Possible screw with the Pacific war?

[Uncle_Joe]

I've been experimenting with various Japanese and WAllied strats for the Pacifc. In doing so, I think I've encountered what I consider to be a possible screw for the course of the Pacific War.

Researching Battleship AA is extremely cheap....only 6-7 for the Japanese or about 8-9 for the WAllies. This can easily be accomplished by either side before the commencement of Pacific hostilities.

Once that happens, Battleships largely become self-escorting and defeat Carrier Air quite handily. If you have any CVs of your own, its almost impossible to miss the enemy planes.

Consider:

With 1 level of research, Battleships will have a 5 AA factor. Thats 5 dice for an average 17.5 or about 18. An unupgraded Carrier Air Group has a 5 Ev and a 3 Dur meaning a 15 defense. So you will slaughter them with BBs. Even with 1 research in CAG Evasion, its still only an 18 defense, or about the average that a BB will hit. If the planes first had to undergo Air to Air fire (even ineffectual), they will again be slaughtered with their (now) 15 defense. It is not realistically possible to up CAG's Evasion again in the early war (you are above 'World Standard at 6). So, even before the Pacific War really begins, Carriers can be outdated, which just feels completely wrong.

I have successfully done this with both the Japanese and the WAllies. Aircraft are basically butchered in job lots before they can even hit the Battleships. Massing up a few BBs in one spot means that there really isnt much that can attack them (except other BBs, which means that the 'Big Gun' proponents end up right!.... [;)] )

I think all that needs to be done is to lower the World Standard on Battleship AA by a point. This would make having it at 5 by the beginning of the war would be prohibitively costly. Later in the war, it can be rationalized as all the little Escort Carriers that came off the line being used to protect the BBs. But early in the war, Battleships should not be able to shrug off air attacks so easily.

If you dont believe me, give it a try in the game. I was appalled by how poorly aircraft (even upgraded) fared against the SAM equipped BBs.

Please check my numbers/analysis and if correct, consider the change to the World Standard.

Thanx!

[Dalwin]

It sounds to me as if you have a valid point.

Is it possible to counter by taking a plane that has a good evasion rating and upping its ship attack or torpedo ratings?

[Uncle_Joe]

No plane can have more than a 6 Evasion without exceeding the World Standard. All Japanese plane have a 3 Durability, so the max defense you can have is 18 (realistically for the early war).

Upping Anti-Ship or Torpedo attack does little to help. The Japanese CAGs are already a 4 Torpedo and I routinely have them at 5 before kicking off the war. Unfortunately, if the plane is hit by AA fire, it never attacks so it cant even achieve a pyrrhic victory. They just get smash down and rarely cause return casualties (at least not anywhere NEAR the cost in aircraft).

[PDiFolco]

Another possibility could be to change basic BB AA rating to 3. This is realistic, at the start of the war BBs fielded very few (if at all) effective AA guns. They were muchi upgraded during the war, especially US BB after Pearl . The standard would not have to change, as in fact upping AA defense of BB was quite easy.

[Paul Vebber]

With 4 dice - the odds of hiting a 15 defense air unit is 44.3%, an 18 defense unit 15.9%

IF you up Flak to 5 dice this goes to 77.9% v 15 and 50% v 18.

Ill repost my chart here its on a FAQ thread "help a keen noob please".

So If you increase Japanese evasion by 1 you gain a 6% advantage over 4 dice v 15 at 5 dice v 18.

I personally would allow damaged planes to make a later attack at "-1 attack" like other damaged units - at least to the "close in" Flak of defending units. "Area Flak" unis can still get air units "flying to the target" - but I think it would help naval combat in particular if air units damaged actually attacking enemy units be allowed to attack (with the "damaged unit" modifier.) I would also up the ship attack of CAGs.

[Warpstorm]

I like the idea of lowering BB's AA rating to 3, as PDiFalco suggests. How easy would it be for a player to do this himself?

[carnifex]

I've noticed this too - BB AA is way too effective, especially when upgraded. It's to the point where I hesitate to launch a CV strike against a pure surface group.

As has been historically shown time and time again in sea battles, the only real defense against airplanes are other airplanes.

