Ron Saueracker
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Snowman999
ORIGINAL: Brady
quote:
But as you say the Ecenomy of Japan in WiTP and the Neads of the Empire have been artificaly created based losely on Historical fact, to better facilitate good game play. So much of this is then mute. Howeaver this still playes directly into the Allied sides hands, in that WiTP has Cut the Empires playable felat by 50% (the Steal Hulled fleat), while the Number of Allied Subs Is I belave still at 100%, and still at 100% or near to it I suspect are all those things that would also hunt them like Planes, Mines ect. Further compounding this problem is the larger than average number of Big ships present to acheave the ttoal tonage figures, which is also aidding the Allied cause. If you want to creat Historical proportions then you nead to adjust the number of predators, and better represent their prey.
It's not this simple. Yes, the allies have a lot of subs. (I haven't counted totals and compared to reality; seems as if they have too many by 1945, but whatever.) The S-boats remain in service and there's no advantage to tying them up, as there are no sub crew pools. In RL it would have been stupid to man S-boats with experienced crews while new construction was at best composed of 1/3 men with a war patrol under their belts.
In the game there are too many subs on station due to one-day cycle times and a lack of fatigue variables. Sub commander ratings severely understate the effect of a great skipper over an average one. This was unique to subs as a vessel type as they operated at long-range independently, with months-long station-keeping, their captains personnaly fought the ship, and they could rove and hunt without needing to stay in a tf or ask permission. The difference between an O'Kane or a Ramage and the average skipper was 1000%. Maybe 2000%. No other ship class has these features combined with the striking power of a heavy cruiser. In the game subs are long-range PT boats. They're treated as an afterthought, not as the core fleet units they were. With 3% of the USN the subs sank about 4/5 of Japanese merchant shipping.
The biggest reason your point above doesn't work in game terms is that, yes, the Japanese merchant marine is too small by A LOT. But game mechanics, even with low cycle-times, hamstring sub attacks by preventing, ever, multiple ship attacks in convoys. Sometime, with op point surpluses, you might get two attacks on the same ship, but never a slaughter as sometimes happened. Read up on the tanker action "Red" Ramage executed in the course of winning the MOH. The USS Parche couldn't happen in WITP. Or Mush Morton. Or Sam Dealey.
If subs could act historically, the currrent merchant marine would be toast in 12 months. If you doubled its size to historical levels, but left the subs crippled, the allies would be severely hampered. As it is now there might be a rough balancing act, albiet with incorrect force totals and behaviors.
Somewhere I remember reading Joel Billings (?) explain that WITP represents the rock-paper-scissors of the war. Naval air covering land ops, land ops to provide bases for LBA, LBA covering naval air and merchant backfilling, and supporting land ops. Which is fine as far as it goes and leads to the hyper-modeling of the air aspects of the war at the expense of some others.
But submarines were critical to the USN's success. Far more than carrier air in the sum total of the war. Allied offense pushed at the outside of the balloon. The subs went into the balloon, starting on 12/8/41, not in 1943, and ate the guts out of the Japanese economy. Without the subs the war wouldn't have ended in 1945, probably not 1946, the USSR would own part of Japan now, etc.
And WITP treats them as an after-thought to be toggled into auto-control rather than "fiddle." I hope a patch, or WITP2, can contain changes to bring them up to their proper place in the big picture. Just adding fatigue, and a multi-attack dice roll to convoy actions would be huge.
Then you can worry about merchant marine historical correctness.
Brilliant Snowman. Makes a great arguement for naval crew factor pools...at least for subs anyway.
_____________________________
  Yammas from The Apo-Tiki Lounge. Future site of WITP AE benders! And then the s--t hit the fan
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