DBB scen 30 (IronBabes): Norm FP weirdness?

[GreyJoy]

Hi,

Maybe i've found something interesting in Scen 30 (Ironbabes with reduced cargo).
I'm playing with PDU OFF and noticed something strange while planning my R&D industries setups
tm.asp?m=3597230

It seems that the not a single Group (included those who arrive as reinforcements) can upgrade to the Norm.
Is that WAD?

Thanks

GJ

[HansBolter]

What do you mean by "upgrade to the Norm"?

I'm playing that scenario against the AI with extended map and stacking limits and have found no anomalies.

I am, however, playing with PDU on. I imagine that may be the difference.

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

What do you mean by "upgrade to the Norm"?

I'm playing that scenario against the AI with extended map and stacking limits and have found no anomalies.

I am, however, playing with PDU on. I imagine that may be the difference.

I mean that there's not a single group, active or scheldued to arrive, that has the float plane Norm in its upgrade path.
That means in a PDU OFF environement, you won't be able to use the Norm, no matter when or where.
This is strange, cause, afaik, every single plane which is not in production in 1941 can be used throughout the game, even if sometimes in very small numbers.
Considering that the Norm is, along with Jake, the best FP in Japanese arsenal, I find this OOB decision quite strange and wondered if it was WAD or, maybe, just an oversight

[Symon]

Yep. That's true. No groups have it and none of them upgrade to it. The airteam probably did it that way because the plane never worked in reality; it was a deathtrap and was cancelled after 6 prototypes and 9 production planes were built. [:)]

[PaxMondo]

Nic,

Most of the "fun" planes for the IJ will never have a group, or maybe only one, to use them with PDU OFF. You need to plan on using the Nate until '45. Kate/Val the entire game. A6M the entire game. That's what PDU OFF means. You have to follow exactly what the air groups upgraded to when they upgraded historically. There is almost no deviation allowed. Don't bother to R&D as it will not help you much at all and just eat supply for very little benefit.

So the good news is that the IJ side now plays like the allied side, the economy is trivial; it almost runs itself. This allows you to focus on the tactical combat and ignore the economy. Banzai!!!

[GreyJoy]

Symon: Yes, that's a rational reason and, when someone pointed me out that only 15 of those planes were built in RL before the program was completely written off, i thought it was a good one. However the same logic do not apply to a lot of other "late war goodies" Japan has. There are 32 Sentais that can upgrade to the KI-94II, which, afaik, never was produced. Same can be said for jet planes or many other cool stuff that never went gold in RL, remaining only "fantasy programs". That's why i asked the original question, because i thought it was strange that a so severe treatement was given to the poor "Norm", while to other fantasy planes were given the ability and the chance to see the light of Birth and to be part of the war (even in small numbers). Not that having or not having the Norm changes my "japanese" life, mind you, just curious[:D]

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

Nic,

Most of the "fun" planes for the IJ will never have a group, or maybe only one, to use them with PDU OFF. You need to plan on using the Nate until '45. Kate/Val the entire game. A6M the entire game. That's what PDU OFF means. You have to follow exactly what the air groups upgraded to when they upgraded historically. There is almost no deviation allowed. Don't bother to R&D as it will not help you much at all and just eat supply for very little benefit.

So the good news is that the IJ side now plays like the allied side, the economy is trivial; it almost runs itself. This allows you to focus on the tactical combat and ignore the economy. Banzai!!!

I know very well Pax! ))
But that's the fun part imho! Trying to do the best with what you have!
I do not agree with you on the RnD stuff anyway. If you do things right, i do believe you can still impact on the general situation of your air forces!
Fighting with KI-43 Ic or with a KI-43 IIb makes all the difference imho. And if you can get the IIb version 6 months earlier...well, why shouldn't i try?[8D]
Think i'll never play with PDU ON again in a PBEM[;)]
Just like stacking limits, extended maps or DBB Oob, PDU OFF is now part of my "MUST HAVE"[&o]

[ny59giants]

GJ - I think a good trade off for allowing PDU "ON" is for the Allies to get working torpedoes.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

GJ - I think a good trade off for allowing PDU "ON" is for the Allies to get working torpedoes.

really? As the Allied I am at least as horny about PDU on as the Japanese. Having a production model and playing with PDU off makes it moot to me.

[mind_messing]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

GJ - I think a good trade off for allowing PDU "ON" is for the Allies to get working torpedoes.

