Subs Balance

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: janh

ORIGINAL: crsutton
...Not a game breaker but it seems to me that in any good simulation of the Pacific War (and this is the best)the Japanese player needs to sweat a lot over the Allied sub threat. Otherwise something is missing.
...

In principle yes, but only so when the Japanese player also sticks to measures like small or no convoy forming, poor escorts, poorly prepared/trained air cover etc. Which means that I believe the Japanese could have taken countermeasures to vastly reduce the effectiveness of the Allied sub threat just as the Allies managed themselves in the Atlantic. But that would have required hindsight and rethinking of Japanese priorities and doctrines, which happens and is explicitly enabled in this game. See Alreds post above, it's the benefit of hindsight.

And exactly what Greyjoy did -- a huge effort on managing the merchant fleet and ASW cover. The question should then indeed be: what is the Allied countermove to the countermove? Wolfpack tactics? I guess that's what I would be pondering about now.
I recall numerous times the question being asked whether having 2-3 subs in a TF makes a difference in detection and attack likelihood, but I never saw a clear and undisputed answer to that. I tried myself for a while, but it seemed to make hardly a difference. Perhaps even a negative one since it reduced my hunting area coverage. Any ideas on how to effectively organize something like a Wolfpack aside from just stacking single sub TFs in a small region?

Marginally at best but not vastly. A convoy system made up of merchants and escorts with amazingly crappy sonar and radar would have provided very little benefit to the Japanese. Unlike the Germans the Allies were routinely tracking Japanese convoys via radio intercepts and Ultra. Without the electronics to counter Allied submarines and with the subs having plenty of warning to position and track convoys, larger convoys would have only put more fish in the barrel. In spite of the limitations of American torpedoes the Allied sub victory over the Japanese merchant fleet was total and complete. This was a victory of electronic superiority and superior intelligence-something that the Japanese would never have been able to counter under any circumstances.

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

ORIGINAL: Chris H

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

In my game while the "super E" has certainly caused havoc its really the air ASW that is killing me. I lost over 50 subs sunk by ASW patrols so far. Under my opponents air umbrella I expect a sub to last about 1-2 days before either getting sunk or having to RTB due to damage from bombs.

I largely agree with Q-ball about the DL. Any sub I have within range of Eriks ASW planes instantly gets a 10/10 DL. And this is in mid 44 so my subs have air search radar. In the rare occasions I do manage to intercept something 9 out of 10 times the sub fires at the escorts. This is making merchant hunting an even bigger waste of time. I wish I had realized this sooner! [:)]

Has anybody installed the latest Beta data patch? This is supposed reduce the effectiveness of the super E?

I have not seen it. My subs, in '45, are really squishy against E escorts. By & large I agree with everything posted above. But the incredible effectiveness of late war ASW by Japan is something that needs to be given a hard look. Virtually any attack by a US sub against an escorted group of Japanese ships gets a severe counter attack forcing the sub to retire, if it survives. My subs receive a minimum of 4 hits received for every attack. Being forced down & not effective is one thing. Being suicidal is something else.

There's a big difference in spotting subs and killing them. I agree that late war ASW is too powerful but I've never tried the latest data patch. What I do not want to see is a reduction in the spotting ability, especially if the Japanese player has invested a lot of training time in it, nothing wrong in keeping the subs at bay.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: Chris H

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

ORIGINAL: Chris H





Has anybody installed the latest Beta data patch? This is supposed reduce the effectiveness of the super E?

I have not seen it. My subs, in '45, are really squishy against E escorts. By & large I agree with everything posted above. But the incredible effectiveness of late war ASW by Japan is something that needs to be given a hard look. Virtually any attack by a US sub against an escorted group of Japanese ships gets a severe counter attack forcing the sub to retire, if it survives. My subs receive a minimum of 4 hits received for every attack. Being forced down & not effective is one thing. Being suicidal is something else.

There's a big difference in spotting subs and killing them. I agree that late war ASW is too powerful but I've never tried the latest data patch. What I do not want to see is a reduction in the spotting ability, especially if the Japanese player has invested a lot of training time in it, nothing wrong in keeping the subs at bay.

