This brings up the first important question raised by the analysis. Why are big guns less accurate on a shell per shell basis than small ones? Personally I have no clue, and my understanding is that the combination of stable firing platform, better range finders and flatter shell trajectory (at least in the 4000 and 6000 yard brackets) make the bigger gun more accurate. Anyone care to guess?
Just a guess, as you said. Maybe the larger guns are intrinsically modelled as the same or better accuracy but they are firing at longer ranges, thereby hiding their true accuracy versus smaller guns.
As treespider pointed out, the replay might be giving us false data as to details about the battle, so judging this will be difficult (and possibly error-prone).
That's not accurate, I am suggesting that the model used in the animation may be inaccurate but working as designed, whereas the model without the animation is accurate. It is my understanding that there are two seperate models at work, one that was developed early on and a later one to introduce the animations to the game... I may be wrong on this point, but a number of people have pointed out to ignore the animations as they are not an accurate representation as to what is actually taking place.
El Cid, I went to ET "A"School probably 30 years after you and that was the first thing they told us as well. I was in the first Gulf War and I have fixed many things that didn't "Belong" to me. In the mid 90's I was one of two epair Electronics techs in the theater of Qatar, and fixed stuff for the Air force, MIUW, three different ships from three differnt squadrons and all kinds of Green gear. ET Everything Tech. I was asked to help FC's before tehy went away, as well as other ET's on the quay as well as EM's. IC's, CT's and any other electrical and some phys dem alphabet people throughut my career. I know lots of FC's that were really good, on thier gear, but I was proud to be reffered to by one FC chief as "The pro from Dover." when I was called out of the CALIBRATION lab to help on a FC radar for a CIWS mount on the USS Long Beach. I don't think I was better that the other rates I just had differnt training. I was expected to know all about electrical and electronic equipment, analog or digital and I may not have been the fastest on it, I was expected to look at the manual and quickly start contributing.
As treespider pointed out, the replay might be giving us false data as to details about the battle, so judging this will be difficult (and possibly error-prone).
That's not accurate, I am suggesting that the model used in the animation may be inaccurate but working as designed, whereas the model without the animation is accurate. It is my understanding that there are two seperate models at work, one that was developed early on and a later one to introduce the animations to the game... I may be wrong on this point, but a number of people have pointed out to ignore the animations as they are not an accurate representation as to what is actually taking place.
That's what I tried to convey. As far as 'final results' go, the model in the combat engine matters. If the model in the combat animations is different, it is misleading us by showing us something different (from the combat engine).
I realize your trying to be helpful, but I doubt that the combat report is lying about the ranges, or splitting them. One of the reasons that I doubt this is: what for? most TFs tried to stay together, rather than split into smaller units fighting at different ranges. Now I know that a torpedo attack could be ordered and that would bring the DDs in closer under some circumstances, but they don't need to get any closer if the range is 4000 yards or 6000 yards.
Very true, but even still different ships will usually have different ranges to target. A simple example, many battles were fought in line-ahead formation. If you're approaching the enemy the ships in front are progressively closer than the ones behind.
Anyway it's just a thought since we don't get that kind of detail from the reports.
As treespider pointed out, the replay might be giving us false data as to details about the battle, so judging this will be difficult (and possibly error-prone).
That's not accurate, I am suggesting that the model used in the animation may be inaccurate but working as designed, whereas the model without the animation is accurate. It is my understanding that there are two seperate models at work, one that was developed early on and a later one to introduce the animations to the game... I may be wrong on this point, but a number of people have pointed out to ignore the animations as they are not an accurate representation as to what is actually taking place.
That's what I tried to convey. As far as 'final results' go, the model in the combat engine matters. If the model in the combat animations is different, it is misleading us by showing us something different (from the combat engine).
Now we just need to know if that is the case, if so the analysis is useful in pointing out the animation engine is broke. And if not then something truly is rotten in Denmark
As I just posted in the Lunacy AAR I am retiring from WitP. I will be staying with the Fear and Loathing game a bit longer but we are looking for an Allied player to take my position there as well, send a message to me if your interested. Fair warning I will be at GDC all next week and be replying erractically during that time.
