Slitherine

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I play wargames for the historical immersion and competitiveness, the longer the game the better. But I stop when a historical game becomes a series of ahistorical meanderings utilizing assets for all sorts of BS tactics. Utah, or Wyoming, or Settsu etc were exactly that...resources, but training resources. They were not shoved into the breach because they were not combat worthy and to sacrifice everything like players are wont to do

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since no human element is involved, players naturally will throw in ships that in RL would never be risked in a combat zone. Personally i wouldn't bother adding her anymore than i would Utah or Settsu

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(ie using merchants as early warning decoys! )

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Exactly my point Steve. Without an actual role in the game for which she was designed for and is a vital part of the Wyoming or any other non combatant will end up leading some wild charge on the front lines.

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ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

Question for Alaskan and Cid. Got any examples of say, Wyoming, operating during WW2 as a bomb soaker, decoy, mobile flak battery escort for convoys etc as players will surely use her for? I realise Centurion was used in this manner during Halberd or some such Malta convoy but this is one extreme and rare example which occured in another theatre of war. Not something which should really instigate widespread use of baroque technology.

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Well at first I decided not to answer, but what the heck. Got any examples of the Japanese KB patrolling the Hawaiian Islands after Dec 7th 1941? In many games being played the Japanese player does indeed do this, although it is ahistorical. The point is it should be up to the players to decide.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Well at first I decided not to answer, but what the heck. Got any examples of the Japanese KB patrolling the Hawaiian Islands after Dec 7th 1941? In many games being played the Japanese player does indeed do this, although it is ahistorical. The point is it should be up to the players to decide.

On Dec 8, 1941 (US time) IJN Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto decided the historical hit and run raid was a MISTAKE. That the Kiddo Butai should have STAYED in Hawaiian waters, hunting carriers and damaged ships fleeing to the US West Coast - and cutting the line of supply for Hawaii. Once the carriers had been neutralized, and certain land facilities as well (air bases, and open to air observation major coast guns at Fort Ruger - which could prevent landing on any coast), a follow up force should have landed three divisions on Oahu. The Battle of Midway was an attempt to correct this "mistake" - just being phase one. In this sense - that the Japanese fleet commander THOUGHT they SHOULD have stayed - and also that MANY US naval officers AT THE TIME thought they SHOULD have done - it IS a reasonable option that players do so.

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I guess anything/everything is an option. Could of, should of, is hindsight which everyone has. This is the reason we game. However, the raid on Hawaii did not, and that is history. Strange, I rememeber you discussing how there was not enough fuel to do this recently. Just where is the fuel coming from again?? The only reason the players can do this is because the tankers and the KB have full fuel tanks and the endurance of the various vessels are absurd, whereas historically they did not have enough fuel to stay there for any length of time and their endurance was much less.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

I am unable to reduce oil in the tankers - they start the game FULL AFTER refueling Kiddo Butai. There is one missing too - should be eight. I am experimenting with forcing 4 to "disappear" until after the tanker force historically returns to Japan - thus using half the oil in the tanker force automatically. It means those tankers are not at risk - but that is a compromise. Opinion?

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Half tanker would do fine. The other half could enter as reinforcements at the time and place where historically the tankers returned to. You can, I think, reduce the fuel aboard the warships. You mentioned previously about modifying the endurance/cruise speeds. Generally, what form will/did this take?

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As you are well aware I argue an 18kt cruise for the Japanese and a 20kt cruise for the Allied and base the endurance accordingly.

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Yoshimura, in his book "Battleship Musashi" indicates in at least once on the endurance of the Yamato and Musahi being "8600nm at 19kts".

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

Utah is already added - and properly so since she was sunk at Pearl.
NOT having her present HELPS the Japanese by causing them to have no chance to waste bombs and torpedoes. Centurion SHOULD be added since she really was in theater - and may have decieved the enemy - all you get is a chance anyway - no certainties.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Yoshimura, in his book "Battleship Musashi" indicates in at least once on the endurance of the Yamato and Musahi being "8600nm at 19kts".

What page?

It is possible - Yamato was designed to go about 5600 miles at 24 knots - if you slowed to 19 knots you might get something over 8000 nm. But I don't remember that datum point - and I have the book - so what page?

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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As you are well aware I argue an 18kt cruise for the Japanese and a 20kt cruise for the Allied and base the endurance accordingly.

Why do that? Different ships are different. Many US ships are much slower than that - and we don't have good data for most at 20 knots. Many range figures for US ships are for TEN knots! In general, Japan NEVER did that - they deliberately went for faster cruising speed - and accepted less range as a consequence.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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As you are well aware I argue an 18kt cruise for the Japanese and a 20kt cruise for the Allied and base the endurance accordingly.

Why do that? Different ships are different. Many US ships are much slower than that - and we don't have good data for most at 20 knots. Many range figures for US ships are for TEN knots! In general, Japan NEVER did that - they deliberately went for faster cruising speed - and accepted less range as a consequence. A WWI era CL had a cruising speed of 14 for example - but our WWII era CA and CL had economical cruising speeds of 10 knots. They could cruise at 16 - but you cannot give them their "10,000 mile range" if they do. I give each ship the most logical rating available - often there is only one - and there is no uniformity of telling us all ships at 18 or 20 knots.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Half tanker would do fine. The other half could enter as reinforcements at the time and place where historically the tankers returned to. You can, I think, reduce the fuel aboard the warships. You mentioned previously about modifying the endurance/cruise speeds. Generally, what form will/did this take?

I do not think you can modify the fuel on board a warship. If you can - tell me how?

You understand what I am proposing - the tankers enter as reinforcements on the date they returned to port. That way they are in effect gone during the op. THe problem is the scenario begins with the Kiddo Butai far at sea. [I like to begin in port - and sailing all that way USES fuel!]

