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Perhaps the answer is to alllow the player to set targeting priorities. It would be work on the programmers end and and may or may not be practical. Tell the CD batteries to target the transports first, BB's, CA, CL's second and so on and so forth...

I would sure love to be able to tell the fighters I set to sweep to go in before the bombers. Think this has been discussed before.

Its more micromanaging on the players part, but mabye other "housekeeping chores" could be automated. Do I really need to be micromanaging the aircraft and ship withdrawls? Perhaps a simple "Yes" "No" dialog box to withdrawl and a warning about PP penalty box if you chose to not make the withdrawl would be easier.

In any case let's wait for the replays and see what happens. If PB do soak up the damage then it may just come down to house rules.

Probably a total anihilation of a Pacific fleet....

Plz do read what heve been sent there and what power was aviable.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Bluebook

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
The actions by the Allied player to allow 350+ ships to arrive undetected at Oahu, with apparently massive air and logistic suppport already next door in the Hawaiian Islands, is what's "wrong." The systematic destruction of Allied power is what's "unbalanced", and that was accomplished by a better player playing well.

What has that got to do with the combat routine for amphibious assaults?

I have been trying to avoid getting into these discussions because I really dont see what relevance they have to the question if the results of the amphibious assault is reasonable or not. Is it reasonable to be able to invade Pearl Harbor, without any prior bombardment from air or sea, with 350+ ships, land 75 000 men in one impulse, and only lose 1000 causualties and a handful of PBs?

What relevance has Wake, Midway or Johnston Island to that question? And the Jap ships were spotted before they invaded.

A different question:

What would have been the invasion results if you had placed three surface TFs in the PH hex continaing, in total, 6-8 CAs, 5 CLs, and 30 DDs?
Whining about CD results, when other results are obtained elsewhere with different force balances, misses the point. When you rely on CD to stop an invasion, you've already lost.

[:D] LARGE? If 9 vs 70 means large then my 15 vs 20 trains in DEI mean HUUUUUUUGEEEEELY LAAAAARGE

ORIGINAL: sfbaytf

Sounds like your invasion force is not screened by large numbers of PB's?

not have, have structured...

Thank You.

ORIGINAL: sfbaytf

No its not...

However,

I do know this. You're a risk manager, you've mentioned you have a "big investment scheme". I work around risk managers and worked in the brokerage/investment banking industry.

You're obviously quite intelligent and have a background in analying things and finding flaws and risks.

From the tone and nature of your posts you do come across as someone who doen't lack any self confidence, in fact you seem to have an abundance of that.

My gut instincts tells me you have no problem pushing the envelope. That can be a good and bad thing. Like I said I admire the audacity and you do seen to have the ingeridients to be a good playtester who could find flaws and break things.

ORIGINAL: WITPPL

OH LORD,

Knowing the Rules of a game and its mechanics is not an exploit.

ORIGINAL: sfbaytf

WIPPL is a very nasty player who knows how to exploit the system. Don't mean that in a negative way. I learned a few tricks from the whipping I got.

He'd make a good playtester. I'm sure he can find many of the flaws.

There were many directors on Oahu for the big guns (8" and larger); IIRC directors were all around the island on ridges and high points, and capable of spotting ships at 125,000 yds distance (but no guns could reach that far of course).  Each battery also had its local director so there shouldn't have been any forced firing on a particular ship due to a lack of directors.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

I'm sure the developers will look at this as they have every other thing for months. And I agree with you that this is one data point; I've been making that same point. It's one, incredibly odd data point.

