Not sure I like this aspect....

[bradfordkay]

I don't know if the game code could handle this alteration, but it seems to me that since the game is already breaking each turn into phases (night, morning air phase and afternoon air phase) then the naval movement should also be handled in the same manner. Rather than having the ships move their full movement rate before the first morning search phase perhaps they should only move one half of the distance during the night phase, and then finishing their movement after the morning air phase. This could posibly leave them within range of attacking bombers during the first daylight air phase, but not the second (unless damage is received during that morning attack).

I think that this would not change the flavor of the game and would be a more realistic portrayal of the action.

[Mark W Carver]

Originally posted by Wilhammer
That is the discussion I wanted to happen. Is it in fact an exploitation? It was certainly easier to pull off, I can tell you that.

I'm curious as to what was the time frame you were capable to pull this off?
Trying this against a competent human American player might not reach the same success against the A/I as elmo3 has stated.

I could only guess that Luganville had no A/C, so knowing that the game only cared about my end points, I was aware that any threat against my ships, no matter what was based there, was not a concern, as I would arrive in the dark, and be out of most bomber's effective range in the day.

In my game against the A/I. I'm in scenario #17, it's 15 Jul '42, and I'm doing my own 'Washington Express' against the A/I at Lunga with CA's and DD's. I have two TF's stationed at Lunganville. I'm schuffling CA's and DD's out of my 'Express' to minimize system damage on the CA's and DD's. Thus, there is always a TF of CA's and DD's stationed in Luganville while the other is bombarding Lunga. Air coverage, well there is an AV with PBY's at Vana (provides great eye-in-the-sky for me, almost to Nggatokae Island in the middle of The Slot. And then there are the American A-20's, British Beauforts and Hudsons stationed in Luganville and yep all of the B-17's which are bombing Lunga at 35,000 in the stone age. No rest for the Japs in Lunga. Lunganville is a level 2 port and the airfield is at a level 7 (1 past it's level 6 max!). All available engineers were flown in and transported in asap to Lunganville.

New Guinea is well secured with the 3rd Aus and the New Guinea Force as well as Gili Gili with the 7th Aus stationed there when they re-took it from the Japs in the middle of June '42. Two carrier TF's (with 5 total CV's) are on station in Noumea as I await the arrival of the 1st Marines and my build-up of supplies and fuel to Lunganville.

[Wilhammer]

I guess this boils down to the oldest argument in wargaming;

The Grog Debates.

I play in a style based on historical knowledge and many, many nights of playing naval campaigns in the Pacific where we did everything in "real time", we broke time up, moved planes and ships in 30 minute phases on maps covered in plastic using grease pencils, matched the overlays, used a judge to track potential intercepts, and then fought detailed engagemnts in one minute turns on a beautiful 16 ft X 16 ft blue table.
Of course, I was a teenager to young man, and had about 6 guys I could always count on to play, and a retired Naval CPO who introduced it to us and indoctrinated historical accuracy and "groginess" in us.

I was a bit mystified in that historical tactics did not quite work in UV.

Why did the Tokyo Raid get launched early?

Hmmm, a gamey carrier Rush on a Japanese port was potentially spotted by a fishing trawler picket. This cannot happen in UV, unless the time is Midnight, 6AM or 6PM (one night search phase, and 2 daytime search phases).

Get past the surface ship argument.

Carriers are passing each other at high speed and not intercepting each other. React to enemy mitigates that some, but Japanes Admirals don't seem to no that their airplanes have far greater ranges than American ones. They dash in too close, and the Americans dash in closer, and the lowly Devestator is a giant killer.

Make it Ignore Enemy, and they zoom past each other.

What SHOULD happen?

The search planes from my carrier should always be looking, and once something is communicated to the fleet, a moment of decision has been reached, and then time should stop, and see who spots who when, and then the airstrike planning takes place.

Too tactical for you in an Operational Level game?

In an Operational Level WW2 Pacific Warfare game, an Aircraft Carrier is every bit as important as an entire sector of a frontline in an operational level game on land in Europe.

It would be like losing Bastogne in a Bulge game, and you get into the details of waging the battle around that in PzC Bulge '44.

It is not that many units we are talking about.

A potential intercept routine need only compare hexes traveled to rate of speed by overlaying all paths and comparing crossed areas to determine if they could of been in the same place at the same time. I use to do this with a Master Plot Comaprison Map, two opposing Plot Maps, platis overlays and grease pencils.

If a potential intercept is determined, the game then does a random check to see if one does take place, then the time stops at that point and executes that action. The units involved suffer Operational Point Loss, the turn proceeds.