I simply assign a ship its real fuel capacity (if fuel oil), and its real range, and its real cruising speed. I ignore the preference of the AI for 15 knots - it is 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, or whatever the ship actually used. Turns out this works just fine for manual games - my design intent. If you play AI - it will just make the crusing speed be 8 or 15 anyway. Not too horrible.

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When the data is not available then use an average. I kind of got tired of "not enough data" so I looked at it statistically by calculating at the average between what data is avaiable at different speeds. I did not get the sigmas, but it would be realtively easy to get as there are sufficient data. However, you should know this and it is a perfectly viable way to get at the data that is not avaiable. Is it not abosolutly precise? No, but it gets the data into the infield at least and beeter than what we have now.

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I do not think you can modify the fuel on board a warship. If you can - tell me how?

You understand what I am proposing - the tankers enter as reinforcements on the date they returned to port. That way they are in effect gone during the op. THe problem is the scenario begins with the Kiddo Butai far at sea. [I like to begin in port - and sailing all that way USES fuel!]

I simply assign a ship its real fuel capacity (if fuel oil), and its real range, and its real cruising speed. I ignore the preference of the AI for 15 knots - it is 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, or whatever the ship actually used. Turns out this works just fine for manual games - my design intent. If you play AI - it will just make the crusing speed be 8 or 15 anyway. Not too horrible.

The fuel field in the ship section. Try givng a ship less fuel than her class template.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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I do not think you can modify the fuel on board a warship. If you can - tell me how?

You understand what I am proposing - the tankers enter as reinforcements on the date they returned to port. That way they are in effect gone during the op. THe problem is the scenario begins with the Kiddo Butai far at sea. [I like to begin in port - and sailing all that way USES fuel!]

I simply assign a ship its real fuel capacity (if fuel oil), and its real range, and its real cruising speed. I ignore the preference of the AI for 15 knots - it is 10, 12, 16, 18, 20, or whatever the ship actually used. Turns out this works just fine for manual games - my design intent. If you play AI - it will just make the crusing speed be 8 or 15 anyway. Not too horrible.

The fuel field in the ship section. Try givng a ship less fuel than her class template.

OK - that kind of sort of works - at a huge penalty (you determine the penalty):

THAT SHIP will FOREVER consume TOO LITTLE FUEL when it refuels! The way it works is that the code uses the individual ship field - not the class field - and you are deliberately allowed to make them different. The code acts as if you feel that particular ship needs less fuel - for the same range! [You installed diesels - or maype a nuclear engine?] I don't do that.

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Hmm , right after I wrote this I tested it, which I should have done first. Interesting in that some very small foresight in the design and playtesting should have caught the fact that beginning at-sea tasks forces started with full fuel loads. It probably could have been a realtively easy fix since there has to be two fields involved currently. One field to store the total capacity and one to store the current capacity.

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There should be some way to do this - after all, most of the subchasers that start in SF in the regular, non-modified game start with less than full fuel (usually the have 540 mile range rather than 1500 miles they get after refueling.) One of you mod mavens should be able to look at the numbers and find out how this is done - unless the game does something really strange with the code to get this result.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again


The Japanese tanker force for Pearl Harbor was divided in fact into two units - logically numbered 1 and 2. I left unit 1 alone (it has a destroyer escort) - except I added a missing ship. I put unit 2 as a reinforcement appearing 14 days after the war begins (21 Dec 41). It took 12 days to go from Etorofu to the point North of Oahu - so I allow 14 days to return to Tokyo (Yokosuka actually). By not appearing at all these ships (there are four - one was missing in WITP) are in effect used to refuel the outbound trip of the Kiddo Butai.

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Hi,

adding Japanese ships as reinforcements results in making them part of the ship building program - Japan will have to spend merchant yard points to "finish" them (not many points for 14 days delay, but still...).

K

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

I am open to a better idea. What can we do to suck fuel out of these ships?

Sid

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ORIGINAL: Kereguelen

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

I am open to a better idea. What can we do to suck fuel out of these ships?

Sid

Hi,

simply reduce the cargo capacity of the tankers of the Kido Butai Replenishment TF at start and give them an upgrade with higher (historical) capacity (upgrade 12/41 or 01/42, whatever you want). Thus this replenishment TF will only supply limited fuel to KB, but the ships will have their true max capacity later after the upgrade. You'll only have to create one new class, and there should be enough class slots left to do this.

K

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ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

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Hmm , right after I wrote this I tested it, which I should have done first. Interesting in that some very small foresight in the design and playtesting should have caught the fact that beginning at-sea tasks forces started with full fuel loads. It probably could have been a realtively easy fix since there has to be two fields involved currently. One field to store the total capacity and one to store the current capacity.

There should be some way to do this - after all, most of the subchasers that start in SF in the regular, non-modified game start with less than full fuel (usually the have 540 mile range rather than 1500 miles they get after refueling.) One of you mod mavens should be able to look at the numbers and find out how this is done - unless the game does something really strange with the code to get this result.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again
On Dec 8, 1941 (US time) IJN Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto decided the historical hit and run raid was a MISTAKE. That the Kiddo Butai should have STAYED in Hawaiian waters, hunting carriers and damaged ships fleeing to the US West Coast - and cutting the line of supply for Hawaii. Once the carriers had been neutralized, and certain land facilities as well (air bases, and open to air observation major coast guns at Fort Ruger - which could prevent landing on any coast), a follow up force should have landed three divisions on Oahu. The Battle of Midway was an attempt to correct this "mistake" - just being phase one. In this sense - that the Japanese fleet commander THOUGHT they SHOULD have stayed - and also that MANY US naval officers AT THE TIME thought they SHOULD have done - it IS a reasonable option that players do so.