Reluctant Admiral Feedback

[John 3rd]

[FatR]

ORIGINAL: JWE
Your results sound similar to Babes. Have statistical analysis of several hundred test runs and mean/sigma results for pre and post 1943 when working with michaelm on the code in this area. Will not post them, and would appreciate it if no one else does either, but the results are available by pm, if you wish, such that you may compare your results to ours.

All run on standard, single variable, test bed.

Yes, I would like to take a look at them very much, thanks in advance.

After rechecking what happened in various engagements, I noted that AA guns start firing on enemy ships only at about 2k, instead of the guns' normal range (although I'm not completely sure that wasn't a fluke, or that I remember some battles correctly and if that is indeed their coded behavior, I'd appreciate the confirmation). This alleviates about half of my worries about DaBabes flak (although even with this, new flak guns's stats still give a significant boost to Allies in night combat), so if John approves the results of flak modification, I think we can use DaBabes' device list as the basis for Scen 70. I looked, and device modifications I made are few, so it won't be hard to reapply them.

[John 3rd]

Lets go for it. If JWE is good I see no problem in doing this. I greatly admire the solid and professional work done by him and his team.

[John 3rd]

FatR:

I have made slight adjustments in starting locations and dispositions for Dec 7th, cleaned up some Task Forces, and fixed some order’s issues. Looks pretty good now for the beginning.

Found one thing from my game with Lew. The Saeki KU T-2-R (3-R and 4-R) are Judy Recon Units but came in with wrong type of Judy. This is now corrected. Additionally, I decided to bring in these units one at a time in Oct, Nov, and Dec instead of all in Dec. Figure that will allow for a gradual use of the plane on Japanese CVs or however the player wants to use them.

Game files sent to you so you can apply device changes from Da Babes for AAA.

Looks like we are in the Home Stretch!
[&o]

[FatR]

Did you get numbers from JWE? I did and I like them. I'll reapply old tweaks, of course, to devices that, IMO, need them, like all variations of British 40mm Vickers (way too good compared to its lackluster historical performance) and Japanese 100/65 (we've talked about this gun in detail already...).

[JWE]

Yeah, as ya'll can see, the changes are really rather subtle. An increase, yes, but not a gross one. We were really trying to avoid the "nerf-uber-nerf" swings. The data are much more unified and on a known and determinable scale. It makes it much more simple to have more or fewer planes shot down by just changing all data values by + (or -) 10, 20, 30%. We thought the baseline results to be "reasonable" and didn't go any further. Obviously, there's room to move within the box.

[ed] At least we put a good baseline together so tweaking is an easier proposition. Enjoy

J

[John 3rd]

I did get the numbers and they are pretty fascinating.

Like the idea of keeping the Babes and us close in a lot of these Mod changes. Tends to make good sense to me.

[FatR]

One more thing, John, before I forgot. In the previous build I placed several planes (A7M3-J, D4Y4, N1K4-A) out of normal upgrade lines for their family, for various reasons, which, I think, weren't justified enough (mostly considering them too good as options). After preliminary air testing, I now think that none of them impacts balance that much. D4Y4 is perhaps the biggest deal of them all (800-kg bomb!), and even then modded-in D4Y5 might be preferable, due to higher chances of survival. Maybe I should just place them back into the upgrade lines, to save players the hassle?

[John 3rd]

I concur with that. Makes far better sense to do it that way.

[John 3rd]

FatR and I have both been really busy so we haven't gotten a lot done in the last week or so. He has been running A-t-A tests and I'm gonna get the website ready. We'll see, perhaps, about a release at the end of the week.

[FatR]

Yes, if you forgive me for my slowness. Unfortunately I found that I didn't tweak the aircraft guns enough again the last week (Ki-45 KAIa remained noticeably better at shooting down bombers that later models, for example), so retweaking and retesting were in order. And job doesn't leave me time, alas.

[FatR]

Just writing here to say sorry to everyone who expected the mod to be ready at the beginning of July. Until a couple of days ago I had very little time to work on it. I've tested naval flak, just to double-check and it seemed OK. I've tested the new and imporved ground flak as well, and that part left me with more doubt (both nerfs to most Japanese ground AA guns and large buffs to the Allied ones). From my experience, by early 1943 Allied flak already grows very effective, to the point of forbidding sustained air raids with no more than 2-3 units. I have severe doubt that further buff will make players to disperse their batteries, instead of concentrating them even more, to eliminate the need for CAP entirely (which seems disturbingly possible even with the stock flak). I've toned down Allied land-based guns quite a bit, though they still are alot better than in stock... and the misterious issue of American flak ineffectiveness (at least in 1942) seems to be fixed, judging by PH raids).

