Salvage (Full Version)

All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition



Message

PetrOs -> Salvage (7/4/2014 9:07:31 AM)

Just a small wish, which I already used to express back in UV and WitP forums many, many years ago

Why there is no ship salvage?
In reality, both sides lost many ships to different causes, and many were salvaged in the end, and put back to operation. Just think about all those US BBs in Pearl Harbour, all of them were actually sunk, but raised later. Even Oklahoma was raised, but with her old type steam engines and most extensive damage it was decided not to restore her, even if it was well possible. Also countless merchants were raised and repaired, as were many ex-allied small warships, raised, repaired and put to service as escorts (Stewart PB-102, ex DD, etc).

I'd really wish to have a possibility to be able to survey a port hex, and select a ship to be raised and repaired. That should not come without a cost, should take supplies and maybe some TF/ship in port blocked from other operations for the salvage time... Allies should probably be limited to own ships only, while japs should be able to lift also damaged allied ships up to destroyer or so, rearming them in process (3"+ guns replaced by jap 3"/8cm AA, 20-40 mm guns by 25mm AA guns, MGs by japanese 13.2 mm MGs, removing TTs, and replacing DC racks with jap ones is what was done in reality, warship speed capped to some 20 knots as they just got enough engine repairs to act as escorts, remaining boilers/engines used as spares)... all merchants/landing ships/tankers keeping their designation (maybe removing attack properties from APA/AKA->AP/AK). Minesweeping types probably keeping their types, all other warship/fast aux (AVD, AVP...) types -> to PC or E

The process I imagined would be to have enough supply (1000 tons per durability point of target? Maybe different for ex-friendly, and ex-enemy) in that harbor, an AR ship in port. Then, that AR should be able to select "salvage sunken ship", select a ship, see an estimate (raising a smaller merchant or a small warship a few weeks, a large liner or tanker a month or two). AR is then blocked and is not usable for other duties. It can abandon raising to be able to escape, but the supply used so far is lost, and salvage must be restarted... The salvaged ship could then appear in damaged condition in harbor, like 50/20/90/0 damage.



Terminus -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 9:35:01 AM)

Suspect this would not be as small a wish as you'd think.



oldman45 -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 11:25:55 AM)

I have a feeling that would be quite a few lines of code to put that in not to mention it might impact the repair codes already in place.



obvert -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 12:51:09 PM)

What you're asking is essentially abstracted in game already. If your BBs get hit by 5 TT in Pearl and have 80 float damage they're as good as on the bottom. It takes as long as it did to salvage them in reality to just repair them in game. Any ship hit hard in a port is much more likely to survive, and if so it's kind of like being salvaged.

A lot of ships were lost in port and not salvaged during the war as well, and I'm thinking the number that were brought back to the surface was not too many. There are the BBs at Pearl, there are a few i the DEI the Japanese brought tup and used. Which others are you thinking of?



Tokyo Boy -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 1:56:25 PM)

I remember that the uss Squalus sunk during her test dive and then she was used again as the sailfish.

So we can also consider ships sunk in shallow waters as a possible candidate for salvage

But I think this is not a big deal, the time need to make it again combat ready , the unit is updated.
no ?






PetrOs -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 2:19:13 PM)

Quite a large number of japanese merchants, transports and tankers were mined/torpedoed/otherwise sunk in DEI, Philippines, etc. Beached and abandoned, they were picked up later. I cant get the names out of my head, but was quite common. Also, significant number of smaller escorts and cargo/tankers were found in both Manila Bay, DEI, Hong Kong, raised and repaired.
Take a look at TROMs at Combinedfleet.com site

