The Reluctant Admiral

[John 3rd]

Stanislav---Are you going to work through the air groups as well?  Looked back at the comments and am not sure as to whether or not you were will to tackle that as well.  If so, I need to add some Daitai and Chutai.  Know exactly what needs to go where so let me know.
 

[FatR]

I'm editing IJN air groups, to accomodate new planes in their starting packages and upgrade trees, but not adding or deleting anything. Perhaps I'll be able to send the draft version of the files tomorrow, so you can add new groups, art and compile the mod.

I introduced some minor changes to existing aircraft. Nell I made slightly less durable, Betty slightly more while service rating of Ki-84b is reduced to 2, bomb placement on several Japanese planes, like D4Y is changed to "Internal". On the other side of the front, I switched MVR values of Fireball and Bearcat (no, seriously, if any American WW II plane is worthy of MVR 33, it's the latter). I

[John 3rd]

Don't worry about rushing anything.  Paula and I leave for Las Vegas Saturday morning so I won't have time to get a look at anything.  Will be back late Monday night and so how about we shoot for a Tuesday check-in and conference on the Mod as it stands at that point.  Should be able to check the Forum and comment but beyond that won't be able to work on anything.
 
Everyone keep up the good work and we'll see where we are in a few days.

[FatR]

One more thing. Do you want to do anything with aircraft weapons? Historically, they were a logistical and production nightmare, with IJN using MGs of four different calibres (7.7, 7.92, 13 and 13.2). Never mind, that many of the models they used throughout the war, particularly flexible defensive guns, were painfully obsolete.

This area might especially benefit from better fleet/army cooperation, because IJA was mostly ahead in machine gun development. Historically, their only joing project was Type 98/Type 1 7.92 MG (which still wasn't produced in sufficient numbers).

[bklooste]

re the new Nell Patrol plane is it armoured ?
 
Also we doing anything to the IJAAF ? I would say planes based on the Kinsei 62 eg the Ki-46-III KAI Dinah would definetly be available 6-12 months earlier , Kawasaki Ki-100 Ki-102 3- 6 months.





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[bklooste]

Another far out suggestion is to upgrade the Kinsei in the Mabel to the 1500 hp varient... Historically they went for the Kate but a lot of players run a lot of Mabels if Mabels ran on par with the Kate im sure an engine upgrade would be done.
 
 

[John 3rd]

I have no issue with streamlining the weapons if practical.  We're definately doing a bit more with Army-Navy cooperation so it could be OK but not TOO much.  How about I leave it to your best judgement.  Since this is a Naval Mod, I want the VAST majority of changes to occur there.
 
As to Army planes benefiting from engines being produced earlier what, specific, planes would have seen that benefit?  BK lists the Dinah and Ki-100 as two possibilities.  Are there others?  I really hope not because we would begin to lose sight of the Mod but it is important to look at as a reasonable possibility.
 

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: bklooste

re the new Nell Patrol plane is it armoured ?

No, it is not meant to be an attack plane. While in AE Nell and Betty have virtually identical survivability (and lack of it), this wasn't so in RL, so this is only role plauisibly left for further Nell models. That's also why I widened the durability gap between them.

ORIGINAL: bklooste
Also we doing anything to the IJAAF ? I would say planes based on the Kinsei 62 eg the Ki-46-III KAI Dinah would definetly be available 6-12 months earlier , Kawasaki Ki-100 Ki-102 3- 6 months.

Ki-100 can be accelerated easily, it could have appeared eariler even if RL, if only the Army decided to use the new engine not so late, as all components were available and the engineering problems were solved easily. In this mod, it can be easily accelerated by half a year. Also, it should be noted that by its in-game stats Ki-100 is a total dog for late 1944 and 1945, in everything but service rating. Scarcely, if at all, better than A6M5c in fact. In RL, as far as I know, Ki-100s saw very little combat with American fighters (battling evenly with Hellcats on at least one occasion, but one occasion is no ground for generalizations), but at least they performed decently (by Japanese standards) as B-29 interceptors. And nearly all easily accessible sources, starting with Francillon, give the plane high praise - allegedly it could best Ki-84 - but again, Francillon's work was proven to contain mistakes, and Internet mostly just channels it. I'll be grateful if anyone can comment on this, because I'm far from expert.

Dinah III can be accelerated somewhat, yes.

As about weapons, I'll present my proposal a bit later.

[John 3rd]

OK.  I'm good with that work for the Army planes.  Makes sense and seems A OK.
 

[DuckofTindalos]

Will the IJN be able to man these new ships effectively, or will they outstrip the training schools' ability to provide skilled crews, thus making it necessary to lower overall starting experience levels?

