Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Since modern ASW has been mentioned thought I'd give a quick synopsis on the difference between modern and WWII style ASW in case some aren't familiar with it.

World War 2 you practically have to be on top of the sub to engage it...your greatest range was going to be a mortar, hedgehog or DCT so all contacts were prosecuted within 1 nm or so of the attacking ship...or if you are lucky you have an aircraft close enough to try and attack the sub.

In a modern ASW engagement, you can have a DDG, FFG or CG that has up to 3 CZ passive sonar capability (CZ = Convergence Zone) and usually carries one or two helicoptors on board with hangar facilities to service them. The initial contact can be made up to 100 nm from the ship with passive sonar. Once you make the contact, you usually launch a helicoptor or two, a land base ASW aircraft or a stand-off rocket thrown torpedo to engage it. If you have a good lock, and it is in range, the rocket thrown torpedo is the best choice because it arrives quickly, and it can not be easily detected by a submerged sub until splashdown. Second best choice is the Helicoptor and the next best choice is the land based ASW aircraft...they can localize and attack once they have a search area. The sub isn't helpless though, they do have countermeasures (noisemakers) to try and spoof the torpedoes seeker.

Basically there is no comparison between the two. In a modern ASW combat, the 'attacking' ship may never be in harms way, its aircraft or rocket thrown torpedoes allow it to engage from beyond the sub's torpedo range.

The closest thing to WWII in the modern environment would be Cold War Era Russian or Chinese coastal patrol boats...they are basically just glorified subchasers and pretty much fight WWII style, though with better weapons (active homing torpedoes and anti-submarine rockets).

quote:

ORIGINAL: JWE

ASW “rating” is nothing more than the number of launchers. Yes, 14 is bigger than 11. But 30 AA is also bigger than 15 AA. But when the 30 is 7.7mm machine guns and the 15 is 40mm Bofors??? Same with ASW. "Rating" is a good thing to look at (within a Nationality) to see what's the better escort for a convoy. Japan 14 is better than Japan 11, and so on. But it is rather misplaced to compare Japan 14 to Allied 11.

Japanese DCs are less capable than Allied DCs – a data thing (see, e.g., DaBabes). As to hydrophones, asdic, sonar, doctrine, whatever, the effects of these things are modeled in code. Allied ASW “capability” grows significantly on a regular basis, with respect to Japan. Increased “capability” includes % chance to detect, % chance to engage, % chance to hit, and with a whopping better weapon.

14 (or even 30) pea shooters don’t cut it against 11 Browning pump 12-gagues.

And all the leader and experience stats are overlayed on top of all this.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

The biggest difference to me is that most IJ players HAVE as ASW strategy.  The IJ weapons weren't much different, it's just in IRL the IJ did not use them appropriately until late war.  The allies had been on the receving end since '39 and were serious about ASW from day one of the pacific war.

So, yes, you won't get historical results in the game because the players are not limited to historical strategies and tactics and you thus get ahistorical outcomes.  BTW, very few games have the IJ lose 4 carriers on June 4-6th 1942 nor do many players send the Aussie/Brit reinforcement units on into Singers.  Capice?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


[ IJN crews had no fuel to train, they were scraping the barrel for men, their maintenance was horrible, their electronics worse.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


[ IJN crews had no fuel to train, they were scraping the barrel for men, their maintenance was horrible, their electronics worse.

Thank you for providing such good support to my statements.

A player can address 3 of your 4 listed variables, the code adapts for the 4th, and so should expect to change the results. Look at C&G's or PzB's AAR. Their situation in no way resembles the historical results. In both cases his forces are largely intact, the allies are at bay, and he has been sucking the life out of the DEI for +18 months.

It would be fair to say that a good many things would be FAR better under those circumstances for IJ than what was actually experienced. Training, manpower, and fuel for example.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

A player can address 3 of your 4 listed variables, the code adapts for the 4th, and so should expect to change the results.

Also simply more assets dedicated to ASW.

At least, this is how I see it IMHO.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


[ IJN crews had no fuel to train, they were scraping the barrel for men, their maintenance was horrible, their electronics worse.

Thank you for providing such good support to my statements.

