Repairing Bases

[pharmy]

ORIGINAL: USS America

ORIGINAL: icepharmy
Bombing the ports in Bataan/Manila or indeed anywhere else does seem fair though, that's were supplies were stacked historically. I just thought I was bombing supplies directly, not by having repair soak them up.

Just to clarify this point, repairs to AF's or Ports do NOT use any supplies. Bombing the AF or Port can/will also result in "supply hits" which you can see in the combat report. This is where supplies are destroyed. The damage to the AF or Port from "non-supply" hits is unrelated to supply use/destruction.

Think of the entire abstraction in these terms: You are attacking a "base". You may specify your planes to focus on the AF or Port, but you're hitting the base, which includes supply depots, vehicle maintenance shops, latrines, etc. Attacking a base with the sole purpose of destroying supplies is a very valid tactic in those terms. Bases with no troops, or no player increased supply needs, will have very few supplies available to hit, so they are relatively useless targets.

Thanks, before this thread I thought that bases with no Engineers did not repair, so all I needed was to move engineers there, but based on this thread I thought that lack of supply (also) caused that (and supply was consumed by those repairs). Well, then there is no point in wanting an option to turn of repair of AF and Ports. So AF and Ports are like upgrade ports/AFs and build forts repair factories in the engineering department but without the supply draw. Many thanks. So that part of the game mechanic goes into my "know for sure category"

[geofflambert]

ORIGINAL: Icedawg

I have no problem with scattering for the purpose of escape - like at the start of the game sending all of those ships in the Philippines off by themselves hoping that at least some of them make it out. But using them for the single purpose of absorbing airstrikes/sucking up sorties from carriers, that's what annoys me.

You can try to make the case that the US used DD pickets toward the end of the war, but the picket ships were more for advanced notice of incoming attacks. At times, these DDs were attacked, but not by 100s of planes - dozen or two, yes, but not the entire strike. The Japanese pilots were smart enough to not waste their resources on the DDs when they knew carriers and other capital ships were nearby. The game engine isn't that smart, it pummels the single-ship TFs and barely sends anything after the more significant targets.

I did try once doing that gamey thing once, I surrounded my CV TFs with about 40-50 AKLs in single ship TFs. The Japanese flew right over them and right to one of my CV TFs. Now only about half of them got there, but there were severe storms going on in that hex at the time. No AKLs were attacked. [:@]

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: treespider
WitPZen....

Woof !!! Zen and The Art of AE Maintenance !!! Spidey, you are brilliant !!!

You and Mike are exactly on point. The game algorithm only has a few buttons to push and a few screen messages to access. But there's a lot more going on inside. Whiners that piss and moan about "messages" that are "displayed", and think that's how the game is working, instead of looking at the more detailed picture, deserve all they get. Ciao. [;)]

Whiners that piss and moan over valid criticism deserve all they get. See reference to "usual suspects" regarding disparaging comments. Try growing up or is that just impossible for the likes of you?

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Bombing an airfield that isn't being used, has no air units deployed at it, has no avaition support units deployed at it, wasn't used to bring in the supply that is stockpiled in field supply depots for ground units defending the front line potentially 40 miles or more from the location of the airfield in order to eliminate said supply is LAME, plain and simply. Sorry for your apparent inability to comprehend such as plain and simple fact. The oversimplification of the supply rules and structure facilitates it as a game tactic that is a valid tactic, but that makes it no less lame.

WitPZen....since there is no way to attack the field supply depots to which you refer ... we attack the airfield to destroy the unrepresented field supply depots. "Sorry for your apparent inability to comprehend such as plain and simple fact."

Guess you misseed this part of the discussion:

"The devs gave China a meager supply level so that Allied players couldn't exploit their large army to ahistorically mount large offensives that were just impossible with an Army consisting mostly of the personal armies of warlords with dubious loyalties to the national cause. This does a good job of historically limiting China, but it unwittingly handed the Japanese player a tailor made mechanism for exploitation.

