The Mine Warfare Morass in UV

[Hartmann]

I'm not totally against the new system. I think that most problems have to do with old saves. Once the deep water mines float away, the problem diminishes.

But it seems that offensive mines in non-shallow water are

a) too offensive to one's own ships
b) next to impossible to keep afloat (especially as the minelayers have to go all the way back to Truk again)

So (provided I did not confuse things) the conclusion is that it is not worth it to lay offensive mines at all, and I do not know whether this really was intended.

My only real worry, though, is that even shallow water mines seem to be much more liable to hit your own ships now - is that true? It made me sweep certain hexes where many of my own convoys pass through.

Hartmann

[Hartmann]

Originally posted by Prince
my minefields were laid around Rabaul, i would call them defensive minefields, but i guess someone had another opinion of that. A DD on his way back to Truk was the next victim, looks like I locked myself in Rabaul.

That's exactly why I did sweep the mines around Rabaul. Even the shallow water mines (those which do not disperse by themselves after a while) seemed "offensive" to my own ships.

Hartmann

[mjk428]

All I wanted was to lay a defensive minefield at PM but getting my DM's there wasn't worth all the work. I understand that it was easy to exploit the old mine rules but I think this goes too far. Rather than raising the COST of mining, the DIFFICULTY was raised.

I think that simply adding the "shallow hex"/"deep hex" distinction would have gone most of the way towards solving the problem. I saw suggestions given regarding base size and supply cost that I believe would work better than the limitation imposed.

The ability to lay mines was a "cool feature" that now has no good use unless the IJN tries an invasion of Noumea or the USN invades Truk.

That's my opinion - I could be wrong:)

mjk428

[Didz]

Originally posted by mjk428
The ability to lay mines was a "cool feature" that now has no good use unless the IJN tries an invasion of Noumea or the USN invades Truk.

That's my opinion - I could be wrong:)

mjk428

That was what dgaad and I were concerned about right from day one of this thread. No one denied that there was a problem with the abuse of mines particularly in PBEM play but my impression is that the 1.1 solution was a knee-jerk reaction that didn't really model the actual restrictions on mine usage very well.

I haven't tried 1.1 yet so I can't comment on how the new system plays but if you are right it sounds like even more of my ships will be in mothballs at Noumea under 1.1 than 1.0. I already have all my SC's and MSW's gathering rust now it looks like the DM's will be joining them. This game gets more like CAW all the while.

[dgaad]

Well, it seems to me like the dev team has for some reason bugged out of this discussion. I agree with Didz in that the "solution" went too far, and has rendered mines a non-factor in the game, and there is no operational flexibility to change that. Frankly, even if we had moveable mine centers, I'm not sure if the net effect would be different since offensive minefields are almost as dangerous to friendly ships under this scheme than to enemy ships. I bet people are even afraid to lay defensive minefields in their own ports. I know I haven't.

[Ron Saueracker]

Let's see. As IJN I used an ML to lay a barrier east of Guadalcanal to limit access by night bombardment forces. Two hits so far on the enemy. Also sank an enemy MSW with one at Gili Gili. That's it (quite a result actually) in 6 weeks. My ships have not sufferred.

By revamping the mine rules, strategic assets such as carriers are , once again, exactly that. The old mine rules made the game too much of a "toy". Now I can concentrate on historical aspects of the campaign and not have to worry too much that my opponent has painted half the South Pacific with uber mines.

[Didz]

Originally posted by Ron Saueracker
The old mine rules made the game too much of a "toy". Now I can concentrate on historical aspects of the campaign and not have to worry too much that my opponent has painted half the South Pacific with uber mines.

How bad was the abuse of Mines in PBEM?

I have yet to get involved in a PBEM game so I have no first hand expereince only an impression from what I have read of other peoples games.

In the #17 scenario the USN only has four DM's so I find the number of mines I lay quite limited anyway especailly as the slot is under Rabaul air cover and therefore a no go area.

Just curious about how the uber mine scenario happens in PBEM games.

[Slaughtermeyer]

I think the AAR of the Crocky vs Kid PBEM has a discussion of the effect of pre-patch über mining on that particular game.

[Didz]

Originally posted by Slaughtermeyer
I think the AAR of the Crocky vs Kid PBEM has a discussion of the effect of pre-patch über mining on that particular game.

