Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: JuanG

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

You are missing exe hotfix 001 which will fix a FULL SPEED problem!
[:)]
This should be out in 0-1 days.

If you dont mind me asking;
Is this only an exe fix or also a database fix?

nada database fix ...

ORIGINAL: erstad

ORIGINAL: JeffK

IMHO, the designers have played God in this, and too many other areas, it should be up to us to choose our fates. There argument for the ability for KB to stay on station is exactly opposite to this. What if the commander of the Miineapolis TF decides to head for San Diego?? Instead, he is stranded in port.

Can always change it in the editor, of course.

erstad,

Thats what I have already done to far too many units, far more than I would expect in a game which has had so many hours spent on it.

Too often they are areas where the designers made a decision to include or not include units.

According to witp Staff, there are 6 12/43 Momi E in scenario 1 already from the start

Where are the US tankers?

The US built lots of Tankers during WWII. This site lists about 900 of them built during the war years:

http://www.usmm.org/tankers.html

If you include tankers that were in existence at wars start and those of all the other allied nations, there were enough tankers to go around everywhere across the globe. But in game it looks like the US gets less than 180 tankers for the entire game (rough count, may be slightly higher or lower) and only has about 30 for the critical year of 1942 when the entire map is bone dry (assuming they can save the ones in the Philippines).

So what happened to the US tanker fleet? There are barely enough in game during 42 to keep Pearl and the Pacific fleet fueled if you are active with you carriers, but as far as getting enough fuel to OZ to support offensive carrier ops by 1943, you'd have to leave Pearl, Noumea and New Zealand pretty much bone dry for all of 42.

And getting enough fuel to Alaska to operate anything larger than a fishing boat will be a pain as well. as will all the outlying islands, you simply don't have an extra tanker to send on routine runs to all the islands, so you'll either have to forgo one of your 3 or 4 critical build up runs in 1942 to OZ, or leave your islands high and dry.

Has the cost to refuel large fleets been reduced, is that why there are hardly any tankers? In WitP it could take 20,000-50,000 or more to top off your large fleets when they saw lots of action. With 3-5 large fleets operating in the Solomon's, you could burn through 500,000 fuel in a month easily.

With a total on map tanker lift capacity of about 300,000 during 1942, you'd need a minimum of 3 tips to OZ to get it in shape for offensive ops. 4 or 5 would be better. The first trip would just get some fuel spread to all the bases, the next two would build up a decent stockpile, but you wouldn't have much in reserves should battle break out.

What happened to historical accuracy?

Jim

Looking at the site you linked, a fair number of those tankers were completed as AOs, assuming that you counted names to get the 900 figure. The only quantity number I could see was 481 listed for the T2-SE-A1 series. The site indicates that all the T3-S2-A1 were either completed as AOs or CVEs.

So the first question would seem to be, how many combined tankers and AOs does the US get? Or did your 180 include the AOs as well?

I would also assume that a fair number of the tankers were dedicated to hauling crude oil and fuel off-map (Europe, interport in the US).

Mike

Sceanrio 2:

Shinano, slot 10, is Taiho Class CV, slot 1845.

ORIGINAL: JeffK

ORIGINAL: erstad

ORIGINAL: JeffK

IMHO, the designers have played God in this, and too many other areas, it should be up to us to choose our fates. There argument for the ability for KB to stay on station is exactly opposite to this. What if the commander of the Miineapolis TF decides to head for San Diego?? Instead, he is stranded in port.

Can always change it in the editor, of course.

erstad,

Thats what I have already done to far too many units, far more than I would expect in a game which has had so many hours spent on it.

Too often they are areas where the designers made a decision to include or not include units.

In my opinion you are being very unkind to these uncompensated designers that have tried very hard to bring us an improvement to our WITP experience. They have also included a means to tweak many things in the database to your and my satisfaction and have pledged close support to address areas of concern. We have all been keenly aware there would be issues we would all find when the game was released to us. We have cried for the opportunity to participate in this process and here we are only one week past the release date and we are flooding the designers with our ideas.

Obviously they (designers) have failed in your eyes. Normally, I would suggest to you that you chalk up this experience to a bad investment and move on to something that will make you happier. However JeffK, you have brought to this game many worthy ideas in your 2123 posts and I would hate to see you leave.

Try to be more charitable in your approach and go back to surfacing things wrong and/or not working for the community's benefit.

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

Where are the US tankers?

