets you'.

What you're describing (changing call signs, radio networks, etc.) could plausibly be done in the background so that the effects were noticed overnight. I can suspend my disbelief and assume that these things were implemented spontaneously, but had been worked on for months in 'the background'. No problem there.

It's even reasonable that a semi-organized anchorage could be established for a modest number of ships very quickly. Is 453 ships a modest number? No. Does the engine allow absurdities by not addressing this? Yes.

Another pet peeve of mine is night bombing-particularly in the early war. Early Allied efforts using B17s from PM against Rabaul were largely ineffective. Night sorties suffered from heavy OPS losses, poor accuracy, difficulty with navigation (winding up on the business end of the Owen Stanley peaks), sporadic enemy CAP, etc. They did it not so much because it was effective, but because they 'had to do something' and anything would do. The game engine permits the absurdity of rookie-crewed, massed early war aircraft flying with no OPS losses over hundreds and hundreds of miles of trackless terrain to deliver fantastically accurate bombs on target. All the while shooting down hapless enemy fighters with laser-like precision. At night. With no OPS losses. It's just 'broken' on so many levels.

An easy fix to the night bombing would be to increase the OPS losses (flying into the side of a mountain in the dark) to 10%. Not *by* 10% but *to* 10%. This level of hard-coded night bomber OPS losses would give even the most bloody-minded Allied commander pause.

Similarly, a significant increase in the OPS damage for armadas occupying a small hex should also be borne. Enough to make it sting when pulling this nonsense.

The game does not exact this tax-the engine 'can't handle it'. I'm just outlining what I think it *should* do for fairness' sake. If it can't (e.g., night bombing), then that's fertile ground for HRs.
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Panther Bait
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RE: April 1944

Post by Panther Bait »

I agree 100% on the night bombing, and I think that is a perfect place for house rules. Build up or limiting of anchorages, too, for that matter. I have seen some AARs where too many house rules ruined the flow of the game with accidental breaches and replaying turns, etc.

The max ships in a hex thing is more complex/harder to house rule, because the game mechanics most affected - naval raid targeting and CAP assignment - are all done behind the scenes with the players at the mercy of the die roll. So, for example, you can't make a house rule that says "Max 200 ships per hex, but only 4 CVs can target a single hex or a signle TF" or anything like that. About the best you could do would be to have a max CV per hex and a max ship per hex rule and hope that the game engine sorts it all out. I still think the late-war Allied player gets hosed with that rule considering what late-war fighter direction was like.

Mike
When you shoot at a destroyer and miss, it's like hit'in a wildcat in the ass with a banjo.

Nathan Dogan, USS Gurnard
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