Thanks!

I have just read through this thread and its quite enlightening.

It appears that both Crocky and Kid were quite happy with the 1.0 mine rules. Kid admits that most of his mine problems were the result of him not using his minesweepers properly whilst Crocky was using his IJN minelayers quite aggressively. In short he didn't properly counter his opponents strategy.

The Anti-Mine debate seems to have exploded amongst the observers reading the thread rather then the players and is based as expected on the fact that supposedly the US never lost a single ship to an enemy mine during the actual campaign.

Apart from this being a non-argument it doesn't give any clue as to why the US ships led such a charmed life or whether the situation would have been different if Yamamoto had followed Crocky's strategy.

Incidently Kid made the point that he had not lost a single US capital ship to mines either, only transports, but that point seemed to get lost in the Anti-mine histeria.

So, I'm still left puzzling why mines became such an issue. I get the impression that Crocky and Kid didn't think they were and they were playing the game.

[juliet7bravo]

Minings not to bad for the IJN, you get all those ML's to use, takes about 3 days to get from Truk down to the Rabaul area. Mining for the Allies has pretty much been eliminated as a viable option, especially in the Oz/PM/GG areas.

(1) 2nd Allied mine center in Australia.
(2) Include the HMAS Bungaree.
(3) Tone down the danger from friendly mines somewhat.

HMAS Bungaree

http://www.navy.gov.au/

Summary; mine load of 412-467 mines; Laid 9000 mines between Jun 41 and January 44; Should be included in game with both a mining capability and/or about a 500t cargo capacity.

Type: Minelayer
Gross Tonnage: 3,043 (gross) 1592 (net)
Length: 357 feet 2 inches
Beam: 48 feet 8 inches
Draught: 20 feet 6 inches
Speed: 10½ knots
Machinery: Triple expansion and lp geared turbine - 2,500 HP
Fuel: Coal
Armament: 2x4 inch guns aft
1x12 pdr gun forward
8 Oerlikons
2 Bofors
6 Vickers machine guns
Mines: 467
Complement: 175
Builders: Caledon Shipbuilding and Engineering Co Ltd, Dundee, Scotland - 1937
Owners: The Adelaide Steamship Co Ltd
Commissioned: 9th June, 1941

[Didz]

Originally posted by juliet7bravo
Minings not to bad for the IJN, you get all those ML's to use, takes about 3 days to get from Truk down to the Rabaul area. Mining for the Allies has pretty much been eliminated as a viable option, especially in the Oz/PM/GG areas.

Bit ironic considering that the Allies seem to have gained the most benefit from mines in the real campaign.

[Chiteng]

Well AAR from me indicates that IJN mining can make
Lunga all but immpossible to reach easily.
The AI is apparently totally helpless to deal with it.

I was able to mine and maintain a barrier that inflicted
enourmous damage on the nightly pounding of Lunga.
In addition it damaged quite a few SS that try to sneak
thru.

This is POST PATCH AAR btw.

However I have found the AI to be incredibly tenacious
and it refuses to retreat.

Right now it has three full strength divisions including
the first marines sitting in Gili Gili
more or less isolated.

I ran out of ships to send against the fleet the AI maintains there
(including the North Carolina)
I am waiting for carrier planes replacements so that I can
hopefully sink that BB.

[Paul Vebber]

I promised myself I would not keep this going...but there are still too many misconceptions out there that need to be set right...

the "developers have abandoned the discussion" because there is little point to continuing to say the same things over and over.

It amazes me that despite repeatedly saying effectively that the "operational flexibility" issue will be taken up in WITP, there has continued to be a "discussion" at all.

1) The bottom line is that in the period of the campaign, some 6000 mines were laid by the US, half ineffectively by air (many landing on land or water far too deep and many simply didn't survive impact with the water...) the other half as described in my summary.

2) Australian mining was done mostly defensively. A strategic decision in the context of the campaign, but I have no problem with adding Brisbane as an Allied mine center and giving the Aussies the HMAS Bungaree. She laid 250 mines at PM from what I can find, and possible reseeded it several times. Its conceivable you may see that in a future patch. But the vast majority of Aussie mines were laid defensively in her home waters.

