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Diealtekoenig -> Teamork: To Matrix and 2by3 Games (6/20/2002 1:47:38 AM)

I am not sure this is a practical suggestion at this stage for UV, but you may want to consider it for the upcoming War in the Pacific Game.

In looking up other data relevant for the game I just reread Raizo Tanaka’s account of the effort to supply Guadalcanal “The Struggle for Guadalcanal” in “The Japanese Navy in World War II” David C. Evans Ed Naval Institute Press 1969.

I am struck that we wargamers argue and worry mostly about hardware, where Tanaka places most of the cause for successes and failure on men. (“Men matter Most” to quote Hughes). Tanaka puts a large part of the cause for Japanese defeat on the fact that the ships he was using were not a team practiced at working as a unit. (He only ranks the confused Japanese command structure and their lack of a consistent plan as a greater problem).

In UV I add and subtract ships all the time for trivial reasons (a little more AA protection for this mission, or replace that destroyer that now has 18 system damage with this new one that just arrived at Noumea). Tanaka _regrets_ to some degree the arrival of new ships because they have not worked together before.

Would it be possible to have Fleet and Squadron experience (separate to a degree from ship/captain/pilot experience)? In other words if I have 6 destroyers the fleet experience should be not just a function of the average (or weighted towards the worst) experience of the individual ships but should be very much affected by how many weeks those ships had been in the same fleet. Swapping ships in and out should cause deterioration in fleet performance and I should pay a price for not treating desrons and crudivs as units.

You could assign a “fleet experience” based on averaging the experience of the ships in a fleet (probably weighting the worst ship triple or something like that). But a) boost the experience of all the ships in the game by maybe 10 units and b) get the“fleet experience” by multiplying that weighted average experience of the individual ships by a “practice together coefficient” of maybe 0.70. Then every day the fleet stays together boost the coefficient by 0.01 (so after a week together the coefficient would be 0.77 and after a month it would max out at 1.00).

Why bother? Because the people who actually fought the battles say that was one of the most important determinants of how effective the ships were in combat.



von Murrin -> My thoughts... (6/20/2002 2:34:10 AM)

This is easily one of the best suggestions I've yet seen here , and quite possibly the most difficult to simulate, simply because now you'd be tracking the length of time in a TF for each and every ship. It would also require that the player have access to this information in some way, and that seems as though it would be a bear to code up. I'll leave any further speculation to those wiser than myself. :)



Paul Vebber -> (6/20/2002 2:37:41 AM)

This is actually a VERY insightful idea! The problems of getting a CVBG trained up TOGETHER for a deployment is still a key problem in today's navy!

I just shudder to think of the posts complaining "I added a BB to my crack SAG of 3 CA and 6 destroyers and they did WORSE...what a crock of BS this game is..." :(

Very good idea though...



mogami -> Idea (6/20/2002 2:45:38 AM)

Hi, Just as LCU have a HQ and componet units ship divisions and desrons and so on could have

a. HQ with leader. Can be deployed ashore oronboard ship (flag ship)

b. Window where ships are assigned to parent, then a third stat like exp or missions can be tracked reset whenever ship is transfered to new group (ship would retain it's training only the "teamwork" rating would change. good ships teamed with other good ships would not suffer so much a loss in teamwork rating.

Taskforces rather then being single ships would first be ship groups

example TF 1 mission Aircombat

composed of
From Carrier Div 1 Kaga
From Carrier Div 5 Zuikaku and Shokaku
From BB div 3 Haruna
From CruDiv3 Myoko Mikuma
From Desron 1 etc etc
windows inside the TF display (making those large latewar USN TF with numbers like 73.1 very easy to make. Each sub unit in TF would also have a leader.



von Murrin -> How about both? (6/20/2002 2:57:26 AM)

Good idea Mogami. I wonder how we'd all play if we had to build TF's in a more historical manner for the sake of efficiency? :)



Sabre21 -> (6/20/2002 2:59:40 AM)

I would agree with you on this and that it not only applies to fleets but to ground and air units too. This can be reflected in the experience level of the individual unit or HQ to some degree. Teamwork is always essential for any military unit, just as a crew on board the ship, plane, or soldiers in a platoon work longer together, the more effective they become. Taking this one step higher; as platoons, planes, and ships work together...they become more effective as an integral unit, and if one is replaced by a newby, the overall effectiveness usually goes down.

One thing to note though, the higher the individual experience is of the new replacement would determine the overall loss (or even gain) of the collective experience or effectiveness. The new replacement might have a highly experienced and motivated crew that actually improves the overall effectiveness. For example trading in a Gomer Pyle for Sgt Striker (Sands of Iwo Jima) would make most platoons more effective:)

There are many other things that can influence how the unit reacts to a loss or a newby gain...not just the experince of the losing or gaining unit, but of the effectiveness of the leader and morale of the unit as a whole.

