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In a PBEM, we have no rule regarding PTs. As I saw several enemy TFs coming for a crucial base, I created 4 big PT-TFs.
While their offensive efforts were limited, they forced the enemy bombardement runs to spend much of their ammo on them and maybe reduced the time they had for bombardement.

I know many games have a HR like "no more than 2 PT-TFs with max. 6 PTs per TF".


IMO this isn't realisitc. Why shouldn't the allied High command order 50 PTs to a base? If this wasn't done in history, this shouldn't be an argument. The Japs didn't do proper ASW work but I would never get the idea of forbidding this to a japanese opponent.

If the dark is filled with enemy PT boats, bombardement TFs have to defend themselves permanently while doint their bomb run. They can't concentrate on bombing as they need their guns for self defence and have to avoid torpedo hits by manuevering wild. I don't see any logic argument why there should be a limit to PTs except the point to introduce a handycap to help the Japanese player.


Opinions?

If this were a simulation, sure, allow as many as you want. 
 
Since I treat it as a game (which it is), the PT's are a bit too effective within the game mechanics.  In the interest of game balance and fun, I play with a house rule for them.  [:)]

You must hand pick your captains and crews Mike! My PT's do the same thing consistantly! Make speed bumps for the Japanese, and burn beautifully! [:)]

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

You must hand pick your captains and crews Mike! My PT's do the same thing consistantly! Make speed bumps for the Japanese, and burn beautifully! [:)]

You mean to counter them?



Why, except from introducing a handycap to favour the Japs, shouldn't PTs make a base virtually immune to naval bombardement with PTs?
If they are concentrated in 2-3 bases, the Japs won't meet them anywhere else. Every medal has two sides, every sword has to sharp sides. If one player does one extreme thing, he usally opens a door for an effective counter.

@Historiker, I think the anwser is this: 

In this game the PT boat is more like a Destroyer then it is like a PT boat,  In realety you can destroy the PT boat with a 13mm AA Gun, or with a 20mm or 37mm AA Gun, but in this game you can  not.   The Playwood and Wood PT Boat can not stop anything but maby rifle rounds, it will die very fast, or at least the crews will if you fire a 20mm or a 37mm Gun at it. The boat is made out of wood.

As this game do not deal with the PT boat very realisticly, many people have rules to say max 4 or 6  PT boats pr hex ect.
The accurecy of the PT boat in this game is also far better then in Realety.



- 

ORIGINAL: Historiker

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve

You must hand pick your captains and crews Mike! My PT's do the same thing consistantly! Make speed bumps for the Japanese, and burn beautifully! [:)]

You mean to counter them?

No , I mean that I've never found PT's to be all that effective. A small group of DD's will destroy the PT's quite nicely. They will disrupt a bombardment (as they did in real life) , but mainly because the bombardment group is too busy sinking PT's, to bombard the shore! [:)]

Why, except from introducing a handycap to favour the Japs, shouldn't PTs make a base virtually immune to naval bombardement with PTs?
If they are concentrated in 2-3 bases, the Japs won't meet them anywhere else. Every medal has two sides, every sword has to sharp sides. If one player does one extreme thing, he usally opens a door for an effective counter.

in a 3 vs 3 show off of (Philipine) PT's against destroyers (both inteded on destroying eachother)
i lost 2 DD's (acutally one managed to make port) to 1 PT ... so they aren't only there for slowing down
 
i dont really like the idea of Allied suicide captains, sounds like something they wouldn't be doing to me
 
but if there are no HR's saying that you can't,  there's no reason not to, its what HR are there for 
 

House rules exist, more or less, to limit percieved shortfalls in game design. If you think that massed PT's are doctrinally sound, and you don't buy into the notion that the game does not represent PT's well, by all means form your mega-PT task force. However, many players -- including me -- think that some sort of limit on PT TF size is both appropriate and necessary.

