Japanese ASW Efforts

[geofflambert]

I adore Burt Lancaster, by the way. What a fantastic actor!

[adarbrauner]

ORIGINAL: Ian R

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve


Naval Search works for the average plane (unless of course you've highly trained the crew in ASW

I agree this works well in the (stock) game. Its easier to leave the aircraft on naval search, because they hardly ever hit any subs anyway, and send a group of small ASW vessels to sit on them when you find them near a port. Another point is that simply putting escorts with your cargo TFs means the subs will come to them.

I also have reason to believe that no matter how you try to mod aircraft weapons, they still hardly ever get a sinking hit.

Some mods (e.g. mine) have some tweaks to late war aircraft (allied in my case) that you'd think might make the ASW mission better. My Privateers have good radar, and "ASW" weapons including FIDO, etc. The ASW weapons are modeled as more accurate versions of GP bombs, because they have to be modeled as GP bombs so that they work within the parameters of the game's systems. So these are also restricted to ASW missions (using the device filters) and can't be loaded for city bombing etc.

According to the ops reports in my testing, my ASW guys were regularly hitting IJN subs late war, but a lot of it is no doubt FOW misinformation. I opened up the IJ turn at one point and had a look at the sunk list - leaving aside many Ha boat* losses recorded as foundered, hit obstruction, marine or operational casualty, the losses seemed to be about 65% depth charges (which I think includes some boats forced to surface and then finished off with gunfire), about 30+% aerial bombs, and maybe 5% to other things including other subs' torpedoes, and in only 2 cases surface gunfire.

Judging by the location information most of the bomb losses were from port attacks. There were quite a few 500lb GP bomb hits said to cause at sea sinkings, but I think some of these were trying to limp away from places like Truk, Manilla, and Takao after the port was heavily bombed.

Not one reported sinking from a FIDO hit [:(], Squid or Hedgehog. However, my "600lb ASW bomb", which is actually an aircraft delivered depth charge and only carried by patrol types on ASW loadout, bagged a half dozen boats at sea. Or maybe not - they may have been caught repairing afterwards by a port strike.

My conclusion was that even with the tweaked stuff I put in, patrolling aircraft still get very few hits causing sinkings. There is a possibility they are getting hits that sufficiently damage subs to send them home for repairs, but no easy way to extract that information.


Edit: * One Ha boat was reported as "abandoned" at Adelaide. Never ever knew it was there.

This is very interesting, Ian

[witpqs]

A side note relevant to some of this: In the combat reports a submerged submarine can take one or more "hits". Nothing more specific than that, so if you look for Hedgehog hits or something they will never show up AFAIK. Also, the way the combat routines abstract things it is possible that all the various ASW weapons a ship has might be reported simply as 'depth charges' in the combat animations. Just keep in mind that many messages are fully hard-coded. Only some things get data filled in from the scenario files, like ship names or whatever. With all the variability in AE sometimes it is hard to know for sure which is which without a programmer telling us so.

[adarbrauner]

What Witpqs is suggesting, Ian, is that your modified antisub mission ordnance could have been more effective than what apparent from the reports etc.

In any case, I'm very impressed by your device, and I'd probably be willing to import your mod package.

[Ian R]

Adarbrauner, there are actually a couple of allied 600lb bomb devices in stock - in slots #1876 and #1889. So when I say "my 600lb ASW bomb" its actually a mod of the GP bomb in #1876. As I don't know the specifics of how the exe resolves GP bombs striking submarines, it seemed safest not to muck about with the penetration, effect, and so forth. So the new device is simply a 600lb GP bomb with the accuracy increased 16.67% (because its a weapon designed to not need to actually hit its target).

[adarbrauner]

ORIGINAL: Ian R

(because its a weapon designed to not need to actually hit its target).

? Explain ?

"With accuracy increased by 16.67 %"

Why by only 16.67 %?

[Ian R]

Depth charges are supposed to damage a subs hull by blast effect - because the chances of a full on hit were fairly miniscule (but improved by Hedgehog or Squid ahead throwers with multi warheads).

16.67% (from 24 for the standard 600lb GP bomb to 28 for the ASW only version) because I don't know what the precise combat algorithm is and didn't want to break the modelling by going too far. I also put in a universal allied 435lb air delivered depth charge (Mk VII aircraft depth charge), again modeled as a more accurate (435lb) GP bomb.

FIDO is modeled as a sort of (very) enhanced accuracy bomb but with massive penetration & blast effect.