I believe that most if not all of this can be captured in the experience and morale value of the hq unit for ground and air.

As for a fleet, maybe a designation of a Flagship with a fleet value could be added

Andy



Diealtekoenig -> (6/20/2002 3:08:10 AM)

To van Murin:
You could code this by adding 1 field for each ship: Time with current fleet. That field would reset to zero whenever the ship left a fleet/joined a new fleet.

And the players could see that field and know how long the ships had been together. (put it right by "Day Experience" and "Night Experience" and call it "Days with Fleet")

To Vebber:
If any player complains, have him take a ship out in the dark off Tassafaronga and tell him to maneuver at 33 Kts in the dark in torpedo water with with 6 other ships he has never worked with before that night.

That should thin out the ranks of whining complainers.



mogami -> Effects (6/20/2002 3:11:57 AM)

Hi

Ships well trained in "standard" doctrine could work together outside of normal structure better then raw ships.

This is more a matter of the ships captains knowing what to expect from the captains/TF commanders then it is a crew question.

There could be a bonus for ships operating together in their normal group (Divisions/Desron etc) with a TF commander that remains for a period.

TF's rather then being generated whenever you want whereever you want would need to be more permanent things (when disbanded the TF would retain a HQ on shore or numbers would be reserved to fleet HQ with the Divisions etc being assigned a specific fleet. It would still be possible to "mix" but here is where new captains/TF leaders would have a penalty rather then a bonus.

I am still fromulating this so everyone feel free to brainstorm here in the giant Matrix think tank



von Murrin -> (6/20/2002 3:19:07 AM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Diealtekoenig
[B]To van Murin:
You could code this by adding 1 field for each ship: Time with current fleet. That field would reset to zero whenever the ship left a fleet/joined a new fleet.

And the players could see that field and know how long the ships had been together. (put it right by "Day Experience" and "Night Experience" and call it "Days with Fleet")[/B][/QUOTE]

Right, and as a DBA I know that it would be a bitch to get working. :)

How you describe it is precisely how, at first glance, I would do it. The problem here is the fact that introducing an entirely new routine into a program already written is virtually guaranteed to break things, and many things you may not be aware are broken until someone complains. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that we shouldn't necessarily expect to see it even in WitP, depending on how "firm" it is at this point in development. I would [I]like[/I] to have it; I just don't know how possible it would be because I didn't write the code. :)



mogami -> Leadership (6/20/2002 3:29:52 AM)

Hi, This is not a "ship" issue. It is a leader issue.
I think besides just using each leaders ratings There could be
bonus or penality. Then program only need to check

1) How long TF has existed
2.) how long current leader has been in command
3.) How long ship has been part of TF
4) Parent HQ of other ships in TF

Leaders who could command a TF must first be assigned to a Fleet/Div/Desron/etc HQ
If the chain of command is followed then bonus
if broken then penality

The HQ rating that is used for modifiers would only need check how long leaders had been in organazation



FAdmiral -> (6/21/2002 3:57:31 AM)

Does anybody remember how "PTO2" did the experience thing?
They had a system of building experience as long as you kept
the orginal ships & leader in the task force. When anything was
changed, it dropped.

JIM BERG, SR.



Paul Dyer -> (6/21/2002 7:41:06 PM)

Good suggestion.

Also, how about additional penalties when units from different navies are working together. From Java Sea on this always caused difficulties. One of the many problems at Savo Island was that while the allies were at (from memory) readiness condition two, this meant different things to the USN and RN. On another occaision an RNZN vessel was sunk in an air raid near Tulagi because she was listening on the wrong frequency and missed the raid warning. So if hastily assembled USN/IJN task groups suffer penalties, combined groups should suffer doubly so.



TIMJOT -> (6/21/2002 8:43:22 PM)

I think having a teamwork efficiency rating is a great idea. Even know I find myself reluctant to break up groups, even though I know there is no penalty (phsycological or superstitous I guess):D

Maybe a simple way to model this within the present games framework, would to have the TF leader's rating increase the longer his ships stay together. The rating would take a hit everytime you added a new ship. The hit would decrease the longer that new ship stayed with the TF. You could also have a training mission setting for TFs to increase the rating.

I seem to remember reading that the US DDs at 2nd GC did so poorly becuase they were an adhoc group that never had worked together before. Halsey didnt want to send them into action but after 1st GC its all he had left.



Paul Dyer -> (6/21/2002 11:12:10 PM)

[QUOTE]Originally posted by TIMJOT
[B]
I seem to remember reading that the US DDs at 2nd GC did so poorly becuase they were an adhoc group that never had worked together before. Halsey didnt want to send them into action but after 1st GC its all he had left. [/B][/QUOTE] Thats right. Halsey selected the 4 DDs only because they were the four with the most fuel at the time. The results reflected this.



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