3) Offensive mining IS AND WAS a very different animal than defensive mining. No "safe passages" are left in an offensive minefield. The field is laid with speed as the utmost goal and precision navigation techniques that allow a ship at 10 knots in daylight with known navaids to "know where the mines are" are not available when mining offensively at 25+ knots in un-familiar waters at night. Whole fields were routinely off by 1000's of yards let alone knowing where individual mines are....

4) hardly a knee-jerk, the restrictions of 1.1 DON'T GO NERLY FAR ENOUGH to reflect the constraints the miners were under!!

5) Deep water mines are an "equal opportunity" threat because they are basically floating on the surface, tethered typically for a short time until the flimsy mooring broke (if it had one). The weight of the mooring cable must be borne by the buoyancy of the mine and the deeper the mooring the more mechanical forces the ocean exerts on it. This produced a "triple whammy" on deep water mines since: they typically were visible on the surface, but at times would submerge, since there was no way to predict the ocean current forces to get them to remain between keel depth and the surface. The mooring cable weight had to be minimized and so was a weak point, and the weaker cables were subject to more stresses than shorter cables and so broke after a short time. So deep water mines were of limited value because they quickly (or started out as) floating mines that drifted into whomever happened by, not knowing friend from foe. That is why "deep water" mines are so dangerous to both sides. And also why their use was soon abandoned by the Japanese and never employed by the US.

6) The US never lost a ship to enemy mining in the campaign (except Minesweepers…and losing several to OUR OWN minefields demonstrating amply that defensive minefields can indeed be a two-edged sword!) because the Japanese chose not to offensively mine very extensively. Mine sweepers removed the defensive mine threat as necessary, in a few cases being damaged or sunk doing so.

Mines were used most successfully as part of strategic mining campaigns ans were of limited effectiveness operationally. The game currently gives considerable "benefit of the doubt" to operational mining, in a way that shows both the strengths and weaknesses pretty well in operational terms.

WITP, with its need to reflect strategic mining, WILL BE DIFFERENT, but for the purposes of this campaign the 1.1 rules reflect reality pretty well, with the possible exception of adding Brisbane as a mine loading facility and the Aussie minelayer, an asset that had little effect on the historical campaign because of strategic priorities.

Hopefully that helps people understand the realities of the situation and that far form a "knee jerk" reaction, the mods made were the subject of considerable discussion and research and portray the operational limitations the two sides were under. If you want to change these strategic decisions, as has been said ad nauseum, you'll have to wait for WITP…

[Didz]

Originally posted by Chiteng
Well AAR from me indicates that IJN mining can make
Lunga all but immpossible to reach easily.
The AI is apparently totally helpless to deal with it.

I was able to mine and maintain a barrier that inflicted
enourmous damage on the nightly pounding of Lunga.
In addition it damaged quite a few SS that try to sneak
thru.

This is POST PATCH AAR btw.

This seems reasonable to me if the nightly pounding you refer to was a Bombardment TF it would have been steaming through your minefield with little effort at watching for mines. On the other hand why it kept repeating its mistake is harder to explain.

In my own game (still pre-patch) I have caught a few IJN ships with offensive minefields (though not actually sunk any). The normal reaction from the AI has been pretty rapid deployment of an MSW to the hex in question and I have never managed to catch a ship in the same minefield twice.

[pad152]

Paul

I think mining was too effective in 1.00 because mines did not decay and mine sweeping didn't work very well.

In version 1.10 mining it seems to be to much trouble for too little benifit.

All I ask is to allow us to create/move mine depots with the editor. I think this would resolve most of the issues, and lets us play the game the way we want.



Thanks

[dgaad]

Originally posted by Didz


The Anti-Mine debate seems to have exploded amongst the observers reading the thread rather then the players and is based as expected on the fact that supposedly the US never lost a single ship to an enemy mine during the actual campaign.

Apart from this being a non-argument it doesn't give any clue as to why the US ships led such a charmed life or whether the situation would have been different if Yamamoto had followed Crocky's strategy.

Incidently Kid made the point that he had not lost a single US capital ship to mines either, only transports, but that point seemed to get lost in the Anti-mine histeria.