Regards,
Feltan

its me who historiker is talking about. i was his japanese opponent in a modified stocks game and i will never ever start another game without a specific HR about the PT usage and the allied uber-CAP.

its about fun AND realism. this 2 things are damaged by the stocks game badly when it comes to immune US CV-TF with its allied uber-CAP shooting down all 600 japanese planes flowen by expert pilots with 70-80 XP (not one of the 350 bombers escorted by 200 fighters made it to the US carriers) and the fact, that around 40 US PT which are activated per a simple mouseclick were able to stop the best of the IJN (8 BB, 15 CA/CL and 40 DD with leaders like adm. tanaka&co.) from causeing any damage into a allied base.

in this game, i had a night action phase, in which my 3 bombard TFs had at least 10 or more different engagements with several PT-TFs and the result was, that after this PT orgy, 8 japanese BBs and a dozend CAs managed to land only 2-3 runway hits on the base AF!

in every game the fun for the opponent dies, when someone is able to "win" the game without any tactic. just park your indestructible carrier TF right at japan and do nothing then flying CAP and the japanese will lose 600 of his best pilots while landing not a single hit on the carriers. we know, that a dozend US CV/CVL were damaged badly 1944-1945 by sometimes a handfull japanese bombers because even the reinforced CAP was not able to intercept all attacks.

same goes for the PT abuse. just do 2-3 mouse clicks and your base is immune to the japanese battlefleet (even in the night phase) with its superb crews and leaders.

by the way: we stopped the game because of a massive sync-bug. in historikers AAR, i lost 2 BBs to his PT and in my AAR, only one DD was sunk. so close to AE, its not a shame to stop a game like our first game, in which hirtoriker played the japanese and stopped the game, because his invasion at fidji and india went bad.[;)]

There´s a good reason why there are so many HRs around. Just go throught those threads asking about hrs and you will soon find out which are the most common and why long term players mostly use the same HRs.

When we are talking about fun: Sending 8BBs, 15CAs and 40 DDs to nuke a base isnt really what one would call "sporty" or realistical... [;)]

ORIGINAL: Barb

When we are talking about fun: Sending 8BBs, 15CAs and 40 DDs to nuke a base isnt really what one would call "sporty" or realistical... [;)]

Exactly. That never happened historically. It cuts both ways. Personally, I don't believe the PT's in my games have been too out of control. When mixing it up with SC TF's, they've tended to tangle only with destroyers, which makes sense that they would bump into the destroyer screen. Of course, there are certainly examples of some crazy stuff out there, which is why a good house rule is needed.

ORIGINAL: Barb

When we are talking about fun: Sending 8BBs, 15CAs and 40 DDs to nuke a base isnt really what one would call "sporty" or realistical... [;)]

why? you know about the japanese bombardements of handerson field at guadalcanal with BB/CA TFs?

its totaly realistic to send several bombardement TFs to a enemy base.

Nowhere near 60+ combat ships on one side [:D]

Oct 11-12: 3CAs, 2DDs (Battle of Cape Esperance) = 5 ships total
Oct 13-14: 2BBs, 1CL, 9DDs (Battleship bombardment of Henderson field) = 12 ships total
Nov 12-13: 2BBs, 1CL, 11DD (1st Naval Battle of Guadalcanal) = 14 ships total
Nov 13-14: 4CAs, 2CLs, 6DDs (Mikawa bombards Henderson field) = 12 ships total
Nov 14-15: 1BB, 2CAs, 2CLs, 9DDs (2nd Naval Battle of Guadalcanal) = 14 ships total

To coordinate 60+ ships on the same night to hit the same target without radar, divided into multiple groups, knowing the enemy surface forces are present ready to interfere with your mission = MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3! [:-]

If you tried to send say: 1CL+6DDs as SCTF to screen bombardment force of 2BBs, 2CAs, 1CL + 9DDs it will be OK to me. Then your whinning about swarms of PTs would be rightful.

Just imagine confusion at 1st Naval Battle of Guadalcanal with 14 IJN ships and 13 USN ships. Exponent it by 4 on your side.. Hell, even tavern brawls are more transparent![8|]

ORIGINAL: bigbaba

ORIGINAL: Barb

When we are talking about fun: Sending 8BBs, 15CAs and 40 DDs to nuke a base isnt really what one would call "sporty" or realistical... [;)]

why? you know about the japanese bombardements of handerson field at guadalcanal with BB/CA TFs?

its totaly realistic to send several bombardement TFs to a enemy base.