A player can address 3 of your 4 listed variables, the code adapts for the 4th, and so should expect to change the results. Look at C&G's or PzB's AAR. Their situation in no way resembles the historical results. In both cases his forces are largely intact, the allies are at bay, and he has been sucking the life out of the DEI for +18 months.

It would be fair to say that a good many things would be FAR better under those circumstances for IJ than what was actually experienced. Training, manpower, and fuel for example.

My point is, using the historical reference (which is our best reference) you still need to address the events that led to it in a simulation such as AE. As has been pointed out numerous times 4-6 June 42 was pivotal. IF you beleive that (as I do), then you also have to accept that IF it does not happen, then a great number of things will not follow the historical result. If poor ASW was due to lack of training and fuel (which I agree with), and Midway events precipitated that, you then have to conjecture what would have been the outcomes. I beleive that Gary and the dev team have done just that. The allies have almost a 50% advantage in ASW based upon what is above. IMO, that is not a small difference. In fact, as was also presented above, you could make a strong case that the gap should not be so large. Electronics (sonar) in the 40's wasn't that much of a difference maker. ASW was still a "knife" fight, fought at close range. Training and the bigger boom made more difference. Also simply more assets dedicated to ASW.

At least, this is how I see it IMHO.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

quote:

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


[ IJN crews had no fuel to train, they were scraping the barrel for men, their maintenance was horrible, their electronics worse.

Thank you for providing such good support to my statements.

A player can address 3 of your 4 listed variables, the code adapts for the 4th, and so should expect to change the results. Look at C&G's or PzB's AAR. Their situation in no way resembles the historical results. In both cases his forces are largely intact, the allies are at bay, and he has been sucking the life out of the DEI for +18 months.

It would be fair to say that a good many things would be FAR better under those circumstances for IJ than what was actually experienced. Training, manpower, and fuel for example.

My point is, using the historical reference (which is our best reference) you still need to address the events that led to it in a simulation such as AE. As has been pointed out numerous times 4-6 June 42 was pivotal. IF you beleive that (as I do), then you also have to accept that IF it does not happen, then a great number of things will not follow the historical result. If poor ASW was due to lack of training and fuel (which I agree with), and Midway events precipitated that, you then have to conjecture what would have been the outcomes. I beleive that Gary and the dev team have done just that. The allies have almost a 50% advantage in ASW based upon what is above. IMO, that is not a small difference. In fact, as was also presented above, you could make a strong case that the gap should not be so large. Electronics (sonar) in the 40's wasn't that much of a difference maker. ASW was still a "knife" fight, fought at close range. Training and the bigger boom made more difference. Also simply more assets dedicated to ASW.

At least, this is how I see it IMHO.

My comment last night was inartful. Let me try to do better.

I agree that players can get the IJN ahistoric levels of fuel, etc. What I disagree with, or perhaps just am side-arguing, is that nothing the Japanese player can do in the game really can affect the ASW encounter at sea. Yes, they can set up ahistorical ASW hunter-killer groups and patrol in ways they couldn't/didn't do in RL. They can divert shipyard repair points to keep ASW assets at sea when the Japanese economy didn't do that in RL. Fine.

But at the point of the tactical engagement the player has no control. AE is not a tactical game. You simply put an ASW-capable asset in a 40-mile hex with an enemy submarine and stand back. EVERYTHING important to the outcome at that point is not under the player's control. Sensors, weapons effects, crew response, ASW group formation discipline, weather effects, attack interim damage, etc., etc., etc. are all abstracted in the code. And it's those variables--not fuel and shipyards--that would determine outcomes in RL. And the player, despite your earlier assertion which I was reacting to, can't control them. So, the results both I and Mike have seen, while wildly ahistorical, are also not the result of bad play. They're in the code. Enter-the-hex-and-go-get-a-beer time. They aren't because Japanese players benefit from earlier ahistorical events a la Midway. They're because the ASW ratings built into the code and OOB, as JWE expalined, are a sledge-hammer and not a scalpel. More launchers and ammo equals more hits, even if each IJN hit is less damaging than a USN hit because the Type 2 DC is less powerful. That ASW rating rules the roost. And in RL the number of launchers was not even in the top 5 variables leading to attack success or failure. But that's the way the code works. OK, fine, I get it. I accept. At least I know that the 1944-45 ASW war will resemble nothing I know from history no matter what I, as the Allied player, do, or can do. (Outside play in the editor.)