Just a few:
Kachidoki Maru, ex President Harrison. Scuttled, ran aground, sunk on rocks near Shanghai in first hours of war. Raised feb.42, active somewhere mid 42.
Honan Maru, ex War Sirdar. Got on a reef, Abandoned after bad air damage, sunken on the reefs near Tjilatjap. Raised, operational by June 42
Arare Maru, ex dutch Paula - Scuttled Tjilatjap, sunk. Raised, put to service.
PB-101, ex Thracian. Badly damaged by jap aircraft at HK, ran aground to avoid sinking, abandoned derelict. Raised 10 july 42, operational by november.
PB-102, ex USS Stewart. Sunk together with dock, raised, repaired
PB-103, ex USS Finch. Sunk by bomb near miss 3 miles off Corregidor, raised, operational April 43
and many more allied...
Arabato Maru, ex Dutch Albatros. Scuttled at Surabaya. Raised, used as a Salvage Tug. Salvages rescue ship Yusho maru in 44 (May-July 44).
Horei Maru, ex Dutch Poolster. Scuttled as Blockship at Tjilatjap. Also salvage tug use.
Gunboat Fushimi. Sunk in Yangtze near Anking by chinese aircraft. Refloated, towed to Shanghai.
Submarine I-33. Sunk due to crew error at Truk. Salvaged. Refloated. Repaired, and sunk by crew error once more during acceptance trials!
Kaibokan CD-2 - driven on a reef by typhoon at Belier Island port. Abandoned. Refloated, repaired.
Nagisan Maru - torpedoed, beached, sunk. refloated, repaired.
CD-50 - hit by sub torp, loses 8 meters of its stern. Beached. Raised some weeks later. Not repaired completely due to war end...

Its really just a small 15 min look through the TROMs....





PetrOs -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 2:30:24 PM)

Coastal hexes are also candidates, but I cant think of how to make it in game...

Also, just for some other examples
Battleship Marat. Hit by Stukas in 42, magazine explosion. Sunk in harbor. Raised, repaired adequately to fire 3 remaining 12" turrets on the coast.
2 QE class battleships in Alexandria. Sunk by italian Maiale guys, firm on the bottom (i.E. sunk). Raised, repaired.
Italian BBs at Taranto. 3 sunk, being firm on the bottom with no bouyancy. Raised, 2 repaired, one incomplete due to italian surrender but nearly done repairs.
Many italian ships were sunk in harbours by US bombers, raised and used in 43-44.
Soviet Gunboat Krasnaya Zvezda. Sunk by finnish MTBs at forward base pier, in part due to criminal neglect of patrolling MGB's crew (entire crew of harbour guard MGB was playing cards or watching the others, missing 5 finnish MTBs passing just a few hundred meters off...). Raised, modernized and used.

For minor ships, my greatgrandfather's uncle (soviet sub commander in Baltics) recalled that their submarine flotilla's tender in 45 was a finnish tug which was sunk by the bombers and raised later.



Terminus -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 3:44:46 PM)

You don't have to copy-paste all those ships, we all know how many times this happened. It's not as easy to add this sort of stuff as you seem to think.



mind_messing -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 6:22:05 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Terminus

You don't have to copy-paste all those ships, we all know how many times this happened. It's not as easy to add this sort of stuff as you seem to think.



Wasn't there a feature in the original WITP that added ships to the Allied ship arrival cue based upon what ships had been sunk?



Don Bowen -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 8:55:37 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: mind_messing


quote:

ORIGINAL: Terminus

You don't have to copy-paste all those ships, we all know how many times this happened. It's not as easy to add this sort of stuff as you seem to think.



Wasn't there a feature in the original WITP that added ships to the Allied ship arrival cue based upon what ships had been sunk?



I think that feature is still in AE, with an on-off switch in the editor. Called Respawn. Never popular, hated it myself.

Too many possible circumstances for salvage, too much code, too many new issues introduced.



jmalter -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 8:57:59 PM)

& there are several historical examples of each side gaining high-quality intel prizes, using diving or salvage teams to comb through enemy wrecks, whether air, sea or land.



crsutton -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 9:33:33 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: mind_messing


quote:

ORIGINAL: Terminus

You don't have to copy-paste all those ships, we all know how many times this happened. It's not as easy to add this sort of stuff as you seem to think.



Wasn't there a feature in the original WITP that added ships to the Allied ship arrival cue based upon what ships had been sunk?



