Reluctant Admiral Feedback

[FatR]

Well, shipboard flak is one of these areas where Japanese really needed improvements, so my thoughts returned to it again and again, and so I decided to write them down. Unfortunately for all JFBs, this is also one of the areas, where there are no magic solutions even with 20/20 hindsight, and any serious improvements (which in all likelyhood means "more 25mms earlier; start working on identifying and, where at all possible, fixing its flaws around 1939-40 at the latest") are hard to justify without also giving Japanese decision-makers benefits of serious hindsight.

[John 3rd]

The Posting made sense to me. It simply made me laugh.

There are times when an addition like that is important. Think that it is important for readers to understand we are trying to be realistic within the timeframe of RA. It helps to explain why some things aren't changed, other tweaked, and some thing massively redone. It is important to be intellectually honest regarding these things...

[FatR]

Just want to say, that I'm continuing working on subs... as dates of availability require some thought, and I want to test the I-200 series thoroughly in Downwall, and I'm rather busy, this moves slowly, but I hope to finish the work by the next weekend at the latest.

Meanwhile, take a look at some threads, relevant to the future work on aircraft:

On Tojos and Japanese fighter range:
http://www.j-aircraft.org/smf/index.php?topic=9294.15

The story of A7M, as told by Jiro Horikoshi (even making an adjustment for inevitable human tendency to portray oneself and one's ideas favorably, this dissuaded my worries that we were too optimistic by pushing A7M to late 1944):
http://www.j-aircraft.org/smf/index.php?topic=3120.0

[John 3rd]

Thanks for the update.

I am working on creating us a website for the Mod.

If time permits I also intend to go through the starting force placement and recommend some changes.

[John 3rd]

Stanislav: How are you coming along?

Have got a decent start on the website (thanks to wife) and am looking forward to seeing your work.

[FatR]

I hope to finish with the subs tomorrow.

[John 3rd]

Thanks for the update and work done.

[FatR]

Okay, so far, I did the following with the subs:

19)Reworked Japanese subs. Besides overall rearrangement of upgrades (mostly in the direction of bringing them sooner, but the upgrade for L4 class subs, that never got it IRL, is delayed), significantly improved cargo capacity of large and medium purpose-built transport submarines, and greatly reduced durability of small transport submarines (Yu and SS classes), to make them more affordable.
20)Added KD8 sub class, which is a moderate improvement over KD7 (more endurance, more MVR, the deck gun is abandoned in favor of heavier flak armament).


16)4 B1/B2 subs laid down before the war (available in 1942) are replaced with 4 C2 subs. 12 B/C3 subs laid down during the war are replaced with 9 C2 subs. Seiran carrier large subs remain untouched.
17)39 subs of K6 and KS classes are replaced with 7 KD7 and 13 KD8 subs. As a result, from August of 1942 to September of 44, IJN will receive about one kaidai sub per month, two on a few months.


Picked captains to new subs, and so on. Note, that there are no changes regarding transport subs, except that they are now either carry much more valuables, or are much cheaper to build. I took a liberty to turn SH sub class into underwater tankers, although normally they were seaplane refueling subs. They are still horribly inefficient and burn more fuel that they deliver, but I guess this can be overlooked, when your fuel is a dead weight piling up in DEI otherwise. D1 transport subs now can carry a few men.

Now, I have a question:

What I should do with late-war subs?

I tested fast ST subs. High MVR or not, allied ASW still wipes them out with little problem. I didn't even use Air ASW patrols, which should allow to make them dead meat (or dead fish...) much faster. Each of these subs is worth a cruiser in naval SY points, and unless they accidentally meet a CVE or other slow, volatile target, they won't return you this investment.

I can try to buff ST class and add more to the queue, or I can remove them all, alongside with other point sinks, and leave only small transport subs, and a few Koryu midgets in the queue for the endgame. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to approach buffing them. Durability can't be increased to satisfying levels without making them unbelievably costly, and I'm not sure how Maneuver works in combat, so I'm afraid of increasing it beyond the upper end of MVR values already present in the game.

[John 3rd]

Sounds very interesting. Cannot wait to go through it and see the changes.

To answer your question regarding late-war, why not simply continue to produce the medium SS like the K7/K8? We've reduced war production from 55 boats down to 33 to this point. Seems to me that no matter WHAT is built it will be trashed by Allied ASW. With that simple reality, the thought is to build more of what has been standardized.

[FatR]

There are less expensive, but still expensive. I think I'll add three more KD8 subs in the final months of 1944, in place of ST subs, and stop the large sub building on that note. By 1945 Japanese players likely won't be able to afford the expenses anyway. In reality ST subs should have been a huge improvement over previous designs, at least for defensive battles, in the game, well, looks like the engine does not allow that.

[John 3rd]

Only concern I have with that is the discussion we had going in another Thread about PLANNING on Japan being done in late-44/early-45. Might be a good idea to add the ones you mention and allow for the player to keep building a few more (into 45) if he has the ability/interest.

[FatR]

What thread you're talking about? I would like to take a look...

Anyway, I not so much plan for Japan to bite the dust around early 1945, as recognize that other needs will be overwhelming by that point. Unlike RL, in AE Japan usually never really expands production after the second half of 1942, because you cannot do anything about the oil limitation. Only shifts priorities. Mostly to aircraft. I hope to shut down at least half of my naval shipyards by the beginning of 1944, once the major warships construction program is completed. As a ship cost increases exponentially with durability, and therefore, for example, one Yugumo-class DD (100 days of building x 10 = 1000 NSY points) is worth two Matsus (70 days of buidling x 7 = 490 NSY points), you can see why I'm not a big fan of adding expensive ships for the endgame. An ST class submarine in stock, by the way, costs 12 960 NSY points, and you can build most of 1945-46 Tachibana program (or 360 fighters) at the cost of one of them.

