ASW tweaks in the CHS mod

[Ron Saueracker]

Have people noticed any change from regular ASW?

[bstarr]

1/27/41 and haven't lost a sub on either side. The crews of I-24 and I-170 are bailing water like mad, though. Subs recieve damage and obviously can be sunk (I-24 is at 94 flooding), but have a much better chance of survival. I was a bit of a doubter on this one, but so far so good.

[Tankerace]

Just out of curiosity Ron, on the ASW tweaks, I believe you said you increased durability. Has this had abnormal results, like subs able to bottom out in deep water? Just concerned since durabilioty is supposed to equate to diving depth.

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Tankerace

Just out of curiosity Ron, on the ASW tweaks, I believe you said you increased durability. Has this had abnormal results, like subs able to bottom out in deep water? Just concerned since durabilioty is supposed to equate to diving depth.

We actually lowered the durability a bit as this was affecting the "production cost" of IJN subs in an unfair manner. Compensated by adding some armor relative to diving depth...ie 300' = 3 mm of armor. Since it is proven that DCs and other ASW weapons can penetrate armor frequently, we figured why not try it? Accuracy of various weapons and damage yield have been cut by 50% as well as the DCs were more accurate and caused more damage than torpedoes..

As for bottoming out, this has everything to do with shallow or deep terrain. Durability = diving depth. Because of this, there is no real distinction between depth other than hit points.

[Ron Saueracker]

So any opinions yet? My concern is that I may not have been severe enough with the accuracy reductions on devices. My test results seemed OK but I only reached July 42 in the test game vs 2ndACR and unfortunately this was the game we had toggled Allied sub doctrine on.

In my stock game vs Mogami we are in July and my subs are attacking but are getting pummelled. The crew ratings seem to have a much stronger impact on attacks so because of this, the DCs are hitting at an alarmijgly high rate.

Who all has the Alpha anyway?

[bstarr]

as of 1/17/42 the Japs have lost 3 subs. Two were lost to DCs and another to a 500lb bomb. All of the subs sank while returning to port, rather than sank outright. One of the subs, I-160 went down basically because I forgot about her and didn't try to return her to port when she was first damaged. There are only 4 other damaged subs, all slightly damaged - one with sys in orange and three in the pink, none in red.

As I've already mentioned, I think the change is a success so far. However, I'm playing with Allied and Jap sub Doctrine 'on,' which is a change for me. In my opinion, I would be a little wary of further changes at least until we have more input.
bs

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: bstarr

as of 1/17/42 the Japs have lost 3 subs. Two were lost to DCs and another to a 500lb bomb. All of the subs sank while returning to port, rather than sank outright. One of the subs, I-160 went down basically because I forgot about her and didn't try to return her to port when she was first damaged. There are only 4 other damaged subs, all slightly damaged - one with sys in orange and three in the pink, none in red.

As I've already mentioned, I think the change is a success so far. However, I'm playing with Allied and Jap sub Doctrine 'on,' which is a change for me. In my opinion, I would be a little wary of further changes at least until we have more input.
bs

When you have a dc attack, can you note how many dcs dropped hit? I'm trying to get the accuracy of DCs down to below 20%.

[bstarr]

will do. I get off work at 9:00 tonight and I've got to leave at 4:30 in the morn, so it will probably be Wed or Thurs before I can really get busy.

edit added- yeah, I'm goofing off at work. The mourners can make their own coffee; I'm busy.

[bstarr]

ron,
Okay, ran a few tests. Basically set all jap at start forces to return to Osaka except SSs. Then I created a mass of Allied trans and surf forces at PEarl and headed them out in all directions, right into the path of the Jap SSs around pearl on 12/7/41

Here's the data from 8 contacts. I would have more, but I've got to get some sleep. (note: When I say "false fires" Ireferring to when a units says it fires, but never registers a miss or a hit on the screen.)

1) 6 DDs - 5 don't fire, 1 false fires. No hits
2) 4 DDs - 3 attack, 1 doesn't fire. 5 hits, sunk (note: all hits, no misses [:(])
3) 2 DDs - 1 fires (2hits), 1 doesn't. 2 hits, minor damage
4) 2 DDs - 1 fires (1 hit, 2 misses), 1 no fire. minor damage
5) 2 DDs - 1 fires (2misses), 1 no fire. No hits
6) 2 AVDs, 4 MSW, 2PG, 4DD - only 1 AVD fires, several false fires, no hits.
7) 2 MSW, 2 DMS, 2 DM - only 1 MSW fires, misses. no hits
8) 5 DD - 1 fires (2hits,2misses), one false fires, 3 no fire. Moderate damage

Judging by this little experiment, ASW is still too strong. However, the SSs are surviving more often when they do get hit.

