Brave Sir Robin

[jwilkerson]

ORIGINAL: Rainer

I think I have a beer now. A German beer. Oops, sorry, a Bavarian beer [;)]

That would be reconstituting from an "in country pop" me thinks!
[:D]

[el cid again]

This may not be true. I used to save unit fragments - but found most never rebuild at all. And if it is true for Japan - the one way to insure maximum build is to give Japan maximum resources and industry - for Japan must buy things with HI points - and that is a big deal in RHS - which set out to make it a big deal. Give Japan less - it will build less. Even of the stuff in the database - no way to build all of it in any game (just as IRL - lots of planned ships never completed). You get em all in the data set and are supposed to turn some off. Wether or not you do - you won't ever get em all- there is not enough HI points. the more Industry the Allies let Japan have - the greater the fraction of what it might build it will get to play with.

ORIGINAL: Big B

Well in the sense of "units" (a variation of the technicality of the term) you very well may produce more units in WitP than in History - as measured by individual units of aircraft, men, guns etc.

It is semantically splitting hairs - but nonetheless valid.

The USA produced some 15,000 units of P-51 Mustangs, Germany produced some 30,000+ units of BF-109's, 485 units of PZKW VIB Tiger II's - etc. And as the player - IF you save a unit fragment of each unit potentially destroyed - you may also rebuild that unit in its entirety.

The point being - in WitP you may produce more 'unit's than was historically possible, and therefore have greater military potential - in sum total - than was historically possible.


B

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: Big B

Well, to paraphrase what vettim89 nicely said above -

WWII happened how it happened. If you wish to agree, that under no circumstances - you will move one inch beyond the limit of historical Japanese expansion/nor build one more unit than Japan historically did - then I will agree to not save/move any unit that was historically destroyed in that time and place.

However, WitP is a fluid game - and such guarantees cannot/should not be made...otherwise we can all just watch a documentary and drink a beer.[;)]

The last time I checked you were not able to build more units than the Japanese had IRL. Granted the existing scenario design often duplicates or triplicates units that existed in history...however it is not like the japanese can build or fabricate NEW land, air or sea units beyond what the scenario designer feels should be present. As an example as a Japanese player i cannot build additional Battleships after the Yamato and musashi are added to my inventory. Nor can I create 30 additional fighter Sentais over and above what the scenario provides.

Just my 2 pfennings on this one aspect...

[el cid again]

[quote]ORIGINAL: treespider

Ahhh the technicality trump card....

I tend to think of units as Divisions, Brigades and battalions and not in terms of devices.

With my definition of units you only having X number of divisions and X number of Air groups. You cannot fabricate those things. They have a hard and fast limit.



[quote]

I am with you on this.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: vettim89

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

i will point out that by leaving your troops in place to be reduced piecemeal, you are giving the Japanese player several thousand points, which means you will have to recoup that times 1.75 or 2 or 3 in order to get a win*... and by having the troops available, it makes it easier later in the game...

i personally don't do a "full-fledged" Sir Robin, but i do make it a priority to get out non-combat type units (Base Forces, HQ, etc.) i will point out the Allies generally made attempts to do the same, except in real life, the "Base Force" units were attached to air units for the most part. When evacuating, air units made every attempt to get out their mechanics, etc. when they left from what i've read.

*EDIT - depending on when you are trying to get a win... or it might make it that much easier for the Japanese to get an autovictory by giving them a few thousand extra points.

I would agree but both the planes and pilots that did get out were incorporated into existing units at their final destination. The game engine allows you to save a handful of men from the PI or Singapore and transport them to Oz or India and slowly the units rebuild to full strength. That is where the game separates itself from history. If the OOB is corrrect and all historical formations eventually appear then it does give the Allied player "gain" units for later use.

Not all units show up in the game... there are not enough slots. Not all ships show up (at least for the Allies)... not all plane types can show up... not all WEAPON types can show up. So, reusing a "fragment" is a valid way of (partially) getting around this, i think.

AE might remedy some of this.

In RHS (and CHS if I am not confused - I used to work under Joe for CHS) - you get "the nearest equal" - so if the right weapon (or plane) is not in the set - you get something of similar performance. There is a LOT of this.

