SDN World 3 Commentary Thread II

[Steve]

OW.

I've had that happen before, sucks.

[DarthShady]

Let me get this straight...Czechmate gets to fight a war against the Russians, damaging that country for any future player that might take it over, and then proceeds to take control of a whole new country - not affected by the war in any way? WTF?

Why the fuck should he be given a new country? Why not simply reserve Britain for a new player?

[Norseman]

Personally I think that retconning that war, since tehre's been basically zero posts regarding it, might be a good idea.

[Siege]

I'm with Shady and Norse on this one; I don't have any particular objection against Czechmate taking over the UK (assuming he honours the Bahrain Agreement), but if he does so the war with Russia should be written out of existence. Players shouldn't get to fight a war with a get-out-of-jail-free card in their pocket in case their military endeavours end up going south.

[Ryan Thunder]

EDIT: Shit, wrong thread.

[Ryan Thunder]

Wilkens your timeline is unfeasible. You launched D+8, which is a day before troops had actually arrived where you're launching from.

[CmdrWilkens]

Wilkens your timeline is unfeasible. You launched D+8, which is a day before troops had actually arrived where you're launching from.

My original timeline was based on needing to overcome resistance along the way. Since you abandoned Penonome and were not able to block the rails lines my entire advance of reserve units accelerate significantly. I did not edit the Phase 3 map to reflect this but the units would be in place by that day (which BTW is the night of D+8). If you want to be REALLY picky I can have them launch from Puerto Aguadulce instead which would add about two hours total to the assault sequence and involve attacking La Palma at 1000 instead of 0800 and moving upriver under a quicker cover of darkness...but that's it.


*Clarification* Since you withdrew your patrols after I mangled them on D+6 I'm going to be able to get my troops across the Gulf of Panama regardless. Their boarding port only changes the length of time at sea and not by an all that particularly significant amount. At 10 kt steaming it would take roughly 14 hours to cross the distance from Aguadulce instead of Coloncito...but I could launch earlier (2100 vice 2200). I could, for shits and giggles, probably push my speed to 12 kt and thus drop the transit time to 11.5 hours or just about exactly the same length as the Coloncito attack.

You specified no troops in La Palma so I'd be coming ashore virtually unopposed save by the constublary and some hastily assembled reserves. Meanwhile I'd have a Divison of combat troops and some big gun dreadnoughts offshore...shifting this by a matter of hours won't change things.

[Ma Deuce]

Again cruising at 25,000 yards my ships are essentially immune to fire from the 13.7" battery with only the 90 odd shots from the 17.7" battery able to tell decisively. Now why might this be an issue is based on the sinking of the Bismarck which was protected in a similar degree to my ship classes (12.6" side belt, 4" main deck plus 2" on the top deck (call it 5.5" effectively) I ran out there.

Don't assume your ships are invulnerable at that distance even if their belts and decks are technically immune. 13.8 inch shells would still pose a very real danger to most of your ships at 25k yards even if they don't get through the main belt or deck (see below). You could take on flooding from hits in unarmored sections, combined with hits that manage to dive under the main belt. Then of course there's the fact that your ships might by disabled by "soft" hits to command and fire control facilities in their superstructures, or maybe they'll take hits to their propellers and steering gear.

Firing from ranges starting at 23,000 yards and dropping steadily to less than 4,000 yards she was hit by somewhere in the neighborhood of 300-400 shells of all calibers (out of 2,876 fired) of which by percentage 75-100 would have been large caliber 16" and 14" shells. If we took this by percentage for only the 16" shells that would be 40-50 rounds...one ship.

And you don't see why that's not a valid comparison? At <10,000 yards, the shells will have a very flat trajectory, meaning they'll tear up the ship's upper works and freeboard, but won't be very good at causing flooding, nor have a very good shot at the ship's vitals. Meanwhile at Denmark Strait, two 14" shells from Prince of Wales fired from about 18,000 yards and 16,500 yards (the latter went under Bismarck's belt and entered her machinery spaces) caused flooding so severe they reduced Bismarck's forward freeboard by over 6 feet and forced her to abort her mission: since these were fired from much greater range than most of the hits during the final battle, they dug much deeper. Do you really think Bismarck could have sustained 40-50 hits of that severity?

Now she was struck repeatedly in ways that damaged her, blew out turrets shot away parts of the conning tower, etc, but she was still floating while being engaged at <10,000 yards by those shells (which would have greater side armor penetration than your 17.7" at 25,000). In other words with 210 large caliber hits you might (MIGHT) baring a lucky penetration completely disarm 2 of my BBs but that assume you could concentrate that much but you would need to land all of it on no more than 3 ships to succeed in sinking them.

