Curious about a design choice

[PrinceBolkonsky]

I'm wondering what the reason was for starting many ships at reduced strength

Does this represent the readiness of support craft and crews?

Does it have something to do with making the ai function correctly.

Is it some kind of play balance?

Everyone is in such a hurry to have these units start at full strength and I don't see why.

[borsook79]

ORIGINAL: Bolkonsky

I'm wondering what the reason was for starting many ships at reduced strength

Does this represent the readiness of support craft and crews?

Does it have something to do with making the ai function correctly.

Is it some kind of play balance?

Everyone is in such a hurry to have these units start at full strength and I don't see why.

I cannot say why exactly it was done - but naval units usually represent many ships, hence lowering the strength allows the game to represent properly the actual numbers.

[Rasputitsa]

I can see that reduced naval strength at the beginning of a campaign has some logic, but taking ships out of mothballs and bringing crews up to full readiness should not take as much as new build costs. I think the problem is that it takes months, or even years, to make up naval strength. To try and do it any quicker would burn up your PPs very rapidily, which I suppose is quite realistic, provided that you can survive long enough in the game.

To give the player enough PPs to realisticaly maintain a naval force would unbalance the game, if those PPs were to be used for other purposes. Industries are not that easy to exchange (shipbuilders cannot easily switch to making aircraft), therefore, you might need separate PP accounts, one for naval building and repair and another PP account for the rest, or is that getting too complicated ?[:)]

[Tomokatu]

You may wish to look at Swatter 555's Mod Pack [&o] which, among other changes, starts out the RN at full strength.

[PrinceBolkonsky]

I like most of the Swatter mod that I have seen but I'm not sure I agree with starting all the fleets at full strength. I do like the idea of the changes making air attacks more effective but at the same time bloodier for the air units.

I still sense that the design choice was made to either represent some historical dynamic and possibly to force players to a pay an appropriate cost for a fully functioning navy.

Also, an aspect of naval operations that is often by necessity ignored at this scale is the tail of the beast. A great deal of resource has to go into bringing naval installations up to full functioning and there are a myriad of support ships to bring out of moth balls, or to build, or to press civilian ships into their roles, and reorganizing the training schools to a war time footing, and always the on going replacement and upgrading and reinvention of coastal and shorter range escort craft, and submarines, and harbor defenses. All this has to be paid for before a country can even think of expanding the fleet with fresh builds of larger ships.

With this in mind it seems like it might be somewhat appropriate that the various groups begin at a reduced level.

In short, I assume that the pps perform double or triple duty representing intellectual and logistical capital. C3I points. Otherwise the use of city proximity as the only supply criteria would be irrational...or at least a bit naive.

[Romdanzer]

Well no actually there IS a reason for this - it respresents Naval OOB's at the starting point of the corresponding scenario!

If you read the manual closely you will see that the Navy counters/figures represent small groups of ships and not only the capital ship that is central to this group - therefore they are actually Naval "units" and not just a ship:

i.e. :

1) a Carrier unit consists of the aircraft carrier and 5 accompaning destroyers.

2) likewise a Battleship unit consists of the Battleship and 5 accompaning destroyers

3) The cruiser unit consists of the cruiser and 5 accompaning destroyers

4) The destroyer unit consist of only 5 destroyers

The hitpoints of the unit represent not only the damage to the main capital ship but also how many of these 5 destroyers are present in this unit.

Therefore the Navy units with hitpoints missing at the start of a scenario represent the lack of destroyers in this unit - hence the OOB...

When you "repair" a unit you are not only "repairing" the main capital ship but also building of destroyers to stock up this unit to the maximum of 5 that it can have.

Romdanzer

[PrinceBolkonsky]

I did indeed understand that these are not individual ships though it would not be correct in any country's naval OoB to assume that every capital ship is accompanied by that many destroyers. Germany had a total of 20-23 destroyers at the beginning of the war. Many capital ships were designed and crews trained to function as raiders in pairs without the close support of destroyers. I wont go into more detail but if you look back at what I said I went far beyond the consideration of warships and on to the elements that actually render these forces useful beyond merely taking up space in dry-dock.

You are certainly correct that every navy was short of destroyers and other light warships for the individual needs of each nation at the beginning of the war. With the exception of the British and to some extent the US these navies had no way of extending these forces appreciably within the short term. If these added points of strength are meant to merely represent the construction of destroyers this is a most unfortunate design choice in my opinion. Such naval builds, even a single point would take much longer to build than the immediate upgrading possible by this kind of spending. This is despite the fact that this is a fairly expensive proposition within the game and many players make use of house rules limiting the number of naval builds.

