Gamey?

[Oznoyng]

I was just wondering if people thought that evacuating PM in a PBEM game was gamey.

I have seen several references to people abandoning PM, but wondered if it could actually have been done from a political perspective. I confess I am not enough a student of history to say.

[marky]

gamey?



wat does that mean lol

[denisonh]

It could be considered as such.

A good IJN player will be able to take PM. If the Allied player puts too much there, it leaves Australia open (TV particualry).

An Allied player who puts up a good fight can achieve a few things:

1. If the IJN is focusing on taking Luganville, you can defend PM and keep it for a while. (B-17 daylight raids on Shortlands/Rabaul are motivation enough for the IJN to take PM).
2. Force committment of ground troops, expend supply, cost the IJN aircraft (with their precious pilots), and damage/sink transports. Without such, it expedites decisive IJN action elsewhere (Australia).
3. You could end up keeping PM if the IJN player bungles it. Possible, but not likely, and in any case you could make it prohibitively expensive slowing the IJN offensive down.

In any case, an all out defense of PM is foolish, especially in SC#19.
Evacuating PM in a SC#17 is foolish IMHO as well.

[Honda]

I for instance prefer playing IJN. That is, that's where my sypathies lie. But there are much worst things happening then evacuating PM. It helps the Allied cdr very much by fortifying auto-victory bases. Some think it's a must in scen19. As USN i have never evacuated PM, be it scen17 otr 19 and i have to addmit i was happy with my decision every time. In my current pbem IJN commander broke the backbone of his forces (naval and land) trying to take PM. Maybe agreeing on some house rules before a pbem will help but so far i let everyone do what they want.
Gamey? Placing Corsairs on CVs.
Not gamey? Evacuating PM.

[RevRick]

Gamey? Placing Corsairs on CVs.
Not gamey? Evacuating PM.

Aw!! Come on. It may be that some one in BuAir actually developed a pair. I mean, if we can postulate the absence of Midway, can we not postulate the presence of someone in the USN bureaucracy with the sense to pound sand?

[Brady]

F4U's on CV's in UV is totaly gamey, it was mentioned way long ago that if they actualy do another patch for UV it would be on the list of stuff to fix.

[Honda]

Thanks. My point exactly.

[RevRick]

April of 43. I've got four CVEs in the game. One of them, with an Air Group gets smacked enough to send back to Pearl. So I offload the Group to put on the other CVE without a group, and by the next AM, when I can move the group again, they've got Corsairs as the fighters. I didn't order it, and one of my beefs is that you don't have any input on what air gets upgraded. Otherwise I would not give 'Meathead' Moore P-38's but would put his tookus on permanent CAP in Townsville. So, now I have F4U-1s on a CVE. Do I quit playing, or just not use that CVE?

[Rendova]

This is one of my real beefs...... F4U's on Carriers in UV is NOT gamey, just crappy if your the IJN. No, the were no F4U's on carriers during the historical time period of UV. SO what? The aircraft was carrier capible, the carrier was capible of handling the aircraft. Yes there were alot of teething problems figuring out how to land them of carriers, but this WAS sloved. If we can assume the IJN decided not to go ahead with Midway, we can assume the USN decided to figure out the teething problems of the F4U's and carrier ops earlier then they did. I know most of the time the F4U's are in Marine Squadron operating of carriers. Yes I know Marine carriers skills were not the greatest. But Marines were carrier quailified and with a practice could fly off carriers. The one point I do feel is lacking is higher Ops losses for units while "training" for carrier ops in f4U's. I suggested in the WitP forum that a "Carrier Pilot Rating" be added to all Navy/Marine pilots which would be used to determine ops lossses due to carrier ops. That way you could train Marine units for carriers ops and pay the penlty of higher ops losses for a time, then after a while you would have qualified units.

[marky]

WAT is gamey ? [&:]

[Honda]

I see your point. The way i see it, you can put hard facts even behind the most outrageous statements. I don't mean you specificaly, of course. You say Japs have a Midwayless scenario. True, so maybe there should ba a scen20 called F4U's go CVborne. I fell foolish enough arguing my case having in mind how much energy has been spent on identical discussions. I don't put Corsairs on CVs as USN kicks ass anyway. More fun that way. One refreshing thing is that we are talking about UV, not WitP, although non-CV airgroups are handeled well in it. There is a problem though...UV is all we have at the moment so it's up to us how realistic we make it or how much we exploit the game mechanics. Some people live for it, some people kill for it. That won't change. We should play the game with people who share our thaughts on that matter or it'll end up like those two guys fighting on WitP forum all the time. Guess that means you keep your F4U squadron RevRick...[:@]

[RevRick]

WAT is gamey ?

playing a game strictly according to the rules, but using aberrations in the way the game plays to create ahistorical situations - like the F4U onboard CV's early in the war. If you have enough F4Us in the pool, simply take the fighter group and transfer it to the shore base at Noumea, or perhaps Luganville, and - Oila!- the next day, you have a squadron full of F4U Corsairs ready to go out and deal with the Zekes.

It can also be a result of programming which the game AI uses, such as the situations where there are regular torpedo raids into the North Australia ports against ships in port when there is a CAP up. Usually, dropping a torpedo in a port results a torpedo hit, but it is on the bottom of the port. There were only a few torpedos specially rigged to drop at the Pearl Harbor attack, the rest of the Kates dropped 1400# shells rigged as AP bombs.

So Gamey is a style of play in which the player, or the AI uses rules and programming which create very atypical results and attack historically. Those are just a few examples off the top of my head.

