Brave Sir Robin

[jwilkerson]

ORIGINAL: BrucePowers

It's a game, not a simulation.

Actually, it's a simulation-game!
[:)]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: ctangus

Interesting thread. I haven't read all of it but here's a few thoughts. FWIW I mostly play allies, but I've started 2 PBEMs as Japan, 1 of which is still ongoing. I'll try to get the thread back on topic somewhat too.

1. I don't consider the "Sir Robin" gamey. However I do think it's bad strategy.

2. "Sir Robin" seems to be based on a common perception that the IJN is invincible in the first few months of the war. While the IJN can concentrate more force in any one location than the allies early war, they can't do that everywhere. There are inevitably opportunities to slow Japan down. Especially if they try to conquer everything at once.

3. There also seems to be a perception that the fall of the SRA is inevitable. If Japan concentrates on it, sure. If they don't and try to take India, Oz, the South Pacific, etc. before the SRA it's not. I've seen several AARs where Java was never lost by the allies - even played one myself.

4. By early or mid-43 the allies don't need a single unit that could be rescued from the SRA. Once the large offensives are started the prime limiting factor is assault shipping, not LCUs. Might be nice to have a few more LCUs, but it's not essential.

5. If the allies don't fight for the SRA it will make Japan's 1st Operational Phase much shorter and give them much more time to expand during their 2nd Operational Phase.

"Sir Robin" seems to mean saving units or cadres as the first priority. IMO it's better to delay the Japanese as the first priority and only save units once they no longer have any utility in delaying the Japanese.

IMO, there were only a few units worth risking the ships to save in the early phases of the war. The US forces in the phillipines, which I almost always send to bolster Port Moresby and southern New Guinnea, and the British forces in Malay/Singapore, which could be usefull if redeployed to Burma.

I do whole-heartedly agree with points 3, 4, and 5. When I play as Japan, I will take what the allied player gives me. If he choses to run from the SRA, then I will divert those troops to Burma, China or south to cut the supply lines to Australia. If my opponant absulely refuses to fight in the SRA, I might very well go after PH which all but forces him to retake it. While it is true that the allied player has to react to what I do in the first 6 months of the game, his actions can either provide me with more options or limit my options. Basically, the allied player can let me run wild, or he can force me to fight for the SRA, totally his choice.

The only certain thing in the game is that the Japanese player really needs to take Palembang intact. Its resources and oil are far too important to the Japanese production system to not conquer. An allied Player that fights hard for the SRA can limit what is opponant has the resources to do elsewhere.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

Maybe I should start a new thread, but since this one really seems to be going strong, please indulge me (or ignore me if you prefer).

The Japanese goal was to achieve a "technical victory" by making the social, political, economic, human costs of war for U.S. society sufficiently great that they would eventually sue for peace, leaving the EJ with substantial gains, but most notably access to the resources that were being embargoed because of their war on China.

Obviously what-if social, cultural and political developments back in the States _could_ have had a serious influence on whether and when such a technical win could be achieved by EJ. But the game does not model those. Social and political events are more or less taken as a given (although the arrival of reinforcments might vary by date, they do not vary within any given mod), though what the theatre commander does with his/her political points is sort of a grey area in a way.

Basically, the outcome of the war, whether EJ can achieve anything like its actual IRL goal, is to be determined by developments in the theatre.

What in game terms has to happen for EJ to achieve a technical victory?

Over in Opponents Wanted a few months ago, I posted what I thought would be required for a technical victory. You've seen this, but others may not have.

Victory:

If the Allied player has a sea line of communications (a continuous path with air superiority) between North America and a fleet base in the Philippines or Taiwan and from there to a forward base in the Ryukyus, Korea, or Japan by 31 January 1944, he wins a decisive victory. If this requirement is met by 30 April 1944, it is a regular Allied victory. By 31 July 1944, a marginal victory, by 31 October 1944, a draw, by 31 January 1945, a Japanese marginal victory, by 30 April 1945, a Japanese regular victory, and by 31 July 1945 or later, a decisive Japanese victory.

If at any time, the Japanese player attacks forces present in a hex in Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands (excluding Midway), or continental North America, the Allied player has an additional two years (just so) to meet his requirements for a victory. Note that raiding the American sea lines of communication is OK, but during the first turn, the oiler task force supporting the KB should be assumed to be half empty.

Armistices can be offered by either side at any time. The side offering the armistice must abide by it once accepted. The other side can withdraw from the agreement with 90 days notice. If Japan takes Calcutta, Delhi, Bombay, or Karachi, the Indian Congress Party forces the British in India to offer an armistice on the current lines of contact. If accepted, this means no offensive operations by either side in India, Burma, or Ceylon. If the Chinese capital is taken or Japan accepts this forced armistice with the British, the Chinese offer a similar armistice.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

I never thought it would be too much to ask for semi-realistic events to take place in the game similar to how they resulted IRL, though.  If it was suicide for convoys to run through 600 miles of ocean controlled by strong LBA forces IRL, then IMO it should be suicide for them to try it in the game.