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

For all I know, accuracy may have little importance in the algorithm, blast effect may be more important. The 'powers that be' have stated quite often, that they will not release these details. Nor will they give us a save game editor - even for AI only games, nearly a decade after release, so we can sandbox these things more esily. [/rant].

[witpqs]

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

I've been reading this thread but in and out (meaning not every post in detail), so I might have missed you saying you are already doing this.

A weapon categorized as "ASW" is one thing, but the detailed aircraft configuration codes they made available allow you to specify certain weapons for certain missions. Are you using that configuration to put your (I'll call it) ASW intended bomb on planes when they fly the ASW mission?

I remember JWE & Co. backing away from making load-outs with the mission specific codes because they felt that opinions varied too much and I imagine such usage did during the war too, so arriving at a baseline might have never achieved anything close to consensus.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

I've been reading this thread but in and out (meaning not every post in detail), so I might have missed you saying you are already doing this.

A weapon categorized as "ASW" is one thing, but the detailed aircraft configuration codes they made available allow you to specify certain weapons for certain missions. Are you using that configuration to put your (I'll call it) ASW intended bomb on planes when they fly the ASW mission?

I remember JWE & Co. backing away from making load-outs with the mission specific codes because they felt that opinions varied too much and I imagine such usage did during the war too, so arriving at a baseline might have never achieved anything close to consensus.

On a more esoteric level, the Aircraft Info screen does not have enough room to show a variety of loadouts for a variety of missions. It seems to show only a normal and reduced loadout of bombs and MGs. Putting ASW weapons and rockets in the generic "bombs" category would allow for much simpler algorithm programming for air attacks. The designers were under time constraints and trying to keep the number of parameters under control.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

I've been reading this thread but in and out (meaning not every post in detail), so I might have missed you saying you are already doing this.

A weapon categorized as "ASW" is one thing, but the detailed aircraft configuration codes they made available allow you to specify certain weapons for certain missions. Are you using that configuration to put your (I'll call it) ASW intended bomb on planes when they fly the ASW mission?

I remember JWE & Co. backing away from making load-outs with the mission specific codes because they felt that opinions varied too much and I imagine such usage did during the war too, so arriving at a baseline might have never achieved anything close to consensus.

On a more esoteric level, the Aircraft Info screen does not have enough room to show a variety of loadouts for a variety of missions. It seems to show only a normal and reduced loadout of bombs and MGs. Putting ASW weapons and rockets in the generic "bombs" category would allow for much simpler algorithm programming for air attacks. The designers were under time constraints and trying to keep the number of parameters under control.

BB: Are you talking about the in-game display?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

I've been reading this thread but in and out (meaning not every post in detail), so I might have missed you saying you are already doing this.

A weapon categorized as "ASW" is one thing, but the detailed aircraft configuration codes they made available allow you to specify certain weapons for certain missions. Are you using that configuration to put your (I'll call it) ASW intended bomb on planes when they fly the ASW mission?

I remember JWE & Co. backing away from making load-outs with the mission specific codes because they felt that opinions varied too much and I imagine such usage did during the war too, so arriving at a baseline might have never achieved anything close to consensus.

Another thread reminded me that what I called here "configuration codes" is called "filters". When I wrote the above I didn't recall the term they had used.

[Ian R]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

I've been reading this thread but in and out (meaning not every post in detail), so I might have missed you saying you are already doing this.

A weapon categorized as "ASW" is one thing, but the detailed aircraft configuration codes they made available allow you to specify certain weapons for certain missions. Are you using that configuration to put your (I'll call it) ASW intended bomb on planes when they fly the ASW mission?

I remember JWE & Co. backing away from making load-outs with the mission specific codes because they felt that opinions varied too much and I imagine such usage did during the war too, so arriving at a baseline might have never achieved anything close to consensus.

Yes.

My "Aircraft ASW weapons" are just modeled as GP bombs with more accuracy, so they fit the coding as described by JWE.

And I have used the aircraft device filters to limit them to ASW missions. For example, I gave the Privateer a useful loadout on ASW missions, but for everything else, I limited it to 4 x 500lb bombs, so as to encourage realistic usage.

[btd64]

RHS has both dedicated aircraft and bombloads for ASW missions. I haven't paid to much attension to those attacks, but I will in a future turn....GP

[Ian R]

Happy to say that Sid and I discussed this, and thank him for his comments.

I didn't want the Privateers carrying out JDAM strikes on IJ industry. So the filters are set that they (and Liberator GRVs, etc) only carry these enhanced accuracy weapons on ASW missions.

For the reasons set about above, the anecdotal evidence is it makes very little difference to "ASW" results anyway.