Nikademus
Posts: 25684
Joined: 5/27/2000
From: Alien spacecraft
Status: offline
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"Be careful what you wish for..." :p
But since you asked. Here goes Matrix and 2b3
First off, a big compliment since I tend to spend my limited time here posting concerns and suggestions. Playing scenerio 17 as Allied and have had one of the most entertaining and exciting wargame experiences on memory. So good that it has created that classic time warp effect leading one to wonder where the time went that one was supposed to devote to more vital activities :)
Am liking most of what i see, and am especially grateful for the new "Troops only" button recently added along with class designators for ships.
Some points/concerns and suggestions however.
1. Still dealing with Uber-General Purpose bombs. In the current campaign I just sank 3 Japanese battleships exclusively by 1000ILB GP bomb, two Kongo class and one Nagato class. Nagato in particular had very heavy protection over the mags and the Kongo's while retaining their battlecruiser side protection also had benefited from heavily augmented deck armor systems. Every single bomb hit "penetrated" leading to the predicitable results. This eliminates the early war US weakness of smaller numbers of torpdeo bombers, exaserbated by the short range of the TBD Devastator. The torpedo was the bane of all battleships and other moderate to heavily armored ships. Here, bombs are like torps so its no problem. (500ILB bombs can also acomplish the same at up to 5inches of protection. Again i remind these are not even Armor piercing bombs, but GP (i.e. HE or at best, semi-AP depending on fuse setting)
2) Tied to #1, damage allocation remains too general. Penetrating damage invariably causes all three major system to increment at the same time (SYS, FLT, FIRE) Non-torpedo and non "belt" hits should have more strict checks in place to see if FLT damage is caused. A ship with 70+% SYS damage after all will still be in no condition to fight, but if the waterline is intact the ship can at least limp back into a port, and as mentioned numerous times, the progressive flooding rules are very strict and properly so......Thats what makes torpedoes so dangerous.
Fire damage, while it can cause SYS and even FLT to increase is still too regimented. Like progressive flooding, there should be checks to see if fires spread, stay the same or even cause explosions. It would be nice too to see if a check could be made to see if weapons systems are taken out by the fires.
3) To address the age old concern (since GGPW days) of small and medium ships surcombing too easily to "penetrating" damage, especially if hit by large caliber shells (and incidently....."bombs") I would offer the following suggestion.
Part of the reason for this is due to the limited "areas" presented when allocating damage. There are four selections currently.
1) Tower Armor
2) Belt hit
3) Deck hit
4) Weapons hit**
** more like 3 choices since when a weapon is hit and penetrated, the attacking weapon is allowed to attack either the belt or deck armor systems as well
Because of it's operational/strategic nature, the game correctly limits itself to assuming that the belt/deck systems are always protecting the ship's vitals and that if penetrated, obviously those vitals will take signifigant damage.
This works fine for larger, more durable targets but often results in excessively fragile medium and smaller ships. A classic example would be one of my last battles, which involved the HIJMS Nagato. She was mostly a non-factor in this night battle, her only contribution being two hits on the CA San Francisco.
the CA recieved no other hits during the fight but after the battle she ended up being the most heavily damaged surface ship that survived, with a whopping 60% SYS, 50+% FLT and over 20 fire levels. All that from 'two' 16.1 inch hits that penetrated.
Realistically, unless the big shell (or bomb) hits something vital, there is just as good a chance that only light to moderate damage might be caused. In the most extreme cases, if using AP, a thin skinned vessel might even suffer negligable damage resulting from the big AP shell passing completely through the ship before detonating leaving only jagged holes in the ship's structure. (A good real life example.....the real San Fran's experience at Third Guadalcanal)
Due to the game's "all vital" damage rules after penetration however, and coupled with the very high damage rating of the 16 inch shell, the damage to my San Fran was predicitibly very heavy. Not that this "couldn't" have happened mind you, the point being that this type of result "will" happen every time with the current system in place. Destroyers and light CL types are even more vulnerable to this form of elimination.....usually all it takes is a half dozen medium hits and the DD is toast. (Make it a dozen if small caliber......make it one or two if heavy caliber)
My suggestion to 'fix' this issue would be to add a 5th damage location to a ship's geography.
