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RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/9/2006 4:12:47 PM   
Feinder


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From: Land o' Lakes, FL
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quote:

Actually, I almost always state facts.


Um...

Nevermind.

Frankly, I'm just surprised that there's somebody on these boards that's more long-winded than I am.



-F-

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Post #: 61
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/9/2006 6:01:21 PM   
mdiehl

 

Posts: 5998
Joined: 10/21/2000
Status: offline 		Tom's logic is beyond dispute. Although one can magically conjure up a situation in which a BB might not fire at all (can't find a target, target masked, damaged critically before opening fire) that a BB should fire its secondaries or wait to suck the opposing CAs into 40mm range is beyond credible.

And the whole business about "you would not fire because you might not want to be seen" is the silliest straw man objection I have ever heard. The BB is there to shoot. It's what BBs do. It's the only thing they do. If you're taking fire, it makes no sense to not return fire (unless you can't because your equipment doesn't work or your crew is dead or your boat is sunk). And it makes even less sense to worry about someone spotting the gun flashes of your 14"-16" but to pound away with 5" and smaller.

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Post #: 62
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/9/2006 8:10:51 PM   
mlees


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quote:

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

Tom's logic is beyond dispute. Although one can magically conjure up a situation in which a BB might not fire at all (can't find a target, target masked, damaged critically before opening fire) that a BB should fire its secondaries or wait to suck the opposing CAs into 40mm range is beyond credible.

And the whole business about "you would not fire because you might not want to be seen" is the silliest straw man objection I have ever heard. The BB is there to shoot. It's what BBs do. It's the only thing they do. If you're taking fire, it makes no sense to not return fire (unless you can't because your equipment doesn't work or your crew is dead or your boat is sunk). And it makes even less sense to worry about someone spotting the gun flashes of your 14"-16" but to pound away with 5" and smaller.


I can imagine a set of circumstances:

A gunnery officer is told to expect heavies. It's night. Weak radar contacts are made, contacts are judged (rightly or wrongly) to be destroyers. Gunnery officer orders that only the secondaries to engage the targets. Heavies may never be detected by some parts of the battleline.

My fav, Jutland, the visibility conditions were such that patches of mist/fog and gun smoke drifted about, and each ship had to engage targets if and when the opportunity presented itself. It was not uncommon for a ship, even in the same division, to not be able to make out the target that the next ship in line was firing at.

(in reply to mdiehl)
Post #: 63
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/9/2006 10:34:47 PM   
Tom Hunter


Posts: 2194
Joined: 12/14/2004
Status: offline 		Next we are going to look at the second part of the action, an encounter between an elite group of RN ships and the same Japanese TF. There is no ship in this group that is not RN, and all have 70 night xp or higher. Due to the leader bug Repulse is captainless, and the famous Captain Spooner who commanded her brilliantly when she was part of Force Z is now in what ever place Halsey went months ago.

HMS Mauritius is also missing her commander, all the other ships have the stock high end RN captain, 60 Naval, 50 Agression except a couple of DDs with higher aggression.

Neither side was surprised, both sides opened fire at 6000 yards.

During round 1 Prince of Wales fired on Atago and hit once with a 14” shell. She fired again in round 2 and missed. Both sides broke off but went into action again in a second engagement. PoW engaged Atago again at 8000 yards and missed. Then in the second round of the 2nd engagement she hit once with her main battery and twice with her secondaries. She is struck once by a non-penetrating 8” shell from Atago in round 1 of the first engagement. In total she fired 148 14” shells and scored a .013 hit rate, once again way below average for the war, but typical for a BB in game. It takes PoW 7 minutes and 35 seconds to fire this many 14” shells.

Her secondary guns fired 89 shells and scored 2 hits, an .022% hit rate, which is within the normal range but not very good. It takes 1 minute 36 seconds for Prince of Wales to fire this many shells.