Those 17.7 inch shells could do a lot of damage when they hit at 25k yards though, and depending on the weight of the shells they may be able to hole your decks at that range as well. They may not have as much side penetration at that range as 14" and 16" shells do at <10k yards, but at any range they'll do a lot more damage if they burst inside their target, especially considering their steep fall angle at that range.

Moreover once they did have my battle line in sight the nature of torpedoes in this era (since most folks seem to be using the rough dimensions of the US Mk 15) require transiting to within 5,000 yards to be effective. Trying to do that in the midst of a battle zone where your own fire is plunging all about and you are already scattered.

I doubt very many of those stray shots are going to be landing more than a few hundred yards away from their targets at most, certainly not enough to seriously impair a concurrent submarine attack.

Short of incidents like the Broad Fourteens subs in this era were not BB killers

Broad Fourteens, eh? Isn't that the incident where one U-boat sank three British armored cruisers in a single engagement because their commander had not taken proper anti-submarine precautions? Sound familiar, ye who have fewer destroyers than capital ships?

Also, destroyers in this era were hardly submarine killers either. Most of the time the best they do was force submarines to dive and keep them deep so they could not fire their torpedoes. Usually this meant you needed more destroyers than the enemy has submarines so that your screen can continue to keep known subs suppressed until the ships they are screening steam out of range, while still leaving enough ships free to guard against any more that might show up while the rest of the screen is still busy.

[Steve]

Frankly if I give him the choice Czech probably will just switch over to Britain, he was going to do so now but considered he had to follow through on what he'd started as the Nordics. If there is such opposition to such then he's free to transfer countries now. I'll just have to run any campaigns the Nordics would make against the USSR.

As for ruining Russia for a new player, wouldn't embroiling it in a difficult, perhaps impossible war with mainland Asia's two top powers count already?

[Ryan Thunder]

You specified no troops in La Palma so I'd be coming ashore virtually unopposed save by the constublary and some hastily assembled reserves. Meanwhile I'd have a Divison of combat troops and some big gun dreadnoughts offshore...shifting this by a matter of hours won't change things.

Whatever. I suppose a congratulations is in order because you've made it a choice between either not having enough troops at the front to hold you off, and losing the canal that way, or getting enough troops to the front but losing the rail line and then losing the canal a little later when you overwhelm my undersupplied troops at the line.

Oh and it cost you all of a division or three (that failed landing that was pushed off by a brigade which was subsequently obliterated) to pull it off.

Awesome.

I'll have to remember to develop my ESP skills so I can determine whether or not I'm getting good advice about my navy next time. All my fault!

[Steve]

Personally I think that retconning that war, since tehre's been basically zero posts regarding it, might be a good idea.

Retconning the Soviet-Manchurian War? The same war I talked about retconning and had people insisting it had to stay because it had played such a major role already with numerous posts regarding it? The posting about it has tapered off precisely because A) one of the players involved left and B) the other player has a family and a Christmas season to tend to.

[Steve]

You specified no troops in La Palma so I'd be coming ashore virtually unopposed save by the constublary and some hastily assembled reserves. Meanwhile I'd have a Divison of combat troops and some big gun dreadnoughts offshore...shifting this by a matter of hours won't change things.

I don't care, because you've made it a choice between either not having enough troops at the front to hold you off, and losing the canal that way, or getting enough troops to the front but losing the rail line and then losing the canal a little later when you overwhelm my undersupplied troops at the line.

Oh and it cost you all of a division or so (that failed landing that was pushed off by a brigade) to pull it off.

Awesome.

I'll have to remember to develop my ESP skills so I can determine whether or not I'm getting good advice about my navy next time. All my fault!

Alternatively you could ask around instead of getting one opinion and taking it in the direction you thought it indicated. You wouldn't be in this mess if you hadn't tried, yet again, for an exotic force structure that you thought would give you a prime advantage over conventional forces that let you punch above your weight.

[Ryan Thunder]

Alternatively you could ask around instead of getting one opinion and taking it in the direction you thought it indicated. You wouldn't be in this mess if you hadn't tried, yet again, for an exotic force structure that you thought would give you a prime advantage over conventional forces that let you punch above your weight.

Nobody disputed what he said, though there was plenty of opportunity to.

Whatever. I'm taking a different approach.

[Norseman]

Personally I think that retconning that war, since tehre's been basically zero posts regarding it, might be a good idea.

Retconning the Soviet-Manchurian War? The same war I talked about retconning and had people insisting it had to stay because it had played such a major role already with numerous posts regarding it? The posting about it has tapered off precisely because A) one of the players involved left and B) the other player has a family and a Christmas season to tend to.

No, the Soviet-Scandinavian War, which hasn't involved anyone so far.

[Steve]

That's because it hasn't happened yet. However, the Nordics have been training for it and posts for such IC have happened.

Still, such will be considered. Poor Finns and Estonians, their Nordic brothers may not liberate them from Communist oppression after all.

