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Mans
Sep 14, 2011

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Interesting how the first and only time the allies muster a minimally repectable fleet to face our own we immediatly lose and flee.

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Grey Hunter
Oct 17, 2007

Hero of the soviet union.
Accidental destroyer of planets






The raids here continue.






Somehow, they are still convincing people to get into planes.






The men are finally rested, and we kick off the fighting again.






We hold the Red Army again!



Well, in one place.






I have to say the number of Soviet air strikes has dropped in the last couple of days. Lets hope that continues.

zetamind2000
Nov 6, 2007

I'm an alien.

The British took back Imphal

OpenlyEvilJello
Dec 28, 2009

18 August 1945

Russian aircraft sink escort No. 213 off Pusan.

Saint Celestine
Dec 17, 2008

Lay a fire within your soul and another between your hands, and let both be your weapons.
For one is faith and the other is victory and neither may ever be put out.

- Saint Sabbat, Lessons
Grimey Drawer
Are the allies constantly flying new planes into Guam or are you just damaging the same ones over and over?

Ardeem
Sep 16, 2010

There is no problem that cannot be solved through sufficient application of lasers and friendship.

Saint Celestine posted:

Are the allies constantly flying new planes into Guam or are you just damaging the same ones over and over?

IIRC the AI isn't smart enough to support/supply bases, so as long as resources exist somewhere in the system, damaged squads and such will restore themselves automatically. Ones that are actually destroyed respawn in set locations and have to be moved somewhere useful.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

mllaneza posted:

It's a big seaplane carrier with most of the armament of a heavy cruiser.

i'll give you big in that it's 11,000 tons but you're out to lunch on the latter. as seaplane carriers they were armed with 4 DP 5" guns.

Grey Hunter
Oct 17, 2007

Hero of the soviet union.
Accidental destroyer of planets






The good work continues!



We drive off a sub.






We hold once more, but for how long?






A quieter day.



But it's time for Operation Pearl Harder to leave....
(With no zoom, this was a nightmare to show)

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

Grey Hunter posted:




But it's time for Operation Pearl Harder to leave....
(With no zoom, this was a nightmare to show)

It begins

:unsmigghh:

zetamind2000
Nov 6, 2007

I'm an alien.

When are the carriers expected to arrive at Pearl Harbor?

Broken Box
Jan 29, 2009

I am so glad we went with Pearl Harder as the operation name.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Grey Hunter posted:




But it's time for Operation Pearl Harder to leave....

:getin:

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22
climb mount niitaka again

CannonFodder
Jan 26, 2001

Passion’s Wrench
Are the big guns coming to play? This needs to end on a battleship duel.

Imaginary Baron
Apr 14, 2010
Plagued by idiotic leadership and suffering from horrific losses, the capitalist allies hide in Pearl and wait for the communists to push through Manchuria.

Godspeed Pearl Harder, end this with a bang.

terrenblade
Oct 29, 2012

Grey Hunter posted:



But it's time for Operation Pearl Harder to leave....
(With no zoom, this was a nightmare to show)

Did you check your fleet for spare planet killers?

Epicurius
Apr 10, 2010
College Slice
Are we including an invasion force? The Soviets cant hit us in our new capital of Honolulu.

Woodchip
Mar 28, 2010
I’m going to guess 8 capital ships sunk on both sides.

Not to make the Mt Niitaka thread too morbid 😆

wukkar
Nov 27, 2009
So we were required to keep X forces in Manchuria to keep the Soviets from activating early. But now that they have activated, are our forces still tied in place? Could we fall back to a Beijing&Seoul line?

Is Grey actively managing this front? Is the enemy AI maneuvering against our stationary forces as it pleases? Are our men getting surrounded and captured, or falling back in good order?

I know the real answer is "Our bulk is busy getting malaria in Burma and they have tanks, it barely matters." But still..

