ORIGINAL: Mogami
Hi, Well if the Japanese player still has pilots and aircraft in pools and supply at the airfield it appears he has done the required planning to sustain the effort. Why would a single mission prevent a units from flying again if it had replacements? The AC require a week to repair. (run the turns and see how long before it has 36 ready ac again)
I might think combat troops (motivated and trained ones I mean) can stand it better then you do. How can this be measured in order to apply a number to it. 79 down from 99 might be too much or too little. I know it is something not easy to define numerically.
"Squadron leader hows your groups?"
"Well we lost 25 pilots and had a 29 point drop in morale we can take one more such mission before the boys will break for sure in a fight"
On a side note. Do you know 79 is lower then I would send a fighter group into action with?[X(]
I rest my boys when they get to mid 80's unless they are bomber pilots. Bomber pilots always seem to have low morale. Even when no fighters are over target.
You know, this is a good example of how far off track conversations in this forum go.
This thread wants to make (if possible) historical sense out of the game's conduct. Then you come along and tell me all about how a player should be awarded for parsing the rules set and playing the game system to the hilt.
Can you see the fundamental conflict there, Russ?
This thread wants to demonstrate how far off the game models are with historical results. The purpose of this exercise is to find a fix, if possible, to the game's bad rules. On the other hand, you're attempting to prove how "accurate" the game model by is by demonstrating how successful a player might be in the game by following the game's bad rules.
In your example, the very fact that the Japanese player can immediately take plane replacements and pilot replacements at Dobodura is part and parcel of the problem. It hardly represents a "solution." You're just playing the game, Russ, and you're trying to win it. I'm trying to fix it so that one fine day it will be more enjoyable to play.
You're hurting this effort to fix the game. You might not mean to but that's the effect.
This is why I wrote what I wrote re the lack of good developmental direction of the entire project. Someone needs to intelligently harness the project's energy, because from day one it's been pulling in the wrong direction--or more properly in all likelihood has been pulling in any number of wrong directions simutaneously.
The result of this confusion of effort is a bunch of models which don't and couldn't work individually thrown together where (surprise!) they don't and couldn't work in tandem, and then all that is labeled a "simulation." Then, when users complain they're told "It's too late now to change it. Do the best you can. A couple of houserules will fix it."
Well, that worked back in the day of board wargames.
Remember the monster from SPI called "War Between the States[/i]? That game was published too early, and arrived in game stores DOA. It was nearly unplayable given it original rules set. Made little sense. Then the errata began to flow. If I recall, there were a couple of minor errata sheets released by the company, and after that the best part of an entire issue of Moves magazine was devoted to yet more errata and the publication of what virtually amounted to a completely new rules set in some areas in an effort to give users a game which at least made half-an-ounce sense.
And in a way this worked. Why did this work? Because players only needed to supplant one printed rules set for another. One rules set was just as good as another. They were both in printed form, players merely had to add something here and subtract something there and they were on their way.
But with computer wargames that doesn't fly.
Too much of what Gary has published is hardcoded. Hourserules are not going to fix many of these problems. Just won't. Which is why it's important to get it right to begin with . . . or, the publisher needs to be willing and able to support the computer product after publication to the tune of however many fixes it requires to get the game right.
Nobody advertises these games before they sell them as "wrong" up front. They advertise these games as right up front, or at least that's the clear (and legal) implication. Otherwise sales wouldn't be so hot.
This thread wants to change the rules set, so please forget the rules as they are now and how those rules allow players to do this, that or the other. I'm sure that's all very clever of you to have figured it out, but that isn't going to fix or improve a thing. The problem is the rules set. I want to get at those problems and see if we can actually fix them, or otherwise improve the situation.