It IS true that some units are still missing. At Matrix there is an effort NOT to give you tiny little thigns - RHS goes the other way - if we ID a tiny thing - it EITHER adds to some other unit OR you get it as a tiny little thing. But some whole classes are absent: we have no spotter planes for the Army (unless they ALSO perform naval search or bombing missions) as a major case. One entire class of military engineers (rail road) is missing - since they cannot build railroads or affect their efficiency. But in RHS - we even added single case devices - there is an Army 16 inch gun at Hutou Fortress - an experimental prototype - and a single 12 inch Sneider Rail Gun in the First Independent Artillery Company. We really try.

[el cid again]

[quote]ORIGINAL: treespider

The Japanese IRL knew what they were facing....

...IMO you're issue is more with game logistics than the actual intelligence. The game allows the Japanese player to achieve the Blitz for a variety of reasons that the IRL Japanese did not have...

Had the Japanese had the game capabilities that they currently have now who knows what would have happened.

AE will hopefully correct some these capabilities.

[quote]

Here I disagree. Japan was limited - and would be limited - mainly by itself.

Japan was (and is today) an extraordinarily divided society. We believed (wrongly) it was a unified dictatorship. It never came close to having a unified military command, never mind unified civil and military institutions, or unified planning.

The great advantages a player has are unified command and planning. These are PERFECTLY balanced - because both sides have them. [The Allies not only never had a unified command in PTO - the commands were very different in strategies, policies, and competative rather than cooperative in a fundamental sense; even so not so badly as Japan and its allies]

As for intelligence, game intel is a small fraction of what it was for Japan - and you have little you can do to change that. Japan monitored US West and Gulf Coast HF and VHF traffic out of Guemas Mexico. Japan had a good intel cell in Panama - and reports from a German radio intercept post at Colon (well - in the water off Colon actually - a sunken WWI submarine sitting on the bottom - with burst transmitters). Japan had better intel on the Manhattan Project than Stalin did - and every briefing given the Japanese PM on the matter was without flaw and timely.
Don't get me started on intel.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: Big B

I believe that ANY land combat in a hex will display ALL enemy units participating in combat in that hex.

Therefore, your 12 men paddle ashore, and engage the local beach defense unit - you won't just see that local beach defense unit on the combat screen - I believe EVERY unit in the hex will show up as they bombard you and engage your "12 man patrol".

That is what I meant by "super-reccon"

B

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso



Well, dunno about SF or Truk, but i believe on occasion Sub Based "recon" did happen (i.e.: putting commandos onto a beach) - not sure how often it happened in the Pacific, but they did it in the Med and pre-Normandy. It certainly wasn't meant to provoke combat like it automatically would in WITP... but i don't think the game engine allows for stealthy "commando style" recon.

i understand this - i also understand that some recon did go on that is not possible in the game as it currently stands.

So, which way to err? Too much or too little? Or should they try to get it "right"? And if so, how should / could they do it?

If one separates "intel" from "recon" - the game is pretty good. You CAN put a Japanese sub off SF and fly recon over it for example. You CAN put a party ashore on any location and get details of what is there too. Not bad really. The beach party is too easy to find and kill - but not horribly so. [Mine usually survive long enough that some escape]

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: treespider

The more (longer) that I play WitP, the more that I consider the WitP engine (and especially so the land combat engine) a steaming pile of poo.

IMO, the OBs of the units, and the capabilities of the units themselves, bear little resemblence to their actual historical counter-parts. I do NOT consider the full-scale invasion of Australia or the whole-sale conquest of India a "historical what-if". I -do- cosider it entertaining fantasy. But no, I do not by any attempt at justification, cosider it "a historical what-if". While I am quite sure many would say I was myopic biggot for claiming that, well - I've been called worse.

Given that in WitP a massive invasion of India or Oz seem to be the norm, WitP is therefor categorized as "entertaining fantasy". It -IS- a very enjoyable game. But it is a very POOR simulation. It's an excellent, very complicated and detailed *fantasy*, but as far as simulation is concerned; well, it's not.

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

While I understand your point in principle Feinder, I completely disagree with it in reality. The reason most Japanese players launch a large-scale attack into either location is due to pulling units out of China and/orManchuria. HAD the Japanese chosen to do this then they might have had to ability to do what many players (such as myself) like to try.

