Simple Balancer Fantasy (SBF) Mod

[Erkki]

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

ORIGINAL: Erkki

My idea of a 111... He 111 H-4 of 4/KG.26. I used a too large top view pic in the 2 previous ones: they're 60 x 60 not 80 x 80, oops...

Looking good Erkki. Basically I'll be looking for both German and Italian aircraft to span the whole time period between 1/1/1942 to 1945, so anything you can make will probably go in the mod. [:)]

OK boss. [:D]

How about... Ju 87 B-2?

[inqistor]

Now, thinking of it...
It is possible to TURN OFF possibility of splitting unit. Just set them to SMALLER size (it probably have no other purpose). So if you set even CORPS as battalion size, it should not be possible to split.

Also, have you tried setting leaders, and ships to belonging to unused Nation? Pilots needs in-game pool, but other things can use virtual Nation, if they are working in-game. There are 3 free slots in editor.

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress
Makes me think no one really cares one way or the other about this mod. Of course that may well be true. Maybe I'm just wasting my time working on this. Probably everyone would rather play something historically based instead of a bunch of fantasy nonsense.

I would think of it as a tool for teaching GC. If you seriously reduce timespan, and reinforcements, it will be quick learning tool for whole map composition, and available forces.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: inqistor

Now, thinking of it...
It is possible to TURN OFF possibility of splitting unit. Just set them to SMALLER size (it probably have no other purpose). So if you set even CORPS as battalion size, it should not be possible to split.

Also, have you tried setting leaders, and ships to belonging to unused Nation? Pilots needs in-game pool, but other things can use virtual Nation, if they are working in-game. There are 3 free slots in editor.

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress
Makes me think no one really cares one way or the other about this mod. Of course that may well be true. Maybe I'm just wasting my time working on this. Probably everyone would rather play something historically based instead of a bunch of fantasy nonsense.

I would think of it as a tool for teaching GC. If you seriously reduce timespan, and reinforcements, it will be quick learning tool for whole map composition, and available forces.

Hmmm. How does 1 year sound then? Too long? Maybe 6 months? I was hoping to have a long enough scenrio to do some ship conversion binds, maybe convert some merchies to AMCs or CVEs. You're probably right, though. People are going to lose interest if it's too long, especially if it isn't something historically based.

[RyanCrierie]

Gary, you have my permission to use the art I did a while back:
 
http://www.alternatewars.com/Mods/WITP_AE/German/German_Art.htm

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

Question for the experts:

I want to give the Japanese some CVs in place of the Yamatos. What would be a plausible substitute carrier-wise for the Yamatos, to be launched before January 1941. Also, I'd like to use a carrier design which would allow me to create 2 carriers per each Yamato. In other words, in the span it took to produce a Yamato, I'd like to pump out two CVs.

Any ideas, suggestions on what would be the likely candidate, another Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, Junyo, or Unryu? What carrier design should I use? I'd like to keep it to an existing design used in the game, instead of a "never-was".

Thanks.

Additional Shokaku's are the obvious choice..., but don't forget the most expensive part---filling and maintaining the Air Groups. Historically the IJN went to war without enough trained pilots to man the A/C it possessed, and without enough A/C to fill it's carrier air groups. And do to it's fetish for over-training replacements, there was a severe shortage of them as well...., so just building additional CV's doesn't begin to cover the actual costs to Japan in money, time, and resources.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress

Question for the experts:

I want to give the Japanese some CVs in place of the Yamatos. What would be a plausible substitute carrier-wise for the Yamatos, to be launched before January 1941. Also, I'd like to use a carrier design which would allow me to create 2 carriers per each Yamato. In other words, in the span it took to produce a Yamato, I'd like to pump out two CVs.

Any ideas, suggestions on what would be the likely candidate, another Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, Junyo, or Unryu? What carrier design should I use? I'd like to keep it to an existing design used in the game, instead of a "never-was".

Thanks.

Additional Shokaku's are the obvious choice..., but don't forget the most expensive part---filling and maintaining the Air Groups. Historically the IJN went to war without enough trained pilots to man the A/C it possessed, and without enough A/C to fill it's carrier air groups. And do to it's fetish for over-training replacements, there was a severe shortage of them as well...., so just building additional CV's doesn't begin to cover the actual costs to Japan in money, time, and resources.