[Lascaris]

Oh and the attack WAS SPOTTED you incompetent. I know you are trying to cherry pick the log but you might have missed where a local garrison patrol spotted the assault 2/3rds of the way in, alerted the local commander, and got abotu a BN of reserves assembled in a region where there is nobody to assemble from while all of the Colombian firepower is headed to Ciudad.

Ok since politeness seems not to be your strong point here

A. In my hardly humble opinion you have cheated with your navy and massively so. Twice. First by making nearly all your tonnage capital ships which had been expressly said that you should have not and second by throwing the pre 1915 tonnage limits out of the window. The rest of us were not idiots you know to make balanced fleets and fill our battlelines with older ships while you blithely went and made effectively your whole battleline out of modern designs while conveniently forgetting screens, after all it takes three years to build a battleship and a 12-18 months to make a light ship.

B. Bismarck which you so kindly bring around to claim the immunity of your ships, was a floating wreck way before it was sunk. Same with Sharnhorst which took all of 13 14in hits from Duke of York to practically wreck to the degree that finishing it off was just a matter of time.

C. Submarines are NOT effective sub hunters in the mid 1920s. Or the mid 1940s. That modern submarines can hunt down each other does not mean that a 1920s submarine can.

D. If you want to posit that your battleships stay beyond effective range of the forts...why your own fire is equally useless against the forts, more so rather since forts don't have to float nor are their guns heaving and rolling. So practically the forts can ignore your battleships for more useful targets and your battleships can do very little about that. Unless the close in of course and I believe we have mentioned already that forts tend to be more durable than ships.

The remainder, is of course that under anything like common sense ruling your operations, you wouldn't have more than enough shipping capacity for call it three divisions, the Darien swamp insanity would be a complete disaster and the 2 brigades of yours reaching the railroad, the ones making anyway met by two three fresh divisions brought by rail.

But I forget. After all Mexico had "hot dice" Consistently for all its not exactly plausible operations. And then people wonder why I say this is a game of risk.

[Ryan Thunder]

Why would the river not be mined?

[Norseman]

The idea of Mexico landing two brigades of special forces, sending them up river, and then blowing up those bridges is impossible, it could not be done. Note I'm not saying it would be hard, I'm saying it would be outright impossible in the face of anything resembling a sane military. Quite frankly the rolls shouldn't say that 8-12 is success, but that 1-8 is utter and total failure with the complete loss of the force, 8-12 some of the force manages to evacuate, 12-14 they actually manage to engage in combat with the bridge garrison before being defeated, 15-16 they manage to damage a bridge, and 17-18 they actually blow one up. That of course would be sane and sanity is something that has been in very short supply so far.

[Siege]

The dice rolls are something I've suspected but could never quite put my finger on until now. I think several of them, not all but several, have been far too generously indexed. Right now the system appears to heavily favour the attacker: the chances of any proposed operation ending in disastrous failure, or just simply failing to achieve its objective in any meaningful way, are far too low. Of all attacks so far I can only recall one that ended in dice-roll disaster for the one who launched it (although that could very well be because I was the one who launched it). All others seem to go to the attacker, no matter if it's a heavily fortified city or a hostile coast that's being assaulted. Are we sure the risks (and thus, odds) of offensive combat operations are being properly estimated?

[Norseman]

3d6 creates a bellcurve that runs roughly thus:

3: 0.5% (actually 0.46, or 1 in 216, but rounded off for this table)
4: 1.4%
5: 2.8%
6: 4.6%
7: 6.9%
8: 9.7%
9: 11.6%
10: 12.5%
11: 12.5%
12: 11.6%
13: 9.7%
14: 6.9%
15: 4.6%
16: 2.8%
17: 1.4%
18: 0.5% (as 3’s note above)

Now... as you can see the odds of getting 10 or less are 38.4% and the odds of 12 or less are 62.5%. In short if you judge that 12 or less is a partial success then he has 2 out of 3 odds of succeeding! This is *insanely* favourable to the attacker, seriously work out the odds that Steve used for the latest sim and you'll see how *insanely* favourable those odds are to an attacker.

EDIT: A good system should go something like:
3: Utter disaster
4 to 6: An unusually bad result.
7 to 9: A worse than expected result.
10-12: The expected result.
13-15: A better than expected result.
16-17: About as good as could possibly be expected.
18: A result better than any expectation

Now for the attack on the bridges I would *expect* that the units would fail and be beaten back with heavy casualties, so anything under 12 should reflect that, 13-15 would be them getting away without getting mauled too badly, and ... well if he got 16 or more we could argue. That's because amphibious assaults are *hard* very hard.

EDIT 2: And here is an improved probability chart if you really want to know what the odds are.