Another issue is Japanese heavy aircraft cannons (37mm+). After several rounds of gradually increasing their stats and testing, I've found that even with their stock stats doubled in about every category, they are still ineffective, even against bombers (against Allied fighters planes that carried them die horribly in any case). Now, they weren't an air war-winning superweapon, but I think that packing at least as much punch as Ki-45-KAIa is not too much to ask from later models of 2E fighters, and neither this will change the air balance (because, well, we already have Ki-45-KAIa), but this will remove a trap option.
EDIT: The same goes for Yak-9T with it single 37mm gun. Not the most relevant plane, but one that is very unlikely to work for anything in stock. Cobras, the only other common big-gun fighters, thankfully pack enough MGs to not care is their main gun can't hit anything.

[JWE]

<bad>

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: JWE
I would ask you to think carefully about AAA. Am talking to michaelm about some code tweaks based on stock and babes data values.

[FatR]

Thanks for the warning. I've kept the reduction as a uniform minus to accuracy, so it will be easy to roll back, if needs be. But after seeing what Allied ground AAA can do in stock (I have a strong suspicion that my opponent is currently keeping bomber squadrons with second-rate planes in the unCAPped base of Little Andaman as nothing but bait, because massed flak there can kill almost as many of my Helens, as they manage to destroy planes on ground, with added bonus of killing well-trained pilots; and that he's right in his calculation too), seeing the new stats made me shudder.

[darbycmcd]

Well, FatR and John, I really respect your efforts at this mod, you guys have done a nice service to the community and started some good discussions. For me though, I am not really interested in it now. It has sort of drifted into 'FatR's vision of how things should work mod' and although I do understand you have read quite a bit about technical issues and arcana of Japanese aircraft, I am not really sold on your testing methods nor the way you have drawn your conclusions about what 'needs' fixing, nor your methodology of fixing things. I really don't mean this to be a negativge thing, you have your opinion, and it is a valid one. But changing basic data as you are to achieve the effects you think the game MUST produce, despite not holding all the other values constant, nor even understanding them in many cases, just seems a bit messy. This tendency to 'buff' and 'nerf' things just has too much potential to skew results in ways that perhaps you like but are maybe to deterministic and not the way everyone thinks the war must go. But it is a fine mod, you both have done good work at achieving what you are after, and I will probably shamelessly steal your ship data for a mod mashup I want to do for myself (your ships, scen 2 OB for air/ground, and TS economy... basically balance the added military force with closer to real economic constraints)

Good luck, and thanks for the work.

[John 3rd]

Darby: Thanks for the blunt note. I sent FatR a similar email a couple of days ago that we not wander from the track. We were close to that a couple of Thread pages ago and moved it squarely back to where it should be.

Have concerns along the same line that we don't tweak this thing to death trying to get a result that (from our perspective) may or may not be more accurate/historical. It is SOOOOOO easy to change things within the Editor once one gets started. Once the changes begin it is quite hard to stop. The 'vision' is what MUST be kept to make this an enhanced Naval Mod and nothing else.

Stanislav and I have been terribly busy and have not had much chance to chat and work on the finishing touches. Apologize for that and the internible waiting that some of you have been doing for this to wrap up and move forward.

[FatR]

Well, it is unfortunate. I've tried to minimize the number of changes and to limit them to balance tweaking, beyond those directly resulting from changes on IJNAF side and present from the first build. Particularly as I hope to use the same basic air and device data for alt_naval mod if we ever get to it. "Big gun" issue mentioned above I feel is pretty obviously neither historical (Japanese obviously considered these planes worth buiding, while in the game everything past KI-45 KAIa is a huge downgrade - not only mine conclusion, tests were done far before by other forumgoers, should still be somewhere in the War Room), nor useful for the game (a newbie trap, plus screws over those who play with PDU OFF - several units upgrade to figher-bombers with KAIc and can't go back to previous models). I don't know about others, but I think that having a roughly historical lineup of models without clearly shooting oneself in the foot is a good thing, and the stock, unfortunately, fails to deliver in some aspects where there I really see no reason not to.

I'd like to see if anyone else feels like darbymcd? I hope for our work to be enjoyed by others, so if this is the prevalent opinion, I'll roll back the newly added IJAAF tweaks, although I'm fairly certain that things like building Helens all the way or avoiding the vast majority of 2E Japanese fighters like plague do not improve the game.

EDIT: And John, I AM prone to tweaking things just because I have editor in my hands and I've read too much. So if you feel these changes should be vetoed, so be it. Just remember when you play, that Ki-45 lineup ends at model A, and Ki-30 is your light/trainer bomber for the entire war, and stuff like that[:)].

[DuckofTindalos]

There IS such a thing as polishing the cannonball too much. Sooner or later it has to be loaded and fired. I think you should pull the lanyard now.

[oldman45]

I would not be discouraged, everybody has an opinion and its going to be different from everybody else's. I kind of agree that with all the different types of planes if the only ones that are worth keeping are 2 or 3, something is not right. While I like historical accuracy, I want a game that feels right and I can play with all the bells and whistles. Following this thread makes me think you all are on to something and its headed in the right direction. It has to be the designers vision, otherwise how will you ever get it done. [;)]

Keep it up men!!