Basically I'll probably dull the experience of the Japanese pilots a bit to make up for having more of them to begin with. As far as airframes I did some counting of all the aircraft available on turn 1 for the Japanese and came up with the following:

The chart shows the following: Aircraft type, monthly production rate on turn 1, total # of airframes, # of airgroups of what size can be made from them. The # in parenthesis is how many extra planes there are after dividing the rest into groups of either 18 or 54.

Basically the chart shows that there are enough navy airgroups to fill quite a few extra carriers, albeit at the expense of having less land based navy airgroups.

A red box in the production collumn means I would turn off production for the aircraft. Green means keep production going.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: RyanCrierie

Gary, you have my permission to use the art I did a while back:

http://www.alternatewars.com/Mods/WITP_AE/German/German_Art.htm

Thanks RyanCrierie! I'll see what I can use.

[inqistor]

To keep it simple, you can probably change all OSCARs I, into 1 model. Same with TBs, and probably BABEs.

As for the time:
2 years seems to be too long. CA can repair in around 3 months, BB can take over year, so, to allow some damages to heavy ships, Scenario should probably be longer, than 1 year.

[traskott]

Suscribed !!! That's an interesting mod !!!

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: inqistor

To keep it simple, you can probably change all OSCARs I, into 1 model. Same with TBs, and probably BABEs.

As for the time:
2 years seems to be too long. CA can repair in around 3 months, BB can take over year, so, to allow some damages to heavy ships, Scenario should probably be longer, than 1 year.

I'm thinking 1 year max for the scenario. I'm convinced I'll need to keep it as short as possible to hold people's interest. Also it will eliminate the need to extend reinforcements for very long and keep the number and types of aircraft to a smaller number. Basically there won't be a Pearl Harbor sneak attack in this scenario so repairing BBs will only be necessary if they are committed to battle.

[traskott]

A dmg BB or CV can take easily 400 days, so people should be very conservative...

[GaryChildress]

A brief little fictional history of aircraft carriers:

Basically Hosho, Langley, and Argus lead the way in aircraft carrier development as historically was the case. Since there are no arms limitation treaties in effect capital ships are completed as such and there are no battleship to carrier conversions. This leads to a "bottom up" evolution of the carrier. In other words carriers start small and gain size over time as opposed to go from tiny to huge and then back to medium.

Take the US as a case in point. The US starts with Langley. Using lessons learned from Langley, a slightly larger carrier named Wasp is built in the mid 1920s implementing a carrier/cruiser design with a single twin 8" turret in the bow. From lessons learned with Wasp, Ranger is built in the late 20s-early 30s dedicated to air operations only. Next comes the Yorktown group, 6 carriers a bit larger than the historic Wasp begun in 1932 incorporating the lessons learned from the Ranger. Finally the Enterprise program (6 more ships) is conceived in 1935 using all the lessons learned up to then resulting in what is effectively the Yorktown class. Ultimately the concept of the super carrier is discarded because most large scale ship building resources are reserved for BBs.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress
Question for the experts:

I want to give the Japanese some CVs in place of the Yamatos. What would be a plausible substitute carrier-wise for the Yamatos, to be launched before January 1941. Also, I'd like to use a carrier design which would allow me to create 2 carriers per each Yamato. In other words, in the span it took to produce a Yamato, I'd like to pump out two CVs.

Any ideas, suggestions on what would be the likely candidate, another Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, Junyo, or Unryu? What carrier design should I use? I'd like to keep it to an existing design used in the game, instead of a "never-was".

Thanks.

Gary, my friend, I think you are worrying too much. If this is a balanced scenario, who cares what's plausible. Just go for it. If I was doing one of those, I would have alternating 'Kakus and Unryus arriving on the same dates as an Essex. The whole idea is balance, yeah? And sure, do the Yamato, Musashi, Shinano BBs to counter the NCs, SoDaks, and Iowas. Nobody is gonna scar you for doing that, so long as you say just what it is you are doing.

Frankly, that might be a fun thing. I strongly believe in limited, historically based, CPX-type scenarios that offer relative balance of forces. Have no idea how this would play out in a campaign game, but can imagine something like the old Tactics-II. Making a historically plausible what-if scenario is one thing. Making a 'balanced' scenario is something else entirely.

So throw historicity out the window. It's not Allies v Japan, it's green/brown v red. In that context, you can do what you darn please without worrying about what someone will say.