The final battle of the night was an experiment on my part, one that a number of people have criticised, the USS Oklahoma and 13 PT boats TF. I built that TF because of some trends that I had noticed watching the combat animations, one bieng that BBs tended to shoot more when they were outnumbered, another that ships like to shoot like types, so a BB will fire plenty if faced with another BB but check fire, or check fire on main battery if there are no other BBs around. This was a theory of mine before, but I think I have proved it conclusively now, and here are the results to show it.
When the battle opened at 5000 yards with no supply Okalhoma fired on Atago which fired back Naka, Hayashio and Asaguma opened up on PT boats but did not hit. The Japanese heavies did not fire in round 1.
In round 2 the range opened to 10000 yards. Nachi, Kagero, Hayashio and Asaguma all opened up on Okalhoma hitting will 11 DD caliber shells, 8 x 8" shells and one torpedo.
Okalhoma fired back on Nachi (1 secondary hit) Atago (2 main in rouond 1 + 2 secondary in round 2) Yugumo (3 main battery hits) and Kagero 1 secondary hit. Olkahma expended 250 rounds of main battery ammo and had a hit rate of 2% she expended 241 rounds of secondary ammunition and had a hit rate of 1.6%
It takes her a minimum of 12 minutes to fire off 240 rounds of main gun ammunition.
One thing that I hope is obivious here is that if a ship is shot at, it will fire back on the ship that fired at it. It seems to do this until it runs out of ammunition, more on that soon.
I saw this in the battles up above as well, sometimes a Japanese ship (they were always outnumbered) would be fired on by two RN ships, especially in the PoW combat where the ship quality was very high and most ships opened fire. But the Oklahoma shows this in very clear terms.
Now I am going to speculate a little bit, and then talk about a few other battles that were fought recently in either Lunacy or just today in fear and loathing.
I think ships want to shoot at like types, so the engine is byassed in favor of BBs shooting at BBs, not at DDs. In of itself that is good. But the engine also seems to want to not shoot at all if there is not a like type target available. That is really, really bad.
What this means is that TFs of like types will fight a pretty good historical battle. We have all seen this, and I think it is why Erik beleives that the combat I just picked apart is an outlyer. Before I started watching closely I would have believed this too, but I don't any more.
But if the TFs are not like types then things start to break down. That is why Mogami's cruisers did really well against my BBs in this series of engagements. It is also why cruiser TFs generally do well against BBs, the BBs don't shoot. We have all seen this, and if you look at your combat reports or just look for engagements where BBs decisively defeated a force containing cruisers only you will not find many, maybe not even one.
Some may say that this is fine because BB Vs. Cruiser engagements were rare in the Pacific. But that was because of doctrine on both sides, and we should not be forced to adhere to that doctrine or punished for changing it.
However there is a way to get ships to shoot, and we have already seen it. Get the enemy to shoot at you! How do you do that? don't give him many targets. Now if you send a solo DD or Cruiser to this kind of fight you will get mugged because the like types will fire on you and you will be badly outnumbered and get sunk.
But if you send a BB the enemy ships will not want to shoot at it, so only some of them will. Being fired on will have a magical awakening effect on the otherwise quiesent main battery, because (theory here) the model will run out of smaller guns to shoot. I think that is why Yugumo ate 3 14" shells off Oklahoma, the secondaries had already shot at the Japanese cruisers so there was nothing left for the model to grab. Just the fact that Okalhoma shot at Cruisers with secondaries and DDs with the main battery is a problem, we all know she should have done it the other way round, but this model is such a mess that you should take what you can get.
I got a post from a War Plan Orange player who said that the people who were winning were not moving their BBs around in big TFs, the winning force seemed to be 2-3 BBs and a few DDs. He said they would win by attrition. He is right, and the reason why is obvious now, when those 3 BBs meet the enemy fleet they shoot twice as often, or maybe more than twice as often than the ships in the 6 to 10 ship fleet, which means that the outnumbered ship fight at a huge advantage.