No ship withdrawals is better, IMO.

PDU On makes Japanese air power stronger, No ship withdrawals boosts Allied naval strength.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy
Fighting with KI-43 Ic or with a KI-43 IIb makes all the difference imho. And if you can get the IIb version 6 months earlier...well, why shouldn't i try?[8D]

Wait until you get there and then tell me ... I've already been there and done that.

You still have all those Nate units which won't upgrade until '45, ditto Kate, Val, Nettie, etc ... I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you're never going to convert me. I did one game PDU OFF, never again. No fun at all for me. It was too frustarating to be in late '43 and still stuck flying Val and Kate and Oscar and Nate and Zeros, but trying to face Corsair, Bolts, Stangs, Cats, .... sure, you'll have a couple Tojo, a George, a few Jill and Judy, a couple Helen, a Peggy but Oscar, Nate, Zero, Val, Sally, Nettie and Kate are going to still be the most prevalent. Be prepared for that. Seriously. You build Sally until '45. You build Nettie until '45. You need to really plan to build a ton of Tsurugi type. You get a lot of small groups late for kami that will only use those Tsurugi AC.

I'm happy you're excited, but what you're finding now is only the tip of the iceberg. You've already had 4 separete threads now on your "discoveries" of what you can't do or can't use. RnD all you wish, but you had better keep all the 1941 AC in production or you won't be flying a lot of air groups ...

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy
Fighting with KI-43 Ic or with a KI-43 IIb makes all the difference imho. And if you can get the IIb version 6 months earlier...well, why shouldn't i try?[8D]

Wait until you get there and then tell me ... I've already been there and done that.

You still have all those Nate units which won't upgrade until '45, ditto Kate, Val, Nettie, etc ... I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you're never going to convert me. I did one game PDU OFF, never again. No fun at all for me. It was too frustarating to be in late '43 and still stuck flying Val and Kate and Oscar and Nate and Zeros, but trying to face Corsair, Bolts, Stangs, Cats, .... sure, you'll have a couple Tojo, a George, a few Jill and Judy, a couple Helen, a Peggy but Oscar, Nate, Zero, Val, Sally, Nettie and Kate are going to still be the most prevalent. Be prepared for that. Seriously. You build Sally until '45. You build Nettie until '45. You need to really plan to build a ton of Tsurugi type. You get a lot of small groups late for kami that will only use those Tsurugi AC.

I'm happy you're excited, but what you're finding now is only the tip of the iceberg. You've already had 4 separete threads now on your "discoveries" of what you can't do or can't use. RnD all you wish, but you had better keep all the 1941 AC in production or you won't be flying a lot of air groups ...

Do you want to scare me Pax? [:D]
I understand what you mean, but i've deeply seen the "other side" (PDU ON), both from japanese and allied POVs, and my opinion is that, in a Pbem environement, the downsides of PDU ON are really too many. You can't control the fact that the IJ Air Force can field, in late 1942, only Tojos and Georges and Jacks. In 1943 only Franks and later models of J2Ms and N1Ks. In 1944 you are gonna face hordes of KI-94s, Shidens etc etc. Too much imho.
I already foresee my future frustrations of having to fight Bolts and Corsairs with Oscars and Zeros. I know it won't be easy, nor satisfying... but i'm pretty sure that will give me and my opponent a much interesting game.
This thread (and the other one) were meant not to complain, but only to understand if it was WAD not to be able to field the Norm FP at all, so the question why it was included in the game at all. Just curiosity, nothing more!

[GreyJoy]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

GJ - I think a good trade off for allowing PDU "ON" is for the Allies to get working torpedoes.

I'm not looking for any tradeoff at all micheal. I'm pretty confident the PDU OFF will give us a much better gaming experience

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

GJ - I think a good trade off for allowing PDU "ON" is for the Allies to get working torpedoes.

I'm not looking for any tradeoff at all micheal. I'm pretty confident the PDU OFF will give us a much better gaming experience

let's keep this in mind and speak about it in early/mid 44 if the game makes it that far [;)]

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

if it was WAD not to be able to field the Norm FP at all, so the question why it was included in the game at all. Just curiosity, nothing more!

For the PDU ON like all of the other late model AC and to allow the game to go a bit beyond VJ day as Bill indicated. Very few of any of the late IJ AC models in the game ever actually got into production much.