I agree whole heartedly. I like the concept of alternating Sho's and Unryu's. I would look at something faster than the Yamato's though. Since Japan is embarking on more concentrated air warfare model, then the B-64 battle cruisers make more since. Faster and armed with the excellent 100mm AA guns. Able to actually keep up with the fast carriers.

[GaryChildress]

ORIGINAL: AlaskanWarrior

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: Gary Childress
Question for the experts:

I want to give the Japanese some CVs in place of the Yamatos. What would be a plausible substitute carrier-wise for the Yamatos, to be launched before January 1941. Also, I'd like to use a carrier design which would allow me to create 2 carriers per each Yamato. In other words, in the span it took to produce a Yamato, I'd like to pump out two CVs.

Any ideas, suggestions on what would be the likely candidate, another Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, Junyo, or Unryu? What carrier design should I use? I'd like to keep it to an existing design used in the game, instead of a "never-was".

Thanks.

Gary, my friend, I think you are worrying too much. If this is a balanced scenario, who cares what's plausible. Just go for it. If I was doing one of those, I would have alternating 'Kakus and Unryus arriving on the same dates as an Essex. The whole idea is balance, yeah? And sure, do the Yamato, Musashi, Shinano BBs to counter the NCs, SoDaks, and Iowas. Nobody is gonna scar you for doing that, so long as you say just what it is you are doing.

Frankly, that might be a fun thing. I strongly believe in limited, historically based, CPX-type scenarios that offer relative balance of forces. Have no idea how this would play out in a campaign game, but can imagine something like the old Tactics-II. Making a historically plausible what-if scenario is one thing. Making a 'balanced' scenario is something else entirely.

So throw historicity out the window. It's not Allies v Japan, it's green/brown v red. In that context, you can do what you darn please without worrying about what someone will say.

I agree whole heartedly. I like the concept of alternating Sho's and Unryu's. I would look at something faster than the Yamato's though. Since Japan is embarking on more concentrated air warfare model, then the B-64 battle cruisers make more since. Faster and armed with the excellent 100mm AA guns. Able to actually keep up with the fast carriers.

Well, for what it's worth, I have taken the route of no treaties and no depression. Basically there's an arms race in the inter-war years which dulls the Great Depression so all the various constituents basically get to have their cake and eat it too. Granted this is pure unbridled fantasy but I'm trying to sugar coat it a little for those who like to have at least a little bit of historic plausibility at work. As I stated in a post above regarding the issue of plausibility, on the fantasy side there will be a lot more carriers out there to fight with for all sides, however, on the plausibility side, they won't be Nimitz Class flying F-14 Tomcats. So yes there's a lot of fantasy involved but it will only go so far.

As far as Battleships for the Japanese, I'm sticking mostly with the 8-8-8 plan. They will form the battle line. The fast striking carriers will employ mostly cruisers as escorts. At this stage in the game, the powers that be are still envisioning a Pacific Jutland and haven't really grasped the concept of the BB as AA platform for the carrier groups yet.

[GaryChildress]

I think I will close the bow in on my hypothetical "Enterprise" class in interest of giving it better sea keeping and reduce the number of ships for the "Yorktown" class to 4 instead of 6.

[traskott]

I've made a mod using all (or almost all) planes of the Ryan Art's Page, plus some one morei, if u want I can send you the files. 

[GaryChildress]

I don't know. So far I'm really liking what Erkki has been making. I may just stick with his art.

Back to the topic of carriers, someone on the Warship Projects boards suggested that without treaty limitations carriers would have gotten big fast regardless and that things like open hangars and unarmored flight decks were basically due to builders trying to stay within treaty tonnage limits.

So I'm thinking I may try a different design for my main carrier design, one with an enclosed bow and hangar and armored flight deck. It's a bit of a cross between Lexington and Yorktown, a little bigger than Yorktown and just a little smaller than Lexington.

[traskott]

How it goes ? 

[Shark7]

Gary, I noticed earlier in the thread you were discussing ways to bring German/Italaian units onto the map. If you look at the very top left corner, you will not a little triangle of land....that is Italian Somaliland...though by 1941 in the real war, the Brits had conquered it. Something to consider.

[oldman45]

With out the treaties (sp?) the Lexington class BC's would be around [;)]