Ex Battleships

[el cid again]

Half tanker would do fine. The other half could enter as reinforcements at the time and place where historically the tankers returned to. You can, I think, reduce the fuel aboard the warships. You mentioned previously about modifying the endurance/cruise speeds. Generally, what form will/did this take?

I do not think you can modify the fuel on board a warship. If you can - tell me how?

You understand what I am proposing - the tankers enter as reinforcements on the date they returned to port. That way they are in effect gone during the op. THe problem is the scenario begins with the Kiddo Butai far at sea. [I like to begin in port - and sailing all that way USES fuel!]

I simply assign a ship its real fuel capacity (if fuel oil), and its real range, and its real cruising speed. I ignore the preference of the AI for 15 knots - it is 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, or whatever the ship actually used. Turns out this works just fine for manual games - my design intent. If you play AI - it will just make the crusing speed be 8 or 15 anyway. Not too horrible.

[el cid again]

As you are well aware I argue an 18kt cruise for the Japanese and a 20kt cruise for the Allied and base the endurance accordingly.

Why do that? Different ships are different. Many US ships are much slower than that - and we don't have good data for most at 20 knots. Many range figures for US ships are for TEN knots! In general, Japan NEVER did that - they deliberately went for faster cruising speed - and accepted less range as a consequence. A WWI era CL had a cruising speed of 14 for example - but our WWII era CA and CL had economical cruising speeds of 10 knots. They could cruise at 16 - but you cannot give them their "10,000 mile range" if they do. I give each ship the most logical rating available - often there is only one - and there is no uniformity of telling us all ships at 18 or 20 knots.

[el cid again]

Yoshimura, in his book "Battleship Musashi" indicates in at least once on the endurance of the Yamato and Musahi being "8600nm at 19kts".

What page?

It is possible - Yamato was designed to go about 5600 miles at 24 knots - if you slowed to 19 knots you might get something over 8000 nm. But I don't remember that datum point - and I have the book - so what page?

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Utah is already added - and properly so since she was sunk at Pearl.
NOT having her present HELPS the Japanese by causing them to have no chance to waste bombs and torpedoes. Centurion SHOULD be added since she really was in theater - and may have decieved the enemy - all you get is a chance anyway - no certainties.

The Japanese player sometimes need that help because on average, even with Utah not present they are lucky to get two battleships permanently "sunk" in the game because a level 10 port with a shipyard makes it extremely hard to "sink" (i.e. remove from the game) any warship present, especially battleships. Utah's presence is therefore superfluous and can in fact be detrimental, absorbing far more weapons then she did.

Just my opinion in the end. All are free to add whatever ships they want in their mods.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Yoshimura, in his book "Battleship Musashi" indicates in at least once on the endurance of the Yamato and Musahi being "8600nm at 19kts".

What page?

It is possible - Yamato was designed to go about 5600 miles at 24 knots - if you slowed to 19 knots you might get something over 8000 nm. But I don't remember that datum point - and I have the book - so what page?

Page 136

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

As you are well aware I argue an 18kt cruise for the Japanese and a 20kt cruise for the Allied and base the endurance accordingly.

Why do that? Different ships are different. Many US ships are much slower than that - and we don't have good data for most at 20 knots. Many range figures for US ships are for TEN knots! In general, Japan NEVER did that - they deliberately went for faster cruising speed - and accepted less range as a consequence.

Friedman is a good source for 20kts for the US, use his ships data section in the annex. As an example, he lists the Salt Lake City as having a service endurance of 7020nm@15kts and 5000nm@20kts. The "design" was 10,000nm@15kts, not 10kts. Indeed according to Friedman ths was the "design" for all the US treatly CA's. In the US Battleship volumn Friedman even gives endurance values for the older BB with clean bottoms and with fouled bottoms.

Japanese I use Jenschura, Jung, and Mickel for 18kts, as well as cross reference with Lacroix and Welles for the Japanese cruisers and other sources when I can find them. I can usually spot "designed" versus "in servcie" in the data.

When the data is not available then use an average. I kind of got tired of "not enough data" so I looked at it statistically by calculating at the average between what data is avaiable at different speeds. I did not get the sigmas, but it would be realtively easy to get as there are sufficient data. However, you should know this and it is a perfectly viable way to get at the data that is not avaiable. Is it not abosolutly precise? No, but it gets the data into the infield at least and beeter than what we have now.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

As you are well aware I argue an 18kt cruise for the Japanese and a 20kt cruise for the Allied and base the endurance accordingly.

Why do that? Different ships are different. Many US ships are much slower than that - and we don't have good data for most at 20 knots. Many range figures for US ships are for TEN knots! In general, Japan NEVER did that - they deliberately went for faster cruising speed - and accepted less range as a consequence. A WWI era CL had a cruising speed of 14 for example - but our WWII era CA and CL had economical cruising speeds of 10 knots. They could cruise at 16 - but you cannot give them their "10,000 mile range" if they do. I give each ship the most logical rating available - often there is only one - and there is no uniformity of telling us all ships at 18 or 20 knots.