Repulse opens up on Haguro round 1, checks fire round two, and fired on Haguro in rounds 1 and 2 in the second engagement. She expends 132 shells and scores no hits. She is struck once in round 2 of each engagement by non-penetrating shell hits. It takes Repulse 11 minutes to fire this many shells.


This time the BBs are not checking fire, but their hit % is very, very low. In fairness to the model I want to get more BB engagements in before being completely certain that BBs checking fire is a major problem, but it does explain a lot. I will point out that I started grinding on this because my feeling was that things were out of wack, this particular action is not the first where BBs have failed to do damage, it is just the first that I have looked at closely.

mlees, the problem with the example you give is that it never actually happened, not even once. BBs did check fire, especially at Jutland in the night phase of the battle, but they never opened up with the secondary battery and checked fire on the primary. I'm not complaining about BBs that check fire, that happend often enough to belong in any good model. My problem is with BBs that fail to fire their main guns because somethhing in the model is causing them to behave in historically impossible ways.

More to come as we get into the cruisers and I am going to try and get data together for some real world comparisons as well.

(in reply to mlees)
Post #: 64
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 12:12:43 AM   
Tom Hunter


Posts: 2194
Joined: 12/14/2004
Status: offline 		Now I want to answer some of the other comments that have come in over the last day or three. In my answers I want to stick to documented facts, since I believe that drives a healthier discussion.

"I've never felt that trying to deconstruct the model from outside this way is really a good way to go. From the few times I've had a peek within, I've been surprised at the number of things that can be considered (which I would not have thought of when trying a process like this). In particular, assumptions about exact ammo usage and corresponding hit %, if incorrect, throw off your entire analysis.

It's much more valid, IMHO, too look at the end results which are the one part of the model that _are_ exposed. I understand this started with your disagreement with the end results. However, I think extending that to this level of specific analysis is likely to send you pretty far afield. I think the most likely thing to conclude is that BBs may be underperforming, rather than the whole model being out of whack." - Erik Rutins

I'm not actually deconstructing or reverse engineering the model. I am analyzing the results the model produces and comparing them to historical data, and hope to add more comparisons of that type going forward.

Looking at end results is really what this is all about, but end results is anything that comes out of the model. Time will tell how far out of wack the model may be, more on that as we go forward.

There is one place that I am expressing an opinion though, my opinion is that a combat model for a historical wargame should not produce results that could not happen in history. So for example if naval gunnery doctrine was centered around putting the maximum firepower on the enemies ship, and if no BB ever fired its secondaries while checking fire on its mains then this should not happen in game, even though its theoretically possible. Likewise a model that allowed aircraft to capture enemy cities, or allowed infantry units to board surface warships and capture them is unacceptable in my opinion. If you disagee with this opinion your not going to like my analysis.

"I've seen far too many results where the end result - the approximate damage to the ships involved and the ending losses - corresponded very closely to reality, to agree that there's a major problem." Erik again

One of the advantages of analysis is that it can give you much clearer view into what is happening. Initially I had the same reaction to naval combat, the end result is very close to reality. But then I began to wonder about this, and as the numbers get crunched the picture is getting muddier. Now I am not sure how close to reality the engine really is. I don't have enough data yet, but the data I have makes me think looking closer could be.

"I can also say with certainty that 2 by 3 has an outstanding grasp of the real naval battles in the Pacific and designed their model to reflect them, including both the most common types of results and the improbable ones. As with other models, there are combinations and cases where the designer either didn't anticipate something or the variable range is such that the results do not seem believable. " Erik,

I think it is a pretty safe bet that many of the people on this board have an equally good grasp of this, in some cases likely better, in others worse. I am not making any comments on the designers knowledge or biases since I don't know any of them. But I am taking it on faith that the meaningful contributions on the thread are backed by a lot of specialized knowledge and data. Building a complex model is not the same as understanding the subject that your trying to model, I'm interested in understanding where the model reflects the real world and were it does not. I am assuming that the designers wanted to build a model that did reflect the real war in the Pacific, if I am wrong on that then everything I am saying is nonsense.