That Works
Jul 22, 2006

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy


Fleets gonna get to Pearl and find it empty and then the Missouri shows up in Tokyo Bay...

dublish
Oct 31, 2011


That Works posted:

Fleets gonna get to Pearl and find it empty and then the Missouri shows up in Tokyo Bay...

... where Grey unleashes the might of the fully armed and operational Tokyo Bay Fortress.

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

wukkar posted:

So we were required to keep X forces in Manchuria to keep the Soviets from activating early. But now that they have activated, are our forces still tied in place? Could we fall back to a Beijing&Seoul line?

Is Grey actively managing this front? Is the enemy AI maneuvering against our stationary forces as it pleases? Are our men getting surrounded and captured, or falling back in good order?

I know the real answer is "Our bulk is busy getting malaria in Burma and they have tanks, it barely matters." But still..

Given the ground combat model, the AI's fixation on targets, the overwhelming strength of the Soviets, and the inability to model August Storm, stringing the Japanese forces around everywhere is probably the best strategy. That or massing in KIAfeng

Bold Robot
Jan 6, 2009

Be brave.



wukkar posted:

So we were required to keep X forces in Manchuria to keep the Soviets from activating early. But now that they have activated, are our forces still tied in place? Could we fall back to a Beijing&Seoul line?

Is Grey actively managing this front? Is the enemy AI maneuvering against our stationary forces as it pleases? Are our men getting surrounded and captured, or falling back in good order?

I know the real answer is "Our bulk is busy getting malaria in Burma and they have tanks, it barely matters." But still..

Grey has more or less said he's wrapping this up after the Pearl Harbor adventure so my guess is he's not doing much of anything with the forces in China.

Grey Hunter
Oct 17, 2007

Hero of the soviet union.
Accidental destroyer of planets
Yeah, there is little I can do in China to stop the Russians, so it would be six months to a year of losing bases every few days.
It's fun now, but it would get old fast.

zetamind2000
Nov 6, 2007

I'm an alien.

Grey Hunter posted:

Yeah, there is little I can do in China to stop the Russians, so it would be six months to a year of losing bases every few days.
It's fun now, but it would get old fast.

You'd pretty much have to redeploy literally everything from outside of China after the Allies make peace following the second raid on Pearl Harbor, but that would be something for the post-game write-up

Grey Hunter
Oct 17, 2007

Hero of the soviet union.
Accidental destroyer of planets






The Steel Rain continues.






The soviets are still bombing, there is just nothing interesting left to blow up....



The Communists take another base.






The Red air force makes the mistake of visiting Japan.






Ignore the random bit of China, this is actually over Rabaul.






We really did a number on them today!

Grey Hunter
Oct 17, 2007

Hero of the soviet union.
Accidental destroyer of planets






The bombs keep falling.






A few bases still have planes to destroy.






That gods-dammned motherfucking +Terrain bonus.....






Ground combat is why I never want to touch this game again once this LP is over. Everything in my favour bar the terrain and it does THAT to me.

saintonan
Dec 7, 2009

Fields of glory shine eternal

They have lots more guns and vehicles there. It seems like the ground combat engine values guns and especially vehicles very highly.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

saintonan posted:

They have lots more guns and vehicles there. It seems like the ground combat engine values guns and especially vehicles very highly.

Depending on the terrain, it should be the reverse. Regular artillery and tanks were garbage in dense jungle and mountainous terrain.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




Should be, often isn't. In my last game I counterattacked at Rangoon with two tank brigades. Bounced the whole Japanese stack back a hex. Without any of their artillery.

Fuzzy McDoom
Oct 9, 2007

-MORE MONEY FOR US

-FUCK...YOU KNOW, THE THING

Hasn't this company/designer made other games where people don't universally hate the ground combat? I get that the appeal here is naval stuff but surely just lifting a barebones version of your grog model from other games would yield better results than whatever this is. The only thing I can think of is that they really wanted to capture the essence of brutal island slogs like Guadalcanal/Okinawa/Iwo Jima and then accidentally made any vaguely fortified position into a nightmare while also forgetting that some landmasses are greater than 20 square miles.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

saintonan posted:

They have lots more guns and vehicles there. It seems like the ground combat engine values guns and especially vehicles very highly.

