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Post by noshurviverse on Feb 22, 2019 21:06:04 GMT -6
It would be a good inclusion. Otherwise there's no way to represent real life incidents such as the sinking of HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales, or the American skip-bombing campaign against the IJN. Does the player have the ability to launch pearl harbor-style air raids? One of the more frustrating things in RTW is when the AI repeatedly refuses battle unless they have a clear majority, but have enough of a fleet-in-being to keep land invasions from progressing. If the enemy refuses to leave port and I have a carrier/air power advantage, I wanna be able to bomb them in port. Pearl Harbor would almost certainly fall under the Japanese "Sneak Attack" battle scenario. As far as the loss of Repulse and PoW, I think those situations could appear rather easily. The British ships were spotted by cruiser floatplanes then sunk by land based aircraft, so with some compression of the timescale I think that situation would fit in with a battle in which the Japanese player simply relies on his air power rather than close with the cruisers that spotted the Brits.
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Post by aeson on Feb 22, 2019 21:19:17 GMT -6
It would be a good inclusion. Otherwise there's no way to represent real life incidents such as the sinking of HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales I'd be inclined to say that the operation in which Repulse and Prince of Wales were sunk could be more or less represented as a convoy attack, battleship engagement, or coastal raid within the game. The British were out looking for a Japanese invasion force, a couple of the Kongos and a bunch of cruisers were sortied to attempt to intercept the British ships (and some of the cruisers came pretty close to making contact with the British ships), and then Admiral Phillips decided to call the mission off and take Force Z back to Singapore but didn't manage to get far enough away to avoid the air attacks the next day. Seems a pretty reasonable fit for one of the longer battle scenarios to me.
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Post by akosjaccik on Feb 23, 2019 1:54:29 GMT -6
Not to mention that from a "narrative-making" perspective, it was fun to lose a battlecruiser as soon as it hit the water by a submarine torpedo attack, but from a "gameplay" perspective frankly, I'd rather not roll the dice on aircrafts also. It's not that I'd mind losing ships to land-based air, it's that I'd rather see it happening on the battle screen, so the player can say "Well, yes, they clearly had this" instead of "great, RNG handled me again" after seeing the same result on a simple popup-window. As such, I'm agreeing with aeson, this is a mission-material.
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Post by pirateradar on Feb 23, 2019 3:36:41 GMT -6
Will battles occur in zones in which a player has land-based air but no ships? Ships can be spotted and attacked by land-based air so I see no reason why I should necessarily have to have a ship initiate the battle if it’s going to be decided and concluded by my air assets anyway.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 23, 2019 4:26:44 GMT -6
It would be a good inclusion. Otherwise there's no way to represent real life incidents such as the sinking of HMS Repulse and Prince of Wales, or the American skip-bombing campaign against the IJN. Does the player have the ability to launch pearl harbor-style air raids? One of the more frustrating things in RTW is when the AI repeatedly refuses battle unless they have a clear majority, but have enough of a fleet-in-being to keep land invasions from progressing. If the enemy refuses to leave port and I have a carrier/air power advantage, I wanna be able to bomb them in port. Taranto might be a better way of expressing what you're looking for than Pearl Harbor, as it was an attack with hostilities well under way, rather than a surprise attack at the outbreak of hostilities. The big problem with battles being declined in RTW1 is that for battle types like convoy attacks or coastal raids, the VP hit for declining is often (always?) less than the value of the soft target to be destroyed in the scenario. And yeah, I anticipate that if nothing else changes the portion of battles for which the decline penalty is less than if the declining side accepted the battle and then avoided contact will be much higher with aircraft involved, not to mention things like the risk of being bombed in port. The first issue could be solved by making the presence of aircraft increase the number of unexpected battles with no option to decline. The second would probably need some battles to have a "force with airstrike" option. If you select "decline" and your opponent selects "force", a battle happens. You get a roll at the beginning to determine if your land based air assets detect his carriers, or the airstrike itself, inbound. If you fail that roll, you start in harbor with your ships raising steam and enemy planes overhead.
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Post by jwsmith26 on Feb 23, 2019 6:47:38 GMT -6
The penalty for refusing a battle can be quite severe in RTW2. Refusal penalties can be in the thousands. I believe the highest I've seen was around 4500 victory points awarded for refusing a fleet battle. It is entirely possible to lose a war by refusing battles in RTW2.
I haven't seen a battle in which one side lacks ships, but I've seen plenty of battles in which no surface shots are exchanged and the matter is resolved via air strikes.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 23, 2019 9:52:49 GMT -6
That's weird. I don't think I've ever seen a refuse penalty over 250.
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Post by williammiller on Feb 23, 2019 10:24:40 GMT -6
That's weird. I don't think I've ever seen a refuse penalty over 250. The 'refuse penalty' was significantly increased in RTW2 after a good deal of analysis and discussion.
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Post by jwsmith26 on Feb 23, 2019 10:39:12 GMT -6
That's weird. I don't think I've ever seen a refuse penalty over 250. The 'refuse penalty' was significantly increased in RTW2 after a good deal of analysis and discussion. And it's a very good change. It makes the acceptance or refusal of each battle a more meaningful decision.
