Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen



Not anymore....

Ships out of fuel can still move at a minimum speed (to simulate towing) but they accumulate damage at an increased rate and are subject to loss by marine hazard - flounder, run aground, etc. Run a fleet of midgets (or PTs) over open ocean without fuel and few if any will survive.

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen



Not anymore....

Ships out of fuel can still move at a minimum speed (to simulate towing) but they accumulate damage at an increased rate and are subject to loss by marine hazard - flounder, run aground, etc. Run a fleet of midgets (or PTs) over open ocean without fuel and few if any will survive.

That is a good solution IMO. It also still allows for "towing" ships that have fuel, but are severely damaged; they won't founder under that system, well, any more than they might anyway.

That will also change the use of barges. I run them all the time out of fuel, not anymore.

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

I noticed the screenshots that Midget Subs are being included. I have mixed feelings about this; although they are kind of cool, IRL the actual results from them was just about nil (I can't think of any sinkings, if you know of any, let me know). Seems like they are going to be a pain to micromanage, to produce either historical results (waste of time for IJN then), or ahistorical results (resulting in angry posts from Allied players: Midgets[:@][:@][:@]).

How is it looking with the testing on Midget Subs? Am I off base in feeling that way?

ORIGINAL: Snowman999


ORIGINAL: Brady

But as you say the Ecenomy of Japan in WiTP and the Neads of the Empire have been artificaly created based losely on Historical fact, to better facilitate good game play. So much of this is then mute. Howeaver this still playes directly into the Allied sides hands, in that WiTP has Cut the Empires playable felat by 50% (the Steal Hulled fleat), while the Number of Allied Subs Is I belave still at 100%, and still at 100% or near to it I suspect are all those things that would also hunt them like Planes, Mines ect. Further compounding this problem is the larger than average number of Big ships present to acheave the ttoal tonage figures, which is also aidding the Allied cause. If you want to creat Historical proportions then you nead to adjust the number of predators, and better represent their prey.

It's not this simple. Yes, the allies have a lot of subs. (I haven't counted totals and compared to reality; seems as if they have too many by 1945, but whatever.) The S-boats remain in service and there's no advantage to tying them up, as there are no sub crew pools. In RL it would have been stupid to man S-boats with experienced crews while new construction was at best composed of 1/3 men with a war patrol under their belts.

In the game there are too many subs on station due to one-day cycle times and a lack of fatigue variables. Sub commander ratings severely understate the effect of a great skipper over an average one. This was unique to subs as a vessel type as they operated at long-range independently, with months-long station-keeping, their captains personnaly fought the ship, and they could rove and hunt without needing to stay in a tf or ask permission. The difference between an O'Kane or a Ramage and the average skipper was 1000%. Maybe 2000%. No other ship class has these features combined with the striking power of a heavy cruiser. In the game subs are long-range PT boats. They're treated as an afterthought, not as the core fleet units they were. With 3% of the USN the subs sank about 4/5 of Japanese merchant shipping.

The biggest reason your point above doesn't work in game terms is that, yes, the Japanese merchant marine is too small by A LOT. But game mechanics, even with low cycle-times, hamstring sub attacks by preventing, ever, multiple ship attacks in convoys. Sometime, with op point surpluses, you might get two attacks on the same ship, but never a slaughter as sometimes happened. Read up on the tanker action "Red" Ramage executed in the course of winning the MOH. The USS Parche couldn't happen in WITP. Or Mush Morton. Or Sam Dealey.

If subs could act historically, the currrent merchant marine would be toast in 12 months. If you doubled its size to historical levels, but left the subs crippled, the allies would be severely hampered. As it is now there might be a rough balancing act, albiet with incorrect force totals and behaviors.

Somewhere I remember reading Joel Billings (?) explain that WITP represents the rock-paper-scissors of the war. Naval air covering land ops, land ops to provide bases for LBA, LBA covering naval air and merchant backfilling, and supporting land ops. Which is fine as far as it goes and leads to the hyper-modeling of the air aspects of the war at the expense of some others.

But submarines were critical to the USN's success. Far more than carrier air in the sum total of the war. Allied offense pushed at the outside of the balloon. The subs went into the balloon, starting on 12/8/41, not in 1943, and ate the guts out of the Japanese economy. Without the subs the war wouldn't have ended in 1945, probably not 1946, the USSR would own part of Japan now, etc.

And WITP treats them as an after-thought to be toggled into auto-control rather than "fiddle." I hope a patch, or WITP2, can contain changes to bring them up to their proper place in the big picture. Just adding fatigue, and a multi-attack dice roll to convoy actions would be huge.

Then you can worry about merchant marine historical correctness.

ORIGINAL: asdicus

I am very much looking forward to this new addition to witp - have a question about surface ships asw ( anti submarine warfare) capability.

At the moment the game cannot differentiate on the capabilty of hunting subs between say a japanese early war merchantman gunboat( basically just a small merchant ship with a gun, few depth charges and perhaps passive hydrophones) and a late war us or british purpose built frigate or destroyer escort( with advanced active depth finding sonar auto linked to asw weapons like squid or hedgehog). Sure the weapons fit is different bwtween ships but the crucial submarine detection equipment ( hydrophones,asdic or sonar ) is ignored. The result is that the japanese armada of early war PG are just as effective vs subs as proper usa or british escorts. Could the game introduce some kind of sonar capability data field to naval ships eg basic passive, basic active, advanced active etc. Jap PG would rate as basic passive while a late war allied escort would mount advanced active and so forth. Sonar type would determine submarine detection %.

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
Let the AE Team do an internal huddle on this question - we will get back to you!

If you’re going to leave the CV respawn rule in, then please shorten the time to respawn to just six months or something. My biggest gripe about the rule is it takes almost as long as it took to build a new carrier to respawn one, as if one was ordered and laid down the day you lost the CV instead of one on the ways simply being renamed.

With a six month respawn at least the allies would get some new CV’s in 43 then. As it is now the rule simply gives Japan about a year and a half or more of no new allied CV’s arriving on map if he gets lucky and sinks most of the allied CV’s in 42.

I think most people would be willing to play with the rule if it wasn’t so all or nothing for allied CV power on map in games where disaster strikes the allies.

Personally I would prefer to simply axe any respawn rule and give the historical ships to the players with mark II names (can't use original names as they were given to later hulls). But if the team leaves in respawning then please shorten the time to respawn in the interest of keeping the game interesting in 1943.

Jim

ORIGINAL: Kid

Can we please get a date sunk column on the Ship Sunk screen?

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

My brain fails me...yet again! Will the Convert-To function for ship conversions include the massive rebuilds like West Virginia and California/Tennesee and lesser ones? Will they be given the commensurate refit/conversion times as well?

Apologies if I missed an earlier answer.[>:][8|]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Please get rid of the entire "react" routine for aircraft carriers!  Is there anything more universally loathed (at least judging from my forum reading for UV and WitP over the past six years)?  People have come up with all kinds of routines to stop CVs from reacting, but none of them are reliable.  Just do away with "react" entirely!  Or, if the designers want a possibility of mayhem in the game, just have a chance (25% or whatever) that CVs will become dispersed or do stupid things.

So much angst and anger will disappear if players can simply issue orders to CV TFs knowing that those CVs will stay grouped with the ships they are supposed to be grouped with.

In all likelihood, this topic has already been addressed.  I tried a search without luck, and who has time to read 36 pages of posts? 

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Pretty sure it isn't... Maybe people need to be told ONCE AGAIN that this isn't a new game, but a modification of an old one.

Please get rid of the entire "react" routine for aircraft carriers!