The biggest issue within WitP from a Japanese perspective is the lack-of-cooperation between the IJA and IJN. This cannot be modeled in the game. A reasonably competent Japanese player KNOWS that one cannot win in China and the Russians aren't going to intervene as long as you leave a minimum force level there. The withdrawal of 5-8 Infantry Divisions and supporting units would have been enough to make such a move possible.

Note that I do not say practical...

This not fantasy, it is warGAMING.

IMO...

One other tidbit of information that makes WitP a fantasy when compared to Real Life.

In 1941 and 1942 the Japanese imported circa 22 million tons of raw materials. In the game to fully supply Japanese Industry, the Japanese need only transport something akin to 2.5 million tons a year...

Which means in the game the Japanese have a huge surplus of shipping available for all of these fantasy invasion scenarios...instead of having to use them to actually transport resources, oils and fuels. It also means in the game that the Japanese are not burning through their fuel reserves nearly as fast as they did IRL which gives them even more operational flexibility.

Until RHS no effort was made to look at the numbers. We found that the RATIO of oil and resources consumed was structurally wrong - that it is impossible to consume enough resources using the WITP model. [Because of manpower centers we can get closer] We found we could only account for about HALF the tonnage - so we REMOVED the other half - entirely - and shipping to correspond to that. In RHS Japan has to worry a lot about moving resources and oil - and then fuel and supplies. The Allies do too - although they don't really need HI points - the resources and oil make supplies and fuel they DO need - and the distances are so vast they better use ships to move them - or they will not have much to fight with. No more "AKs to burn" (quoting Joe Wilkerson) in RHS.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: treespider

The more (longer) that I play WitP, the more that I consider the WitP engine (and especially so the land combat engine) a steaming pile of poo.

IMO, the OBs of the units, and the capabilities of the units themselves, bear little resemblence to their actual historical counter-parts. I do NOT consider the full-scale invasion of Australia or the whole-sale conquest of India a "historical what-if". I -do- cosider it entertaining fantasy. But no, I do not by any attempt at justification, cosider it "a historical what-if". While I am quite sure many would say I was myopic biggot for claiming that, well - I've been called worse.

Given that in WitP a massive invasion of India or Oz seem to be the norm, WitP is therefor categorized as "entertaining fantasy". It -IS- a very enjoyable game. But it is a very POOR simulation. It's an excellent, very complicated and detailed *fantasy*, but as far as simulation is concerned; well, it's not.

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

While I understand your point in principle Feinder, I completely disagree with it in reality. The reason most Japanese players launch a large-scale attack into either location is due to pulling units out of China and/orManchuria. HAD the Japanese chosen to do this then they might have had to ability to do what many players (such as myself) like to try.

The biggest issue within WitP from a Japanese perspective is the lack-of-cooperation between the IJA and IJN. This cannot be modeled in the game. A reasonably competent Japanese player KNOWS that one cannot win in China and the Russians aren't going to intervene as long as you leave a minimum force level there. The withdrawal of 5-8 Infantry Divisions and supporting units would have been enough to make such a move possible.

Note that I do not say practical...

This not fantasy, it is warGAMING.

IMO...

One other tidbit of information that makes WitP a fantasy when compared to Real Life.

In 1941 and 1942 the Japanese imported circa 22 million tons of raw materials. In the game to fully supply Japanese Industry, the Japanese need only transport something akin to 2.5 million tons a year...

Which means in the game the Japanese have a huge surplus of shipping available for all of these fantasy invasion scenarios...instead of having to use them to actually transport resources, oils and fuels. It also means in the game that the Japanese are not burning through their fuel reserves nearly as fast as they did IRL which gives them even more operational flexibility.

True enough - i've mentioned this before, but i'll mention it again:

Japan immediately before the war needed 10 million tons of shipping to support her economy.

She had 6 million tons - 4 million tons were supplied by other countries, and this shipping immediately evaporated when the war started.

Yet, in the game Japan has so much shipping available that the Japanese players will laugh at Allied attempts to conduct an anti-shipping campaign. They can conduct wholesale invasion of Hawaii when in fact they barely had enough shipping to allow enough fuel to get their carriers back to Japan (the original PH plan called for SCUTTLING some of the carriers!)

The game engine doesn't reflect any of this - at least in the mods i've played.

This is somewhat misleading.

