ORIGINAL: freeboy
I use my CVs very carefully early on and I would not be surprised if a fair percentage of them, especially Lex, Hornet, Yorktown and Wasp, survive into 43
No kidding.. note to thosw playing against Ron, he has found the secret GO TO ATLANTIC buttone forhis fleets... It is 4 42 and he has lost 1 cl.. in my adopted game btw
This view is a little misleading.[;)] Aside from the initial two-three weeks of this campaign where heavy units were at risk anyway and not utilizing them would have been gamey and downright un-English, my RN units have for the most part escorted about twenty convoys to Australia or have stayed out of the way of the Japanese CVs and LBA. Why, because it is suicide to do much of anything else with them at this point. Historically, the Eastern fleet stayed clear of Japanese naval forces and LBA as well during 1942/43 for the same reasons. As both you and Dave have seen, it is not necessary to throw merchant and naval vessels into forlorn hope situations to keep units/bases supplied and mount a succesful defence of India, Java, Burma etc. (knocking on wood here as Freeboy is in the midst of a fairly determined bid for India, Burma and Ceylon).
As for the USN, it's been actively escorting troop and supply convoys, patrolling and generally maintaining a stance from which it will react if the "commitment line" I've set is more than probed. Only the foolish Allied would mount operations such as invasions without establishing control of the sea, even if temporary and localized.
I've not stuck my head in the sand, I just don't throw units away for the sake of doing something. It's not like this game has been lacking for action. Lots of sunk and damaged Japanese ships, from the Zuikaku taking two torps from Albacores on down to the most humble MSW and merchant now forming artificial reefs off India and a few other regions.
And this is what stinks. If my reserved strategy pans out, I may well have some vessels in service well past their historical "loss" date. Because of this, the vessels which were building and were slated for different names will "cease to exist" because they were cursed by having been historically renamed in honour of ships lost. Four of the earliest historically available Essex class CVs, queens in this naval chess game, simply become unavailable as reinforcements, along with a host of other ships...one Australian. While Pasternaski may abhore the term "respawn", it is an ideal term. I personally like "add water and stir". Essentially, it is a renaming issue, and I hereby rechristen it as such.
Why is it actually a name issue, and not some attempt at "modelling" the US ship building priorities, capabilities and direction? This is why...ask yourself if we would have this feature if the USN was not prone to honouring its lost ships by naming future ships with the lost ship's name and left them with their original and temporally unique names. Of course not. There was only three ways this dilemma would have been dealt with which would have prevented this debate from ever occurring.
1) Have the vessels which historically were renamed/named in honour of lost ships (which potentially may not be lost in the game) made distinct from their predecessors by adding the suffix "II" to the name in the database.
2) Have any ship which was historically christened in commeroration of a lost ship be entered into the database utilizing it's original name or use a hypothetical name.
3) Allow players to rename ships that arrive with duplicate names. Many players would probably really like this option. (Could get a little weird I suspect)[;)]
If any of the obvious approaches were taken, we would not be having this discussion, everyone would be happy, and I would not have pushed my luck over the issue and become a grumpy middle aged geek[:D]. Or revealed myself as one.[:D][:D][;)]
