Accuracy of Combat Reports (FOW?)

[Pascal_slith]

ORIGINAL: xj900uk

FoW on your own side was quite common in WWII.  Lots of people were reported as killed in action, dead, buried and funerals held only to turn up when hostilities ceased in 1945...

I had a distant great uncle who was reported killed when Singapore fell in February 1942.  His wife re-married in 1944 and lo and behold guess who should walk through the family door on Christmas Eve 1945, completely immaciated and suffering from several diseases after workign for a couple of years on the Death Railway.?
Incidentally, they weren't very pleased to see him and threw him out.  As my great uncle had been declared legally dead he needed a court order to get this over-turned & access to the family funds/fortune/family house - he failed and ended up on the streets with nothing (before the war he'd been quite high-placed in a well-known oil company).
Fortunately for all concerned his experiences working on behalf of the Emperor of Nippon had left him permanetnly weakened and he died in a hostel for the down&outs from pneumonia in 1948.

On a more slightly amusing note,  the Ark Royal was reported sink several times by German propaganda before a sub finally got her in 1941.  More to the point on a couple of occassions the BBC reported it sunk as well...

Family history over - proof of the point is that Fog of War affects both your own reported losses/deaths/sinkings as well as that of the enemy.

The story of your great uncle is quite appalling. There must be more to the story as the courts did not even allow him access to family funds....

[fbs]

ORIGINAL: Wirraway_Ace
Was it common in my experience for commanders to over-report losses of key weapon systems? Yes and no. Certain commanders tended to under-report and others over-report. The truth would come out later when the requisitions for equipment and personnel came in (often days later). Additionally, some commanders seemed to consistently have more "errors" in their on-hand inventories of key weapon systems. Aircraft serial number AB123 was reported lost two weeks ago and requisitioned against, but was found in service...

Bottom line: I find the FOW of features in WiTP AE have a similiar feel to how I actually felt as a staff officer...

Very good, I appreciate the input. I'll stop complaining about FOW for friendly losses. I'm probably trying to micromanage too much -- I'm kind of a detail freak [:D]

Cheers [:D]
fbs

[Marty A]

ORIGINAL: m10bob

ORIGINAL: Marty A

You should also know which enemy ships are positivly sunk and which are think they sunk but you can not tell that either

It would not be historically accurate to know which of your own ships are sunk, right away. Two tragic examples being the Juneau and the Indianapolis.

I did not say my own ships. if dd ward comes in alone in daylight against 4 kongo bbs and sinks and it is seen sinking then it would be nice if i did not have to remember that for the rest of time. if the repulse blows up i should not have to remember that she really sunk [was this game or the other game?]. would probably be easy enough to do if play ae was all people had to do but other games and this other thing called life sometimes gets in the way of that. would it be so hard to do? and last time i checked rescuing crew was not a part of the game so indianapolis sinks and i know it has what game effect if i am us?

if the ship is no longer on map it pretty means it sunk. meaning my ship.

[Hokum]

If you really wanted to know a unit status, you had to go down and make an unscheduled visit (which has its own hazards). In the game, this is simulated by going down to the unit detail screen and looking at its status. For air units, of course, you have to know what you started with. I don't find this very difficult.

Yeah but... in real life the same officer was in charge of setting up a task force course, the arc searches of planes and the mission of the plane.

If I'm asking the 3rd air Div to "establish air superiority, interdict naval movement and support the 25th army movement in the malay peninsula", then fine, give me inaccurate reports and make them one week late. But right now, I can have access to every details, it's just extremely cumbersome.

[Wirraway_Ace]

ORIGINAL: Hokum

If you really wanted to know a unit status, you had to go down and make an unscheduled visit (which has its own hazards). In the game, this is simulated by going down to the unit detail screen and looking at its status. For air units, of course, you have to know what you started with. I don't find this very difficult.

Yeah but... in real life the same officer was in charge of setting up a task force course, the arc searches of planes and the mission of the plane.

If I'm asking the 3rd air Div to "establish air superiority, interdict naval movement and support the 25th army movement in the malay peninsula", then fine, give me inaccurate reports and make them one week late. But right now, I can have access to every details, it's just extremely cumbersome.

To me, the combersome nature of trying to know every accurate detail is important to a game of this type. Very few of those who play have the time to check all the details and still meet life's other committments. Instead, the sheer scope of the game and the FOW feature produces a reasonable in-game fog of war.

[fbs]

AHAAA!

Found the perfect solution for the terrible problem of accounting aircraft losses. I just noticed that the KIA/MIA/WIA counters on the air unit screen have two parts: last day and total. So the KIA/MIA/WIA already have the exact functionality to find out about combat losses on last day.

What we needed is to get the Ops/WOff/A2A/Flak/Ground counters, which currently only show totals, work the same way as KIA/MIA/WIA, which is, to have two values: one for last day and another for unit totals.

This simulates the in-person inspection that Wirraway_Ace was referring to. You just go to the air group and find out how many were lost last day -- including the reason, very nice. As there is a bit of unused space under the KIA/MIA/WIA counters, these can be slipped down a little bit to create space for the other counters.

So we don't need to mess the combat reports - just get the Ops/WOff/A2A/Flak/Ground counters work the same way as KIA/MIA/WIA. This way those that like to go for the big picture can just read the combat reports, while those that like to count every propeller in the field can have their fun opening the information screen for the groups he's concerned with. And we could have "Hail to The Chief" playing when I open the air information screen, to simulate the band playing for me on my unscheduled field inspection (unless I'm inspecting a Soviet base, in that case a random shooting sound will give a realistic ambience that I'm unhappy with the squadron leader and I've sent him to the firing squad)

Cheers [:D]
fbs

[m10bob]

ORIGINAL: Marty A

ORIGINAL: m10bob

ORIGINAL: Marty A

You should also know which enemy ships are positivly sunk and which are think they sunk but you can not tell that either

It would not be historically accurate to know which of your own ships are sunk, right away. Two tragic examples being the Juneau and the Indianapolis.

I did not say my own ships. if dd ward comes in alone in daylight against 4 kongo bbs and sinks and it is seen sinking then it would be nice if i did not have to remember that for the rest of time. if the repulse blows up i should not have to remember that she really sunk [was this game or the other game?]. would probably be easy enough to do if play ae was all people had to do but other games and this other thing called life sometimes gets in the way of that. would it be so hard to do? and last time i checked rescuing crew was not a part of the game so indianapolis sinks and i know it has what game effect if i am us?

if the ship is no longer on map it pretty means it sunk. meaning my ship.

Right..The point I was trying to make was that you might not even know the extent of your own losses, even though your ships sunk (or were about to) within sight of friendlies,(in this case, the Juneau).
The confirmation of enemy sinkings (even when in sight) would also be conjecture as 5 of your ships reporting the sinking of a single enemy DD might be seen as 5 separate sinkings.

[xj900uk]

The story of your great uncle is quite appalling. There must be more to the story as the courts did not even allow him access to family funds....

There is a bit more. Basically my great uncle, thanks to his treatment in WWII, was in no fit nor mental state to give evidence & the cross-examining legal team tore him to shreds. In the end the Magistrate ruled that he was 'mentally unfit to plead his case' and threw it out

[witpqs]

One would think "I am alive. See?" would be enough. Truly appalling.