After watchign this and crunching the numbers I decided to wait for this post until I had actually tested my theory. The next time Mogami hit Sorong I had several TFs of one BB and 2 DDs, the Japanese came in with cruisers and this time they badly damaged 2 DDs, lost a CA and a DD but did not scratch the Allied BBs all of which fired numerous rounds from all their guns.
This fleet structure of lonely Battleships duking it out with enemy surface combat TFs would be a total disaster in the real world, but in WitP it is the the best possible BB TF. When I grouped 4 BBs with with cruiser and DDs, and 2 more with more cruisers and DDs I did less damage to the Japanese than when I sent one BB up against a similar force of Japanese cruisers.
The most recent test of the theory occured in the Fear and Loathing game, where 3 Royal Navy TFs crashed into the Japanese landing at Soerbaja. The Japanese did not have a surface combat group in the hex, but they did have 4 transport TFs each with 25+ transports and a few PGs and PCs for defense. The 3 RN TFs were a cruiser TF with 2 Country Class, 3 Town Class, and Fleet class and 5 DDs, and Warspite with a DD and Revenge with a DD.
Skipping the analyis the Cruiser TF arrived first and hit one of the convoys. These were all day battles the cruisers hit on TF an fought at 22k yards, 18K, 12, 9, 17, 24 and 30. They did a substantial amount of firing and damaged 16 Japanese ships out of a convoy of 29, some of which had been bombed or torpedoed by Allied air attacks earlier in the day.
Warspite arrived next and fired at 22, 18, 14, 10, 4, 8, 14, 20 and 28. She fired off all 800 of her main gun rounds, sunk 4 ships and damaged 7 more, though some were hit by the DD HMS Decoy. This is a pretty good performance in one respect, Warspite and Decoy damaged or sunk 11 out of 31 ships, the 11 cruisers and DDs from the cruiser TF only got 5 more. This happened because Warspite was shot at by some of the small guns on the Japanese merchant ships so she got to shoot back a lot. If there had been warships present in the convoy the battle would have been very different and also unrealistic, but in a different way. If there had been 1 cruiser in the convoy Warspite would have done a small amount of shooting because of unlike types, and then retired. If there had been many escorts she would have chewed up the escorts but not the convoy, but with no escorts she gets into the merchant men, some of them fire on her, and she fires back. If there had only been 1, 2 or 3 merchant ships she might not have fired at all.
Still it is both amazing and kind of pathetic that HMS Warspite closed to within 4000 yards of a 30 ship convoy and expended 800 15". She should either have sunk more, or used a lot less ammunition. Basically you can have one or the other, but not both, if your going to be realistic. If lots of ammo is used up the damage should be high, and if little is used up damage should be low, but the game does not work this way, partly because of the like ships rule, partly because big guns are highly unlikely to hit, and partly because a round of ammo does not equal either a fixed number of shells OR an amount of shells fired in a fixed period.
Finally HMS Revenge arrived and found a third convoy of 35 ships, opened fire, used up all 800 rounds of main batter ammunition and hit 8 ships sinking 1. I did not watch the combat report, so I don't know the details.
There is one more combat, farther to the South near Koepang that I want to comment on, because it shows the other side of the broken model.
While Warspite was taking on the Japanese merchant marine with her notoriously inaccurate gunnery KMS DeRuyter and 4 DDs caught 1 AP and 2 AKs off an island base near Koepang. Now in the real war a CL and 4 DDs would easliy massacre 3 merchant ships, as was seen over and over again during the fall of Singapore and the NEI as well as many other places where surface combatants found small numbers of merchant ships. But the model does not like you ship to shoot at a ship that is not like you. Merchants are not like DDs and CLs so only the AP fired. The Allied ships did not fire much either because they don't like to shoot at merchant ships. The result was the AP was hit by 24 shells and a torpedo and sunk, and the other 2 ships got away. This is not the exception in WitP it is the rule, for the reasons that I have explained over the course of these posts.