This "overlay over overlay" check is done once at the beginning of each phase, and the game stops at each battle that got generated, thus no need to process in real time.

A turn based game with opportunity "fire".

What of "following the sounds of battle"?

That is React To Enemy Plus.

================================

Going on vacation now, be back next week.

Hope the patch is out when I get back, I still enjoy this game a bunch. I just would like to see it get better.

They seem to have so much detail in the units (down to commander and pilot level!), detailed units, but the crucial component of time and spotting is out of skew in its abstraction.

When you get right down too it, though both sides planned naval actions, the actual point of encounter was a meeting engagement.

As it is now, it feels a lot like seige warfare at times, circa 1756.

[Paul Vebber]

THe problem I se in most of the arguments - things "well in CM you don't have problems with..." is a "lowest tactical denominator" being looked to that is not workable in an operational level game.

This game has no business being comparable to CM, a game of individual tank and squad combat !!! IF it were i would call it a failure!

Do you really want to play the Pacific war with Carriers at War, resolving the location of thousands of units at 5 min intervals?

I certainly can see the point of wanting to "play out" the key battles in a 'tactical' fashio, but i think a lot of folks are taking GAME experience with TACTICAL naval games and wanting the same level of detail in a game that spans years and not days.

The assumption that your god's eye view is shared by all your subrdinates, that the reports you see on the map are exactly accurate are not necessarily valid!

operational games tend to get "tacticalized" and that leads to discussions why certain tactics succed or fail - something that is beyond the scope of operational level games!.

I don;t think people realize how much the game would drag if you tried to run the thing in "continuous time". All the caluculations to resolve all the little details of the spotting situation would have to be done every "x" minutes and the game would take FOREVER to play.

And what would the result be. IT could be VERY AHISTORICAL if all the details of teh tactical situation were not modeled exactly right .

That is why operational games employ abstraction. I can create a computer program that models the intricate workings of a precision time piece the friction of the jewels, the relaxing of the spring. IT can model perfectly the little variations over time. Or I can query the system clock.

If I want to know what time it is, all the effort to model the clock is wasted efort. If I know on average such watches lose 3 secs per month I can account for that and even through in a random sec here or there. Will you know which I use based on me telling you what time it is?

This is a CONSTANT problem of "real" wargaming too, "buy-in to the abstraction layer" is always painful and never universal, but required at the operational level.

You CAN'T just assume the battlefield is a Newtonian Machine and by turning the crank and watching everythin move exactly as ordered with no mistakes or confusion produces anything more realistic than a well considered set of abstractions that produce "good enough" results. ITs nearly always teh other way around. That is why so many think baordgames more "elegant" for their abstraction than a brute force computer calculation that always leaves out "just one more crucial variable.."

"continuous time" tracking of ships on a hexless ocean is only "more realisitc" if the navigationa and reproting limitations are strictly represented, and the modeling of those human failings is notoriosly difficult and can be approximated by methods not all that far removed from the techniques the game uses. (Queueing theory being one). These techniques don't model the PHYSICS of situations, but realtionships between the interactions that can occur. IN many cases the special dimensions don't have the sort of impact one would expect, when one includes realistic errors.

So those of you offended by seeming "holes in the phyics" you have good company with senior military officers in multi-million dollar service wargames. SOmetimes a tweak toward the tactical level is warranted (we ARE evaluating options - don't take my comments as "blowing you off").

But the reality is that the principle trap that both military and commercial wargames tend to fall into is the argument that "the only way the operational level can be right is to explicitly model the tactical". Thats just not true, and the "glory days" of operational level wargaming here at the Naval wargame were done based on "tactical resolution" not far removed from "dicing for 6's"...yet the games, according to Nimitz predicted every operational facet of the actual wa, except the Japanese resorting to kamikaze's.


If anything this exchange has denstrated that LIMITING what tactical details teh player is given so they have less to potentially offend their sensibility is arguably better than trying to explicitley model tactics to produce details with a stronger physical pedigree - yet with no more basis in historical correctness than the assumptins all teh number crunching is based on.

I had all sorts of trouble with TOAW and its "detailed reports" until one day I just turned them off and never looked back. The "macro results" based on "attack facotr" seemed to work at the scales I was interested in , and not paying attention to the distraction of figuring out how the detailed reprts could possibly have been arrived at, let me enjoy the game.

[Paul Dyer]

A number of myths have grown up about how the allies missed the approach of the Japanese to Savo Island. In many ways the litany of missed signs is like a mini-Pearl Harbour, or the current debate about 9/11. Please bear with me & I’ll try to summarise what I think is the accurate story.

