CD fire issues

[Dili]

Anyone tried to put the BB's floatplanes doing recon over the the invasion hex?

[Nomad]

ORIGINAL: Dili

Anyone tried to put the BB's floatplanes doing recon over the the invasion hex?

Isn't that what they are for? BB and CA float planes were for gunnery spotting, not intended for ASW work

[Misconduct]

ORIGINAL: Dili

Anyone tried to put the BB's floatplanes doing recon over the the invasion hex?

Here are some ways I use my battleships, if I am going to bombard, I have 40% ASW, 20% rest and the other 40% are used to recon the target at 2,000 feet same Alt I use my ASW.

Battleships on attack I use 50% Naval Search, 20% rest and 30% for ASW

Cruisers are pretty much same way, if I want a beefed up ASW group I will put 2 light cruisers, and 6-8 destroyers in a group and have them at 70% ASW, 20% rest and 10% for Recon work if I am near islands like Munda etc.

[John Lansford]

Mike, I'd agree with you if my BB's had been approaching Mili blind, but I've had recon over the island for a month or so, as well as DB and LB attacks for the same period of time.  Unless they're heavily concealed, my recon planes should have identified at least a majority of those guns, especially since Mili is designated as a "fortress".

[seydlitz_slith]

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

Since the report posted by the OP indicates that the sunken BB's formed part of the invasion TF itself, rather than a bombardment group, is there any reason to suppose that they were moving at all when shot at by the CD guns? I have in mind that when a SCTF attacks an unloading amphibious TF one sees statements in combat reports along the lines of "Japanese/Allied ships attempt to get under way". So when an amphibious invasion TF arrives at its destination, do all its ships immediately drop anchor, including any defending warships it contains? If so, what juicy, stationary targets they would make!

I honestly think that the routine is running as if the ships are stationary at anchor. That is most likely one of the major issues with the routine.

[bklooste]

They should be built into the accuracy of the guns

ORIGINAL: Nomad

ORIGINAL: Dili

Anyone tried to put the BB's floatplanes doing recon over the the invasion hex?

Isn't that what they are for? BB and CA float planes were for gunnery spotting, not intended for ASW work

[seydlitz_slith]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1



CD certainly isn't perfect in the game, but there is an element of reality in your result. The defending guns have a range of at least 11 miles, and you are there to "silence" them. To do that you have to "spot" them and "fix" their location. Good luck doing that from over 12 miles away vs. guns camouflagued on a low lying island.

I would assume that the spotter aircraft carried by the battleships and cruisers would perform this task. They would orbit the gun locations and locate the guns when the fired then walk the shells from the ships onto the target. So I wouldn't expect all the spotting to be done from the pagoda masts 12 miles out.

[bklooste]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

ORIGINAL: bklooste

Right! But if the attacking ship is to have ANY chance of hitting it's own targets, it can't be out there maneuvering like a sports car doing "doughnuts" in the parking lot. It has to give it's own plotting team some consistancy of course and speed for them to do their jobs.

The truth, re the game, is that there is one CD routine that must work for PH as well as Mili, and those two situations are as unlike each other as assaulting with a Marine Division and an Indian Army artillery unit. (For once we are in agreement. One of the game's most regrettable failings is the failure to differentiate between real Coast Defense Installations and just guns mounted on the coast.)

Sorry a ship will always maneuver to the detriment of a firing solution. Thats what most of the FC in battle ships was about and why they were far superior in WWII then WWI . Being able to maneuver , quickly determine a solution despite roll etc. There are a large number of cases in ship to ship fights where they zig zag , then quickly turn , fire ( and bring most turrets into play) and continue evading rinse and repeat .

I don't suppose you would care to cite some of the "large number of cases in a ship to ship fight" you mention? Bismarck certainly didn't in the Denmark Strait, nor Warspite at Matapan, and neither Oldendorf or his Japanese opponent at Suriago Strait. What you do see in ship to ship actions is some mild course changes of a few degrees to chase salvos.

More radical maneuver is pretty much limited to night engagements and attempts to disengage. Even then, if you look as "Second Guadalcanal", the only radical turns involved were made to avoid torpedoes..., not during the gunfire exchange. Your "spin on a dime and quick draw with a BB" couldn't possibly work until the refinement of millimeter band fire control radars after WW II.

Chasing salvos is not done in battle lines though . I see it in a number of reports i read, they turn 20-30 degrees fire and turn back though its more common between a superior and an inferior unit evading and if CDs are this nasty to put a ship at risk you WOULD evade . Though common (esp with CAs) these are not high profile like the Bismark etc .

[Klahn]

ORIGINAL: bklooste

The code should be changed that cant you do more than 60 fire or 40 sys without penetrating period this would represent most of the super structure lost.

That's going a little bit too far. Ships could certainly be, and were sunk by non-penetrating fire. Some ships were sunk or severely damaged by weapons that missed. CA Suzuki was sunk without being hit when a near miss bomb set off an explosion of her own weapons. PoW was basically lost to a single torpedo that didn't penetrate her armor. It was struck by quite a few bombs and torpedoes, but the one that sank her actually struck her portside propeller shaft outside of the hull.