Someone mentioned upthread that the displayed Assault Value is based purely on ability to take and hold ground, and not actual combat ability, so it hugely overestimates infantry while basically giving 0 AV to artillery and tanks which then nevertheless have a giant impact on the combat. So even though it gives you an AV for each side and an adjusted AV for each side, that doesn't actually reflect combat capacity because artillery and tanks are more or less invisible in that number.

I think there was some point where Grey lost a battle to a tank unit that was listed as having 0 AV but nevertheless defeated a bunch of infantry because they had nothing that could harm tanks.

PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Fuzzy McDoom posted:

Hasn't this company/designer made other games where people don't universally hate the ground combat? I get that the appeal here is naval stuff but surely just lifting a barebones version of your grog model from other games would yield better results than whatever this is. The only thing I can think of is that they really wanted to capture the essence of brutal island slogs like Guadalcanal/Okinawa/Iwo Jima and then accidentally made any vaguely fortified position into a nightmare while also forgetting that some landmasses are greater than 20 square miles.

Yeah, Grey just finished War in the East and War in the West playthroughs, and the ground combat there seemed reasonable? My guess is that the ground combat was designed purely to make Japanese island fortresses irritating for the Americans to take, which would be dumb and not surprising.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22
lol at anyone describing the WITE/WITW ground combat engine as reasonable, someone had a really good post on that poo poo in an earlier LP thread

Omobono
Feb 19, 2013

That's it! No more hiding in tomato crates! It's time to show that idiota Germany how a real nation fights!

For pasta~! CHARGE!

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

lol at anyone describing the WITE/WITW ground combat engine as reasonable, someone had a really good post on that poo poo in an earlier LP thread

Define reasonable. WITE models down to single tanks and 20 men squads if I remember correctly and we can all agree that's incredibly stupid, but the outcomes were somewhat sensible from the numbers displayed.
Here the model seem to mistake tanks for invincible mobile fortresses even in situations and on terrain where infantry should be king.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

lol at anyone describing the WITE/WITW ground combat engine as reasonable, someone had a really good post on that poo poo in an earlier LP thread

quote:

In a hex-and-chit wargame, you might have a Panzer Division counter with a Strength of, say 15, as opposed to a Soviet Rifle Division counter with a strength of, say 3.

If the Panzer Division attacks the Soviet Rifle Division, that's a 3:1 strength ratio. You roll a six-sided die, and then the higher the die roll the better the result. If your strength ratio is higher, such as 4:1 or 5:1, then the worst possible die result is improved, and the best possible die result goes even farther.

Now, if the Panzer Division loses a battle, you might flip the chit over to its "reduced strength" side, which would have a Strength of, say, 7.
If it loses yet another battle, the Panzer Division might be destroyed altogether.

WITE's claim-to-fame is that by modelling every single tank, rifle squad, half-track, and anti-tank gun inside the Panzer Division, and by also modeling the experience level, fatigue level, and morale level of the every single "device" inside the formation, then you can get gradations finer than 15 -> 7 -> 0. You could project a strength number that's "accurate" up to two decimal points, even!

___

Similarly, in our same hypothetical hex-and-chit wargame, that Panzer Division might have a Movement Point allocation of, say, 40, as opposed to an Infanterie Division with an MP allocation of only 10.

That wargame might have rules for how this figure of 40 will get adjusted: maybe it gets cut in half if you're so-and-so hexes away from the nearest supply source, or maybe it gets cut in half during winter, and so on.

Maybe there's an absolute minimum of 5 MPs that you can always use no matter what.

WITE's claim-to-fame is that by modelling the precise fuel percentage number, you can get gradations finer than 40 -> 20 -> 5.

