In my opinion the "problem" lies not with supply, nor in wear and tear, nor in the life expectancy of gun barrels. As i've mussed on the WitP board....wear and tear on warships is already far too high making even normal cruising a taxing operation the farther a TF goes much less a high speed bombardment or Fast transport.
I am keeping my eye firmly locked on the far greater distances that will be traversed in WitP vs UV.
Supply in the game is indeed plentiful.....more so than was historical. This was a conciencious decision on the part of the game designers due to the game' limited scope in terms of the entire Pacific Campaign. While it does cause a quickening of the operational pace, i consider it a non issue pretty much since WitP will solve it simply by coming into existance.
It is certainly true that gun barrels have a "Shelf life" however this is a pandora's box best not opened. Why? Simple. Its not just gun barrels. Its EVERYTHING. Especially when one is talking the SoPac theater. Everything has a shelf life. Aircraft, aircraft parts, engines, weapons, tools etc etc etc. Airforces on both sides during this period would be fortunate to have 50% or more of their paper strength flyable on any one day. But to simulate this would require a supply system so complex as to boggle the mind of even the most fanatical grognard, not to mention require a wargame far larger than even this formidable 21st century example. There are also many many different kinds of supply (Mine issue anybody?) In short......its not really a practical road at this point in time. Maybe the 'next' generation of wargames will have it. Assuming my horse doesn't kill me i hope to live to see it.
Level bombers.......no comment
The more basic (and solvable) problem, i feel lies in the depiction of the bases themselves. Essentially, all bases are treated as Lungas. Guadalcanal was in so many ways, a unique struggle which saw both navies fighting in ways and preforming missions not conceived of prewar. To elaborate.....Lunga was "indeed" highly vulnerable to surface bombardment, due to it's geography and due to the military situation of the time. The entire Marine perimeter, including the airfields, was very small, and there were no advance features to protect both supply dumps and aircraft.
However not every base in real life is a Lunga, either in size, in geography nor in complexity. Some bases are geographically unsuitable for bombardment completely. Rabaul comes to mind. Anyone ever see an arial picture of Rabaul base? Its harbors are not easily accessible thus making a close range bombardment impractical not to mention extremely risky. But it can be done in UV. I've done it myself just for giggles.
For those that are more accessible, there is the complexity issue. In both bombardment and air bombardment terms i see too little difference in the way they behave. Lunga, given how many aircraft operated from it was game wise probably not greater than a "level 3 base" (small historical fudge....B-17's did operate from the main field for refueling stops, in UV of course a base must be level 4 or higher to operate twin+ engine bombers) and in terms of operational aircraft was Level 2 at least at the beginning stages.
The lack of revertments or other more permanent fixtures precludes it being awarded a Level 4 or higher status, as well as there being only one field before the creation of the small "fighter one" strip.
As such, it was highly vulnerable to attack. A bigger base, with more airstrips, concrete revertments, and a more developed, better protected and dispersed supply depot should be far far tougher to crack, requiring many many missions just to keep it down.
One does not see this though. A primary culprit is the "supply hit" Its treated the same for all bases and IIRC a 'hit' takes off a fixed % of points per occurance. The problem here is the bigger the supply dump, the bigger the % is, taking positively HUGE chunks out of even the biggest bases. IMO, this should be reversed. The bigger the base (port/airfield) the small the % should be or the harder a "hit" should be.
Same for airfield/airfield service damage. Its supposed to work that way now, but in practice i dont see it. I can take out Rabaul almost as easily as a Lunga. One suggestion i would have outright is that larger airbases should be assumed to have multiple fields therefore a 'cap' should be placed on damage (per raid) as often individual raids will only be able to target one or two fields, not all (unless the raid is very very large) This problem also exists for bombardment. Bombardment should be made more variable as well. Some bombardments of Lunga ended up shelling non vital areas such as the "boneyard" where heaps of canibalized aircraft were piled up.
In short, look not at wear and tear, or supply levels. We must look at the bases and the differences in how they behave when at small/low levels of development vs larger/higher levels of development. There also need to be more variance.....some bombardments/air attacks will be more successful than others, and not all the factors will be influenced by combat or interdiction.
