ORIGINAL: mdiehl
The problem is that I find them neither informative nor sound.
The sentiment is directed back at you with interest. [;)]
He seldom, if ever, provides the source of his information when asked.
I have offered in this thread the source for said data. To repeat:
Frank, Richard
1990 Guadalcanal. Random House, New York, NY.
Lundstrom, John B.
1994 The First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD.
1990 The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD.
The detailed analysis of losses has been posted by me several times, and verified independently by others in these fora a couple times. I used to piss off Tristanjohn alot with my observations about the A6M vs F4F data and when he finally got mad enough to do the analysis himself he was shocked. At some point he even came back and noted that the data were as I have represented them. I suppose he's no longer around here much because at some point, having one's integrity challenged yet again by people who seem motivated to end the discussion by the use of ad hominem invective (IIRC, Chez, that was YOU), does in fact deter people from engaging.
No, you have that wrong, and it is a matter of public record over on the UV boards for anyone who cares to do a search.
I always was on board with your analysis (as far as I could make it out without having researched Frank myself--Lundstrom I'd already read, though I didn't have copies at that time on hand to specifically cite from). Indeed, when I first arrived at the UV boards you seemed to be the only person who had puzzled that part of the equation out, and I clearly recall you having to make the same argument ad infinitum to a proverbial host of shelf monkeys who simply refused to hear, see or speak differently on that subject.
As it happened, I noted any number of times that the bottom lines cited by you from your readings of Frank and Lundstrom coincided to within a plane or two with what Morison's research had gleaned some forty years earlier. There is, essentially, no difference at all between the three studied assessments. I quoted Morison extensively at that time (in the UV forum), and later, after I'd read Frank, and obtained copies of Lundstrom's two First Team works, I went back and itemized it again (this was after you'd disappeared somewhere--where did you go?), and was met with the identical reception you encountered repeatedly. Your math was spot on, something I never doubted, as was mine, for whatever that's worth. Only you see that isn't worth squat to people who have no interest in facts.
Big news there.
Now my thinking was that these three authors (serious scholars, all) are not likely stuffed coincidentally full of the same analytical muffins, therefore the model must be seriously whacked. As noted, that didn't and doesn't and probably never shall gain much traction with the "company" types around here, and it achieves just about the same forward movement with Japanese fanboys. Hell, I'm not even confident most of the rest of forum can logically follow (or cares to) the argument without falling asleep in class, but nevertheless the data do shake out that way when all is said and done, and anyone with half a whit of sense and even moderate desire could see it. But instead the argument is swept under the rug and ignored for all intents and purposes when it comes to design--well, ignored completely by Matrix, as it has no intention to redesign this game, so forget that avenue, and essentially ignored even by the CHS crew--witness the "decision by committee" approach to everything over there, even to the extent of feebly asking in the public forum whether or not dropping the Zero Bonus (as if that thought had just occurred to someone) might or might not be pertinent to the project's stated goal.
And so it goes.
Finally, you are correct insofar that I am not an adherent to or practitioner of ad hominem argument. I do find myself constantly greeted with this impolite and misleading tactic, however, another matter of public record, and I point this out immediately when it raises its ugly head--and not just when I am personally so treated, but no matter to whom this idiocy is directed. At least I hope you realize that. But either way.
[Note: It is not clear to me if you wanted to refer to Chez or myself above with your reference to the use of ad hominem pleas to the unwashed of this forum. I am brutally direct, always, and I suppose abrasive by nature on top of that, a grievous failing no doubt, but I only resort to fighting fire with fire when provoked.]
As for my periodic absences from the Matrix forums: this has more to do with lack of substantive progress toward meaningful change than bad posting habits of the membership. My skin's thick as a lizard, so that's a non-issue for me. But you see the game is virtually unplayable for anyone who knows the subject and expects to find "truth" due to its piss-poor models, and unless that can somehow be changed for the better I see little use in hanging around day to day to argue the same old obvious points into the ground. So I check back in now and then and see what's cooking, do what I can to spur further effort, then let it gracefully go.
OTOH I am encouraged because five years ago I was about the only person who thought that GGPW A2A model got the balance wrong. It is heartening to see that despite the noise from the naysayers, there many now who think I am correct.
Not so. There were howls of protest on GEnie (the board chosen by SSI to host the few playtesters who bothered to post feedback there) during the development of PW, but these were ignored. Of course I can't comment on what feedback Gary received through back channels. I'd dare to say that David Landrey, who ran the playtest side of the project, and had a no-nonsense approach to wargames, might have had a few choice words for Gary, but I don't know.
By the way, I never started out assuming that the USN should win FTF engagements in the early war. I had read Zero Pilot as a kid, and Incredible Victory, and so forth, all of which made early USN success look like "a lucky break" or whatever. For me the watershed moment was reading Richard Frank's book and then looking at the index data. That exercise demonstrated to my satisfaction that most PTO strategy games err to a certain extent in favor of the Japanese in the early war. Then I read Lundstrom's two books where to the best degree that anyone can the data are broken down pilot by pilot. Empirically, the F4F+pilot was the equal of the Zero+pilot in the very first encounters (and this was substantially before anything like the beam defense was regularly used). Empirically GGPW and WitP do not produce results that accord with something I think is a historical expectation. Therefore, WHATEVER you decide to mess with (EXP, A2A combat model, Zero bonus) there's no escaping that if you want the game to function well in representing the look and feel of early WW2 PTO, SOMETHING needs to be changed.
Which is why it's so important to any good WWII Pacific education to get Morison under one's belt as soon as possible. Had you, you could have disabused yourself of many errant notions earlier on. Until Lundstrom and Frank came along there wasn't anything better on the subject anywhere. And for all of Morison's mistakes (understandable considering the context within which he wrote), his work shines brightly still, and serves as the best single reference on the U.S. Navy in World War II.
Of course with that you might disagree, as you have constantly questioned Morison's work in the past, but really, how far off could he have been to have arrived at the same conclusion as both Lundstrom and Frank? No biggie. Morison's reputation stands universally secure, but as long as I was on it. . . .
