neutered PT boats post 1095/1096

[Bullwinkle58]

You are absolutely correct, and I've tried to make this point in a couple of threads. It can be incredibly dark at sea, like no darkness city-dwellers have ever seen. Folks in these threads toss off night ranges of 4000, 6000 yards and complain that surface action doesn't begin there, when you couldn't see the dang bow 200 FEET away. Getting a firing bearing for torpedo launch on a moving target when all you have is a faint glimmer of lighter black than the darker black over there . . . that's a chore. Then try to get an angle-on-the-bow and a range.

AE added moonlight as a variable used in the combat calculations. I can count on one hand the number of times it's been brought up in threads here. The devs didn't add it to be artistic. It really mattered, and so it matters in the code. How many PT boat doubters can say with assurance what the moonlight was when their PTs refused to attack?

[stuman]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: stuman

ORIGINAL: eMonticello

The devs really need to check the definitive source for PT Boat activities.

I watched that show religiously as a kid .

So, you wore a robe?

Probably my PJs [:)]

[budman999]

IMHO PT boat attacks (except those vs. barges, etc. ) should be a rare event and as in real life not to be relied on as a reliable weapons platform.

[AirGriff]

I agree with Bullwinkle. I distinctly remember from the book, "The Mosquito Fleet", that the tactic in the Solomon's was to get as close as possible to the target before opening up, and when I say close as possible I'm talking hand grenade throwing range (no kidding--this guy liked to throw hand grenades into these barges until his crew mates convinced him it wasn't a good idea, since if he got hit in the wind up...). Even when the boats had radar they would still get in that close. That was against the barges. The AKL types maybe they did the torpedo's, I can't remember, but the barges were too small and too shallow draft to use torps on. I wish I still had that book!

[bradfordkay]

I want to apologize for my first post here. I wrote "I tend to agree" without emphasizing that I wasn't wholeheartedly supporting the idea. Normally I would have said "I am in agreement here" if I was,  but I wanted to point out some misgivings with the idea.

Last night I had watched the encounter between MTB-11 and the xAK with some disbelief. My experience since the latest round of patching has been to see my PTs avoid encounters with transports but try to duel with the surface forces of the IJN.

My US and Philippine squadrons keep turning back at San Fernando and Lingayan without attacking - understandably as there were escorts for the transports at those locations. When I saw a single MTB avoid combat with a lone xAK (large, but still the least naval vessel in the fleet next to an xAKL) I was a little perplexed. This morning I saw the thread and it struck a note.

MTB-11 was the sole survivor of the Hong Kong MTBs that had fought the IJN at Jesselton and Brunei. Lt Baldwin's boat still had its torpedo in it's encounter at Miri with the xAK Lisbon Maru, but he has a very low aggression rating (39). It's wholly within reason that he would avoid another daylight combat after what he had been through... but the casual observer had only seen him pass up a chance on torpedoing a sitting duck after three days of sailing out against the Kirishima and friends. It didn't make sense!

Look, I know that there is a lot of randomness, and I tend to be on the bad side of Murphy so I know that I'll be seeing a lot of bad results in my time with AE. I certainly have had them in UV and WITP. Sometimes you just scratch your head in disbelief, wondering what went wrong this time. Most of the time you can figure it out after you delve into the situation but there are occasions where you just figure that the dice fell the wrong way. Sometimes when you get up the next morning you see a thread started by someone else who just had a similar "Huh?" experience and you just have to pitch in.

I have to admit that whenever I see what appears to be a huge change in the way that a portion of the game works I will always wonder if the change hadn't gone further than necessary. It's my nature to resist huge change... maybe it's because I trust that you had it close to right when the game was released so any changes should feel incremental.

[John Lansford]

Once the threat of surface ship engagements diminished, most PT boats ditched the torpedo tubes for much heavier gun armament to deal with barges and small patrol boats.  They'd add 40mm, 20mm, .50 caliber guns; I believe there was at least one PT captain that put a 37mm AT gun on the bow somehow.  Torpedoes were useless against barges; they'd go right under them due to their shallow draft.
 