Surely a different mechanic would better represent the effort to provide a destroyer compliment to every named capital ship no matter its size or its operation parameters. I still prefer my own description. I hope there is more to this.

[Rasputitsa]

ORIGINAL: Bolkonsky


You are certainly correct that every navy was short of destroyers and other light warships for the individual needs of each nation at the beginning of the war. With the exception of the British and to some extent the US these navies had no way of extending these forces appreciably within the short term.

I agree that only Britain, USA and to a lesser extent Japan, France and Italy, are the only nations that have a significant warship construction and repair capability. To give Britain and the US the number of PPs necessary to maintain their realistic naval resources would completely unbalance the game, if these PPs were in a general pool and could be used on ground, or air units.

You would need a larger, but separate, pool of PPs to truly represent the naval strength of these nations. It could be justified on the grounds that shipbuilding resources cannot easily be used for other means. The same could apply to aircraft production in the case of Germany, which should have more aircraft production capability, but in a separated pool, so as not to give an advantage in the production of other types of unit.

I suppose I am proposing that each nation have separate PP pools for naval, air and ground production, adjusted to reflect the initial historical strengths of each nation at the beginning of a scenario. It should be possible to switch PPs between the pools if the player wants to change a nation's emphasis between naval and air, or ground etc.. The switch would be gradual, to reflect the difficulty of re-locating workers and re-tooling major industries. [:)]

[PrinceBolkonsky]

That sounds like a good idea and probably something that the AI could respond to relatively well. However, naval builds and aviation programs represent years of organizational and intellectual work that really happened throughout the 30s. I don't think their is a great deal of room for drastic retooling. That the US did this was something close to a miracle that could not be reproduced elsewhere in this time period. There are plenty of 'what ifs' that are only taken seriously among us crackpot gamers. The US built what they had to for two oceans. The British simply would not change their naval builds. The French had already done what they could and ran out of time or the need to do more. Their threat was overland. (To imagine the French having not built ships and instead armor is to forget that everyone in the world thought they had the mightiest army in Europe through the better half of the 30s. One must also forget the reality in Europe of the concept and value of Empire) The Italians simply did not have the resources to quickly build more large ships, and if they did, they wouldn't have had the oil to make them operational. They didn't have enough oil to do so for half the war anyway) On and on and on.

I just don't see the need for this kind of thing. If it is done, it ought to be extremely limited or be part of a pre-game setup or scenario. There are many paper games that cover such things admirably. Days of Decision III is brilliant. Totaler Krieg developed like a finely honed blade (probably the best gamers game ever made, manages to jump off the deep end but does so in such a way as to always keep the game in balance) Any designer would do well to study the work of Alan Emrich, the man knows how to make a game a game!

I realize that a lot of this kind of thing is beyond the ken of the AI. But I think this game plays quickly and has a good operational scale and has great appeal as a pbem game that is assisted so that it requires less rules learning, odds figuring, movement calculation etc (hence it plays faster) Probably the money is in creating a good game that can be played solo. Regardless, I think the different pools might be a good compromise between what an AI can handle and what pbem players and modders would like.

I still prefer my original description of what is going on with naval points and see no reason to start the ships out at full strength. I don't like the destroyer rational though in a very small way it could be part of the story. Its too easy to see unit factors in terms of pure productive capacity and equipment development and forget the intellectual capital involved in running these organizations which I see as being a part of unit strength and production points. I do realize that this aspect is accounted for partially within the system by the doctrinal levels and can be considered part of the research and command. But I don't think it can be undersold. Getting people to do things a different way is usually far harder than the actual retooling. The same is true for getting these naval organizations running smoothly, constantly adapting to the unanticipated. This for me, is what the PPs spent on naval builds represents. Just compare the tonnage of actual warships lost or damaged to the tonnage of shipping and support ships lost in operation Weserubung by the Germans.

[Rasputitsa]

I think we agree on most of this, at the start of the war forces are on peace time establishment, which means that naval groups will start below full strength. Britain and the USA have the warship building and support potential to build up their forces, but the realistic level of PPs to do this cannot be made available for other unit types. The same applies to a lesser extent to Japan, Italy and France. It is problematic whether France can stay in the war long enough to make use of this capacity.

There would have to be a way to shift PP values between Naval, Ground, or Air pools, if the player decides to change strategy, but it would be a slow process.

I also see PPs as representing more than just industrial power, Russia had large industrial potential but did not build large naval forces. It was neither necessary for their strategy, nor was it in the 'blood', as it is for the maritime nations. That would be reflected in large PP pools for land forces and a smaller pool for naval forces. Each nation would have its own proportion between the separate pools to reflect their historical initial positions.[:)]