[Raesene]

3d6 creates a bellcurve that runs roughly thus:

3: 0.5% (actually 0.46, or 1 in 216, but rounded off for this table)
4: 1.4%
5: 2.8%
6: 4.6%
7: 6.9%
8: 9.7%
9: 11.6%
10: 12.5%
11: 12.5%
12: 11.6%
13: 9.7%
14: 6.9%
15: 4.6%
16: 2.8%
17: 1.4%
18: 0.5% (as 3’s note above)

Now... as you can see the odds of getting 10 or less are 38.4% and the odds of 12 or less are 62.5%. In short if you judge that 12 or less is a partial success then he has 2 out of 3 odds of succeeding! This is *insanely* favourable to the attacker, seriously work out the odds that Steve used for the latest sim and you'll see how *insanely* favourable those odds are to an attacker.

EDIT: A good system should go something like:
3: Utter disaster
4 to 6: An unusually bad result.
7 to 9: A worse than expected result.
10-12: The expected result.
13-15: A better than expected result.
16-17: About as good as could possibly be expected.
18: A result better than any expectation

Now for the attack on the bridges I would *expect* that the units would fail and be beaten back with heavy casualties, so anything under 12 should reflect that, 13-15 would be them getting away without getting mauled too badly, and ... well if he got 16 or more we could argue. That's because amphibious assaults are *hard* very hard.

3-4: An utter disaster.
5-7: An unexpectedly bad result.
8-12: An expected result

Or use opposed rolls: both roll 3d6 and add/subtract favorable/unfavorable modifiers.
If the attacker has the higher total, the operation was a success, otherwise it fails.

[Ryan Thunder]

amphibious assaults are *hard* very hard.

Quite. The largest amphibious assault ever conducted prior to 1925 was carried out by the Americans during the civil war. It involved landing 15 000 troops supported by 70 ships of the line, with ironclads among them.

Wilkens has casually landed 50 000 troops behind my lines. Prior to that, he landed 100 000 troops in a swamp.

Now he's trying to land 10 000 troops in unfamiliar terrain through a river that would apparently have been mined by any competent military.

[Raesene]

amphibious assaults are *hard* very hard.

Quite. The largest amphibious assault ever conducted prior to 1925 was carried out by the Americans during the civil war. It involved landing 15 000 troops supported by 70 ships of the line, with ironclads among them.

Wilkens has casually landed 50 000 troops behind my lines. Prior to that, he landed 100 000 troops in a swamp.

Now he's trying to land 10 000 troops in unfamiliar terrain through a river that would apparently have been mined by any competent military.

Which assault was that ? Somehow I doubt the USN had 70 ships of the line (i.e. full-scale battleships) during the US civil war... I'm not even sure the Royal Navy had that many active and in use during that period.

[Steve]

The dice rolls are something I've suspected but could never quite put my finger on until now. I think several of them, not all but several, have been far too generously indexed. Right now the system appears to heavily favour the attacker: the chances of any proposed operation ending in disastrous failure, or just simply failing to achieve its objective in any meaningful way, are far too low. Of all attacks so far I can only recall one that ended in dice-roll disaster for the one who launched it (although that could very well be because I was the one who launched it). All others seem to go to the attacker, no matter if it's a heavily fortified city or a hostile coast that's being assaulted. Are we sure the risks (and thus, odds) of offensive combat operations are being properly estimated?

There was also Thanas' attempt to amphibiously assault Timor, his land attack on Timor that was simultaneous and also rolled low, and Wilkens' first Atlantic landing that rolled at bottom as well and was subjected to massive damage, at the top of my head. And his air raid rolls have been, generally, less than stellar as of late.

Still, I will consider your points, Siege. I've been trying to determine the thresholds based on the opposing forces; if one side has a clear advantage, it gets a better threshold than if the odds were more even. As it is I do believe that in my haste to get the rolls the other night done because both Wilkens and Rogue needed to head off I judged his attack too successful, hence why I've gone back on what was in the log and have rescinded success to just a mile or two at very most.

And why would that river have been mined?

[Lascaris]

amphibious assaults are *hard* very hard.

Quite. The largest amphibious assault ever conducted prior to 1925 was carried out by the Americans during the civil war. It involved landing 15 000 troops supported by 70 ships of the line, with ironclads among them.

Wilkens has casually landed 50 000 troops behind my lines. Prior to that, he landed 100 000 troops in a swamp.

Now he's trying to land 10 000 troops in unfamiliar terrain through a river that would apparently have been mined by any competent military.

The largest was rather Gallipoli ~75,000 men in total. Which actually gives a pretty good indication of the problems involved in a landing without specialist craft. Frex just count how many of the 75,000 actually went ashore on the first day.

Also one must note that the allied army at Gallipoli could draw upon the largest merchant marine of Earth, in addition to the French navy and ever so quietly Greek merchant ships. Oh and of corse the British also had a multitude of smaller and larger ports from right by to not particularly far from the landing zones.