It is still in the game in that you get all those ships that could have respawned in WITP as normal replacements in AE. The only difference is that you now do not have to figure out some bonehead way to get the original ship sunk so that you can get the respawn. You are going to get it anyways so no worry. [;)]



wdolson -> RE: Salvage (7/4/2014 10:02:47 PM)

I have spit-balled how to do salvage in my mind. There are a lot of issues to deal with. The code for sinking ships in port needs to be altered to make it easier to sink them. The code now makes it tougher to sink ships in port because salvage is abstracted into the code.

The Allies, especially the US, had better capability to salvage ships than the Japanese did. The reason they only did it at Pearl Harbor was partially for publicity and partially because that is the only time US ships of any serious value were sunk in port and it was worth it. I'm only recalling off the top of my head, but I believe there were 5 BBs and 2 DDs that were "sunk" at Pearl Harbor that were raised. I'm counting the Nevada which was beached to prevent sinking and the two DDs which were in dry dock and were essentially destroyed and pretty much rebuilt completely in California with some salvaged fittings from the original ships. I may be misremembering the numbers.

The Arizona and Oklahoma were too far gone to repair. The Oklahoma was floatable, but since it capsized, the damage topside was too severe to bother with. The Utah was also sunk and was not considered worth the effort.

In the code now, those BBs and DDs sunk at Pearl Harbor would just be severely damaged and looking at long repairs. Putting in salvage without changing the in port damage routines would unrealistically skew the game. The trouble here is how much do we tweak the damage code? There are a zillion variables, all with randoms.

The Japanese were more desperate for hulls and also had access to many sunk Allied ships in the SRA. They captured a number of Allied ships and repurposed them. The problem comes in with the ship classes. The game requires a ship class and right now the classes have a nationality. The game engine can't operate a Dutch ship under the Japanese OOB. Any changes of equipment have to be defined in an upgrade ship class.

To give the Japanese the ability to refloat Allied ships lost in Allied ports (or possibly shallows near old Allied bases), every possible sunk Allied ship that can be resurrected needs to be defined in the database as an upgrade with a new nationality. All equipment and changes for these ships have to be defined. This is a lot of work. Do I hear a volunteer?

For the refloating itself, I was thinking of making it part of the port size/naval support code and have some sort of random that is checked every turn. There are three possible outcomes: the attempt to raise the ship failed, the repair team determined the ship was a write off and it is now permanently sunk, or it was successfully raised. Factors would have to be port size, number of naval support on the job, size of the ship, and time. Each turn the odds of some kind of definite outcome (either raised or sunk forever) would have to go up and the odds of indeterminate would have to go down.

The tweaking of this algorithm would take a lot of experimental work too. You need to get a realistic chance of getting a permanently lost ship and you can't have the teams work too fast.

The ship database also needs to be tweaked to add a new indeterminate result of "maybe sunk" and the number of attempts to raise it. Some kind of new user interface something would have to be added to tell users where the maybe sunk ships are.

It's possible to do, but it's a very big change and it will require database updates as well as a lot of playtesting to work out the kinks.

Bill



wdolson -> RE: Salvage (Respawning) (7/4/2014 10:12:45 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: crsutton

It is still in the game in that you get all those ships that could have respawned in WITP as normal replacements in AE. The only difference is that you now do not have to figure out some bonehead way to get the original ship sunk so that you can get the respawn. You are going to get it anyways so no worry. [;)]



I've heard Gary Grisby's original thought was that US industry could simply replace any ship lost. A lot of players and the AE team took issue with that idea. The US built pretty much the maximum number of ships it could, it just renamed some on the ways to ships that were sunk. AE's official scenarios includes all the ships that came in as something II with no respawning, but as Don said, the capability to respawn is still there, you need to turn it on in the editor. As far as I know, no mod has enabled respawn.

Bill



JeffroK -> RE: Salvage (Respawning) (7/4/2014 10:31:44 PM)

Dont give in, they'll ask for Tank & Battlefield recovery teams next and the ability for the IJA to operate M3 Stuarts!



Dili -> RE: Salvage (Respawning) (7/4/2014 11:53:32 PM)

Why not? [:)]



Page: [1]

Valid CSS!




Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition 2.4.5 ANSI
0.65625