Reluctant Admiral 3.0

[John 3rd]

Since I have the modified files for the 4.0 version, I am planning to begin work on this tonight when I get home from work.

Am particularly interested in any commentary from RA players that could help with anything extra that might improve the Mod.

Am thinking of taking a page from Perfect War and have the Pensacola Convoy actually having made it to the Philippines to provide a bit more Allied oomph there. The A-24s would be present, another P-40 Squadron, several artillery units, and about 15,000 additional supply. Add the Pensacola herself and it would be a nice bump for the Allied player. Thoughts?

I plan to get the work done very quickly and do a release of 4.0 by the end fo the week.

[John 3rd]

We are going to tentatively place RA 4.0 as Scenario 77 for the moment.

I just downloaded all of the revamped files from JWE. Here are his comments as to changes made:


Updated all classes 12 through 21, 30 through 34, 51, and 79; basically DDs, DEs, Es, SCs, PGs, PBs, PCs, DMSs, DMs, APDs, AMs, MSs, that kind of stuff.

Tweaked some (very few) class designations and made sure the individual ships were properly set. The Swan, Warrego, Parramata stuff became Grimsbys, Grimsby RAN, and Grimsby RIN, you know, just a bit of brass polish.

Only tweaked identical classes. Did not disturb any of your new/additional stuff. RN DDs got a face lift, but I made darn sure all the ships conformed.

Once all the classes were done, I did a full “Update Weapons from Class” in the ship file. Checked it all twice; think it’s good to go. So you are at Babes specs for Classes and Ships, except you don’t have the “extras”. So you are at maybe 92%, but what you got is right and tight. The stuff you are missing is replaced by the extras your mod defines.

ASW
Didn’t mess with your Sub Classes. But did do the DC Device tweak. RA will run at default, which is not bad at all, given Don’s public code tweak.

AA/DP
Did everything to RA that was done for Babes (Big or Lite). Except, I noted Stan did his own tweaks on the secondary values, so I didn’t mess with those at all.

Bombs
Did those the same as was done to Babes (Big or Lite). Tweaked Eff to reflect “boom” (charge) weight rather than just weight of the bomb. Big tweaks in Anti-Soft and Anti-Armor for ground combat. Matt Norton tells me JuanG has tested the algorithm and finds the Ground Combat model working perfectly, but that Eff needs to be reconsidered, a skoosh, for the Naval Combat model. Juan is more meticulous than even I, so if he has a suggestion, I’m on it.

About it. RA is at Babes standard for all basic stuff.

Changed the Scen number to 077, so there’s no confusion with what you have in your folders. Also changed the cmt file so it’s clear that 077 is a “Modded 070”

Ciao. John

[John 3rd]

I got in a good session last night that got all the changes done except for the IJN SNLF/Atoll Defense units. Should be able to finish the work tonight.

I've kept a detailed change log so I will Post that when finished.

[John 3rd]

JWE's Changes are detailed above so we start with that.

The AA Upgrades to all Japanese CVs/CVLs/BCs/CAs/BBs are all done according to the note Post at the top of this page. This should make the improvements within the Kaigun more gradual and reflect the wartime priorities of who gets the new heavy AA guns first.

Ships Modifications (from earlier discussion on this Thread and the Older RA Thread):
1. Kongo's now standardized to 4 Floatplanes. For some reason their were either 2, 3, or 4 planes allowed on these four ships. Now fixed.
2. CS Mizuho's class changed to Chitose as per discussion within Perfect War Mod.
3. BB--CV Conversion for Ise--BBs now allowed six months earlier if wanted.
4. Added several AOs/TKs to the Japanese reflecting the awareness of Fleet Train needs. Total of only four ships added here.
5. As requested by several RA players, two more Agano-Class added to the building cue. They are due out in April/May 1944. With acceleration they could deploy in late-43 or the player could simply decide not to complete them.

The Pensacola Convoy has just finished unloading at Manila when war breaks out. This important convoy adds more fighters (P-40-B/E), more armament, 3 Squadrons of A-24 Dive-Bombers, 20,000 supply, adds 4 75MM to Philippine ID TOE, as well as 2 BF and 2 Artillery units. This addition will serve to toughen up the Philippine's Air Force as well as Ground situation. The Allied player will gain the use of a modern CA and have difficult choices for the convoy sitting at Manila.

Lowered starting base stats, as per Racing the Sunrise, for the following bases:
A. Johnston AF reduced from 2 to 1.
B. Christmas and Palmyra AF lowered from 1 to ZERO.
C. Canton AF lowered from 2 to 1.