So far, I've heard of only 2 PH invasions, both of which exhibited some weird behaviour in regards to damage to invasion transports. Again I'm referring to the bloody pacific game between Undercovergeek and Yank, he's said he'll post his combat reports tomorrow, I think they'll be quite relevant to this discussion. Maybe as interesting is that WITPPL said he had learned enough about the invasion routines that he thought he could pull of an invasion of PH with this landing fleet, which we can agree would not have worked IRL.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
My feeling is, the way it works now is by definition the way the devs thought it should be, and as they tested it. Whatever internal polling or arguing they did, they considered trade-offs, and set the code as we see it. Therefore, the burden of proof is on anyone who thinks it needs to be changed to propose how and why. I'm not a programmer, but I've studied it. I'm not a business analyst, but I've worked with developers in a business setting. And one thing I've had pounded into me by people who do this stuff for real is that you can't take one unexpected result and work backwards, merrily changing variables.

I don't think this part of your post is particularly fair, first you say that people who have a problem with this result should come up with a better way to handle things, while you clearly know about the problems modelling something as complex as this. Why aren't we allowed to simply bring a problem to the attention of the developers and then let these people who know a lot more about the algorithms already in place try to fix it ?

If I can make two suggestions (both of which I think already have been made in this thread)
- Ships able to sink in the invasion sequence, so the 10 times dead PB can't continue to soak up damage
- Lower early war amphibious bonus against heavily defended targets.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
This is what I'm trying to get the "it's broken!" crowd here to confront. I think--probably--the devs already went through these exercises, in a far more professional way than I can do. I think, from what I've observed, that there are LOTS of randoms in the CD sequences, because I cetainly haven't been able to see strong, certain outcomes when I try an invasion. Which is the way I myself like it. I don't want a mathmatical cookbook approach to major pieces of the game, because too many players here will instantly figure them out and do work-arounds.

Make no mistake. What's being asked for here is not a "tweak." (I'm starting to hate that word.) It's a major renovation that affects total game balance, in a game that, so far, to me, is pretty well balanced.

I'm sorry but this is a load of fearmongering. A change for the CD routing will not lead to 'a mathematical cookbook approach to invasions' and if done right (and I have no reason to think the developers will not do their best to get it right) it will not affect total game balance. A change in this should only lead to better handling of this kind of monster invasions and a better game overall. I don't think you oppose that and I don't see why you so vehemently seem to oppose any changes to this routine. Have a little faith in the devs, if they can make it better, they will, if they can't, we'll learn to live with that.

I would be somewhat reticent to completely re-write all the code concerning CD defenses since (IMHO)that might well result in the annihilation of the entire 7th and 3rd fleets by a handful of 5.5's later in the game.

There was a real life attempt by a Japanese TF to land in the teeth of US coast defenses without much in the way of preliminary bombardments and so forth: Dec 11th at Wake. The defenses can be briefly summed up as 6 x 5" guns with imperfect protection and imperfect fire control, 13 x 3" guns with the same defects and 2-4 improvised F4F bombers. The invasion force aborted the landing attempt after having had 1 DD sunk by the CDs and 3 cruisers, 4 destroyers, a transport and a patrol boat damaged (one of the aforementioned damaged destroyers was subsequently sunk by the "bombers" during the withdrawal). The Japanese were engaged by the CDs at something under 6000 yds range. The loses to the defense at that time were inconsequential. The Japanese bombardment completely failed to suppress the defenses. When the Japanese subsequently tried to land on Dec 22 they brought along a great deal more firepower both on the surface and in the air and they had pretty much knocked out all the 5" guns prior to landing. Even so their landing on Wilkes Islet was wiped out and one of the two patrol boats beached on the main island of Wake was reduced to scrap and which is still visible on the beach in a photo taken by raiding US aircraft later in the war.

On the other hand the US invaded numerous atolls guarded by Japanese CDs during the war. The US employed considerable firepower beforehand to damage those CDs and during the fighting to suppress those CDs. Japanese CDs thus managed to do almost no damage to American ships offshore. Japanese machine guns, mortars and other light artillery did manage to inflict what we in the West think of as heavy casualties on the landing force a few times but never enough to put the eventual outcome of the battle in serious doubt. In most cases the Japanese garrison was wiped out to nearly the last man and ratio of Japanese casualties to total (KIA,WIA,MIA) American casualties was 3-5 to 1.
So it would seem a properly supported invasion should be able to duplicate those results.