(in reply to Tom Hunter)
Post #: 65
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 8:47:31 AM   
treespider


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From: Edgewater, MD
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quote:

First everyone needs to understand that an ammo factor on a BB main gun equals about 44 rounds, on an 8" gun it equals 31, on a British 6" gun CL with 8 guns it equals 33 rounds, but if that ships is a British 12 6" gun CL then it equals 50 rounds, and if it is a CL with 6 guns it equals 17 rounds. 4" and 4.5" ammo factors seem to be set at around 20 rounds per factor, except on the British CLAAs where it would be much more.


Just curious...where did you get these numbers?

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Post #: 66
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 10:15:51 AM   
frank1970


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Joined: 9/1/2000
From: Bayern
Status: offline 		el cid, what range is point blank for BBs?
I´d expect a BB to get at least 50% hits at point blank (say range <2000yards.




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Post #: 67
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 1:16:05 PM   
Tom Hunter


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Status: offline 		treespider,

All ammo numbers are from www.navweaps.com

I calculate the time to fire by using Conways to get a gun count and then dividing the number of shells fired by the ROF and the number of guns, or half the number of guns if it is a secondary battery that lacked all around capability. The time to fire number is certainly open to debate, it is really a theoretical minimum.

I do think time to fire off all the shells is somewhat helpful, especially when it shows a major divergence like the DDs shooting for 30 seconds and the BBs shooting for 8 minutes.

(in reply to treespider)
Post #: 68
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 1:27:16 PM   
treespider


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From: Edgewater, MD
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter

treespider,

All ammo numbers are from www.navweaps.com

I calculate the time to fire by using Conways to get a gun count and then dividing the number of shells fired by the ROF and the number of guns, or half the number of guns if it is a secondary battery that lacked all around capability. The time to fire number is certainly open to debate, it is really a theoretical minimum.

I do think time to fire off all the shells is somewhat helpful, especially when it shows a major divergence like the DDs shooting for 30 seconds and the BBs shooting for 8 minutes.


Are you positive this is an accurate representation of the actual number of shells fired by a ship in the game?

Perhaps the ammunition factors in the game are not an exact correlation of IRL shells, which would throw off all of these calculations. Unfortunately I am not home right now, but I seem to recall that even after multiple bombardments for instance the Heavy guns still have 3 ammo factors. I may be wrong on this....


_____________________________

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Post #: 69
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 1:46:24 PM   
el cid again

 

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quote:

Although one can magically conjure up a situation in which a BB might not fire at all (can't find a target, target masked, damaged critically before opening fire) that a BB should fire its secondaries or wait to suck the opposing CAs into 40mm range is beyond credible.


Go watch Das Boot or, if you don't understand German, The Boat.
This fine movie is significant because, unlike Hollywood navy flicks, it correctly shows that naval warfare is about technology. The crew spends its time dealing with things that don't work, and what works (or not) determines what is possible to attempt operationally. As a Navy technician I find it ENTIRELY credible that you might not be able to fire your main guns - for a whole host of reasons. As an engineer, I had to learn how to do an analysis of a complex system. It turns out that the reliability of the system as a whole is the product of the reliability of each component. If there are just five parts (and no capital gun system has only five working parts) - and each is 90% reliable - there is a 41% chance the system will fail on any given occasion! In Viet Nam, my second ship had 5 inch 54s which were so unreliable that they were down about half the time - a two gun ship (like mine) typically could put one gun in service. But IRL there were many times NEITHER gun was up.
This system was NEVER perfected, and surviving 5 inch 54s were mechanically altered so they CANNOT fire their designed 42 rounds per minute NOR fire at aircraft (involving fast slew rates). And the SPS-40 air search radar was, in my time, actually worse than that! It was down the vast majority of the time. USN had bought too many, and it was not tolerable for it to fail, so they had to invest in research to come up with a fix - and the set became reliable and still serves. But the point is that we do not, even post war, always have nice stories to tell about reliability.
Things do go wrong. In fact, about 2% of battleships (worldwide) BLEW UP because of flaws with their big guns! Even sitting in harbor (see, for example, the fate of Mutsu). It may not fit the image gamers have of the Navy, but making things work was a big job, not always achieved in real combat conditions. [For a WWII era US horror story - look at torpedoes!]