In a move from Perfect War, a small Philippine Infantry unit is moved to Legaspi so the base doesn't fall for free on Day One.

A good British Hurricane Squadron starts at Singapore.

The US Navy Training Squadrons (Fighter, DB, and TB) size is raised to 48 (from 36) and three Army Training Squadrons are added (F, 2EB, 4EB). They also can have up to 48 planes. These Training units are fixed and cannot move.

Made the following Japanese HQ units into Command Units (to allow for upgrade of other units): Combined Fleet, SE Fleet, SW Fleet, and Burma Area Army.

Added more planes to the Pools and slightly bumped production on some of the early war Allied aircraft to allow a little bit of flexibility.

It is Christmas after all so I will note that these changes help to rein in the Japanese some, add a few things, and boost the Allies a bit as well.

Comments?

[AdmNelson]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

The Pensacola Convoy has just finished unloading at Manila when war breaks out. This important convoy adds more fighters (P-40-B/E), more armament, 3 Squadrons of A-24 Dive-Bombers, 20,000 supply, adds 4 75MM to Philippine ID TOE, as well as 2 BF and 2 Artillery units. This addition will serve to toughen up the Philippine's Air Force as well as Ground situation. The Allied player will gain the use of a modern CA and have difficult choices for the convoy sitting at Manila Makes for fighting the Philippines a bigger issue. The DBs hitting ships around the Philippines, big need for the Japanese to take them out.

Lowered starting base stats, as per Racing the Sunrise, for the following bases:
A. Johnston AF reduced from 2 to 1.
B. Christmas and Palmyra AF lowered from 1 to ZERO.
C. Canton AF lowered from 2 to 1.

In a move from Perfect War, a small Philippine Infantry unit is moved to Legaspi so the base doesn't fall for free on Day One.

A good British Hurricane Squadron starts at Singapore. Very good
The US Navy Training Squadrons (Fighter, DB, and TB) size is raised to 48 (from 36) and three Army Training Squadrons are added (F, 2EB, 4EB). They also can have up to 48 planes. These Training units are fixed and cannot move.

Made the following Japanese HQ units into Command Units (to allow for upgrade of other units): Combined Fleet, SE Fleet, SW Fleet, and Burma Area Army.

Added more planes to the Pools and slightly bumped production on some of the early war Allied aircraft to allow a little bit of flexibility.

It is Christmas after all so I will note that these changes help to rein in the Japanese some, add a few things, and boost the Allies a bit as well.

Comments?

Ready to go and can't wait to play test this mod.

[FatR]

I like most of your changes John. Can you send the files to me closer to New Year, so that I can do proposed modifications to ship stats and upgrades and change aircraft engines where it is needed?

[John 3rd]

Are you able to do you Modifications fairly quickly FatR? REALLY want to give this one a crack!

I will finish the ground changes this weekend and then send you the files.

[FatR]

I think I'll be able to do it in a few days.

As about nightfighters, the need for them really wasn't pressing until late in the war, when a variety of conversions quickly appeared. I think in the environment where Allied aviation often acts primarily by night, low-grade improvised nightfighters could have appeared a year or more eariler.

[ny59giants]

I would suggest that you focus on finishing up RA 4.0 as it sounds like its close to being finished and then go back to the Perfect War mod.

[John 3rd]

FatR: Give me a day or two and I'll have the ground side done. Will then send you the files for your tweaks and then you can fire them back and we can Post them.

[John 3rd]

I just sent the files over to Stanislav to work on.

He'll add his Change List here and I'll wrap up some finishing touches and we'll ready to go.

I'll be restarting both of my RA Campaigns (with Adm Nelson and Soli Invictus) once the work is finished and am looking forward to it.

QUERY: How does one install--and load--the Extended Map?

[FatR]

OK, I got the files. Hope to add the changes within this week.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
QUERY: How does one install--and load--the Extended Map?

Just follow the instructions;

https://sites.google.com/site/dababeswitpae/map-and-art [;)]

[John 3rd]

I've been emailing a bit recently and wanted to Post an update here.

Developments:
1. Stanislav is finishing up his changes so we're good there.

2. I have to finish the LCU IJN upgrades/changes. Perhaps 3 hours of quiet time to do that. This is as long as my sons allow that to occur!

2. Had the suggestion made to make China more along the lines of Perfect War where there are higher garrison requirements and static Chinese forces. kfsgo said he couldn't get to it for at least two weeks. I know we have players hot to start new games so I am thinking about how we could 'simply' make China a bit more static.

