PaulRezendes
Posts: 11
Joined: 2/16/2008
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Gregor:
The question is almost moot. I bought the game. When will there be more scenarios?!?!?!? The look is great, the interface is easy, and the game editor is so much easier to use. Thanks for bringing this one back.
First of all, this is not about faith in fellow players. Even if I am naturally naive, experience is a good teacher. I know a guy who won the Russian Campaign tournament one year because he knew the game so well he completed his moves quickly, but his opponents kept running out of time for theirs. I know a Flattop player who has figured out how to minimize his chances of detection by staying in storms and timing his launches and landings so that they occur on even-numbered turns, when he knows the clouds will move and uncover his ships long enough to launch or recover. So, no, I know that wargamers are lawyers-at-heart looking for a rule to "game" to good effect.
As to launches beyond range and mobility between launch and recovery: we have to start with the fact that this is not a design flaw, it is physical reality. And it did not happened just once and late in the war; the US CV's launched and had to close range at Midway and the Marianas.
As to grounds for sacking -- I think we can only make that judgment in a strategic context. Did anyone sack Spruance and Fletcher for losing virtually all of their torpedo bombers by launching them beyond their range and unwittingly turning Torpedo Eight into a symbol of American courage and determination? Further, you've allowed something similar by letting players launch strikes that will not return until after dark.
The problem of a-historical moves that were too costly in the historical context can be dealt with by writing the control into the game as a point-issue, or as a factor in a campaign (and I hope that sometime soon you guys will design a campaign system!)
Points: In Flattop, sacrificing planes by sending them off when you know they won't get back means a 5X increase in the points your opponent gets for them. Lose all of your Dauntlesses that way, and you lose the equivalent of a carrier in point values. If you guys can design a squadrons list that keeps track of why planes were lost, you should be able to design a routine to jack up the points awarded where the loss is because the plane was launched beyond maximum range and splashed when out of fuel! [And here's another possible tweak -- pilot experience affecting plane range!]
Strategic concerns: In Carrier Strike, losing Akagi's strike planes by sending them off beyond their range means that in the next battle all of her pilots will be green and ineffective.
Your point about staying at max range is lost on me. Staying at max range as the US doesn't help in 1942. Further, my point was that the immobility of IJN carriers sacrificed their range advantage.
My point about US carriers depended on several facts, including the fact that they often traveled alone, had better AA of their own and in the escort, and had better damage control. Add to that the fact that their spot numbers seem unduly better than the IJN's, and that means they can afford to absorb strikes and hits better than the IJN. I'm no fan of self-inflicted harm; a US player is not going to run away from the Japanese, he's going to close range, and he has inherent advantages that mean that his expected damage from doing so is less than the IJN's.
[In fact, American weapon design seems to differ from Japanese in precisely this: Start-of-war American weapons systems seem to have been designed to absorb damage at the cost of performance. (The lessons of US Grant?) Japanese systems of similar vintage were designed (no "seems" here) for performance at the cost of protection. (The Bushido spirit - deliver the killing blow or die trying) So, if the US CV's in CAWIII can't absorb damage better than the IJN's -- and I think they can -- that's a design flaw!]
At bottom, there is an underlying problem all game designers must face. A "realistic" wargame, by definition, has to offer the players raw materials permitting anti-historical decisions and, therefore, has to allow a player to do things that a commander at the time would not do or would not think of doing. I think gamers realize that the historical characters whose shoes they try to fill were typically good at what they did, and where they weren't, a gamer doesn't want to be stuck with the limitations of his historical counterpart. There is no clear line between personal limitations of individual commanders and the limitations imposed by the doctrines of the time or "strategic" considerations.
Alexander defeated the Persians despite being vastly outnumbered because he used his cavalry to penetrate the Persian line and attack headquarters -- maybe I'm displaying ignorance here, but what other general in the age of swords used the blitzkrieg ? What wargamer today would not at least consider that move in an ancients wargame with command control features? Permitting that move in other ancients battle simulations would not be a fault of the game. Using that move would not be "gaming" a result; it would be doing what games offer the players -- a chance to re-write history.
So -- do you design a game with built-in limitations that were a result of contingent historical fact that gaming is designed to allow us to alter [such as personal fault, historical doctrine, or strategic concern], or let the players decide, then adjust the point system so that victory in a tactical or operational game will be tempered by decisions with historical ramifications? On the one hand, sometimes you have to do the former to make the game playable -- who would want to play Antietam as Lee against a Union army that is not immobilized by built-in command paralysis? On the other hand, where the game system incorporates certain advantages of one side (better US AA, better damage control, larger plane capacity, dive-bombers with decent range carrying bombs with twice the punch of the opponent, sturdier ships and planes, larger launch capacity allowing faster launch and recovery) it is simply unfair to diminish one of the historical advantages of the other side.
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss this. And, once again, MORE SCENARIOS! RANDOM SCENARIO GENERATORS! CAMPAIGN GAME!!!
Paul R.
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