This is relevant to UV – it shows how reconnaissance can fail when it ought not to and spotting an enemy can be a matter of chance. There were various chances to sight the Japanese - intelligence had an idea something was up, and there were at least four sightings of Mikawa’s force. The role of the RAAF Hudsons seems particularly misrepresented, and this seems to be a rare area where Morrison went astray.

As far as I can make out, the missed opportunities went as follows:

- intelligence could have provided some clues. An increase in signal traffic, plus ordering of submarines and aircraft towards the area were noted, but these were to be expected. One significant clue was that on the 7th Mikawa had shifted his flag from Rabaul to a ship, and there was suspicion at Pearl Harbour that this was Chokai. The following day MacArthur’s HQ confirmed this. A message that the Japanese force was en route Guadacanal was intercepted on the 7th. However, due to a recent code change this was not decrypted until two weeks later.

- the first sighting of the Japanese force was by the submarine S-38 at dusk on the 7th. The report was “two destroyers, plus three other larger vessels, headed south-east”. It reached the invasion fleet late the following morning. However, since this sighting was distant and near a major Japanese base it was not thought of much consequence. The presumption was that should this force approach the air searches would locate it the following day.

- The next morning came a sighting by some B-17s who passed overhead on the way to bomb Rabaul (actually in support of Watchtower). Their sighting seems to have been treated similarly to that of S-38.

- There were actually two Hudson sightings. Neither crew was aware of Watchtower, and both had been told to expect allied ships in the region. It was therefore something of a surprise when the vessels turned out to be hostile and opened fire.

- The first, by Hudson 218 flown by a Sgt Stutt, immediately sent back a contact report. Indeed the crew were so concerned to get the message through that when no acknowledgement was received they aborted and returned to base. However, Stutt made one significant error due to inexperience. He thought he had seen 3 cruisers, 3 destroyers, plus 2 remaining ships which he couldn’t identify. Instead of saying so, he referred to the latter as “either seaplane carriers or gunboats”. This was nonsense, and served to deflate the warning, since no group composed of these types of ships would be an immediate surface threat. Had the message reported cruisers/destroyers + unknowns possibly the warning bells would have rung loud.

- On arrival (just after midday) Stutt wasted no time in making his report. The cuppa tea story is, I think, completely fallacious. The inexplicable delays were in the time this took to be relayed by the shore staff. The message had to be sent to Townsville, on to Brisbane, then to Pearl for transmission to the US ships. It did not reach Brisbane until 6 hours after Stutt had landed. All this despite the message being headed “Emergency”. Thereafter the process was swift. Ghormley’s HQ received it about 20 minutes later, around 1840 on the 8th. Even this would have been in time, had the reported composition of the enemy been accurate and the staff at Savo been more receptive and alert.

- the second Australian sighting was by Hudson 185 in early afternoon. Again inexperience played a major role. This aircraft tried to send a report, but was told to maintain silence by its home base. It did accurately report its sighting on arrival. However, the debriefing officer refused to believe it, and a flaming row ensured. One of the cruisers was described as “similar” to an RN Southhampton class – as Snigbert mentions. A watered down message eventually reached Guadacanal just before Mikawa did.

In summary, had anyone pieced the available evidence together they might have summarised “a day after we landed, Mikawa has moved to sea in Chokai. We know that various other cruisers are I the vicinity, and air and submarine reinforcements are on the way. Late on the 7th a surface task force was reported headed south east, and there have been two sightings of a similar sized group in the slot the following day.” Put like that Mikawa’s intention and the threat seem obvious.

To repeat, the implications for UV/WITP seem to be that sighting reports always have a random element in them. Delays and inaccuracies are the norm. The experience rating of the searchers should also matter. Finally, in this case, complacency also played a role. A more alert staff might have grasped the significance of the various sightings that did get through. But at that time the vicious surface battles and tenacity of the IJN lay in the future and were not yet appreciated.

An excellent account of the debacle is “The Shame of Savo” by Bruce Loxton. The author was an 18yr old midshipman on HMAS Canberra when she went down. He subsequently became Director of Naval Intelligence for the RAN.

[strollen]

Interesting post Paul, but isn't there a compromise solution between calculating everthing and doing nothing.

While I don't agree with Didz that problem is particularly bad. There clearly is something unrealist about a TF being able to sail 300 miles bombard, or unload and than sail 300 miles back without being able to be subject to an air attack.

It seems to me that there is already a mechanism to help address the problem. Operations Point, my understand is that Opps points simulates actions that take a fraction of a 12 hour phase (refueling, aircraft operations, loading/unloading). Currently neither Bombarding nor Fast transport evacuation or unload consume any ops points.

Simply making them consume a fixed or variable 100 or 200 ops points means that bombarding/Fast TF would only be able to move 8-10 hexs on the way out instead of 10-12 making them more likely subject to air attacks. Since very few Japanese TFs were successful attacked inbound to Henderson, while more than few were attacked outbound this seems to solve the problem.

What I am missing?

[Paul Vebber]

I don't know, I must be missing it too...

I keep saying that such "compromise options" are being evaluated, but there is no assurance they may not break more than they fix...and the "tacticians" seem to more firmly cling to "bottom up" modelling to the point of saying "historical results don't matter" as long as the "physics" looks right...:rolleyes: A classic "top-down" vs "bottom up" modeling catfight! I;ve cetinaly been to this fire enough times. The "right answer" is always a combination, but that means SOME "bottom up abstraction", and some"top down marginally supported detail"...I think the current compromise is a good one!

My point is that the game is fundamentally operational and could just have easily have used 'Sea areas' as hexes. We could probably take the hexes away, draw areas on the map and do nothing else and folks and the "issues" would go away, becasue the player couldn't tell...

If I had you combat results of an ultra-detailed tactical model and another set form "dicing for 6's" and you couldn't accurately sort them out, what does that tell you about the operational relevence of the model? Would that mean the "dicing for 6's" was "unrealistic" or simply produced a distribution of results just as "believable' as the ulta realistc model, except perhaps "at the margins".

A lot of research and testing went into givin gthe player the point of view of being in operational command. In that the game has succeeded. I'm surprised nobody has complained that 99 jeeps, er...destroyers can sink a Battleship :p

[Wilhammer]

Paul,

Just to make it clear, I am not suggesting a tactical system.

When I refer to CM, I am referring to its turn execution system.

You plot for a certain interval of time (this could be a minute or a day), and then the units of all types interact as the action unfolds after it was computed.

I only compared it to CM as it is the latest incarnation of this.

World At War uses such a system with 4 hour turns in a game like Operation Crusader.

I am referring to a possible system for a future design.

Saying we are "tacticians" looking for a tactical simulation is not the question here.

I bring up the naval miniatures to highlight our campaign system.

Why can't a computer program compare the "overlays" of two opposing plots, and compare tracks to rate of speed and path traveled, to create the chance that if two opposing forces get within a few miles of each other, and spot each other enroute, and then either avoid by chance, avoid by choice, or engage.

As it stands now, two types of intercepts do in fact occur; collision with mines and minesweeping.

One force is moving, the other force is stationary.

How do you determine this collision? A ship passes through, and a random event is generated that signifies either a collision or a succesful detection and removal, modifed by manf factors such as density and crew experience.

Now suppose the mine could move?

The point I am focused on is not tactical (I want an operational level game), but on the limitations of the 12 hour phases with end point only search/combat situations.

So please, focus on that.

BTW, it is one of the finest Operational Games ever produced.

You have succeeded in putting us in Operational Command in the SW Pacific.

Try to see this as positive feedback with a strong desire to see the search/engage interaction in time and space to be as detailed as the rest of the simulation.

A-, could be an A+.

I will continue to play it, it is good.

[bradfordkay]

When I first received UV, I realized that this was not a computer version of the classic boardgame Flattop (a multiplayer CAW with updated graphics...hmmm)and have come to truly appreciate the operational level of the game.

Uncommon Valor is dangerously close to the perfect SoPac wargame. I've only had it one week, and have finished only two scenarios (Coral Sea and Operation MO). I lost each of those at least twice before finishing... The game flows beautifully, keeping you on edge waiting for news of the enemy carriers (invasion force, resupply convoy, whatever is your latest worry). There is just the right amount of detail to make the game seem realistic without bogging down too much.

However, the bombardment situation does need a little help. An excellent example is a situation in my last game. On or about July 12 a Japanese BB TF is sighted in the China Strait (30nm E of Gili Gili) by Hudson patrol craft. At that moment a US 3CV TF is approx. 150nm south of the New Guinea shore midway between Gili Gili and Port Moresby. The BB taskforce mauls the airfield at Port Moresby that night and at the start of the daytime air operations phase is now 60nm ENE of Gili Gili. The forecast for the day IS overcast, but the failure of the CV TF to find the battlewagons passing between them and the shore until they reached the end of the day's passage detracts somewhat from the experience.

I do not argue that it couldn't have happened that way. It's just that now there is no other way that it will happen in the game. So the gamer is induced to try to order his forces to intercept where the enemy will be at the end of the day rather than placing them more reasonably located to intercept the enemy during the passage of the day.

[deilthedog]

paul
im just curious to what options are being looked at in forthcoming patches in relation to this?