U.S. Land Based Aircraft vs. Japanese Carriers.

[Disco Duck]

I am not having any success in getting my Land Based level bombers to attacked Japanese carriers.

In both situations the Carriers have rounded the bend near Gili-Gili. In the first case my land based bombers attacked merchant ships near Lae and Buna and completely ignored the carriers pounding the base.

In the second case I had every land based bomber I could lay my hands in Cooktown (5/42). The Japanese carriers were 5 hexes away and none of the bombers attacked. My carrier based bombers attacked but were overwhelmed by CAP.

Overall a good game but I would like more control over the naval attacks.

Disco Duck

[ADavidB]

Your Allied LBA won't attack Japanese carrier TFs unless you have long-ranged fighter aircraft to escort them. If you wan't LBA to attack, shorten their maximum radius to the same as your fighters.

Dave Baranyi

[dtravel]

Allied LBA is ... reluctant ... to attack IJN carriers even when they do have escorting fighters available. At least early in the war.

And getting enough Allied fighters together in one place can be hard, since they start out with nowhere near enough.

[Massattack]

I think you have pretty much come to the logical conclusion yourself. Allied LBA reluctant to attack CV groups unless well escorted: Not enough Allied escorts early on: Only high experience (above 70) LBA can actually land any bombs on moving naval targets. These are the real limitations the early war Allied commanders have to face.

Regards

[Disco Duck]

Thanks to all.

Putting escorts on the bombers did get some of my LBB to attack the carriers. But, they still scatter thier attack's against what ever TF's happen to be present.

As far as Land base level bombers being reluctant to attack carriers I am not sure I agree.

I don't believe the Japanese carriers were attacked by any land based aircraft at Coral Sea. At Midway the B-17's attacked without escorts. No they didn't hit anything but they did disrupt the formation and the CAP, which helped the Dive bombers later on.

I believe only 1 in 100 bombs from an American Level bomber ever hit anything before skip boming was developed. I am not surprised they don't do any damage in the game. I just want to wear out the CAP so my carrier based planes can get through.

[dtravel]

ORIGINAL: Massattack

I think you have pretty much come to the logical conclusion yourself. Allied LBA reluctant to attack CV groups unless well escorted: Not enough Allied escorts early on: Only high experience (above 70) LBA can actually land any bombs on moving naval targets. These are the real limitations the early war Allied commanders have to face.

Regards

Umm, re-read what I wrote. I said that even WITH what the players are told is a sufficient number of escort fighters, Allied LBA does NOT attack the IJN CVs anywhere near as much as they should. In my current game I've been watching the IJN carriers cruise up and down the Java Sea for several months and only be attacked twice! All the Dutch fighters have been at bases around it. I've moved a bunch of P-40s into the area. I've even seen the bombers set on Naval Attack fly past the carriers to attack ships in ports that are known to have CAP. There is another Gotcha programmed into the game here preventing Allied aircraft from attacking the IJN carriers.

And its beginning to piss me off almost as much as Ron is about ASW. [:@]

[ADavidB]

ORIGINAL: dtravel

ORIGINAL: Massattack

I think you have pretty much come to the logical conclusion yourself. Allied LBA reluctant to attack CV groups unless well escorted: Not enough Allied escorts early on: Only high experience (above 70) LBA can actually land any bombs on moving naval targets. These are the real limitations the early war Allied commanders have to face.

Regards

Umm, re-read what I wrote. I said that even WITH what the players are told is a sufficient number of escort fighters, Allied LBA does NOT attack the IJN CVs anywhere near as much as they should. In my current game I've been watching the IJN carriers cruise up and down the Java Sea for several months and only be attacked twice! All the Dutch fighters have been at bases around it. I've moved a bunch of P-40s into the area. I've even seen the bombers set on Naval Attack fly past the carriers to attack ships in ports that are known to have CAP. There is another Gotcha programmed into the game here preventing Allied aircraft from attacking the IJN carriers.

And its beginning to piss me off almost as much as Ron is about ASW. [:@]

I have a feeling this goes way, way back to the first version of Pacwar, in which the Brit CVL would charge out of India all the way to Malaya to attack the KB and get promptly squished. So GG changed the code so that Allied CVs wouldn't attack at bad odds. Then folks complained about suicide attacks on the KB by less than a handful of planes, so GG changed the code again. Lo and behold, some 12 or more years later, those "fixes" are effectively showing up in WitP.

So if you can lure Japanese carriers to some place where you will have something near to a 1:1 balance of fighters to the Japanese, and you have experienced LBA around, and your fighters are long-legged enough to keep up with your LBA, you will likely get a strike at the Japanese carriers. Now, in order to achieve all that you will have to be in late 1942, but that is how the game is designed.

