Reluctant Admiral Feedback

[John 3rd]

Thank you Sir. I read those threads referenced and then went to old library. The totals seem pretty much right. Will continue working and think on it some more.

[gajdacs zsolt]

John,

Earlier you were curious about the effectiveness of the A6M4. 'Thanks' to today's turn I have some hard data for you: (image attached)

3rd Ku S-1 with 45 A6M4 sweeped (at 20.000 feet) Rangoon from a distance of 4 hexes. Average exp of the group is 64.



According to recon data his groups (I'm guessing it was three groups) have no planes left. This was the first sweep since the planes appeared in Rangoon about two turns ago.

One more thing: We are playing two day turns. Both turns saw combat over Rangoon.

I'd say the A6M4 is pretty effective...

EDIT: Tracker states losses at: 21 p-40b (19AA), 12 hurri IIc(9AA), 9 hurri IIb(5AA)

[darbycmcd]

GACK!!!!!! That hurts. Are we still using the overfast Zero's? I mean I get it that your pilots are good, but come on..... these were not novice pilots.

[gajdacs zsolt]

I don't know, probably yes.

What is the consensus on A6M speed now?

ORIGINAL: darbymcd

GACK!!!!!! That hurts. Are we still using the overfast Zero's? I mean I get it that your pilots are good, but come on..... these were not novice pilots.

[darbycmcd]

Well, I think alone would not account for the difference in losses anyway. 6:1 is probably just very bad rolls for me I guess. It is.... difficult to explain that over my airbase with radar, decent pilots, etc I would get that bad an exchange ratio, but c'est le guerre.

[dwg]

ORIGINAL: Terminus
Well, Atlantis was sunk at the end of November 1941, so there seems little point. If you want Thor, then she entered the Indian Ocean in May of 1942, which means that the Jap player will also have to pay for her.

If you must have a second raider, then the Michel is the one you want.

If the cost to Japan for a mid-game appearance is the point of concern, then would this be a workable solution: put the German raiders into the Japanese OOB at the start and at somewhere like Truk, but in an unarmed, even immobile condition, and then have a refit that arms and mobilises them at the time of their actual appearance in the IO.

[FatR]

OK, sorry for disappearing. I'm back. Might need a day or two to read through the posts and formulate responses.

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
Let us actually open this up. I would make the following air group proposal for the KB:

Starting with the easiest thing... I would have increased the number of TBs for Hiryu/Soryu to 24 at the expense of fighters. Otherwise, I see nothing wrong with your numbers.

If you want to change airgroups to these numbers from the start, though, please test how the PH strike (with a historical first turn, particularly) will work after that, before putting this change in a release version. Otherwise, just make airgroups resize to these numbers on 1/42, and make this their last resize.

Well, and don't forget to remove mandatory resizes for USN carriers as well (or leave only one, on 1/42, depending on what you do with IJN ones), for the sake of fairness.

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: bklooste

Are the BCs and accelerating CVs a trap ?

That is to say the HI cost is so high it may damage the fuel stocks / long term capability to wage war ?

A hard question to answer. I can only say, that my war economy is fuel-deficient. I'm down to 4.65m tons of oil/fuel despite having nearly the entire oil wealth of DEI in working condition. However, I'm engaging in very fuel-expensive transpacific fleet operations for most of the game... I hope to eventually reduce fuel consumption by curbing such operations. However, if I'm ever to hit 4m threshold, I will be forced to shut down some heavy industry. As the Empire has surplus of roughly 40k HI points per month, and can free more HI by reducing the armament program (with almost 80k in the pool, I'm keeping producing guns mostly because I want to have a big reserve for the late-war Army expansion and rebuilding of destroyed units), this is theoretically tolerable. But I still would much prefer to solve the situation through reducing excessive fleet movements, than though resorting to this.

Of course, in 1943 the pilot training expenses will grow. It remains to be seen by how much. I hope this will not immediately drive me into negative HI balance when combined with the above-mentioned fuel-saving HI shutdown. I would like to have 900k of HI points or so saved for the dark times past the Soviet activation (or 6 months of running an aircraft production program about three times its current size, combined with vehicles/weapons production at the current level) and so far I have about 350k.

On the other hand, with acceleration of Unryus, a Japanese player can simply shut down most of his shipyards by the end of 1943, because there will be very few big ships left to build.

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

Stanislav, Michael, and BK: I am going to go through the Mod and make the changes we have agreed on. Do any of you have comments pertaining to my responses to Stanislav (Post 639/640) or the Air Group Composition detailed above?

