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I found another way to limit Glens: I reduced production rate to 1 and set expansion to only 1. Players who use defaults won't have so many any more. Now I don't mean I did this in the aircraft database - Japanese planes always should be set to zero production. I mean I did it at the factory.

A few more TROM"s:

This one is interesting it shows the use of a "Slim", note even in Late Nov. of 43 she was still using her Glen to recon Pearl:

http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-19.htm

This Boat did some interesting things as well, refueling Jakes to extend their radious of operation, Imagine alowing these Subs to act as AV's:)

http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-26.htm

This Boat even used her Glen, to do ad hoc ASW patroles:

http://www.combinedfleet.com/I-29.htm

Thier are many more, if you folow the link back to the Sub Page and Look under Aircraft Carrying Boats their are Scades more. Interesting is just how many times key points of interest Like Pearl, Nouma and other Magor bases were reconiotered by Sub launced Float planes, even relatively late in the war.

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I to feal the game gives up to much info on the Magic Mouse sweap's over basses, espichaly Magor ones in Japan.

The Allied Intel in general is a bit over done imo.

Thanks for those TROMs, Brady. They do show pretty active Glen recon missions -- but maybe not so much "Naval Search" as it's modeled in WITP. I mean, mostly the logs show Glens dispatched to recon particular targets: PH, Noumea, Santa Cruz Island, etc. Obviously a Glen would report any enemy vessel it saw on the way to the target, but you don't see many instances of a Glen reporting a contact in the open ocean, do you?

No, but the TROM's don't show daily patrole activaty either for the subs in general,I am looking into the subject of Daily patrole usege for these boats from another source at present.

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Interestingly, the TROM's do show some Usage, that the Game does not realy alow or acount for.

1) Use of these boats as ad-hoc AV's.

2) Night Time recon, and Recon that actualy acheaved it's objective's.

One quick and dirty answer could to be have the sub check its location prior to launch (if it doesn't already). The game already uses the hex's water type for ASW purposes...use the same check prior to launching the AC. For a port hex you have X% chance of launching, for coastal waters Y%, for open ocean Z%. This would be a rough way to emulate the surface conditions, obviously you'd have a better chance of launching in a port hex, and your worse chance would be in the open ocean. This would be in addition to any checks for surface ships or AC present.

Other thing is, the sub launched AC would have been far more useful if used properly. Why recon enemy bases (as they so often did) if you ain't prepared to do something about it? If you were seriously employing your subs in an anti-shipping role, a floatplane would be invaluable. Why do you think surface commerce raiders carried them? Because it extended their search capabilities/radius enormously. This is another example of the Japanese mis-employing a potentially far more useful asset.

It's like midget subs...why did they insist on using them against major, well guarded (so to speak) bases? Or in other areas with a butt-load of ASW capable ships zipping around? There were plenty of smaller or less (or virtually unprotected) well protected ports they could have been used against with a far greater chance of success. Think what the 5 midgets at PH might have been able to do in Seattle or San Francisco instead, for example.

Yeah, but that was because of Japanese submarine doctrine. Plus, if you've got a weapon that you're certain can infiltrate a well-protected enemy port, aren't you going to send it after the highest-value targets?

Near as I can tell from the TROM's all the recon flights were conducted from Open Ocean launch points, for obvious reasions, also non aparently (unless I mised something) were intercepted. Many of these recon flights were conducted in watters notiours for their bad weather, Oregon, Alaska. Operations were also conducted suxcessfully at Night.

Thier is no evidance to sugest that these planes could not conduct operations for search mishions in the open ocean either.

Other than a rutine that would aply to all ship types that can launch and recover float planes, to prevent them from conducting operations in Sea states that would prevent recovery and Landing I see no reasion to change what the game presently models.

Thought as noted above their may be a reasionable argurment to augment their capabailitys.

Yeah, but short of modeling surface conditions for each hex the best you can do is swag it. There's several actual float plane guys here who could help "ballpark" percentages for how often you'd be able to operate a floatplane of that type in generalized conditions. We know the game already uses port/base, shallow/coastal, and deep/ocean hexes. My impressions from when I played is that the Glen et al. flew to often.

"aren't you going to send it after the highest-value targets"

(to totally digress) Nope, I'm going to use it where its got the best chance of success and likelyhood of recovery. But I have the advantage of hindsight, and no one says I have to play the game stupidly in order to preserve "historical accuracy"...that's the entire idea of playing historical sims. Doctrine is something that I, as the "Grand High Poobah" should certainly be able to impact. The real problem with the midgets is that the IJN believed their own press and thought they were more effective (as used) than they were. This doesn't mean that they might not have been more effective if used differently. Also, you could argue that the midgets were actually a success if you looked at both actual results and the resources that were used to defend against them. Think if the Allies had to aggressively defend EVERY port against both ASW and midget attack? Kinda like strategic bombing in the ETO...the real success was in the many squadrons of AC, the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of troops, the thousands of high velocity AA guns, heavy automatic weapons, and other resources diverted from the fighting fronts to defend against it.

