Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, No I am saying there is nothing in the model to tell you why a ship does not fire it's main guns. The ship is checked to fire. It checks it's main guns they fire or they don't, it checks it's secondary they fire or they don't it checks the next slot of weapons and so on.
Now TF commander, ship CO and crew ratings are used in these checks.
The only problem I have is when people use poor crews and leaders and then post their ships don't perform to perfection. Tom is saying he used good crews (and the RN always does well for me in combat) But I don't match his recollections because I saw Atago take 2 back to back 15in hits. And she was hit by other large guns (14in) The IJN TF moved 2 hexes and parts moved 3 and other parts moved 4. Undamaged they would all have moved 6 hexes (the max a TF can move in a single phase)
Air attacks finished them off but I think most of them would have sunk without any further damage being inflicted. Tom wondered why they did not sink outright which is another issue that I have explained many times before. (damage is resolved slower then in actual time. )
But the model does not explain combat in enough detail for anyone to say why Ship A does not fire a set of guns in a certain round. You don't watch the battle your seeing it on the radio. For all you know every gun fires every round but you only see those shots that are reported. Just like in air attacks not every group of aircraft shows a splash (but they all drop bombs you just will never get a hit without a splash)
If a ship expended ammo then it fired it's guns. If a ship expended ammo from one slot and not another then the reason was when it was checked it failed to pass the check to aquire a target. while the animation shows one ship at a time firing in realty there are many ships firing at once and you see part of the action. (the highlights so to speak it does not show you when a ship fires at shadows or wildly off target it just subtracts ammo and since you didn't see the guns firing you assume the ship did not fire. )

In fact Tom look on the sunk ships list. CA Atago is listed as sunk by a 15in
The combat report lists 67 hits on Japanese

Other IJN ships sunk by gunfire to date
CA Chokai 14in
CA Mogami 15in
BB Mutsu 16in
Somebody is firing mainguns

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ORIGINAL: treespider


Sounds like the replay bug to me...

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ORIGINAL: Nikademus

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ORIGINAL: treespider


Sounds like the replay bug to me...

If so, then the IJN player replay is the valid one.

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Hi, Marblehead has a night experiance rating of 36 Boise 39 Houston 52.
who was TF commander? which DD?
You can't send these untrained units into action and then complain they don't fight at 100 percent perfection.

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In fact Tom look on the sunk ships list. CA Atago is listed as sunk by a 15in
The combat report lists 67 hits on Japanese

Other IJN ships sunk by gunfire to date
CA Chokai 14in
CA Mogami 15in
BB Mutsu 16in
Somebody is firing mainguns

quote:

ORIGINAL: spence

Mostly my complaint is the criterion used to break off the battle. A convoy of 15 10 kt ships that scatters to the four winds might escape but these guys stopped to pick up survivors. "The Law of the Sea" might induce the cruisers and destroyers to pick up the survivors (soldiers) but the transports doing it implies that they owned the battlefield when the action concluded. That is surely BS.
And flying 500 miles to bomb enemy ships when there is another spotted enemy force less than 150 miles away that clearly meant to attack your base of operations seems a bit out of whack as well.

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We have also added several new artists to the project and new art has been added; we have recoded some of the executable to include this new and improved art. Not part of the original design, we have added and are adding a significant amount of animation for your viewing pleasure. These animation sequences hit and burning ships and aircraft hit by anti-aircraft artillery, flak bursts and exploding land based targets. Each takes 81 to 222 frames of art. Our artists are also working many long hours.

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ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

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ORIGINAL: spence

Mostly my complaint is the criterion used to break off the battle. A convoy of 15 10 kt ships that scatters to the four winds might escape but these guys stopped to pick up survivors. "The Law of the Sea" might induce the cruisers and destroyers to pick up the survivors (soldiers) but the transports doing it implies that they owned the battlefield when the action concluded. That is surely BS.
And flying 500 miles to bomb enemy ships when there is another spotted enemy force less than 150 miles away that clearly meant to attack your base of operations seems a bit out of whack as well.

Gotta agree with SPENCE here. Though what has to be THE most annoying thing in the entire game is naval strikes. You finally interpret the intelligence correctly and set up an air attack to meet the incoming threat in time. Then the moment arrives, and your A/C totally ignore the CV TF three hexes away, the incoming Bombardment TF 4 hexes away, and rush to attack a flock of his "barges" 5 hexes away in another direction. You can set the "altitude" of an airstrike, but you can't even give it "priority target", or a direction to attack in, or any worthwhile input at all. What is the use of being "in command" if your forces can tell you to "shove it..., we ain't flying today!"

