System damage and repair

[norsemanjs]

By now all of you have experienced the pain of minor system damage from routine operations sometimes getting as high as 15%. This is of course to be expected and negligence of routine maintenance in the demanding environment of the south pacific you should learn to live with some of this.

It is diheartening however to sit for days and weeks in port waiting for a ship which you think should have a high priority to be repaired.

I have a few thoughts and suggestions. I know some of these are likely not possible to put in a patch, needing a lot of work. But I'll throw them out there for discussion. Other threads may have already discussed some of these as well.

1. Ability to give priority to a ship to increase the rate at which sytem damage will be repaired. This happened all the time, and in industry today we see this a lot. If you really have to have it quickly it will cost you but it can usually be done.

2. Destroyer and Sub Tenders, I had hoped they would actually be included in UV. The purpose of these ships was to set up in less developed or forward bases and take care of the minor system damage sustained from normal operations. I had imagined setting these ships up in places like Port Moresby, Lunga, Luganville to take some of the load off of the bigger ports like Noumea or Brisbane. Or supplementing the abilities of the bigger ports.

3. Repair ships, I know they are out there somewhere. I had hoped to be able to assign an important ship to one of these valuable repair vessels and let the skilled workmen aboard these vessels knock a couple of weeks off the repair of my important capital ships.


I imagine that the abilities of these vessels has been buried in the code and makes up the intrinsic repair value that we expect from our bigger ports. I, like many of you out there, would really like to decide myself how to utilize these units.

I don't mean to be critical, because this is the best wargame I have seen in very many years and I love it. My wife is ready to clobber me every time I boot up my PC, I know she wishes I hated the game.

What do you guys think? Is there any hope for a few of these repair ships and tenders. I really need to find a way to get my capital ships out of port quicker!

[mogami]

Hi, I get frustrated by this sometimes. Then I remember my time in the Navy. Often a system is down, you know how to fix it but have to wait for some little doodad part to arrive. In game terms it would be staying at same damage level for a period before begining to remove damage (but then damage would come off in larger chunks then in game) (it averages out at least floation damage gets repaired 20-25 points per day...whew saved more then one ship)

[Burch]

System damge above 25 is painfully slow to repair; if the ship is a minor one (AP, DD etc) I send it to Pearl, however, I don't send the big boys back! To me a carrier sitting at Noumea with 28 sys dmg for 3 months is better than sitting out and arriving back at Pearl in like 130 days and then being released back to SOPAC who knows when. My thinking is that if I am faced with a major push by the enemy at least I can sortie the carrier for some assistance if it is in theater.
I have also noticed (posted this in an earlier thread) that there seems to be some discrepency in repair v. port size. For instance Cairns (port size 6) seems to repair ships faster than Brisbane (port size 9)

[mogami]

Hi, The ship will always repair faster back in Japan/PH. It may not be released as soon. However as soon as you send it back a ship in Japan/PH might be released and arrive in 2 weeks. If you keep it the HQ considers it yours and sits on a replacment.
Check what ships are in Japan/PH and if a replacment is there consider sending the damaged ship back.

[Paul Vebber]

SUb and destroyer tenders shuttling about abstractly is what gives minor ports their repar capacity, torpedo loading ability etc.

AFAIK they will be included explicitly in WITP.

I for one am glad its one thing the "maintainence weinies" behind the scenes handle...though it can be frustrating when delays occur!

Being able to prioritize repairs is a good idea though!

[Burch]

Originally posted by Mogami
Hi, The ship will always repair faster back in Japan/PH. It may not be released as soon. However as soon as you send it back a ship in Japan/PH might be released and arrive in 2 weeks. If you keep it the HQ considers it yours and sits on a replacment.
Check what ships are in Japan/PH and if a replacment is there consider sending the damaged ship back.

Mogami,
I never considered this. Thanks for making that point:D However, I would assume (you know what happens when we do that) that this only applies to ships in PH/Japan and not those that have yet to arrive there. I mean it doesn't speed arrival of replacements to PH/Japan as well does it?

[kaleun]

AFAIK?
K

[elmo3]

Originally posted by kaleun

AFAIK?
K

As Far As I Know

[zed]

With the Japanese, I dont know how much can be fixed at Rabaul or Kavieng as opposed to sending them to TRUK. Is there any way to tell. Can CVs replenish even at Kavieng/Rabaul?

[Spooky]

Originally posted by zed
With the Japanese, I dont know how much can be fixed at Rabaul or Kavieng as opposed to sending them to TRUK. Is there any way to tell. Can CVs replenish even at Kavieng/Rabaul?

Since the Rabaul and Truk port size are quite similar (usually 8 or 9 after a few weeks) - It is not necessary to send back a damaged ship to Truk ... unless you want to send it back to Japan for repair.

However, Truk got 2 advantages over Rabaul :
- You can send back the ship to Japan
- The US will probably not bomb Truk

Spooky

[Paul Vebber]

I've asked Joel about some of this, and he advised that at 'on map' ports, repair is by "die roll" that can often go awry. If you send ships back 'off map' then they are repiared according to a formula that predicts repair time.

So trying to micromanage on map repair efforts can be for nought if you have 'bad luck' in teh supply chain getting you what you need in forward areas.

[norsemanjs]

So, I've had bad luck with the old roll of the die. Nothing new there.

I also had noticed that I was getting pretty decent repair rates out of Cairns. But that was also luck.

Some interesting ideas about when to send ships back to Pear/Japan. Is there any indication about when a ship sent back to Pearl/Japan will get repaired and upgraded? This type of indicator would certainly push me over the edge on sending ships out of theater if I new that I would get them back (someday) with improved armament.

Glad to hear the tenders will make an appearance in WITP!

[von Murrin]

I use the same guidelines as Mogami. If damaged and you don't need it send it back. If you need it, see if you can get something comparable from Pearl/Tokyo. If so, send it back.

FWIW, ship commitment makes a big difference here. IJN commitment is decent to begin with, goes up in late '42, and nose dives in '43. Allied commitment steadily increases through Oct '42, stays rather even through Mar '43, and goes up again shortly after that. Basically, if you have a lot of ships, don't expect to get many, if any, back.

It may also be class dependent. For example, if I lose a US sub and I have as many as it seems I'm allowed, it seems that Pearl has no problems dispatching a new one with the next reenforcement group. I've seen this work with AP's and AK's, too.