(in reply to mdiehl)
Post #: 70
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 1:57:36 PM   
el cid again

 

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quote:

And the whole business about "you would not fire because you might not want to be seen" is the silliest straw man objection I have ever heard. The BB is there to shoot. It's what BBs do. It's the only thing they do. If you're taking fire, it makes no sense to not return fire (unless you can't because your equipment doesn't work or your crew is dead or your boat is sunk). And it makes even less sense to worry about someone spotting the gun flashes of your 14"-16" but to pound away with 5" and smaller.


It is not possible to reconstruct the tactical events in a computer routine that never actually had any specific events in mind in the first place! The die roll that says "things didn't work" is just meant to simulate things not working - which like it or not is realistic. And the one thing that can screw up even the most reliable of systems is the human operator! [We techie guys say "the most likely component to fail in any system is the operator."] Naval battles are full of strange occurrances, and not shooting or not shooting the proper battery is one of the more common of those occurrances. If you cannot imagine a case where one might elect not to fire main guns, it is because you have not been around when a big complex thing like a capital ship tries to solve a technical battle problem. Such things are common, not rare. In fact, it happened in WWII to USN. We don't know why battleships at Surigao strait failed to shoot - or to shoot only one salve - with their big guns? But it might not be equipment failure. [If it WAS equipment failure, that is enough to make it understandable, even if you find it not credible]. It might have been a decision - even an order - to avoid confusing the fire control problem with too many heavy shell splashes. [Radar of that period actually tracked the splashes and the target. There were only so many targets. There were a lot more Allied ships. Perhaps there was a concern with degrading everyone's gunnery if a near continuous stream of splashes were present?] Also, possibly it was a range issue or a masking issue. Not only might friendly ships mask the target, so might islands and islets.
Possibly ships near the end of the line didn't have a proper target? It DOES NOT MATTER what the reason was - and I admit it is more likely to be system failure. The point is system failure is not the only credible reason guns may not have fired. It realy is possible it was not a good idea for them to fire. Sans specific information, we do not know, and it is wrong to make assumptions. I have done technical investigation and analysis, and I am trained to keep an open mind. And I will testify that things go wrong - out of a whole line of ships odds are that some ship has a major technical system failure.

(in reply to mdiehl)
Post #: 71
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 1:58:22 PM   
Apollo11


Posts: 24082
Joined: 6/7/2001
From: Zagreb, Croatia
Status: offline 		Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Go watch Das Boot or, if you don't understand German, The Boat.
This fine movie is significant because, unlike Hollywood navy flicks, it correctly shows that naval warfare is about technology.


The "Das Boot" DVD is the very first DVD I ever bought!

I have "Director's Cut" version (I think it is around 4 hours long - even longer one is the version that was shown on TV as series in Europe - I watched it as a kid) and I always watch it in german with english subtitles...


Leo "Apollo11"

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P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to el cid again)
Post #: 72
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 2:02:33 PM   
treespider


Posts: 9796
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From: Edgewater, MD
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Go watch Das Boot or, if you don't understand German, The Boat.
This fine movie is significant because, unlike Hollywood navy flicks, it correctly shows that naval warfare is about technology.


The "Das Boot" DVD is the very first DVD I ever bought!

I have "Director's Cut" version (I think it is around 4 hours long - even longer one is the version that was shown on TV as series in Europe - I watched it as a kid) and I always watch it in german with english subtitles...


Leo "Apollo11"


Better yet...read the book.