But if you want more toys for 1942 I think the best middle ground between realism and playability is to take a bit of liberty with history and reduce the type ST's Durability to something more economically manageable, while adding an extra pair of torpedo tubes, to increase the chance of their sacrifices achieving something. This souds less contrived than continuing to modify KD even when it is clear that old subs are suicide boxes...

Well, and I intend to cut STS subs from the scenario. The whole concept was doomed to failure IRL (small and ultra-small subs, to my knowledge, only achieved significant successes during WW II as diversionary weapons, attacking ships in harbors), and it is in AE. Midget subs at least can be useful for surprise mass deployments if Allies are landing in a major base.

[John 3rd]

Over in BigRed's economic thread we talked about late-war stuff. There was another Thread that was casually discussion a similar thought but I don't remember which one. Will try to find it and add it to the list.

The cost of SS in this game staggers the mind. Does anyone know how much building a Sub actually COST compared to, say, a DD? I know there isn't much that can be done about that but I have to think you could build 2-3 SS for the cost of a single DD.

[FatR]

Cost of a ship in NSY points : Durability x (Durability x 10). As you can see, a large sub is worth not one DD but a whole flotilla with this formula. I.e., the cheapest stock attack sub will cost you 24 points every day for 240 days = 5760 NSY points. Or almost six Yugumo-class destroyers.

So, should I add an ahistorical modification proposed above to ST subs, for those people who still want to build them late in the war? Honestly, if there is another way within the current engine to justify their expense, I don't know it...

In the light of the above, I also think we should reduce durability of midget subs to about 9, increasing their Maneuver value instead. Honestly, they are so fragile anyway, that reducing their durability probably won't matter much in terms of combat survivability.


EDIT: I would have offered to cut subs' durability, and range/effect of ASW weapons in half across the board, but (a)without seeing the workings of the random number generator, I cannot be sure how this will affect combat calculations (b)this will make Air ASW extremely murderous.

[John 3rd]

I spent some time thinking on the subject last night while I was at work and feel we ought to leave well enough alone. Stick to what you have done and don't bother with anything more. The changes already set for the Japanese SS program are massive so lets not add more to it.

Your math demonstration amazes me at the cost comparison of DDs vs. SS for construction. 6DD = 1SS! Load of hooey in my humble opinion.

[FatR]

Finished compiling Japanese naval changes. John, I've sent them to you, take a look. Changes are:

19)Reworked Japanese subs. Besides overall rearrangement of upgrades (mostly in the direction of bringing them sooner, but the upgrade for L4 class subs, that never got it IRL, is delayed), improved capacity of purpose-built transport submarines and greatly reduced durability of small transport submarines (Yu and SS classes), to make them more affordable.
20)Added KD8 sub class, which is a moderate improvement over KD7 (more endurance, more MVR, the deck gun is abandoned in favor of heavier flak armament).


16)4 B1/B2 subs laid down before the war (available in 1942) are replaced with 4 C2 subs. 12 B/C3 subs laid down during the war are replaced with 9 C2 subs. Seiran carrier large subs remain untouched.
17)39 subs of K6 and KS classes are replaced with 7 KD7 and 13 KD8 subs. As a result, from August of 1942 to January of 1945, IJN will receive about one kaidai sub per month, two on a few months.
20)Late-war subs of ST and STS classes are removed from queue. 4 KD8 subs added instead of the for late 1944-January of 1945, but otherwise it is assumed that something as ungodly expensive won't be built anyway in 1945-46. As mentioned above, related to motorboats, IJN won't be obsessed with subs late in the war in this alternative (something that might have been quite accidental in RL).


Will at least start posting air side proposition on this weekend.

Meanwhile, a couple notes and questions:

(1)While comparing stuff to Scen 1 I noticed that Japanese AA rocket launchers have no effect value in stock. They are absent from Scen 70 anyway, just noting.

(2)Most motorboats no longer appear in the queue within the game if their arrival location is set at random. I supposed this is the correct behavior, because LBs and midgets don't as well. But some, namely motorboats of T23+ class remained in the queue, dunno why.

[John 3rd]

Now we can get rocking and check everything out. Thanks for the hard work and changes Stanislav. Sent the file on to Michael (as we discussed) for a 3rd set of eyes to examine the changes.

WAAAAAYYY long ago (when we started brainstorming this beast, we decided to get rid of the Rocket Launchers in lew of useful AA. Man---that is quite a while back.

[inqistor]

ORIGINAL: FatR
(1)While comparing stuff to Scen 1 I noticed that Japanese AA rocket launchers have no effect value in stock. They are absent from Scen 70 anyway, just noting.

Are not they have separate device type (AA rocket)?

Actually, what points exactly SSTs uses during production? Naval, or Merchant?
Take a look at this page(slightly below half). Indeed cost of US SS is indicated as 1/3rd of DD (3.3 mil vs 10 mil), however for Japan:

4. 41 Destroyers (67,130 tons) at 3522 Yen/ton.

5. 18 Submarines (26,540) at 8317 Yen/ton.

So, considering, that they produced larger submarines actual in-game cost is close to history.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
WAAAAAYYY long ago (when we started brainstorming this beast, we decided to get rid of the Rocket Launchers in lew of useful AA. Man---that is quite a while back.

Have ya'll taken a look at DaBabes for these things? One of the first things we did was to tweak the Allied LC goodies and the Jap RLs so that they both work.

[FatR]

I looked at my copy of BabesLite... still no Effect value. See: