Nice Surface Combat!

[Tankerace]

Well, what my theory (in this scenario) is that as Astoria fled, she did fire. But I agree, we have no way of knowing what happened, exactly. For all we know Astoria might have fired alot, but was saved because she was shielded by the smoke of another ship that was hit.

[mogami]

Hi, No The truth is out now. Astoria early in the battle crippled her adversary. As she moved in for the kill the Japanese fled firing a spread of torpedos that Astoria nimbly dodged. However they all hit USN ships to the rear.
With most of the USN heavies crippled Astoria pursued the Japanese. All the damage was inflicted by her. Sadley she ran out of ammo just as she was ready to wipe the Japanese out.

[Tankerace]

Well.... that's the last time I make a guess as to what happens in a battle....[;)]

[Adnan Meshuggi]

did she consumpted ammo ?

if yes, master of witp had guessed right, if not, then even he made an error. Or anoter bug is in the game, the "ship fires but do not consume ammo"-bug [:D]

honestly, i tend to agree that one or two destroyers would go with lex, but not the cruiser... if i remind correctly, the lex could go faster as the cruisers, so they would have slow down her (not in statistic numbers, but in reallity, the lex and saratoga could run faster as the cruisers... maybe i miss something, but i think this is true....)

so, the lex should run away, one or two dd with her and the astoria should take it like a man (and go down or at last be damaged... or, maybe her input improve the allied situation and her good fire let the japanese disengage earlier...

But honestly, if not the "problem" with the surface battles will be fixed we will discuss the "why does my destroyer fired not 2 salvos of torpedos in an angle of 35 Degree if everybody knows that it is useless to fire in 120 Degree - and even more important, why does this buggy game does not have this important detail in mind if i attack singlehanded the whole enemy fleet... should not my dd sink at last 3 or 4 battleships with one salvo" Thread... i bet, in 2 weeks we will discuss exactly such things.

If i want to play a game with such things included (yes, i really want to play such game), i should beg for it... GG do "Great Naval Battles - the Campagin (Micromamagement each turret, look for every engine of your planes, look for every bomb your planes carry - and please, do it in the way we can follow the attacks in 3D (use of the IL2-Engine, perfectly with some steering by the player so he manipulate the results a little bit)....

[:)]

[Xargun]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Problem is my fleet moved off during daylight and since the Lex wasn't damaged at all she launched bombers at me from 1 hex away... Several ships were hit and the DD Hatsuharu was finished off...

Hi, Didn't quite think that all the way through? You still had the range advantage if you had moved your TF to be more then 4 hexes from where you thought the surface battle would be. [:-] So what if you have to cancel a landing (But I think A6M2 from Truk can provide LCAP to Rabaul) The important thing is what if you had quessed wrong? and they stayed only in SBD range and what if USN commander had also stripped his TF of escorts to run into Rabaul for surface battle. (Or even worse suppose there had been USN TF you didn't see?

Lucky it turned out so well. All in All I think it is sometimes better to be lucky then to be good.

First of all I had everything at Rabaul run north to be out of aircraft range, except for this TF... I also swear I had do not retire on it and was hoping for 1-2 engagements at night in which I could beat up the escorts and then set the CV on fire - thus interrupting air ops.. Problem was we fought (I won the battle I think) and then my stupid TF moves off on its own... I can see the wounded ships moving off, but the whole TF up and moves out of the hex when they easily have superiority over the CV TF... If I could have gotten 1 more engagement before the AM air phase, I am sure I would have damaged that CV...

As for Zeros out of Truk, they wouldn't reach the battle hex.. 12 hexes.... And I don't have enough in Truk to make any decent number over my fleet.. 30 zeros on LR CAP only puts like a third over the TF in question.. 10 Zeros wouldn't be enough to stop the airstrikes...

Xargun

[Xargun]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, Well I guess we are guessing Astoria took no part in the battle because she was not hit?
There is no way to tell from the text report if she fired or not. Eric did you watch the battle? Did Astoria fire at all?
Ron in your battles you never have a ship fire that is not hit? In my last battle the USN fired quite a lot of ammo but they scored very few hits.

I watched the battle of course [:D] I want to say 2 or 3 rounds of combat were fought in which the Astoria was not spotted til the 3 round. I believe she fired a few shots and I think a DD fired back at her but missed (not sure on the return fire). The Portland was detected first round and seems to have gathered the majority of the first round's shots. Then the other CA was spotted and was shot at too.. The DDs mostly fired at each other, but a few IJN DD fired at the CAs and bounced shells off their armor... All allied ships were spotted by the end of the combat except the Lex and the lone DD that wasn't hit... The Astoria just got lucky.. She was there... just not a priority target.

Xargun

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, Well I guess we are guessing Astoria took no part in the battle because she was not hit?
There is no way to tell from the text report if she fired or not. Eric did you watch the battle? Did Astoria fire at all?
Ron in your battles you never have a ship fire that is not hit? In my last battle the USN fired quite a lot of ammo but they scored very few hits.

Hi, Mog! I was referring to how the detected/not detected feature affects both the attacking and attacked TF. On both sides we usually see a number of ships which are nameless and rarely take part in the action, although as the range changes, some do. My question was whether or not the Astoria even fired. I've seen this situation many times and it just strikes me as odd that a core unit like Astoria, which is in formation with the rest of the screen, fails to act. As in my Force Z example in the other thread (which seems to be suffering from a death spiral of it's own![8D]) Prince of Wales, the flagship and one of the core units in the attacking force, not once participated. One must assume that the core unit heavies operate in formation so PoW should have been in the thick of it as Repulse, 500-1000 yards behind, was blazing away (PoW has radar).

My concern has always been that the detected/not detected feature is resulting in some rather questionable situations. The reason is that it applies to individual ships, not formations.

At one point 18 months ago, when Paul Vebber and I were chatting about a new combat model proposal (before my absence due to health) this was a key aspect. Ships generally operated in formations, divisions, what have you. The TF is the basic type, but vessels within a TF are very often subdivided by mission type and role. Basic subdivision is a "CORE" and a "SCREEN", (we discussed a variety of TF subdivions but that will only complicate the issue at this point and as we are no longer in early alpha, it's a moot issue). The CORE and SCREEN are fields within the TF in which heavy and screening vessels are assigned by the player, with various restrictions according to TF mission and ship class. CORE and SCREEN can act independently.

For example, an Air Combat mission would have CVsand close escort in the CORE and BBs through DDs in screen and a Combat TF depending on nationality (doctrine) would have for IJN and RN:BBs/CAs as the CORE and CLs/DDs as screen and USN:BBs/CAs/CLs/DDs as core early war-no screen (to simulate the lack of independence given DDs) and allow a screen from 43 on. Over simplified but whatever, you get the drift?

Perhaps a small part of what we were discussing could be applied to the present model. Instead of checking for detection for each ship, check for type. This would very roughly simulate the concept of formation. Personally, however, given the very abstract nature of the combat model, I'd drop the detect/not detect entirely, and assume the ships are all in communication, and simply let target selection and ship operation points dictate if a ship is hit or not. Differentiate between warships and transports as well. Warships should be allowed to fire, transports would have a chance to fire.