Should Accidental Losses be Included?

[noshurviverse]

Throughout history, many ships were lost to purely accidental circumstances. Some of these were the result of running aground and a quite a few smaller ships met their fate at the bow of a larger friendly ship. And of course, the powder magazines of ships and the often poorly understood chemistry behind the charges within cost several ships and their crew dearly.

With that in mind, would it be worthwhile to model these possibilities in game? The "Ship sunken by sub/mine" event is one that brings players quite a bit of frustration, so I could see it being more trouble than it's worth, but if these events also impact the AI nations just as much it could work. Another thought might be that only ships that require a refit (0) might be eligible to be lost this way. This would incentive players to keep their ships well maintained and provide a way to avoid losing ships abruptly.

[rodentnavy]

So you are thinking of modelling events like HMS Montague running aground at Lundy or the Honda Point Disaster?

[akosjaccik]

I'd say if so, make it optional - for one rather important reason, a reason that I otherwise extremely like in this game: that's the fact that game size is a thing.

For example, I'm the sort of player who likes to play poorly funded, disadvantaged navies on small to medium sizes. Losses affect me very differently than people who like to play on massive funds and sizes, and where losing 20 destroyers in a single battle means barely 10% of their overall forces. So, how to balance it out? Scaling the possibility per turn? Because then the large-size player might be annoyed that he's losing ships every ~ten turns.

In anycase, I'm fully for customizable gameplay experience and I already like the occassional "in the darkness two of your ships collided while heading for port" etc. events after the battle for example, but I'd recommend to, again, make this optional so the game won't pick up a "strongly recommended" let's say, medium size to play on, for it to be the optimized per "realistic rate" one for multiple reasons.

[dorn]

There are 2 ways how such events can be applied.

1. Probability of such event
It has disadvantage that event trigger no matter of scalling. So scalling coefficient can be needed in some cases
2. Probability of such event for each ship
It has advantage that probability for whole fleet is scaled by number of ships but it does not consider reasons behind number of ships

There can be other coefficients for any event applied to this.

[garrisonchisholm]

This would be a good event, even if you threw in Storm events like what happened to the Japanese, but I think if any player saw it more than once they would pull their hair out. As is there seem to be a lot of "bad luck" complaints. It would have to be both infrequent and likely a pre-game tick-box option.

[wlbjork]

Crew quality should play some part in the resolution of such an event. Plus, I don't see that it should always result in a ship being lost.

Should it be treated like a mine/submarine attack? Just with different descriptions and images, depending on the event.

[captainloggy]

Like Mutsu and Vanguard blew up at port, that would be a fine addition, although perhaps no too frequent. Also, it somewhat already exists when you get the event to send saboteurs to blow up a battleship who end up blowing up a corvette only.

[tortugapower]

Dec 24, 2019 9:05:37 GMT -6 garrisonchisholm said:

This would be a good event, even if you threw in Storm events like what happened to the Japanese, but I think if any player saw it more than once they would pull their hair out. As is there seem to be a lot of "bad luck" complaints. It would have to be both infrequent and likely a pre-game tick-box option.

To be fair, I'm sure the Japanese complained about their vessels, and the Americans when a bunch of their Clemsons ran aground. *Very angry admiral noises*

Complaining is only natural!

[director]

As long as the events were seen to apply to all players and not just the human, I'd be OK with it.

[oldpop2000]

The Honda Point Disaster of 1923 was a combination of low budgets and failure to use the RDF located along the coast. The group following desRon 11 did use the RDF and they turned into the Santa Barbara Channel perfectly. The real issue was the speed coming down from San Francisco. I will leave the explanation to the following link. I've visited Honda Point and it is a treacherous area.

www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2010/february/naval-tragedys-chain-errors

The loss of the Clemson's actually did not cause the Navy any real problems, they simply went to the mothball fleet and got enough to fill out the squadron, serviced them and everything was fine. The Commander of the DesRon admitted his failure was not punished, If I remember. 

[sagaren]

Here's a good video covering the high points.


Honda Point Incident

[oldpop2000]

Dec 24, 2019 15:18:23 GMT -6 sagaren said:

Here's a good video covering the high points.


Honda Point Incident

I saw that video a couple of days ago, I should have put it up here. Thanks.

[sagaren]

My pleasure.

[director]

The explosions of Vanguard, Leonardo Da Vinci and Mutsu are clear examples of how random events can severely impact naval operations. The loss of Da Vinci and Mutsu were particularly painful as those navies didn't have a large number of capital ships in the first place.

I do think it would 'go down easier' if the incidents were scaled for fleet size. The most workable way might be to have events cause damage for smaller fleets and escalate to terminal damage for larger fleets. Ideally you'd want to reward the player who invests money in testing and quality control (or navigation and command), but that might be unworkable.

[srndacful]

I've been thinking about suggesting this, but I figured that, IMHO, it would only pi$$ off the majority of players, so I kept quiet. 

Still, if you'd like to press on, there is a really simple solution to the problem:
Have each and every ship roll against 1-in-a-million (well, more like 100.000, really) chance to have an accident each and every month.
If Fredrik's up to it, you could even add modifiers to the roll - like ships in Reserve having half this chance - or ships in Mothballs having five times less chance - or ships in colonies having 1.25 times the chance - or perhaps a penalty for nations with Hidden Flaws or Poor Shipbuilding or Poor Education or both.

Again, just my 0.02$ really.
Cheers!