If you give me a choice between a defended port with a battleship and an undefended port with five merchantmen, and I think my minisub is good enough, and the crew well trained enough, to penetrate any one of them, I'm going to go for the battleship 10 times out of 10.

I realy dont think, that given the operational history of the Midgets as employed that they were not suxcesfull up to a point, and they were deployed in a far wider maner than comonly thought. The problem is in the modeling of them, certainly it could be done but, they did not want to do it...

They could of added the larger bombs to Japanese bombers as they did the allied ones, but they did not want to...

The later example is easly done the first I think is not, midgets would be harder I asume to model. Though Easly done in their guise as a short range sub.

Certainly for WiTP II I would hope to see these added in their full to the game, from Ships, Subs and Shore basses.


Interesting link on Midgets at Pearl, more involved than I had thought:

http://www.combinedfleet.com/Pearl.htm


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O-Cool book I just got from this sight, only took two weeks to arive:

http://www.hlj.com/product/GAK02339

Near as I can tell from the TROM's all the recon flights were conducted from Open Ocean launch points, for obvious reasions, also non aparently (unless I mised something) were intercepted. Many of these recon flights were conducted in watters notiours for their bad weather, Oregon, Alaska. Operations were also conducted suxcessfully at Night.

I can easily understand how a Glenn would not be intercepted, especially over the West Coast. We didn't keep standing CAP over the ports and certainly not at night. Any interception would most likely have been a fluke by a training flight.

Also figure that we didn't have a very effective air traffic control system in use as yet and that commercial aircraft didn't use IFF (it was still a military secret) so any plane patrolling over a port could easily be mistaken for a commerical flight or a military training aircraft. It would take a visual sighting to determine otherwise.

And you are correct, Brady. Nearly all Glenn flights were launched from the open ocean. No sub skipper in his right mind is going to surface for 20-30 minutes in shallow water and within visual range of shore. Even at night, shorebased radar could potentially raise the alarm. Given that it took several minutes to make the plane ready for launch, its natural to assume that they would want to remain as covert as possible.

Chez

But still, part of the basic problem here is that WitP doesn't model Sea State. You can launch a Glen whenever the heck you want, whereas I'm rather certain that pretty low States would have necessary in real life.

But still, part of the basic problem here is that WitP doesn't model Sea State. You can launch a Glen whenever the heck you want, whereas I'm rather certain that pretty low States would have necessary in real life.

Absolutely. That's why I had posted earlier that Glenn ops losses should be based on weather conditions. That's as close as we can get without actually modeling seastates. Given identical weather conditions, deep, open ocean areas tend to be calmer than do shallow, coastal areas.

Chez

"I'm going to go for the battleship 10 times out of 10"

See?!?!?! EXACTLY what I'm talking about...player input determining the course of history!

"Absolutely. That's why I had posted earlier that Glenn ops losses should be based on weather conditions. That's as close as we can get without actually modeling seastates. Given identical weather conditions, deep, open ocean areas tend to be calmer than do shallow, coastal areas."

Talking even more out of my hienie than usual, couldn't you (1) make a go/no go flight determination based on the hex weather, then (2) swag the numbers for sea states by going "Okay, for an open ocean hex you have a 1 in 10 chance (for example) of having the right sea conditions to conduct flight ops on any particular day" and then rolling the dice? Since the game is already checking the water hex type for the ASW values. In effect, you'd be generating the sea state for that particular hex via dice roll. (3) With more coding effort, you could then tie the OP loss %/possibility due to "on the water ops" to your original dice roll value or even another dice roll.

For that matter, shouldn't all sub/ASW ops be generating a sea state to affect detection values anyway? Two fixes for the price of one...

There certainly SHOULD be a realistic weather/sea state model for the entire map, but that's more likely for (pie in the sky) WitP2, not WitP.

Talking even more out of my hienie than usual, couldn't you (1) make a go/no go flight determination based on the hex weather, then (2) swag the numbers for sea states by going "Okay, for an open ocean hex you have a 1 in 10 chance (for example) of having the right sea conditions to conduct flight ops on any particular day" and then rolling the dice?

