Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: wdolson
A large enough force crushed them the second time.

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ORIGINAL: John 3rd

No String.  Not true whatsoever.

The 1st Landing of a full Infantry Division and Engineering Regiment (30,000+ troops) featured them with a Prep of 55 for the base.  They landed against a force only marginally stronger then WAKE ISLAND.  Yes--there is that FA Unit but that is about the ONLY difference.

Wake usually falls when  a pair of of strong SNLF or Naval Guard units hit it.  With the Forts at 2 instead of 1, I landed with a force 5-6 times that strength.  What CRAP!  Add to that then the second Landing of 2 small base forces and an Artillery Regiment then, finally this Brigade. 

I rarely get mad at the game anymore but this is insanity.  One little garrision with, as detailed above, less then a dozen good-sized guns have managed to kill 40,000 Japanese and sink about 20 AP/AK.  I cannot believe it.  If I say anything more, this will be appropriately censored by our good webmasters...

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ORIGINAL: wdolson
Wake showed how poor Japan was at amphibious operations. They're successes were almost always against unprepared or non-existent defenders. Wake's defenders were prepared, but very small. A large enough force crushed them the second time.

Bill

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ORIGINAL: Nikademus
I'd have to disagree with that. Wake showed what could happen when an ill prepared "2nd Team" force with inadequate resources and support tries to assault an alerted and well defended atoll. In terms of the Japanese' successes, the reason why they were against non existant or lightly defended areas was due to doctrine. The Japanese were arguably the most proficient at Amphibious "Operations" which by definition are operations designed to be conducted against lightly or undefended locales. Japan, like the UK were unenthusiastic regarding the viability of Amphibious "Assault" [The taking of moderate to heavily defended coastlines] and thus didn't develop a detailed doctrine to conduct it. Only the USMC felt it was viable and it eventually did become viable once the kinks were worked out and the tools were developed to support it. (primary advanced landing craft that could fight their way in with a decent chance of survival.)

WitP AE - Test team lead, programmer

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

With that distinction, ie operation vs assault, OK I concede the point. The Japanese were fairly efficient at putting troops ashore when there was little to no opposition. However, that can only be expected when the enemy is lax and unprepared. If the enemy has any time and resources to prepare, you are conducting an assault, and Japan was not prepared for that either with the equipment or the doctrine.

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It took a while for the US to work out the bugs, but it was necessary. Shattered Sword talks about what would have likely happened if the Japanese had tried to land at Midway. The defenders were well prepared and had all likely routes ashore bore sighted. The Japanese landing force would likely have been shreadded before reaching the beach.

Bill

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ORIGINAL: Feinder

... If he posts the combat report of the base-adjsuted avs, that will likely explain a lot.  But I doubt that a def btn alone would do much vs. a bde that is (should be) fully prepped for invasion.

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Each of the organizations tended to be unique -- "one of a kind,' as a battalion's history stated. Weapons and personnel reflected a unit's destination and duties, much as a child's erector set took the shape dictated by the person assembling the parts, or such was the view of James H. Powers, a veteran of the 8th Defense Battalion. The selection and assignment of men and equipment proved a dynamic process, as units moved about, split into detachments, underwent redesignation, and traded old equipment for new. Much of the weapons and material came from the stocks of the U.S. Army, which had similarly equipped coast and antiaircraft artillery units. The first 155mm guns dated from World War I, but the Army quickly made modern types available, along with new 90mm antiaircraft guns that replaced the 3-inch weapons initially used by the defense battalions. In addition, the Army provided both primitive sound-ranging equipment and three types of Signal Corps radar -- the early-model SCR268 and SCR270 and the more advanced SCR268, which provided automatic target tracking and gun-laying.
By October 1941, the tables of organization for the new defense battalions had certain features in common, each calling for a headquarters battery, a sound-locator and searchlight battery, a 5-inch seacoast artillery group, a 3-inch antiaircraft group, and a machine-gun group. The specific allocation of personnel and equipment within each battalion depended, however, on where the battalion deployed and the changes "prescribed by the Commandant from time to time." In brief, the defense battalions adhered to certain standard configurations, with individual variations due to time and circumstance. The average battalion strength during the war was 1,372 officers and men, including Navy medical personnel. Like manpower, the equipment used by the defense battalions also varied, although the armament of the typical wartime unit consisted of eight 155mm guns, twelve 90mm guns, nineteen 40mm guns, twenty-eight 20mm guns, and thirty-five .50-caliber heavy machine guns, supplemented in some instances by eight M3 light tanks.