I do agree that there is something wrong with CD fire. I'm just want to point out that freaky things can happen to individual ships in combat. It is perfectly reasonable for any of the ships engaging the Soviet CD guns, including the battleships, to have been sunk by them. The problem is that it's unreasonable for them all to have been sunk or seriously damaged without even making an effort to withdraw.

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: seydlitz
I would assume that the spotter aircraft carried by the battleships and cruisers would perform this task. They would orbit the gun locations and locate the guns when the fired then walk the shells from the ships onto the target. So I wouldn't expect all the spotting to be done from the pagoda masts 12 miles out.

You would assume a great deal. The Japanese had been flying over Wake for several days before they tried to land, but didn't know where the guns were. The Americans had been attacking Tarawa for a week before they landed, and didn't know where the guns were. What makes you think the guys in the floatplanes would do any better unless the camo was pulled off and the guns began to fire? There job was to "walk the fire" onto a target once it was revealed. But the guns would only be revealed when they fired.

[seydlitz_slith]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

ORIGINAL: seydlitz
I would assume that the spotter aircraft carried by the battleships and cruisers would perform this task. They would orbit the gun locations and locate the guns when the fired then walk the shells from the ships onto the target. So I wouldn't expect all the spotting to be done from the pagoda masts 12 miles out.

You would assume a great deal. The Japanese had been flying over Wake for several days before they tried to land, but didn't know where the guns were. The Americans had been attacking Tarawa for a week before they landed, and didn't know where the guns were. What makes you think the guys in the floatplanes would do any better unless the camo was pulled off and the guns began to fire? There job was to "walk the fire" onto a target once it was revealed. But the guns would only be revealed when they fired.

Exactly, but the guns are not moving so when they did open fire the aircraft would be able to walk the fire in on them. The ships could withdraw back out of range of the guns. Then the ships would suppress or knock out the guns from outside their effective range.

[jhdeerslayer]

Guess I fall back on all this as I don't recall too many examples historically of supporting fleet ships getting hammered to a pulp by on shore batteries.

[Dili]

Isn't that what they are for? BB and CA float planes were for gunnery spotting, not intended for ASW work

Yep but from my experience players don't bother change them from usual naval search.


At 20km distance no one should be making much damage to each other unless with overwhelming numbers. That is why naval bombardments were disapointing in WW2 against prepared emplacements, ships had not enough rounds to make several direct hits to various guns. If land based medium guns are making too much hits at that kind of distance that should be reviewed.

[YankeeAirRat]

There was a couple of situations during D-Day were a couple of US destroyers were hit hard as they supported the landings at Point Du Hoc and Utah Beach. That was only cause their CO's took the ship's into point blank range so that their guns could provide penetrating fire against the artillery sites to support the Army on the ground. In turn they received some serious hits that required them to withdraw on the morning of D+1 back to ports on the English coast as the temporary repairs started to fail. I don't remember off the top of my head what those ships where named. The only other thing that I can think off from the top of my head where shore battery fire destroyed the fleet that tried to penetrate a chock point was the Dardanelles campaign during World War 1. Combination of Krupps guns and minefields cause the loss of three ships and heavy damage to three others. All of them in the Battleship and battle cruiser size. Since then no one in thier right mind has considered going in to an opposed chockpoint with ships since then. If you even look at most of the landings in the Pacific, they were against what was supposed to be "light" islands that didn't have dedicated coastal defense artillery as most of the leading officers understood them to be. Even when the 3rd and 5th fleet along with TF57 sent their battle lines to bombard the Japanese home lands they went after those targets around Tokyo Bay and Kobe which didn't have dedicate forts for coastal defense or those forts had already been "suppressed" by carrier based air power. The next most modern Naval Gunfire support which drew return fire is when the USS Des Monies, USS Newport News, and some destroyers of the Allen Sherman and Hull class formed a gun line to open up holes in North Vietnamese air defenses as part of the Linebacker raids. In turn the NVA coastal defense fired one Surface to Surface missile, sent out a pair of torpedo boats and fired from guns ranging at 180mm down to 76mm sending around 1000 rounds back at the ships. Again if my faulty memory serves me right the Newport News was struck by a 155mm round as they steamed in a couple of lines between Vinh and Haiphong. The round was non-penetrating that went through the superstructure. However again the NVA's coastal defense batteries were towed artillery that was sited in to provide coastal defense and thier fire control was provided by radar sites.

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: seydlitz

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

You would assume a great deal. The Japanese had been flying over Wake for several days before they tried to land, but didn't know where the guns were. The Americans had been attacking Tarawa for a week before they landed, and didn't know where the guns were. What makes you think the guys in the floatplanes would do any better unless the camo was pulled off and the guns began to fire? There job was to "walk the fire" onto a target once it was revealed. But the guns would only be revealed when they fired.

Exactly, but the guns are not moving so when they did open fire the aircraft would be able to walk the fire in on them. The ships could withdraw back out of range of the guns. Then the ships would suppress or knock out the guns from outside their effective range.