So what should we make of all this. First of all your BBs should be put into very small TFs. Even if they run into a big enemy BB TF they have an excellent change of crippling or sinking one or more enemy BBs and they will ALWAYS do disproportunate damage. If they meet an enemy cruiser or destroyer TF they will do very well unless they get torpedoed because they will return fire on everything that shoot at them, weather or not they actually have the guns to do it.
It does make some sense to group cruisers and DDs since they are likely to run into like types anyway.
Grouping BBs in small TFs in a huge advantage for the Allies because they have so many more of them. In fact if done well (keep the BBs under aircover, no unecessary risks early in the war) I suspect it will completly wreck the game because the Japanese don't really have a strong counter move. I'm not going to find out, because I am not going to waste any more time on a game which I find too flawed and frustrating, but some one reading this should try it.
Conversly the Allies should not agree to a house rule regarding the size of BB TFs because that makes the BBs much weaker and less effective than they were historically.
Sorry to post such negative conclusions, and maybe I am wrong about the end effect on the game, but I am certain that I have the model and its effects figured out, those who disagree are welcome to run historically correct TFs up against the gamey, bastard, A-historical TFs I suggest, but don't complain when all your ships get sunk, because that is what is going to happen.
Anyone going to GDC next week? send a message, maybe we can meet up for a beer.
As I just posted in the Lunacy AAR I am retiring from WitP. I will be staying with the Fear and Loathing game a bit longer but we are looking for an Allied player to take my position there as well, send a message to me if your interested. Fair warning I will be at GDC all next week and be replying erractically during that time.
The final battle of the night was an experiment on my part, one that a number of people have criticised, the USS Oklahoma and 13 PT boats TF. I built that TF because of some trends that I had noticed watching the combat animations, one bieng that BBs tended to shoot more when they were outnumbered, another that ships like to shoot like types, so a BB will fire plenty if faced with another BB but check fire, or check fire on main battery if there are no other BBs around. This was a theory of mine before, but I think I have proved it conclusively now, and here are the results to show it.
When the battle opened at 5000 yards with no supply Okalhoma fired on Atago which fired back Naka, Hayashio and Asaguma opened up on PT boats but did not hit. The Japanese heavies did not fire in round 1.
In round 2 the range opened to 10000 yards. Nachi, Kagero, Hayashio and Asaguma all opened up on Okalhoma hitting will 11 DD caliber shells, 8 x 8" shells and one torpedo.
Okalhoma fired back on Nachi (1 secondary hit) Atago (2 main in rouond 1 + 2 secondary in round 2) Yugumo (3 main battery hits) and Kagero 1 secondary hit. Olkahma expended 250 rounds of main battery ammo and had a hit rate of 2% she expended 241 rounds of secondary ammunition and had a hit rate of 1.6%
It takes her a minimum of 12 minutes to fire off 240 rounds of main gun ammunition.
One thing that I hope is obivious here is that if a ship is shot at, it will fire back on the ship that fired at it. It seems to do this until it runs out of ammunition, more on that soon.
I saw this in the battles up above as well, sometimes a Japanese ship (they were always outnumbered) would be fired on by two RN ships, especially in the PoW combat where the ship quality was very high and most ships opened fire. But the Oklahoma shows this in very clear terms.
Now I am going to speculate a little bit, and then talk about a few other battles that were fought recently in either Lunacy or just today in fear and loathing.
I think ships want to shoot at like types, so the engine is byassed in favor of BBs shooting at BBs, not at DDs. In of itself that is good. But the engine also seems to want to not shoot at all if there is not a like type target available. That is really, really bad.
What this means is that TFs of like types will fight a pretty good historical battle. We have all seen this, and I think it is why Erik beleives that the combat I just picked apart is an outlyer. Before I started watching closely I would have believed this too, but I don't any more.
