ORIGINAL: treespider
ORIGINAL: Demosthenes
ORIGINAL: Charbroiled
I think you hit the nail on the head. If the PT's would break contact more often vs. a superior SF, then there would be less PT losses....AND, less of the results that people are complaining about.
Then the debate would begin on "what is a superior SF".
That would make sense if it was established that PTs always ran away from Jap surface forces, but I have read no such thing.
As far as I know, PT's did not hide from every Jap ship they found, quite the contrary.
True. However the Japanese rarely went intentionally hunting for PT boats like some players including myself do. Meaning we have a dedicated surface task force just to engage the PT's - mine usually consists of a CL and 4 DD's. Now if I could only remember to set them to Patrol Do Not retire...
What we are left with is a game routine that assumes that any contact between PT Boats and Jap surface forces is a regular slugging match that allows the Japs to shoot at PTs as if they were destroyers or bigger. That is why so many more PTs are always lost in a typical game.
In short, the game routines do not take into account how almost impossible it is for a Jap surface ship hit a PT boat. That is why so few PTs were ever lost during the war... not because PTs buggered off and hid until the Japs passed by.
They may have been harder to hit but the game routine is also causing the PT's to stick around for multiple rounds...instead of shooting and scooting.
The higher-than-historical amount of Jap DDs lost in the games in question can statistically be laid on the constant exposure players place their ships in. But the ahistorical exchange rate is not a matter of more frequent contact - it's a matter of the game not handling PT survivability meaning - maneuverability and tactics - properly.
I would say it is a symptom of both - more frequent contact with dedicated destroyer hunter/killer groups and a mishandling of PT tactics by the game routine....
PT's should be allowed to enter two types of Task Forces - Escort and PT. If in escort they can be issued orders to travel to a new base or destination.
If they are in a PT Task Force - they should be handled similarly to aircraft - be given a particular target hex - be allowed to run day or night missions - then return to base and dock in the same phase - if the player chose to send them out during the day then they would be more vulnerable.
I agree with the majority of your logic, the only thing I am trying to point out is this:
Regardless of what we think the Japanese should have been able to do if they wanted to, the cold facts are that the Japanese were very poor at destroying PT Boats.
To assume that they could have done much better - assumes that the only reason that they did not do better in fact, is because they chose not to. This cannot be.
If PTs sank 3 DDs and torpedoed others - for the cost of only 5 sunk by surface engagement, then it stands to reason that IF PT vs Surface Ship contacts are greater, PTs will sink and torpedo more Japanese ships...AND loose more PTs in the process - BUT NOT AT AN EXPONENTIALLY INCREASED RATE OF PT LOSSES THAN WAS HISTORICALLY THE CASE.
To assume that that would happen, goes back to the old position of "the Japanese really could have been better at killing PT Boats IF they wanted to... they just really didn't want to sink PT Boats. - A position that is:
A) Improvable
B) Irrational
That is why I maintain that the real eye opener in this controversy has been how vulnerable PTs are compared to the real world.
Does anyone remember that 20 years after WWII, the modernized US Destroyer Maddox was attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin in broad daylight by PTs? Those PTs closed into torpedo range and fired at the Maddox, and the Maddox was not able to sink any of them?
(I would also like to point out that the examples posted of surface combat do not show PTs operating in Flotillas of 20 and more..that is to say - it appears that players are using them in realistic numbers)