The Japanese landing bonus seems necessary to allow the IJ Player to advance at something like the historical pace. But it ought to be remembered that the Japanese hardly ever tried to land into the teeth of the defenses (an Wake illustrates how well their doctrine worked when they did). The amount of specialized training and landing equipment possessed by the IJN/IJA troops was minimal. Unloading adequate supplies and heavy equipment over the beach was a development of the Allies which consumed much of the time between Pearl Harbor and D-Day. Simple assertions that the Japanese could have improvised an equivalent supply organization in a month or so are baseless.

The losses suffered by the invasion fleet in this instance seem implausibly light. But the accumulation of a mass of artillery, AFVs and supply by the invasion force seems even less plausible given the state of amphibious doctrine displayed by the Japanese in the early war. The Japanese were great at "hitting them where they ain't". Frankly going toe to toe with the defense (any Western defense position that could not be turned) historically resulted in enormous Japanese losses for next to no gain. Granted that the hexes are 40 odd miles across but amphibious assault invariably ends up as a straight forward frontal attack where firepower matters much more than manuever. The Japanese could not develop enough firepower for this kind of assault to succeed with so little cost.

[

quote]ORIGINAL: Smeulders

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

I'm sure the developers will look at this as they have every other thing for months. And I agree with you that this is one data point; I've been making that same point. It's one, incredibly odd data point.

So far, I've heard of only 2 PH invasions, both of which exhibited some weird behaviour in regards to damage to invasion transports. Again I'm referring to the bloody pacific game between Undercovergeek and Yank, he's said he'll post his combat reports tomorrow, I think they'll be quite relevant to this discussion. Maybe as interesting is that WITPPL said he had learned enough about the invasion routines that he thought he could pull of an invasion of PH with this landing fleet, which we can agree would not have worked IRL.

I don't agree that the results are "weird". I think they're what's programmed. There is a presumption that the CD routines should hit transports first, every time. As I tried to show in my scenarios, that can easily result in gaming THAT system too.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
My feeling is, the way it works now is by definition the way the devs thought it should be, and as they tested it. Whatever internal polling or arguing they did, they considered trade-offs, and set the code as we see it. Therefore, the burden of proof is on anyone who thinks it needs to be changed to propose how and why. I'm not a programmer, but I've studied it. I'm not a business analyst, but I've worked with developers in a business setting. And one thing I've had pounded into me by people who do this stuff for real is that you can't take one unexpected result and work backwards, merrily changing variables.

I don't think this part of your post is particularly fair, first you say that people who have a problem with this result should come up with a better way to handle things, while you clearly know about the problems modelling something as complex as this. Why aren't we allowed to simply bring a problem to the attention of the developers and then let these people who know a lot more about the algorithms already in place try to fix it ?

Yep to the first part. If anyone has a problem with the CD system, stop "me too"ing and suggest fixes that don't break something else. Otherwise it's just whining. As for your second point, I think the way it works now is the way the devs thought it should work, because that's what they shipped. Q.E.D.

If I can make two suggestions (both of which I think already have been made in this thread)
- Ships able to sink in the invasion sequence, so the 10 times dead PB can't continue to soak up damage
- Lower early war amphibious bonus against heavily defended targets.

I don't know if the ships aren't sinking in the invasion sequence, as I said yesterday. It's a 12-hour phase. I don't know how time and sequence is handled. Just because the player isn't informed in real-time that the target is sunk doens't mean the algorithm doesn't know that. Regardless, a 99/99/99/99 PB isn't shooting back. If you want the CD routine to stop shooting at IT, then again you're back into variable definition land--how/when/why does the routine shift away from a target, does it matter what the target is, what target variables are key in determining if it will be left alone, is range a factor, is day/night phase a factor, ad infinitum. It's not so easy as saying "Just FIX it!!!!"