But why? Japanese forces really had no better equipment for spotting Allied subs in 1944 than they did in 42. In fact it might have been less so as Allied air search radar grew more refined. They were on most occasion aware of Japanese aircraft long before those aircraft could see them. Training up a Japanese air crew in air search skill would in no way negate this. The common tactic in areas of heavy air traffic was for American subs to lie under the surface during the day and hunt the virtually blind Japanese ships at night using radar. I can see no scenario where better trained aircrews would make any difference at all under these circumstances. As the game is now the sub is pretty much always spotted and when spotted always attacked. No semblance to the actual events where Japanese ASW efforts only accounted for about one Allied sub a month for the entire war.

I can see where good play would allow the Japanese player to reduce the effect of Allied submarines to an extent, but we should not cross over into the realm of fantasy.

[SBD]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

ORIGINAL: Chris H





Has anybody installed the latest Beta data patch? This is supposed reduce the effectiveness of the super E?

I have not seen it. My subs, in '45, are really squishy against E escorts. By & large I agree with everything posted above. But the incredible effectiveness of late war ASW by Japan is something that needs to be given a hard look. Virtually any attack by a US sub against an escorted group of Japanese ships gets a severe counter attack forcing the sub to retire, if it survives. My subs receive a minimum of 4 hits received for every attack. Being forced down & not effective is one thing. Being suicidal is something else.

This was addressed by the Babes series of mods. I would be very surprised if it is included in the stock game in the future. But never say never.

The "super E" was addressed for the stock scenarios in the "patch 7 unofficial data scen updates" in the tech section.

[JocMeister]

I went over all my subs on the map this turn. They had either 0 DL or 10. Not a single one with something in between. Strange?

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

I can see where good play would allow the Japanese player to reduce the effect of Allied submarines to an extent, but we should not cross over into the realm of fantasy.

I say again this is a game and not a documentary who is to say what would have happened if the Japanese had focused more on ASW training. Whose to say what would have happened if the Japanese were the lucky ones at Midway or the Japanese realised there codes had been broken. Whose to say what would have happened if the bomb wasn't dropped or the US was ready and waiting in PH. What I will concede is the detection levels should perhaps be reduced, particularly at night and/or in bad weather.

The way the heavy bombers can be used in the game is also verging on the realms of fantasy as is Japanese research for that matter.

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

I went over all my subs on the map this turn. They had either 0 DL or 10. Not a single one with something in between. Strange?

Just checked my TF as the Japanese against AI and mine are similar. What I have noticed is there seems do be very few instances were there is a difference between DL/MDL? After rereading the manual on detection levels I have my doubts that detection is working correctly for TF?

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
Absolutley the only one useable, and they were a very small proportion of the U-boat fleet. The vast majority were Type VIIs.

I looked through the development of the boats of the various navies this morning, and was quite astonished to find that the US fleet-boat types, although almost 30% larger in displacement, had about the same range as the Type IX. I always thought they also had a larger range and longer endurance, but it would seem at least from that point the type IX are comparable. The VII were about 25% shorter legged, comparable to the British (Dutch) boats like the T-class. Another surprise I found was how little the British and Dutch boats actually contributed to the defeat of the IJ merchants, far less than 10% of sunk tonnage. I think I use their boats to much greater effect in the game in 42 alone.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
The Allies didn't have 3.5 years of warning and their efforts then sprang forth fully formed. They worked incrementally, experimenting. The Japanese had ample warning too. USN fleet boats were leaving Pearl on war patrol on 12/8/1941.

That's what I was pointing at. The British quickly felt the effect of the U-boats and knew them from WW1, so they rather quickly implemented measures and put a high priority on submarine warfare, ASW developments, convoys etc. Admittedly, the geography you described offered them less disadvantage points than the Japanese faced, but more important thing probably is that the Japanese were not recognizing the seriousness of the submarine threat they would face in late 43 or 44 before 1943.

