PT Boats

FAdmiral · Post by **FAdmiral** » Mon Mar 25, 2002 8:51 pm

Of course, what were really have here is a "what if" type of
game. If it followed history to the letter, there would be no
use playing it because the outcome would always be close
to what we remember. It's the fog of getting away from
normal doctrine and doing things the player thinks might
benefit his position. As long as the unit platforms have
exact historical limitations, we get to see if our ideas on
second guessing the actual commanders will work better,
worse or as per actual history....

Jim Berg, Sr.

Joel Billings · Post by **Joel Billings** » Mon Mar 25, 2002 10:40 pm

The way PT boats can disrupt barges is by screening locations you expect them to move to (i.e Tassafaronga, Buna, etc.). They will then get into a surface combat with the barges and hopefully shoot up a few of them.

Dunedain · Post by **Dunedain** » Tue Mar 26, 2002 2:01 am

Joel: IIRC, some of those jap barges were extremely heavily armed.
Do the jap barges in UV have tons of weapons mounted on them?
And does the combat resolution model in UV get down to the detail of
accounting for the fire from all those various calibers of MG's and
light auto-cannons (as well as heavier guns they might have mounted)?

Joel Billings · Post by **Joel Billings** » Tue Mar 26, 2002 2:35 am

No and Yes. The game resolves all gunfire down to AA machineguns and 20mm. You'll see PT boats routinely getting multiple shell hits on Japanese DD's (of course they don't usually do much damage). Barges do have weapons, but not tons of weapons. One barge class just has a machinegun while another has a dual 25mm gun.
Along with the missing air dropped mines, this just shows that for every time a new item is added in a game, it turns out there's another level of detail that was left out.

FAdmiral · Post by **FAdmiral** » Tue Mar 26, 2002 4:56 am

Most small arms fire from the PT Boats was in reality meant
to kill sailors manning different positions on the enemy DDs.
Since the game probably doesn't model this part of ship warfare, the actual damage done to equipment would be minimal....

Jim Berg, Sr.

panda124c · Post by **panda124c** » Tue Mar 26, 2002 5:37 pm

Originally posted by FAdmiral
Most small arms fire from the PT Boats was in reality meant
to kill sailors manning different positions on the enemy DDs.
Since the game probably doesn't model this part of ship warfare, the actual damage done to equipment would be minimal....

Jim Berg, Sr.

What I was getting at is that as the war progressed the PT boats were used less and less against major warships and became more and more like gun boats for use against small craft (barges) and support for small landings. This causes a change in the weapons mix on the boat from lugging four torpedo's and a few rapid fire guns to large numbers of rapid fire guns and two torpedo's and depth charges which tossed into the water under a barge set for 50' or less (at high speed of cours) would destory very large barges. A very common occurance in the Med.

Larry Holt · Post by **Larry Holt** » Tue Mar 26, 2002 9:21 pm

I would like to add that destroyers got their name and their initial role was PT boat destroyers. This is because in the WWI era PT boats were going after capital ships. That they were not too successful in the UV time and location is more due to the wide operational area rather than any shortcomings in the possibile uses of PT boats.

Dunedain · Post by **Dunedain** » Tue Mar 26, 2002 11:04 pm

Joel: Thanks for the info. on the jap barges. Perhaps in a patch
some jap barge variants with lots of guns can be added to the mix.

Does anyone have any references showing the types and
quantities of weapons mounted on some of the more heavily armed barges?

By the way, Joel, what's the word on manuals for UV? You or
one of the other folks at Matrix said that options were being looked
into to allow UV customers who want to get a professionally printed
manual for UV from Matrix to get one. What solution have you
guys come up with?

corbulo · Post by **corbulo** » Wed Mar 27, 2002 8:54 pm

btw if i remember correctly, Kennedy's PT boat was destroyed in July 43 trying to stop Japanese from getting reinforcements to New Georgia.