[Paul Vebber]

I don't have teh game in front of me - but it is a simple matter of changing the value in one of the files in the data directory. I forget which one has teh unit data in it. There is a block for each conutry with all the unit types and all teh unit characteristics. you can modify them (and the "state of the art") as you please. Just make sure you save the files as a new "campaign" so you don't muck up the existing ones.

I will try to make an example this weekend...

Note that lowering Flak to 3 will reduce the hit chance against 15 defense /c only 9.3% and agains t 18 defense a/c, 0.5%

I've toyed with monkeying around with the values, but you can make matters worse the other direction very easily!

the only real defense against airplanes are other airplanes.

Once the US started using things like the CLAA and mounting literally hundreds of MGs and flak on BBs it got to be almost as one sided as 5 dice vs 15 def suggests. The problem, to me anyway, is the fact planes damaged by this close in fire never get to attack.

IF you do lower ship flak, then I would also lower a/c attack some (torps in particular) or you may find things go a bit too much the other way

[kenoyer130]

This should be addressed as one of the main points of World War 2 was the dawn of the Aircraft Carrior as the main force for control of the oceans, and the complete destruction of battleships (no matter how large) as being anything besides the quickest way to the bottom of the ocean. I think that in almost every case aircraft carrier planes should completely dominate battle ships. The battle ships were sunk very quickly, in most cases without even seeing the enemy aircraft carrier.

I just got done reading "The Winds of War" (incredibly awsome by the way) and this was one of the themes explored in detail.

[Uncle_Joe]

Its quite easy to change the data to 'fix' the problem. It took me about a minute to find the data file that contained the 'world standards' and reduce it by one.

I would have no problems seeing the AA factor of the BBs go down to 3, but I dont think 4 is out of the league of realism. Its just when it gets to 5 that its a problem. The odds shift rather dramatically at that point.

I too think that planes hit by AA fire should still be able to fire (albeit with their penalty like other units). I guess perhaps that makes Strategic Bombing too powerful? Perhaps Air to Air hits should prevent the Air-Ground/Sea attack, but AA is treated as simultaneous?

Although its not hard to change the data on my own, I would prefer to see it changed 'officially' so that I can still play PBEMs with folks and still have a fun and semi-historical Pacific War.

Anyone from Matrix/2by3 have a comment on this? Are we just missing something and this is intended and if so, what it is intended to represent?

Thanx again for the input!

[willgamer]

UJ,

Please could you post your where/what to change for reducing the world standard for the less technically inclined... [&o][&o][&o][&o]

Thanks!

[carnifex]

The problem, to me anyway, is the fact planes damaged by this close in fire never get to attack.

Yes, I think this is what I meant. I don't mind taking plane losses or having them damaged, but it's dispiriting to do so little damage in return. I mean if let's say one plane icon is 50 airplanes and you send them out against surface ships I can't believe that all 50 would turn back or all 50 would get so damaged that not one would get through to bomb something.

[aletoledo]

I agree that I think letting the planes attack, even while damaged seems like a better solution.

With 1 level of research, Battleships will have a 5 AA factor. Thats 5 dice for an average 17.5 or about 18.

isn't the 'average' 15 and not 17.5? is there a reason that the odds seem above 3 for a single dice roll (3.5 average for a single dice roll)?

[ratprince]

The average for ond (1) dice six rolling is: 3.5, not 3

The average for two (2) die six rolling is: 7, not 6

Effectively, every die added increases the number potential average by 3.5

To be clear"er" for those non-statistic geeks out there (count me in that crowd![;)]) is that if you imagine a number line with 1 on the left and 6 on the right, the dead center of the line is halfway between 3 and 4, not on the three or four. The same concept applies to a dice. The average of one die rolling is 3.5. Now, this may seem counter-intuitve as a die cannot come up 3.5....right? What the principal is actually, that given an "infinite" number of rolls of one die, the statistical mean (average) and median will lay exactly at 3.5........

Hope that makes sense and doesnt muddy the concept more!! [:'(]

later

Prof. Mike

[Paul Vebber]

Please could you post your where/what to change for reducing the world standard for the less technically inclined...