I assume the lack of success of the fleetboats in 42 to mid 43 due to the duds, and their still comparably small number, made the Japanese underestimate that. Add to that a difference in doctrinal thinking since they themselves did not see subwarfare as merchant warfare against civilian ships, and they general cultural differences, and you can see why it took until the peaking losses in spring 44 for them to install a command and coordination structure for civil convoys, until they began increasing convoy sizes from some 5 to 10-20 ships with better escorts usage, or began looking at ASW warfare with more pressure. Too little too late, though. The Japanese never saw this coming.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
That they even managed to get flaot plane ASW up in many of their islands is remarkable, not a failure. But to expect them to be able to operate multi-engine, radar-equipped ASW from flyspecs in the DEI is nuts.

This is true, but imagine how it would change AE if you knew that as Japanese, there would be now measures possible to reduce the damage due to the merchant warfare one the fleet boats arrive in numbers and the torpedo problems go?
In my opinion it is fortunate that AE is not hardwired like this and one can implement a proper convoy system rather quickly (latest by conclusion of the expansion phase late-42), just as if the Japanese had not had the problems in coordinating large numbers of ships in a formation, with the escorts, with air, or even coordinating the various convoys itself. As if the measures they started to adopt mid-44, would already be started 12/41. Or even using hindsight to copy measures the Allies learned against the Germans. From training pilots in numbers in ASW duty to building up small airstrips at suitable locations in the DEI, SRA etc so one isn't stuck with float planes in 43/44. Using air cover to suppress boats selectively along the convoy lanes etc.

It is a lot of benefit one can gain from hindsight, and this is one aspect where I believe the Japanese floundered so badly, that there ought to be a good potential to last out longer even with the technical capabilities they had.

I tried to find the statistics on merchant losses from convoys/independent travelers, but I only found the statistics from the USN Administrations as published in 1947. I think it was the same table that I saw in Nimitz book a while back, which showed that the adoption of a strict convoy system lead to a reduction in Allied shipping loss by 60%. It is convoluted with all the other factors that also changed during the same time, though. Unfortunately I couldn't find any similar table for the PTO losses, but I mean to recall that I had found a PDF of a thesis from a USN student from the early 50s on the PTO that had a table of losses by origin and by travel. I can't find of remember where I originally got it.

Anyway, I tried to google for such a table, but instead hit a book that actually discusses this exact topic: "Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War", James B. Wood, 2007. See page 53 following, he estimates that with a timely implementation of a proper convoy system the losses could have been reduced by 50%. The argumentation seems sound for what I know, though of course it is just an estimate, but it is the size of the improvements that I would say a Japanese player could expect with proper effort. Not sure how it is in Greyjoy's game -- are the losses of AK and TK far below 10-20 ships per month?

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: SBD

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Lecivius




I have not seen it. My subs, in '45, are really squishy against E escorts. By & large I agree with everything posted above. But the incredible effectiveness of late war ASW by Japan is something that needs to be given a hard look. Virtually any attack by a US sub against an escorted group of Japanese ships gets a severe counter attack forcing the sub to retire, if it survives. My subs receive a minimum of 4 hits received for every attack. Being forced down & not effective is one thing. Being suicidal is something else.

This was addressed by the Babes series of mods. I would be very surprised if it is included in the stock game in the future. But never say never.

The "super E" was addressed for the stock scenarios in the "patch 7 unofficial data scen updates" in the tech section.

When most forumites say "stock" they mean official, Matrix QAed stock patches/upgrades. Andy Mac has done great work on his own and it's available, but it isn't official changes.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

I went over all my subs on the map this turn. They had either 0 DL or 10. Not a single one with something in between. Strange?

Yes. I have 2/2, 3/3, 0, 10/10. Wait a few days and re-check.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: janh

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
Absolutley the only one useable, and they were a very small proportion of the U-boat fleet. The vast majority were Type VIIs.

I looked through the development of the boats of the various navies this morning, and was quite astonished to find that the US fleet-boat types, although almost 30% larger in displacement, had about the same range as the Type IX.

About the same range, yes, but far different offensive power. A USN fleet boat had ten tubes, six forward and four aft, and 24 torpedoes. (14/10) A Type IX had only six tubes (4/2) and only 20 torpedoies. Except five were stored externally, a set-up that looks crazy to anyone who isn't a naval architect or a senior officer who doesn't have to go to sea on one of these things.

