Bloody Pacific

[herwin]

I've reached 24 June 1942 in an RHSAIO scenario. I've lost 17 submarines, all but a couple in intelligence collection missions! Isn't this excessively bloody?

[spence]

On a long term average over the course of the war it's not too far off...if you're the Japanese.

[el cid again]

In spite of dramatically reducing the number of die rolls - you now get one per pattern instead of 1 per DC -
and ALSO reducing the accuracy of DC - the effect remains the same - and ALSO increasing sub durability -
my great fear is we have only moved in the right direction - but not gone far enough. Players will notice a dramatic
decrease in ASW lethality - and I expect some complaints - but that does not mean it is enough.

Another consideration is that ASW is DIFFERENT for different subs. The durability of a sub - and later on the sensors on the sub
- greatly change the relative chance of a hit or sinking. Thanks to Historiker's invention we can use proper depths - and thanks to a new depth rating system we have more consistent data than using the former idea of safe diving depth. Thanks to JWE we have a better understanding
of the AS model - enough to justify the dozens of hours needed to revise the data. Now there is a greater difference between ships, planes and subs - and these often change over time. In general, ASW will get more effective later in the war. But subs fight back with sensors making them more likely to submerge and evade surface weapons. And the chances a sub is hit varies on a much greater - and far more rational - basis than before. German subs are the hardest to sink - because they can dive deeper - and later subs are harder to sink than pre war designs - in general - because the later ones dive deeper than the early ones (in general). And it is graded by class - not all subs are equally targets as it were.

Another problem is that gamers will do better than reality. Gamers at least have the option of TRYING to hunt subs intensively
- in particular with aircraft. A great strategic failure of the US was to invest in bombers that did NOT hunt subs - and it
is believed by critics of the strategic air war that using the bombers for ASW (and also for army support operations) would have
been more effective than using them for city bombing. PLAYERS may do that - and IF they do that - they will sink more submarines
- in spite of having the same number of ships and planes - because they can fly more AS missions. In war games with good players
both sides have 20-20 hindsight - and you need to expect better than history results and competition.

We need a lot of data to get a sense of this. All I know for sure is we moved in the right direction. It is indeed possible we didn't move
far enough. ASW is hard - but is it hard enough? Anyway - making it hard is a great enhancement - and fixes a big problem with WTIP -
where subs could not stay at sea long enough to be more than a minor harassing factor. NOW subs might be able to be a big problem -
big enough it justifies diverting planes to the mission from PRIORITY other missions - big enough to consider evading ANY sub detected -
that is - and you might risk subs in places that would have been fatal in the game before - ie more like reality.