Hope to work on this tomorrow (Saturday).

1)Actually changing lifting capacity for merchants would be a piece of cake, technically. There aren't that many types of them. I'm afraid of messing with this aspect because it impacts so many of everything, though. Primarily fuel expenditures for carrying stuff. I was more noting it than asking for a change.

2)Changing the number of engineers on all TOEs would be one hell of a work, though. I'm still for cutting it in half. I might help with actually doing that, if you want.

3)About airgroups, I already commented.

4)Do you agree with me on naval issues discusses above? I.e., a)Changes to Type 2 DCs/E-class ships in DaBabes style, b)Removal of extra CLs/CLAAs from the queue, c)CLAA conversion option for Nagara-class cruisers (I agree that it might become available earlier due to availability of Aganos, but probably not before 6-8/42, when the perspective of the long and air-dominated war become obvious), and maybe others (I can take a good look at said others to see which ones might be suited for it).
That said, I have a couple more ideas, but let's first make things clear about these ones.

P.S.: I still have a lot to say about the air aspect of the game... Just don't have the time to run more necessary tests (I'm afraid that testing against the absolute best Allied planes might have skewed the picture somewhat, and I simply need more data) and put it all together.

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: darbymcd

GACK!!!!!! That hurts. Are we still using the overfast Zero's? I mean I get it that your pilots are good, but come on..... these were not novice pilots.

Extra speed did not help Japanese much in Enhanced BB mod which I played as Allies.

I'd say, the biggest factor against Allies in the combat above was using one of their worst second-generation planes (P-40B, the oldest available Warhawk model) as the main part of their CAP.

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: dwg

ORIGINAL: Terminus
Well, Atlantis was sunk at the end of November 1941, so there seems little point. If you want Thor, then she entered the Indian Ocean in May of 1942, which means that the Jap player will also have to pay for her.

If you must have a second raider, then the Michel is the one you want.

If the cost to Japan for a mid-game appearance is the point of concern, then would this be a workable solution: put the German raiders into the Japanese OOB at the start and at somewhere like Truk, but in an unarmed, even immobile condition, and then have a refit that arms and mobilises them at the time of their actual appearance in the IO.

dwg--I would love to find a way to bring in the German element for the historical accuracy of it, however, I now understand the developer's issues in doing this.

Your thought--concerning the raiders and SS starting massively damaged in port is creative and I will not dismiss it out-of-hand. BK, Michael, Stanislav--thoughts on this outside-of-the box idea?

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: FatR

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
Let us actually open this up. I would make the following air group proposal for the KB:

Starting with the easiest thing... I would have increased the number of TBs for Hiryu/Soryu to 24 at the expense of fighters. Otherwise, I see nothing wrong with your numbers.

If you want to change airgroups to these numbers from the start, though, please test how the PH strike (with a historical first turn, particularly) will work after that, before putting this change in a release version. Otherwise, just make airgroups resize to these numbers on 1/42, and make this their last resize.

Well, and don't forget to remove mandatory resizes for USN carriers as well (or leave only one, on 1/42, depending on what you do with IJN ones), for the sake of fairness.

I had wondered what had happened to you Stanislav. Figured that life had had the audacity to get in the way!

On this topic:
1. Agree with thinking here. I think the Japanese start with different numbers for Air Group Composition (Tested a few times to see results) and then allow ONE resize that the player may choose.

2. To be fair the American player should be given one re-size as well. This would seem to make good since to me. Although an American evolution of Air Group changes (like historically) could be allowed. What do Allied players feel about this?

[John 3rd]

Responses:

1)Actually changing lifting capacity for merchants would be a piece of cake, technically. There aren't that many types of them. I'm afraid of messing with this aspect because it impacts so many of everything, though. Primarily fuel expenditures for carrying stuff. I was more noting it than asking for a change.

If you could explain this a bit more to me (so I am clear on the idea), I think it might be a good idea. Am just a bit murky as to the specifics. Could you provide several examples when you get the chance?

2)Changing the number of engineers on all TOEs would be one hell of a work, though. I'm still for cutting it in half. I might help with actually doing that, if you want.

IF we really wanted to do this then we certainly could. I've got a solid feel on the Japanese side and could probably do it in the course of an afternoon. It is the Allied side that would terrify me! Sooooooo many units....

Stanislav--If you would like to take-on this nightmare, we could do it. The key point is what would we limit this work to? Engineering units? Base Forces? Engineers within Infantry units? Engineers within HQ Units? Do we slash them AND vehicles in half?