Sorry if I didn't come across very clearly. That's actually what I was trying to say. By using weather data in a hex, we could incur certain seastates and limit operations accordingly. I would probably say something along the lines of 70% chance of success on a clear day in open ocean, minus 10-20% for coastal hexes. Plus an additional -10% cumulative chance of success for each type of weather. So launching in a coastal hex in rainy weather would give a 30% chance (70-20-20) of success. Something along those lines

Actually, I would like to see this carried further now that I think about it. Apply it to carrier aircraft also. Give them an increased chance for ops losses based on worsening weather.

Chez

Well, again to the TROM's Only one glen that I can see in the TROM's (I looked at about half of them) was an OP Loss(disapeared on a flight). While their is no mention of the weather, I think we can asume that if it was bad they dident operate, the same can be said for any Float Ship, any CV, Base, exc...So OP loss based on weahter is not realy a viable factor imo, Bad weather they dont fly simple as that.

Since this aplies evenly to all aspects of WiTP (Aparently no consideration given to SEA State for Float Planes operations), I cant see any reasion personaly to will an efect on Just the Glen's, when all Sea Planes/ Flying Boats should be efected equiely.

As noted above, Hopefully the wanted for greater detail of WiTP II will acount for this.

Thier is no evidance to sugest that these planes could not conduct operations for search mishions in the open ocean either

It is quite a different matter to SEARCH a circular area of just a 2 hex radius (~45000 sq miles and Naval Search in WitP pretty much depicts such a search) than to fly to a harbor and see what's there. The Glenn had a cruising speed of 90 kts. Do the math. FLy due North for an hour, turn 135 deg to the right, fly roughly 125 mi SE, turn right 90 deg, fly another 125 mi SW, then fly 90 mi due North again (just about out of gas and hopefully finding your sub). Half the 2 hex radius has been searched with a fairly low probability of detection and half the day has been used up (roughly 5 hours). Do the same in the afternoon and cover the other half with that same low POD. Naval search is kinda whacked in the game but at least with the Mavis/PBY/etc SQDRNS you can imagine individual planes searching realistic wedge shaped sectors with a reasonable POD. Not sure of a Glenn's range but if its search radius is more than even 1 hex the coverage allowed is not possible within the time frame of an AM or PM Air Phase.

One other thing I've noticed is that Glenn equipped subs seem to conduct flight ops without detriment to either themselves or their embarked a/c when there is an enemy ASW TF in the same hex. Possible yes; but seems like it would reasonably often lead to the either the loss of the plane/pilot/crew (cause he doesn't lead the ships to the sub) or the loss of the whole shooting match (cause the pilot does lead the ships to the sub).

ORIGINAL: Grotius

Thanks for those TROMs, Brady. They do show pretty active Glen recon missions -- but maybe not so much "Naval Search" as it's modeled in WITP. I mean, mostly the logs show Glens dispatched to recon particular targets: PH, Noumea, Santa Cruz Island, etc. Obviously a Glen would report any enemy vessel it saw on the way to the target, but you don't see many instances of a Glen reporting a contact in the open ocean, do you?

The point of contention here isn't that the Glen should have it's powers limited, but that they weren't hardly used and unreliable, or that they could only be used in the calmest seas. The issue of 'no search' only comes up not because they can't do it IRL, but because it gives them lots of power they shouldn't have in the game, because of the bias against their being used beyond the slightest degree because of alleged lack of use. If a plane can recon a port, something often more imminently dangerous than spotting ships at sea, then surely it can spot fleets. Whether the IJN used them very much in that role is immaterial, as the new commander should have that basic option. Of course there's always the possibility of getting a toggle option for these who quiver at the sight of the mighty plane spotting fleets. Any plane that can recon a port, and was used int hat role, should surely be able to search for a fleet.

I hope I'm not opening up on you Grotius when I say this, but it really does make me ill that it seems that virtually every capability of IJ in this game in being called into question that such-and-such capability shouldn't be granted to them because we don't have extensive documentation of it's being done. Besides that point, since we already know that the IJN was often using it's subs, even non-Glen ones for reconnning the sea, just why would they not use the Glen for navy searches when they're just as capable of that as a float plane?

I don't see it as a ding on the Glen or the IJN, but rather on the games search routines. The bottomline is that a sub isn't an aircraft carrier, and a single Glen isn't a squadron. Fix the air search routines, cut down its use somewhat in a realistic manner, and the Glen is "fixed".

The sea state thing is an issue that affects almost every facet of seaborne ops. Seaplane ops, ASW, carrier ops, even amphibious ops. How often was weather/sea state a burning issue for amphibious ops? Every time, no exceptions. Yet we can pull up offshore, no matter what time of year, no matter what the weather or seas are like, and start tossing troops over the side.