The greater displacement allowed for crew comfort (A/C, showers, a laundry, fresher food, free space) which added to combat effectiveness in an 80-day patrol in hot climates. Other than a few IX patrols to the Carib, south of the equator off Africa, and a very few sent to SE Asia, IX patrols were in the Atlantic, not in heat.

I always thought they also had a larger range and longer endurance, but it would seem at least from that point the type IX are comparable. The VII were about 25% shorter legged,

The VIIC, by far the most numerous VII, had a range of 6500 NM at moderate transit speed. A Gato-class had 11,000 miles at 10 kts, a Standard bell. That is not a trivial difference. A Type VII, to have return fuel, any loiter time, with allowance for attack and evasion speed, could only go, maybe, 2000 miles out. That doesn't get them to where the Japanese were.

comparable to the British (Dutch) boats like the T-class. Another surprise I found was how little the British and Dutch boats actually contributed to the defeat of the IJ merchants, far less than 10% of sunk tonnage. I think I use their boats to much greater effect in the game in 42 alone.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
The Allies didn't have 3.5 years of warning and their efforts then sprang forth fully formed. They worked incrementally, experimenting. The Japanese had ample warning too. USN fleet boats were leaving Pearl on war patrol on 12/8/1941.

That's what I was pointing at. The British quickly felt the effect of the U-boats and knew them from WW1,

So should the Japanese if they'd been paying attention. They live on an island same as the English. But as you say there werre cultural blinders.

so they rather quickly implemented measures and put a high priority on submarine warfare, ASW developments, convoys etc. Admittedly, the geography you described offered them less disadvantage points than the Japanese faced, but more important thing probably is that the Japanese were not recognizing the seriousness of the submarine threat they would face in late 43 or 44 before 1943.

I assume the lack of success of the fleetboats in 42 to mid 43 due to the duds,

It has become a truism in the forum that fleet boats were crap until mid-late 1943. In fact they had impressive sinking totals per boat in the dud era.

and their still comparably small number, made the Japanese underestimate that.

To an extent. But the Japanese should have very early recognized that the USN was not using its boats in the pre-war published doctrinal manner. They were not hunting capital warships, but rather merchants. How many months and years of slack do you give the Japanese on this? The data was accumulating by early spring 1942 that the USN was doing things unplanned for in pre-war doctrine.

Add to that a difference in doctrinal thinking since they themselves did not see subwarfare as merchant warfare against civilian ships, and they general cultural differences, and you can see why it took until the peaking losses in spring 44 for them to install a command and coordination structure for civil convoys, until they began increasing convoy sizes from some 5 to 10-20 ships with better escorts usage, or began looking at ASW warfare with more pressure. Too little too late, though. The Japanese never saw this coming.

You give them a lot more slack than I do. No nation engaged in a total war for world domination with another superpower can allow themselves the luxury of waiting 2.5 years to react to actual warfighting results. The Japanese were simply bad at ASW. We were very, very good at submarine warfare. No amount of apology for Japan can disguise the fact that they were terrible submarine strategists on multiple levels. Saying "It was their culture" is a cop out. They simply were bad at it. And they paid.

The more interesting question is whether more convoying would have helped. I think not.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
That they even managed to get flaot plane ASW up in many of their islands is remarkable, not a failure. But to expect them to be able to operate multi-engine, radar-equipped ASW from flyspecs in the DEI is nuts.

This is true, but imagine how it would change AE if you knew that as Japanese, there would be now measures possible to reduce the damage due to the merchant warfare one the fleet boats arrive in numbers and the torpedo problems go?
In my opinion it is fortunate that AE is not hardwired like this and one can implement a proper convoy system rather quickly (latest by conclusion of the expansion phase late-42), just as if the Japanese had not had the problems in coordinating large numbers of ships in a formation, with the escorts, with air, or even coordinating the various convoys itself. As if the measures they started to adopt mid-44, would already be started 12/41. Or even using hindsight to copy measures the Allies learned against the Germans. From training pilots in numbers in ASW duty to building up small airstrips at suitable locations in the DEI, SRA etc so one isn't stuck with float planes in 43/44. Using air cover to suppress boats selectively along the convoy lanes etc.