To tell you the truth, I haven't been able to play in a while. Just recovering from a surgical procedure on my back, and I haven't even cranked up the game in a couple of months or more, so I'm just getting back to battery.

[2Stepper]

ORIGINAL: marky

WAT is gamey ? [&:]

LOL! I just replied to this very question in his solo post only a moment ago... should learn to read other threads first. hehehe... At any rate, I used a hunting reference to define the term though I understand what ya'll are referring to with regards to UV and I assume in some form to WiTP.

What I don't get is the problem with F4U's on carriers... Unless my memory is VERY faulty (been months since I played UV), the game runs till late '43. Granted you didn't see F4U's in any number on carriers till 1944, but the ability was always there. They had both tailhooks as well as folding wings.

Though I'd have to check my history on the marine versions... they might have dropped this... At any rate, I don't think this qualifies as "gamey" at all... At least not in scenarios where Midway never happened... Otherwise in the scope of UV, I wouldn't have a problem with taking it out with the more time restrictive games...

just my 2cents... [8D]

[Shadow of the Condor]

With reference to Oznoyng's original question of evacuating PM, I would say no. I do (and have quite a lot) advocate evacuating PM to shorten the defensive line for the Allies. I also make note of the game allowing one to do that without regard to the political ramifications of a "real life" decision to do so.

The nice thing about the "game" aspect is that we can try variations without such ramifications. As was also pointed out, Scenario 17 presumes the battle at Midway did not happen, and all of the IJN ships lost there are available. That alone sets the scenarios to be ahistorical. Would the Allies have tried to keep PM in the face of 6 first line carriers instead of the three that historically were used?

The other ahistorical aspect is the concept of "autovictory" by Jan 1. Who is to say whether the Allies would capitualte if the IJN captured one of the bases required? The game constraints of the Noumea entry for reinforcements pretty much seal the Allies' doom if they lose this base, but what would stop the Allies from moving their HQ further south, say to NZ? And would the Allies really throw in the towel if Luganville was in IJN hands on Jan 1, 43?

Anyhow, enough from on the soapbox. Viable strategies in a game are certainally different from viable strategies in real life.

And thank goodness they are. [:)]

[Rendova]

ORIGINAL: 2Stepper

ORIGINAL: marky

WAT is gamey ? [&:]

LOL! I just replied to this very question in his solo post only a moment ago... should learn to read other threads first. hehehe... At any rate, I used a hunting reference to define the term though I understand what ya'll are referring to with regards to UV and I assume in some form to WiTP.

Granted you didn't see F4U's in any number on carriers till 1944, but the ability was always there. They had both tailhooks as well as folding wings.

Though I'd have to check my history on the marine versions... they might have dropped this...

That was my point they were able to do it, just because they didn't doesn't not mean it should be disallowed in UV. BTW as far as I know are Marine F4U were fully equipped for carrier duty.

[DoomedMantis]

youll be glad to know you have full control of what groups get upgraded in WitP. There are also severe op penanlties for having non carrier trained aircraft flying operations on carriers.

[Drex]

What about sending perfectly good ships back to Pearl to get better ships released andx to keep your commitment level high? I think this is gamey but I still do it because you have to do something to get that CV released and you know your opponent is doing it. Still it is an artificial way of influencing the AI.

[AmiralLaurent]

Drex,

I don't think sending undamaged ships back to PH (or Japan) is gamey. In real war, most of the times, commander send back ships they don't need. In fact, because they were more needed somewhere else, but that is another subject.

The fact that the total shipping is limited in UV is a game trick to have you send back unneccessary ships. For example if you kill most IJN CV in 1943, you can send back some CVs to try to get more transports.

It seems also logical to me to send old ships to the rear area when newer ships become available.

....

As for evacuating PM, in real war, the Australian HQ had a plan called "Brisbane line" during spring 1942. If the Japanese land in NE Australia, all land north of Brisbane would be evacuated. This was a hotly discussed plan and very political question but it might have taken place, even if it was dismissed in the end (and never used as the IJN was never in the position to land in Australia).

Anyway, I have never evacuated PM in a PBEM. It cost time, troops and ships to the Japanese player to take it. And that is worth the loss of some troops.

What is gamey in most wargames is to evacuate troops defending their homeland to other countries, when in real history most of the troops will just melt away and refuse to fight in such cases. As for example, if you evacuate the Philipinno Army to Australia in WITP in the first month of the war.

But PM has no political value, as it has a little white civilian population, most of wich will be evacuated with the troops (as was the case in Rabaul for example, or most northen New Guinea towns). It has also no economic value but is a wonderful position to harass Japanese bases. And so the IJN has to take it.

....

Using Corsairs on CV is exploiting a bug in the program. F4F-4 don't upgrade on CV but upgrade on land, that means than in UV programers intent, only land-based units should upgrade. Anyway you don't need this to win. And when you have Corsairs, you didn't need US CV anyway as LBA is strong enough to crush the Japanese.

[Drex]

Perhaps but usually commanders don't have all the ships they need.I can see sending the non-combatant ships as these went back and forth anyway but I don't think too many combat ships were sent back unless they were damaged or needing a refit(now that makes it plausible because as commander you can set the sys dmage level required for a refit) But to send zero damage ships back does seem gamey. I still do it.

[CynicAl]

AFAIK, Corsairs from the F4U-1A on came from the factory fully carrier-capable. I've heard that the Marines removed the powered wing-folding mechanism and the tailhook to save weight, but refitting this equipment should be easily within the scope of squadron-level maintenance.