Accuracy of Combat Reports (FOW?)

[xj900uk]

FoW on your own side was quite common in WWII.  Lots of people were reported as killed in action, dead, buried and funerals held only to turn up when hostilities ceased in 1945...
 
I had a distant great uncle who was reported killed when Singapore fell in February 1942.  His wife re-married in 1944 and lo and behold guess who should walk through the family door on Christmas Eve 1945, completely immaciated and suffering from several diseases after workign for a couple of years on the Death Railway.?
Incidentally, they weren't very pleased to see him and threw him out.  As my great uncle had been declared legally dead he needed a court order to get this over-turned & access to the family funds/fortune/family house - he failed and ended up on the streets with nothing (before the war he'd been quite high-placed in a well-known oil company).
Fortunately for all concerned his experiences working on behalf of the Emperor of Nippon had left him permanetnly weakened and he died in a hostel for the down&outs from pneumonia in 1948.
 
On a more slightly amusing note,  the Ark Royal was reported sink several times by German propaganda before a sub finally got her in 1941.  More to the point on a couple of occassions the BBC reported it sunk as well...
 
Family history over - proof of the point is that Fog of War affects both your own reported losses/deaths/sinkings as well as that of the enemy.

[fbs]

ORIGINAL: xj900uk

FoW on your own side was quite common in WWII.  Lots of people were reported as killed in action, dead, buried and funerals held only to turn up when hostilities ceased in 1945...

I had a distant great uncle who was reported killed when Singapore fell in February 1942.  His wife re-married in 1944 and lo and behold guess who should walk through the family door on Christmas Eve 1945, completely immaciated and suffering from several diseases after workign for a couple of years on the Death Railway.?
Incidentally, they weren't very pleased to see him and threw him out.  As my great uncle had been declared legally dead he needed a court order to get this over-turned & access to the family funds/fortune/family house - he failed and ended up on the streets with nothing (before the war he'd been quite high-placed in a well-known oil company).
Fortunately for all concerned his experiences working on behalf of the Emperor of Nippon had left him permanetnly weakened and he died in a hostel for the down&outs from pneumonia in 1948.

On a more slightly amusing note,  the Ark Royal was reported sink several times by German propaganda before a sub finally got her in 1941.  More to the point on a couple of occassions the BBC reported it sunk as well...

Family history over - proof of the point is that Fog of War affects both your own reported losses/deaths/sinkings as well as that of the enemy.

Hahaha.. that's true soldiers get catch in friendly forces fog. But it is unrealistic that every single air combat report is inaccurate.

I have this mental picture:

"-- Squadron Leader Joseph, this is your boss; how are you doing?"
"-- I'm not sure, Sir; my pilots told me half the squadron was shot down yesterday, but I can't trust the dirty bastards, as they are always lying"
"-- You don't know how many aircrafts you lost yesterday?"
"-- That's right, Sir. For example, Flight Officer Barnabe told me yesterday evening that he was killed in the afternoon. I believed his report, but an hour later I found him in the Mess messing with the nurses."
"-- So the report you sent me yesterday was wrong?"
"-- No, Sir, the report is right."
"-- How come?"
"-- I shot pilot Barnabe and dumped his aircraft on the river, so now he is actually dead."
"-- Good job, Squadron Leader, keep it up!"

Cheers [:D]
fbs

[steveh11Matrix]

The real problem with FOW on your own side's losses/damage is that, while reasonable where the player represents the high-level commander, it's totally unreasonable where the player represents the ship or squadron commander. WitP has always had a schizophrenic side, and it comes out quite strongly here.

Related question: If I turn FoW OFF, is it really off? I get the strong impression that the answers "No, not really, it's just a little less obvious!" but it would be good to know.

Steve.

[Wittmann30]

Hehe...good one fbs [:D]

I have to say, my intention of starting this thread was not about pros and cons of FOW...but actually ask HOW that FOW technicaly works, which factors are relevant to get false reports, dependencies etc...maybe an official of the Dev Team could maybe give an answer.

Maybe a short question list helps:

1. What are the dependicies and factors lead to a false report? (technicaly)

2. Is it possbible that combat report also tells false ship names/types? ( simple example: combat report tells BB Ise is in a TF but in real it's not BB Ise but BB Kongo )

3. Ground combat, if the enemy captures a base, combat report reveals the attacking ground units by name. Is this correct or could be also false?

Thanks in advance

[witpqs]

I like the FOW.

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: fbs

ORIGINAL: xj900uk

FoW on your own side was quite common in WWII.  Lots of people were reported as killed in action, dead, buried and funerals held only to turn up when hostilities ceased in 1945...

I had a distant great uncle who was reported killed when Singapore fell in February 1942.  His wife re-married in 1944 and lo and behold guess who should walk through the family door on Christmas Eve 1945, completely immaciated and suffering from several diseases after workign for a couple of years on the Death Railway.?
Incidentally, they weren't very pleased to see him and threw him out.  As my great uncle had been declared legally dead he needed a court order to get this over-turned & access to the family funds/fortune/family house - he failed and ended up on the streets with nothing (before the war he'd been quite high-placed in a well-known oil company).
Fortunately for all concerned his experiences working on behalf of the Emperor of Nippon had left him permanetnly weakened and he died in a hostel for the down&outs from pneumonia in 1948.