It is a mistake to extend the Allied convoy results in the Atlantic to the idea of convoying itself and then argue that fewer, larger convoys would have "saved" Japan's ASW. What made Allied results what they were was not convoying itself; that's just more ships in fewer formations with more escorts each. What made the Allied version work was the escorts themselves, and the air coordination, and the C&C, and the sensors. The Japanese had none of this. They had crappy escorts, crappy sensors, crappy C&C between ship COs, and no Jeep carriers.

What do you get if you put 50 ore-carriers in a huge convoy in Java, together with 15 of the best escorts Japan had? A target rich envioronment. The hardest, by far, portion of the classic submarine attack profile is the Detection phase. Once fleet baots found a formation, of any size, they most often got off an attack and much more than half the time hit something with a weapon. But the Pacific is vast, and 5-ship formations are small. Radar helps, but the radar horizon from a surfaced sub, due to height of eye and curvature, is not much more than visual (by day.) In many cases smoke was seen below the horizon before radar saw the maker of it. (Japanese ships smoked a lot more than most Allied, in part due to still having a lot of coal-burners.)

So the argument for big convoys is they offer fewer unit target formations. And they do, but they also cover more sea, they take more comms to control, they take more radio traffic for Ultra decoders, and they move at the speed of the slowest member. All of which makes the detection phase easier for a sub. (Or subs; bigger convoys would have made the USN go to cooperative hunting packs sooner, if only to get more weapons present for the actual attack.) And once that big, slow-moving convoy is found, maybe at a choke point, maybe in blue water, the IJN esocrts are STILL crap. Their sensors never were good, even at the end. Their sonar especially, before training deficiencies, relied on echo ranging and not passive measures, and, like radar, echo ranging favors the hunted as they can hear you a lot farther away than you can ping off them.

So, with the same escorts, the same sensors, the same lack of organic air cover provided by jeeps, the same lack of LR air bases for multi-engine ASW, all Japanese convoys do is make an attack by sub(s) more efficient once the detection phase is overcome. And it was not going to be unless Ultra were put out of business at a minimum. Japan needed to re-do merchant traffic habits and support for them from top to bottom, from a standing start, as the Allies did. And that was never going to happen. Putting the sheep in bigger flocks just means the wolves get less out of breath killing them all at once.

I tried to find the statistics on merchant losses from convoys/independent travelers, but I only found the statistics from the USN Administrations as published in 1947. I think it was the same table that I saw in Nimitz book a while back, which showed that the adoption of a strict convoy system lead to a reduction in Allied shipping loss by 60%.

Again, not the system itself. The components of the system.

It is convoluted with all the other factors that also changed during the same time, though. Unfortunately I couldn't find any similar table for the PTO losses, but I mean to recall that I had found a PDF of a thesis from a USN student from the early 50s on the PTO that had a table of losses by origin and by travel. I can't find of remember where I originally got it.

It's important to be clear on terminology. When forumites say "convoy" they have a picture in their heads. The converse of "convoy" is not necessarily "single traveller." There are gradations. Some few Japanese ships, after the first months, traveled alone. But mostly small formations of 3-5 merchants travelled with 1-3 escorts (it's in the patrol reports.) Is that a convoy? Technically it is, but it's not an "Atlantic convoy."

Anyway, I tried to google for such a table, but instead hit a book that actually discusses this exact topic: "Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War", James B. Wood, 2007. See page 53 following, he estimates that with a timely implementation of a proper convoy system the losses could have been reduced by 50%.

I disagree if no other factors were changed. The Japanese would have had the same building blocks, and the USN would have reduced single-boat patrols and gone to multiples earlier than they did.

The argumentation seems sound for what I know, though of course it is just an estimate, but it is the size of the improvements that I would say a Japanese player could expect with proper effort. Not sure how it is in Greyjoy's game -- are the losses of AK and TK far below 10-20 ships per month?