As to lowering amphib bonuses, well, OK, maybe, since they're a game artifact/work-around anyway. They're a made up rule. So, what do you change it to so everyone is happy? Remember, it can't just apply to Pearl Harbor. It has to apply to all "heavily defended" targets. Singapore, Soerbaja, Bataan--you know, targets the Japanese player needs a whole lot more than Pearl Harbor if he plans on winning.

Could you define arrays of heavily-defended-targets-ignore-amphib bonus-YES and heavily-defended-targets-ignore-amphib bonus-NO? Good luck getting agreement on that around here. What's "heavily defended" anyway? LCUs? What disruption and fatigue? Forts? CD? Base size? Supply level at the moment? How do you mix and match those variables so the code has a clue which array to check? More importantly, how do you inform the player in any meaningful way that his planned attack is going to meet which array's CD response without, by inference, giving him all sorts of unearned intel?

My head hurts.

Thanks for the post.
I'd note that at Wake:
1. They were dealing with the USMC.
2. Wake fell.

As for the balance of your post, all true. However, you're engaging in what many here like to scorn as "talking about the Real World instead of the game."

As an Allied player I propose these rule changes: 1) The Japanese player may never attempt to invade any base which the Real Japanese (tm) did not attempt to invade in WWII. (aka "Goodbye to Oz") 2) In no in-game invasion may the Japanese player employ armor, or medium or heavy artillery. They were simply too stupid to ever get it ashore. 3. Special bombardment routines be crafted so that IJN bombardments result in 20% of the damage as any Allied naval bombardment. Since they were very, very bad at them.

OK, I'm happy. How are all you Japanese players doing.[:)]

Bullwinkle, two questions for you.

a) Do you think these results (PB getting killed 10 times over, transports and landing troops virtually unharmed) are unrealistic ? As in, the chance of this happening in real life is virtually null.

b) If the devs can make these results more realistic, should they do that ?

If you answer yes to these two questions, then we aren't in disagreement, except of course, that you seem to think that people without access to the algorithms for the CD guns should magically be able to produce a system that is better than the guys who have worked on this for years. And that you seem to take the inability of us to come up with any solutions, because we know nothing about the code as proof that it cannot be improved.

I'm merely speculating , Don would have to confirm, but presumably the "algorithm" presumes the transports are for the most part "standing offshore" well outside the range of most of the "guns" used to fire...the PB's are presumed to be inside this envelope, and hence soak up much of the fire from the CD guns.

One other point that is missed is the landing LCU's themselves are attacked at the end of the turn sequence via a bombardment attack from the defenders...which gives me a thought...

ORIGINAL: treespider

I'm merely speculating , Don would have to confirm, but presumably the "algorithm" presumes the transports are for the most part "standing offshore" well outside the range of most of the "guns" used to fire...the PB's are presumed to be inside this envelope, and hence soak up much of the fire from the CD guns.

Interesting, and could be an explanation for this battle, but in the example of a smaller battle given by Bullwinkle the landing ships did get, so it seems like it isn't always the case that the transports are kept out of range.

there is a MASSIVE difference between getting ashore and taking the place - im standing on Pearl with 2700 AV against 850-900 - all forces have supplies coming out of their ears, i have attacked once - a shock - my AV was reduced to 700, Yanks AV was increased to nearly 5000!!!!!!!!!

standing in the sand is a lot different to taking it - dont sulk, blubber or argue until youve seen an attack go in which hasnt happened here yet - its nasty

I think the Japanese should be able to invade anywhere they want to.
The constraints to such invasions should approximate those faced by the IJN/IJA. Transposition of the Allied Model, achieved after 2 years of trial and error and a major commitment of scarce resources is not a valid assumption though.

