ORIGINAL: el cid again
I for one would not like to see the CHS combined with other mods. For the record I oppose any attempts to make the historical data "fit" some pre-conceived notion of "flaws" in some of the various aspects of the game engine, usually to the detrement of historical reality or the laws of physics. This does not, however, prevent individuals from applying various mods to the CHS. But if the design team for CHS decide to incorporate the various mods then I will probably withdraw my support of CHS.
I am confused about your meaning here. Digging into CHS it appears that as is it clearly involves attempts to tweek real data to compensate for flaws in the engine: see for example armor on submarines (to reduce ASW effectiveness) and armor on merchant ships (to reduce the effectiveness of machine guns). Now the gatekeeper says the subs will lose their armor - that changes in the WITP engine code have made it no longer germane. And I for one think the merchant ships should lose their armor - because it is false and because it is not a "flaw" to say they are vulnerable to MG fire. [Note that patrol craft - in WWII and today - often are so armed - and it is a foolish merchant captain that ignores them]. I THINK you are saying you like changes towards real data. But MAYBE you are saying you don't like changes at all. Care to clarify?
Well I happened to peruse the data for the merchants and subs. 5mm (roughly 3/16") will keep most rifle caliber ammo from penetrating, as indeed it should. A .30 caliber mg is not going to disable or sink the average merchant. Indeed, there was an interesting article in todays newspaper concerning pirate attacks on a passenger vessel off Somali. Not only were the pirates unable to disable the vessel, but the vessel was relatively immune to the fire of the pirates, with RPG's being the only weapons that actually caused any real damage. However, the heavy mg's (12.7mm, 13.5mm) have no problem penetrating this.
Subs have an extremely tough high pressure hull that is extremely resistant. One of the arguments against the 3" guns that equipped many of the DE's was that it was not heavy enough to penetrate the pressure hull of the German U-boats at anything short of point blank range. Although the reason for adding the armor was for mitigating depth charge attacks, I have no problem with subs having some armor values.
Am I against change? By supporting CHS I have embraced change from the canned scenario to one that has more PERCEIVED historically accurate mod. For instance, the logistic model sucks. One work around that is actually historically supportable would envolve a two prong approach. First, modify the cargo capacities of merchants to a lower value to reflect ineffecient loading in the early war. Add mods to the merchants so that over time they eventually increase back almost the design capacities. The second aspect is one worked on by Andrew where most of the resource of the US starts disabled, slowly restored over time so that by 1944 there are more than sufficient supply. Both of these mirror the buildup of US strength, while limiting US options early war, both of which have historical underpinnings.
The air to air mods that Nik has developed have some merit, but the LCU anti-aircraft fix, or AEGIS as it was called, is a solution in search of a problem as far as I am concerned. There really was a "hole" in the sky where anti-aircraft fire was unable to adequately fill. Heavy AA is realtive ineffective against anything except aircraft moving in s straight line. Light AA was grossly ineffective over 2000 meters. Re-reading some of the losses sustained by the British aircraft over nighttime Germany, which had undoubtably a far superior AAA setup than anything Japan can put together or even US early war, was able to shoot down an average of 3.9% of the attacking planes on a good night. German night fighters would operate down to 1000 meters over flak batteries with only a small chance of being hit.
Thus to wrap things up CHS is a design by committee with various compromises that up to now has done a pretty good job of portraying the nuts and bolts of the units and vessels of the Pacific War. Is it perfect? No. But I have argued for the minimalist approach as far as tweaking for the sake of perceived flaws, real or not, in the game. As only one of many some of my PERCEPTIONS have gone unanswered, and some have been accepted, as it should be.
) The AI of course will not follow this schedule and will use all 110 “building” subs. However since the AI always deploys them BADLY, I figure this is a handicap that Allied players can live with. We all like increased challenge. 