Further, by modelling the entire logistical chain from the oil extraction, to the fuel production, to the fuel shipment to the front by train, to the fuel shipment from the HQ to the division by truck, that that fuel percentage number is can be finely adjusted anywhere from 0% to 150%.

___

This is all well and good, and there's maybe some value in letting the Strength value be "extracted" from a formation's component parts so that you don't have to think about whether the Grossdeutschland Division should have 17 or 16 strength relative to the 1st Panzer Division's 15 strength - just plug in the GDR's OOB and it'll all wash out, right?

Except the combat value that you're assigning to the component parts are themselves arguably arbitrary, and assuming that the GDR has slightly higher morale / experience than a regular Heer formation is also arbitrary, and so on. Just because the 16 strength was derived from a summation of smaller bits doesn't make the 16 strength an objective metric, if the smaller bits themselves were assigned subjectively.

And if it's all going to end up subjective anyway, then you might as well construct a game where you don't have to account for the precise number of motorcyclists in a division in 1942 while the moon is gibbous waxing.

And if you do want to break the limitations imposed by your hex-and-chit predecessors and have a game where the Panzer division can "flip" between all 15 integers between 0 and 16, you can also do that, but also you don't need to be so anal-retentive about it.


___

A good counter-example is the Decisive Battles series (not the Decisive Campaigns series).

In this game, each unit is assigned a number of "bullets" representing their ammo level, and a number of "barrels" representing their fuel level. A unit might have anywhere from six to eight bullets, and they might get two to four bullets back during the inter-turn resupply, but it's all abstracted. You don't need to know how many tons of ammunition each bullet translates to - all you need to know is that as long as you still have bullets, you can still fight, and if you run out, you're in trouble.

Similarly, a panzer battalion might be able to travel 15 hexes total - it'll lose one barrel for every 5 hexes you make it move, and it'll get anywhere from 1 to 2 barrels back during the inter-turn resupply, but you don't need to know how many liters of gas that translates to, because it's not important.

Strengths are also handled in a similar way - a unit is assigned a strength value, and that value goes up and down in multiple "steps" as the unit takes casualties, but it's just "steps" - you don't get to see what that actually represents. Hell, the game even supports a mode where base strengths are randomized, to keep battles interesting, which wouldn't be possible in WITE's model.

___

Finally, the reason why you would want to do this in the first place, to "reduce" the complexity of a game down to this level, is so that it's easier for the player to understand exactly what it is they're doing.

In Decisive Battles, you can count-up the total strength you're committing to an attack, you can account for the terrain modifier, you can count how much artillery, air-power, and "generalship" points you're committing (each of which improves your odds by one more "column shift" per), and then you can check the combat tables for the possible results across the six die rolls.

Now, you CAN guarantee a victory by doing a 10:1 combat, but you'll never have enough forces to always do that, and if you're playing with a 3:1 attack and half the time it's going to fail to cause a retreat because the d6 came up as a 1, 2, or 3, then you still can't predict exactly how the battle is going to go, even if you know what the odds are, and that still keeps the game interesting.

In WITE, you're generally aiming for your offensive CV to be twice that of the defender's defensive CV. A lot of the computation is done for you - the displayed defensive CV already includes the terrain modifier, the offensive CV already reflects potential artillery support, and so on, but when you commit that combat, there's still a bunch of die rolls going in the background as far as whether the general will mess up, whether the air support will arrive, whether the engineers will be committed, etc.

Now, if the player is still just looking for strength odds, and if the outcome of the battle is still unpredictable because of the die rolls in the back, but it's even more unpredictable because the player is deliberately kept from knowing how those odds and die rolls and percentages are going to shake out ... that's not necessarily a better experience.

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Omobono posted:

Define reasonable. WITE models down to single tanks and 20 men squads if I remember correctly and we can all agree that's incredibly stupid, but the outcomes were somewhat sensible from the numbers displayed.
Here the model seem to mistake tanks for invincible mobile fortresses even in situations and on terrain where infantry should be king.