Yes Wake fell. An isolated unentrenched garrison of 450 men and 5 aircraft was overwhelmed on the second try after two weeks when the attempt was backed up by 2 carrier airgroups, a land-based airgroup, 4 heavy cruisers, 3 light cruisers, a half dozen or so destroyers and 1500 men. Most persons, and especially the Japanese, don't even attempt to portray the Wake as a great Japanese victory because of its eventual outcome.

The heavy weapons support allocated for the next major amphibious assault on an island, Midway, amounted to half a dozen mortars and another half dozen machine guns which were to be man-handled ashore across about 200 yards of reef. Once again, the IJN/IJA amphibious doctrine planned mostly to make great use of the warrior spirit of its infantry in lieu of such items as tanks and artillery. If a better option than throwing infantry at machine guns was really available to them the IJN/IJA leadership would have employed it. Most other places they did. They landed where there were no machine guns and then took a while to unload all that other stuff before getting involved in a major battle/assault. Unloading all that other stuff took time. It didn't happen on the first/second day.

It's interesting to note that in the thread dealing with "Mistakes from (Original) WitP" [or some such] there's a couple of posts about how the Player(s) overestimated the time 25th Army needs to get ashore/get moving down the peninsula. As it stands it seems to get moving quite quickly overrunning Malaya fairly routinely in significantly less time than was historical. Perhaps it's just that all IJ Players are astoundingly adept planners and incredible tacticians though.

It seems to me the biggest thing is that small caliber guns from escorts are "suppressing" much larger CD guns. A 3" or 4" gun on a PB should not be suppressing a 10" 12" or 16" CD gun. If possible i would write a routine that only allows like size naval guns to suppress. Ie: battleship calliber guns (14", 16" 18" guns suppres CD guns of similar or smaller sizes.) As is now enough PBs can suppress and duel an entire CD fort, i just dont see that happening in RL.

Also if possible i would have CD guns disengage and go to a new target once a ship reaches heavy damage (the ship is no longer combat effective and not a threat any longer). This could be done with a random role so that its not definate and would represent the uncertinty of war.

The last thing is that the landing routine doesnt seem to model landing under fire very well. Against a heavily fortified and ocupied island entire landing boats should be lost to mortars. Soldiers disembarking landing craft should be ocationaly shreded by MG fire. IMO you just dont realy see that in the current model. If possible i would add a routine that takes island size (stacking limit) and the total number of heavy weapons into account (Ie if your landing on an atol your much more likely to hit an MG nest).

ORIGINAL: Smeulders

Bullwinkle, two questions for you.

a) Do you think these results (PB getting killed 10 times over, transports and landing troops virtually unharmed) are unrealistic ? As in, the chance of this happening in real life is virtually null.

b) If the devs can make these results more realistic, should they do that ?

If you answer yes to these two questions, then we aren't in disagreement, except of course, that you seem to think that people without access to the algorithms for the CD guns should magically be able to produce a system that is better than the guys who have worked on this for years. And that you seem to take the inability of us to come up with any solutions, because we know nothing about the code as proof that it cannot be improved.

I don't accept your premises.

I don't think the issue is "realistic." In the context of the game I don't know what that means, and even if I did, three other people would disagree with me. I think 12-hour submarine turn-around times are unrealistic; you may not care a whit. But the game works fine with them because other factors in the submarine war even out this Allied advantage.

I care about whether the result is balanced and gives me a good game as I define it. And I define it as 1) challenging intellectually 2) occassionally surprising 3) educational, and 4) fun.

Since Japan never tried to invade Oahu, and Oahu never had to test its full CD system while under attack, what's "realistic"? It's all speculation.

As an Allied player I'm a little surprised that so many Japanese players want to slow down their possible speed of advance when that is the only hope they have of securing a VP win in the long run. Improve CD hit rates on transports and the Allies benefit. They get to start 1943 with the Japanese merchant marine bleeding and geopgraphic limits lower than historic. All because of Oahu?