_____________________________

Here's a link to:
Treespider's Grand Campaign of DBB

"It is not the critic who counts, .... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena..." T. Roosevelt, Paris, 1910

(in reply to Apollo11)
Post #: 73
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 2:03:39 PM   
Apollo11


Posts: 24082
Joined: 6/7/2001
From: Zagreb, Croatia
Status: offline 		Hi all,

quote:

ORIGINAL: treespider

Better yet...read the book.


I have it as well...


Leo "Apollo11"

_____________________________



Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to treespider)
Post #: 74
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 2:42:06 PM   
Apollo11


Posts: 24082
Joined: 6/7/2001
From: Zagreb, Croatia
Status: offline 		Hi all,

I wholeheartedly reccomend the "wholy trinity" of German U-Boot books:

#1
Das Boot: The Boat
by Lothar Gunther Buchheim

#2
Iron Coffins: A Personal Account of the German U-Boat Battles of World War II
by Herbert A. Werner

#3
Sharks and Little Fish: A Novel of German Submarine Warfare
by Wolfgang Ott


Whilst the #1 and #2 are well known the #3 is true hidden jewel!


Leo "Apollo11"

_____________________________



Prior Preparation & Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance!

A & B: WitW, WitE, WbtS, GGWaW, GGWaW2-AWD, HttR, CotA, BftB, CF
P: UV, WitP, WitP-AE

(in reply to Apollo11)
Post #: 75
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 5:02:46 PM   
Erik Rutins

 

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline 		Tom,

There are certainly historical reasons why a BB might not fire its main batteries - most of these would relate to technical issues, combat damage or a problem determining target, etc. I recall reading about South Dakota's night engagement near Guadalcanal, where she definitely had some serious issues getting things working. I agree with you that BBs, as a rule, should engage with their main batteries most of the time in a surface engagement.

My concern about your analysis stems from the fact that you have taken an end result that didn't seem right and you are now analyzing it based on some assumptions about what the designer intended an ammo unit to be, what he intended a "round" of firing to be, etc. That's why I say focus on the end results and see what really made you question them. If it was the effectiveness of BBs, then I would focus on seeing if you can figure out why they might not be firing or - if they are firing, figure out whether the problem is that they are not hitting. If a BB, for sake of argument, fires off 1/3 of its ammo "units" and scores one hit in an engagement that is in daylight an in range, I agree that seems unlikely. However, actual combat accuracy was often low - particularly at night but also in day due to maneuvering, combat damage, mistakes in the heat of battle, etc. The real question is does the BB do this in multiple battles over time or did it just have one remarkably bad battle.

If BBs always perform poorly in your tests and rarely fire their main guns in surface battles given good conditions, then I agree that should be examined. However, if you've seen say two dozen battles that turned out to have realistic end results, then starting your analysis with the one that didn't is already going to skew your results as far as analyzing the overall model in a meaningful way.

Anyway, carry on, I'm reading and paying attention.

Regards,

- Erik

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(in reply to Apollo11)
Post #: 76
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 5:50:02 PM   
mdiehl

 

Posts: 5998
Joined: 10/21/2000
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quote:

My concern about your analysis stems from the fact that you have taken an end result that didn't seem right and you are now analyzing it based on some assumptions about what the designer intended an ammo unit to be, what he intended a "round" of firing to be, etc.


The designers assumptions, whatever they are, are incorrect. The results he obtained in that combat are implausible.

It may for example be that the whole "experience aggression leadership morale" system is so arbitrary that it prevents the other assumptions from working properly together.

_____________________________

Show me a fellow who rejects statistical analysis a priori and I'll show you a fellow who has no knowledge of statistics.

Didn't we have this conversation already?

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Post #: 77
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 6:45:33 PM   
mogami


Posts: 12789
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From: You can't get here from there
Status: offline 		Hi, All I know is the Japanese TF was shot to bits.

