dgaad
Posts: 864
Joined: 7/25/2001
From: Hockeytown
Status: offline
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There have been several threads which have dealt with Mine Warfare in UV, and to which Matrix has responded.
I feel that the basic approach to mine warfare is flawed in UV presently, and will be even more flawed in the patch.
Lets start with what the new rules will be :
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Paul Vebber
[B]
1) You will have to load mines at Noumea or Truk. There were not hordes of mine techs and you could just load them from anywhere. This will help keep mining in or near enemy base hexes as was historically done as you won't have time to lay 10's of thousands of mines everywhere.
[/QUOTE][/B]
This will make mines effectively useless for the Japanese. For the Allies, Noumea is somewhat closer to the bases that will be fought over, and the Allies have oilers allowing "on station" refuelling points, meaning that minelaying will be less effective than it is now, but far more effective than it is for the Japanese. The Japanese player will be able to mount "on station" refuelling using DDs or some other type of ship, so the corresponding cost in terms of resource commitment of surface ships in order to place mines in huge when compared to the Allies.
Also, I'm disappointed that Matrix has chosen to implement an arbitrary rule with respect to a hardcoded fixed location for mine loading. No one questions that mines required specialized storage, technicians, and enormous resources. Everyone should question a rule that puts all those technicians, storage facilities, and resources on a leash tied to a pier complex on one island. It takes no more specialized resources to move a mine operation than it does to move a strategic bombing group, and these were moved with impunity throughout the war, because the theater commanders were willing to and had the resources to do it.
Forcing loads at Truk for the Japanese doesn't "help keep mining in or near enemy base hexes as was historically done", it shuts down effective mining altogether. The Allies should start using their MSWs as sub chasers or, better yet, send most of them back to Pearl and increase the chance of getting a few cruisers or even a carrier. You won't need them.
[QUOTE][B]
2) There was a Japanese deep water mine. There were also floating mines that sank after a short time or exploded. Mine fields in deep hexes are only 10% as effective and that paltry capability is halved each day until they vanish the third day after being laid. Reflects that at least the Japs TRIED to mine on occasion in deep water, you will likely have the same lack of success they did. With the loading of mines restricted to the depot locations, I can't see many folks using this for 4 days very limited effect.
[/QUOTE][/B]
Deep water mines are of zero interest to me, had almost no effect on the war in terms of ships sunk or clearing effort, and in my opinion they should be completely scotched in the game, so I think matrix's approach here is good.
[QUOTE][B]
3)There is a VERY VERY small chance you can hit mines you lay defensively. ONce you capture a base, you are assumed to discover the "secret plan" for the minefield (since all the ships had to have it...) and it becomes friendly to you (and remains friendly to the enemy). WHen you mine his bases, and them capture the base, since such offensive fields are laid with an eye to speed and not care, you have to treat them like an enemy minefield and sweep them.
[/QUOTE][/B]
This is really unclear.
In Mine Warfare operations there are "defensive" minefields and "offensive" minefields. Every time a minefield was layed, no matter who layed it and where, it was mapped by the side that layed it, and this mapping was communicated to all ships in that navy within a relatively short time.
What is Matrix doing here? Does this mean that mines that are layed anywhere other than a base will not be seen until they are hit? I don't understand.
[QUOTE][B]
3) A hot key will cause a small s to appear in shallow hexes. [/B][/QUOTE]
Presumeably, this means that laying mines in shallow water will be considered to be the standard approach, therefore we must know where the shallow water is.
So, now we have another statement from Matrix about Mine Warfare :
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Paul Vebber
[B]I thinnk the current rules reflect pretty well the capabilities. The max loadout of mines is part of the class definitions, only Minelayers had the training to do it, (and even a few of them got sunk in the process) so its not the sort of thing any ship should be able to just go do.
For the purposes of this campaign teh theater commander had to work withthe mine facitlities he had, and was not really at liberty to rearrange them, as their scarcity was a "big navy" problem. The game assumes that subtenders make there rounds to assist subs with torps as needed (someting explicted included in WITP) there was a single US mine layer tender, and it will likely appear in WITP, with some more mining options (like Aerial mining). BUt believe it or not it was 1944 before a replacemetn to the WWI mk16 was available in significant numbers!
For the scope of this campaign the new rules do a good job for balancing historical capability against what the player might like to do. [/B][/QUOTE]
There are all kinds of things wrong with these statements.