The US built lots of Tankers during WWII. This site lists about 900 of them built during the war years:

http://www.usmm.org/tankers.html

If you include tankers that were in existence at wars start and those of all the other allied nations, there were enough tankers to go around everywhere across the globe. But in game it looks like the US gets less than 180 tankers for the entire game (rough count, may be slightly higher or lower) and only has about 30 for the critical year of 1942 when the entire map is bone dry (assuming they can save the ones in the Philippines).

So what happened to the US tanker fleet? There are barely enough in game during 42 to keep Pearl and the Pacific fleet fueled if you are active with you carriers, but as far as getting enough fuel to OZ to support offensive carrier ops by 1943, you'd have to leave Pearl, Noumea and New Zealand pretty much bone dry for all of 42.

And getting enough fuel to Alaska to operate anything larger than a fishing boat will be a pain as well. as will all the outlying islands, you simply don't have an extra tanker to send on routine runs to all the islands, so you'll either have to forgo one of your 3 or 4 critical build up runs in 1942 to OZ, or leave your islands high and dry.

Has the cost to refuel large fleets been reduced, is that why there are hardly any tankers? In WitP it could take 20,000-50,000 or more to top off your large fleets when they saw lots of action. With 3-5 large fleets operating in the Solomon's, you could burn through 500,000 fuel in a month easily.

With a total on map tanker lift capacity of about 300,000 during 1942, you'd need a minimum of 3 tips to OZ to get it in shape for offensive ops. 4 or 5 would be better. The first trip would just get some fuel spread to all the bases, the next two would build up a decent stockpile, but you wouldn't have much in reserves should battle break out.

What happened to historical accuracy?

Jim

Can anybody come up with a link or basis for guesstimating the number of tankers dedicated to the theater at any one time? We could then add them from the names reflected in the site you provided even if a particular ship served the Atlantic, et al others.

ORIGINAL: Buck Beach
Can anybody come up with a link or basis for guesstimating the number of tankers dedicated to the theater at any one time? We could then add them from the names reflected in the site you provided even if a particular ship served the Atlantic, et al others.

There isn’t any practical link, but there is a rational set assumptions and starting basis. We know exactly how many hulls, and their average tonnage, in the US fleet as of Jan. 1, 1940. We know exactly how many hulls, and their individual tonnage that were built (delivered) from Jan.1, 1940 to Jan. 1, 1942. And we know who got sunk.

Then we determined how many tankers (qua tankers), of what types, were constructed (delivered) in each shipyard in each region of the US from Jan.1, 1942 till mid ’45; paying attention to West Coast deliveries.

Then we determined things like raw crude transfers from well (pipe) termini to refinery sites (calc the tonnage required), from Oil Production Board figures. Then analyzed Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce figures for all refined product shipments to all recipients; Russia, Britain, General Lend-Lease, Africa Theater, Med Theater, Euro Theater, Pac Theater, SWPac Theater, Neutral Zone-Atlantic, Neutral Zone-Pacific (Chile, fx), Neutral Zone-Africa, Intranational (a BIG number, includes Mexico, Canada, Central America).

From the individual annual “tons of gas” figures, we get a percentage of how many tons went where annually. Given that, we figured out what % of hulls could do that on an annual basis. We too were surprised at the result, but remembering that Nimitz was screaming for ‘tankers, tankers, tankers’, till mid ’44, I guess we shouldn’t have been.

AFAIK this info is not presented anywhere else. We have so much data on this, and other aspects of the respective Pac Theater merchant fleets, the Don Bowen and I are thinking seriously about writing a book.

Bottom line, to get Joe, Erik, and Matrix totally off the hook, if anybody wants to chew some butt over WiTP-AE merchant fleets, that butt would be mine.

[edit] btw, used WiTP database as starting point,and just made sure capacity with respect to time was satisfied; that took a couple months. So ... thinking that concept and capability was more important then spelling (and, I was damn tired), didn't try to name everybody 'absolutely historically correctly'. Besides, nobody really knows what that means.

Another thing on tankers (or lack thereof), tankage devoted to hauling gasoline (aviation and regular land vehicle) and diesel fuel would have to be subtracted out as well, since "fuel" doesn't include regular motor fuels (not to mention motor oil and other petroleum products).  Fuel in the game is pretty much just bunker fuel for ships and factories.  Of course, in that instance, you could make a case for adding in some non-tanker transport, since all those items are represented by supply in the game. 

