atomic bomb missions

[jcjordan]

I'm in July45 & I've got 2 atomic bombs. I ran a mission to Tokyo w/ manpower as the target & when I mouse over for the base info (recon level is high) damage to Tokyo doesn't seem as high as I thought it'd be. Most industry is only off about 1/3 & no fires, port/airbase/aircraft look to not have been effected at all. Did I just get screwed by the AI or is atom bomb not as effective? Did I use it wrong by sending it to manpower?

[Alfred]

The effect of the A-bomb is quite anemic and a con job for any Allied player who expects it to mirror the real world effect.

Alfred

[JeffroK]

Alfred, in your opinion, what is the most effective target for the ABomb?

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

Alfred, in your opinion, what is the most effective target for the ABomb?

Can't give you a good answer because I've never dropped an A-Bomb.

The fundamental problem is that you can target only 1 industrial facility. The rest of the industrial facilities may suffer some damage. Airfield and port facilties, land air and naval forces stationed in the city are untouched. Hence my statement that the effect is anemic. But if you must drop it, choose the single most valuable industrial facility. That probably restricts the candidates to one of the following, preferably in a city with many industrial facilities:

• a really big oversized Heavy Industry facility (but if there are sufficient HI points in the pool, the value drops)
• if Sakhalin is the only substantial oil source centre, and there is an oil shortage, then maybe the oil centres there
• if the latest and best fighter is produced in only a single mega plant, that aircraft factory

As you can see, nothing will be decisive and if it were decisive, you are probably winning a decisive victory as it is without use of the bomb.

If we wanted to properly reflect the true destructive power of an A-bomb attack, the destructive effects should be more along these lines:

• complete destruction of specific targetted industry facility
• complete destruction of all manpower centres in the city
• complete destruction of 1/4 of other industrial facilities (randomly chosen) in the city
• remaining 3/4 of other industrial facilities in the city to suffer 100% damage (but repairable over time)
• taking note of natural protection provided within the base hex, a die roll which could result in 75-90% destruction of all elements in a military unit (LCU, air squadron, or ships in TF or anchored) located in the city
• airfield and port respectively reduced to size 1

As it currently stands, dropping the A-Bomb is there to provide eye candy. Combined with the fact that dropping more than 2 A-bombs reduces the final victory level, no Allied player should rely upon the A-Bomb as a war winning weapon. Nor should any Japanese player fear its use.

I'll wait with baited breadth to hear all those Japanese players who are so quick to find fault with the game, which miraculously always seems to disadvantage them, to stand up and complain that the effects of the A-Bomb are too weak and should be beefed up, in the interests of fair play you understand.[;)]


Alfred

[Cavalry Corp]

Alfred

I am inclined to agree with you . Maybe this needs to go on tech where maybe it needs some improvement - and I am a Jap player.

The A bomb should be feared.

[Alfred]

cavalry,

I am particularly loathe to raise a hue and cry about any game change for several reasons.

1. Every change carries within it the potential for great destabilisation in other areas. There simply are not the resources available to properly play test significant code changes.

2. Just because I bought this game does not give me any proprietorial rights to the game design. I find it very arrogant that many people, who do not have any understanding how the code actually works, how every sub routine impacts on every other sub routine, believe they know better than the developers. From my post you can see that I think the treatment of the A-bomb is inadequate but not everyone will necessarily share my views and the devs had to juggle various competing views in producing a commercial product. They are entitled to have the integrity of their vision maintained.

3. I'm an adult and I should take responsibility for my own actions. It is up to me to learn how the game mechanics play and to become au fait with the game design. It is up to me to then come up with the proper play within the game design parameters. A game change should not be instituted just so that it makes it easier for me to play the game.

4. AE is a game in the sense that it isn't a simulation. There are just far too many abstractions to qualify it as a simulation. When deciding what and how to abstract something, too many cooks spoil the broth. Again the overriding vision has to be that of the developers.

5. The editor is my friend were there to be something in the game I violently disagreed with.

Alfred

[Panther Bait]

Alfred +1 for that post. 
 
Mike
 

[chesmart]

+1 Alfred

[Rainer]

2. Just because I bought this game does not give me any proprietorial rights to the game design. I find it very arrogant that many people, who do not have any understanding how the code actually works, how every sub routine impacts on every other sub routine, believe they know better than the developers. From my post you can see that I think the treatment of the A-bomb is inadequate but not everyone will necessarily share my views and the devs had to juggle various competing views in producing a commercial product. They are entitled to have the integrity of their vision maintained.

Everybody should have to sign this before being allowed to post [;)]

PS: I agree with all other points in the post cited above.

[jcjordan]

+1 Alfred.
 
I did think the results strange that when you set normal bombers to bomb manpower they create fires but the atom bomb didn't in this case & damage was light hence why I made the post for discussion about them. Maybe some consensus will come about on how a change might be done but that's not up to me.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: JeffK

Alfred, in your opinion, what is the most effective target for the ABomb?

