Matrix Games Forums

Also, why always the engineers and support?

Because those are assumed to be at the airbase, which seems to be the main target most of the time. It would be interesting to see what would happen if you added in CD and AA units. Would the AA (at the airbase) get shredded while the CD (at the port) remained largely untouched, or would the presence of the CD (presumably shooting back) induce the bombardment TF to shift more of its attention away from the airbase to the port?

ORIGINAL: TheElf

This is good news Nik. Thanks for doing the leg work. Out of curiosity, what do you suppose drives the outrageous Casualties report. Besides FoW that is?

As the Admial pointed out, the "casualties" are roughly accurate, however the actual death and destruction is not even a tenth of what was reported which is the most cruicial point, followed by the disruption levels of the front line troops.

In one of the biggest bombardments any player could form in the game, using 8 BB's and four CA's, and using recon to double the effectiveness, the actual # of killed and destroyed equipment was:

Front line troops:

36 Infantry + 36 support engineers.
1 81mm Mortor and 1 37mm AT gun.

The base took the biggest whoppup from all those guns. Their casualties:

712 men killed
16 MG's destroyed
23 Engineering vehicles.

No fort levels were present.

All in all, i dont consider these actual casualties excessive and the test also shows that the two of the three defending INF divisions were barely impacted at all by this mass of metal. I doubt any attack against this force unless overwhelming to begin with, would garner more than a 0:1 modifled odds.

The Disabled or "wounded", despite their numbers are repairable and temporary and dont count towards VP. Wounded can be anything from grave to shell shock.

Very good and interesting tests, Nikademus. I wonder what the result would be if this test was repeated with everything exactly the same but with fort level 9?

Here you go Andrew:

Test F1: All as before save for Lunga base Fort level increased to Level 9 and no recon before bombardment.

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR 11/02/44

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Naval bombardment of Lunga, at 67,97


Allied aircraft
no flights


Allied aircraft losses
SBD Dauntless: 15 destroyed
B-24D Liberator: 2 destroyed

Japanese Ships
CA Mikuma
CA Mogami
CA Chikuma
CA Tone
BB Hyuga
BB Ise
BB Yamashiro
BB Fuso
BB Musashi
BB Yamato
BB Mutsu
BB Nagato

Allied Ships
DD Robert Huntington, Shell hits 1


Allied ground losses:
772 casualties reported
Guns lost 15
Vehicles lost 4

Airbase hits 10
Airbase supply hits 9
Runway hits 52

***
Actual permanent deaths/equipment losses

41st Infantry

1 x 75mm Pack How

Disruption=12
Fatigue=12


32nd Infantry

1 x Support

Disruption=8
Fatigue=8


3rd Infantry

None

Disruption=1
Fatigue=5


101st Base Force

4 x USMC RS
3 x Support
3 x AV
1 x Eng
1 x Eng Veh

Disruption=37
Fatigue=16


102nd Base Force

1 x MG
1 x AV
1 x Eng Veh

Disruption=38
Fatigue=12


103rd Base Force

2 x MG
1 x AV
1 x Eng Veh

Disruption=36
Fatigue=10

104th Base Force

2 x USMC RS
2 x MG
1 x AV
2 x ENG
1 x Eng Veh

Disruption 37
Fatigue=17


Summary of losses:

Front line troops

12 Men
1 Gun

Second line/Base troops

240 Men
5 MG
4 Eng Vehicles


******************

Here's another test run to show how low it can go:

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR 11/02/44

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Naval bombardment of Lunga, at 67,97


Allied aircraft
no flights


Allied aircraft losses
SBD Dauntless: 7 destroyed
B-24D Liberator: 1 destroyed

Japanese Ships
CA Mikuma
CA Mogami
CA Chikuma
CA Tone
BB Hyuga
BB Ise
BB Yamashiro
BB Fuso
BB Musashi
BB Yamato
BB Mutsu
BB Nagato


Allied ground losses:
482 casualties reported
Guns lost 10
Vehicles lost 1

Airbase hits 9
Runway hits 25

Test F3: Same as F1 and F2 but with Recon

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR 11/02/44

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Naval bombardment of Lunga, at 67,97


Allied aircraft
no flights


Allied aircraft losses
B-24D Liberator: 6 destroyed
SBD Dauntless: 17 destroyed

Japanese Ships
DD Yuzuki
DD Kikuzuki
CA Mikuma
CA Mogami
CA Chikuma
CA Tone
BB Hyuga
BB Ise
BB Yamashiro
BB Fuso
BB Musashi
BB Yamato
BB Mutsu
BB Nagato

Allied Ships
DD Ingraham, Shell hits 1, on fire


Allied ground losses:
1973 casualties reported
Guns lost 10
Vehicles lost 12

Airbase hits 19
Airbase supply hits 8
Runway hits 101
Port supply hits 1

Actual permanent deaths/equipment losses

41st Infantry

1 x Support

Disruption=4
Fatigue=12


32nd Infantry

none

Disruption=2
Fatigue=8


3rd Infantry

None

Disruption=1
Fatigue=4


101st Base Force

3 x USMC RS
6 x Support
2 x MG
5 x AV
1 x Eng
4 x Eng Veh

Disruption=64
Fatigue=22


102nd Base Force

5 x Support
1 x MG
2 x AV
2 x Eng Veh

Disruption=69
Fatigue=22


103rd Base Force

3 x USMC RS
5 x Support
1 x Eng
2 x Eng Veh

Disruption=71
Fatigue=25

104th Base Force

4 x USMC RS
4 x Support
2 x MG
6 x AV
1 x ENG
2 x Eng Veh

Disruption=67
Fatigue=27


Summary of losses:

Front line troops

12 Men

Second line/Base troops

552 Men
5 x MG
10 x Eng Vehicles

Again, I'm curious. What kind of systems damage did the bombarding ships get for doing the mission. I'm guessing 2 or 3 points, if that.