Finally, on the issue of sensors, I disagree with your assertion that they were a minor element. Yes, WWII ASW weapons made ASW a close-in fight. That does not mean that sensors were not determinative. Certainly the Battle of the Atlantic disproved that. Most of the time the first knowledge an IJN escort had that a sub was near was a merchant exploding. Sensor equals Mark I eyeball at that point. For the next few minutes, the ASW commander had a datum that a sub was somewhere inside a circle centered on the target of about 4000 yards' diameter. If it was night, he was pretty sure the sub was surfaced; in daylight he knew. After that sensors come into play. WWII ASW weapons had a PK of tens of yards. (The Hedgehog, if the sub was attacked athwartships, only about 6 yards.) A submerged sub moving at three knots (6000 yds per hour), can increase that circle of uncertaintly rapidly in an hour. A surfaced sub, running at flank, can increase it by 40,000 yards in that same hour. If the escort is not already at battlestations, or is out of position in the formation, the only way the ASW commander has a chance to engage (a very poor chance perhaps if the geometry and his speed advantage are bad) is by having excellent sensors and well-trained operators feeding information to a tracking team in CIC or the bridge, and that team making tactical recommendations to the ASW commander. If any link in that chain fails, the sub gets away without prosecution.

The game, as I conceeeded above, doesn't overtly model any of that. It gives an ASW TF a pretty good chance to detect a sub in a huge, 40-mile hex, a lot of the time. (To be fair, the Allies get this bennie too.) Airborne ASW helps, yes, but again, the plane offers a single datum; the sub displaces a LONG way before the surface assets can arrive. In open ocean, where many of my and Mike's losses occured, there simply isn't any RL way for the prosecutions we saw to have occured. The game is just built that way, however. But, I will say, that despite the Allies' ASW advantages built into the code which get better over time, I've never sunk three IJN subs in a week. I'm just sayin'.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
<snip>
They're because the ASW ratings built into the code and OOB, as JWE expalined, are a sledge-hammer and not a scalpel. More launchers and ammo equals more hits, even if each IJN hit is less damaging than a USN hit because the Type 2 DC is less powerful. That ASW rating rules the roost. And in RL the number of launchers was not even in the top 5 variables leading to attack success or failure. But that's the way the code works. OK, fine, I get it. I accept. At least I know that the 1944-45 ASW war will resemble nothing I know from history no matter what I, as the Allied player, do, or can do. (Outside play in the editor.)
<snip>

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shark7

And just to add an honest opinion here, its at the tactical level the limits should come in. No player should be penalized by forcing them into making the same poor strategic decisions the Allies or Japanese made in the war. The player should have full strategic control and act accordingly, however, you should still be limited by game mechanics in the actual number crunching of carrying out your strategies (the tactical level). Because honestly what is the point of playing if you can't do anything different than history...might as well just watch news reels.

Basically what I am saying is even if I choose to form up 100 hunter-killer ASW groups, when the turn plays out, every contact should not have an attack, every attack should not have a hit, and every enemy sub should not be contacted. That is all inner workings stuff and the player should have little control over it beyond forming a good strategy to try to over-come the weaknesses.

quote:

ORIGINAL: JWE

Perhaps I was not as clear as I thought, either. All true, a sledge-hammer, but ASW ‘rating’ does NOT rule the roost. That would be a Negatory. It is one of many things that contribute numbers to the calculations, but other contributors have much greater impact in their respective areas. Things might seem like a black box because yes the game is not tactical, but there is a high degree of internal differentiation, in both the data inputs and calculations performed on them, for the ASW combat more. It really is viewed as a phase flow including detection, acquisition, prosecution, and damage.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

... I'm a sub fan; I think that has come through in all my AE posts back to the beginning.


... I'm just a sub war geek.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

quote:

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58


[ IJN crews had no fuel to train, they were scraping the barrel for men, their maintenance was horrible, their electronics worse.

Thank you for providing such good support to my statements.