BEFORE the war Japan traded globally. Sending ships to Europe, South America, India, Africa, Australia, the USA and Canada - involving long transits - is inherently less efficeint than sending ships to China, Korea, Manchukuo, Philippines, Indochina, NEI, Burma is. Further - Japan is the only major maritime nation in history to recall ALL its ships BEFORE the war - an RN coding station at Singapore predicted hostilieied "on or after 8 Dec 1941 Far East Time" on the basis that "all Japanese merchant ships will be in home waters by that date."

Japan also captured hundreds of thousands of tons of Allied shipping - and impressed or hired tens of thousands of local vessels and native craft into logistic service.

These matters ARE addressed in RHS - you will find "junks" - "dhous" - "river tankers" - "tug and barge combinations" etc on both sides. You do have to move about half the actual resources required - you have only about half the shippign capacity to do it with - and this is assumed to represent "the military portion of the economy"

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

If lack of supply is going to be the cause of the fall of Singapore, then taking a few combat units out will actually make it last longer {supply drops less}.

It isn't lack of supply per se that causes the fall of Singapore - its because you don't have enough AV to keep the Japanese from taking it... and lack of AV can be CAUSED by lack of supply.

It does help a bit if you can try to balance the amount of supply with the number of units, but eventually it breaks down under pressure.

As mentioned, i try to get out the noncombat types since they don't help all that much... i certainly don't want the &*%^ engineers to keep using up supply to fix the airfield and port so that it is easier for the Japanese to use... just the opposite: i want the facilities WRECKED.

By the time a siege has gone on, the engineers usually can't destroy much on the turn when the city falls... Best to get them out, but when is tricky - you DO want them to build forts for a while, but by the time that has happened, it's hard to get them to safety.

Broad testing (hundreds of tests each of many different situations and scenarios) indicates about half are typically destroyed. Sometimes it is 80 per cent and very rarely 100 per cent. No engineers guarantees NO additional damage however.

And it DOES work to SEND SUPPLIES in. I do it all the time. It is not easy or cheap - but it works.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: treespider







One other tidbit of information that makes WitP a fantasy when compared to Real Life.

In 1941 and 1942 the Japanese imported circa 22 million tons of raw materials. In the game to fully supply Japanese Industry, the Japanese need only transport something akin to 2.5 million tons a year...

Which means in the game the Japanese have a huge surplus of shipping available for all of these fantasy invasion scenarios...instead of having to use them to actually transport resources, oils and fuels. It also means in the game that the Japanese are not burning through their fuel reserves nearly as fast as they did IRL which gives them even more operational flexibility.

True enough - i've mentioned this before, but i'll mention it again:

Japan immediately before the war needed 10 million tons of shipping to support her economy.

She had 6 million tons - 4 million tons were supplied by other countries, and this shipping immediately evaporated when the war started.

Yet, in the game Japan has so much shipping available that the Japanese players will laugh at Allied attempts to conduct an anti-shipping campaign. They can conduct wholesale invasion of Hawaii when in fact they barely had enough shipping to allow enough fuel to get their carriers back to Japan (the original PH plan called for SCUTTLING some of the carriers!)

The game engine doesn't reflect any of this - at least in the mods i've played.

This is somewhat misleading.

BEFORE the war Japan traded globally. Sending ships to Europe, South America, India, Africa, Australia, the USA and Canada - involving long transits - is inherently less efficeint than sending ships to China, Korea, Manchukuo, Philippines, Indochina, NEI, Burma is. Further - Japan is the only major maritime nation in history to recall ALL its ships BEFORE the war - an RN coding station at Singapore predicted hostilieied "on or after 8 Dec 1941 Far East Time" on the basis that "all Japanese merchant ships will be in home waters by that date."

Japan also captured hundreds of thousands of tons of Allied shipping - and impressed or hired tens of thousands of local vessels and native craft into logistic service.

These matters ARE addressed in RHS - you will find "junks" - "dhous" - "river tankers" - "tug and barge combinations" etc on both sides. You do have to move about half the actual resources required - you have only about half the shippign capacity to do it with - and this is assumed to represent "the military portion of the economy"

Well, a few hundred thousand tons is not going to make up for 4 million tons... and the Japanese were no longer getting many of the crucial materials (so they tried submarine freighters to France and Germany for some really critical stuff).