Its the first section in "baseline.txt"

Goto:

UNIT,HEAVY FLEET
UNITBASE,TD_AA,4,TD_SA,7,TD_UA,0,TD_LA,6,TD_TORP,3
UNITBASE,TD_SPEED,10,TD_EVADE,3,TD_AMPHIB,0

and change it to:

UNIT,HEAVY FLEET
UNITBASE,TD_AA,3,TD_SA,7,TD_UA,0,TD_LA,6,TD_TORP,3
UNITBASE,TD_SPEED,10,TD_EVADE,3,TD_AMPHIB,0

Then goto unitdata.txt and goto each of the UNIT,HEAVY FLEET section and chance TD_AA to 3.

Now it will be much more difficult to get to falk 5.

I would reduce Japanese Ship attack to 3 if you do this.

[aletoledo]

thanks mike mcmann, I just realized that you can't roll a zero on a die! doh!

[Dalwin]

I few have said that it is fair to lower BB AAA rating becasue BBs did not have much AAA.

Keep in mind that the heavy fleets actually represent 2xBB plus a number of escorting CL and DD.

Light fleets represent 2xCA plus escorts.

[Joel Billings]

Also something I didn't really realize until I stopped to think about it is that since all you need to do to hit is equal the net defense, the fact that you average 3.5 on one dice actually means you have a 50/50 of a hit against a 4 defense. So if you are rolling 3 dice (average 10.5), you have a 50/50 of getting a hit against a 11 defense. At first I used to think that the average of 10.5 meant I had less than a 50% chance of hitting an 11 defense. A minor item, but worth noting if you're really trying to calculate odds quickly. I found Paul Vebbers spreadsheet in the War Room to be a great chart to keep handy (it hasn't moved from its spot next to my keyboard in several weeks). Thanks Paul.

[Uncle_Joe]

Joel,

So what is the story on the AA factor for BBs? Is it seen as a problem that they can effectively ignore Carriers after one level of research?

If so, would there be any plans to look into changing it? Again, if so, what avenue would appear prudent? So far, I've been playing with the 'World Standard' reduced to 3 for Battleship AA and its worked great. The US eventually will get there and that spells doom for Japanese air power. But it takes more time and commitment and almost certainly wont be done before the outbreak of hostilities with Japan (not without leaving glaring holes in the rest of the WAllied military needed against Germany).

Do you folks at Matrix/2by3 have any thoughts on this? Or have I missed the boat on it somewhere?

Thanx!

[Paul Vebber]

With most of the things like this, if repeated play bears out that its a problem, then, based on Joel's other repsonses, it will be looked at for tweaking in the next patch. There is a general conservatism though to wait and see if repeated pbem or vs AI games prove the problem to have no effective counter. I'm as bad as anybody at latching onto 'theoretical problems' and getting a lather about them - some of which may pan out to be significant, others though get countered either directly or indirectly.

So from my "Matrix point of view", I think 2by3 is correct to take a "wait and see" attitude regrading reports of "uncountereable advantages" to see what you the players come up with as counters. Many such things don't become apparent for a few games, and are different issues with PBEM and vs AI play. The purpose of the next patch is to take a look at the AI strategy in light of all the experience being discussed to improve the AI, and looking for issues like this that prove to provide uncounterable advantages in pbem play and address them.

So these issues are not being ignored, its just that in playtesting - many issues were discussed that seemed "killers" on the surface or in theoretical discussion that didn't pan as such. I'm not poo-pooing this one as not being real - my personal opinion is to make some tweaks to the way flak works to let planes damaged by 'non-flak unit flak' still attack. That may prove too hard, and a "tweak the numbers" approach used - or someone may find something else that makes us all go "duhhhhhoooo" and realize that its not an issue.

I don't know the oucome, but I do know from my peripheral involvement in this and more hands on in other games, that "knee-jerk" reactions to patch, then a month or two "re-patch" are to be avoided in a game like this.

Joel will have more to announce regarding the next patching effort in the next week or two. The bottom line is 2by3 is listening closely to what is being discussed, and intends to make a considerable effort to take both vs AI and pbem feedback and make improvements to the game for both schools of play.