WITP also counts land formations as being composed of hundreds of infantry squads and dozens of individual tanks and guns.

The problem is that you don't even get the kind of Attack Value vs Defense Value dichotomy in WITP that you do in WITE - you have your Assault Value, but you won't know what the AV of the enemy is until you fight them in the same hex, and while you can recon enemy troops to get an estimate on the number of troops in a hex, how that translates into AV is still a mystery since support squads and specialty squads still count as men.

That said, I do think it's worth noting that WITP works on a daily scale, while WITE works on a weekly scale, so what might seem like a reasonable "Soviet tank division rolls over a Hungarian infantry brigade in a single combat-right-click", might stretch out to be a three-to-four-turn affair in WITP, which might change how we perceive it to be as far as whether it's happening "fast enough"

Comstar
Apr 20, 2007

Are you happy now?
From reading Castles of Steel I don't think any human player would put up for a single turn what happened in real life.

4 German BC's with attached CL's and DD's bombard a British harbour with 4 old DD's and a modern SS.

3 DD's run away. 1 launches 1 torpedo (that misses) and the sub grounds itself on a sandbar. The defending old small guns on land cause more damage and take none back because the range is so short the BC's shells aren't arming and are skipping off the ground into the town behind them.

The BC's see the single torpedo and run away.

400 civilians dead and wounded and nothing of military significance occurs.

It gets more farcical when the big fleet engagement you have planned (because you can read the enemy codes and know what's going on) fails completely because your signal officer sends a bad order to the wrong ship which passes that bad order to the next wrong ship and causes your BC fleet to miss by 10 miles the enemy fleet. Meanwhile a DD squadron mistakes an enemy DD for friendly because it stayed in their formation and kept a straight face while doing it. A friendly BB decides NOT to shoot an enemy CL for no apparent reason. One of your fleet admirals is trying to give orders to a DD squadron and dosn't know Fleet Command ordered the DD's to sit 100 miles away guarding a minefield.

Any human player would be tearing their hair out and refusing to play such a buggy game.

Grey Hunter
Oct 17, 2007

Hero of the soviet union.
Accidental destroyer of planets

Comstar posted:

From reading Castles of Steel I don't think any human player would put up for a single turn what happened in real life.

4 German BC's with attached CL's and DD's bombard a British harbour with 4 old DD's and a modern SS.

3 DD's run away. 1 launches 1 torpedo (that misses) and the sub grounds itself on a sandbar. The defending old small guns on land cause more damage and take none back because the range is so short the BC's shells aren't arming and are skipping off the ground into the town behind them.

The BC's see the single torpedo and run away.

400 civilians dead and wounded and nothing of military significance occurs.

It gets more farcical when the big fleet engagement you have planned (because you can read the enemy codes and know what's going on) fails completely because your signal officer sends a bad order to the wrong ship which passes that bad order to the next wrong ship and causes your BC fleet to miss by 10 miles the enemy fleet. Meanwhile a DD squadron mistakes an enemy DD for friendly because it stayed in their formation and kept a straight face while doing it. A friendly BB decides NOT to shoot an enemy CL for no apparent reason. One of your fleet admirals is trying to give orders to a DD squadron and dosn't know Fleet Command ordered the DD's to sit 100 miles away guarding a minefield.

Any human player would be tearing their hair out and refusing to play such a buggy game.

It would depend on how it was communicated.

X has missread orders.
Y is holding while awaiting clarification.
Z is ignoring your orders and is attacking for his own personal glory.

As long as it is clear this why your plan is in tatters, most people would be fine.

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vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

Comstar posted:

From reading Castles of Steel I don't think any human player would put up for a single turn what happened in real life.

4 German BC's with attached CL's and DD's bombard a British harbour with 4 old DD's and a modern SS.

3 DD's run away. 1 launches 1 torpedo (that misses) and the sub grounds itself on a sandbar. The defending old small guns on land cause more damage and take none back because the range is so short the BC's shells aren't arming and are skipping off the ground into the town behind them.