This is not about "economical" ranges regardless what the game may state, but instead it is an attempt to bring realistic combat task force cruisng speeds into the game. A task force in the game will only move as fast as the slowest vessel. For convoys this is perfectly fine. For fast carrier task forces you move as fast as the Carrier, which WILL not be steaming at 10 kts. This is the standard that needs to be met in my opinion.

As a example the USS Indiana took 14 days sailing time to reach Tongatabu from the Panama Canal, a distance of roughly 5900nm, thus she averaged 17kts. The difference between 20 and 17kts is due her having to to refuel her escorting DD's a couple of times. This can be accounted for in the game by loss of op points. Theorectically if she had cruised at an economical speed for her destroyers then they would probably not have had to have been refuled under their current in game 6000nm+ endurance. But this illustrates that the BB set the spped, not the DD's. It also illustrates that the endurance for DD's are lower in reality than in what the game gives us.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Half tanker would do fine. The other half could enter as reinforcements at the time and place where historically the tankers returned to. You can, I think, reduce the fuel aboard the warships. You mentioned previously about modifying the endurance/cruise speeds. Generally, what form will/did this take?

I do not think you can modify the fuel on board a warship. If you can - tell me how?

You understand what I am proposing - the tankers enter as reinforcements on the date they returned to port. That way they are in effect gone during the op. THe problem is the scenario begins with the Kiddo Butai far at sea. [I like to begin in port - and sailing all that way USES fuel!]

I simply assign a ship its real fuel capacity (if fuel oil), and its real range, and its real cruising speed. I ignore the preference of the AI for 15 knots - it is 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, or whatever the ship actually used. Turns out this works just fine for manual games - my design intent. If you play AI - it will just make the crusing speed be 8 or 15 anyway. Not too horrible.

The fuel field in the ship section. Try givng a ship less fuel than her class template.

[el cid again]

When the data is not available then use an average. I kind of got tired of "not enough data" so I looked at it statistically by calculating at the average between what data is avaiable at different speeds. I did not get the sigmas, but it would be realtively easy to get as there are sufficient data. However, you should know this and it is a perfectly viable way to get at the data that is not avaiable. Is it not abosolutly precise? No, but it gets the data into the infield at least and beeter than what we have now.

In general, the data IS available, although it is not always consistent! Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War is fantastic - and based on archives once held by the USA (sadly most US archival documents are being destroyed, those that are not are farmed out to contractors like Bectel - on the rationale there is no funding - which may be true sometimes - but in other cases it is a way to avoid embarassing ourselves or our allies - and in yet other cases analysts suspect other motives but cannot be certain which). It does appear the cruising speeds changed over time - that is Japan used 14 knots for WWI and 18 knots for WWII era vessels. Further, merchant ships generally cruise about 3 knots below top speed - which varies vastly (and usually is much higher than given in WITP - Japan had the fastest merchant fleet in the world - and the most modern - but you cannot tell by looking at our data!). I took the quick and easy way out - using the data as presented - not attempting to estimate it for some ohter case.

[el cid again]

I do not think you can modify the fuel on board a warship. If you can - tell me how?

You understand what I am proposing - the tankers enter as reinforcements on the date they returned to port. That way they are in effect gone during the op. THe problem is the scenario begins with the Kiddo Butai far at sea. [I like to begin in port - and sailing all that way USES fuel!]

I simply assign a ship its real fuel capacity (if fuel oil), and its real range, and its real cruising speed. I ignore the preference of the AI for 15 knots - it is 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, or whatever the ship actually used. Turns out this works just fine for manual games - my design intent. If you play AI - it will just make the crusing speed be 8 or 15 anyway. Not too horrible.

The fuel field in the ship section. Try givng a ship less fuel than her class template.

OK - that kind of sort of works - at a huge penalty (you determine the penalty):

THAT SHIP will FOREVER consume TOO LITTLE FUEL when it refuels! The way it works is that the code uses the individual ship field - not the class field - and you are deliberately allowed to make them different. The code acts as if you feel that particular ship needs less fuel - for the same range! [You installed diesels - or maype a nuclear engine?] I don't do that.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

I do not think you can modify the fuel on board a warship. If you can - tell me how?

You understand what I am proposing - the tankers enter as reinforcements on the date they returned to port. That way they are in effect gone during the op. THe problem is the scenario begins with the Kiddo Butai far at sea. [I like to begin in port - and sailing all that way USES fuel!]