No, it isn't... Henderson Field had naval spotters on a hill overlooking the base, radioing in corrections to the BBs... in this game ALL bombardments take on the exact same characteristics, even if there are no troops on the ground...

Also, the Japanese could not even maintain enough guns/barrels/liners in reality for even gunnery PRACTICE, let alone megabombardments every other day (or even every other week.)

Can you name even three actual bombardments that the Japanese carried out during the war (7 Dec 41 - Aug 1945) with their BBs?... there are maybe 3 (one being Henderson Field)... the others didn't do squat... there were a couple of attempts at bombardments that didn't come off.

The US DID carry out numerous hit and run raids with BBs, CAs, etc... they were not terribly effective either AFAIK.

@Barb:

we are talking about january 1944. nearly all japanese warships in this bombard-TFs had radar systems AND also highly skilled crews (espacialy for night combat) and leaders with 70+ values.

one can not expect 100% historical correctness from a game. thats why we have houserules and modifications. but at least, a game should come close to that. now, risking your whole battlefleet with radar, very good crews and leaders and intense recon for bombardement-runs comes close to realism but doing 3-4 mouseclicks in a just captured base to make it immune against any bombardement with 40 tiny wooden nutshells is not.

i think, PT spamm causes more problems for most of the japanese players then a large scale naval operation. thats why we see alot of games with HRs about US PT usage and not one game with a "a maximum of 10 ships are allowed in bombard-TFs" HR.

ORIGINAL: bigbaba

@Barb:

we are talking about january 1944. nearly all japanese warships in this bombard-TFs had radar systems AND also highly skilled crews (espacialy for night combat) and leaders with 70+ values.

one can not expect 100% historical correctness from a game. thats why we have houserules and modifications. but at least, a game should come close to that. now, risking your whole battlefleet with radar, very good crews and leaders and intense recon for bombardement-runs comes close to realism but doing 3-4 mouseclicks in a just captured base to make it immune against any bombardement with 40 tiny wooden nutshells is not.

i think, PT spamm causes more problems for most of the japanese players then a large scale naval operation. thats why we see alot of games with HRs about US PT usage and not one game with a "a maximum of 10 ships are allowed in bombard-TFs" HR.

I somehow think that the japanese would have had some problems with 60 PT boats historically as well. 120 torpedoes in the water is something to avoid..

Well try to make arrangement with your opponent - which works two ways: You will send REASONABLE bombardment TFs (say one TF with max 15 ships or two smaller, screened by one SCTF) and he will limit his PTs reasonably also (say 12 per base)

I think this is generous offer. And closer to reality too.
You will be able to bombard and he will be sure his base wont be nuked ...

If you are reasonable and inteligent enough, you should know that his mass of PTs was caused by your nuking bombardments...[8|]

I'm against any house rule that can be avoided.

If the game doesn't know that a barrel has to be replaced every 120-300 rounds and that the Japs couldn't build enough of them - so what? I bombed Tavoy for 3 month 2-4 times a week. It is possible for both sides.

He can build ahistoric bombardement TFs, I can create ahistoric PT TFs. In fact, my losses in PTs as well as my embedding was so intense, my PT-pool was empty...
We'll see how it works in AE, whether PTs will be taken at least out of action after some bursts with light flak. If so, I'll allow him to put as many PTs in his bases as he wants - while playing the Japs myself.

As I said abouve: everything in the game hase its influence. If he sends all of his BBs to one base for bombardement, it may be unrealistic and this base will be nuked - but I'll also will only face CAs attacking my invasion fleets elsewhere.
If he puts all his LBA in some key areas for ASW duty, my subs are useless, but my airfields are safe from runway cratering and my shipping is much less endangered...


If he puts all his CVs together to a death star, this fleet will be invincible - as historical - but he won't have many CVs anywhere else, so I may be able to raid his convoys - maybe even filled with troops that will consequently never set their foot on sacred japanese soil... [;)]


The fewer rules the better!

As historiker said: Each action creates a reaction.. [:)]