If the game had a realistic mechansim for attacking supply directly it would by nature be far less effective than bombing airbases. Supply dumps in the field camoflaged in wooded or jungle terrain are far less easy to find, fix and direct effective attacks against than airfields. Especially when dealing with the supply dumps and lines of an army nearly devoid of large weaponry and motorization. Just think of the attempts of the US to interdict supply along the Ho Chi Min trail in Vietnam and then imagine how far less effective a similar effort on the part of a technologically inferior Japan of the 1940s would have been.

This particular aspect of the simplification of supply mechanisms provides for an ahistorically exploitable assault on China that often skews many games"

Or did you simply ignore it in your desire to make such an intelligent contribution to the discussion?

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

Bombing an airfield that isn't being used, has no air units deployed at it, has no avaition support units deployed at it, wasn't used to bring in the supply that is stockpiled in field supply depots for ground units defending the front line potentially 40 miles or more from the location of the airfield in order to eliminate said supply is LAME, plain and simply. Sorry for your apparent inability to comprehend such as plain and simple fact. The oversimplification of the supply rules and structure facilitates it as a game tactic that is a valid tactic, but that makes it no less lame.

WitPZen....since there is no way to attack the field supply depots to which you refer ... we attack the airfield to destroy the unrepresented field supply depots. "Sorry for your apparent inability to comprehend such as plain and simple fact."

Guess you misseed this part of the discussion:

"The devs gave China a meager supply level so that Allied players couldn't exploit their large army to ahistorically mount large offensives that were just impossible with an Army consisting mostly of the personal armies of warlords with dubious loyalties to the national cause. This does a good job of historically limiting China, but it unwittingly handed the Japanese player a tailor made mechanism for exploitation.

If the game had a realistic mechansim for attacking supply directly it would by nature be far less effective than bombing airbases. Supply dumps in the field camoflaged in wooded or jungle terrain are far less easy to find, fix and direct effective attacks against than airfields. Especially when dealing with the supply dumps and lines of an army nearly devoid of large weaponry and motorization. Just think of the attempts of the US to interdict supply along the Ho Chi Min trail in Vietnam and then imagine how far less effective a similar effort on the part of a technologically inferior Japan of the 1940s would have been.

This particular aspect of the simplification of supply mechanisms provides for an ahistorically exploitable assault on China that often skews many games"

Or did you simply ignore it in your desire to make such an intelligent contribution to the discussion?

No Hans...there are many different variables that lead to the "ahistoric" assault on China....you want a China that has an unassailable source of supply...give it daily allotments. As to other factors that play into the "China Syndrome" I would include weak Manchurian garrison requirements (which would include several subparts and deserves a discussion of its own), the entire land logistical system of the game which gives both sides a far more robust ability to move supply than was possessed IRL, related to logistics would be the transportation network, and weak Japanese garrison requirements within China to name a few...

Your veiled pompous personal insults...one of which I quoted in my initial response should be taken elsewhere...this forum deserves better, and the lack thereof would likely invite the "intelligent contribution" to the conversation.

[Puhis]

I'm fine with supply abstraction and bombing airfield/port can also destroy supply, but sometimes it just feel that supply loss by bombing is totally excessive.

I guess this is just one those drawbacks and limitations of the game engine.

[LoBaron]

I was short - and not very friendly - in my first response because of the general tone of your initial post, and the fact that you are around for so long that I don´t have the slightest
idea how it is possible to miss the fact, that many features of WitP make more sense if you use abstraction as a tool to rationalise certain game functions, and that by doing so it would
make your post unneccesary or require a completely different approach to the topic.

If someone completely new to the game posts similar comments my reaction would probably be different with a bit more emphasis on explanation.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Puhis

I'm fine with supply abstraction and bombing airfield/port can also destroy supply, but sometimes it just feel that supply loss by bombing is totally excessive.

I guess this is just one those drawbacks and limitations of the game engine.

I think Treespider is building a mod where he attempts to reduce the supply stacking over the whole map, so he I assume has a pretty strong and better informed
opinion on the topic, which I am probably lacking. So tbh I would be very interested in his view on this.

Let me just say that I do not have the feeling this is true.