On a more slightly amusing note,  the Ark Royal was reported sink several times by German propaganda before a sub finally got her in 1941.  More to the point on a couple of occassions the BBC reported it sunk as well...

Family history over - proof of the point is that Fog of War affects both your own reported losses/deaths/sinkings as well as that of the enemy.

Hahaha.. that's true soldiers get catch in friendly forces fog. But it is unrealistic that every single air combat report is inaccurate.

I have this mental picture:

"-- Squadron Leader Joseph, this is your boss; how are you doing?"
"-- I'm not sure, Sir; my pilots told me half the squadron was shot down yesterday, but I can't trust the dirty bastards, as they are always lying"
"-- You don't know how many aircrafts you lost yesterday?"
"-- That's right, Sir. For example, Flight Officer Barnabe told me yesterday evening that he was killed in the afternoon. I believed his report, but an hour later I found him in the Mess messing with the nurses."
"-- So the report you sent me yesterday was wrong?"
"-- No, Sir, the report is right."
"-- How come?"
"-- I shot pilot Barnabe and dumped his aircraft on the river, so now he is actually dead."
"-- Good job, Squadron Leader, keep it up!"

Cheers [:D]
fbs

No, you are not getting it, my friend.
The combat report is the one going to the highest muckity-muck..
If the squadron commander wants to know what his real losses are, he will look at his unit and see how many planes, pilots he has at end of day..

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: m10bob

The combat report is the one going to the highest muckity-muck..

Exactly! YOU are the same as the highest (albeit 'combined') muckity-muck in WWII. Instead of shuffling between an office and various conference rooms, reading and hearing reports made by subordinates in person and over the telephone, you read/see whatever information you get via the computer. You send orders to the units, remotely. You do not even get to deliver those orders yourself. That's the design of WITP/AE.

[fbs]

ORIGINAL: m10bob
No, you are not getting it, my friend.
The combat report is the one going to the highest muckity-muck..

I'm not sure of that. The current combat report seems more like the vision that the flight commander had during the actual combat. It's more like: "Oh no, we lost Jimmy, Johnny and Juniper - I saw them smoking - but in turn we shot down 6 Japs". What the game calls combat report is that actual moment: 3 probable friendly losses, 6 probable enemy losses.

Then the flight commander comes back to base and finds out that Jimmy was shot down, but Johnny and Juniper managed to come back. So now he knows for certainty that he had 1 loss against 6 probable enemy losses. This is what he writes down and sends to his superiors -- but this is not anywhere in the game.

In no way the squadron commander would report to Gen Percival that he lost 3 aircrafts when he knows he only lost 1. That's impossible.

ORIGINAL: m10bob
If the squadron commander wants to know what his real losses are, he will look at his unit and see how many planes, pilots he has at end of day..

Right, and the squadron commander has to remember how many aircrafts he had the day before. For us, that means writing down that somewhere, or reloading the last turn. That's quite a bit of manual work...

Cheers [:D]
fbs

[witpqs]

You are getting information within hours of the events. It takes hours for that information to move. So, you ARE getting the 'actual moment' type reports. When you want better info, look at the actual units to see how banged up they or at the actual ships to see the damage. That's the equivalent of later reports.

The alternative is that more complete and accurate reports for a given game-day could be delayed by two or three game-days. Then you would have to issue your orders for January 3rd without useful reports of what happened on January 2nd.

What we have is FOW reports right away, without getting fuller, more accurate reports two or three days later.

[tbridges]

I understand that the specific details on the Intelligence report are disguised in the name of FOW. Thats fine, but does that also apply to the current score? So its possible to be losing the game when you think you're winning? Or is the score accurate even though the details are not?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: tbridges

I understand that the specific details on the Intelligence report are disguised in the name of FOW. Thats fine, but does that also apply to the current score? So its possible to be losing the game when you think you're winning? Or is the score accurate even though the details are not?

I don't know.

[fbs]

ORIGINAL: witpqs
You are getting information within hours of the events. It takes hours for that information to move. So, you ARE getting the 'actual moment' type reports. When you want better info, look at the actual units to see how banged up they or at the actual ships to see the damage. That's the equivalent of later reports.

The alternative is that more complete and accurate reports for a given game-day could be delayed by two or three game-days. Then you would have to issue your orders for January 3rd without useful reports of what happened on January 2nd.

Well, I'm not going to repeat my point more. I know there are people that don't care for that, and others that enjoy the extra challenge from incomplete information, but I can't get to grips that you know exactly what is the fatigue of each one of your pilots and how many Zeroes were lost in operational accidents yesterday, but nobody in the US Air Force can tell you how many aircrafts your 18th PG/6th PS lost yesterday.

I feel that this behavior is not designed to provide realistic fow, but because both sides on PBEM see the same report, ergo the report must be fogged the same way for both sides. People can argue historical justifications for that, but it is outside my capacity to suspend misbelief that this is not due to PBEM mechanics.