One thing that did come to my mind was that you need to be careful when using the animations to judge the # of hits. Fog of war is really tricky. When I get back home I'll run some tests and check against ammo ASW expenditure. That'll be the telling factor.
bs

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: bstarr

ron,
Okay, ran a few tests. Basically set all jap at start forces to return to Osaka except SSs. Then I created a mass of Allied trans and surf forces at PEarl and headed them out in all directions, right into the path of the Jap SSs around pearl on 12/7/41

Here's the data from 8 contacts. I would have more, but I've got to get some sleep. (note: When I say "false fires" Ireferring to when a units says it fires, but never registers a miss or a hit on the screen.)

1) 6 DDs - 5 don't fire, 1 false fires. No hits
2) 4 DDs - 3 attack, 1 doesn't fire. 5 hits, sunk (note: all hits, no misses [:(])
3) 2 DDs - 1 fires (2hits), 1 doesn't. 2 hits, minor damage
4) 2 DDs - 1 fires (1 hit, 2 misses), 1 no fire. minor damage
5) 2 DDs - 1 fires (2misses), 1 no fire. No hits
6) 2 AVDs, 4 MSW, 2PG, 4DD - only 1 AVD fires, several false fires, no hits.
7) 2 MSW, 2 DMS, 2 DM - only 1 MSW fires, misses. no hits
8) 5 DD - 1 fires (2hits,2misses), one false fires, 3 no fire. Moderate damage

Judging by this little experiment, ASW is still too strong. However, the SSs are surviving more often when they do get hit.

One thing that did come to my mind was that you need to be careful when using the animations to judge the # of hits. Fog of war is really tricky. When I get back home I'll run some tests and check against ammo ASW expenditure. That'll be the telling factor.
bs

The only ships which expend ammo are those which are shown to actually drop dcs (hits or misses)

Yeah, I was afraid it was still too high (DC accuracy..I think it should be cut down to 10% of original rating...I only cut it by 50%. Even this is probably too high because the darn leader and crew rating I fear have too huge an effect)

[jwilkerson]

None of the subs fired ?

[Bradley7735]

Ron and bstarr,

I think that a relatively high number of slightly damaged subs is good. When I was reading all those US sub books (Wahoo, Tang, etc etc), one thing I noticed was that after a patrol, a sub that contacted the enemy several times would need lots of yard work to fix the things jarred loose from attacks. We don't see that in the current version of WITP. I think that an optimal setting would be to have a relatively high number of hits (less than current witp, but not rare), and that it would take a lot for a sub to sink. I don't think you can do this, but it would be cool if the rare DC hit caused major damage while most hits just cause slight SYS damage.

anyway, at least you're fixing the high rate of kills on subs. against the AI, I don't even send mine out on patrol. I find that I trade victory points at about 1-1.

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Bradley7735

Ron and bstarr,

I think that a relatively high number of slightly damaged subs is good. When I was reading all those US sub books (Wahoo, Tang, etc etc), one thing I noticed was that after a patrol, a sub that contacted the enemy several times would need lots of yard work to fix the things jarred loose from attacks. We don't see that in the current version of WITP. I think that an optimal setting would be to have a relatively high number of hits (less than current witp, but not rare), and that it would take a lot for a sub to sink. I don't think you can do this, but it would be cool if the rare DC hit caused major damage while most hits just cause slight SYS damage.

anyway, at least you're fixing the high rate of kills on subs. against the AI, I don't even send mine out on patrol. I find that I trade victory points at about 1-1.

I think that a relatively high number of slightly damaged subs is good.

Agree wholeheartedly. What I am pulling for in the end is to take the inevitable fact that as crew ratings increase, the number of escorts detecting and actually dropping DCs is going to increase...it has in my match with Mogami and we are only in July 42, and use it positively. We don't see lots of DCs dropped with the odd sub kill and more common damaged sub result...we see all or nothing BS extremes. So, if I can get the accuracy of DCs down and get the damage yield somewhere within a happy medium, we will end up with something more acceptable (lots of DC ammo used for common damage result and occasional sinking of sub).

[Grotius]

I'm very glad to see you doing this. I don't suppose you can do something similar with the over-efficient lethality of other weapons systems, can you? E.g., naval bombardment, 4-engine bombers (in naval and airfield attack roles), Betties/Nells, etc? Is there any way to increase the "armor" of a base or airfield?

