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Post by director on Feb 18, 2019 16:41:13 GMT -6
My point is based on making suicide tactics rare and painful.
There is an old story about a military man who met two professors while on an ocean voyage. He taught them some rules for kriegspiel and was then horrified at how easily they accepted massive casualties in search of victory. Just by personal preference I don't want players to be tempted to pull out the Kamikaze card every time a war starts to go badly. I think it should be a possible tactic - but a very, very painful one.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Feb 18, 2019 17:28:29 GMT -6
Just some simple numbers on the Special Attack Corps or Tokkotai. About 4000 Japanese army and navy pilots and aircrew died from October 1944 and August 1945. The US Navy lost three CVE's, thirteen destroyers, one destroyer escort, two destroyer minesweepers and on SC. From October 1944 till the end of the Okinawa Operation, the Japanese made 2314 sorties, by the IJN, 1086 returned without sighting a target and 1228 actually made attacks. Of this number, 475 made hits on targets or near misses which caused damage. I will let the statistical geniuses on this forum compile hit percentages. Based on my numberS, the number ships sunk versus the number of actual attacks was very low. I am in agreement that this sort of combat strategy should be available, but only in a limited way and for a limited time.
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Post by alexbrunius on Feb 19, 2019 3:11:54 GMT -6
Just some simple numbers on the Special Attack Corps or Tokkotai. About 4000 Japanese army and navy pilots and aircrew died from October 1944 and August 1945. The US Navy lost three CVE's, thirteen destroyers, one destroyer escort, two destroyer minesweepers and on SC. From October 1944 till the end of the Okinawa Operation, the Japanese made 2314 sorties, by the IJN, 1086 returned without sighting a target and 1228 actually made attacks. Of this number, 475 made hits on targets or near misses which caused damage. I will let the statistical geniuses on this forum compile hit percentages. Based on my numberS, the number ships sunk versus the number of actual attacks was very low. Allow me to try ( even though I am far from a genius I do love to run the numbers ). According to USAF the Japanese Kamikaze "killed 4,900 sailors, and wounded over 4,800." Compared with your number of Japanese casualties ( assuming everyone making an attack is a casualty ) this means at least a 7.9 : 1 casualty ratio in favor of Japan with most Japanese casualties being rookies while many American casualties being experienced veterans of a long campaign. 475/1228 = 38.7% hit rate by the Kamikaze rookies, while the norm at the time was around 10% hit rate by experienced pilots using conventional attacks against dense AA, or 2% when same Japanese rookies attempted conventional attacks. Other sources list a 14% hit rate by Kamikazes, and this source list 26% of the Kamikazes that arrived near enough to target to be engaged by AAA managed to score hits, both numbers which would still be extremely good considering what other options Japan had available. The cost of making a mass produced single engine fighter was about $50K while the cost of a typical US Essex class fleet CV was about $73,000K, so it stands to reason that putting a single US Carrier out of action for the remainder of the war or sinking it is "worth" expending roughly 1500 airplanes. The Kamikaze managed to AFAIK put at least 2 US fleet CVs out of action, sink 3 Escort Carriers, 19 destroyer sized ships and about 40 others mostly large transports. It's hard to find a way to count where this was not a very favorable exchange for Japan if you tally up the industrial cost expended to produce this war materiel as well repair the damaged ships ( many of which were so badly damaged they had to be scrapped after the war meaning they can be considered total losses ). If we include the fact that many Kamikaze planes could be made cheaper or use obsolete models not fit for frontline combat anymore the exchange becomes even better. Yet another thing to consider is that the insane amount of AA that the US fleet was firing against the Kamikaze attackers was not free either. The industrial cost of expending the 340 highly advanced VT proximity fuse shells on average needed to down a Japanese Kamikaze for example was actually higher than the cost of the attacking airplane! During 1945 the US Navy on average expended 1500 x 40mm shells, 4400 x 20mm or 11300 x .50 cal ammunition per airplane shot down. Seeing these numbers we can appreciate that the Kamikaze approach was very logical and made complete sense to both the pilots and the Leadership of Japan. If Japan can trade casualties 8:1 and damage or sink hundreds of US warships they can make a US Landing on Japan so expensive that there might be hope of a negotiated surrender instead of an unconditional one. I agree with both of you that it's conditions if it's included should be pretty rare and limited ( but losing badly as a player already should be pretty rare and limited in itself ). But I don't agree that it necessarily was "very very painful". The way I see it for Japans situation and mentality/culture it was a natural development of strategy/tactics for the situation they found themself in. The "Kamikaze" attack of Battleship Yamato ( Operation Ten-Go ) though has no logical/statistical foundation and can only be seen for what it was, choosing to throw away the ship and the lives of it's crew to go down in combat and not have to live with the shame of not having fought as hard as the others. So, maybe one interesting way to balance the gameplay benefit of Kamikaze and indeed make it a bit painful is that it comes with a chance each month that the Navy brass decide to sortie your newest or largest Carrier/Battleship mostly alone on an impossible mission into the entire enemy fleet with you having no option to refuse it, only a button that says "For the Glory of the Emperor"?
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