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ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

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ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

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ORIGINAL: spence

Mostly my complaint is the criterion used to break off the battle. A convoy of 15 10 kt ships that scatters to the four winds might escape but these guys stopped to pick up survivors. "The Law of the Sea" might induce the cruisers and destroyers to pick up the survivors (soldiers) but the transports doing it implies that they owned the battlefield when the action concluded. That is surely BS.
And flying 500 miles to bomb enemy ships when there is another spotted enemy force less than 150 miles away that clearly meant to attack your base of operations seems a bit out of whack as well.

Gotta agree with SPENCE here. Though what has to be THE most annoying thing in the entire game is naval strikes. You finally interpret the intelligence correctly and set up an air attack to meet the incoming threat in time. Then the moment arrives, and your A/C totally ignore the CV TF three hexes away, the incoming Bombardment TF 4 hexes away, and rush to attack a flock of his "barges" 5 hexes away in another direction. You can set the "altitude" of an airstrike, but you can't even give it "priority target", or a direction to attack in, or any worthwhile input at all. What is the use of being "in command" if your forces can tell you to "shove it..., we ain't flying today!"

But this has been true since UV day 1 ... so not recent news, correct ?

And while it is certainly sometimes not hitting the target we would want, I don't find it as frustrating as I did 4 years ago. Maybe I'm just desensitized ! And there are real life examples ( Japanese attack on Neosho and Sims at Coral Sea ) where the task force struck was not optimal.

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ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter

Treespider

In an earlier post I wrote about what was in the combat animations, and my conclusion is that we can trust them.

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ORIGINAL: treespider

What I think I was trying to suggest is that the game may be using two entirely seperate models to arrive at the same end result. So yes the animation you are watching is accurate and can be trusted for the model being used within the animation if animations are on. And the game uses a seperate model when the animations are off that would provide the same if not similar end result but a uses a different way to get there.

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ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter


This brings up the first important question raised by the analysis. Why are big guns less accurate on a shell per shell basis than small ones? Personally I have no clue, and my understanding is that the combination of stable firing platform, better range finders and flatter shell trajectory (at least in the 4000 and 6000 yard brackets) make the bigger gun more accurate. Anyone care to guess?

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

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ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter


This brings up the first important question raised by the analysis. Why are big guns less accurate on a shell per shell basis than small ones? Personally I have no clue, and my understanding is that the combination of stable firing platform, better range finders and flatter shell trajectory (at least in the 4000 and 6000 yard brackets) make the bigger gun more accurate. Anyone care to guess?

Just a guess, as you said. Maybe the larger guns are intrinsically modelled as the same or better accuracy but they are firing at longer ranges, thereby hiding their true accuracy versus smaller guns.

As treespider pointed out, the replay might be giving us false data as to details about the battle, so judging this will be difficult (and possibly error-prone).

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ORIGINAL: treespider

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

As treespider pointed out, the replay might be giving us false data as to details about the battle, so judging this will be difficult (and possibly error-prone).

That's not accurate, I am suggesting that the model used in the animation may be inaccurate but working as designed, whereas the model without the animation is accurate. It is my understanding that there are two seperate models at work, one that was developed early on and a later one to introduce the animations to the game... I may be wrong on this point, but a number of people have pointed out to ignore the animations as they are not an accurate representation as to what is actually taking place.

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ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter

witpqs,

I realize your trying to be helpful, but I doubt that the combat report is lying about the ranges, or splitting them. One of the reasons that I doubt this is: what for? most TFs tried to stay together, rather than split into smaller units fighting at different ranges. Now I know that a torpedo attack could be ordered and that would bring the DDs in closer under some circumstances, but they don't need to get any closer if the range is 4000 yards or 6000 yards.

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

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ORIGINAL: treespider

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

As treespider pointed out, the replay might be giving us false data as to details about the battle, so judging this will be difficult (and possibly error-prone).

That's not accurate, I am suggesting that the model used in the animation may be inaccurate but working as designed, whereas the model without the animation is accurate. It is my understanding that there are two seperate models at work, one that was developed early on and a later one to introduce the animations to the game... I may be wrong on this point, but a number of people have pointed out to ignore the animations as they are not an accurate representation as to what is actually taking place.

That's what I tried to convey. As far as 'final results' go, the model in the combat engine matters. If the model in the combat animations is different, it is misleading us by showing us something different (from the combat engine).

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ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter

As I just posted in the Lunacy AAR I am retiring from WitP. I will be staying with the Fear and Loathing game a bit longer but we are looking for an Allied player to take my position there as well, send a message to me if your interested. Fair warning I will be at GDC all next week and be replying erractically during that time.