But if the TFs are not like types then things start to break down. That is why Mogami's cruisers did really well against my BBs in this series of engagements. It is also why cruiser TFs generally do well against BBs, the BBs don't shoot. We have all seen this, and if you look at your combat reports or just look for engagements where BBs decisively defeated a force containing cruisers only you will not find many, maybe not even one.
Some may say that this is fine because BB Vs. Cruiser engagements were rare in the Pacific. But that was because of doctrine on both sides, and we should not be forced to adhere to that doctrine or punished for changing it.
However there is a way to get ships to shoot, and we have already seen it. Get the enemy to shoot at you! How do you do that? don't give him many targets. Now if you send a solo DD or Cruiser to this kind of fight you will get mugged because the like types will fire on you and you will be badly outnumbered and get sunk.
But if you send a BB the enemy ships will not want to shoot at it, so only some of them will. Being fired on will have a magical awakening effect on the otherwise quiesent main battery, because (theory here) the model will run out of smaller guns to shoot. I think that is why Yugumo ate 3 14" shells off Oklahoma, the secondaries had already shot at the Japanese cruisers so there was nothing left for the model to grab. Just the fact that Okalhoma shot at Cruisers with secondaries and DDs with the main battery is a problem, we all know she should have done it the other way round, but this model is such a mess that you should take what you can get.
I got a post from a War Plan Orange player who said that the people who were winning were not moving their BBs around in big TFs, the winning force seemed to be 2-3 BBs and a few DDs. He said they would win by attrition. He is right, and the reason why is obvious now, when those 3 BBs meet the enemy fleet they shoot twice as often, or maybe more than twice as often than the ships in the 6 to 10 ship fleet, which means that the outnumbered ship fight at a huge advantage.
After watchign this and crunching the numbers I decided to wait for this post until I had actually tested my theory. The next time Mogami hit Sorong I had several TFs of one BB and 2 DDs, the Japanese came in with cruisers and this time they badly damaged 2 DDs, lost a CA and a DD but did not scratch the Allied BBs all of which fired numerous rounds from all their guns.
This fleet structure of lonely Battleships duking it out with enemy surface combat TFs would be a total disaster in the real world, but in WitP it is the the best possible BB TF. When I grouped 4 BBs with with cruiser and DDs, and 2 more with more cruisers and DDs I did less damage to the Japanese than when I sent one BB up against a similar force of Japanese cruisers.
The most recent test of the theory occured in the Fear and Loathing game, where 3 Royal Navy TFs crashed into the Japanese landing at Soerbaja. The Japanese did not have a surface combat group in the hex, but they did have 4 transport TFs each with 25+ transports and a few PGs and PCs for defense. The 3 RN TFs were a cruiser TF with 2 Country Class, 3 Town Class, and Fleet class and 5 DDs, and Warspite with a DD and Revenge with a DD.
Skipping the analyis the Cruiser TF arrived first and hit one of the convoys. These were all day battles the cruisers hit on TF an fought at 22k yards, 18K, 12, 9, 17, 24 and 30. They did a substantial amount of firing and damaged 16 Japanese ships out of a convoy of 29, some of which had been bombed or torpedoed by Allied air attacks earlier in the day.
Warspite arrived next and fired at 22, 18, 14, 10, 4, 8, 14, 20 and 28. She fired off all 800 of her main gun rounds, sunk 4 ships and damaged 7 more, though some were hit by the DD HMS Decoy. This is a pretty good performance in one respect, Warspite and Decoy damaged or sunk 11 out of 31 ships, the 11 cruisers and DDs from the cruiser TF only got 5 more. This happened because Warspite was shot at by some of the small guns on the Japanese merchant ships so she got to shoot back a lot. If there had been warships present in the convoy the battle would have been very different and also unrealistic, but in a different way. If there had been 1 cruiser in the convoy Warspite would have done a small amount of shooting because of unlike types, and then retired. If there had been many escorts she would have chewed up the escorts but not the convoy, but with no escorts she gets into the merchant men, some of them fire on her, and she fires back. If there had only been 1, 2 or 3 merchant ships she might not have fired at all.