The idea I've come up with is to bump garrisons throughout ALL of China. This would force more units to cover cities for by BOTH sides and at least slow things down. We could also do this in India...

Am open to ideas/comments on this. Does anyone have any?

EDIT: WOW--This was my 7,000th Post! I definitely have NO LIFE...

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
QUERY: How does one install--and load--the Extended Map?

Just follow the instructions;

https://sites.google.com/site/dababeswitpae/map-and-art [;)]

Thanks John. Looks like I need to create yet another WitP: AE Folder...

[John 3rd]

Just got this email from kfsgo:

Ok, rushed and simple...I can do rushed and simple, I guess. You get some backstory to make it complicated, though.


Garrison requirements are an interesting one; it's a bit of a balancing act between overweighting (which obviously reduces army flexibility) and underweighting needs; you get an essay since it's a quick one to write and is interesting as well as relevant:


The Japanese army was more or less capable, after late 1942 or so, of going wherever it wanted in China; its great problem was supporting itself once it got there. The Chinese were basically in a situation where they had far more manpower than they could arm - the population of Szechwan alone (think the basin from Chungking to Chengdu) was something like 80 million even then - annual Chinese intake of conscripts was usually not far off the total number of rifles the Chinese had available for the whole war! - but unfortunately it never clicked, on an institutional scale, that some proportion of the draftees the military apparatus was rounding up could be used for wider-scale logistical efforts. So, you also see these enormous numbers of people drafted from the civil population to do stuff like build airfields for B-29s etc - and while that's going on the army is more or less left to starve, because it's not capable of meeting its own supply needs beyond a subsistence level (through extraction from the local population) and the labour force which it could be using to acheive that is being diverted to do other things. In other words - for all the griping those of us who have to command the Chinese do about the inability of the NRA to supply itself, the game works pretty well in that respect. So, garrison requirements for the Chinese are effectively a political problem - it's a question of, where is the Kuomintang up against a local...government is the wrong word, but government - that has priorities other than prosecuting the war? There are three key poles to this:


- Yunnan; this is the main pathway for American supply flow into China and a significant amount of political 'pull' had to be expended in keeping Long Yun (who was the warlord/governor/administrator/whatever at the time) cooperative in not being a disruption to that pathway. Yunnan was also a significant poppy-growing (and so opium-producing) region for most of the war and a lot of time and effort was put into suppressing that - a lot of the Chinese Air Force earned their wings shooting at poppy farmers rather than the Japanese, though the problem was solved eventually - the price of rice got so high towards the late-war period that they switched to growing that!


- Szechwan; after the Japanese advances in the first four years of the war this is the Chinese 'heartland'. The trouble is that the KMT is more or less a foreign government - Chiang Kai-Shek et al's direct control never extended too far beyond Chungking proper and you've got a situation where the local warlords have far more military power than the "government" - so you have retention of KMT troops (ie the competent, motivated ones) to keep a lid on them.


- Shaanxi; speficially, the area that's controlled by the CPC, so in game terms the 'Yanan' base. Obviously the Communists were a major preoccupation for CKS; unfortunately, in the stock scenario the base produces no supplies and is therefore incapable, given the way supply flow to bases works, of supporting a garrison. That can't be helped, but can be used - give the place a significant garrison requirement and it becomes, politically, an unsolvable problem - which is pretty accurate, really - you can either garrison it and starve the garrison to death, or not and take a PP hit.


Now, the Japanese are a little more unhinged. There is a lot of guff put out about movement of a million tons of oil a week from Singapore through to Port Arthur etc - unfortunately, the logistical situation we see in WITPAE games is more or less nonsensical in a lot of ways, and is particularly so in China; the Chinese transportation system can move an effectively unlimited quantity of material extremely quickly if it's actually available - and given the Japanese capacity for production of supplies it generally will be - and that is more or less the polar opposite of reality - support for the later Japanese offensives involved a huge overstretch of their logistical system, with enormous diversions of motor transport, riverboat and barge shipping and railway rolling stock away from civil and 'back-end' military needs, the effects of which you see towards mid-1945 - they were effectively running for the coast by the end of the war, because even that movement had ground to a halt courtesy of the USAAF and they weren't even getting food, never mind ammunition etc. Unfortunately the game is very binary as regards infrastructure - you either control a road/railway or you don't; the vehicles or trains needed to make use of them aren't considered. This is where the Japanese had huge, huge problems - f.e the Burma-Siam railway used stock and materials looted from the Malayan railways (the line from Malacca to Kota Bharu was ripped up to build it - even the rails themselves!), the Pakanbaroe railway stuff looted from Java - basically the Japanese were never able to make really effective use of the infrastructure they had without wrecking their capability somewhere else.


