Alfred
Posts: 6685
Joined: 9/28/2006 Status: offline
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ORIGINAL: Hghx-0 Playing WiTP AE quite a lot and got some questions that i am not sure how they work/don't understand why are they made the way they are made 1. Port attack and torpedoes: Why may not they be used? IJN used some special torpedoes for PH attack that were able to function in shallow waters. Torpedoes are extremely effective, they cause flooding and are able to sink any ship much faster than any bombs. it's really disappointing they can't be used in ports. Care to nominate the real world instances of aircraft dropping torpedoes on docked ships? This was an extremely rare occurrence in WWII. For very sound military reasons. From a coding POV it does not make sense to devote resources to unrealistic operations. As it is, if the player selects the Historical 7 Dec strike, the first turn is hard coded for both players. Doing so captures the PTO sui generis operation without having to code in all the relevant factors which would then need to be taken into account for every port for all 1634 game turns. Both the coding and hardware requirements would be immense and the game would be no better for it. To give just one example of the pointless effort which would be involved is how would one differentiate a shallow depth port from the very deep water found once off the continental shelf, usually located well within the 40 nautical miles of a game hex.[/I] 2. Naval search, port spotting and overall recon: I don't understand why a plane performing naval search that crosses a base do not gain DL on it, why can't the pilots detect ships in port at least? Isn't it supposed to be thier work to spot ships? It goes far more problematic, because you can hide a whole carrier fleet in a DOT base (there is not limit, so you can hide every US ship in a small 0 (zero) level port). You can avoid the combat by just disbanding the task force and if the enemy does't know about you he will never find your ships, nobody can ever recon every base. Recon is a point to point exercise. Naval Search is an area exercise. You want info on a base, you use a recon mission. Naval Search avoids directly overflying a base. This is consistent with real world historical praxis which took into account the flying characteristics of aircraft models. Flying directly over enemy bases required fast, high altitude aircraft who had sufficient endurance to get rapidly from point A to point B and back, were able to outrun armed enemy fighters and could avoid most enemy flak. Searching for an enemy fleet instead required a relatively slow aircraft, able to remain airborne for many hours as it scanned the horizon using primarily the Mark I eyeball (for wakes, oil slicks), and if possible some ordnance to drop as opportunity presented itself against single ship enemy "fleets". In short, the game has abstracted recon and naval search operations to be consistent with historical praxis. Far too much coding effort for zero practical gain would result from attempting to reduce the abstraction.[/I] 3. Training while flying primary mission, patrol levels: When flying a primary mission you can't focus the training set in patrol levels on something else than the mission itself. So for example executing naval attacks you can't train a 30% of your pilots to better ground attack. It's a minor issue, but still would be great.. I can't think of too many real world exemplars of squadrons undertaking training not relevant for their current (or prospective) deployment. Why would you expect the game, which attempts to reflect real world historical parameters, not be consistent with real world praxis? You want those pilots to improve their skills in other non relevant (to their current duties) areas, pull the squadron off frontline duties to undertake training. As it is the game already fudges reality here by not requiring pilots to undertake training when the squadron changes to another aircraft model of the same game type definition. 4. Excluding a certain base from squadron flying list. When playing Japan i think that nobody ever flies to bomb Singapoore, because it's uneffective and the AA cuts out the whole raid, you should either stop flying or set a range that is smaller than that to Singapoore, as a result aircraft can't intercept most of the fleeing ships. Now, using some small PT boats you can trigger the aircraft to fly and being absolutely destroyed by CAP/AA fire/fatigue. To have "DO NOT fly without being escorted" button and "Restricted bases list" is essential, especially for the IJ side, where you get 30-60 trained on-map pilots per specialization per 3 month of training and each KIA/MIA Navy pilot is a local tragedy. There are no waypoints for aerial operations. To have that capability would require a multi year rewrite of the air module and require players to undertake a dramatic hardware upgrade. Without waypoints it is simply too difficult to code base exclusions as then the issue of interception from other enemy airfields (to name only one) could not be sidestepped. Here is a hint. Actually try to bomb Singapore. Good Japanese players do so. In fact doing so is essential if Singapore is to be captured on or before the historical date of its surrender. Maybe those players know what they are doing and use the appropriate tools to get acceptable results. Here is another hint, read up on what historically happened. Historically Allied ships were able to ingress and egress Singapore for a far longer period than is commonly possible against a human Japanese player.[/I] 5. Defined load level. Now player can't load a certain amount of supplies/fuel, he is limited by maximum of cargo capacity and port level. When having a shortage it's really important to share the limited amount of supplies rationally. It also applies to refuel/rearm, according to plan some ships the player may not want to replenish, for example, the ones that spent too much fuel and refueling them will slow down the whole TF. Care to provide the appropriate set of algorithms to implement this? Or you could just play the game as it is where this is not a problem. Overland logistics are quite adequately dealt with by the existing algorithms. Players who have problems here usually reap the consequences of interfering with the automatic routines whilst having no idea of what they are doing. Nor is their intervention usually required in the first place. Islands require a bit more player intervention but nothing out of the ordinary provided proper advance logistical planning is applied. There is a myriad range of merchantmen, with widely diverging cargo capacities, available. It is the player's responsibility to utilise the right tools to get the job done.[/I] 6. Sigint. Does this thing work? I always get messages about 10, 9, 5, 2.. ships.. near Truk?.. Tokyo?.. Where i have a lot of long ranged patrols?.. Can somebody please explain how does this type of intelligence gathering work? Is it any precise? Yes it works. You are playing a game which attempts to reproduce the historical factors. Japanese intel gathering capabilities was very poor compared to Allied intel gathering capabilities. The initial Japanese operations were aided greatly by intel gathered over many years by spies before 1941. Subsequent operations were almost entirely conducted in the dark regarding Allied rear area dispositions and intentions. 7. Reaction of surface TF Do they? In which cases? I haven't ever seen. Only combat TFs are eligible for reaction. The naval reaction algorithm has the following checks: (a) detection levels (b) relative strength of both reactor and reactee TF (c) relative speed of both reactor and reactee TF (d) where reaction entails moving into dangerous waters (eg shallow water, under enemy air cover), the aggressiveness rating of the TF commander (e) ammo and fuel levels (f) hex characteristics (deep water being preferred) (g) damage and ops points levels of ships in the TF (h) range to enemy TF (i) in the case of a CV TF, the number of operational aircraft on board (j) in the case of a CV TF, the number of remaining aircraft sorties (k) known enemy minefields (l) in the case of a sub TF, a naval reaction will not occur into a medium or large sized port (m) and the ever present Grigsby random Naval reactions do occur but their occurrence is subject to meeting the above conditions. A Surface Combat TF might be in position to react but if doing so would result in it entering a known enemy minefield, it won't. Similarly a timid leader will not pursue the enemy into enemy dominated airspace. All this is consistent with real life praxis. I have some more questions, but i think that this is enough for now, would be grateful if somebody would help me to understand these things Alfred
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