Joel Billings · Post by **Joel Billings** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 1:08 am

Don't know what David finally decided on the manual. But I will support him 100% if he decides that financially it doesn't make sense to provide a printed manual. If that's the case, I will plan on printing it out.

Joel

Jason629 · Post by **Jason629** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 3:15 am

I personally have no issue with a .pdf manual that I can print off. Hell, thats what the office is for!

panda124c · Post by **panda124c** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 5:22 am

Originally posted by Larry Holt
I would like to add that destroyers got their name and their initial role was PT boat destroyers. This is because in the WWI era PT boats were going after capital ships. That they were not too successful in the UV time and location is more due to the wide operational area rather than any shortcomings in the possibile uses of PT boats.

Actually the torpedo was developed and the Torpedo boat was designed to launch them against capital ships. So to counter them the Torpedo Boat Destroyers were created with lots of rapid fire guns. Then someone had the bright idea, that Torpedo Boats were not very sea worthy and had short range and the Torpedo Boat Destroyers were plenty fast to catch capital ships, were much more sea worthy and had guns to defend themself so why not put torpedos on Torpedo Boat Destroyers. Thus was born the modern Destroyer. So the Torpedo Boats were replaced with the Destroyers. But the Patrol Boats were still very useful and by adding Torpedos they could be even more useful in coastal areas thus creating the Patrol Torpedo Boat. Incendently the British had Motor Torpedo Boats (MTB) with very light guns with torpedos and as a counter to the German E boats they had Motor Gun Boats (MGB) without torpedos but with larger guns (6 lb's). The American PT's were modified to match the situation they found themselfs in by adding more guns and larger guns, they were much more flexible. So eventually they became Gun Boats with a side line of torpedoing any capital ships they came across. Interestinly the depth charge became the major weapon in the Med being used against coastal shipping in shollow water set for shallow depth the depth charges would break the back of very large ships, transports, barges, F-Liter, etc. There is a good book, which I don't remember the name of, written by the grandson of Charles Dickens about the British MTB operation, he was an MTB commander. And one should not forget excelent book 'At Close Quarters' by Capt. Robert J. Bulkley, Jr. Sorry I'm getting long winded.

David Heath · Post by **David Heath** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 8:54 am

Hi Guys

We decided not to go with a printed manual. The costs for this size manual is just to costly for use to afford. The second problem was the size of the manual (100-130 pages) and that is to large to fit into our DVD Box. We are making two manual designs. One in full color and one in B/W for easy printing. We are also working on an providing an eBook one for PDF. We also included a page stating that photo copies and printouts maybe may at stores or print shops.

We put a lot of time into the manual and its big and the detail is in the manual. Of course the larger manual is better for the player but not good for our production cost.

David

madflava13 · Post by **madflava13** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 9:33 am

Mr. Heath,
Thank you for the quick response on the manual issue. I support your decision fully. Although its always neat to have the manual ready to go, I'll burn a little ink in my printer if it will help Matrix's bottom line. You guys are the last bastion of "user-friendly" game designers, and I've loved every game I've played from you guys. Appreciate the efforts you all have put into this and I hope to be one of the first to buy UV...

Snigbert · Post by **Snigbert** » Thu Mar 28, 2002 6:32 pm

Another plus of the PDF manual, is that you can email it to a friend and show him what the game is all about, thus prompting him to go out and buy a copy for himself when he sees how cool it is. Put the manual up for free download on the Matrix website, so interested parties could check it out. All that good free advertising.

Not sure if that is a copywrite infringement or anything, though.

corbulo · Post by **corbulo** » Fri Mar 29, 2002 4:06 pm

To get a true picture of the capabilities and limitations of PT boats, I need to watch some old episodes of McHales Navy. BTW, this also gives a picture of what warefare was like in the south pacific. If anyone is interested, they are on Nick at NIght.

Snigbert · Post by **Snigbert** » Fri Mar 29, 2002 6:21 pm

Ernest Borgnine had at least a 75 in Leadership and 80 in Inspiration

PT Boats

Manual