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Post #: 78
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 7:17:58 PM   
mdiehl

 

Posts: 5998
Joined: 10/21/2000
Status: offline 		They got off lightly just the same. I think Hunter has identified the problem correctly as one of accuracy and big guns not firing. While I can buy the argument that sometimes a BB will not shoot main armament because the target is -- way too close -- not in sight -- not on radar -- a DD, the suggestion that a BB would withhold main batter fire if a heavy cruiser (or even something plausibly mistaken for a heavy cruiser) is visible or on radar does not strike me as remotely plausible.

I wonder what the hit rate was for the DDs at Samar? From Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors I have the impression that the US DDs at 5000 yards were hitting with most of the shots they fired from 5"38s and that the FD radar was substantially responsible for that.

_____________________________

Show me a fellow who rejects statistical analysis a priori and I'll show you a fellow who has no knowledge of statistics.

Didn't we have this conversation already?

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Post #: 79
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 9:35:00 PM   
Tom Hunter


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Status: offline 		As I was grinding I got to see both what the Japanese did and what happened to them. They did do a lot of damage with torpedos, though one might argue for more in the suprise round, or for more hits on the same ships that took only 1 hit per round.

Assuming that suprise really means exactly that, the kind of thing that happened to the Americans at Savo Island or the Italians at Mattapan, the Japanese should have HIT much more in the suprise round of the first combat. Even if the British were not suprised the Japanese still should have hit more often. Since they were shooting 8" shells at BBs they did not do much with the few hits they had, and though it is doubtful they would have done much more to the BBs they still should have had the shots.

I don't agree that the Japanese got pounded in this series of engagements, with the exception of two ships that we will get to. If memory serves in the second battle of Guadalcanal the USS South Dakota was hit 14 times by 8" and 14" shells, and the log of the USS Washington shows 9 hits by her main battery on the Japanese BB (Hiei or Kirishima I forget which) .

My amazement that nothing sunk on the Japanese side was the reason I started cranking away on this. The ships got sunk the next day when the CV strikes came in on the ones that were slowed and damaged. That is getting off lightly in my opinion, though your entitled to your own.

As I said above the Japanese should have hit a lot more as well, IF the Japanese hit %s are similar to the Allied numbers. This was a battle where a number of ships expended a fair amount of ammunition but failed to perform at historical levels. I'm trying to get some insight as to why, and why many of the other mismatch battles (BBs Vs. Cruisers) have the same kind of result in game, but not in history.

(in reply to mogami)
Post #: 80
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 9:57:08 PM   
Tom Hunter


Posts: 2194
Joined: 12/14/2004
Status: offline 		The Model

One of the points/questions that a number of people have brought up is how much we know about what is going on in the model. The asnwer is some, but maybe not everything we would like to know. Here is a list of what we know.


We know how many shells a ship fired. We have the actaully ammunition loaded on the ship, the game has a number of rounds of ammo on the ship, and by dividing the rounds into the number of actual shells we can calculate the number of shell per round.

You may ask "what if the designer reduced the ammo capacity for play balance." My answer is that he can't. He can put more shells into an ammo factor, but he can never change the fact that HWS Warspite had 800 rounds of big gun ammo on board at full load. I hope this makes sense to everyone. In a historical game, the value of ammo, armor or number of guns is always directly analagous to the historical warship. Even if you decide that in your WitP your going to say "my Warspite has 4" guns for the main battery" you are not changing the historical battery of 15" guns on the real Warspite, instead your are designing a game with the wrong values for 15" guns.

There are 18 ammo rounds on the Warspite for her main guns and 18 goes into 800 44.44 times, or 44 rounds per gun. We know that if Warspite shoots 3 rounds that is 132 shells.

Another thing we know is that when a hit is reported it does damage. If the hit is non-penetrating it does less, little or no damage, and if it does penetrate it does more, but we have never seen a ships sys damage go down as the number of shell hits went up.

