Impact of Leaders in WitP

[Belphegor]

To let the human player guide historical units involved in historical settings through variations in historical events.

Don't leaders qualify as historical units?

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: spence

As to JD's comment that Kurita's turn away at Samar was not representative of Japanese leadership; well, I have my doubts actually. Nagumo's failure to attack PH with a third wave, his indecision about striking the US fleet at Midway, Mikuma turning away from the transports at Guadalcanal after smashing the covering forces, Abe's indecision (complemented by Callahan's indecision) at Naval Battle of Guadalcanal which allowed the range to close to point blank, the Japanese failure to close on the wounded Salt Lake City in the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, tend to indicate that there was considerable room for the personal characteristics of individual Japanese leaders to affect the outcome of important actions. If one were to look hard, something of a common thread concerning institutional leadership running throughout might be well argued.

Thank you VERY much, spence! This was exactly my point!

[Yamato hugger]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

ORIGINAL: Admiral Scott

What is a Carrier Task force leader's and/or Carrier Captain's Air rating used for?

The list only mentions air rolls for group leaders and HQ leaders, nothing about TF leaders.

Gary says:

The carrier TF leader acts as the air-HQ leader for carrier launched aircraft.

And this would actually mean something if the game left the leaders we put in charge in the units we put them in charge of, but when someone like Halsey is replaced by a ground unit commander (especially when it's from the other side) then frankly, what good is it??

I'd prefer if you turned it off and made all leaders the same and leave the randoms to the dice.

Edit: Its clear the game is ment to depend a lot on the commanders ratings. So much depends on it is what I see in this post, which means when it dosent work it that much worse. Fix it or remove it. My .02

[JD009]

Been away for a while.
Not much on this thread.

So Terminus, all Japanese Admirals will run from a fight at every opportunity? [:D] Sure make for a short war, just run a couple of DD's out of Pearl Harbor on Dec 7 and the entire Japanese fleet will flee to Tokyo Bay and scuttle themselves?

Using historical examples of actions ignores the tremendous variety of influences on those point-in-time decisions. Can we really know what was on someone's mind when they made a decision? All of the factors they considered, all of the information on the situation as they thought it was happening? Not as hindsight tells us it was happening. Kurita had been awake and under air attack for some time as I recall. What if he had not been? Nagumo was looking for carriers at Pearl Harbor, not the oil tank farm. Hindsight tells us that if they had completely ignored Battleship Row and bombed the oil tank farm they would have been far better off, no US Navy ships west of Hawaii for the first six months of the war. But they didn't know that at the time, they were lookin fer flattops. Their strategy was based on force-vs-force, not on messing with the enemies logistics.

This whole business is one of the problems with leaders. A massive exercise in 20/20 hindsight is in progress. Did every Leader really walk around with their personal performance numbers tattooed on their foreheads? Did the High Command really have the option of making some Aggressive Genius Ensign commander of Combined Fleet? Or were the militaries really pretty much stuck with the main leaders that chance and the pre-war promotion process handed them?

It all smacks of the bad old days of rules lawyers, when people tried to leverage superior knowledge of the minutia of the wording of rules into victory. How many hours will people spend pouring over the leader selection process? Why bother with strategy when you can find the perfect combination of leaders who will guarantee victory, regardless of the forces on each side.

Belphegor; Leaders are not units in this game, they are a randomizing factor. In this case one that can be manipulated to try to gain an advantage. I might say an unfair advantage, but its not really that. Its simply one way that players can expend effort to try to gain an advantage. He (or she) who spends the most hours looking at and assigning leaders wins.

My real concern is the answer to the following either/or pair. Either leader ratings have so little effect on the outcome of battles that its silly to even bother with them? Or leader ratings are so significant as to make them the determining factor in victory? Has this game really been playtested enough to answer which is correct. If the first statement is right then why bother with leaders, you are just spending time for nothing. If the second statement is right then why bother playing the game, the ALLIES WIN. They did in real life so the leader ratings should always yield the same result. I would discount the idea that a perfect balance has been struck as pretty unlikely, especially since even the programmers don't seem to know how it all works. [;)]

JDOO9

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: JD009

Been away for a while.
Not much on this thread.

So Terminus, all Japanese Admirals will run from a fight at every opportunity? [:D] Sure make for a short war, just run a couple of DD's out of Pearl Harbor on Dec 7 and the entire Japanese fleet will flee to Tokyo Bay and scuttle themselves?

Using historical examples of actions ignores the tremendous variety of influences on those point-in-time decisions. Can we really know what was on someone's mind when they made a decision? All of the factors they considered, all of the information on the situation as they thought it was happening? Not as hindsight tells us it was happening. Kurita had been awake and under air attack for some time as I recall. What if he had not been? Nagumo was looking for carriers at Pearl Harbor, not the oil tank farm. Hindsight tells us that if they had completely ignored Battleship Row and bombed the oil tank farm they would have been far better off, no US Navy ships west of Hawaii for the first six months of the war. But they didn't know that at the time, they were lookin fer flattops. Their strategy was based on force-vs-force, not on messing with the enemies logistics.

This whole business is one of the problems with leaders. A massive exercise in 20/20 hindsight is in progress. Did every Leader really walk around with their personal performance numbers tattooed on their foreheads? Did the High Command really have the option of making some Aggressive Genius Ensign commander of Combined Fleet? Or were the militaries really pretty much stuck with the main leaders that chance and the pre-war promotion process handed them?