What they seemed to have done was run stuff non-stop, wearing out ships... of course, a lot of them ended up getting sunk anyways...

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

This whole business of "Sir Robin" withdrawing everything, everywhere - of course is not possible...

i mean, even if you WANTED to, unless you designed a mod with a LOT more political points (or possibly a lot fewer troops) than the mods/scenarios i've seen, you can't withdraw or even move troops in PI, DEI, Malaysia into some sort of defensible position in the game... there are too many troops and not enough political points.

So, what exactly IS a Sir Robin defense in reality? [&:]Does it mean withdrawing combat troops and leaving the engineers behind? Apparently the reverse is not a true "Sir Robin" (from previous comments.)

First - there ARE such scenarios. PPO and all EOS family scenarios give the Allies 1000 pp per day.

Second - the Sir Robin does NOT require ANY pp - I face a Sir Robin where ALL points in Malaya are undefended EXCEPT Singapore - on Luzon Except Manila - static units of course not included in the "all" - and it looks like ALL of Burma may have evacuated - which you can do overland - otherwise - they are way up at the top. This is bad strategy - but possible in game terms.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Well, a few hundred thousand tons is not going to make up for 4 million tons... and the Japanese were no longer getting many of the crucial materials (so they tried submarine freighters to France and Germany for some really critical stuff).

What they seemed to have done was run stuff non-stop, wearing out ships... of course, a lot of them ended up getting sunk anyways...
[/quote]

No - running 5 per cent of the route makes up for a LOT MORE than four million tons.

The Japanese were not short of resources. The exceptions are trivial: there is no helium outside the USA. The biggest resource problem for Japan in a strategic sense was a paucity of known sources of urnanium in Asia (which made them consider going to Shinkolobwe to get it - the US did actually do that in 1942). They were able to get vital atomic materials like Beryllium from German - also Zircon (an alloy used in fuel element cladding used to this day - invented in Germany - but no one admits Germany had such things in WWII - you must read MAGIC intercepts to find out). Japan WAS short of machine tools - and that was never solved. It DID import technical plans and weapons prototypes. It EXPORTED resources (tin, quinine, raw rubber and gold ) to Germany.

[rtrapasso]

I think it is wrong to evacuate Malaya - when IRL troops and supplies and air units went TO Malaya. You cannot expect to hold it 100 days if you make it weaker. Nor should you want to lose it fast.

i see - just because Percival and some others were fools, i should be one as well?

There were many reasons Malaya fell - many of them had to do with idiocy on the part of the high command. The Royal Navy realized that the only real reason to defend Singapore was to support the Naval Base there, and the reason the Naval Base was there was to support the Royal Navy.

Once it was plain that the RN couldn't operate from Singapore, the plan to keep putting troops into the area was more than foolish - it seriously jeopardized the defense of the rest of the region - and was shown when Burma collapsed, barely allowing some more crucial troops to escape. Had those troops been lost, the fight might have allowed the Japanese to push into India and caused a revolt (i am only now just learning the British did face some revolts of troops as it was - one helping to cause the fall of Christmas Island.)

i don't seriously think Japan could have conquered India, but a revolt would have seriously damaged the Allied cause.

[Nomad]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

This whole business of "Sir Robin" withdrawing everything, everywhere - of course is not possible...

i mean, even if you WANTED to, unless you designed a mod with a LOT more political points (or possibly a lot fewer troops) than the mods/scenarios i've seen, you can't withdraw or even move troops in PI, DEI, Malaysia into some sort of defensible position in the game... there are too many troops and not enough political points.

So, what exactly IS a Sir Robin defense in reality? [&:]Does it mean withdrawing combat troops and leaving the engineers behind? Apparently the reverse is not a true "Sir Robin" (from previous comments.)

First - there ARE such scenarios. PPO and all EOS family scenarios give the Allies 1000 pp per day.

Second - the Sir Robin does NOT require ANY pp - I face a Sir Robin where ALL points in Malaya are undefended EXCEPT Singapore - on Luzon Except Manila - static units of course not included in the "all" - and it looks like ALL of Burma may have evacuated - which you can do overland - otherwise - they are way up at the top. This is bad strategy - but possible in game terms.