5) Superstructure
This damage location should have the following characteristics
a) A high probability to be chosen as the "hit location" (this would be especially true during shorter range night fights which tended to be close allowing shell trajectories to remain "flat", ususally stricking midway to high up resulting either in upper deck or superstructure hits .....historical example --- South Dakota and Hiei at Third Guadalcanal Both ships suffered most of their hits in the superstructure region, very few at the waterline) My suggestion, 50% chance at least that this location be chosen. Higher for close range night battles.
b) This hit location should be immune to causing FLT damage
c) This hit location should have little to no chance of causing SYS damage (because to do so would defeat the purpose of armor which "protects" the vital areas......control and bridge spaces in the same general area already have a "hit location" in the form of Tower Armor
d) This hit location should have a medium to high probability of causing FIRE damage. Superstructure areas (Tower armor excluded) tended to be light and non armored in nature (or at best, splinter protection only) and thus would be highly vulnerable to incendiary type fire, such as the 5inch HE rounds of Destroyers and such. The chance of fires should be linked to the shell and bomb type of course. Actual structure damage can look bad and be extensive, but in terms of vital operations, it actually means little so there should be little in the way of SYS damage. The danger is that all this metal and the things contained therein make good fuel for fires which can cause damage leading all the way to the loss of the ship if unchecked
e) This hit location should have no armor rating (control spaces have their own hit location)
Implementing this suggestion would, i believe acomplish the following
1.) Eliminate the constant infusion of signifigant damages, especially when concerning larger shell and bombs by having a "shell aborber" in the form of the "Superstructure" hit location. This would allow warships, especially small warships such as destroyers the chance to be able to take more than a half dozen to a dozen hits without being crippled and sunk. Having the new hit location to "absorb" up to 50% or more of these incoming rounds would leave the more vital "Belt" and "Deck" armor systems to cover and protect the "vital" systems when they are chosen as the hit location without having to change the coding routines for those systems a great deal.
One exception though should be for bomb hits, given their trajectory, as with weapons location hits, if they strike the superstructure hit location a 'check' should be made to determine whether or not the bomb is allowed to make an additional attack against the deck armor system of the warship. either that or bombs should have a higher probability to strike deck armor vs superstructure. Carriers in particular should have a low roll for "superstructure" when taking bomb hits due to the their expanse of flight deck and small concentrated bridge structures
2) Currently in the game, non-penetrating hits do nothing to virtually to a ship. While not a bad thing, one area where it does fall short of realism is in the form of incendiary effects caused by infusions of light HE munitions from Destroyers and other ships with small and medium weapons. Becuase of this its impossible to simulate events such as what happened to both SoDak and the Hiei where, while their vitals were all but immune to the incoming fire, their participation in the fighting was degraded by the numerous superstructure hits they suffered which caused distracting fires in the later's case and fire control issues in the former.
With the exception of Hiei's unprotected steering engine room, neither ship ever had it's WT or structural integrity put into danger. Fires though are naturally dangerous because they can acomplish what the shells themselves were not capable of, mainly causing SYS and weapons damage and even some FLT if serious enough.
So to reiterate, the implementation would solve too outstanding problems present since the days of GGPW.......the first being the tendancy for light and medium ships to be knocked out and/or sunk after only a minimal number of penetrating blows due to every penetrating hit being "vital" in nature. With this system in place the Superstructure would act as a natual shell absorber, taking hits that while not vital in nature, cause visual damage and most importantly the potential for fire damage which can threaten the ship's safety if heavy enough. Casualties would be another component but are not represented in the game currently. A check could be put into place that makes a ship being pummeled by a bunch of non penetrating or superstructure hits being distracted enough to reduce it's level of participation in the battle.
2ndly it would give outgunned adversaries, such as pop-gun armed destroyers a chance to hurt or at least impede bigger ships that venture into close range situations where they might be smothered by a large number of non penetrating incendiary fire causing FIRE damage that might end up resulting in weapons and SYS damage.
4.) Suggest that the new class descriptor be included in the form TF popup screen so that players at the time of forming can better determine what classes are available to form up their TF's with
5.) Still seeing a virtual lack of discovery when assigning aircraft to ASW flights. I've tried adjusting the atitudes, the % of bomber group devoted etc etc. I can see the mission acumilating so i know they are flying but other than that....... Actual attacks are not a problem. At this point in time, aircraft were not very successful at attacking subs.