It all smacks of the bad old days of rules lawyers, when people tried to leverage superior knowledge of the minutia of the wording of rules into victory. How many hours will people spend pouring over the leader selection process? Why bother with strategy when you can find the perfect combination of leaders who will guarantee victory, regardless of the forces on each side.

Belphegor; Leaders are not units in this game, they are a randomizing factor. In this case one that can be manipulated to try to gain an advantage. I might say an unfair advantage, but its not really that. Its simply one way that players can expend effort to try to gain an advantage. He (or she) who spends the most hours looking at and assigning leaders wins.

My real concern is the answer to the following either/or pair. Either leader ratings have so little effect on the outcome of battles that its silly to even bother with them? Or leader ratings are so significant as to make them the determining factor in victory? Has this game really been playtested enough to answer which is correct. If the first statement is right then why bother with leaders, you are just spending time for nothing. If the second statement is right then why bother playing the game, the ALLIES WIN. They did in real life so the leader ratings should always yield the same result. I would discount the idea that a perfect balance has been struck as pretty unlikely, especially since even the programmers don't seem to know how it all works. [;)]

JDOO9

[&o] I like.. Now how can we get these "undocumented" aspects (leader effects, etc.) of the game compiled in one source?

[Widell]

ORIGINAL: AlaskanWarrior
]Now how can we get these "undocumented" aspects (leader effects, etc.) of the game compiled in one source?

There´s a section on the wiki (Link here) where a lot of leader aspects are being documented. More input, feedback and observations are welcome

/Robert

[JD009]

Thanks Widell, I checked it out, lots of stuff to read there.

So, has anyone tried the Great Experiment? Play the same small scenario over and over to see what the average results are, then change the leaders and repeat? Should be able to get some kind of stats on results at various stages in the battle. Everybody issue the exact same orders for each Trial. Repetition, repetition... And see what the variations in results are.

[:)]

[JD009]

Hmmm. I seem to have killed this topic. Is this discussion going on someplace else I haven't noticed?

[&:]

[treespider]

So, has anyone tried the Great Experiment? Play the same small scenario over and over to see what the average results are, then change the leaders and repeat? Should be able to get some kind of stats on results at various stages in the battle. Everybody issue the exact same orders for each Trial. Repetition, repetition... And see what the variations in results are.

Sounds like you volunteered yourself![;)]

[RevRick]

Ah. Inspiration is the ability to get those under you to so something incredibly brave/stupid/foolhardy.

Leadership is that what they are doing is right. Custer was a greatly inspired leader, but dumber than a fence post.

Rule of thumb. High Inspiration, High Leadership - good.

Low Inspiration, High Leadership - not bad, could be good.

High Inspiration, Low Leadership - Not good.

Low Inspiration, Low Leadership - CinC Head Cleaning Detail Adak.

[bradfordkay]

"Terrible Turner was a good defender agianst air attacks by virtue of clever maneuvering"


Seems that he was misnamed...

[SireChaos]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

"Terrible Turner was a good defender agianst air attacks by virtue of clever maneuvering"


Seems that he was misnamed...

Why? The Japanese bomber pilots sure found his unwillingness to present a neat target absolutely terrible [:D]

[1EyedJacks]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

To clarify, Inspiration equals Morale and Leadership equals Skill in the chart. Also, Gary could find no reference in the code for the Admin skill impacting ship repair.

In the manual it says Naval HQs speed up repair time (see 8.1.1 in manual). So which skill helps speed up repair time then?

[DSwain]

How much impact does the 'big cheese' have? ie, is it worth giving MacArthur (or Nimitz) command of individual divs or TF's or best keeping them commanding HQ? Does the man you have at HQ affect all the units within that command?
cheers

[Anthropoid]

ORIGINAL: RevRick

Ah. Inspiration is the ability to get those under you to so something incredibly brave/stupid/foolhardy.

Leadership is that what they are doing is right. Custer was a greatly inspired leader, but dumber than a fence post.

Rule of thumb. High Inspiration, High Leadership - good.

Low Inspiration, High Leadership - not bad, could be good.

High Inspiration, Low Leadership - Not good.

Low Inspiration, Low Leadership - CinC Head Cleaning Detail Adak.

That was extremely helpful synthesis Rick!

[FAdmiral]

From what I have read here, it seems that the 5 skill catagory ratings for each
leader is what the game engine reads when calculating outcomes. Words like
promising and aggressiveness are nice when explaining to the player but the
numbers in the skill ratings are the real key. NOW, if there just was an easy
way to find them without looking at the entire list (takes much time), I would
get to play the game alot faster....

JIM

[Titanwarrior89]

I agree. But thanks guys for giving us the info. It will help.[:)]

ORIGINAL: Oliver Heindorf

Thank you for the information ! But honestly...this could have done earlier and belongs to the manual imho

[dtravel]

ORIGINAL: Anthropoid

ORIGINAL: RevRick

Ah. Inspiration is the ability to get those under you to so something incredibly brave/stupid/foolhardy.

Leadership is that what they are doing is right. Custer was a greatly inspired leader, but dumber than a fence post.

Rule of thumb. High Inspiration, High Leadership - good.

Low Inspiration, High Leadership - not bad, could be good.

High Inspiration, Low Leadership - Not good.

Low Inspiration, Low Leadership - CinC Head Cleaning Detail Adak.

That was extremely helpful synthesis Rick!

Unfortunately, its also wrong for the game. High Inspiration - rapid morale recovery. Low Inspiration - slow morale recovery. Leadership is meaningless except for assisting in pilot training.

[goodboyladdie]

The game rather helpfully lets me try a few Japanese leaders too...

[scout1]

hopefully thry aren't too helpful for you .....