Convoys in the game aid Japan greatly due to the DL factors mentioned, as well as the code forcing attacks on escorts far more often than they occured in RL. Most sub COs did not find it difficult to get inside IJN ASW screens, at least for a first attack. In the game escorts take the shot at least 50% of the time in my experience. This is far from historic. So, in the game, I agree that fewer, larger merchant formations can reduce Japanese player losses. But that's a code artifact and a game balance, not a reflection of historical truths.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: janh

]Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War[/link]", James B. Wood, 2007. See page 53 following, he estimates that with a timely implementation of a proper convoy system the losses could have been reduced by 50%. The argumentation seems sound for what I know, though of course it is just an estimate, but it is the size of the improvements that I would say a Japanese player could expect with proper effort. Not sure how it is in Greyjoy's game -- are the losses of AK and TK far below 10-20 ships per month?

Of course it is all speculation but I disagree with the expert here. My reasons are 1.Unlike the cat and mouse game played in the Atlantic, the Americans were very good at tracking Japanese convoys. I would think that a large Japanese convoy would have been very difficult to hide. 2. With this advance knowledge the Americans would have concentrated submarines in the path of the convoys and employed the wolf pack tactics that the Germans tried. 3. These wolf pack tactics would have succeeded because the tactical situation was the exact opposite in that the Allies held total technical superiority. Without, huff duff, effective airborne radar, effective surface search radar and effective sonar on the Japanese side the Allied submarines would track the convoy by day and then attack en masse at night with devastating results just as the Germans were able to do early in he war. Japanese shipping remained virtually helpless at night right until the end of the war. In this case a large convoy would have just played right into the Allies' hands. Yes, they would have been able to concentrate more escorts but I suspect any number of escorts would have been simply overwhelmed by multiple submarines.

I know that somebody is bound to bring up the increasing number of Japanese radar and sonar equipped ships but don't. That dog just never did hunt....

[Jorge_Stanbury]

From my forays into Silent Hunter IV forums,; I was under the impression that Japanese sonar equipment was good, or as good as the Allies

Radar is another story; depth charges rather puny and "advanced weapons" like headhog/ squid non existant

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

From my forays into Silent Hunter IV forums,; I was under the impression that Japanese sonar equipment was good, or as good as the Allies

Radar is another story; depth charges rather puny and "advanced weapons" like headhog/ squid non existant

I used to hang out in the SH forums too. Subsim.com? Let's just say that the level of actual technical knowledge was low. IMO.

[JocMeister]

I miss SH on the Amiga! Last good SH game was nr III with GW mod! That was awesome. Then they ruined it! Ruined I tell you.

[janh]

I grew up with Silent Service 1 and 2, then AoD and later bought SH III. With the GW mod it was a blast. Too bad it lacked the wolf packs, though, or a strategic level. SHV seemed to have a great potential, but after the initially devastating critics and the annoying DRM idea, it was an easy decision to turn to WitP and ARMA.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: crsutton
These wolf pack tactics would have succeeded because the tactical situation was the exact opposite in that the Allies held total technical superiority.

Could be true, but I think the key difference is what you mentioned earlier: intel, ultra etc. During times at which the Germans had information on the Atlantic convoys, they also had success. This waned once the Germans lacked guidance by intel, LR-recon or the ability to stay surfaced and increase the footprint of detection. That and having the Allies on the contrary being able to track the U-boat positions with new ASW methods as you mentioned or reading the German code at phases, was a -- or probably even the -- key to their failure. The Japanese could not have copied this, true.

[Lokasenna]

I enjoyed Silent Service for NES. Tried Silent Hunter IV, but could never get into it.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
Convoys in the game aid Japan greatly due to the DL factors mentioned, as well as the code forcing attacks on escorts far more often than they occured in RL.

The latter part is something that actually interests me a lot more than the DL question. They truly have a habit of targeting escorts, especially slow ones like the PBs. This makes adding PB and other small escorts all the time to adsorb sub attacks a useful tactic. Not sure why this is so. I recall Michael M already commented on that a while ago.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
I enjoyed Silent Service for NES. Tried Silent Hunter IV, but could never get into it.

My favorite is probably still AoD. The AI was terrible, but the overall concept and stuff were great.