I simply assign a ship its real fuel capacity (if fuel oil), and its real range, and its real cruising speed. I ignore the preference of the AI for 15 knots - it is 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, or whatever the ship actually used. Turns out this works just fine for manual games - my design intent. If you play AI - it will just make the crusing speed be 8 or 15 anyway. Not too horrible.

The fuel field in the ship section. Try givng a ship less fuel than her class template.

OK - that kind of sort of works - at a huge penalty (you determine the penalty):

THAT SHIP will FOREVER consume TOO LITTLE FUEL when it refuels! The way it works is that the code uses the individual ship field - not the class field - and you are deliberately allowed to make them different. The code acts as if you feel that particular ship needs less fuel - for the same range! [You installed diesels - or maype a nuclear engine?] I don't do that.

Hmm , right after I wrote this I tested it, which I should have done first. Interesting in that some very small foresight in the design and playtesting should have caught the fact that beginning at-sea tasks forces started with full fuel loads. It probably could have been a realtively easy fix since there has to be two fields involved currently. One field to store the total capacity and one to store the current capacity.

[rtrapasso]

Hmm , right after I wrote this I tested it, which I should have done first. Interesting in that some very small foresight in the design and playtesting should have caught the fact that beginning at-sea tasks forces started with full fuel loads. It probably could have been a realtively easy fix since there has to be two fields involved currently. One field to store the total capacity and one to store the current capacity.

There should be some way to do this - after all, most of the subchasers that start in SF in the regular, non-modified game start with less than full fuel (usually the have 540 mile range rather than 1500 miles they get after refueling.) One of you mod mavens should be able to look at the numbers and find out how this is done - unless the game does something really strange with the code to get this result.

[el cid again]

There should be some way to do this - after all, most of the subchasers that start in SF in the regular, non-modified game start with less than full fuel (usually the have 540 mile range rather than 1500 miles they get after refueling.) One of you mod mavens should be able to look at the numbers and find out how this is done - unless the game does something really strange with the code to get this result.

I hope someone posts a way. Failing that, I have done two things:

I rated tankers for deadweight rather than gross tons. Gross tons are useless for oil!
Deadweight is the actual weight. A Japanese Large tanker is 15,000 deadweight (vice 17,000 as defined in WITP). I also assume that the tanker uses 20% of its fuel capacity for itself - that is there are 3000 more tons of fuel on board to give that same tanker its range - which is now much less than the 25,000 miles of WITP. It CAN go that far - around the world - but to do so it would have to eat some of its cargo! Since this is hardly normal in the theater, I give it the fuel it needs to go about half that far.

The Japanese tanker force for Pearl Harbor was divided in fact into two units - logically numbered 1 and 2. I left unit 1 alone (it has a destroyer escort) - except I added a missing ship. I put unit 2 as a reinforcement appearing 14 days after the war begins (21 Dec 41). It took 12 days to go from Etorofu to the point North of Oahu - so I allow 14 days to return to Tokyo (Yokosuka actually). By not appearing at all these ships (there are four - one was missing in WITP) are in effect used to refuel the outbound trip of the Kiddo Butai.

In general, I will try to base other TFs on ports, so fuel is not an issue. Looking for a better way - so ideas are welcome.

I picked a small tanker with only 5000 tons deadweight (although some named ships in WITP defined as "small tanker" had three times that I have not tampered with that assignment) - and it also has a much reduced range. But the "whale ship tanker" I have renamed "super" - because it is representative of a group of classes with 31,000 tons deadweight. I will check this entire group to omit any ship with lower capacity (redefining it as "large" instead). The large and super classes have a max speed of 19 knots and a cruise speed of 16 knots - both historical. There should be a class of motor tankers - but I have not added it. It would suck names out of the other classes, not add new ships. By greatly reducing the capacity of small tankers and slightly reducing the capacity of large tankers - and cutting the ranges of all tankers - I hope to have helped solve the fuel problem being too efficient. I also often increased the fuel requreirements for ships - where this is known. The super tanker range was also reduced (from 37,500 or some such to 24,000 nautical miles).

[Kereguelen]

ORIGINAL: el cid again


The Japanese tanker force for Pearl Harbor was divided in fact into two units - logically numbered 1 and 2. I left unit 1 alone (it has a destroyer escort) - except I added a missing ship. I put unit 2 as a reinforcement appearing 14 days after the war begins (21 Dec 41). It took 12 days to go from Etorofu to the point North of Oahu - so I allow 14 days to return to Tokyo (Yokosuka actually). By not appearing at all these ships (there are four - one was missing in WITP) are in effect used to refuel the outbound trip of the Kiddo Butai.

Hi,

adding Japanese ships as reinforcements results in making them part of the ship building program - Japan will have to spend merchant yard points to "finish" them (not many points for 14 days delay, but still...).

K

[el cid again]

Hi,

adding Japanese ships as reinforcements results in making them part of the ship building program - Japan will have to spend merchant yard points to "finish" them (not many points for 14 days delay, but still...).