That's certainly the theory..., but to do that you first have to get the guns to fire. Which means providing them with an irrisistable target. So some ships are going to have to get close enough to be that target, and they are going to have to be important or dangerous enough to draw that fire. For them, life is going to be "interesting" in the extreme.

And true coastal fortresses are not that easy to destroy. Those at Manila Bay, for instance, while lacking any overhead cover at all, were still functioning quite well months after the Japanese achieved total air superiority over the Philippines.

[bklooste]

All these issues are covered by Critical hits ( The Suzuki was probably a faulty detonator POW ) ...In no case historically was BB Machine gunned to death which is what we are seeing eg 100 * a min of 1 damage Or in the above case 80-100 hits doing 90 sys damage.

You could argue a single hit could cause a fire which can spread and i would agree with you ( fire should be small but can spread and be affected by DC) but none of these were single hits and in no case was a ship lost due to non penetrating damage unless a fire or ammo explotion ( mostly followed by a fire) was involved. In this case you can get 100 system damage ,no fire and sink.

ORIGINAL: Ryvan

ORIGINAL: bklooste

The code should be changed that cant you do more than 60 fire or 40 sys without penetrating period this would represent most of the super structure lost.

That's going a little bit too far. Ships could certainly be, and were sunk by non-penetrating fire. Some ships were sunk or severely damaged by weapons that missed. CA Suzuki was sunk without being hit when a near miss bomb set off an explosion of her own weapons. PoW was basically lost to a single torpedo that didn't penetrate her armor. It was struck by quite a few bombs and torpedoes, but the one that sank her actually struck her portside propeller shaft outside of the hull.

I do agree that there is something wrong with CD fire. I'm just want to point out that freaky things can happen to individual ships in combat. It is perfectly reasonable for any of the ships engaging the Soviet CD guns, including the battleships, to have been sunk by them. The problem is that it's unreasonable for them all to have been sunk or seriously damaged without even making an effort to withdraw.

[bklooste]

This is from Nemos AAR
 

2. The CD routine is not working as was historical but it is broken in a predictable and reliable way and thus cam be compensated for. I ran a little in-game test with three TFs, one comprising 2 BBs only, one comprising CAs, CLs and lots of DDs and another comprising BBs plus escorts.

End result. BB only TF had 1 BB trashed and only took out two enemy guns. Escorted BBs set to escorts do not bombard did poorly also and BBs rook too many hits, DD TF took very little damage ( 1 CA on fire, total of under twenty hits vs about eighty hits on the two unescorted TFs ) Nd took out twenty defending enemy guns and trashed the airfield and defending troops.

So, overall, I tried three solutions against a single island on the same day. CL TF went in first then unescorted BBs then escorted BBs. The Cl/DD TF took the least damage and destroyed the most guns. So if sending in shipping set escorts to Bo bard and load up on he fast small ships which can dodge a bit.

 
So CLs and DDs will destroy the guns and dodge/evade but BBs dont and get clobbered .

[jomni]

Will assigning a commander with low aggression to a Bombardment TF help in preserving BBs?

[Dili]

So there seems to be a problem.

[Klahn]

ORIGINAL: bklooste

All these issues are covered by Critical hits ( The Suzuki was probably a faulty detonator POW ) ...In no case historically was BB Machine gunned to death which is what we are seeing eg 100 * a min of 1 damage Or in the above case 80-100 hits doing 90 sys damage.

You could argue a single hit could cause a fire which can spread and i would agree with you ( fire should be small but can spread and be affected by DC) but none of these were single hits and in no case was a ship lost due to non penetrating damage unless a fire or ammo explotion ( mostly followed by a fire) was involved. In this case you can get 100 system damage ,no fire and sink.

PoW did not burn and none of the bombs that hit her penetrated her deck armor. She was sunk purely by her "system damage." The torpedo bent one of the port propeller shafts. The now-unbalanced spinning shaft ripped a hole through her causing her to take on 18,000 tons of water. She could not pump out the water because the spinning shaft also knocked out much of her electrical systems. There was no fire. Her ammo did not explode.

Also, where are you seeing that they are getting 100 system damage and sinking without fire? In the example you gave in the first post, it looked to me like pretty much all of your ships burned.

BB Mutsu, Shell hits 118, heavy fires, heavy damage
BB Nagato, Shell hits 133, heavy fires, heavy damage
CA Chokai, Shell hits 78, heavy fires, heavy damage
CA Takao, Shell hits 79, heavy fires, heavy damage
DD Shiranui, Shell hits 24, heavy fires, heavy damage
DD Hayashio, Shell hits 19, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAKL Kofuku Maru, Shell hits 12, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAKL Turusima Maru, Shell hits 1
xAKL Kurama Maru, Shell hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAKL Nanko Maru, Shell hits 4, on fire
PB Taiko Maru, Shell hits 10, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Saiko Maru, Shell hits 9, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Myoken Maru, Shell hits 11, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Kure Maru #5, Shell hits 7, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Keiko Maru, Shell hits 10, heavy fires, heavy damage
PB Kamitsu Maru, Shell hits 6, on fire
PB Edo Maru, Shell hits 6, heavy fires
PB Busho Maru, Shell hits 8, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Yamafuku Maru