We also know that bigger penetrate more and do more sys damage than smaller shells. When I look at a ship that has taken 2 non-penetrating 8" hits the sys damage will have gone up 1-3 % looking at a ship where the shells penetrate it goes up 10s of %.

Finally we know that the combat report does report real damage. Ships with reported penetration of their engine spaces move more slowly in the next movement phase. Ships with reports of AA guns destroyed really do have them missing the next day.

Finally we know that the ships really are firing on the target they list. The combat report does not say Atago firing at Prince of Wales when Atago is actually firing at Repulse.

So the truth is we get quite a lot of information from the combat reports, number of hits, penetration of hits, area penetrated, reports on certain types of damage, ship firing, type of shell fired. If we look at the ammo before and after we can easliy get the number of shells fired as well. By the way I rounded Warspites 133 (3x44.44) down to 132 because BBs with even numbers of guns tend to fire even numbers of shells in a salvo.

From there we can get the % hit rates, find out if the ship fired at all and identify oddities like ships that fire secondaries but not main guns, or ships that fire on one target or many targets (more on that coming) or ships that keep firing and hitting under circumstances that make continued accurate firing very unlikely.

I wanted to put in some defense for the model, since some of the counter arguments seem to come down to "the combat report is all lies." I don't see any evidence that is true, maybe more of it should be lies but that is a different discussion, and right now it reports truth.


(in reply to Tom Hunter)
Post #: 81
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 10:00:07 PM   
witpqs


Posts: 26087
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter

... 1 divided by 132 = .0075 ...



Tom, I'm behind in reading up on this thread so excuse me if somone has pointed this out already. Many of your percentages are expressed wrong and might be messing up one's train of thought. 1/132 is indeed .0075. But percentage is "(hits/shots) x 100", so the percentage of 1 hit in 132 shots is .75%. Likewise some others (from your original post) 1 in 42 is 2.3% (not .023%), 1 in 21 is 4.7% (not .10% - this one must have been a typo or something), etc.

The reason it matters is that the historical sources you cite are using the standard A/B x 100 formula, so the comparisons wind up being off.

BTW, I do think you are on to something. Problem 1 is the number of times an inferior task force comes back for more. I understand better crews and higher rated leadership will get you more, but that expample seems like too much more.

Problem 2 is the BB main batteries lack of firing. You can be too close for those guns to fire, but that seems to have (again) happened way too much (meaning probably at too great a range).

Problem 3 is the hit percentage. Need to be careful with this one. Due to the other factors (surprise, leadership, crew night experience) and hidden (from us) tactical factors arising from them, the 'correct' number of hits might still be lower than 'historical' because the historical instances were more favorable.

Great ananlysis Tom. You're helping everybody. Thanks.

PS: Lack of torpedoes I figure can be fixed real easy, so not in the same league as the other issues you've uncovered.

< Message edited by witpqs -- 3/10/2006 10:01:15 PM >

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Post #: 82
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 10:01:58 PM   
tsimmonds


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quote:

If memory serves in the second battle of Guadalcanal the USS South Dakota was hit 14 times by 8" and 14" shells


IIRC SoDak was hit 39 times by 5", 5.5", 6" and 8" shells; only a single hit was by 14". Many of the shells did not explode (including the 14").

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Post #: 83
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 10:17:50 PM   
mdiehl

 

Posts: 5998
Joined: 10/21/2000
Status: offline 		Here's an interesting read:

http://www.dcfp.navy.mil/mc/museum/War_Damage/57.pdf

The "crew night experience" is a red herring. It's a rating presumed to matter in real life but that has not been obviously indexed to anything real. Ship crew EXP should be completely eliminated from the game.

< Message edited by mdiehl -- 3/10/2006 10:21:02 PM >

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Post #: 84
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 10:29:36 PM   
Tom Hunter


Posts: 2194
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Status: offline 		Witpqs,

Sorry for the confusion I have seen this expressed two ways and probably got them muddled. Basically when Warspite shoot 132 shells between 3 and 13 of them should wind up on target depending on a wide variety of factors, but barring unusual circumstances, such as a target that dodges and does not return fire.