Supply losses are very high in case large stocks of supply are attacked. Even so, it is pretty time consuming to "bomb" a hex out of supply. Even if supply reduction
happens fast through bombardement, it is due to

- a high ammount of units located in an isolated hex (high default supply consumption not directly related to bombing attacks, and high number of disableds which consume supplies to be "repaired")
- a high ammount of AA guns in that hex which consumes supply by shooting bombers (easily corrected by setting those units to "reserve" mode)
- a very large ammount of bombers (prefferedly HB) concentrated against a single target

and maybe other similar effects.

I think that all the above justifies a fast supply reduction in case of isolation, so is not a valid point for a general excessive supply loss due to bombing raids.
If the above points do not apply, in general I experience a very realistic supply reduction due to air strikes.

But this is an opinion based on only playing, I do not playtest.

[Puhis]

This is what I mean excessive.

[KenchiSulla]

ORIGINAL: Puhis

This is what I mean excessive.

I am sorry, but this picture doesn't really explain what happened.. It just shows 2100 supply points are not in that hex anymore.

[LoBaron]

Convincing.

[Puhis]

Yeah, I wrote post but disappeared because of connection error. Anyway, all I'm saying that Hans have good point about infantry supply. It should be hard to destroy supply of well fortified infantry, whether that's Chinese infantry in "rough" forest or Japanese infantry in jungle.

We all know supply system is not going to change. But I don't buy claims that the system is fine.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Puhis
Yeah, I wrote post but disappeared because of connection error.

In this case I apologize for my sarcasm.

There is a neglectable (means I can play according to HRs in PBEM or simply not do it against the AI) problem with certain aspects of supply.
But it is far more complex than anything Hans believes.

Treespider already pointed out several reasons for certain Chinese supply situations.

Let me add a two more:

We are playing a map with 40nm hex fields. This alone makes it impossible to simulate specific situations, as the granularity of terrain
can in no way reflect reality. You attack a huge area, and this area is never "only jungle", "only flat", only choose what you like.

Supply (this has been pointed out hundreds of times, and it is part of the "issue") is an abstraction. It represents ammunition, canned beef,
medical stuff, spare planes, avgas, guns, replacement tank crewmen. I could go on with this list ad nauseum.
You are not able to make a distinction between a bomb hit on an ammunition dump, or a bomb hit on a wooden medical tent. In reality the
effects would diverge 1:10000. How do you simulate both? It is only possible by either chosing the middle ground or adding a high power randomizer
to hit effects. Both solutions have drawbacks, as when the number of sorties gets too high the system doesn´t work very well anymore.

Combine this with the other posts explaining what happens, how it is caused, and how to abstract it to reduce the impression of something
being "LAME", and you pretty much find out that you can add solutions if you absolutely feel the need to. (e.g. add a supply source to China if you think it
is important to change the balance in this theatre and don´t want to agree on a HR).

[AirGriff]

I thought they toned down the supply hit issue from WitP. Then, it was any bomb hit took 1% of whatever supply was at the base. Now, I believe it is based on the ordinance dropped, though I'm not sure the exact affect. In any case, if you are worried about running out of supply, get smart and figure out how to overcome it. I can think of a few ways to at least partly deal with the problem by just using a little creative thinking (I won't divulge lest my worthy opponents take note). I do see where China is an issue and maybe an HR is in order, but elsewhere I'd disagree. Supply was designed to be a crititcal part of the game and should be part of any good player's strategy, both in a defensive and offensive sense. I see absolutely nothing wrong with targeting supply since both sides can do it to equal effect.

[LoBaron]

I think so too, AirGriff.

Although logic dictates that certain issues continue to exist, since abstraction levels in WitP AE mean that in case you stuff one hole at one
end you open up another hole at the other end. And small holes there are, as you only can go into so much detail limited by the abstraction
layer you are using.

But this is nothing compared to WitP and IMO not noticeable except in the most imbalanced circumstances. And those are nearly exclusively player
created (results of senseless classics like "if you start stacking, I start stacking more"). No worries, under normal circumstances and with
thoughtful play, you would not even notice.

There was, in one of the later patches, a change from the original 1% per hit rule to an a bit more sophisticated dice roll, which now includes
bomb size as variable. I have not noticed a huge deviation from the original formula, but that might be because in my PBEM we seldom create
unrealistic force concentrations.