Still it is both amazing and kind of pathetic that HMS Warspite closed to within 4000 yards of a 30 ship convoy and expended 1600 15". She should either have sunk more, or used a lot less ammunition. Basically you can have one or the other, but not both, if your going to be realistic. If lots of ammo is used up the damage should be high, and if little is used up damage should be low, but the game does not work this way, partly because of the like ships rule, partly because big guns are highly unlikely to hit, and partly because a round of ammo does not equal either a fixed number of shells OR an amount of shells fired in a fixed period.
Finally HMS Revenge arrived and found a third convoy of 35 ships, opened fire, used up all 1600 rounds of main batter ammunition and hit 8 ships sinking 1. I did not watch the combat report, so I don't know the details.
There is one more combat, farther to the South near Koepang that I want to comment on, because it shows the other side of the broken model.
While Warspite was taking on the Japanese merchant marine with her notoriously inaccurate gunnery KMS DeRuyter and 4 DDs caught 1 AP and 2 AKs off an island base near Koepang. Now in the real war a CL and 4 DDs would easliy massacre 3 merchant ships, as was seen over and over again during the fall of Singapore and the NEI as well as many other places where surface combatants found small numbers of merchant ships. But the model does not like you ship to shoot at a ship that is not like you. Merchants are not like DDs and CLs so only the AP fired. The Allied ships did not fire much either because they don't like to shoot at merchant ships. The result was the AP was hit by 24 shells and a torpedo and sunk, and the other 2 ships got away. This is not the exception in WitP it is the rule, for the reasons that I have explained over the course of these posts.
So what should we make of all this. First of all your BBs should be put into very small TFs. Even if they run into a big enemy BB TF they have an excellent change of crippling or sinking one or more enemy BBs and they will ALWAYS do disproportunate damage. If they meet an enemy cruiser or destroyer TF they will do very well unless they get torpedoed because they will return fire on everything that shoot at them, weather or not they actually have the guns to do it.
It does make some sense to group cruisers and DDs since they are likely to run into like types anyway.
Grouping BBs in small TFs in a huge advantage for the Allies because they have so many more of them. In fact if done well (keep the BBs under aircover, no unecessary risks early in the war) I suspect it will completly wreck the game because the Japanese don't really have a strong counter move. I'm not going to find out, because I am not going to waste any more time on a game which I find too flawed and frustrating, but some one reading this should try it.
Conversly the Allies should not agree to a house rule regarding the size of BB TFs because that makes the BBs much weaker and less effective than they were historically.
Sorry to post such negative conclusions, and maybe I am wrong about the end effect on the game, but I am certain that I have the model and its effects figured out, those who disagree are welcome to run historically correct TFs up against the gamey, bastard, A-historical TFs I suggest, but don't complain when all your ships get sunk, because that is what is going to happen.
Anyone going to GDC next week? send a message, maybe we can meet up for a beer.
I'm still blown away by all the ooohs and aaaahs, like this is breaking news or something.[8|]
Yammas from The Apo-Tiki Lounge. Future site of WITP AE benders! And then the s--t hit the fan
"Still it is both amazing and kind of pathetic that HMS Warspite closed to within 4000 yards of a 30 ship convoy and expended 1600 15". She should either have sunk more, or used a lot less ammunition"
Hi, The load out for QE class BB is 100 rounds per gun. So your estimate of ammo expended is over by 700 rounds. (edit QE BB only have 8 main guns so your ammo expended is more then 2x too high) Warspites main guns could fire 2 rounds per minute.
At Jutland she fired 259 main gun rounds.
