Game is not broken, History is!

[Monter_Trismegistos]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
9 August 1944
PB4Y (VB 116) crashes on takeoff from Stickell Field, Eniwetok, and burns amidst the 340 planes in the carrier aircraft replacement pool area; 106 (F6Fs, FMs,SB2Cs, and TBMs) are destroyed

Was this "plane dissapearance from pool" bug fixed in RL version of WitP?

[Knavey]

Hmmmm....[:D][:D][:D]

[oldman45]

I think an AE exploding in a port would lead to the most wailing and gnashing of teeth. You would wreck just about any port in the game if that were to happen. Think about the explosion in Corpus Christi, if my memory serves me that flattened most of the port. Can you imagine if PH or Truk had their port reduced to 0 for 3-6 months [:D]

[Q-Ball]

Has anyone lost a ship yet to ammo handling accident, a la Mutsu, in-game?

[oldman45]

Thankfully no.

[bretg80]

The Japanese lost at Midway because they were over confident and they had no reason to suspect US carriers in the area. So their guard was down and they were beaten by a surprise attack, just like the American's at Pearl. Most people will not fare well in a surprise encounter and if they do it is usually by luck. The Japanese had a little luck at Midway, they did get one Carrier. It could have been a total loss.

[jwilkerson]

This is probably possible to see in AE ...

Call it 0/20/0/0 damage to USS Washington due to ramming by USS Indiana.

[Canoerebel]

The "weird things happen in war" is a great feature of AE.
 
But if a "weird things happen in war" thing becomes a norm, rather than an isolated, unpredictable occurrence, you may have a problem.
 
 
 

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

This is probably possible to see in AE ...

Call it 0/20/0/0 damage to USS Washington due to ramming by USS Indiana.

Warspite1

Whoops! Nice picture by the way - never seen that before.

The British had a few tragic accidents - Queen Mary sinking the cruiser Curacao, KGV or DOY sinking a destroyer, the cruiser Calcutta sinking the Canadian destroyer Fraser. Did the US Navy have anything similar in terms of severity?

[John Lansford]

I don't think so; most of our collisions appear to have been between equal sized ships.

Looking through the Sunk Ship list in my CG, I've run into a number of "unknowns" as to cause, and at least one "collision" (an AKL IIRC).  There's also several small subs that have listed "hit obstruction", plus one CA listed as being sunk by .303 MG fire!

[fbs]

This thread took an interesting turn: people are listing odd accidents and odd hits as examples of freak events, and that is fine. But nobody has come yet with a truly freak battle result.

I think that's hindsight in play. Battles are analyzed to exhaustion, and historians yearn for an explanation for what happened - they will always come with some. So Tsushima for example can be explained by A, B and C, and people come to believe that whenever A, B and C are in place then logically the battle can only have that particular result -- even if the particular A, B and C combination never happened again.

The way I see it, a battle has a freak result if both sides expected a range of outcomes, and yet got something completely unexpected. Fact that the unexpected will always be explained by someone does not mean that people can predict unexpected, strange results.

Consider Malaya: the speed that the Japanese advanced, with units surrendering to recon forces, surpassed both Japanese and British predictions. The Japanese probably would win at Malaya anyway, but I'm not so sure that the results in Malaya were anything you could call average or expected.

My point is: battles are very complicated and chaotic system with many hidden variables, and as in any chaotic system it is very difficult to predict their evolution precisely. The only recourse we have is to use dice rolls to model probabilities, and that is fine. My problem is: we take historical outcomes as being matter-of-fact, average results that a game/simulator should reproduce in average -- when in fact historical outcomes may have been just lucky incidents coming out of those hidden variables.

Pearl Harbor is a good example: perhaps we shouldn't take for granted that 18 ships sunk/heavily damaged should be the expected, average result. Perhaps the average result should be no battleships sunk (or something else that the subject matter experts can come up with), and the historical results should be a lucky break given by a particular alignment of improbable conditions.

Thanks,
fbs

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: fbs

This thread took an interesting turn: people are listing odd accidents and odd hits as examples of freak events, and that is fine. But nobody has come yet with a truly freak battle result.

I think that's hindsight in play. Battles are analyzed to exhaustion, and historians yearn for an explanation for what happened - they will always come with some. So Tsushima for example can be explained by A, B and C, and people come to believe that whenever A, B and C are in place then logically the battle can only have that particular result -- even if the particular A, B and C combination never happened again.

The way I see it, a battle has a freak result if both sides expected a range of outcomes, and yet got something completely unexpected. Fact that the unexpected will always be explained by someone does not mean that people can predict unexpected, strange results.

Consider Malaya: the speed that the Japanese advanced, with units surrendering to recon forces, surpassed both Japanese and British predictions. The Japanese probably would win at Malaya anyway, but I'm not so sure that the results in Malaya were anything you could call average or expected.

