Flak effectiveness at Pearl Harbor

[spence]

Shortly after the newest patch (Feb 2012) came out somebody or other was complaining about the results they were obtaining with their (IJN) attack(s) at Pearl Harbor.

I sorta took their complaints with a grain of salt since other responders seemed to be indicating that they had had fairly satisfactory results.

But with the results that I have seen at Pearl Harbor in a PBEM game I just started I have to wonder if a programer inadvertently dropped a comma or an ampersand into the program which causes Pearl Harbor flak units, base forces and all ships in the harbor to load their guns with blanks on a more or less permanent basis.

I only bring it up because the flak at Pearl Harbor has not shot down a single Val or Kate over the course of 2 turns. On Dec 7th with Surprise ON I have less of a problem with this result (well actually I chock it up as another sop to the JFB crowd) since flak did at least seem to claim a couple of strafing Zeros. But for Dec 8th where there is no surprise and the raid has to fight its way through a substantial CAP the same result seems (frankly) unbelievably odd and so far afield from any conceivable historical reality as to make me think that some kind of insect is at "play".

(The complete lack of flak casualties to the KB's bomber force is confirmed by the Intel Screen for the two turns. Also I noted that during the Combat Animation not one single bomber "flashed" red to indicate it had been shot down or "yellow" to indicate it had suffered damage.)

[fcharton]

Hi,

I'm Japan in that PBEM, and agree with Spence that the flak results look weird (unusually low). Two other things I've noticed:

1- on that day, I did lose a large number of Vals (26 out of 53 that flew against enemy opposition, almost a 50% loss!), but all of them are said to be air to air losses. Yet, combat reports only account for about 10 vals destroyed or damaged.
2- the number of search planes (Vals in that case) reported as "destroyed by cap" is very high. This would explain the heavy losses mentioned above, except that this number seems a bit high if you compare it to the number of planes that actually flew search missions (and I must say I have difficulty understanding why those Vals all seem to have been searching Pearl Harbor, which was bombed the day before, would be bombed that day, and had CAP present... seems like having planes with non zero search percentage close to a base with CAP is a very bad idea, not quite logical if you ask me)

Could there be a problem with the way losses are reported? ie, some or all of the flak losses would be incorrectly reported as air to air, or search losses to cap?

Francois

[spence]

Still awake huh?

My Intel Screen shows 31 Vals shot down on Dec 8th --- every single one in A2A. It didn't list a single one on Dec 7th. It seemed to me that my CAP shot down quite a few (I didn't start counting until after I noticed that there seemed to be a lot so my estimate ended at 15) during the "Search Phase" along with 5 or so on your raids on PH but 31 seems more than I can account for. But I also note that my Intel Screen lists not one single Val or Kate lost due to flak.

It does list a few Zeros shot down by flak on both days but those Zeros were strafing the airbase. Some kind of bug involving altitude maybe?

[jmalter]

the Army AA units at PH start w/ morale at 50 & TOE 81, they're not gonna be terribly effective.