BTW - GG never really changed anything about the way that Bettys and Nells attack. It worked in Pacwar to set your US CVs just outside of Zero range but within Betty/Nell range and get easy shots at unescorted Japanese bombers, and it still works in WitP.

[dtravel]

Please, stop telling me things like that. My blood pressure goes up way too easily to begin with. I'm too fricking young to have a stroke.

[ADavidB]

ORIGINAL: dtravel

Please, stop telling me things like that. My blood pressure goes up way too easily to begin with. I'm too fricking young to have a stroke.

If the old Compuserve SSI forum posts were hanging somewhere (but I don't think that AOL brought any of the historical posts along when they swallowed CServe) you could read a very similar set of stories during the initial release of Pacwar. The discussions on China, Zeros vs Wildcats, sub effectiveness, B-17 effectiveness (and repair), ground combat, surface combat reaction, etc. were all there and have all come back to haunt WitP.

GG's take on history hasn't really changed any in the past dozen years - he just keeps making more skillful and mechanically advanced versions of his older games, but with the same biases inside the databases. Pacwar was a great game for its time. WitP is a great game for its time. But both would have benefited from a less biased view of history.

The other factor is that GG has always wanted to make "balanced" games. I believe that the idea is that it is not enough for the player of the historical losing side to simply "avoid the mistakes of history" in order to have a chance to "win", particularly since the player of the historical winning side can also avoid the mistakes. So in order to acheive some level of "balance" GG skews the capabilites in the early part of the war. Thus we end up with what we now see in WitP.

It's too bad that WitP has turned out this way, because it is fundamentally a great game. But as it stands, I'm not certain that a skilled Allied player actually has a chance to beat a skilled Japanese player in WitP - mainly because of the ground combat problems, particularly how they affect Asia, and their potential to affect anywhere else where the Japanese player decides to use a "Mongol" strategy.

Dave Baranyi

[dtravel]

I told you! Stop telling me things like *POP* <the top of dtravel's head explodes and he slumps dead into the lap of ADavidB, gushing blood and brains all over him>

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: dtravel

I told you! Stop telling me things like *POP* <the top of dtravel's head explodes and he slumps dead into the lap of ADavidB, gushing blood and brains all over him>

Hey! What you two do in the privacy of your own bedroom is your business, but...

Your remarks are right on the money, Dave. Just out of curiosity, I fired up my C64 emulator and loaded WitSP, something I haven't done for years. The similarities between that old game and UV are startling. The carryover, as you suggest, is to afford the IJN player in WitP ahistorical opportunities to "win the war" rather than "win the game." The willingness of the tweakers and fixers to make changes intended, purely and simply, to reduce the capability of Allied arms and enhance those of the Japanese has been a sad thing to see. A recent poster blatantly stated, "Anything that helps the Japanese is okay with me." That seems to be the epitaph of the dead-end design effort that the UV/WitP engine turned out to be.

[BlackVoid]

Read some AARs and you will see that it is not that easy as Japan. A simulation can never be perfect, there will always be some problems.

Japan is also limited in many respects(aircraft upgrades, very good allied subs, tons of allied level bombers). The need for a balanced game is a real one too. It would not make much sense to play it if the allies are guaranteed to win. Maybe that would be a better simulation, but a horrible game. Do not wish for what you would regret.

[ADavidB]

ORIGINAL: BlackVoid

Read some AARs and you will see that it is not that easy as Japan. A simulation can never be perfect, there will always be some problems.

Japan is also limited in many respects(aircraft upgrades, very good allied subs, tons of allied level bombers). The need for a balanced game is a real one too. It would not make much sense to play it if the allies are guaranteed to win. Maybe that would be a better simulation, but a horrible game. Do not wish for what you would regret.

The key to balancing the game is to give a certain level of "performance points" to the Japanese for acheiving various goals and avoiding historic failures. Then you could get rid of the various "tweaks" that irritate so many of us folks who want a realistic simulation rather than a fantasy game...

Dave Baranyi

[Dereck]

ORIGINAL: BlackVoid

Read some AARs and you will see that it is not that easy as Japan. A simulation can never be perfect, there will always be some problems.

Japan is also limited in many respects(aircraft upgrades, very good allied subs, tons of allied level bombers). The need for a balanced game is a real one too. It would not make much sense to play it if the allies are guaranteed to win. Maybe that would be a better simulation, but a horrible game. Do not wish for what you would regret.

This is a bit of a Catch-22 for those who want this game 100% realistic. If the game was 100% realistic then there WOULD be no chance for Japanese victory. Even Admiral Yamamoto himself knew there was no way to militarily defeat the US.