There are two basic reasons US losses to mines were minimal : Japanese mine warfare policy and practice was highly defensive rather than offensive, and the US essentially spared no expense in their mine detection, mapping and sweeping. By the end of the war the US had the largest minesweeping fleet in history (I have a post on that also).

As I stated in a previous post, the Japanese doctrine related to mine warfare was strictly defensive. Their minefields were generally laid only around harbors or other points of defense. They did not mine channels, for example, unless it was relatively near to the port. If you compare the Japanese and US mine warfare doctrines, you will find that the US policy was much more aggressive.

Another reason Japanese doctrine and practice was very defensive : US airpower. Every minute the Minelayer was more than a few minutes sailing time outside of a safe/camoflaged berth was increased risk for strafing by a chance enemy patrol. However, its also true that in areas where there was no risk of enemy air patrols, the Japanese limited themselves strictly to defensive minefields around ports and landing beaches.

Having said and hopefully being understood on this doctrine point, its always debateable how much of a "doctrine" you incorporate into special rules that limit player options. There do seem to me to be two camps on this issue : one that is essentially anti-mine and would be satisfied with any change the further reduces the ability to use mines to any effect, and the pro mine camp which generally would like to see as much flexibility on the mine warfare issue as possible. I like to think I come down in the middle.

I wouldn't want, for example, the Japanese to be able to lay dozens of minefields all around the Island of Guadalcanal because that was simply not something the Japanese had the training for. Ironically, the Japanese has the infrastructure to support a very aggressive mine warfare doctine (specialized subs, for example, a deep water mine) they just never used it aggressively.

So, as I have oft-repeated, I think the solution is not to have fixed ports, but to simply have a few conditions met before mines can be loaded at a port, and increase their cost.

[dgaad]

Originally posted by Paul Vebber
I promised myself I would not keep this going...but there are still too many misconceptions out there that need to be set right...

We appreciate your continued engagement in this discussion. Please note that this discussion is no longer just about UV, at least not for me, because as I have said my main concern is doing what I can to prevent a fixed location approach in WitP.

the "developers have abandoned the discussion" because there is little point to continuing to say the same things over and over.

It amazes me that despite repeatedly saying effectively that the "operational flexibility" issue will be taken up in WITP, there has continued to be a "discussion" at all.

Anyone who gets involved in a forum discussion will have to repeat himself. Ask anyone. Ask me

I would like "Operational Flexibilty" in UV. If I can't get it here, I want it in WitP. Saying that it will be taken up there is and ambiguous half of a loaf, but I want the whole shebang.

Please note that my comment "the devs have abandoned the discussion" was made because I didn't see any response from the dev team to the comments being made by other players on the new mine rules. I have essentially given up on convincing the dev team to drop the fixed port scheme, so you can ignore anything I say, something which should give you some small, insigificant or momentary joy.

1) The bottom line is that in the period of the campaign, some 6000 mines were laid by the US, half ineffectively by air (many landing on land or water far too deep and many simply didn't survive impact with the water...) the other half as described in my summary.

I'm personally in support of all of the changes made with respect to mineFIELD efficacy. I agree with you that offensive minefields are problematic from the standpoint of danger to friendly ships.

2) Australian mining was done mostly defensively. A strategic decision in the context of the campaign, but I have no problem with adding Brisbane as an Allied mine center and giving the Aussies the HMAS Bungaree. She laid 250 mines at PM from what I can find, and possible reseeded it several times. Its conceivable you may see that in a future patch. But the vast majority of Aussie mines were laid defensively in her home waters.

Aussie home waters are part of the map, therefore Bungaree and her efforts are fair game for inclusion, along with a Brisbane mine center if we are talking about fixed locations.

3) Offensive mining IS AND WAS a very different animal than defensive mining. No "safe passages" are left in an offensive minefield. The field is laid with speed as the utmost goal and precision navigation techniques that allow a ship at 10 knots in daylight with known navaids to "know where the mines are" are not available when mining offensively at 25+ knots in un-familiar waters at night. Whole fields were routinely off by 1000's of yards let alone knowing where individual mines are....

Agree, generally, but lets not go overboard and make offensive minefields SO dangerous to friendly ships that they aren't laid at all even by players that know what they're doing. In some cases, due to the map configuration, some hexes that would be considered "offensive" minefields by the game, would in reality be a defensive minefield.

