Mayan Storyline War

[Kaiser Kirk]

Its definitely affecting how Japanese approach coastal defense. MTBs are proving worthless and subs and aircraft not much better.

Realize the Mayans have level 5 coastal defenses in that southern province, which means the minor ports
have batteries of QF guns and small garrisons. I specifically pointed out to you the San Jose had coastal and land forts.
They don't take 75mm hits well.

Attacking a colonial province with no coastal defense would seem them much better.

The barge attacks were going much better. The Mayans weren't sending their
patrol boats down, so you had a bit of a free hand.

The various gambits to slow down the Mayans resulted in quite a few Legions not
attacking last turn due to the need to build up supplies, and the delays doing that.

Subs are interesting, they have great potential, but it's married to some real limitations.

In World War 1 subs had some great successes against warships....but the germans built..373 ..
subs in that war over 4 years, lost 178.
A number of the best successes were surprises the sub could
do that - sink moored & netted PDs with netcutter torps, or those ACs that thought it was a mine.
Subs sneaking into Scapa flow, the QE's in Alexandria, etc. Surprise !

Here, we see folks parking subs off naval bases.
They didn't do so well.
Fair question- did I handle that right?

Well is there a historical precedent to say that should have
been a great success?

Historically, did navies post fleets of subs right outside a major anchorage
and score lots of successes as a result?

The Brits had lots of pretty good subs in WW1...How many Austrian/German DNs did they sink entering/exiting naval bases?
I mean they knew from radio intercepts when the Germans entered/exited because they radioed the lighthouse (?) (ah, can't recall what).
The Germans kept trying to lead the Brits into submarine ambushes... not aware of that working.

Aerially, planes are limited in this time.
Anti-aircraft is pretty poor too.
At least one of those torpedo nets should have failed, which might have really ramped that success up.

[Desertfox]

Oh yeah Im not worried about the San Juan raid, that was a gamble, and shooting up barges, just about any ship can do that. More the Aztec MTBs not being able to do anything.

All the results seem reasonable, the Japanese are just a bit miffed, since they had great success with subs last time, but last time was what 8 years ago? Obviously ASW has gotten much better.

[Kaiser Kirk]

All the results seem reasonable, the Japanese are just a bit miffed, since they had great success with subs last time, but last time was what 8 years ago? Obviously ASW has gotten much better.

To be fair, I don't think there really was ASW in-game 1915ish...and not much real life.
:)

[Kaiser Kirk]

I made progress Saturday, but folks schedules mean some queries take a while to hear back on, and so I had to wait until today for some elements.
I have a fair bit finished and will get further as the day winds on.
So I hope to wrap up... Monday ? Maybe Tues- depends on how some rolls break.

In the interim, my commentary on air points :

Commentary :
Land point "size" really only matters for assessing transport and supply needs.
They don't otherwise interact greatly with naval forces beyond bombardment – which primarily suppresses and degrades the targets.

Air points continue to be problematic as they interact directly with naval units.

Right now my 'undefined' version varies.... but kinda has them at 64 fighters or  32 bombers/s or  16 Torpedo or Heavy bombers.  Zeppelins would come in packets of 4. They are multi-role vs land forces.

Vs navies, I'll divide up the various uses – so if half the fighters are flying, that's half the air assets.
Because they apparently share pilots ..or engines... as not everything can fly at once.

I picked that 'undefinition' so that a 64 plane fleet carrier would be 2 and a 96 plane would be 3.
That way I could 'match' regional-based non-specific air points to location specific very defined naval air.

However, I've got a 1924 design for a flight deck cruiser that's part of series of designs I've been working on since..apparently April.
To pay for it's 20 plane airgroup, I have to spend 1,600 tons.  Or $1.6 and 1.6BP.
That's 60% more than an Airpoint.

We did a fair bit of work to get the carrier air group 'cost' right.
For 64 planes on a Carrier, you'd need ~$5.1 and 5.1 BP.   
Yet you get a multirole air point for 1/5 th that amount...thats a problem going forward.

I think for the future, the 'undefined' Airpoint size is going to have to plummet.
Maybe to 16/8/4 ish...but that would mean all of us have tiny air forces.
It would mean they would be so small as to be irrelevant to Land Points.

The other aspect is planes in real life have a high maintenance cost and were replaced basically every 3 or so years, where an Air Point bought in 1910 with minimal maintenance costs is fully effective in 1941.  Which makes our planes extremely cheap as a budget item.

We'll probably all need to spend more on Air Points to get the number of planes we conceptualize as having, well except the Romans, who have an indecent number already.

Historically, planes were very very expensive to build and keep up. Carrier airgroups cost roughly what the carrier did long term. But all that goes back to my belief different ship design categories should have different maintenance costs associated..but that's been shot down.

Anyhow, how to address this should be a postwar group think .  I'll stick with what we have for the war.