A player can address 3 of your 4 listed variables, the code adapts for the 4th, and so should expect to change the results. Look at C&G's or PzB's AAR. Their situation in no way resembles the historical results. In both cases his forces are largely intact, the allies are at bay, and he has been sucking the life out of the DEI for +18 months.

It would be fair to say that a good many things would be FAR better under those circumstances for IJ than what was actually experienced. Training, manpower, and fuel for example.

My point is, using the historical reference (which is our best reference) you still need to address the events that led to it in a simulation such as AE. As has been pointed out numerous times 4-6 June 42 was pivotal. IF you beleive that (as I do), then you also have to accept that IF it does not happen, then a great number of things will not follow the historical result. If poor ASW was due to lack of training and fuel (which I agree with), and Midway events precipitated that, you then have to conjecture what would have been the outcomes. I beleive that Gary and the dev team have done just that. The allies have almost a 50% advantage in ASW based upon what is above. IMO, that is not a small difference. In fact, as was also presented above, you could make a strong case that the gap should not be so large. Electronics (sonar) in the 40's wasn't that much of a difference maker. ASW was still a "knife" fight, fought at close range. Training and the bigger boom made more difference. Also simply more assets dedicated to ASW.

At least, this is how I see it IMHO.

My comment last night was inartful. Let me try to do better.

I agree that players can get the IJN ahistoric levels of fuel, etc. What I disagree with, or perhaps just am side-arguing, is that nothing the Japanese player can do in the game really can affect the ASW encounter at sea. Yes, they can set up ahistorical ASW hunter-killer groups and patrol in ways they couldn't/didn't do in RL. They can divert shipyard repair points to keep ASW assets at sea when the Japanese economy didn't do that in RL. Fine.

But at the point of the tactical engagement the player has no control. AE is not a tactical game. You simply put an ASW-capable asset in a 40-mile hex with an enemy submarine and stand back. EVERYTHING important to the outcome at that point is not under the player's control. Sensors, weapons effects, crew response, ASW group formation discipline, weather effects, attack interim damage, etc., etc., etc. are all abstracted in the code. And it's those variables--not fuel and shipyards--that would determine outcomes in RL. And the player, despite your earlier assertion which I was reacting to, can't control them. So, the results both I and Mike have seen, while wildly ahistorical, are also not the result of bad play. They're in the code. Enter-the-hex-and-go-get-a-beer time. They aren't because Japanese players benefit from earlier ahistorical events a la Midway. They're because the ASW ratings built into the code and OOB, as JWE expalined, are a sledge-hammer and not a scalpel. More launchers and ammo equals more hits, even if each IJN hit is less damaging than a USN hit because the Type 2 DC is less powerful. That ASW rating rules the roost. And in RL the number of launchers was not even in the top 5 variables leading to attack success or failure. But that's the way the code works. OK, fine, I get it. I accept. At least I know that the 1944-45 ASW war will resemble nothing I know from history no matter what I, as the Allied player, do, or can do. (Outside play in the editor.)

Finally, on the issue of sensors, I disagree with your assertion that they were a minor element. Yes, WWII ASW weapons made ASW a close-in fight. That does not mean that sensors were not determinative. Certainly the Battle of the Atlantic disproved that. Most of the time the first knowledge an IJN escort had that a sub was near was a merchant exploding. Sensor equals Mark I eyeball at that point. For the next few minutes, the ASW commander had a datum that a sub was somewhere inside a circle centered on the target of about 4000 yards' diameter. If it was night, he was pretty sure the sub was surfaced; in daylight he knew. After that sensors come into play. WWII ASW weapons had a PK of tens of yards. (The Hedgehog, if the sub was attacked athwartships, only about 6 yards.) A submerged sub moving at three knots (6000 yds per hour), can increase that circle of uncertaintly rapidly in an hour. A surfaced sub, running at flank, can increase it by 40,000 yards in that same hour. If the escort is not already at battlestations, or is out of position in the formation, the only way the ASW commander has a chance to engage (a very poor chance perhaps if the geometry and his speed advantage are bad) is by having excellent sensors and well-trained operators feeding information to a tracking team in CIC or the bridge, and that team making tactical recommendations to the ASW commander. If any link in that chain fails, the sub gets away without prosecution.