You are correct and I will start writing it the right way.


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Post #: 85
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 10:34:16 PM   
Tom Hunter


Posts: 2194
Joined: 12/14/2004
Status: offline 		irrelevant, do you have the link to the South Dakota's after action report? I have been looking for it but unable to find it. It would be helpful to have along with any other logs or detailed acounts.

mdiehl, I am not certain I agree with you, but my opinion is that the experience system does not do a good job of reflecting training or doctrine. However I really want to keep this discussion on topic, rather than getting into a "this is my opinion about what is wrong with the game." Type thread.

I much prefer a thread that shows where the variance between historical combat and the game combat models.

I am afraid I don't have time to get to the cruisers and Oklahoma today, maybe tomorrow.

(in reply to tsimmonds)
Post #: 86
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 10:36:19 PM   
treespider


Posts: 9796
Joined: 1/30/2005
From: Edgewater, MD
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: mdiehl

Here's an interesting read:

http://www.dcfp.navy.mil/mc/museum/War_Damage/57.pdf

The "crew night experience" is a red herring. It's a rating presumed to matter in real life but that has not been obviously indexed to anything real. Ship crew EXP should be completely eliminated from the game.



I haven't read the article yet but how do you propose that a situation like Java Sea be modelled with the command problems inherent in the force and the lack of training together? Would this be handled by the Commanders ratings?

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Post #: 87
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 10:36:35 PM   
mdiehl

 

Posts: 5998
Joined: 10/21/2000
Status: offline 		Tom there is something like the SoDak's AAR in that link that I provided above. I'd have cut and pasted but that function is blocked in the PDF file they provide.

And I'm not trying to distort this into "what's wrong with the game" but people are trying to claim that your analysis is incorrect on the grounds that crew EXP may be the "overlooked factor" in your analysis. My point is that attributing it to crew EXP does not mean that the model is good. Only that *if* crew EXP is the culprit then the crew EXP assumptions are wrong... which would not surprise me in the slightest since no one has articulated a relationship between anything real and the EXP values assigned to the ships in the OOB.

< Message edited by mdiehl -- 3/10/2006 10:43:34 PM >

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Post #: 88
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 10:43:18 PM   
treespider


Posts: 9796
Joined: 1/30/2005
From: Edgewater, MD
Status: offline
quote:

There are 18 ammo rounds on the Warspite for her main guns and 18 goes into 800 44.44 times, or 44 rounds per gun. We know that if Warspite shoots 3 rounds that is 132 shells.


I would agree with you except for one point. Not knowing what the designer intended.

In some game systems I am familiar with, in any given combat those three rounds may actually represent from 100-150 shells (or some other range) and not 132 every single round.

Over the course of multiple combats you would hope that the three rounds would average out to be 132 shells but in any given combat they may only represent 100 or 150.

If this is the case then the only meaningful way to analyze the BB's would be to look at multiple combats instead of one single combat.

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(in reply to Tom Hunter)
Post #: 89
RE: Analysis of Naval Gunnery Combat - 3/10/2006 11:48:35 PM   
Erik Rutins

 

Posts: 37503
Joined: 3/28/2000
From: Vermont, USA
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: mdiehl
The "crew night experience" is a red herring. It's a rating presumed to matter in real life but that has not been obviously indexed to anything real. Ship crew EXP should be completely eliminated from the game.


I disagree with that. It's a game variable designed to reflect night naval combat performance. Call it "Crew night experience" or "night training" or "night doctrine", either way there's evidence that not all navies were equal in this regard.

Based on your comments (i.e. "presumed to matter in real life"), are you suggesting that crews trained in night combat had no advantage over crews that did not train for night combat at all?

Regards,

- Erik


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Post #: 90
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