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Post by rimbecano on Feb 23, 2019 11:54:29 GMT -6
That's weird. I don't think I've ever seen a refuse penalty over 250. The 'refuse penalty' was significantly increased in RTW2 after a good deal of analysis and discussion. D'oh! I misread jwsmith's comment as referring to RTW1. That'll teach me to read.
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Post by Adseria on Mar 10, 2019 14:37:52 GMT -6
That's weird. I don't think I've ever seen a refuse penalty over 250. The 'refuse penalty' was significantly increased in RTW2 after a good deal of analysis and discussion. I'm looking forward to RTW2 even more now! I always thought it was strange that you could get more VPs for sinking a convoy after the escorts ran away than you got if the defender declined battle. After all, the merchants are still sunk, and you didn't damage any other ships either way.
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Post by noshurviverse on Mar 10, 2019 15:12:04 GMT -6
I'm looking forward to RTW2 even more now! I always thought it was strange that you could get more VPs for sinking a convoy after the escorts ran away than you got if the defender declined battle. After all, the merchants are still sunk, and you didn't damage any other ships either way. I think it's a plausible explanation that accepting a convoy defense is to imply you're "running the blockade" or something similar. Declining the battle would indicate either the convoy turned back or scattered similar to Convoy PQ 17. Of course, the question arises as to why a merchant sunk in the Strategic phase is always worth 5 points, when a merchant sunk in a convoy defense or coastal raid is worth much more.
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Post by Adseria on Mar 10, 2019 15:20:47 GMT -6
I'm looking forward to RTW2 even more now! I always thought it was strange that you could get more VPs for sinking a convoy after the escorts ran away than you got if the defender declined battle. After all, the merchants are still sunk, and you didn't damage any other ships either way. I think it's a plausible explanation that accepting a convoy defense is to imply you're "running the blockade" or something similar. Declining the battle would indicate either the convoy turned back or scattered similar to Convoy PQ 17. Of course, the question arises as to why a merchant sunk in the Strategic phase is always worth 5 points, when a merchant sunk in a convoy defense or coastal raid is worth much more. Abandoning the attempt doesn't seem that much different; the cargo still didn't reach it's destination. Also, a convoy scattering, as in your PQ-17 example, is no guarantee of survival; PQ-17 had 35 merchant ships, and 24 of those were sunk.
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Post by noshurviverse on Mar 10, 2019 17:02:35 GMT -6
Abandoning the attempt doesn't seem that much different; the cargo still didn't reach it's destination. Also, a convoy scattering, as in your PQ-17 example, is no guarantee of survival; PQ-17 had 35 merchant ships, and 24 of those were sunk. Depending on the circumstances I think cargo being delayed might be a hindrance without holding the same weight as it ending up on the bottom of the sea floor. As for a convoy scattering, no doubt that wasn't a promise of anything. However, I'd argue that since roughly a third of those ships sunk were by planes, which aren't represented in RtW1 that those casualties can be excused. The rest were by U-boats, which I'll avoid saying much on seeing as how abstracted the process is in-game.
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Post by mycophobia on Mar 10, 2019 20:31:00 GMT -6
Abandoning the attempt doesn't seem that much different; the cargo still didn't reach it's destination. Also, a convoy scattering, as in your PQ-17 example, is no guarantee of survival; PQ-17 had 35 merchant ships, and 24 of those were sunk. Depending on the circumstances I think cargo being delayed might be a hindrance without holding the same weight as it ending up on the bottom of the sea floor. As for a convoy scattering, no doubt that wasn't a promise of anything. However, I'd argue that since roughly a third of those ships sunk were by planes, which aren't represented in RtW1 that those casualties can be excused. The rest were by U-boats, which I'll avoid saying much on seeing as how abstracted the process is in-game. I think it’s pretty easy to come up with justification for either scenario, and there can always be individual case where refusing the escort mattered little, or having devastating impact on the war. That’s said, in current RTW there are almost 0 penalty from never taking any non-mandatory mission except the occasional small battle to avoid prestige loss. Maybe skipping a couple convoy escort attempt won’t have a huge impact, but never? Also I think for objective based missions, the objective themselves ought be more valuable. Sinking a convoy for 2000 points hardly means a thing compared to day, sinking a mid-sized cruiser. Naval warships are meant to achieve strategic objectives, destruction of opposing ships, while meaningful, should ultimately be because they allow you to achieve your strategic objectives. Therefore I think land support, convoy attack missions etc should contribute much greatly to victory points than they do now. Therefore there is actually an incentive to focus on say, destroying an large enemy convoy rather than trying to focus on escort ships to get more VP. Major fleet engagements should still be able to decide the wars, but objective based missions should have more weight as well. Alternatively completion of mission objective can have ramifications beyond VP, such as land shellling objective reducing enemy income by a factor, or destroying airbase, etc...the effect of these ramifications should be independent of who “won” the scenario based on VP. If I can have the only airbase UK have in SEA knocked out, losing a BC may be worth it. If that’s just 2000score which is probably 200~VP, there is no point.
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