[John 3rd]

Terminus---Solid, Good question. 
 
Answer:  Don't know.  There is no Shinano or Taiho so that helps with CVs some.  The BCs...hmmm...perhaps we should work with a starting reduction in their experience.  How was XP arrived at for AE?
 

[bklooste]

ORIGINAL: FatR

Dinah III can be accelerated somewhat, yes.

As about weapons, I'll present my proposal a bit later.

What about the Ki102?

[bklooste]

The BC come in 44 so its no issue ( the crews can come from Shinanon , surivors of sunk ships or newly trained)  , the destroyers and cruisers in 42 would prob have some issues but rather than new ships having bad crews it is more likely the lower exp will be in older or lesser ships eg the crew of a Momi APD would be assigned a new crew and the momi gets a new crew.

[John 3rd]

Hey BK.  That might be plausible (lowering the Momi's).  I'll ask again--how is experience assigned?  What is considered normal?
 
Might be reasonable to show an experience falloff within the DDs.  Course some of that would be pending ship losses.  Figure heavy losses by 1943 with some crew surviving to man new construction.  It is an interesting conundrum.  Remember Kaigun talking about the Officer and Chief Petty Officer shortage in 1943...
 
 

[bklooste]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

Hey BK.  That might be plausible (lowering the Momi's).  I'll ask again--how is experience assigned?  What is considered normal?

Might be reasonable to show an experience falloff within the DDs.  Course some of that would be pending ship losses.  Figure heavy losses by 1943 with some crew surviving to man new construction.  It is an interesting conundrum.  Remember Kaigun talking about the Officer and Chief Petty Officer shortage in 1943...

Isnt experience just a subjective rating ( how can it be anything else) ? Personally i think allied ships get diddled with low exp early on but if you change them there DDs slaughter Japanese ones.

It seems strange to me since the Japanese DD and larger fleet was smaller by 43 , there were surviving crews and also new recruitment. I can only speculate it is due to the requirement for more Japanese Naval officers on land bases and Patrol / Auxiliary vessels.

Does anyone know how the merchant vessels ran did they have IJN crews ?

Then again they parked like 5000+ on the Yamato with tons of officers & NCOs in 45.

[John 3rd]

Concur with BK's thoughts.  Any guidance here will help.  Do we have an AE designer around who might jump in?
 

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: FatR

One more thing. Do you want to do anything with aircraft weapons? Historically, they were a logistical and production nightmare, with IJN using MGs of four different calibres (7.7, 7.92, 13 and 13.2). Never mind, that many of the models they used throughout the war, particularly flexible defensive guns, were painfully obsolete.

This area might especially benefit from better fleet/army cooperation, because IJA was mostly ahead in machine gun development. Historically, their only joing project was Type 98/Type 1 7.92 MG (which still wasn't produced in sufficient numbers).

As we discussed in the original thread, the IJA a/c cannons were much better designs using better munitions. Again, if standardized and used exclusively, they would have further benfitted from that (like the US M2 50 cal) and gotten even better. Would Isoroku have swept the inter service rivalry aside and use the best items or would he have been so steeped in tradition that even he could not go there? I think arguments, good ones, could be made either way.

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: bklooste

What about the Ki102?

Ki-102 was held back by the development hell the proposed successor to Ki-45 got into. First IJA wasn't interested in development of 2E fighters, then the brass wanted a single-seat 2E fighter, then a two-seater again. It had potential to be the best actually available 2E Japanese fighter for late war, but, as the result of all this, IJA was forced to still fly Ki-45s in defense of Home Islands. So I don't know about acceleration.

As about crew problems. Japan was so critically short on trained techical personnel, it's sometimes hard to imagine today. Hiroshi Ichimura, in his book on Ki-43 aces, mentions that radios on 64th Sentai's Oscars generally did not work because there was no one skilled in repair and maintenance of radio equipment among ground crews. As we know, the situation with maintenance of inline engines used on Ki-61 was only slighly less dire. As about the fleet, crews of the new Japanese carriers that were sunk in 1944 often get accusations of performing damage control poorly. Skilled submarine crews also were in short supply. Crews of late-war destroyers and kaibokans still often performed admirably, though (as far as conditions allowed), probably because their training was easier to streamline. So, can I totally see lower crew experience levels on extra ships, particularly on large ships.

[FatR]

As about weapon modification. First of all, I'm using "Japanese Aircraft Equipment, 1941-1945" by Robert C. Mikesh as my main reference, so if anyone has comments about the trustworthyness of this book, I'll be glad to hear them.