6.) Not sure if this is a bug, historical fact or what, but certain US FG's and VF's come into the game with as many as 2.5 times the number of pilots vs the number of machines (ready or unready). While not as odd for LBA units, it gets distinctly odd when dealing with carrier air groups that are forced to divert to LBA's due to carrier damage. When they divert, they divert with their entire pool of ready pilots, an impossibility unless each pilot stuffed a friend behind his seat while in flight :) For carrier groups i feel the ready pilots should not exceed the total number of planes carried in the squadron given this mobility feature (example: a VF of 36 planes had to divert to Lunga from Enterprise due to damage during heavy combat. When examining the VF at Lunga it had all 64 of it's ready pilots present right from the get go on the very next turn, a neat and very useful loophole for Allied players indeed!)
7.) Confused about maximum range and effective range brackets as shown in the game and popup screens. I'm finding that search and C47 transports are routinely exceeding the extended range listed in their info screens. This may need looking at.
8.) suggestion for ASW interactions. There seems to be some debate over how effective depth charges should be against subs. Part of the confusion may be being caused by the interpretation of what kind of hits are being scored. If a direct hit by depth charge, the sub naturally should have little to no chance of surviving while submerged, but if it's a near miss then i could see how subs are often coming away with only light to moderate damage Perhaps a msg enhancement should be added as with the fighter combat specifying whether or not a hit is a near miss or a direct hit. Its more information than the attacker is normally privy to granted, but it would help to ease player concerns that their subs are interacting correctly when being counter-attacked.
9) I'm wondering if there should be a bigger delay when replacing lost pilots, especially for carriers (and esp for the Japanese player) Right now replacements and pilots tend to be near instantanious. Since the turns are 24 hour ones.....it would seem to be more realistic if there was some delay invoked when air groups suffer heavy casualties (killed or wounded) resulting in a need to ship forward fresh recruits. Just an idea
10.) Air vs LBA
Been wondering about this for as long as GGPW.....actually i lied, as far back as Carrier Force. Air attack vs airfields have always struck me as being a bit on the anemic side. The only exception i have ever seen was in the historical Turn one for GGPW when US forces were put into "suprise" status. There one might see dozens of planes destroyed or damaged on the ground.
After that though, rare if ever do any planes get caught on the ground. The problem is not as acute with UV since even when no aircraft are destroyed there can still be runway and service damage, and more importantly, morale hits for units based there.
I have yet to see in any of the countless # of strikes, even when radar is *not* present at the target a raid has been able to strike at the air assets held at a base. Big bases, small bases, large #'s of aircraft, low #'s of aircraft, its all the same....little to no "hits" on actual aircraft. Its almost enough to make one say, "why bother?"
It also makes me wonder how, in WitP, the game will be able to cover late war USN "plane raids" when leading up to an Atoll or island invasion, raids which were reputed to have destroyed "hundreds" of planes on the ground (Truk is another example) leading to the isolation of the target. I was never able to do this with GGPW (the weekly turns also hindered it too) and given the results seen in UV, dont see how WitP will be able to acomplish this either.
So in conclusion, i'm wondering if LBA vs Air attack is just a tad bit too anemic and should be looked at for a future patch and WitP.
11.) Air vs Land based unit
As others have mentioned, biggest problem right now is that air attacks vs ground units at a base tend to have the same unit attacked over and over and over again while other units are left untouched. This results in one unit (with my luck, its usually the high assault value one) continually gets attritioned to impotence while other less valuable units do not. Attacks against the units is still a bit on the heavy side as well. Disruption and morale hits are fine but in the opposite situation for the airfields, ground casualties tend to continue to be on the high side. Dont have the manual with me but just in case this is not the case, what i would suggest is that ground casualties be tied to the fortification level of the base being attacked. I can see massive casualites when a unit, recently landed and not having had time to dig in gets bombed but a unit that has high fortification levels should be very hard to cause damage too. Terrain should also factor as well, attest to this the reletive ineffectiveness of massive air attacks vs fortresses such as Okinawa or Iwo Jima or to a lesser degree, Corregidor even.
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m 2 cents & BTW I can't believe how good Matrix pat... - 
Let's be "conservative"... :-) - 
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