Two BB's got a point, one other got 2. (then again, they only made the run from Shortlands. [;)] )

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

Would the AA (at the airbase) get shredded while the CD (at the port) remained largely untouched, or would the presence of the CD (presumably shooting back) induce the bombardment TF to shift more of its attention away from the airbase to the port?

All support type units (ENG, AA, CD etc) are considered base support units and will bear the brunt of airfield/port class air attacks and from shore bombardments. I ran some tests with AA and CD units and the casualties were similar to those seen of the base forces in terms of reported "casualties" CD guns in general are fairly resiliant....the large type (10in+) all survived the 8 BB bombardment without a single disablement. Smaller army type CD guns (5 inch or lower) suffer a few disablements. Very few actually destroyed.

So this sys damage was probably from movement only. Is there a sys damage check for the bombardment? Were the mechanics changed from UV then?

Inquiring minds want to know![:D]

Just to let you know. The bombardment damage doesn't bother me. It's the ability to rinse and repeat that does.[;)]

The bombardment damage doesn't bother me. It's the ability to rinse and repeat that does.

Same here. Our house rule calls for a level 3 port or an AE; I'm thinking we might want to bump the port size to a 6 or so....and hell, maybe an AE for each BB.

yes I know....but thats a subject for a different ra_ i mean 'thread' [;)]

ORIGINAL: Halsey
Just to let you know. The bombardment damage doesn't bother me. It's the ability to rinse and repeat that does.[;)]

Same here, BTW.

It seems there may be a couple of contributing factors:

1) Ability for ships to reload all ammo at any port.
2) Not enough SYS damage to bombarding ships (not sure about this one).

Thanks for the additional testing Nikademus.

I suppose this is in response to the Soerbaya bombardment? 5800 casualties, 168 runway hits. 4 crappy CD hits back.[;)]

Didn't kill any planes, cause there aren't any.

I suppose this is in response to the Soerbaya bombardment? 5400 casualties, 168 runway hits. 4 crappy CD hits back.

Didn't kill any planes, cause there aren't any.

No, I already felt that way. But feeling that way isn't enough to make me stop doing them altogether![;)] I do try to be reasonable and moderate.

Those shells came from my AE in Batavia; I'm on my way back there now for more. Notice also I did not set the escorts on "do not bombard". Arashio's hurt bad enough that she dropped out of the TF. Doing what I can to tone it down. And your casualties were apparently concentrated among the airbase service troops, since in this turn's assault your AVs were essentially unchanged from what they were in the two previous assaults.

Wasn't trying to kill planes (it was already pretty clear there aren't many there), was rather wanting to soften up the ground defense for that turn's shock attack, and so in that sense this bombardment was completely ineffective, despite how it looks in the combat report.[:'(][;)]

I'll have a look this evening to see what kind of sysdam (if any) it caused.

Try running the test with no second line formations in the hex, just front line combat troops. I'm curious to see if the effectivness drops drastically or if 1 unit gets designated as the "target" and takes massive hits. If so it becomes vitally important to keep at least 1 second line formation in any coastal hex to "protect" the combat troops.

Jim

This wasn't a test. This was the real thing.[:D]

Yeah, almost all support boys. Grunts are in good shape.

With an all BB group this is what I would expect. Probably the leader has a BIG influence. They throw everything else way out of wack, so why not this?[;)]

Nikademus, can you run the same test with no planes in the airfield ? In this case the port was targeted rather than the
airfield in my game experience.

Then you can empty the port too and check if the INF units are hit harder.

Then you can also put only INF units in LUnga and check if they are hit harder.

I can answer the 2nd question already. INF units alone are not harder hit. On average I was suffering casualties of only a third to a quarter of what was posted here. I have results from these tests. I can post them tonight.

It is always important to have mutiple 1st line troop units available when protecting a priority target. I documented this when i was testing ground attack by aircraft during a Land combat tweak phase. Aircraft can only attack on LCU per phase. (Sometimes multiple air attacks can target different LCU's during a single AM or PM phase) so having an additional LCU with low disruption and fatigue to help cushion any followup ground attacks by troops is vital.

As demonstrated....fortification levels are important too.

Guys, you do understand that a Naval Bombardment is considered a Port + Airfield attack. Almost all of the losses will come from support staff as they are exposed to these types of attacks. The more support staff, the higher the numbers are going to be.

Combat units will dust themselves off, thumb their noses and go back to playing cards.

The moral to the story is your support guys expect *you* to protect them. If you don't, they will give their lives trying to stave off the damage as the shells come in.

Navys exist to prevent other navys from doing this. If you don't want to risk you ships, don't risk the troops. These are generally classic examples of overextending your lines. You (a) don't have the air cover to protect the area and (b) don't have the naval power to secure the location and (c) don't have the shore defences (mines/cd) to hand out lessons in manners.

If you don't, they will give their lives trying to stave off the damage as the shells come in.

Where do you come up with this stuff, Ray? I can't think of many (any?) examples of troops that would forsake cover to "stave off damage as shells come in." I'd like to see some examples here which would support this statement.