Now, that isn't something that can be effectively replicated in-game - there's not really such a thing as dedicated supply interdiction (by which think attacking motor transport, sub-Yangtze level shipping, supply columns etc) - so the expansion of garrison requirements isn't really meant to represent the need to garrison areas per se. Broadly speaking, there was a low-level insurgency going on that was more or less independent of and unaffected by Japanese troop concentrations, and there was also a surprising continuity of actual Chinese government control, or at worst influence, in areas occupied by the Japanese, but these never really translated into an organised military challenge - if it were going on in 2003 rather than 1943 it'd be "terrorism" and "insurgency"; as it was it was "banditry", I suppose. Rather, garrison requirements are meant to be a logistical lock - a "you can support an army this far forwards, but if you go any further you're going to have problems" sort of thing. So, take a look at this:


http://i.imgur.com/dZt5u.jpg


The red line is the Japanese logistical 'wall'; beyond that they're basically beyond their logistical ability. Note it basically follows navigable rivers. So - on the red-circled bases Japanese garrison requirements should increase substantially and Chinese requirements modestly. The effect is - if the Japanese want to take these places, they can, but they will have to either garrison them heavily (with consequent 'static' troops - much easier to keep them fed if they ain't moving!); or, if they want to use the troops for further offensives, skip that, which will come at a political cost - ie deterioration of the civil infrastructural system. Remember that until the US 10th AF started to be a problem everyone involved here beyond the actual front-line troops was basically in it for the money - the last thing your officers want is anything that'll stop them feathering their nests. On the blue-circled bases Chinese garrison requirements should increase substantially and Japanese requirements modestly. Realistically there is not a particular impact on the Japanese beyond that already inflicted by regular garrison requirements and their 'stop line' in these areas; meanwhile, they're a big political problem for the Kuomintang, because the locals have their own agendas and aren't likely to be cooperative without several thousand NRA rifles aimed at their backs.


So, that's a concept. I can't give you concrete numbers for the Japanese without spending half a day looking at numbers because these things are all basically arbitrary, dependent on the forces theoretically available, and you will know more about what those are than I do. Pick some numbers that would make you wonder whether taking the places would be a good idea, I guess, then set the Japanese to require slightly less than that number and the Chinese something halfway between the new number and the old one. For the Chinese side of the line you might be looking at something like:


Chengdu 400
Chungking 550
Neikiang 60
Kienko 60
#
Sian 240
Yenan 160
#
Kunming 240
Kweiyang 140
Mengtze 60
Tsuyung 60


Also, conceptually any bases with no garrison requirements at all should have a minimal number - maybe 10 or 20 - representing the actual dispersed low-level resistance. The problem in that is finding units small enough to fill the gaps...but then that's fair enough.


Ok, enough for tonight - it's nearly 1am here. Have a think about that and I will get back to you tomorrow if necessary.

[oldman45]

Love reading his stuff. Its a shame there is not a way to interdict supply even abstractly.

[John 3rd]

You have that right Oldman! Let us see more. I think this would serve to tie down troops yet still allow for action if either side so desired...

[FatR]

Just so you know, John, I tinkered with upgrades on Japanese CAs too, bringing them more in line with Lacroix/Wells, with adjustment to the nature of the mod. None of them ends up with more than 60-something MGs, but many of these are installed somewhat earlier than historical, and fire arcs are, IMO, more reasonable (stock suffers somewhat from big very bunches of MGs grouped to fire forward/rear). I inted to tinker with DDs as well, special type upgrades might be historically suspect (no high-angle turrets in wartime upgrades), never mind some of them actually being downgrades in game terms.

Adjusted displacements (mostly down), speeds and fuel loads (both up) on major Japanese combatants with the help of Jentschura's data. Note that a bigger fuel load just means that a ship burns more fuel to go the same distance.

[bigred]

Hi John, I was reading and thinking about the china supply/garrison changes issue.  What if some of the rail and major roads where changed to trail at some locations to guarantee the break up of the resource flow.  This would force the japs to use resupply via river traffic from Shanghia.
W/ the merge w/ Babes, would some of the small resupply craft be able to travel farther than stock upriver to resupply IJA.
Also this would stop the misuse of the singers to PA resource move.
No sure these are good ideas or has been said previous on this thread.