The final battle of the night was an experiment on my part, one that a number of people have criticised, the USS Oklahoma and 13 PT boats TF. I built that TF because of some trends that I had noticed watching the combat animations, one bieng that BBs tended to shoot more when they were outnumbered, another that ships like to shoot like types, so a BB will fire plenty if faced with another BB but check fire, or check fire on main battery if there are no other BBs around. This was a theory of mine before, but I think I have proved it conclusively now, and here are the results to show it.

When the battle opened at 5000 yards with no supply Okalhoma fired on Atago which fired back Naka, Hayashio and Asaguma opened up on PT boats but did not hit. The Japanese heavies did not fire in round 1.

In round 2 the range opened to 10000 yards. Nachi, Kagero, Hayashio and Asaguma all opened up on Okalhoma hitting will 11 DD caliber shells, 8 x 8" shells and one torpedo.

Okalhoma fired back on Nachi (1 secondary hit) Atago (2 main in rouond 1 + 2 secondary in round 2) Yugumo (3 main battery hits) and Kagero 1 secondary hit. Olkahma expended 250 rounds of main battery ammo and had a hit rate of 2% she expended 241 rounds of secondary ammunition and had a hit rate of 1.6%
It takes her a minimum of 12 minutes to fire off 240 rounds of main gun ammunition.


One thing that I hope is obivious here is that if a ship is shot at, it will fire back on the ship that fired at it. It seems to do this until it runs out of ammunition, more on that soon.

I saw this in the battles up above as well, sometimes a Japanese ship (they were always outnumbered) would be fired on by two RN ships, especially in the PoW combat where the ship quality was very high and most ships opened fire. But the Oklahoma shows this in very clear terms.

Now I am going to speculate a little bit, and then talk about a few other battles that were fought recently in either Lunacy or just today in fear and loathing.

I think ships want to shoot at like types, so the engine is byassed in favor of BBs shooting at BBs, not at DDs. In of itself that is good. But the engine also seems to want to not shoot at all if there is not a like type target available. That is really, really bad.

What this means is that TFs of like types will fight a pretty good historical battle. We have all seen this, and I think it is why Erik beleives that the combat I just picked apart is an outlyer. Before I started watching closely I would have believed this too, but I don't any more.

But if the TFs are not like types then things start to break down. That is why Mogami's cruisers did really well against my BBs in this series of engagements. It is also why cruiser TFs generally do well against BBs, the BBs don't shoot. We have all seen this, and if you look at your combat reports or just look for engagements where BBs decisively defeated a force containing cruisers only you will not find many, maybe not even one.

Some may say that this is fine because BB Vs. Cruiser engagements were rare in the Pacific. But that was because of doctrine on both sides, and we should not be forced to adhere to that doctrine or punished for changing it.

However there is a way to get ships to shoot, and we have already seen it. Get the enemy to shoot at you! How do you do that? don't give him many targets. Now if you send a solo DD or Cruiser to this kind of fight you will get mugged because the like types will fire on you and you will be badly outnumbered and get sunk.

But if you send a BB the enemy ships will not want to shoot at it, so only some of them will. Being fired on will have a magical awakening effect on the otherwise quiesent main battery, because (theory here) the model will run out of smaller guns to shoot. I think that is why Yugumo ate 3 14" shells off Oklahoma, the secondaries had already shot at the Japanese cruisers so there was nothing left for the model to grab. Just the fact that Okalhoma shot at Cruisers with secondaries and DDs with the main battery is a problem, we all know she should have done it the other way round, but this model is such a mess that you should take what you can get.

I got a post from a War Plan Orange player who said that the people who were winning were not moving their BBs around in big TFs, the winning force seemed to be 2-3 BBs and a few DDs. He said they would win by attrition. He is right, and the reason why is obvious now, when those 3 BBs meet the enemy fleet they shoot twice as often, or maybe more than twice as often than the ships in the 6 to 10 ship fleet, which means that the outnumbered ship fight at a huge advantage.



After watchign this and crunching the numbers I decided to wait for this post until I had actually tested my theory. The next time Mogami hit Sorong I had several TFs of one BB and 2 DDs, the Japanese came in with cruisers and this time they badly damaged 2 DDs, lost a CA and a DD but did not scratch the Allied BBs all of which fired numerous rounds from all their guns.

This fleet structure of lonely Battleships duking it out with enemy surface combat TFs would be a total disaster in the real world, but in WitP it is the the best possible BB TF. When I grouped 4 BBs with with cruiser and DDs, and 2 more with more cruisers and DDs I did less damage to the Japanese than when I sent one BB up against a similar force of Japanese cruisers.


