Surface Combat in the Expansion

[esteban]

Is the deadliness of surface actions with multiple TFs on each side going to be toned down?

I ask because right now, every TF on one side in a surface action fights pretty much every TF on the other side in succession, at least until the main ships in a TF start to run out of ammo.

For example, in my current WitP PBEM game, my opponent and I had a big nightr action at Lunga involving 3 surface TFs on my side, and 2 on his. Lets call my surface forces TF1, TF2 and TF3 and my opponents TF A and TF B.

How this fight played out in terms of the game engine was like this:

TF1 fights rounds of combat with TF A and TF B
TF2 fights rounds of combat with TF A and TF B
TF3 fights rounds of combat with TF A and TF B

This made the fight extremely deadly for both sides. I think that out of +- 60 ships I had engaged I had about 15-18 undamaged ships left after the fighting. My opponent was in particularly bad shape because one of his TFs was centered on BBs, which carry less main battery ammo than cruisers and destroyers. So his BBs had to fight something like 18+ rounds of combat, while they only had main battery ammo for maybe 1/2 that many rounds.

To be more realistic, what should probably happen in situations like this would be something like

TF1 fights EITHER TF A or TF B
TF2 fights EITHER TF A or TF B
TF3 fights EITHER TF A or TF B

So what can we expect out of the expansion in situations like this?

[Monter_Trismegistos]

Every TF entering (passing some dice roll?) combat zone should fight with every opposing TF which also entered combat. As it is now.

Why ships should not fire and not being fired upon if they were in range?

[esteban]

This sets up a situation where surface combat becomes ahistorically lethal. WW2 didn't have any "Jutland-sized" surface actions like WW1 did, but at Jutland the ships at the front of the battle lines were not fighting against every enemy ship up and down the enemy line of battle. Instead they tended to fight against the ones at the front of the enemy line.

What the current game engine does is have every surface TF fight every other surface TF in the hext for at least 2-3 rounds of battle.

I can definitely see a situation where if one side has 1 surface TF in the fight, and the other side has 4 then all those 4 TFs should take a shot at the one opposing TF. But if each side has multiple TFs it doesnt make a lot of sense to me that the two TFs at the front of each sides line square off, then they "switch places" in line so that they can both fight the rear of eachothers lines.

The way WITP currently handles this is essentially the same way that it handles air combat, which is also too lethal. Basically you don't want to be in the lead squadron/task force in a big fight in WitP, because almost nobody in your group will be left at the end of the fight.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: esteban

This sets up a situation where surface combat becomes ahistorically lethal. WW2 didn't have any "Jutland-sized" surface actions like WW1 did, but at Jutland the ships at the front of the battle lines were not fighting against every enemy ship up and down the enemy line of battle. Instead they tended to fight against the ones at the front of the enemy line.

What the current game engine does is have every surface TF fight every other surface TF in the hext for at least 2-3 rounds of battle.

I can definitely see a situation where if one side has 1 surface TF in the fight, and the other side has 4 then all those 4 TFs should take a shot at the one opposing TF. But if each side has multiple TFs it doesnt make a lot of sense to me that the two TFs at the front of each sides line square off, then they "switch places" in line so that they can both fight the rear of eachothers lines.

The way WITP currently handles this is essentially the same way that it handles air combat, which is also too lethal. Basically you don't want to be in the lead squadron/task force in a big fight in WitP, because almost nobody in your group will be left at the end of the fight.

The stats on WWII naval combat were that the number of engagements was usually driven by the size of the smaller force, not by the product of the force sizes. The same was even more true for air combat. This is one of the places where the game engine goes off the rails as the relationship between the two sides becomes unbalanced.

[John Lansford]

If they are all in surface warfare TF's why shouldn't they all join in the fun?  Perhaps there should be a random chance for a SW TF to not get into a fight, though; at Savo Island there was a second Allied cruiser TF west of the transports that never saw any shooting, and of course the transports didn't either.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

If they are all in surface warfare TF's why shouldn't they all join in the fun?  Perhaps there should be a random chance for a SW TF to not get into a fight, though; at Savo Island there was a second Allied cruiser TF west of the transports that never saw any shooting, and of course the transports didn't either.

Because in surface warfare, TFs have locations and formations. In particular, some are likely to be screening other TFs or be screening component ships. So an engagement is likely to begin between the screens before the more important ships get involved--if they get involved at all. The game engine should probably treat everything in a hex as a mass of ships and then decide what's in the screen, what's supporting, and what's being protected from engagement.

[John Lansford]

I've seen that happen already; warships escorting merchant ships or carriers were the only targets and the only ones firing, and the battle ended with the carrier/merchants only getting hit a few times while the escorts got blown away.  Granted this was a single TF vs TF fight, but the combat subroutine does appear to have something like that already built into how it handles a fight.

[langley]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

I've seen that happen already; warships escorting merchant ships or carriers were the only targets and the only ones firing, and the battle ended with the carrier/merchants only getting hit a few times while the escorts got blown away.  Granted this was a single TF vs TF fight, but the combat subroutine does appear to have something like that already built into how it handles a fight.

I confrim that I have seen this a number of times as well.

MJT