This is why I asked for your definition of Sir Robin. I do not consider this a Sir Robin defense. I am not saying it is the best one, but to me, a Sir Robin defense is taking as many units from Malaya, PI, and DEI as posible to India and or Australia.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso


Well, a few hundred thousand tons is not going to make up for 4 million tons... and the Japanese were no longer getting many of the crucial materials (so they tried submarine freighters to France and Germany for some really critical stuff).

What they seemed to have done was run stuff non-stop, wearing out ships... of course, a lot of them ended up getting sunk anyways...

No - running 5 per cent of the route makes up for a LOT MORE than four million tons.

The Japanese were not short of resources. The exceptions are trivial: there is no helium outside the USA. The biggest resource problem for Japan in a strategic sense was a paucity of known sources of urnanium in Asia (which made them consider going to Shinkolobwe to get it - the US did actually do that in 1942). They were able to get vital atomic materials like Beryllium from German - also Zircon (an alloy used in fuel element cladding used to this day - invented in Germany - but no one admits Germany had such things in WWII - you must read MAGIC intercepts to find out). Japan WAS short of machine tools - and that was never solved. It DID import technical plans and weapons prototypes. It EXPORTED resources (tin, quinine, raw rubber and gold ) to Germany.

[/quote]

First of all, the run from Japan to the DEI is a lot longer than 5% of the distance to the US (Japan's major source of import before the war).

From what i've read of the Japanese economy, they were short of more than a few strategic minerals including aluminum, forcing them eventually to try using steel, wood, etc. for airplane manufacturing.

Yes - they exported some stuff to Germany (a pittance - was it even 1 million tons during the course of the war?) in trade for some crucially needed stuff. As pointed out they imported 21 million tons of material in the first 2 years of the war.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

This whole business of "Sir Robin" withdrawing everything, everywhere - of course is not possible...

i mean, even if you WANTED to, unless you designed a mod with a LOT more political points (or possibly a lot fewer troops) than the mods/scenarios i've seen, you can't withdraw or even move troops in PI, DEI, Malaysia into some sort of defensible position in the game... there are too many troops and not enough political points.

So, what exactly IS a Sir Robin defense in reality? [&:]Does it mean withdrawing combat troops and leaving the engineers behind? Apparently the reverse is not a true "Sir Robin" (from previous comments.)

First - there ARE such scenarios. PPO and all EOS family scenarios give the Allies 1000 pp per day.

Second - the Sir Robin does NOT require ANY pp - I face a Sir Robin where ALL points in Malaya are undefended EXCEPT Singapore - on Luzon Except Manila - static units of course not included in the "all" - and it looks like ALL of Burma may have evacuated - which you can do overland - otherwise - they are way up at the top. This is bad strategy - but possible in game terms.

Don't know PPO, and from (little) i've seen in EOS, is it really a representation of WW2? The EOS scenarios i've seen are really augmented in all kinds of ways that don't resemble reality. However, i will admit i am not that familiar with them except for reading an AAR or so... and i might have got the details wrong in my memory.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Nomad

ORIGINAL: el cid again

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

This whole business of "Sir Robin" withdrawing everything, everywhere - of course is not possible...

i mean, even if you WANTED to, unless you designed a mod with a LOT more political points (or possibly a lot fewer troops) than the mods/scenarios i've seen, you can't withdraw or even move troops in PI, DEI, Malaysia into some sort of defensible position in the game... there are too many troops and not enough political points.

So, what exactly IS a Sir Robin defense in reality? [&:]Does it mean withdrawing combat troops and leaving the engineers behind? Apparently the reverse is not a true "Sir Robin" (from previous comments.)

First - there ARE such scenarios. PPO and all EOS family scenarios give the Allies 1000 pp per day.

Second - the Sir Robin does NOT require ANY pp - I face a Sir Robin where ALL points in Malaya are undefended EXCEPT Singapore - on Luzon Except Manila - static units of course not included in the "all" - and it looks like ALL of Burma may have evacuated - which you can do overland - otherwise - they are way up at the top. This is bad strategy - but possible in game terms.

This is why I asked for your definition of Sir Robin. I do not consider this a Sir Robin defense. I am not saying it is the best one, but to me, a Sir Robin defense is taking as many units from Malaya, PI, and DEI as posible to India and or Australia.

i also would not consider this "Sir Robin". Not optimal, but not "Sir Robin".