4) hardly a knee-jerk, the restrictions of 1.1 DON'T GO NERLY FAR ENOUGH to reflect the constraints the miners were under!!

Disagree. The constraints in 1.1 are artificial and ahistorical. The minefield efficacy is from what little I have seen okay, but the artificial fixed port mine loading scheme is not supported by logic or historical data. To say that if something wasn't moved in the theater between 1 May 42 and 31 Dec 43 is evidence that a rule should be implemented so that it cannot be moved flys in the face of common sense to me, especially when I know that facilities of FAR GREATER size, cost, complexity, etc., were moved during WW2 (tank and aircraft factories, strategic bombing bases, ship resupply facilities, etc).

5) Deep water mines are an "equal opportunity" threat because they are basically floating on the surface, tethered typically for a short time until the flimsy mooring broke (if it had one). The weight of the mooring cable must be borne by the buoyancy of the mine and the deeper the mooring the more mechanical forces the ocean exerts on it. This produced a "triple whammy" on deep water mines since: they typically were visible on the surface, but at times would submerge, since there was no way to predict the ocean current forces to get them to remain between keel depth and the surface. The mooring cable weight had to be minimized and so was a weak point, and the weaker cables were subject to more stresses than shorter cables and so broke after a short time. So deep water mines were of limited value because they quickly (or started out as) floating mines that drifted into whomever happened by, not knowing friend from foe. That is why "deep water" mines are so dangerous to both sides. And also why their use was soon abandoned by the Japanese and never employed by the US.

Agree.

6) The US never lost a ship to enemy mining in the campaign (except Minesweepers…and losing several to OUR OWN minefields demonstrating amply that defensive minefields can indeed be a two-edged sword!) because the Japanese chose not to offensively mine very extensively. Mine sweepers removed the defensive mine threat as necessary, in a few cases being damaged or sunk doing so.

Agree, but I don't necessarily feel that this means special rules should be implemented to constrain use. A solution to limit Japanese mine use, for example, should give a Japanese player some (but not total) flexibility to depart from the history of Japanese mine warfare doctrine, and become more offensive than they were historically. Naturally, this should come at some increase cost to the Japanese player (such as by increasing the supply point cost of mines).

Mines were used most successfully as part of strategic mining campaigns ans were of limited effectiveness operationally. The game currently gives considerable "benefit of the doubt" to operational mining, in a way that shows both the strengths and weaknesses pretty well in operational terms.

WITP, with its need to reflect strategic mining, WILL BE DIFFERENT, but for the purposes of this campaign the 1.1 rules reflect reality pretty well, with the possible exception of adding Brisbane as a mine loading facility and the Aussie minelayer, an asset that had little effect on the historical campaign because of strategic priorities.

Hopefully that helps people understand the realities of the situation and that far form a "knee jerk" reaction, the mods made were the subject of considerable discussion and research and portray the operational limitations the two sides were under. If you want to change these strategic decisions, as has been said ad nauseum, you'll have to wait for WITP…

I want operational flexibility, along with the set of excellent rule implementations about minefield efficacy, in UV. I agree that the 1.1 rules reflect minefield efficacy very well, I disagree about the fixed port scheme, which as I said is illogical. I don't think it was a knee-jerk reaction, but to say that the fixed port scheme is based on history is either just a misunderstanding of historical facts, or disingenuous.

[juliet7bravo]

The IJN mine doctrine was VERY offensive in nature*, and revolved around offensive mining as part of their "Decisive Battle" doctrine. Note that even midget subs were evolved as part of this doctrine and were viewed as "mobile mines"...kinda like mobile early low-tech versions of USN RAPTORs. This is why they built so many fast, well armed, high capacity minelayers...to mine in advance of the enemy fleet/area denial weapons. The BIGGEST reason the IJN didn't do more offensive mining in the waters they were operating in was because their minesweeping capability stank...badly. Against the advanced mines the USN deployed by subs/aircraft later in the war, they were virtually helpless.

*Note...this doctrine obviously went to crap, along with the IJN's fortunes once they got the crap kicked out of their little heinies.