I think I've still got my paperback copy of Mosquito Fleet.

[spence]

Once the threat of surface ship engagements diminished, most PT boats ditched the torpedo tubes for much heavier gun armament....

Would that be November 1944?

IMO PTs should attack quite regularly. They should score hits with torpedoes quite rarely; with a slight improvement in accuracy occasioned by the newer torpedoes that didn't require a launch tube later in the war. They should survive IJN warships quite well (since relatively few were destroyed by enemy surface ship action) but suffer losses due to running aground etc with a greater frequency than other warships.

[freeboy]

how do you fire a torp without a tube??????[X(]

[mdiehl]

It's nutty logic to presuppose that a merchant would lower a whale boat full of riflemen and drive off an 83 foot Elco that has it massively outranged and outgunned. It's nutty logic to imagine that a merchie with a deck gun is more of a threat, at any range, than an MTB with two to four torpedoes and multiple automatic cannon mounts; DESTROYERS were invented because CRUISERS couldn't necessarily protect themselves against torpedo boats. It's nutty logic to assume that sending a MTB on a patrol mission implies the order 'And run away upon making contact with the enemy.' That wasn't EVER the habit in the USN and I defy anyone to come up with an example of an MTB fleeing from an unescorted merchant ship without attempting to make an attack. The guys on American PT boats were chosen because they were aggressive, vastly experienced with small boats, and just a little devil may care.

From the doctrine:

1306. If circumstances do not favor or warrant an expectation of successful escape, motor torpedo boats will close to an absolute decisive torpedo firing range.

And no, the doctrine does not state the expectation that torpedo boats will operate in squadrons of four boats:

(b) Whether massed attacks will be conducted by several squadrons or individual attacks by units of a squadron.

[Mark VII]

Classic T.[&o]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Good Grief...[8|]

[jackyo123]

ORIGINAL: Dixie

I know the game is broke.  One of my ships was sunk by the AI.  And my Zero fighters are being shot down by Buffalo fighters.  You devs are all Allied fanboys! [:@]  Except in my game where I'm playing as the Allies, in that game you're Jap fan boys.

Egads people, get a grip.  A single PT boat attacking in daylight at 12,000 yards?  I wouldn't be surprised if mine didn't launch torps either.  The element of surprise has gone, the crew don't know what is hiding behind that fat cargo ship over there, it could be a destroyer for all they know.

I could have posted the nightime attacks as well - now in late december, have had *19* pt boat engagements, most at night - *without a single torp fired* or merchant ship damaged.

Not one.

5 of the attacks ended up with the PT's taking gunfire; ok, perhaps too damaged to strike. But the other 14? IIRC, 9 or 10 were nighttime engagements off of vigayan.

[jackyo123]

I was thinking the same things as you, Don..., until I saw, "Same behavior with nighttime attacks." PT's are basically "stealth weapons", and their chance of engagement should have visibility as a key component.

IF this is also occurring during night conditions, then additional "tweaking" is probably called for... Can any of the complainers provide examples of "night actions" where this is happening?

Someone who actually finished reading the post!! Thank you!

Yes, nighttime attacks yielded almost identical results (they ran away at 5000 yards instead of 9000). So did sending in a group of 5 with the highest aggression rating captain available (was something like 79).

[jackyo123]

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

It seems like defensiveness is about equal to complaints at this point.  I know people may tire of complaints - especially since some complaints are over the top, unkind, just plain wrong, or all three.  But legit complaints are the only way we're going to feret out the problems wit the game and make it even better.  So don't jump on folks who are simply giving an opinion.

I want to 2nd Canoerebel's note. A long while back, I thought dive bombers were broken. Mine couldn't hit crap. My first post was along the lines of "Dive Bombers suck", or something like that. Later, I noticed a post about level and glide bombing and thought that my sucky dive bombers were due to my bad orders. I posted a 2nd thread that was more along the lines of "my dive bombers are not working and I would like to know what settings I should be using." After that thread got some real good feedback, I realized my dive bombers were set way too high and were level bombing. Problem fixed.