As the point of divergence is 1936 and the scope of it is limited, the wholesale reworking and unification of the airrcraft and armament system is not possible.

We can, however, postulate that the need for improved aircraft armament, particularly defensive armament, was realized and acted upon earlier and with greater determination than in RL.

In RL, they tried to adopt German MG 15 7.92 gun to replace obsolete Lewis derivatives in the role of flexible defensive gun as early as 1938. Nagoya Army Arsenal produced them for both IJN and IJA, but the production was very slow to gain tempo and the new cartridge probably posed many logistical difficulties, so by the time it was adopted as standard on some aircraft, rifle-caliber MGs in general became obsolete. In our alternative, the fleet air arm pours money into expanding production at Nagoya, partially to get more of these guns before the war and partially as a show of trust (necessary for better cooperation, considering that IJN and IJA almost clashed in open civil war just two years before). MG 15 is also rechambered for Army's 7.7x58 cartridge (instead of 7.92x57) to avoid introducing the new calibre (maybe that should not be technically possible, but Japanese did similar things for both of their standard HMGs, so we have at least some justification for assuming that it is). Later this gun is adopted by additional arsenals and factories. Its in-game accuracy drops slightly, as the result of the modifications, but it is available much earlier and becomes the standard defensive gun for new Navy and Army bomber models from 1942.

As the next step, the 7.7x58 cartridge is adopted as universal for Navy 7.7 aircraft machine guns (and evenutally machine guns in general), in place of .303 British. As Type 89 and Type 97 are represented by a single device entry in AE, this require no in-game changes. (As most MGs were built by naval arsenals, directly controlled by the Fleet, and military was genenerally the dominant side in its relationships with armament industry, these changes can be viably pushed through.)

Type 2 13mm MG (the license-built copy of MG 131), which also suffered from major production problems in RL, is never adopted, to, again, avoid introducing a new calibre, and because it could not be mass-produced in time. Similarly, Type 3 13.2 MG is developed but does not reach mass production, due to its late availability (historically, it became ready for combat use somewhere in second half of 1943 - way too late). Instead, fleet becomes interested in Type 1/Ho-103 HMG (two different devices in the game, but apparently they represent the same gun), which is the earliest Japanese aicraft HMG available by far. In continuation of joint aircraft weapon projects started by the above, its development is prioritized and receives considerably more resources. It becomes the standard fixed HMG for both IJNAF and IJAAF fighters, and the flexible defensive version appears earlier as well, so it is widely installed on new planes starting from 1943. While not using a standard IJN 13.2 cartridge poses a logistical problem, they were willing to accept such in RL, by producing Type 2. And in the long-term, as 13.2 is increasingly phased out from service, this actually improves the situation. In-game, it should be noted, this represents a downgrade to planes with Type 2, but, again, we do not aim for perfect Japan here.

I'll post my thoughts on aircraft cannons later.


EDIT: I was wrong that the game does not differentiate between Type 89 and Type 97. Early-war IJN fighters just use the former, for some reason.

[bklooste]

ORIGINAL: FatR

ORIGINAL: bklooste

What about the Ki102?

Ki-102 was held back by the development hell the proposed successor to Ki-45 got into. First IJA wasn't interested in development of 2E fighters, then the brass wanted a single-seat 2E fighter, then a two-seater again. It had potential to be the best actually available 2E Japanese fighter for late war, but, as the result of all this, IJA was forced to still fly Ki-45s in defense of Home Islands. So I don't know about acceleration.

As about crew problems. Japan was so critically short on trained techical personnel, it's sometimes hard to imagine today. Hiroshi Ichimura, in his book on Ki-43 aces, mentions that radios on 64th Sentai's Oscars generally did not work because there was no one skilled in repair and maintenance of radio equipment among ground crews. As we know, the situation with maintenance of inline engines used on Ki-61 was only slighly less dire. As about the fleet, crews of the new Japanese carriers that were sunk in 1944 often get accusations of performing damage control poorly. Skilled submarine crews also were in short supply. Crews of late-war destroyers and kaibokans still often performed admirably, though (as far as conditions allowed), probably because their training was easier to streamline. So, can I totally see lower crew experience levels on extra ships, particularly on large ships.

With the Kinsei 62 being mass produced i would say there would be a stronger case for the Ki-102 esp as it was line ball choice.

re training - all nations had those issues except for the pre war cadre. In the US most recruits came from farms , in Russia they were peasents etc. Still with regard to crews wouldnt the large and better ships get the good crews and the Navy personell on bases and Merchant ships get the less suitable candidates.