Michael the Pole
Posts: 680
Joined: 10/30/2004
From: Houston, Texas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cpdeyoung
Michael,
I cannot help but think that with the wide ocean naval zones the system models the reality pretty well. Crete was a real lesson to the Royal Navy and they did not expose their forces thus again. Dunkirk was a very special case and even 11 destroyers represents one or two, maybe three HP in the current system. Any more serious results would take the system way beyond the real situation on the high seas. We have gone over this before, but German "naval" air was not very effective against warships. In narrow seas, with no room to run, and very slow moving, or stationary targets it could get hits, but not out in fleet formation on the high seas. The remote blockade that is represented by the cruisers shadowing Bismarck is very different from the seas off Brest where she wanted to get.
I respect your opinion, but I think the table you want is only approriate when you are in littoral waters. With Gary asking for the AI to be withdrawing from the current heavy damage inflicted by current tables I think we would be in big trouble with your change.
I think the currrent system plays well. When I saw the damage the Axis was doing with air to my multi nation Allied fleets I withdrew, and this is just the reaction you want, and is historically acurate.
I think you have won this battle already with the air changes we have. Any more would be too much, in my opinion.
Chuck
Chuck
First, thank you for the respect of actually dealing with my arguement, rather than accusing me of threatening you, as Anraz did.
I'm afraid that I don't agree with your analysis. By my count (and it is difficult to come to a solid conclusion, esp. concerning the Royal Navy, since so much of it is considered to be off map) some counters do consist of a flotilla leader (usually a cruiser or light cruiser) and somewhere between 1 and 6 escorts (destroyers.) This is not uniformly true -- the Poles (and most of the smaller navies) destroyers get their own counters and sometimes they were deployed all by themselves as single ships. But lets go with the proposition that most counters represent five or six ships. I agree that Dunkirk was unusual in that most of the ships sunk were in close, and some (not all) were not manuvering. I think that this only strengthens my arguement for the proposed coastal sea zones. But have you ever seen the game destroy two or three ship counters in a single turn? I know that I haven't. That aside, Crete was certainly not a case of either lack of manuvering room or not manuvering at all. The only sense were this question comes up is when you order your ships into an area where the other side has air superiority.
This kind of choice is certainly, and solely, the conscious choice of the owning player. However, when you do make that choice, the consequences should be dire. I have a statement by Churchill himself here somewhere (I believe that its in "Finest Hour" during his discussion of running the first armored regiment reinforcement to Egypt in September, 1940) that taking ships into such an area is "grave."
The bottom line is, are we able to replicate the same levels of damage that were common historicaly? The answer is clearly, no! The only sense that manuverability was limited at Crete was that the Med Fleet was unable to escape from under the Axis air umbrella before first light. I can give you many, many examples of this from the Pacific War as well, but here's just one. Repulse and Prince of Wales had all the sea room to manuver that anyone could ask for. In fact, one of the reasons that Admiral Phillips took his ships where he did is because, "he thought that Japanese forces could not operate so far from land." After recieving attacks over the course of a single day from aprox. 100 Japanese aircraft,both ships sank. In game turns, two battleships sunk in a single turn by a single aircraft unit.
Chuck, honestly, have you ever seen anything in the game that comes even close to this level of damage? I know that I haven't. This preformance was seen over and over and over during the war. Have you ever seen three cruiser counters destroyed in a single turn, as at Crete? I know that I haven't. How about what happened to the Japanese fleets who moved under American air cover at Leyte Gulf?
The lesson to be drawn from this is that unopposed airforces could sink darn near anything in a week. And yet in the game, we see example after example of fleets remaining on station under heavy air attack for month after month, suffering one or two hit points of damage per turn and sailing placidly along, while presumably improving their tans!
And this, after all, is the crux of Gary's arguement about the AI. The AI is leaving ships under air attack -- AND THEY ARE NOT BEING SUNK! IF they WERE being sunk, there wouldn't be an issue of the AI leaving them there, week after week, as we have all seen the French or English do in the North Sea or the Med.
< Message edited by Michael the Pole -- 10/12/2009 12:24:30 PM >
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