The BC's see the single torpedo and run away.

400 civilians dead and wounded and nothing of military significance occurs.

It gets more farcical when the big fleet engagement you have planned (because you can read the enemy codes and know what's going on) fails completely because your signal officer sends a bad order to the wrong ship which passes that bad order to the next wrong ship and causes your BC fleet to miss by 10 miles the enemy fleet. Meanwhile a DD squadron mistakes an enemy DD for friendly because it stayed in their formation and kept a straight face while doing it. A friendly BB decides NOT to shoot an enemy CL for no apparent reason. One of your fleet admirals is trying to give orders to a DD squadron and dosn't know Fleet Command ordered the DD's to sit 100 miles away guarding a minefield.

Any human player would be tearing their hair out and refusing to play such a buggy game.

Just imagine a game, any game, trying to simulate the Dogger Bank Incident:

quote:

The Russian warships involved in the incident were en route to the Far East, to reinforce the 1st Pacific Squadron stationed at Port Arthur, and later Vladivostok, during the Russo-Japanese War. Because of the fleet's alleged sightings of balloons and four enemy cruisers the day previously, coupled with "the possibility that the Japanese might surreptitiously have sent ships around the world to attack"[7] them, the Russian admiral, Zinovy Rozhestvensky, called for increased vigilance, issuing an order that "no vessel of any sort must be allowed to get in among the fleet".[7]

It was known that enemy intelligence had been heavily active in the region.[8] Torpedo boats, a recent development of the major navies, had the potential to damage and sink large warships, and were very difficult to detect, causing psychological stress on sailors at war.

While enroute, Admiral Rozhestvensky received an intelligence report from the Russian transport Bakan in the Langeland Fjord of "four torpedo-boats which only showed lights on the mizenmast-head, so that at a distance they might be taken for fishing boats." The Admiral took the report seriously and quickened his coaling and commenced sailing.[9]

Similar accidents and rumours affected the Russian fleet: there was a general fear of attack, with widespread rumours that a fleet of Japanese torpedo boats were stationed off the Danish coast, talk of the Japanese having mined the seas, and alleged sightings of Japanese submarines. Before the Dogger Bank incident, the nervous Russian fleet fired on fishermen carrying consular dispatches from Russia to them, near the Danish coast, without causing any damage due to their poor gunnery.[10]

After navigating a non-existent minefield, the Russian fleet sailed into the North Sea. The disaster of 21 October began in the evening, when the captain of the supply ship Kamchatka (Камчатка), which was last in the Russian line, took a passing Swedish ship for a Japanese torpedo boat and radioed that he was being attacked. Later that night, during fog, the officers on duty sighted the British trawlers, interpreted their signals incorrectly and classified them as Japanese torpedo boats, despite being more than 20,000 miles (30,000 km) from Japan. The Russian warships illuminated the trawlers with their searchlights and opened fire. The British trawler Crane was sunk, and its captain and first mate were killed. Four other trawlers were damaged, and six other fishermen were wounded, one of whom died a few months later. As the trawlers had their nets down, they were unable to flee and, in the general chaos, Russian ships shot at each other: the cruisers Aurora and Dmitrii Donskoi were taken for Japanese warships and bombarded by seven battleships sailing in formation, damaging both ships and killing a chaplain and at least one sailor and severely wounding another. During the pandemonium, several Russian ships signalled torpedoes had hit them, and on board the battleship Borodino rumours spread that the ship was being boarded by the Japanese, with some crews donning life vests and lying prone on the deck, and others drawing cutlasses. More serious losses to both sides were only avoided by the extremely low quality of Russian gunnery, with the battleship Oryol reportedly firing more than 500 shells without hitting anything.[10] After twenty minutes' firing the fishermen saw a blue light signal on one of the warships, the order to cease firing.[11]

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