My point is: battles are very complicated and chaotic system with many hidden variables, and as in any chaotic system it is very difficult to predict their evolution precisely. The only recourse we have is to use dice rolls to model probabilities, and that is fine. My problem is: we take historical outcomes as being matter-of-fact, average results that a game/simulator should reproduce in average -- when in fact historical outcomes may have been just lucky incidents coming out of those hidden variables.

Pearl Harbor is a good example: perhaps we shouldn't take for granted that 18 ships sunk/heavily damaged should be the expected, average result. Perhaps the average result should be no battleships sunk (or something else that the subject matter experts can come up with), and the historical results should be a lucky break given by a particular alignment of improbable conditions.

Thanks,
fbs

Warspite1

FBS you make a good point, but I think its difficult to analyse what was freak result or what was "average" etc. But its fun to hazard a guess.

Gut feel says that given the surprise advantage and the aircraft available, what the Japanese achieved at Pearl Harbor was less than optimal in real life and in any wargame, the Japanese player would expect to do better. Launching a third wave for example.

I think given the inexperience of all of those who took part - and all other factors - the Coral Sea and Midway operations could both have resulted in major victories for Japan, although I would say that if that had happened, that would have represented a freak result given the US intelligence, their damage control procedures etc etc. But if a game produces this result, its not "broken".

Savo Island produced another sub-optimal result for Japan. Having done the difficult bit, Ozawa had the transports at his mercy. I don`t think that a game that has the ability to reproduce this battle resulting in a major victory for Japan would be "broken" therefore.

Interesting stuff.....

[ckammp]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

This is probably possible to see in AE ...

Call it 0/20/0/0 damage to USS Washington due to ramming by USS Indiana.

Warspite1

Whoops! Nice picture by the way - never seen that before.

The British had a few tragic accidents - Queen Mary sinking the cruiser Curacao, KGV or DOY sinking a destroyer, the cruiser Calcutta sinking the Canadian destroyer Fraser. Did the US Navy have anything similar in terms of severity?

The USS Ingraham (DD-444) collided at night with the tanker USS Chemung (AO-30) off of Nova Scotia on 22 August 1942. Of a crew of 208, only 11 survived. Ironically, she was investigating a collision between USS Buck (DD-240) and troop transport Awatea, in which 7 sailors died.

The USS S-26 was rammed at night by the USS Sturdy (PC-460) in the Gulf of Mexico on 24 January 1942. Of a crew of 46, only 3 survived.

There were several other cases of US Navy ships being sunk by collisions during the war, but most of their crews were rescued.

[aciddrinker]

Not only collisons sunked ships, i.e.
USS Hull (DD-350) foundered during a typhoon in the Philippine Sea, 18 December 1944.
USS Monaghan (DD-354) foundered during a typhoon in the Philippine Sea, 18 December 1944.
USS Spence (DD-512) capsized during a typhoon in the Philippine Sea, 18 December 1944.
If somthing like that will happen in game there will be much crying on forum i guess

[spence]

An improbable result?

How about the Indian Navy minesweeper/tanker (Ondina IIRC) combo that sank the AMC Hokuku Maru and damaged her stable mate critically with just a 3" and 4" gun between them.

[JeffroK]

Can we have the possibility of a CL torpedoing itself

HMS Trinidad (from Wikipedia)

While escorting Convoy PQ-13 in March 1942, she and other escorts were in combat with German Narvik-class destroyers. She hit and sank the German destroyer Z 26, and then launched a torpedo attack. One of her torpedoes had a faulty gyro mechanism possibly affected by the icy waters. The path of the torpedo formed a circular arc, striking the Trinidad and killing 32 men.

She made it to Murmansk but was struck by a bomb on the return journey and scuttled.

[Local Yokel]

...and not just CL's. Torpedoes on circular runs certainly accounted for Tang and, in all probability, Tullibee. Bad things can happen with ordnance of any kind.

Sorry to raise a nitpicking point, but at Savo the Japanese commander was Mikawa Gun'ichi rather than Ozawa.

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel


Sorry to raise a nitpicking point, but at Savo the Japanese commander was Mikawa Gun'ichi rather than Ozawa.

Warspite1

It was indeed Mikawa - Doh!

[Ametysth]

First shot of the war was shot by USS Ward Dec 7th, which engaged and shot a midget sub trying to enter the Pear Harbor while the planes from KB were on their way. Commander of Ward at that time was LT Outerbridge.

USS Ward was converted to APD and was hit by Kamikaze in the Battle of Leyte and it was scuttled by destroyer USS O'Brian... O'Brian was commanded by very same Outerbridge at that time. Date of the sinking of USS Ward; Dec 7th 1944, almost to the hour three years after the ship has opened fire.

[AirGriff]

I get a kick out of this thread. Good stuff. You know, maybe all the militaries in the world should get together and make sure future ops adhere to the good common sense the devs have worked up for us here. Future history would be so much easier to write, but not nearly as interesting.

As a pilot, I'm amazed at how life-like training simulators are, but the day they build an airplane to fly like a simulator is the day I go find something else to do [:D]