[vettim89]

Some ravings form another Madman.

1. I think the Japanese shipping/Industry issues relate to lack of slots more than anything else. If the resource needs were realistic then there wouldn't be enough shipping. Ergo it is fudged and is that so bad. The Japanese have to move less stuff but have less ships to do it. This seems to be a compromise

2. I think we need to define terms better. What really is Sir Robin. The cultural reference is to a coward - the Monty Python character wet himself and ran away when he was challenged. So when people use the term Sir Robin it has a negative if not derogatory connotation. So what EXACTLY does Sir Robin mean?

3. If the objection is to a tactic then there is no basis for argument unless you and your opponent agree beforehand that ahistorical tactics are to be avoided. But be careful. The original US/Filipino plan was to move as much supplies into Bataan as possible and then slowly withdraw there for a final stand or releif to come. The problem is that the Japanese advanced so fast that they were not able to accomplish the plan. So technically at least as far as the PI is concerned is Sir Robinning to Bataan is actually historically correct. Point being that one man's "gamey tactic" may just be a viable solution to the historical problem.

4. If the objection is to the game engine allowing players to do something that many feel it shouldn't, exactly what is it that it allows? Most gamey techniques can be solved by a simple House Rule. For instance in my game with Greasylake, I agreed to not remove Dutch and Phillipine units from their native territories. As a return favor, he agreed to allow me to tranfer Canadian units to unrestricted commands if he invades Oz or NZ.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: vettim89

Some ravings form another Madman.

1. I think the Japanese shipping/Industry issues relate to lack of slots more than anything else. If the resource needs were realistic then there wouldn't be enough shipping. Ergo it is fudged and is that so bad. The Japanese have to move less stuff but have less ships to do it. This seems to be a compromise

AFAIK, there aren't that many SHIPS left out of the IJ OOB and merchant fleet unless you start to go under 500 tons. There was some CD Database put out a few years ago that listed thousands of "ships" down to 50 tons that were controlled by Japan... most of them were strictly limited to coastal or even harbor duties, but it got a lot of people drooling. They are (sort of) represented in the game by barges (but seemed to be ignored by some folks). Some ships are "idealized" - i.e. there is a rule in the game about supplies passing between 2 ports on opposite sides of a straight. Troops can capture ports on another island without shipping ("autocapture").

There are numerous Allied ships of >7000 tons missing (i tried looking up my Dad's ship and its sisters - about 1/3 of them are missing.) How many Japanese ships of over 7000 tons are missing?

The US and other ARMY also ran a lot of ships (i.e. "Mineplanter" (minelayer) ship(s) in the PI which don't show up in Vanilla nor CHS, AFAIK). Trying to find any information on any of these ships is problematic. Try looking up ships run by the New Zealand Army, for instance - it's really a pain! The Japanese Army also tried running ships (but they seem to be in the CHS mod, at least).

There were also lot of specialized ships run by the Allies that never appear in the game (some played crucial roles in the war, such as aircraft transport ships that moved planes intact, ready to go when unloaded... one of these played a crucial role getting planes to Midway).

However, getting back to the shipping issues between various mods:

A lot of the shipping problems stem from very basic questions - i.e. - what is a ton? It has NUMEROUS definitions, and not all of them relate to weight... shipping tonnage is actually volume. The numbers involved in WITP are weight (from what i can figure out.) Then of course, there is the confusion from different types of tonnage (several kinds, and it is not always clear trying to determine what is listed in the stats).

When you start to mix apples and oranges like this, all kinds of confusion results. This resulted in drastic decrease in the amount of cargo a ship could haul in some mods.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Until RHS no effort was made to look at the numbers. We found that the RATIO of oil and resources consumed was structurally wrong - that it is impossible to consume enough resources using the WITP model. [Because of manpower centers we can get closer] We found we could only account for about HALF the tonnage - so we REMOVED the other half - entirely - and shipping to correspond to that. In RHS Japan has to worry a lot about moving resources and oil - and then fuel and supplies. The Allies do too - although they don't really need HI points - the resources and oil make supplies and fuel they DO need - and the distances are so vast they better use ships to move them - or they will not have much to fight with. No more "AKs to burn" (quoting Joe Wilkerson) in RHS.

Still trying to sell us on RHS...