The IJN also embarked on the most ambitious mining project in history*...roughly 15 times the size of the North Sea Mine Barrier of WW1. This involved mining the channels/choke points leading into the Japanese controlled waters, primarily against submarines. We're talking minefields throughout Indonesia and the P.I. for example. This project went on through the entire war in fits and starts...never completed, primarily due to a lack of mines and the facilities (radars, shore batteries) to protect the mine fields. The ASW minefields laid in the channels leading into the Sea of Japan for example, kept out subs until the development of sensitive mine detecting sonar.

*Note...ever wonder why when perusing an IJN ship listing or OOB you see so many coastal class/auxiliary minelayers and minesweepers listed? This is why.

The USN used "offensive" or "tactical" mining (outside of enemy ports, approaches, shipping lanes) in VERY limited numbers. They could paralyze shipping in a Japanese port just by dropping a few mines, as they had little way of clearing them (other than the obvious). The later mining, primarily conducted by aircraft doesn't even pertain to this discussion as this was largely done in Japanese home waters, where the USN was obviously not operating surface ships, and was conducted with technology that was NOT in existence during the period covered by UV.

The US success against IJN mines was almost entirely due to "reading the mail", ie breaking the IJN codes. In particular the IJN merchant marine codes which outlined minefield locations/composition...this was successful to the point that postwar corrections to existing USN maps of IJN minefields was "zero".

Moving "Mine Centers" wouldn't be as easily accomplished as you think either. And why would a commander move the facility? Closer to the front? Given the scarcity of both mines and trained mine techs during this period, that would hardly be likely. The USN had just lost a large amount of mines and mine techs when Subic Bay was overrun. Moving it would entail building new bunkers (sizable ones at that, mines in shipping containers are pretty bulky), cargo unloading facilities at the new port to handle bulk cargo, transportation facilites, quarters, mess facilites ect. All this to position scarce resources closer to one part of your operational area, while moving it further away from the rest. This during a period where the logistics capability at Noumea itself was described as a "national disgrace". Just getting "beans and bullets" to the front was a headache...let alone mines. Imagine what the IJN was like? Create a major headache/strain on exisiting resources just to save a few days steaming time?

The way mines are handled are pretty "abstracted" already. Think about the "logistics" of busting hundreds/thousands of mines out of the the bunkers, stripping them out of the shipping containers/dunnage, prepping them for service, inserting the booster charges, arming them with the detonators, and loading them on board the minelayers...and doing this day after day, month after month. Currently, this is done with the click of the mouse. If we want to start digging to deeply into "operational flexibility", instead of spending a few days in transit each way, our ML's will be spending a week or 2 tied up in dock while the splinter mine detachment we moved forward struggles to get the mines prepped and loaded. I'd imagine LTC Vebber there can happily tell us about how long it would take to prep and load 2500 mines (rough total capacity of the IJN ML's in a single lift)...or even how long it would take parked in a hex to lay 600 mines. This definitely wouldn't occur overnight. Be careful what you wish for, as you might get it.

[juliet7bravo]

Paul; I think overall the changes in v1.10 are excellent in general. The defensive/offensive mine diferential works okay, the minesweeping works okay, the deep water mining works okay. All of these changes have went far toward making the use of mines in UV much more realistic.

The "intent" of making fixed mine resupply locations was to introduce a limit on the number of mines in game, or at least as I understood it. This works well for the IJN as they get 11 minelayers, each with decent speed, fuel capacity, and mine capacity. It works well for the Allies in the eastern portion of the area of operations, even given their 4 minelayers with mediocre legs and comparatively low carrying capacity. Mining ops in the GC area are still feasible and useful.

Where it doesn't work, is the western (Australia and PNG) half. The transit times/distance from Noumea has turned out to be prohibitive in practice.

In real life, within a few months or so of scenario start date, the need for defensive minefields in Oz and PNG had pretty much evaporated. In "UV", the first 6 months the outcome can still be in doubt, you may (WILL!) still have to worry about IJN ships in the Coral Sea, and against a human, you may be fighting for survival off the shores of Oz, or even trying to repel an IJN landing.

Historically, mining wasn't widely used to it's full capability, there was NO NEED for it. In UV gameplay, there could very well be a DESPERATE NEED to use every weapon you have, and would have had historically available. In UV, the idea isn't to just relive history, it's to replay/re-game it. As such, there may very be a valid and pressing need to use mines in PM or Oz. Under v1.10, this capability has been rendered pretty much non-existant.