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Grotius

I'm very glad to see you doing this. I don't suppose you can do something similar with the over-efficient lethality of other weapons systems, can you? E.g., naval bombardment, 4-engine bombers (in naval and airfield attack roles), Betties/Nells, etc? Is there any way to increase the "armor" of a base or airfield?

Pretty sure we can reduce device values vs "soft targets" and such.

[bstarr]

Sub experiment 1

Okay, I tried another experiment. As before I rerouted all Jap fleets to Osaka in order to get them out of the way. I then stood down all air units. Next I created 17 small transport fleets at Pearl, with 1 to 3 escorts and 1 or 2 escorted ship. I also created 2 Surface fleets and a 4 DD ASW fleet, then launched all into the circle surrounding Pearl. I sent all forces out 3 to 4 hexes and played two turns, giving all but four of my fleets time to return to port. In some ways the results were much better than my last brief experiment.

Counting every sub in every hex that each fleet entered comes to 241 possible encounters. Of these only 7 took place.

1) I-4 attacks AK Castor scoring two hits, DDs Mugford and Ralph Tabot reply each firing once, each scoring a hit. I-4 is at sys28, fld75
2) I-16 attacks AO Neosho scoring three hits, 3 DDs answer call but none fire.
3) I? is spotted by 2 MSWs no fire.
4) I? spotted by 4 DDs no fire; two “false fire,” but no ammo expended.
5) I? spotted by 4 DDs no fire; one “false fire,” no ammo expended
6) I? spotted by DDs Selfridge and Phelps, Selfridge false fires, no ammo expended.
7) Same two DDs spot a I-5 (I didn’t check to see if I-5 was the same one spotted before) Selfridge fires again, this time hits. I-5 at sys47 fld78 (by far the most damage I’ve seen from one hit in this mod)

I believe one thing that is causing the high casualties is the amount of escorts allied players are using. Apparently sub search is performed by individual ships rather than fleets, otherwise I would have had many more encounters this time around. This works horrribly for the SS, since it is a fleet with one ship. Notice that in my first experiment no SSs fired; they only had about 8 possible targets to look for. in my second experiment 2 SSs fired. While this isn't a drastic improvement, it does leave one to wonder if this was because there were more fleets rather than more ships. Also (when using large fleets) once these large fleets get the bead on a sub each ship in the fleet will get a crack at her. Since I’m an historic-player and, to me, it seems more realistic to use only one or two escorts for a small trans fleet, I tend to have less sub casualties than many other players. In the long run, this massive fleet problem will probably have more effect on the end result of massive sub casualties than any changes to the database. In fact, if anything, it may get worse considering all the extra PGs we've added.

However, I still think a few modifications might be in order. You’re right, accuracy is too high. I think damage is getting pretty close to real however. In my opinion, encounter #7 was a fluke.

My opinion about the massive fleet problem is to encourage realistic play. Sure you have about a dozen MSWs and 4 DDs at Sydney, but it would be silly to send all of them as escorts with the two AKs heading to Port Morsby.

Overall opinion – If Matrix were to work on this. Matrix should limit the number of ships who have a crack at a sub to three. I recall reading that three was kinda like magic number for ASW, it allowed the sonar-equipped ships to triangulate the distance and come up with the location of the enemy sub. For searching there should still be a benifit to having more escorts, but there should be some sort of a bell curve in effect so that 10 ships isn't 10 times better than 1.

[bstarr]

Ron,
your PM box is full, so I sent you an email.
bs

[bstarr]

I have bounced back and forth on this issue so many times it ain't even funny. However, after a 6 month test, I think I've come to the conclusion that, yes, the subs need more work. I've had 15 Jap subs sunk; and I pulled all but a handful off the line in early April. Once the allies get a little experience under their belts, ASW becomes quite gross. Sure there are slightly more AKs and TKs sunk than in the historic war, but this doesn't make up for the slaughter of Jap subs.
bs

ps. any more progress, Ron?

[Ron Saueracker]

Thinking of playing around with the durability of subs as per Nikademus. Also going to drastically reduce the accuracy and yield of DCs.

[Captain Cruft]

I can't give any concrete data unfortunately. What it feels like is that the number of successful ASW attacks is reduced a bit but the ridiculous lethality is not.

DCs - how about leaving the Accuracy much the same but taking the Effect way down? Something tells me the model just won't let you stop the DCs hitting the subs but we might be able to change what happens when they do.