The most recent test of the theory occured in the Fear and Loathing game, where 3 Royal Navy TFs crashed into the Japanese landing at Soerbaja. The Japanese did not have a surface combat group in the hex, but they did have 4 transport TFs each with 25+ transports and a few PGs and PCs for defense. The 3 RN TFs were a cruiser TF with 2 Country Class, 3 Town Class, and Fleet class and 5 DDs, and Warspite with a DD and Revenge with a DD.

Skipping the analyis the Cruiser TF arrived first and hit one of the convoys. These were all day battles the cruisers hit on TF an fought at 22k yards, 18K, 12, 9, 17, 24 and 30. They did a substantial amount of firing and damaged 16 Japanese ships out of a convoy of 29, some of which had been bombed or torpedoed by Allied air attacks earlier in the day.

Warspite arrived next and fired at 22, 18, 14, 10, 4, 8, 14, 20 and 28. She fired off all 800 of her main gun rounds, sunk 4 ships and damaged 7 more, though some were hit by the DD HMS Decoy. This is a pretty good performance in one respect, Warspite and Decoy damaged or sunk 11 out of 31 ships, the 11 cruisers and DDs from the cruiser TF only got 5 more. This happened because Warspite was shot at by some of the small guns on the Japanese merchant ships so she got to shoot back a lot. If there had been warships present in the convoy the battle would have been very different and also unrealistic, but in a different way. If there had been 1 cruiser in the convoy Warspite would have done a small amount of shooting because of unlike types, and then retired. If there had been many escorts she would have chewed up the escorts but not the convoy, but with no escorts she gets into the merchant men, some of them fire on her, and she fires back. If there had only been 1, 2 or 3 merchant ships she might not have fired at all.

Still it is both amazing and kind of pathetic that HMS Warspite closed to within 4000 yards of a 30 ship convoy and expended 1600 15". She should either have sunk more, or used a lot less ammunition. Basically you can have one or the other, but not both, if your going to be realistic. If lots of ammo is used up the damage should be high, and if little is used up damage should be low, but the game does not work this way, partly because of the like ships rule, partly because big guns are highly unlikely to hit, and partly because a round of ammo does not equal either a fixed number of shells OR an amount of shells fired in a fixed period.

Finally HMS Revenge arrived and found a third convoy of 35 ships, opened fire, used up all 1600 rounds of main batter ammunition and hit 8 ships sinking 1. I did not watch the combat report, so I don't know the details.

There is one more combat, farther to the South near Koepang that I want to comment on, because it shows the other side of the broken model.

While Warspite was taking on the Japanese merchant marine with her notoriously inaccurate gunnery KMS DeRuyter and 4 DDs caught 1 AP and 2 AKs off an island base near Koepang. Now in the real war a CL and 4 DDs would easliy massacre 3 merchant ships, as was seen over and over again during the fall of Singapore and the NEI as well as many other places where surface combatants found small numbers of merchant ships. But the model does not like you ship to shoot at a ship that is not like you. Merchants are not like DDs and CLs so only the AP fired. The Allied ships did not fire much either because they don't like to shoot at merchant ships. The result was the AP was hit by 24 shells and a torpedo and sunk, and the other 2 ships got away. This is not the exception in WitP it is the rule, for the reasons that I have explained over the course of these posts.



So what should we make of all this. First of all your BBs should be put into very small TFs. Even if they run into a big enemy BB TF they have an excellent change of crippling or sinking one or more enemy BBs and they will ALWAYS do disproportunate damage. If they meet an enemy cruiser or destroyer TF they will do very well unless they get torpedoed because they will return fire on everything that shoot at them, weather or not they actually have the guns to do it.

It does make some sense to group cruisers and DDs since they are likely to run into like types anyway.

Grouping BBs in small TFs in a huge advantage for the Allies because they have so many more of them. In fact if done well (keep the BBs under aircover, no unecessary risks early in the war) I suspect it will completly wreck the game because the Japanese don't really have a strong counter move. I'm not going to find out, because I am not going to waste any more time on a game which I find too flawed and frustrating, but some one reading this should try it.

Conversly the Allies should not agree to a house rule regarding the size of BB TFs because that makes the BBs much weaker and less effective than they were historically.

Sorry to post such negative conclusions, and maybe I am wrong about the end effect on the game, but I am certain that I have the model and its effects figured out, those who disagree are welcome to run historically correct TFs up against the gamey, bastard, A-historical TFs I suggest, but don't complain when all your ships get sunk, because that is what is going to happen.

Anyone going to GDC next week? send a message, maybe we can meet up for a beer.

Yammas from The Apo-Tiki Lounge. Future site of WITP AE benders! And then the s--t hit the fan