The game, as I conceeeded above, doesn't overtly model any of that. It gives an ASW TF a pretty good chance to detect a sub in a huge, 40-mile hex, a lot of the time. (To be fair, the Allies get this bennie too.) Airborne ASW helps, yes, but again, the plane offers a single datum; the sub displaces a LONG way before the surface assets can arrive. In open ocean, where many of my and Mike's losses occured, there simply isn't any RL way for the prosecutions we saw to have occured. The game is just built that way, however. But, I will say, that despite the Allies' ASW advantages built into the code which get better over time, I've never sunk three IJN subs in a week. I'm just sayin'.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

Good to know more of the math, JWE. For my current game I suspected something along those lines re the ratings, so I edged the Type 2 DC down a bit on Accuracy, to an 8. I probably should have toned down the E's launcher count instead. Next time I will, and leave the DDs' Type 2s alone.

You probably would like, as much as any of us, to get into the sensor code and re-model it to make it the huge game-changer it really was and is. I know, from forums for past sub games by Sonalysts, that sonar modeling is a math Everest, and radar not much different. If ever there's a WITP2 I hope that can be funded in the design specs.

Thanks for the knowledge.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Another factor that is not "appreciated" in the game: Allied HuffDuff, which could automatically locate the bearing of high frequency radio transmissions within seconds... this was shipborne from 1942 on in Allied ships and gave a great advantage in ASW (and other operations).

AFAIK, the Japanese did not have this generally available on ships... aside from possibly the "efficiency" factor in ASW, the game does not seem to model this, i.e., by ignoring this, the IJN and Allied ASW efforts are made more on par with each other (which was NOT the case in actual events) which would tend to magnify the IJN relative ASW strength.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Alfred

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

... I'm a sub fan; I think that has come through in all my AE posts back to the beginning.


... I'm just a sub war geek.

With those antlers of your's providing an inbuilt snorkel as early as 7 December 1941, of course you would be a sub fan. OTOH, they would stick up above the parapet/trench making you a target for snipers on land.

Alfred

quote:

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

You really should use tracker to see....

I know some CMs, DDs and DMS convert to E type boats but the best ones are build later in the war.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso
To add a bit more to the debate: according to the "US Submarine Design" series, USN fleet boats were ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE quieter than I-boats, and at least an order of magnitude quieter than the quietest U-boats... (i didn't see comparisons to British boats...)

This alone gave the USN a tremendous advantage in sub warfare (including sub vs sub, i would think).

As this fact isn't widely appreciated, i am pretty sure it is not in the WITP game design.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

Another factor that is not "appreciated" in the game: Allied HuffDuff, which could automatically locate the bearing of high frequency radio transmissions within seconds... this was shipborne from 1942 on in Allied ships and gave a great advantage in ASW (and other operations).

AFAIK, the Japanese did not have this generally available on ships... aside from possibly the "efficiency" factor in ASW, the game does not seem to model this, i.e., by ignoring this, the IJN and Allied ASW efforts are made more on par with each other (which was NOT the case in actual events) which would tend to magnify the IJN relative ASW strength.

quote:

So yes, factors are “appreciated” in the game. But no, those factors are not expressly modeled; except in so far as they are held in the mind of the designer. You would not believe the background math that was passed back and forth during the development activity.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

quote:

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso
To add a bit more to the debate: according to the "US Submarine Design" series, USN fleet boats were ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE quieter than I-boats, and at least an order of magnitude quieter than the quietest U-boats... (i didn't see comparisons to British boats...)

This alone gave the USN a tremendous advantage in sub warfare (including sub vs sub, i would think).

As this fact isn't widely appreciated, i am pretty sure it is not in the WITP game design.

I know from RL experience that quiet ops are a factor--95%+--of three things. Good initial design and builder QA, good maintenance practices, and crew training and discipline. Take the best design, but have the crew paint sound mounts to make them stiff, or drop tools while at silent running, and it all goes out the window. In modern sonar world we call ooppsies "transients." They are precious to opposing sonar operators. No narrow-band analysis needed. Drop a wrench in the bilge and you're toast.

WWII USN crews drilled and drilled on silent running. It wasn't just the title of a great novel.