Can't give you a good answer because I've never dropped an A-Bomb.

The fundamental problem is that you can target only 1 industrial facility. The rest of the industrial facilities may suffer some damage. Airfield and port facilties, land air and naval forces stationed in the city are untouched. Hence my statement that the effect is anemic. But if you must drop it, choose the single most valuable industrial facility. That probably restricts the candidates to one of the following, preferably in a city with many industrial facilities:

• a really big oversized Heavy Industry facility (but if there are sufficient HI points in the pool, the value drops)
• if Sakhalin is the only substantial oil source centre, and there is an oil shortage, then maybe the oil centres there
• if the latest and best fighter is produced in only a single mega plant, that aircraft factory

As you can see, nothing will be decisive and if it were decisive, you are probably winning a decisive victory as it is without use of the bomb.

If we wanted to properly reflect the true destructive power of an A-bomb attack, the destructive effects should be more along these lines:

• complete destruction of specific targetted industry facility
• complete destruction of all manpower centres in the city
• complete destruction of 1/4 of other industrial facilities (randomly chosen) in the city
• remaining 3/4 of other industrial facilities in the city to suffer 100% damage (but repairable over time)
• taking note of natural protection provided within the base hex, a die roll which could result in 75-90% destruction of all elements in a military unit (LCU, air squadron, or ships in TF or anchored) located in the city
• airfield and port respectively reduced to size 1

As it currently stands, dropping the A-Bomb is there to provide eye candy. Combined with the fact that dropping more than 2 A-bombs reduces the final victory level, no Allied player should rely upon the A-Bomb as a war winning weapon. Nor should any Japanese player fear its use.

I'll wait with baited breadth to hear all those Japanese players who are so quick to find fault with the game, which miraculously always seems to disadvantage them, to stand up and complain that the effects of the A-Bomb are too weak and should be beefed up, in the interests of fair play you understand.[;)]


Alfred

Crap, and I ramped up research and production so that I could produce 600 a month. Now I find out they are nerfed. I am going to sorely miss those Boomerangs after all..[:D]

[JeffroK]

What, the game let you upgrade from Wirraways to Boomerangs, talk about ahistorical!

[Cavalry Corp]

This thread is about A bombs and having not seen one dropped in any game I would be disappointed if it was as above - that was my point in my reply.

[vettim89]

I think the A Bomb is included in the game for historical accuracy. We can debate what the effect should or should not be, but the truth is the amount of historical data is very small. The A Bomb cannot do what it did in RL: make Hirohito realze any further resistance would not mean just losing the war but the extinction of the Japanese race. While that may seem far fetched to our ears, it is not if considered through his eyes in 1945. He had received reports that two Japanese cities had been essentially incinerated by a single bomb dropped by a lone aircraft. This came after several months of firebombing that had already killed far more Japanese than the two A Bombs.

You can't and probably shouldn't model this in the game. Who would want to play with a rule that says, "Drop two A bombs and the Japan player automatically surrenders within three turns of the second bomb being dropped."

[jcjordan]

Well historically it did force the IJ to surrender in a way w/ the damage it did cause so to me in game it should cause a great deal of damage & fires as well as points scored but alas it's not to be [&:]. I'm not saying that they should surrender in 3 turns but points/damage should be scored in such a way that the Allies to gain from their use towards winning. In this game it's moot as I actually won the game back in Sept44 but just wanted to keep playing to see about the late war things like the atomic bombs & USSR entry.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Alfred
I'll wait with baited breadth to hear all those Japanese players who are so quick to find fault with the game, which miraculously always seems to disadvantage them, to stand up and complain that the effects of the A-Bomb are too weak and should be beefed up, in the interests of fair play you understand.[;)]

As an exclusively Japanese player, I hereby complain that the effects of the A-Bomb are too weak and should be beefed up in the interests of fair play.

Alfred: please consider something for that baited breath of yours.

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Alfred
I'll wait with baited breadth to hear all those Japanese players who are so quick to find fault with the game, which miraculously always seems to disadvantage them, to stand up and complain that the effects of the A-Bomb are too weak and should be beefed up, in the interests of fair play you understand.[;)]

As an exclusively Japanese player, I hereby complain that the effects of the A-Bomb are too weak and should be beefed up in the interests of fair play.

Alfred: please consider something for that baited breath of yours.

You don't count as you don't fit the profile of the Japanese player I identified.

My breadth remains baited.

Alfred

[vettim89]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Alfred
I'll wait with baited breadth to hear all those Japanese players who are so quick to find fault with the game, which miraculously always seems to disadvantage them, to stand up and complain that the effects of the A-Bomb are too weak and should be beefed up, in the interests of fair play you understand.[;)]

As an exclusively Japanese player, I hereby complain that the effects of the A-Bomb are too weak and should be beefed up in the interests of fair play.