4)Do you agree with me on naval issues discusses above? I.e., a)Changes to Type 2 DCs/E-class ships in DaBabes style, b)Removal of extra CLs/CLAAs from the queue, c)CLAA conversion option for Nagara-class cruisers (I agree that it might become available earlier due to availability of Aganos, but probably not before 6-8/42, when the perspective of the long and air-dominated war become obvious), and maybe others (I can take a good look at said others to see which ones might be suited for it).


a. What would be the exact changes on a 'DaBabes-style' DCs/E-Class Ships?

b. Agree that we build remaining Agano's (through Oyodo/Niyodo) and nothing more. I'll pull the Agano-Kai CLs I had added for 3.0. NO new CLs after 1943.

c. Starting 6/42 the old CLs are pulled out of line to convert over to CLAA. This would be an extensive conversion pulling them out for quite some time. We do it by ship class with oldest going first. I'll go through and formally create a proposal for this soon.

How about that?

[DuckofTindalos]

I've always been a big proponent of old CLs being converted to CLAAs, but here's an interesting thought which originated in the pre-war Royal Navy when they converted their old C-class ships: some officers felt that the conversion made the cruisers vulnerable in close range surface combat with other cruisers and destroyers, because it (by necessity) stripped out torpedoes and such, in favour of relatively small-calibre AA weapons.

It wasn't until the Dido class that the RN felt they had a good class of this type.

[John 3rd]

Those Dido's were good ships.

If the old Japanese CLs can be made USEFUL by conversion...why not?!! Will have proposals for the classes later on today or tomorrow.

[DuckofTindalos]

Well, the big "why not" is "takes up yard time and resources". I say build more Akizukis.

At least tell me you're dropping the torpedo cruiser concept.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
2)Changing the number of engineers on all TOEs would be one hell of a work, though. I'm still for cutting it in half. I might help with actually doing that, if you want.

We cut them drastically in DaBabes, but are finding they need to be cut even more. All things considered, and with all due respect, we cut them by 50% but think it's probably better to cut them down to 10% of the original values, with due consideration given to some of the 'special' capabilities. Am willing to work with John on this.

a. What would be the exact changes on a 'DaBabes-style' DCs/E-Class Ships?

Two parts to that: "Num" of weapons (chance to hit) and "Depth" of weapons (chance to kill, .. if ..). The way the algorithm works is, the more the "devices", the more die rolls you get. Any good mathemetician can see what will result. Because the "chance" is a power law, it made sense to adaptively reduce the number of launchers in DaBabes in accord with a power law. This is exactly what I did and am willing to give John the whole magilla as to results and break points.

Kills are a bit different, and depend much on the diving depth of a sub, and it's ability to dive deep. DaBabes has adjusted the 'depth' parameter of various DCs and also various subs to try and achieve a realistic kill rate. One again, I would be pleased to give John the benefit of all I have learned, in this regard.

Note, I have no intention of exposing the algorithm. I can explain its uses and some of its imperitives, but that's it, so don't even ask.

[John 3rd]

We'll keep Kitakami and Oi but that is it for TT Cruisers...

Got to placate the Gun-Club somehow! [:D]

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
2)Changing the number of engineers on all TOEs would be one hell of a work, though. I'm still for cutting it in half. I might help with actually doing that, if you want.

We cut them drastically in DaBabes, but are finding they need to be cut even more. All things considered, and with all due respect, we cut them by 50% but think it's probably better to cut them down to 10% of the original values, with due consideration given to some of the 'special' capabilities. Am willing to work with John on this.

a. What would be the exact changes on a 'DaBabes-style' DCs/E-Class Ships?

Two parts to that: "Num" of weapons (chance to hit) and "Depth" of weapons (chance to kill, .. if ..). The way the algorithm works is, the more the "devices", the more die rolls you get. Any good mathemetician can see what will result. Because the "chance" is a power law, it made sense to adaptively reduce the number of launchers in DaBabes in accord with a power law. This is exactly what I did and am willing to give John the whole magilla as to results and break points.

Kills are a bit different, and depend much on the diving depth of a sub, and it's ability to dive deep. DaBabes has adjusted the 'depth' parameter of various DCs and also various subs to try and achieve a realistic kill rate. One again, I would be pleased to give John the benefit of all I have learned, in this regard.

Note, I have no intention of exposing the algorithm. I can explain its uses and some of its imperitives, but that's it, so don't even ask.

John--Would it be easier if I sent you the RA Files?

I know that Juan did all his Modifications by me simply sending it to him.