I know with some other war games I have, such as Stalingrad by Atomic games, has realism options you can set. You can play without ANY options set which would mimic what actually happened or you could set options which would benefit the Soviet player (such as no Soviet purge, better logistics, etc) and/or options which would benefit the Germans (such as Sixth Army not restricted, November Reinforcements, etc).

[SteveV]

Dereck, don't mean to speak for Dave, but what he is suggesting is that the game be as realistic as possible, but that the Japanese player get victory points for capturing and holding certain bases, sinking Allied shipping, NOT taking losses to Japanese shipping, etc., in such a fashion that the Japanese player can still win "the game" while still, inevitably, losing the war.

Makes sense to me, but the recent threads indicate that there will not be much more programming resources directed at this project, so this is likely a forlorn hope.

SteveV

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: BlackVoid

Read some AARs and you will see that it is not that easy as Japan. A simulation can never be perfect, there will always be some problems.

Japan is also limited in many respects(aircraft upgrades, very good allied subs, tons of allied level bombers). The need for a balanced game is a real one too. It would not make much sense to play it if the allies are guaranteed to win. Maybe that would be a better simulation, but a horrible game. Do not wish for what you would regret.

I don't need your recommendations about what to read. Historical simulation is just that. Anything else ought to be called "historical distortion."

The point is that designers of simulation games have always been confronted by the problem of designing victory conditions - it has always been seen as an essential element of the design. Indulging people's fantasies has usually been more in the realm of the likes of lingerie catalog designers and purveyors of pornography ("I like them" - Paul McCartney).

[Dereck]

ORIGINAL: SteveV

Dereck, don't mean to speak for Dave, but what he is suggesting is that the game be as realistic as possible, but that the Japanese player get victory points for capturing and holding certain bases, sinking Allied shipping, NOT taking losses to Japanese shipping, etc., in such a fashion that the Japanese player can still win "the game" while still, inevitably, losing the war.

Makes sense to me, but the recent threads indicate that there will not be much more programming resources directed at this project, so this is likely a forlorn hope.

SteveV

I THINK the reasoning behind victory points is that Japan originally intended to attack, form a defensive perimeter and make it so costly for the Americans to recapture territory that they would sue for peace on terms favorable to Japan. Of course, historically, after Pearl Harbor THAT was never going to happen. But I think that may be the reasoning behind the victory point setup. By 1945 Americans WERE weary of the war but not even close to the point where they considered anything other than complete victory.

[mac5732]

I agree with most things stated, however, I believe that the game was possibly set up for balance which if one thinks about it, what would might have happened if the Japenese didn't make certain mistakes in the war, subs going after all ships or especially tankers, transports etc instead of mostly warships, if they had changed their codes prior to Midway and the US didn't break the code, Invaded Hawii in conjunction with attack on pearl harbor, put more effort into making the canal into a fast operating airbase and port, didn't lose the battle of the coral sea, not shooting down Yamamoto and more, I think the game takes into account the possiblity that these did not all happen and that The Empire of Japan, if the war was fought somewhat differently, might have had a chance of discourging the population of the US to the point of a peace greeement or armistice.... possible When a game creates a combat simulation, you have the actual historical game, but then you also have the game with where certain mistakes were not made and what if's, I enjoyed PacWar and now WITP, it has historical but also certain options whereas you can see what ifs didn't happen or did happen, oh well, my 2 cents

[Disco Duck]

Some of these posts are starting to depress me. I thought I was buying an accurate simualtion that finally including the one thing that Navies truly exist for and that is interfering with lines of supply.

Now it sounds like a lot of things have been biased for the sake of game play. And it sounds like they will not be fixed. If that is true I will not buy any more Matrix produced games. I am already having a big fight with customer support concerning my order.

I disagree that the U.S. would have continued on to the bitter end no matter what. In his book on WWI, General S.L.A. Marshall states that it took longer for the German Army to Mutiny than it did the French because the Germans had more victories. The same would be true for the U.S. in WWII.

Take a look at the U.S. losses up to Midway. Wake Island. Basiclly a rock in the Pacific. The Philipines, we were going to give them thier Independance anyway. Besides a lot of the Philipino's cheered the original attack. Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. The U.S. was not ready.

What if we lost Midway, or Guadicanal? What if we had a string of defeats like Port Moresby falling and part of Australia? You think Kerry-Bush was an ugly campaign? A lot of people still think Roosevelt allowed the surprise attack to get us into the war. He would have probably been impeached if he had a string of defeats to answer for.

I think the U.S. would have sued for peace if we had a string of defeats. I think the Victory Points can be set so that the Japanese can get peace without changing the game mechanics to make it harder for the U.S. to win.

[dtravel]

Actually, the conspiracy theories about Roosevelt "letting" Pearl Harbor be attacked didn't start until long after the war was over.