So you shoulkd revise warspite accurracy to 536 rounds expended rather then 1600 (does that raise it to 3 times what you thought?) Overall you over estimating ammo expended by at least 1/3 since only 6 points of main gun ammo is AP (all guns consider 1/3 of their ammo points to be HE not AP)(DP guns do not have 100 percent ammo points for any type target)
Ammo stowage main guns
Queen Elizabeth, Royal Sovereign and Vanguard classes: 100 rounds
Renown, Courageous and Hood classes: 120 rounds
Marshall Soult and Erebus: 100 rounds
Iowa class 333 round per gun
Abercrombie and Roberts: 110 rounds
Not all this ammo would be of correct type for ship to ship or naval bombarment. In WITP 3 points of ammo is normally considered to be HE with 6 points as AP. So Warspite in a Naval battle would have 67 rounds AP per gun and 33 rounds HE per gun.
An Iowa class would have 222 AP rounds per gun and 111 HE rounds per gun
But what prevents a ship from expending too much ammo on a target. I mean where it continues to fire even after the target has sustained enough damage to sink but has not yet done so? Since the ships fire so fast a ship could "waste" a considerable amount of ammo.
I'm not retreating, I'm attacking in a different direction!
I cannot comment on the warship to warship tallys but I saw on the WPO forum that Japanese Merchants had manuver ratings above 50, some as high as 70. I wonder if this is how they are able to get away and or cause the warships to miss so often. If you have medium transports with more manuverability than a DD it coudl explain a few things.
"Life and Times of Old Shiny" has her getting the drop on a German DD at point blank range and doing 'over a donzen hits in two minutes" Sheffield can fire a maximum of 120 to 132 shells in 2 minutes which is also a 10% hit rate, IF she fired the maximum number of shells possible. This was at very close range, under 1000 yards, but she also had a very short time to react due to low visibility. Sheffield did much better than the German DD, which failed to fire at all.
We don't have the statistics, but a German raider managed to sink Sydney - at point blank - with inferior weapons. She didn't sink at once - but limped off burning and never was heard from again. The raider was also sunk in the same action - but some of the crew survived. At point blank range it is normal to score very well. But it is wrong to believe that average ships in average conditions will routinely score more than 10% hits even under such circumstances. This is not to say a superb ship under exceptional conditions could not sometimes achieve that - a different statement entirely. But you should not be expecting this, and you would be much more justified to cry "naval combat is broken" if you saw it regularly - than if you see lots of misses. Lots of misses ARE normal - even when you cannot explain why.
There is a submarine simulation game which got modified to the point it is "too realistic" - it is no longer easy to get a fire control solution. Players hate it - but that does not mean it is a bad simulation - it just means players like to see things go boom.
And what did the Kormoran sink the Sydney with??
60 years later no-one appears to have the answer!!
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
I cannot comment on the warship to warship tallys but I saw on the WPO forum that Japanese Merchants had manuver ratings above 50, some as high as 70. I wonder if this is how they are able to get away and or cause the warships to miss so often. If you have medium transports with more manuverability than a DD it coudl explain a few things.
TANSTAAFL!
And lo...what do we find in the Stock scenario...70 for a small AK's maneuver rating.
Tom's logic is beyond dispute. Although one can magically conjure up a situation in which a BB might not fire at all (can't find a target, target masked, damaged critically before opening fire) that a BB should fire its secondaries or wait to suck the opposing CAs into 40mm range is beyond credible.
And the whole business about "you would not fire because you might not want to be seen" is the silliest straw man objection I have ever heard. The BB is there to shoot. It's what BBs do. It's the only thing they do. If you're taking fire, it makes no sense to not return fire (unless you can't because your equipment doesn't work or your crew is dead or your boat is sunk). And it makes even less sense to worry about someone spotting the gun flashes of your 14"-16" but to pound away with 5" and smaller.
Add to reasons for ships not firing (Just finished Morison's Guadalcanal.) The TF leader giving out poor instructions, fear of firing on own ships, ships at lead or rear manouvering for position but finding themselves out of the battle.
I also avoid combat simulation, it takes up too much time and as mentioned, appears more a cartoon thant a factual recreation.
Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
Hi, Tom did a fine job but his logic is not without flaws. The primary is all his accuarcy numbers are too low because he expended 100 percent ammo (and in some cases is too high by 100 percent in this) while only 2/3 ammo can be used against ships.
size of a ship is a factor in man rating and this is furthered by speed so a man 70 ship with speed of 10 is easier to hit then a 50 man with speed of 30.
I'm not retreating, I'm attacking in a different direction!
Dorry ofr the confusion I created in the last post by saying 1600 rounds on Warspite, I do know it is 100 rounds per 15" gun.
My accuracy numbers in the earlier part of the analysis are correct, they were done in an excel spreadsheet with rounds per gun data from Navweapons. I did not give accuracy number for the Fear and Loathing battle because I did not count shell hits by type, I just gave outcomes.
Even if Mog is correct in his 2/3rd useful assumption, and he might be, it still leave the hit rate too low compared to historical
HE is appropriate against naval targets and certainly would be used - indeed preferred - against soft targets like merchant ships. Consider the battle off Samar. IJN BB's switched to HE because the AP was passing right through the CVE's without exploding.
What does need to be taken into account is that warships would be unlikely to expend all their ammo in such an attack lest they be caught defenseless by a more powerful force on the way home.
HE is appropriate against naval targets and certainly would be used - indeed preferred - against soft targets like merchant ships. Consider the battle off Samar. IJN BB's switched to HE because the AP was passing right through the CVE's without exploding.
What does need to be taken into account is that warships would be unlikely to expend all their ammo in such an attack lest they be caught defenseless by a more powerful force on the way home.
That gets to the nub of my question earlier in the thread...What does the ammunition rating of 9 for the big guns really represent?
Hi, I bet you could go back 2 years or more and find that to figure out what 1 point of ammo represent divide ammo allotment in WITP by ammo in ships loadout per gun.
example HMS Warspite carried 100 rounds per gun and a full load in WITP is 9 rounds or 11 rounds per ammo point. 3 points of ammo are reseved for HE with 6 for AP. So if your Warspite fires and you check following turn and she has 5 points left she fired 4 points 4x11=44 rounds. This is an approx since WITP does not track specific ammo (but a BB will never fire more then 3 rounds against land targets on bombardment mission) Also a BB might fire all 9 rounds in surface combat even though it is only consider to have 6 points of AP (and no I don't think it changes to HE. Gun damage is based on gun size and target. with the gun always doing the best damage against whatever target is engaged. DP guns can eat all their ammo on AA and have none for surface action or they can expend it all in surface action and have none left for AA.
But thats not important. All that is important is "how many points do you have and where can you reload it"
WITP is not a tactical game. A specific TF should be tracked operationally. Did it complete the assigned mission or not. How effective was it during that mission? Not ship by ship round expended by round expended. The model is not designed tactically.
Land combat is not a set battle where the issue is resolved in a single day. It is an attrition model where when 1 side has collected the proper force ratio (2-1) after all other factors are considered it takes over the contested hex. (the resulting status of enemy forces is decided by other factors, can they retreat? can they remain in the hex even after losing control of the hex)
The air combat model assumes that control of the air is in dispute and one side will lose the abilty to contest control at some point and withdraw. In the period where control is disputed the combat will be bloody. Operating in enemy controled space will be costly and operations not possible prior to gaining control will become feasable once it is won.
Trying to dispute control with inadequate forces is costly. Air units require frequent periods of rest and refit. Naval units require frequent periods of refit and LCU require frequesnt periods of rest and refit. Ignoring these periods is costly.
where players tend to look at results and think 1 day the model thinks in longer periods. what occurs in 1 day of combat will have an influence on the days that follow.
It is permitted to play with this tactical mindset however the results will reflect over use of any unit. There are countless examples in this forum of posts asking "why" but only addressing the event as if it was isolated in time to just that particular turn and event. Often no accurate answer can be provided because the "facts" are presented as just raw numbers with no connection to the operation they are part of
"my 24 fighters were clobbered by his 16" "My ships got their butts kicked" "my landunits lost a battle"
I'm not retreating, I'm attacking in a different direction!