Alfred: please consider something for that baited breath of yours.

Here is what I meant about historical data being scarce. We know that both bombs caused a lot of damage. That said we also know that there was tremendous variability to the damage. It is thought that Hirshima suffered more because it was essentially flat terrain. Nagasaki being more hilly had areas of "shadow" that were relatively protected. Both of these targets were much smaller than say Osaka or Tokyo. My point being that any effect programmed into the game could be argued that it was either too weak or too strong. In game terms I don't think even obliterating all the industry in a given hex would really matter that much as the points totals would be high enough to make even a 1000 point A bomb attack unlikely to affect the odds ratio.

So, going back to my original point, it is unlikely that even cataclismic results from an A Bomb attack will win the game for the Allies. Even a complete obliteration effect in a hex (all the ground units, all the industry, all the aircraft) would be unlikely to yield that many points outside of Tokyo and maybe Osaka. Now of course if the Allied player was hovering just below a 2:1 margin and the A Bomb results pushed it over, then you could say the A Bomb won the war. However, that threshhold could just as easily be achieved through traditional Strategic Bombing, unit destruction, and geographic conquests. In other words, just pushing the game past the Autovictory threshhold does not mean the A Bomb "ended" the war.

Japan was preparing to repel the Allied invasion of the HI in August of 1945. Their plan, if you can call it a plan, was to inflict extraordinary casualties on the invaders to the point where the civilian populace would demand the Allies sue for peace. Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed that for the reason I pointed out above. Like I said you cannot model that in game short of introducing some sort of "will to resist" factor into the Japanese victory conditions. I wouldn't even want to contemplate how that could be modeled. The political aspects of the war are not modeled in AE - its just not the scope of the game. It would add an interesting element if commanders had to answer for their defeats, etc. But that is a different game altogether.

[BossGnome]

While I would agree that the A-bomb should be beefed up (perhaps by providing a VP bonus?) to the allies to represent the sapping of Japanese morale, there are a few things you might want to consider when discussing its effects on the overall industrial potential of a 48 square km hex. Oh, and a disclaimer: I am mostly an allied player.
 
Now, I live in Hiroshima, about 400 m from the epicentre, to be precise. The a-bomb, dropped right in the middle of downtown, pretty much obliterated everything in a 1.6 km radius -everybody dead, every building destroyed, nothing left. Further out, things get less "total". Here are a few concrete examples to illustrate my point.
 
Hiroshima Train Station, for example, which ferried both civilian and military supplies and men during the war, is located a "mere" 2.5 km from the epicentre. It was severely damaged, and several of the staff irradiated or killed, but the trains were all back up and running within a 48 hours of the bombing. Not exactly what you'd call "total destruction"!
 
The Hiroshima civilian shipyards and docks situated in Ujina port are located about 5 km from the epicentre. They sustained some damage, but were not requiring of repairs when relief ships docked at Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bombing.

Going further out: the city of Kure, one of Imperial Japan's major military shipyards and naval command centres (and, in-game, located in the Hiroshima hex), is located about 25 km from the epicentre. It, its shipyards, and its military installations, were completely untouched by the bomb.
 
I suppose that in game terms, we should look at the Hiroshima bombing as a "city attack - manpower" kind of attack. It was dropped right in the middle of downtown, killed a lot of civilians and pretty much flattened the city. But did it stop the civilian and military shipyards? No. Did it destroy the military garrisons present on the outskirts and suburbs of Hiroshima city proper? Not really - though you might argue that having these soldiers immediately take part in relief duties might count as "disruption". Did it destroy the basic infrastructure such as radios, train lines, electricity? Not really - they were rebuilt/put back into working order incredibly fast - on the order of 2-3 days. The Hiroshima bank was even up and running 3 days later!
 
The reality is that the bomb destroyed everything within a 1.5-1.6 km radius, and damaged everything within a 4km radius after that. In a 48 km hex which represents diffuse production facilities, that doesn't necessarily represent that huge of an amount of actual damage.
 
That being said, I would still argue that dropping an A-bomb should either automatically give the allies VPs or remove VPs from the Japanese player, to represent the sapping of Japanese morale that this bomb had.
 

[vettim89]

Wow, BossGnome, talk about being the "on the scene reporter". Excellant points about what an AE hex contains and the "relatively" narrow footprint of the A-bomb against all the facilities in said hex.

The political aspects of the PTO are fascinating and it is too bad there are not modeled better because it would make for a fascinating game. The unending feud between the IJA and the IJN would be interesting to model as would the King/Marshall feud (it was really more those two than it was Nimitz and Mac). How about the sacking of leaders: Tanaka ended up in Burma and Fitch was sent to Alaska. All sorts of little turns of the worm that would both frustrating and fun