Cheers [:D]
fbs

[steveh11Matrix]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

You are getting information within hours of the events. It takes hours for that information to move. So, you ARE getting the 'actual moment' type reports. When you want better info, look at the actual units to see how banged up they or at the actual ships to see the damage. That's the equivalent of later reports.

The alternative is that more complete and accurate reports for a given game-day could be delayed by two or three game-days. Then you would have to issue your orders for January 3rd without useful reports of what happened on January 2nd.

What we have is FOW reports right away, without getting fuller, more accurate reports two or three days later

I have no objection to enemy loss reports being subject to FOW, that makes perfect sense. But MY loss reports should be accurate, and for the sake of playability I'd rather not have to dig through a load of work to get it - in particular, NOT having to load a previous turn to compare it to...

WitP is wonderful, but it's an ergonomic nightmare.

Steve.

[Marty A]

You should also know which enemy ships are positivly sunk and which are think they sunk but you can not tell that either

[Wirraway_Ace]

I also really enjoy the FOW feature. I spent years on Division and Corps staffs in combat. The first report is always wrong. If you really wanted to know a unit status, you had to go down and make an unscheduled visit (which has its own hazards). In the game, this is simulated by going down to the unit detail screen and looking at its status. For air units, of course, you have to know what you started with. I don't find this very difficult. I always go to the pilot screen. As I often play the Japanese, I track the pilots in my key units very closely. Without any extensive note taking (I might use a yellow sticky now and then), I know how many pilots all my frontline fighter units had before the turn (there really are depressingly few). I then just jump down to their screen to see how many pilots I have now...I don't worry as much about the planes. Planes are like socks, use em and throw them away when they get too many holes.

The only significant difference I note between my own experience with FOW and that within the game, IRL you can learn who you can trust (a few) and who you can't, so you can focus your efforts at clearing the FOW more effectively. In WiTP AE, all your commanders are equally inconsistent with their reporting.

ORIGINAL: m10bob

I like FOW on both sides..If I am the overall commander, sitting on my keester back at Pearl, chomping on a 2 day old cigar I swiped from Bill Halsey and a report comes in, I should expect it to have some errors.
Sure, the report might have said a Gearing class DD went down, but if I'm such a lousy CO that I don't know Gearings were not in that force, maybe I need to spend more time down in the harbor, and less time in the head?

[fbs]

ORIGINAL: Wirraway_Ace
I also really enjoy the FOW feature. I spent years on Division and Corps staffs in combat. The first report is always wrong. If you really wanted to know a unit status, you had to go down and make an unscheduled visit (which has its own hazards). In the game, this is simulated by going down to the unit detail screen and looking at its status.

For my education, Wirraway_Ace, was it common for the air groups to report they lost many more aircrafts than it actually did? That's my entire point.

I'm all for fogging experience, fatigue, readiness, enemy kills and such intangibles. But it's very difficult for me to understand that squadron leaders routinely exaggerate how many aircrafts they lost -- unless that's what actually happened.


Cheers [:D]
fbs

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Wirraway_Ace

Planes are like socks, use em and throw them away when they get too many holes.

And like socks, you never do figure out what happened to some of them... [:D]

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: Marty A

You should also know which enemy ships are positivly sunk and which are think they sunk but you can not tell that either

It would not be historically accurate to know which of your own ships are sunk, right away. Two tragic examples being the Juneau and the Indianapolis.

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: tbridges

I understand that the specific details on the Intelligence report are disguised in the name of FOW. Thats fine, but does that also apply to the current score? So its possible to be losing the game when you think you're winning? Or is the score accurate even though the details are not?

I don't know.

In vanilla WITP, the computer did not give you the points for enemy ships lost for roughly a week, the time it took your sources to verify the sinking of the enemy ship.
Of course, enemy ships sunk within visual contact of your people were usually verified right then, and the points given.

[Wirraway_Ace]

ORIGINAL: fbs

ORIGINAL: Wirraway_Ace
I also really enjoy the FOW feature. I spent years on Division and Corps staffs in combat. The first report is always wrong. If you really wanted to know a unit status, you had to go down and make an unscheduled visit (which has its own hazards). In the game, this is simulated by going down to the unit detail screen and looking at its status.

For my education, Wirraway_Ace, was it common for the air groups to report they lost many more aircrafts than it actually did? That's my entire point.

I'm all for fogging experience, fatigue, readiness, enemy kills and such intangibles. But it's very difficult for me to understand that squadron leaders routinely exaggerate how many aircrafts they lost -- unless that's what actually happened.


Cheers [:D]
fbs

Was it common in my experience for commanders to over-report losses of key weapon systems? Yes and no. Certain commanders tended to under-report and others over-report. The truth would come out later when the requisitions for equipment and personnel came in (often days later). Additionally, some commanders seemed to consistently have more "errors" in their on-hand inventories of key weapon systems. Aircraft serial number AB123 was reported lost two weeks ago and requisitioned against, but was found in service...

Bottom line: I find the FOW of features in WiTP AE have a similiar feel to how I actually felt as a staff officer...