Correct me if I'm wrong.  Having skimmed through all this, to me the obvious failure is in the PB's not sinking under bombardment.  If they had, then CD fire would have shifted from counter battery fire to the shelling of the transports.  This would have massively increased the damage & casualties to the attacking Japanese force.
 
While there are a lot of points & counter points on the PH defenses, and player abilities, this seems to be the crux of the matter.  Am I missing something?  And if this is in fact the problem, how difficult would it be to improve the game model going forward?

ORIGINAL: treespider

I'm merely speculating , Don would have to confirm, but presumably the "algorithm" presumes the transports are for the most part "standing offshore" well outside the range of most of the "guns" used to fire...the PB's are presumed to be inside this envelope, and hence soak up much of the fire from the CD guns.

One other point that is missed is the landing LCU's themselves are attacked at the end of the turn sequence via a bombardment attack from the defenders...which gives me a thought...

The combat results print out at the start of this thread shows the PBs universally at 2000 yards, and the few xAKLs, etc. hit at 12,000 yards.

For those that care, is this "realistic? For a variety of seamanship reasons all I can say is "maybe." Anchor holding ground verus CD danger versus time-to-beach versus troop seasickness versus landing craft fuel versus current and wind effects versus navigating through smoke versus collision danger versus . . .

ORIGINAL: treespider

I'm merely speculating , Don would have to confirm, but presumably the "algorithm" presumes the transports are for the most part "standing offshore" well outside the range of most of the "guns" used to fire...the PB's are presumed to be inside this envelope, and hence soak up much of the fire from the CD guns.

One other point that is missed is the landing LCU's themselves are attacked at the end of the turn sequence via a bombardment attack from the defenders...which gives me a thought...

I also presume that the transports carried with them 2500 V-22 Ospreys to enable all the troops to land en masse?

I think the concern about the CDs being so ineffective is quite justified and needs to be thoroughly examined but for me the biggest problem is being able to unload so quickly. My ships can't unload that quickly when docked, so I'm curious how the transports "standing offshore" can perform such feats. Even if the US had evacuated Oahu there is still no way the Japanese could land so much so quickly.

ORIGINAL: spence

I think the Japanese should be able to invade anywhere they want to.

I do too. My "proposed rules" were somewhat in jest, to reflect the "It ain't historical!!" bent of some here. It's a game. It's fun to change history.

The constraints to such invasions should approximate those faced by the IJN/IJA. Transposition of the Allied Model, achieved after 2 years of trial and error and a major commitment of scarce resources is not a valid assumption though.

I think, in a perfect world, or WITPII, this should be possible. It means writing two completely parallel land combat models though. That wasn't in scope as I understand it. I think the devs did a lot of work trying to overcome that with TOEs, replacement rates and pools, bomb damage, malaria effects, the amphib bonus, somewhat tortured sub ops, more tortured ASW ops, and REALLY tortured aircraft production for the Japanese (in my AI game about 3000 Betties have been destroyed in August 1943, and a peek into the Japanese side shows 1400 in the pool.) And probably a bunch of other stuff. That's why you can't pull something like CD modeling out, slap a bunch of changes on it, and stick it back in. It's part of a larger, balanced system of play.

Yes Wake fell. An isolated unentrenched garrison of 450 men and 5 aircraft was overwhelmed on the second try after two weeks when the attempt was backed up by 2 carrier airgroups, a land-based airgroup, 4 heavy cruisers, 3 light cruisers, a half dozen or so destroyers and 1500 men. Most persons, and especially the Japanese, don't even attempt to portray the Wake as a great Japanese victory because of its eventual outcome.

Again, with respect, I was reading about the defense of Wake in the early 1960s. I was jesting with the reputation of the USMC. But to some extent the point stands. The Japanese could do opposed amphibious landings to some extent if they accepted inordinate casualties. If they had tried Oahu they would have lost with massive casualties, but they still could have made a go of it.