Currently in our game there is an attritional bombing campaign going on against Rabaul and the Admiralties, so Mike, our honoured opponent Offenseman,
could chime in on the effects of the raids, but I will not encourage him as it obviousely is a matter of FOW and I don´t find it fair to ask him
to lift opsec. He would need to state his supply losses compared to standard supply consumption plus go into detail on AAA consumption
and ability to reinforce. Clearly it would put him into disadvantage to reveal such data, even more as I would be able to deduce much more information
from the parts he provides.

[AirGriff]

Regarding Puhis's charted example, I'd say that if you only have 2,999 supply at a base, it's not going to take much to take its' supply out. 3k of supply is woefully low. You need LOTS more supply than that for a front line base to survive a determined air campaign. You need tons of supply, tons of engineers to repair damage, a robust defense to make sustained air attacks untenable, and if possible some kind of counter move to draw off enemy attacks. If you can't do these, then it's probably a good time to find another place to dig in and start all over. Otherwise, the place is just a speed bump with a crew cut.

[Puhis]

ORIGINAL: AirGriff

Regarding Puhis's charted example, I'd say that if you only have 2,999 supply at a base, it's not going to take much to take its' supply out. 3k of supply is woefully low. You need LOTS more supply than that for a front line base to survive a determined air campaign. You need tons of supply, tons of engineers to repair damage, a robust defense to make sustained air attacks untenable, and if possible some kind of counter move to draw off enemy attacks. If you can't do these, then it's probably a good time to find another place to dig in and start all over. Otherwise, the place is just a speed bump with a crew cut.

Because it's PBEM game, I'm not going to give details of Ndeni. You're right about one thing, supply level there was too low and that was my mistake. Still, there was supply enough for couple months, and one day bombing destroyed virtually all the supply. IMO that's a bit too much...

I do agree LoBaron that this is much better than original games of this series, UV and WitP. IMO supply system is still not very good, so weird things can happen.

However, some mods have reduced bomb effectiveness, so that might give more reasonable results. There's so many reasons to start for example Babes mod...

[Bullwinkle58]

Although this horse is long beaten, dead, molded, and crumbled to dust, I still find myslef smiling that so much heat and steam is generated from base supply issues when a far more serious--massive really--"hole" exists in the log system in the game. It seems that this is The Subject Which Shall Not Be Named by JFBs, even as they bewail the ability of Allied 4es to hit a barn door.

I refer of course to the ability of mega-tonnage of petroleum products to "wander", on their own it seems but perhaps carried by coolies issued clay cups, from Singapore to Korea where they can be hopped across a narrow strait to the HI production lands. JFBs who proudly proclaim they do not fear Allied subs because they ahistorically move the resources the whole shebang was intended to capture home without ever getting wet. Put oil and fuel in tankers, expose them to loss, and you won't see 4-million HI point banks in 1945. Let petroleum travel across un-railed terrain for thousands of miles? JFB wet dream.

One reason I prefer playing the AI is it's honest, so far as I can tell, about cargo convoys.

I now return you to your regualrly scheduled thread.

[LoBaron]

Exactly.

Base buildup is more than stationing troops and building up forts. If you want sustainability you feed in as much of the abstracted
"from screwdrivers to Elko boats" stuff as possible. The whole game is logistics and supply driven.

The funny thing about abstraction is, you can view what the stuff is composed of how it suits the situation best:

A) If I haul in x tons of abstracted supply, this is the equvalent of a small ammo dump, 2 replacement a/c, 5 recruits and some food and meds.

OR

B1) If I haul in 20 times x tons of abstracted supply, this is the equivalent of the same small ammo dump but in a sheltered bunker, the same 2 replacement a/c
with loads of spare parts and 2 replacement pilots, 5 recruits with more food, a doctor with meds and medical facilities, reserve gear, a jeep, and a radio

OR

B2) If I haul in 20 times x tons of abstracted supply, this is the equivalent of 20 times the ammo, 40 replacement a/c and food supply for 4 months, a mobile
hospital and spare parts to last for a whole operation.


It all depends on how exposed the base is, how the situation developes and what your plans are with the stuff you are accumulating there.

All you need is a little bit of fantasy. [:)]

[LoBaron]

[:D][:D]