In 80% of the cases in the game it´s suicide too. If convoys are safe then mostly because weather made it impossible for the aircraft to launch or they fail to locate the target. No matter if stock or the mods I´ve played so far, if I own several (or just a couple) of bases around an enemy base and enemy convoys have to move 600 miles in range of LBA then it is surely suicide for the enemy convoys to move to that base. Of course the enemy can send 100 ships at once, but then he will lose 50 of them --> that´s suicide for me.

Sinking 25 ships in one day isn´t that hard to achieve if you have experienced crews and the appropriate aircraft. Even if those 25 ships don´t sink immediately, a couple of bomb hits and an AK goes down 4 days later (and the supply is lost on day one when the ship is hit by the bombs). So on the first day 25% of the 100 ship convoy is lost, another 15-20% on the following day, next day 0 due to weather, again 0 due to bad die rolls, then a big strike and again 30% are lost, makes something like 60-70% at the day the convoy arrives at the enemy base. If it goes out again, you will kill the rest of the ships.

Of course you can also exploit the game engine and send in 100 single ship TFs and only 25% of the ships are lost going IN AND OUT.

[String]

ORIGINAL: castor troy



Of course you can also exploit the game engine and send in 100 single ship TFs and only 25% of the ships are lost going IN AND OUT.

And this is where you will direct a few surface ships at them, a CL or two, and sink 50% of the single ship tf's or more.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: String

ORIGINAL: castor troy



Of course you can also exploit the game engine and send in 100 single ship TFs and only 25% of the ships are lost going IN AND OUT.

And this is where you will direct a few surface ships at them, a CL or two, and sink 50% of the single ship tf's or more.

unfortunately NOT. This is what I have seen often enough and you can also read that in Andy Mac´s AAR vs PzB. If there are 100 single ship TFs in a port you don´t even attack 75% of them. Like I said it´s completely screwing up the game using single ship TFs, but that would be another story.

[String]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: String

ORIGINAL: castor troy



Of course you can also exploit the game engine and send in 100 single ship TFs and only 25% of the ships are lost going IN AND OUT.

And this is where you will direct a few surface ships at them, a CL or two, and sink 50% of the single ship tf's or more.

unfortunately NOT. This is what I have seen often enough and you can also read that in Andy Mac´s AAR vs PzB. If there are 100 single ship TFs in a port you don´t even attack 75% of them. Like I said it´s completely screwing up the game using single ship TFs, but that would be another story.

Well yeah.. 100 single ship tf's is a bit much I agree. But just use 100 single ship surface combat TF's then [:D]

[Monter_Trismegistos]

ORIGINAL: treespider
This one may upset some people....

But 63 years later who really won the war?

Militarily the West may have won, however politically did the East really win?

Polish boy ask his father: Daddy, if we lost the war, would we be as rich as the Germans?

[John Lansford]

The Manila to Ormoc convoy route was hardly open ocean, and the Japanese used smaller ships that could hide along the coastlines as they made the run.  Much of those convoy runs were made prior to airbases were established on Leyte, so the statement that they were made "in the teeth of everything the US could throw at them" is overstating the effort.  While the carriers offshore attempted to interdict the shipping, they were also supporting the Leyte ground fight, suppressing other PI airbases and performing CAP and naval search missions.
 
My point is that the player cannot rely on IRL tactics, because they do not create IRL results in WitP.

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: Monter_Trismegistos
Polish boy ask his father: Daddy, if we lost the war, would we be as rich as the Germans?

Nope! Fifty years of being a "Socialist Worker's Paradise" made sure of that... [:D]

[Anthropoid]

Those conditions for an EJ technical victory seem pretty reasonable. Their goal IRL was simply to wreck such devastation on the allies that the democratic nations lost the will to fight. Skewed vp seems an easy and not inaccurate way to represent that in the game.

If we add Herwin's houserules for late game victories based on ability of allies to devastate the home islands with firestorms, then it seems a pretty reasonable simulation-game of the WiTP.

So then the question for me vis a vis the "Sir Robin" critiques are: does Sir Robin (or other 'unrealistic' dimensions of the game) _actually_ skew the chances of one player or the other being able to achieve victory in an unrealistic manner: meaning an EJ victory anytime before end game (Mar 46?) or an allied victory pre-Aug 45?

If the game is currently structured so that, even when a PBEM rival uses some of these putatively 'gamey' methods, it still does not really make him/her any more likely to 'win' then how can you argue that it really is gamey? The concept of 'gamey' implies that it is a semi-cheat way to win a game by exploiting some loophole in the rules or mechanics of the game.

If players are (a) resupplying EJ held Rabaul through hail storms of allied airpower successfully as a way to win an ahistorical japanese win, or (b) Sir Robining all through the SRA, etc., as a way to win an ahistorical allied win, or (c) extending the Japanese "tidal wave" even further than it extended IRL as a way to win an ahistorical Japanese win, then yeah I can--as someone who knows much, much less about this game than most of you guys--agree that the game is imbalanced too far away from historical/IRL parameters.

But if these ahistorical _events_ do not lead in an improbably high number of trials to ahistorical final _outcomes_, then what is the problem?