K

This is true. It also means they cannot be caught at sea and sunk by Adm Halsey (if he is clever). I don't like that either. But putting tankers at sea with full loads - and carriers at sea with full loads - half way across the ocean - seems completely bad logistically speaking. Combine that with grossly exaggerated ranges and reduced fuel loads and KB becomes able to cruise for a month - I went to San Francicso, and back to Hawaii - and then to Japan - and STILL had a third of my fuel ! Silly.

FYI early in the war as a US player I hunt enemy tankers and merchants. They don't do well against even the worst carrier planes no matter how few I have. The pilots get experience and the enemy loses whatever was in cargo on the ships. It is not glamorous or fair - but fighting the Kiddo Butai with one or two carriers - each with 1/3 of a deckload - is not my idea of sane either.

I am open to a better idea. What can we do to suck fuel out of these ships?

Sid

[Kereguelen]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

I am open to a better idea. What can we do to suck fuel out of these ships?

Sid

Hi,

simply reduce the cargo capacity of the tankers of the Kido Butai Replenishment TF at start and give them an upgrade with higher (historical) capacity (upgrade 12/41 or 01/42, whatever you want). Thus this replenishment TF will only supply limited fuel to KB, but the ships will have their true max capacity later after the upgrade. You'll only have to create one new class, and there should be enough class slots left to do this.

K

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: Kereguelen

ORIGINAL: el cid again

I am open to a better idea. What can we do to suck fuel out of these ships?

Sid

Hi,

simply reduce the cargo capacity of the tankers of the Kido Butai Replenishment TF at start and give them an upgrade with higher (historical) capacity (upgrade 12/41 or 01/42, whatever you want). Thus this replenishment TF will only supply limited fuel to KB, but the ships will have their true max capacity later after the upgrade. You'll only have to create one new class, and there should be enough class slots left to do this.

K

I was going to mention that whatever the idea, it need to be universally applied. There is more at stake here than just the KB, as there are other taskforces at sea in the first turn.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Hmm , right after I wrote this I tested it, which I should have done first. Interesting in that some very small foresight in the design and playtesting should have caught the fact that beginning at-sea tasks forces started with full fuel loads. It probably could have been a realtively easy fix since there has to be two fields involved currently. One field to store the total capacity and one to store the current capacity.

There should be some way to do this - after all, most of the subchasers that start in SF in the regular, non-modified game start with less than full fuel (usually the have 540 mile range rather than 1500 miles they get after refueling.) One of you mod mavens should be able to look at the numbers and find out how this is done - unless the game does something really strange with the code to get this result.

Looking at the database I cannot discern a difference in class and ship entries in respect to fuel capacity. Probably yet another one of those undocumented code things. I have noticed that PT boats also arrive with less than full fuel loads.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again
On Dec 8, 1941 (US time) IJN Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto decided the historical hit and run raid was a MISTAKE. That the Kiddo Butai should have STAYED in Hawaiian waters, hunting carriers and damaged ships fleeing to the US West Coast - and cutting the line of supply for Hawaii. Once the carriers had been neutralized, and certain land facilities as well (air bases, and open to air observation major coast guns at Fort Ruger - which could prevent landing on any coast), a follow up force should have landed three divisions on Oahu. The Battle of Midway was an attempt to correct this "mistake" - just being phase one. In this sense - that the Japanese fleet commander THOUGHT they SHOULD have stayed - and also that MANY US naval officers AT THE TIME thought they SHOULD have done - it IS a reasonable option that players do so.

CID. Can you supply a source document for this statement? It seems rather odd that after months of planning and gaming Yamamoto would have suddenly had this "brainstorm" the day after the attack. And as the IJA wasn't offering 3 divisions for any Hawaiian advanture (look at what they were willing to make available for Midway with six months of victories behind them..., basically a regiment), the "landing" is just a pipedream. Reality was that while Kido Butai could have hung around a few days and beat up some additional targets, lack of fuel would have forced them home at that point. And with even fewer veteran pilots and planes. The second strike at PH had had much higher losses than the first as US AAA got up and running. Also remember that the Japanese had expected great things from their submarine forces around Oahu, and that Yamamoto and Nagumo both knew the Pearl was the base for a lot of US subs. Sticking around would give those subs a chance to even the score. Not even the US knew on December 7th how lousy their torpedoes were going to be.

Players can make use of "hindsight" to do a lot of things the original participants never seriously considered. Would be more realistic if there were some unknown variables involved. How bold would the Japanese player be if there was a chance that US subs MIGHT come out and be as effective as German U-Boats from day one? It's always easier to look back and say should of, would have, could have than to peer into the unknown.

[witpqs]

Mike, even the dismal performance of the US torpedoes was no guarantee - some of them did explode. If KB hangs around US subs just might score in spite of bad torps.