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ORIGINAL: Ken Estes


John, any idea what unit it is? The marine CD battalions don't normally contain that much firepower. What level are the forts?

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ORIGINAL: herwin

When I was the chief (systems) engineer for a USMC command and control system for amphibious operations, I learned the amount of staff work for a landing against a defended shore was staggering--several times greater than the staff work for a comparable set-piece battle. It all had to be done and done right for the operation to have any chance of success. Once ashore, tempo had to be maintained to keep the enemy reacting and not counterattacking. Supply was not an issue--there was no depth to the battlefield--but training, preparation, and initiative were key.

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ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

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ORIGINAL: herwin

When I was the chief (systems) engineer for a USMC command and control system for amphibious operations, I learned the amount of staff work for a landing against a defended shore was staggering--several times greater than the staff work for a comparable set-piece battle. It all had to be done and done right for the operation to have any chance of success. Once ashore, tempo had to be maintained to keep the enemy reacting and not counterattacking. Supply was not an issue--there was no depth to the battlefield--but training, preparation, and initiative were key.

Are you saying that supply was not a DIFFICULT issue to address, or that you really didn't need to supply the troops aside from perhaps their basic combat load?

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There are a lot complaints about the pace of the game. And yet we give an amphibious bonus to the Japanese during the opening months to keep their SNAFU losses to a minimum without requiring them to prep to 100 for their landings. Perhaps a better plan would be to give the Japanese Player a "special phase" on turn one to set the objective to 100 for "X" units and then let the SNAFUs of hurriedly cobbled together operations take their toll while the bonus would only apply to ops where the units were prepped to 100. But that's recoding and will never happen I suppose.

"It is obvious that you have greatly over-estimated my regard for your opinion." - Me

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ORIGINAL: ctangus

Against an atoll you certainly want to unload all your troops in one day. Multiple shock attacks without resting can gut your combat units. It's not quite as important against a non-atoll base, but it still helps.

I did some testing on this recently, since I'm currently on the offensive in 3 games. The testing probably could have been more thorough, but here's what I've concluded so far:

1. Troops, if they're in the lowest-numbered task force, will unload 1000 load points in the first day. For example a typical Marine division requires @24,000 AP load points or 35,000 LST load points. To ensure it unloads fully in a day you'll need to load it on 24+ APs or 35+ LSTs.

2. Troops, if they're in an additional (higher-numbered) task force unloading at the same time, mostly obey the same rules, but not always. I didn't do enough testing to isolate why, but TF #2 (or #3) doesn't always completely unload. It seems to unload 80-90% of its troops. To be safe add an extra 25% margin. So for the Marine Div example above you'd want to load it onto 30 APs or 44 LSTs.

3. Supplies unload at 200 points/phase or 400 points/day. However on an initial invasion supplies don't seem to unload during the first phase. On D-Day you get only 200 supply points per AK dedicated solely to supply transport.

Let's take that Marine Division again for example. At rest it might have a supply requirement of 1200. Combat doubles requirements so it will need 2400 supply for combat. To give it 2400 supply in one day of unloading you need 12 AKs solely dedicated to carrying supply.

I hope this makes some sense. It might seem like a lot of shipping - heck might be overkill - but I've had several successes & no failures applying these rules of thumb.