_THAT_ to me is what makes the whole experiment fun. It is an ecological simulation, and there are nearly infinite possibilities. What happens in permutation 473 of 1,456,324? How does _that_ slight variant shift the ebb and flow of agents in the system into alternate patterns from those which played out in history. To me, as a student of history, this is an even more interesting way to study history through a game like this.

[mdiehl]

Okay, I'm being a smarta$$, but why do you and so many other people appear to be focussed upon the potential for the Japanese side to be skewed when there is an equal opportunity for the Allied side to be skewed?

Because there really is no potential for the Allied side to be favorably skewed. WitP consistently underrates every aspect of Allied warmaking potential throughout the war.

For example, I can't see the difference between an Allied player grouping 300 4Es to hit a single target in April 1942 and a Japanese player grouping 300 2Es to hit a single target in April 1942 (other than the obvious fact that 300 4Es will cause significantly more damage than 300 Japanese 2Es). Neither situation happened in History, but both players can and regularly do this sort of thing.

Both are a product of a weak supply model. The Allies could no more have based 300 4EBs out of, say, Cairns or Moresby in 1942 than the Japanese could from Truk or Rabaul. No capability to do that sort of thing at all. Certainly capability in Japan or in the US. That said, at no point in the war did the Japanese mount a 300 2e strike on anything anywhere; such an event would be adoctrinal at best. At least the US, even in 1939, had a doctrine that envisioned the use of hundreds of 4EBs on a single target.

An Allied player can invade Hokkaido in early 1942 - something that couldn't happen in History. Why then do people get upset if a Japanese player can invade Ceylon in early 1942?

Actually, the Allies could have invaded Hokkaido. They just couldn't have kept such an invasion force in supply. Moreover, if the Allies were to do it in 1942, the invasion force would be strategically isolated by the IJN and land based air. In contrast, because Allied pilot exp is substantially underrated, the IJN can prevent the Allies from strategically isolating a Japanese force in Ceylon. All the more ironic because the Japanese didn't have sufficient ships to supply an ocfor in Ceylon, even if the Royal Navy had withdrawn to South Africa and let 'em do it.

[Hortlund]

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
Actually, the Allies could have invaded Hokkaido. They just couldn't have kept such an invasion force in supply.

Yeah, thats not splitting hairs at all.

[mdiehl]

You're correct. It's not splitting hairs. The point being that in early 1942, the IJN *could have* "put men ashore" at Darwin or even Moresby, just as the USN could have done so in Hokkaido. But neither power had the capability to sustain any substantial number of people in such places (much less Ceylon for the Japanese) albeit for different reasons. Off coastal Hokkaido in 1942 the Japanese could have fought a pretty decisive battle (not necessarily THE decisive battle) to their liking. The USN probably could NOT have fought such a battle to their liking off Moresby in, say February 1942, but could in April. The USN could have fought such a battle in defense of Hawaii in February 1942 and easily won, but they would not have had to. If Japanese had landed a large number of men on any large Hawaiian island, all the Hobbits in the Shire (IJN merchant capability) could not have kept those men in supply had Smaug (the USN) been as tame as a rabbit. Japan was overtaxed trying to put more than 20 operational Betties in Rabaul in February 1942.

[Hortlund]

You must have me confused with someone who wants to argue with you. Sorry.

[panda124c]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

I don't think that you're giving the historical crowd the benefit of the doubt there, DB. The vast majority want both sides to be restricted to what they could historically do. However, your previous question was focused on the Japanese POV, so that also coloured both the answers you received and the way you percieved those answers.

Ohh a new challange; Try to play a historical version where each side only does what was historically done. [:D]

[mdiehl]

You must have me confused with someone who wants to argue with you. Sorry.

I probably erred in thinking you had something relevant to contribute. My bad.

[Ketza]

Didnt the Allies resupply Malta in the face of tremendous losses?

Seems plausible that in WITP I should be able to make the same call if I choose to do so.

On the subject of Sir robin I found that when I fought tooth and nail for the SRA in 4 different PBEMs I typically stopped the Japanese player in his tracks. All 4 of them surrendered before the end of March. These were stock games so I dont know how much different a mod game would be.

I am just looking forward to Admirals edition to get a few more PBEMs going!

[bradfordkay]

ORIGINAL: pbear

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

I don't think that you're giving the historical crowd the benefit of the doubt there, DB. The vast majority want both sides to be restricted to what they could historically do. However, your previous question was focused on the Japanese POV, so that also coloured both the answers you received and the way you percieved those answers.

Ohh a new challange; Try to play a historical version where each side only does what was historically done. [:D]

No, you misread my comment. I didn't say that we want both sides restricted to what they historically did, but what they historically could do. Big difference.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: pbear

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

I don't think that you're giving the historical crowd the benefit of the doubt there, DB. The vast majority want both sides to be restricted to what they could historically do. However, your previous question was focused on the Japanese POV, so that also coloured both the answers you received and the way you percieved those answers.

Ohh a new challange; Try to play a historical version where each side only does what was historically done. [:D]

You saw my proposal. If Japan had not hit Hawaii, it would have been a challenge to defeat Japan by early 1944 with the full historical reinforcements.