The original poster to this thread probably needed to know that daylight attacks by PT's would most often result in the PT running. Done. Easy. Maybe he could have worded his thread a bit better.

Anyway, there's a lot of folks here who make some real good responses that help others. Most of those folks are the people who make and test this wonderful game.

Most of the pt boat attacks are night - the setup is this:

- 3 groups of pt boats in Manilla. Order them to go engage the enemy ak's i just reconned in vingaya (sp?) which is a few hexes away. Well within the PT's range.

All 3 groups attack at night. They all retreat from combat. But the enemy TF does 'get underway' sometimes, so the pt's, on their way back to manilla, sometimes run into them again 1 hex offshore. I should have posted one of the nighttime combat reports, but they are essentially the same, except the ranges are far less (2k to 3k yards usually).

After my first run, i replaced all captians with the highest rated aggressiveness captains that were available, with the very highest for my largest TF. All were in the 60's IIRC.

Made no difference. They still ran from combat.

I've read a lot about the PT's in the solomons and the Leyte Gulf battles. While it is true that they didnt have a decisive effect, they did at least attack with guns and torps. Most of the torps were duds (in Richard Frank's excellent 'GuadalCanal') he relates at least 2 instances where PT's fired their torps at enemy destroyers / cruisers and thought the torps scored (IIRC, one prematured, and one ran under the ship and exploded on the far side). Which is an easy mistake to make at night.

Point is, they were determined and aggressive. I've got my most aggressive commanders in them. But in the game, they just really really dont want to attack.

Last night, an enemy convoy of 1 pb and 2 ak's wandered into Manilla harbor. The pt's both evaded combat. The coastal guns did some damage, but the enemy convoy escaped - all at night.

So, the pt's not only wont engage the enemy at their landing zone, but wont even in their own harbors!

[jackyo123]

Also - I have their threat tolerance set to ABSOLUTE. Seems to make no difference to them. I would think that setting to ABSOLUTE would be something like this in their orders:
 
- 'You are ordered to engage and destroy all enemy vessels at location x,x. Press home the attack with all vigor. Do NOT, rpt do NOT consider the safety of the boat. Your priority is to SINK the enemy transports. All other considerations are secondary.'
 
If that captain came back and said he had retreated from a bunch of merchies without firing a shot .... I think he would be relieved pretty quickly. Unfortauntely, i picked the highest rated 'aggression' commanders that were available.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: freeboy

I think The frustration for many lie not in the game performance per se, but in our EXPECTATIONS, so what should we expect guys? Obviously a cl or a few dd would destroy lite pts, but should aks and aps be attacked on night riads?
I would be very interested to see some documetation for how the paper boats did in the Solomans.. thanks again for helping us out here!

Better yet, here's how they did throughout the entire war (every engagement):

At Close Quarters - PT Boats in the United States Navy
http://funsite.unc.edu/hyperwar/USN/Clo ... html#index

After you read that (it is very well written and highly interesting), you'll realize that your expectations for success should be extremely low (except as barge busters). I've beaten this death in a different thread, but all indications are that US PT Boats were lousy torpedo platforms. Two examples really exemplify the point:
1) A couple PTs took on a the Japanese light cruiser Kuma in '41, fired 8 torpedoes at a range of 500 yards, and obtained only a single hit (and that didn't explode).
2) In the '44 Surigao Strait engagement, 37 PT boats obtained two hits against targets they knew were coming and could engage in a narrow waterway. One against a ship that wasn't the target (the torpedo missed and hit something else) and the second against a destroyer that was burning and dead in the water. And even here the PT made THREE attacks. The first two torpedo runs missed the target, and success only came after the third pass.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: freeboy

how do you fire a torp without a tube??????[X(]

They were (essentially) the air-launched version and were slid/rolled off of their mounts over the side.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: jackyo123

Also - I have their threat tolerance set to ABSOLUTE. Seems to make no difference to them. I would think that setting to ABSOLUTE would be something like this in their orders:

- 'You are ordered to engage and destroy all enemy vessels at location x,x. Press home the attack with all vigor. Do NOT, rpt do NOT consider the safety of the boat. Your priority is to SINK the enemy transports. All other considerations are secondary.'