First of all, in UV you are NOT a theater commander. This game actually involves three distinct theaters : SoWestPac, SoPac, and Australia. So, you are more of a Supra-Theater commander.
There is no question that a theater commander had to work with resources he had. However, this statement is being used to justify "fixed" locations. Its like saying "Theater commanders have to work with what they had, and where they had it, and they can't move it regardless of operational needs." No one would agree with that statement.
Mines were no more scarce than functioning torpedos. If something is scarce, do you make an assumption that it was therefore in short supply? Mines were scarce in the theater not because they weren't available to to shipped into the theater, but because of DOCTRINE. US and Japanese naval doctrine were highly OFFENSIVE doctrines, which discouraged and disparaged mine-laying except in exigent or limited circumstances.
The fact is we don't have good information on the number of mines layed in the theater. Mine warfare wasn't glamorous and didn't sink a bunch of ships, it is not the subject of much study precisely because Naval doctrines the world over remain OFFENSIVE, and because mines are a static weapon that are not politically popular right now.
One poster said there were only 1300 mines layed in WW2! This is totally wrong. There were something like 10,000 air-dropped mines layed just around Japan in Japanese home waters by the USAAC's "Operation Starvation" in 1945.
It might interest you to know, however, that TO THIS DAY, mines are STILL being discovered and cleared in the Pacific. The US Navy and the AAC spent ENORMOUS resources detecting, mapping, and clearing mines. There wasn't a task force that sailed on ANY significant operation which did not have to do a course adjustment to avoid a PROBABLE minefield. Its this kind of stuff that's in the BACKGROUND of history that leads us to the false conclusion that mine warfare was not a factor. It was a factor, a huge factor, but its kind of like riding a bike. Pedalling and steering are big factors, and you know about those. The sprocket and chain are also huge factors, but you never hear about them as long as they work.
Another poster contributed this piece :
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Don Bowen
[B]
The Australian Navy's primary minelayer, HMAS Bungaree, operated out of Sydney 1942-1944 and laid defensive minefields along the N.E. Australian Coast/Barrier Reef area. I can find no reference to her ever having been in New Caledonian waters in the official Australian Navy History.
Bunbaree is not represented in the game (probably should be) and Brisbane could stand-in for Sydney as her base and a second mine-load port.
Don [/B][/QUOTE]
Guess what? This is perfect. There was a mine op center in Sydney, and the Australian Navy laid mines along the NE coast. Who heard of this before? How many mines did they lay? Do you think the Japanese knew about it? I bet they did, and I bet they had that area marked in RED on their navigational maps. Do historians talk about this? No, because Jap subs and ships (if any ventured so far) avoided the area. But, did the Aussies, US, and Japs expend resources on this minefield? You bet they did. The Aussies layed and mapped it, the US mapped it, the Japs probably mapped it, and ALL of these navy's avoided contact with it, and the US Navy probably swept it later on in the war. That's an enormous amount of resources. Does this show up in the history books? No.
BASIC POINTS from all of this and stuff in other threads :
[B]
1. ALLOW moveability and multiple centers for mine-loading and laying operations.
2. MAKE mines really expensive. I've recommended mine loading only at ports of size 4 or greater, only ports with at least 20,000 supplies on hand, and 200 supplies per MINE. This scheme would approximate the historical situation very nicely. Few question that in the current implementation there are WAY TOO MANY mines being layed in deep and shallow water. The solution is to make them costly to represent scarcity due to doctrine and supply, which would make deep water mining really a waste of resources. The player would not be able to lay thousands of mines and would then focus on exigent situations, predictable shipping lanes, just like the commanders did historically. With 200 supplies per mine, you would basically be forced to load mines (especially the Japanese with their gigantic loadout for their minelayers) only at major ports with 40,000+ supplies. You would have to focus first on defenses against subs and then, when you had the resources, be able to lay a few fields offensively. But that will be about it, due to the extreme cost. The solution is not render mineloading as a completely static operation, oblivious to a changing operational situation, and have all kinds of special rules about "secret plans" and so forth.
[/B]
Its really just that simple.
The 200 supplies per mine would have another effect on the game that I think would be positive : it would reduce the general levels of supply for the Japanese, particularly if they concentrated on mine-laying. The Japanese IMHO in the game have far too many supplies. But this is another debate.
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