A mine center in Brisbane, and a single plodding 10 knot HMAS minelayer would be both historic and useful...without reverting back to "Common Mining". This isn't "carping". I'm all for the "new rules", and thought they'd work out well. They have...with the exception of losing a realistic capacity to mine in the Oz/PNG area due to the transit times.

[dgaad]

Originally posted by juliet7bravo

Moving "Mine Centers" wouldn't be as easily accomplished as you think either. And why would a commander move the facility? Closer to the front? Given the scarcity of both mines and trained mine techs during this period, that would hardly be likely. The USN had just lost a large amount of mines and mine techs when Subic Bay was overrun. Moving it would entail building new bunkers (sizable ones at that, mines in shipping containers are pretty bulky), cargo unloading facilities at the new port to handle bulk cargo, transportation facilites, quarters, mess facilites ect. All this to position scarce resources closer to one part of your operational area, while moving it further away from the rest. This during a period where the logistics capability at Noumea itself was described as a "national disgrace". Just getting "beans and bullets" to the front was a headache...let alone mines. Imagine what the IJN was like? Create a major headache/strain on exisiting resources just to save a few days steaming time?

The way mines are handled are pretty "abstracted" already. Think about the "logistics" of busting hundreds/thousands of mines out of the the bunkers, stripping them out of the shipping containers/dunnage, prepping them for service, inserting the booster charges, arming them with the detonators, and loading them on board the minelayers...and doing this day after day, month after month. Currently, this is done with the click of the mouse. If we want to start digging to deeply into "operational flexibility", instead of spending a few days in transit each way, our ML's will be spending a week or 2 tied up in dock while the splinter mine detachment we moved forward struggles to get the mines prepped and loaded. I'd imagine LTC Vebber there can happily tell us about how long it would take to prep and load 2500 mines (rough total capacity of the IJN ML's in a single lift)...or even how long it would take parked in a hex to lay 600 mines. This definitely wouldn't occur overnight. Be careful what you wish for, as you might get it.

Juliet : Thanks for participating and providing your information. I'll defer to your expertise on Japanese doctrine and use. Suffice to say that while they had the infrastructure and language in their manuals for offensive mine warfare, they lacked real capacity to do it for various reasons, and this was easily countered by Purple and the superior resources of the US.

I say again : facilities of FAR GREATER COMPLEXITY, COST and so forth, were MOVED in WW2, for OPERATIONAL REASONS. Saving a few days steaming time is an operational reason. So is saving a few hours flying time, or whatever. Iwo Jima was invaded for Operational Reasons having to do with the strategic bombing campaign. Military power is a function of mobility and firepower. Saving steaming, marching, driving or flying time is essential to increasing the amount of time units with destructive capability have to deliver that destructive capability into enemy capacity.

Everything in the game is an "abstract" to some extent. I was a tanker in the US Army, so I know how difficult it was to get our tanks loaded up (and we did alot of this work ourselves) and moved out, and how tedious it was to have to do it over and over again every time we ran out of fuel or ammo, or whatever. Everything you said about all the intricacies of mine center ops is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether or not this facility can be moved IF IT HAS TO BE or BECAUSE the OPERATIONAL COMMANDER wants it to be moved so the minelayers can spend more time mining, and less time sailing, just like our tank commanders wanted to spend less time driving to and from a supply point and more time on the tactical mission.

I can't understand why anyone would seriously argue that this type of facility can't be moved. We didn't have such a facility in Noumea when the war started, yet by May 1 it was magically there. It got moved there. We didn't have strategic bombing bases in Bari, Italy, when the war started but sometime after Salerno we DID have one there, because we moved it there from North Africa.

Facilities of almost any imaginable complexity and size can and were moved during the war, from economic infrastructure on down to ammo loading points for tanks, main supply harbors for the Allied forces in France, etc. etc. etc.

Yes, it doesn't happen overnight. But it does happen. Why it happens is related to the operational situation. If you make a rule that disallows the movement of these types of facilities, you are constraining the operational commander to an unrealistic and illogical degree. Make it difficult to move, make it expensive, make it time consuming. But allow it.