If that captain came back and said he had retreated from a bunch of merchies without firing a shot .... I think he would be relieved pretty quickly. Unfortauntely, i picked the highest rated 'aggression' commanders that were available.

Based on the following Dev comment from another thread, it appears that a different piece of code is overriding your settings.

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

We also added routines that allow PT's to evade/retreat from combat in daylight situations where high visibility gives the edge to a surface force that spots them.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

Once the threat of surface ship engagements diminished, most PT boats ditched the torpedo tubes for much heavier gun armament to deal with barges and small patrol boats.  They'd add 40mm, 20mm, .50 caliber guns; I believe there was at least one PT captain that put a 37mm AT gun on the bow somehow.  Torpedoes were useless against barges; they'd go right under them due to their shallow draft.

I think I've still got my paperback copy of Mosquito Fleet.

It's been way-long since I read any books about PT's, but I also recall that some boats removed 2 (of the 4) torpedo tubes when heavier guns were installed.

BTW, there might have been others, but it was Kennedy who added a 37mm on the bow. No removal of other weapons IIRC. Made the boat more sluggish to turn, might have contributed to getting rammed.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

It's nutty logic to imagine that a merchie with a deck gun is more of a threat, at any range, than an MTB with two to four torpedoes and multiple automatic cannon mounts;

Referring to the combat report that started this, 9 merchies and 1 PB escort versus a single MTB, initial range 12,000 yards.

It's reasonable to assume that each merchie and the PB is armed with at least 1 x 3" gun, maybe more or bigger in some cases. None of the MTB's weapons can match the range of the convoy's main weapons.

Maybe if the doctrine that MTB carried were written on some serious armor plating... well then it wouldn't have been an MTB anyway.

[mdiehl]

The torpedoes were more than a match for any merchie weapons. Moreover, the merchies chances of hitting the PT even considering that there were nine of them are, if realistically modeled, less than the chance that Dick Cheney can squeeze through the eye of a needle. A PT boat would quite likely engage such a convoy. Whether or not it's going to get effective hits seems open to debate. Of course, basing one's torpedo hit projections on war shots at warships rather than at merchies is probably a flawed analysis, since merchies by their nature are slow and sluggish, so PTs, if given shots at them, ought to score once in a while. And they ought to cause other damage (errm, SYS damage in this game) from the 20mm+ guns.

This seems like one of those issues where "It didn't happen in history" (because the right cirumstances didn't come up in the PTO) has been translated into "It couldn't happen here" (even when the setup for an effective PT boat attack is really quite favorable).

German PTs had some notable successes in the channel and near Britain, and UK PTs in the Med, and US PTs in various other actions. IIRC one PT even scored a Japanese submarine with a torp shot.

The point being, if a Japanese player is going to throw merchies into the fray without air cover or substantial surface escorts such as DDs, the expectation should be that "Resistence is in fact not futile."

Maybe if the doctrine that MTB carried were written on some serious armor plating... well then it wouldn't have been an MTB anyway.

Japanese gunnery was rather mediocre throughout the war. Japanese merchie gunnery shooting at a fast, highly maneuverable, low to the water PT could be expected to miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, repeat a thousand times, and maybe hit on the 1004th shot or whenever. The threat from merchies was LOW repeat LOW. I remind you again that PTs were determined to be a significant threat to CAPITAL SHIPS, which is why the "Torpedo Boat DESTROYER" (later, just "Destroyer") was invented.

One merchie. Ten merchies. A PT should engage and have a much greater chance of damaging or sinking one than vice versa, unless the merchies are covered by air cover or DDs.