The figures that come from DFDC include all shipped “product” ; that would be CS-xxx crude, bunker-C, core/coke sections, heavy diesel, kero/gasoline, light refined product all the way down to stuff like naptha, iso-octane derivatives … you know … product.

Okay, so some of that is called “supply” in-game. But it’s a good starting point for determining annual tanker tonnage, especially when you consider total tonnage and cargo ship deep tank and forepeak capacity and the small gal/ton figures of ‘top of the cracking towers’ product.

Isn't there a "minimal refueling" option on the TF window?? That means you should set that for your Tankers going from West Coast to Pearl so they don't drink up the fuel you are trying to stockpile there. Many of us players are use to stock and a few of the original mods were the Allies have fuel to use like sand on a beach.

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Isn't there a "minimal refueling" option on the TF window?? That means you should set that for your Tankers going from West Coast to Pearl so they don't drink up the fuel you are trying to stockpile there. Many of us players are use to stock and a few of the original mods were the Allies have fuel to use like sand on a beach.

Have no idea what you are talking about. Neither stock nor AE uses liquid cargo to refuel.

In stock, there was only two options for TF refueling once it reached its destination. AE now has four. Correct??

If you leave the default setting of Full Refuel, the your Tankers, filled with Fuel will attempt to draw a full load of Fuel from the destination port. Correct??

Thus, you will need to select either Do Not Refuel or Minimal Refuel on your Tanker TF to prevent them from drawing from the fuel stored at your destination, or at the least use the minimium needed to return back to your home port (hopefully in the USA).

Carrying this one step further, then if you are just dropping off troops in Hawaii with the transports returning to the West Coast, then use one of those two options above is best.

Did I make sense this time?? [&:]

I think it's a huge mistake to limit the allies to just the number of hulls required to meet some shipping manifests tonnage shipped list. The idea that there were full loads on every trip (unlikely in rough seas) and no ships at all held in reserve (again unlikely), creates a very fragile glass jaw situation.

Sink 5 or 10 tankers in a KB raid and you've effectively crippled the allied war effort as there is no way to make up the shortfall in tonnage by bringing more ships in from other areas of the globe, or increasing production of tanker hulls.

Probably the only way to get accurate information on the exact number of tankers in the Pacific would be to go to the source: http://www.mrfa.org/Navy.Records.htm

Deck logs could be poured over to obtain data that would tell if a ship was in the Pacific and if so when. But researching the hundreds or thousands of individual ships would be a project for someone writing a book. hint hint. [;)]

Anyone who lives near:

Modern Military Branch
National Archives and Records Administration
8601 Adelphi Road
College Park, MD 20740-6001


that wants to volunteer to drive over and pour over some records?

How wonderful. If you will put together a complete and self consistent system, we will run it past the people who vetted ours; folks who have been in the marine shipping industry for 4 or 5 generations, with names like Howell, Lykes, etc.. If it makes sense to them, we'll be in touch.

ORIGINAL: JWE

How wonderful. If you will put together a complete and self consistent system, we will run it past the people who vetted ours; folks who have been in the marine shipping industry for 4 or 5 generations, with names like Howell, Lykes, etc.. If it makes sense to them, we'll be in touch.

Easy big fella we are not all out to get you and criticize all of your work. I think most of us just want the best product and as close to "the way it was" possible. Open ears and minds might lead to a solution if there is a problem.

ORIGINAL: Buck Beach
Open ears and minds might lead to a solution if there is a problem.

Look after your tankers where ever they are, accept that fuel is a limiting factor for your early combat ops and then make sure you convoy them with escorts later on.

From what I have seen you have a lot of different sized ships (not just tankers) rather than the small or large you generally got with WITP. To my mind then, take your big tankers from the storage/production areas to a 'hub' and then use your smaller tankers to distribute the fuel to the forward bases. That way you only put smaller chunks of your capacity in harms way. Same goes for freighters.

ORIGINAL: bsq
Look after your tankers where ever they are, accept that fuel is a limiting factor for your early combat ops and then make sure you convoy them with escorts later on.

Sounds advice.

Also, to help ease the load on the US tankers, use the British ones to ship fuel to Australia (from Abadan, as was done in real life).

Andrew

CVE Anzio has an arrival date in the game of 1 Jun 43 but the Anzio landings that the CVE was named in honor of were made on 22 Jan 44 - 6 months after the ship arrives?...whazzup with that? [&:] BuShips Prescience? [:D]