ORIGINAL: Elladan
Unlike Nik I am NOT following your point - and you have NOT answered my question above: WHY is (NON EOS) RHS "far from historical"???
I will state it again, I'm talking
only about replacement pilot experience rate. Not about RHS as a whole. In first post of this tread I asked if this rate changes as time passes. The only experience based answer was by Mike Solli. Based on this and my own test I accept a hypothesis that replacement pilot experience rates are constant in time.
REPLY: Yes and no. The absolute value of replacements which are NOT named pilots is constant. The average value of replacement pilots is different - and somewhat under player control - because of the effect of named pilots.
Now to the point - in history Allies won the war in air because of:
a) better planes (some will probably disagree),
REPLY: Yes and no. There is a consensus - then and now - that SOME planes were NOT better. Japan had the best flying boat. Japan had the best recon planes (something we imitate to this day). Japan had the best of planes of unique types - when you are not in the race you get no standing at the finish line. And "best" may not be the same thing for all players.
What is best for Japan might not be best for the US for example. It cannot be denied the US produced more and better heavy bombers. But if Japanese fighters were not better - how can a single one have defeated an entire squadron - and shot down 18 - without even a wingman? Lack of pilot experience and fuel prevented their fighters from having a chance most of the time - but that does not mean they were not better in fundamental senses. IF you use MODERN standards of evaluation (and consider cost) - THEN you might have to admit their planes were indeed better. We spent more money, more aluminum, and got bigger planes which had - and needed - more power - but in the end all that extra spending could still be killed only once. That is not the ideal theoretical solution (although it is a typical American solution). The ideal "best" fighter plane should be cheap and "expendable."
b) more planes,
REPLY: LOTS more planes
c) bigger supply of properly trained pilots due to better training system,
REPLY: or perhaps just a bigger population base and more training institutions/nations involved - Japan was not facing a single enemy
d) some degree of luck, but as we can't model this we might as well drop it.
REPLY: maybe - but I think you miss the big picture here: it is always easier to lose a war than to win it; Japan guaranteed its own defeat in half a dozen ways; it had no strategic plan (compared, say, to the Russo Japanese War where it took on a similar size enemy in relative terms but HAD a plan); and over a big war luck tends to even out;
Only at Midway was Japan unlucky - and Morison claims they broke ALL the laws of war in that battle - so I think even then they pretty much guaranteed a disaster
Now in RHS:
a) can't really say, haven't played it long enough, but assume it's ok,
REPLY: it is experimental and new - it may have problems - and I think it has at least one major problem and several minor ones
b) as only Japan can tinker with production in WitP, it will (nearly) always be able to outproduce Allies,
REPLY: Stuff and nonsense. It can NEVER outproduce the Allies. IF you are honest - and add up all the things the Allies have/get - Japan never can come close - never come close to being outclassed 2:1. You should not read the production on the map as the total production for the Allies. You must add to it the value of all the off map stuff which appears at the map edges as well.
c) it's opposite in RHS, Japan will have many more higly experienced pilots, more and more as time passes.
So in short - RHS is far from historical because it deviates in points b and c. (point b is not your fault, all scenarios have this problem)
REPLY: I do not follow this at all. It makes me wonder if you have a different system of mathmetics than I do?
The Allies have vastly greater numbers of experienced pilots. And the Allies can train up their inexperienced pilots to high levels as well - while the Allies have the potential to PREVENT Japan from doing that - to a greater or lesser degree depending on your skill. This is quite intentional - and a function of the way the game works and the particular map area we use. The ALLIES have areas to work up green units that can not be cut off from supply. Japan can be cut off at the knees by killing its imports - something that matters in RHS because we killed "free supply" on the main map areas.
On top of this - my numbers are based on REAL numbers - not some subjective feeling. In 1941 the JNAF was the biggest naval air force in the world - bigger than the USN. It never gets any bigger - it isn't as big as all the Allies put together - but it essentially only has the help of a smaller JAAF - not a host of significant countries. But these are actually only a fraction of the real world Japanese numbers - I don't let them have the pilots who fly planes not in the game - nor pilots with other jobs (not actual pilots of planes in the game).
What IS "historical"???
Steady, big enough, supply of properly trained Allied pilots on one side and very low supply of highly talented Japanese pilots plus a lot of relatively green ones on the other side
is historical. (I guess it means stock values are quite good in fact)
REPLY: This is hard to do. Actually the pilot training schemes of both sides were NOT "steady" but grew. Starting them - as I do - where they were when the war begins - means they are very much too small later on in the war. Starting them where they were later in the war means you can never simulate the critical year of 1942 accurately - and for that reason have zero chance of a meaningful mid war situation. It is a conundrum I cannot fix - it is inherent in the system. Ignoring that we MUST do 1942 right is not a solution IMHO. But - yes - in a sense - it is a problem. Yet it is a problem in ALL forms of WITP - and indeed MORE so in non RHS - because only in RHS are we giving you close to the right numbers (based on actual measurements of program outputs with the "extra" pilots removed) for ANY period of the war.
How do you figure out what the numbers should be??? That is, what methodology do you use to say "this should be 50" vice 40 or 60 or 49 or 51???
Never said a word about what value it should be.
What matters in my opinion is a relative experience of Japanese vs Allied pilots, effect of experience on air combat results and easiness of on-map training. Still thinking about it.
REPLY: Not an answer here. But since the game has a mechanism to develop experience in combat - that is NOT our job. We let players use units to work up experience of that form. All we need (or get) to do is worry about the basic training NOT involved in the operations (which we are simulating). The only long standing measure of experience widely used is flight training hours. Here things get really sticky: if the Japanese do well should they automatically be forced to have pilots who don't get any gas to train with? I think the answer is certainly no - but do you disagree? It is as if one says "they can win the war, have unlimited fuel, but we forbid them to use it to train." I think we need to assume they CAN train - and simulate the effect of killing the fuel in the game - by killing the imports and industry that generates the supply points (and also that generates the planes). IF they produce no supply points they cannot fly - so they are defacto in the real situation. IF they produce planes and supplies - I think we must assume they also could train up to the earlier standard. And since we have NO way to adjust this anyway - it is pretty much academic.
And why is it your view that we can ignore the situation in the early war period in favor of some later period??? All games start in 1941 - so THAT is what we must program for first of all.
You are right if you want to make a "Pearl Harbor to Midway" scenario. If you want a Grand Campaign you have to think about later years too.
REPLY: Actually I do think about later years. But there is no escape of the fundamentals: you cannot find out what a mid war situation looks like if you force the early war to be grossly distorted. Further, the basic geography, weight of numbers and level of technology that must enter the mid and late war in Allied hands pretty much renders this discussion moot. A victorious Japan is still likely to lose by being overwhelmed. Japan's military leadership correctly understood the US was a non-militarized society - with obsoletscent equipment and concepts - and a population lacking in anything similar to the Samouri spirit. They grossly underestimated the degree of resolve generated by the attack on Pearl Harbor - the degree to which we would build up and invest in a whole new generation of technologies - or even our willingness to sacrifice numbers of lives to retake the area. [It is not possible we could do such a campaign today - our government would fall with even 1% of the casualties] I don't worry about what I cannot control - and about what is going to tend to turn out right no matter what I do (or any player does). I worry about what I can control - and hope we get a better produce bye and bye.
Later - whatever happened - Japan will be overwhelmed by numbers and by quality of enemy aircraft - it cannot be avoided.
With current experience settings I have serious doubts about it. That's why I starter this thread in the first place.
Uff, such a long post [:)] And a disclaimer: English is not my native language, so what I actually wrote might not be what I had thought. [;)]