Norm worked and it didn't work. The issue was that the float was jettisoned and generally lost so this made every mission for the Norm pricey. The range wasn't that much greater than the Jake, so the IJN didn't pursue it. Also, while faster than the Jake, it still was easy meat for allied fighters, so again, not much gain for a fair amount of cost. I tend to agree with the IJN assessment.

In my mod, I've dropped the normal range way down and added drop tanks to bring it back to its normal range. The purpose is to represent the added cost of a norm Norm mission. It isn't perfect, but its a step. My next go around, I think will make a 2E to better represent the AvSupport requirement.

Then in game, just like the IJN, I don't tend to use them too much. They burn supply at 2x the Jake and the extra range isn't all that much. However, there are a few places on the map where those extra few hexes matter and so I do build and equip a few groups.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

You can't control the fact that the IJ Air Force can field, in late 1942, only Tojos and Georges and Jacks. In 1943 only Franks and later models of J2Ms and N1Ks. In 1944 you are gonna face hordes of KI-94s, Shidens etc etc. Too much imho.

True, absolutely true. But you should also know exactly how to counter this as the allies. It isn't hard at all, it just requires time.

Most allied players suffer morale issues, not game issues, because their expectation is that the war should proceed at the historical pace. That won't happen if the IJN doesn't suffer a Midway and if the internal politics of the IJ production are removed; both of which are typical in a PBEM game. That means, the allies can't expect to have overwhelming force until VE day. That's 18 months later than their expectations based upon history, but a history that will not play out in the game and they simply lose their will to play. Every IJ player knows that you cannot stop the Russian hordes, or for that matter the allied LCU's from about '44 on. Literally, you cannot stop them as the IJ. The allied firepower is so overwhelming, you just have to see it from the IJ side to really understand the losses. You've seen it, you know.

So a PDU ON game will last until '46 if both players are evenly matched. The allies get to use ALL of their late game toys. They probably won't be able to land in Japan unless they pull off a Hokkaido landing like you did against Rader. But, they will have taken everything else back and will be pulverizing the HI from bases in Korea with those 100's of B17's that they get after VE day.

So, the allies win with a HUGE VP advantage. The IJ economy is wrecked. They may or may not have an airforce at games end, but if they do it is just pool aircraft as they can't build any more.

This all assumes that the IJ player doesn't implode his economy, which we've seen several times now. Of course, the allies win that much sooner if that happens.

[obvert]

The other thing I'm hoping PDU-off allows is to get away from the reliance on massive death star airbases countered by other defensive death star bases. Wen you have 1946 experiments flying in 44 that's all you can have, and it makes the game not very interesting.

PDU-off could allow players to be creative about how they use the planes they have.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: obvert

The other thing I'm hoping PDU-off allows is to get away from the reliance on massive death star airbases countered by other defensive death star bases. Wen you have 1946 experiments flying in 44 that's all you can have, and it makes the game not very interesting.

PDU-off could allow players to be creative about how they use the planes they have.

PDO OFF doesn't change how many planes you can and will build, only the models. You still have the exact same number of air groups. So instead of 1000's of Tojo's you will build 1000's of Nates. You'll stack them as much as you can because numbers matter. In fact with Nates you will need even more numbers to be able to hold your front. I wonder if that was Tojo's reasoning? [;)]

[PaxMondo]

I do have to add this about PDU OFF: it makes the P-40 a front line aircraft for much of the game as it was historically. I can remember a long time back reading about the air war in WWII and wondering why in the heck the US kept building the P40 when it had so many better planes. After my first, and only, PDU OFF game I discovered why. Since the IJA was still fielding the Nate/Oscar, the P-40 was still a very competitive plane. Given that it was tooled up and well supplied, it made sense to keep it in production. If the IJA had switched over to Tojo in a big way, as many PDU ON game do, I doubt the US would have continued the P40 production.

Developing this realization led me to change my mod. The allies stop building the P40 with the K model and switch to a more advanced model depending upon the country. For the USAAAF, this is the P47. So all of the P40/P39 production goes to P47 to counter the Tojo 'incursion'. I'm sure that if this had happened IRL there would have been some drop in numbers, but for my mod I just did a simple conversion keeping the total number of aircraft put into the game whole.

[oldman45]

I am sure you're aware Pax that many of the motivations for the US production was how many could we build? The Sherman tank, the P40 various ships these were mass produced even though they were not the best. That said, I like your idea and may go back and look at my mod now.