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ORIGINAL: wdolson
The game tries to manage to do this with the prep points for individual units.  In reality it shouldn't take that long for a unit to prep for a given target.  In the real world, units were often held in reserve during multiple operations and only commited to the areas where resistance was toughest.  I know the US had floating reserves at both Iwo Jima and Okinawa.  Those units were not prepped for a particular target, they were prepared to go ashore at any one of a couple of locations if they were needed.

The logisitcal planning for the operation is the real bottle neck and the prep point system is too inflexible and doesn't work that well to slow operations down to a realistic pace.  It also doesn't allow for operations like the Japanese did in the early months of the war, so the system has to be ginned with the amphibious bonus.

Bill

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

Early war operations were carried out without landing craft and ships. The Japanese didn't have any kind of amphibious vehicle and landed thier troops in whle boats. Early landing craft were available to the US for the Guadalcanal operation, but I think a lot of troops still came ashore in other craft.

All successful early war landings were virtually unopposed. The few times the Japanese ran into any real resistance, they were clobbered.

I think the problem you want to address can be solved with a new ship type, the APA. The difference between APs and APAs would be the types of boats they carry. APs would unload slower at invasion beaches and troops would land more disrupted than APAs. Some APs that were afloat at the beginning of the war can upgrade to APAs when the landing craft begame available in the real world.

This would make landings with APs very risky and would serve as a bottleneck for operations as you describe without huge modifications. It might be a largish change for WITP, but it could be done. It could be done with a new type of device for ships, which would be landing craft.

Bill

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ORIGINAL: John 3rd

Hi Guys. 

I stopped posting onto this because I have been so furious.  Total result of the Pago-Pago Operation:  one Inf Brigade from China destroyed, 1 Engineering Regiment destroyed, 2 Artillery Regiments destroyed, 2 small Construction Battalions destroyed, 75% of the 56th Infantry Division destroyed.  I evaced the remainder so it can rebuild for about a year or so.  To this add a total of 2 PG, 3 MSW, 9 AK, and about 12 AP SUNK.

Those are the specifics.
John

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ORIGINAL: wdolson

Early war operations were carried out without landing craft and ships.  The Japanese didn't have any kind of amphibious vehicle and landed thier troops in whle boats.  Early landing craft were available to the US for the Guadalcanal operation, but I think a lot of troops still came ashore in other craft.ey

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All successful early war landings were virtually unopposed.  The few times the Japanese ran into any real resistance, they were clobbered.

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I think the problem you want to address can be solved with a new ship type, the APA.  The difference between APs and APAs would be the types of boats they carry.  APs would unload slower at invasion beaches and troops would land more disrupted than APAs.  Some APs that were afloat at the beginning of the war can upgrade to APAs when the landing craft begame available in the real world.

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ORIGINAL: Nikademus

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I think the problem you want to address can be solved with a new ship type, the APA. The difference between APs and APAs would be the types of boats they carry. APs would unload slower at invasion beaches and troops would land more disrupted than APAs. Some APs that were afloat at the beginning of the war can upgrade to APAs when the landing craft begame available in the real world.

This would help. The only problem I see with it is that the landing craft themselves remain too abstracted and combined with the player's detail control of all warship and merchant types represented directly on the map, those "APA's" can be recycled over and over again to mount ops quickly. But it would be an improvement. The game already has something like that in the Amphibious Command ship but due to the abstraction effect, their impact in the game is not all that great in my opinion. I'd be afraid that the APA concept would result in a similar dilution of effect in regards to curbing unchecked amphibious op/assault missions.

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ORIGINAL: VSWG

wdolson also suggested that APAs carry landing crafts as devices, without them troops would not profit from using an APA instead of an AP. If these devices could become damaged/destroyed during landings you could effectively control the amount of invasions a player can conduct by limiting their replacement rate in the industry pool. The only problem would be the fixed replacement rate for these landing crafts throughout the war.

IMO a great idea! Sadly, it's probably something for WITP II.

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ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

Next time, add some CAs or BBs to invasion that can stop CD and arty mauling your ships and troops ashore.