Meanwhile, trying to puzzle out SK5's air combat rules and how that applies to the various places Air and Sea are interacting this turn... 

[TacCovert4]

I would keep 3 things in mind:

1)  carrier aviation is always more expensive than land based air, pound for pound.

2)  aircraft aboard a carrier are effectively both air point and deployment point.

3)  carrier aviation has the distinct edge of being deployable to hostile environments,  land based air has to be deployed to friendly territory.

[The Rock Doctor]

Most of what we're paying for on the carrier air group is hanger and flight deck rather than airframes.  The land-based air point is using some easily constructed wood/canvas hangers and a flat patch of lawn somewhere instead.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Ultimately it comes down to if the players are comfortable with how things work out.
Plus we do have to look down the line when $1 isnt' buying Short 184s, but B-17s.

[TacCovert4]

Correct.   I'm fine with it.  Because at the same time my carrier plans for the late 20s will have biplanes.....but that tonnage will be F4Us in the 40s.

[snip]

tldr: If it's going to work better for how things are actually being slimed, the Points system for non-naval units should be converted to a unit-based system at the end of this conflict. I fully endorse this.

When I was originally working on the non-naval section of the rules, my desire was twofold. I wanted to have a system which could, in theory, accommodate any level of detail a player wished to provide about the non-naval forces of their nation and have these levels of detail be compatible with each other for non-consensual conflict. To me, the structure of N3 (and its spinoff variations for other startup attempts), failed the first regard while other systems became too complex to manage for those who did not want to have focus on non naval aspects. That was the genesis of the points system in my mind, something which would let the GM have an actual number assigned to forces in a region which could be used in producing results for non-consensual conflict while providing for maximum story flexibility for the players.

What basically nobody but Kirk has seen (and even he lacks a lot of details which are collecting virtual dust in various folders on my computer) was the combat system that was to tie to them. Those thin outlines, and my recolection of where I was going with them, point to a system which would have seen non-naval combat rely on a very very high amount of abstraction and long turn length to reduce overhead outside of Naval combat. In a nutshell, my original plan called for as long as six-month length turns for non-naval things. Results would be produced on this based on a very Risk-Like system, basing the outcome on the resulting difference between two dice roles. This is why all the modifiers that are noted in the rules due to tech level are based on a precent, because the system was conceptually built for that. I dont even have any notes remaining on how I indented for Air Points to interact with fixed-asset ships.

Since Kirk became GM, he has been in the very unenviable spot of having to handle combat without a firm system in place to do that which melded to our other ruleset. I apologies again for putting him in that position. Since he has much more experience with tabletop wargames than I do, it only makes sense that he has tried to adapt those systems to the points system. It's very clear now how incompatible the points system is with the more in-depth way that non-naval conflict is being handled by the GM. As such, it is my belief that we need to, at the conclusion of the present conflict, revamp the non-naval aspects of our rules system to better match what is actually being used to handle non-consensual conflict resolution.

[Desertfox]

It sounds like the land based portion is working fine (with only one minor quibble on my part).

It's only the air component since it does interact directly with ships and it will become quite varied that I believe needs a touch more work.

[Kaiser Kirk]

Well prior to this war, I drew up a long 'draft' list on landwarfare to discuss with Snip.
I think I sent it, but can't find it in my sent PMs. I should check again.

Some of it I'm implementing as I go, but other elements it
would not be fair to put into place without giving folks some time
to assess the impacts- and heck the ideas might get rejected,
or spur better proposals.

Anyhow, there were a couple orders this round that
depending on how things worked out in Spot X, player 1 might do Y, which would trigger counter actions.
In the end...those sequences did not really happen.

There is a lot of air attack in this one, which took a while to work through.
I find the SK5 rules nice for calculating what hits, and confusing beyond that.
They seem to want to account for air battles on a per plane basis, or perhaps moving
counters in sequential turns, and I don't see a less detailed resolution. Not workable
on this time scale. I expect that like SK4, I will wind up using the parts of the rules
that suit what we are doing, tailoring to our tech tree, and falling back on
various wargaming/rpg/historical lessons to guide the stuff not otherewise covered.

Tac's ill luck in the Veracruz carge has now been countered by good luck.
Streaky dice roller.

[The Rock Doctor]

Mayans seem to be making progress.

Am I in a position where the Union is having to intern Aztec and Japanese troops?

[Kaiser Kirk]

At this stage, there should be a number of Japanese and Aztec troops that were unable to retreat West and were cut off and have been pushed to the Wilno border, where they would cross. These are not coherent formations beyond possibly the Company level.

What Wilno does with them is an open question.  The Mayans will at least initially be very cautious about operating near the Wilno border.

[The Rock Doctor]

Okay, good to know.

I have no idea who has what forces in Costa Rica, and my news will reflect that confusion.

[Kaiser Kirk]

and Rome piles in !

Come one, come all !