@Imperious:
Quote from: Imperious Leader on July 10, 2007, 06:48:21 pm
subs attacking subs at 2?
Subs fire with torpedos, obviously, so I figured it’s harder to hit a skinny sub with a torpedo than a large battleship.
Torpedo’s don’t fire deeper than about 6-10 feet below the water line. And subs are not going to be surfaced to receive them as hits. So basically subs cant hit other subs .No sub in ww2 was ever sunk in such a manner
Quote from: Imperious Leader on July 10, 2007, 06:48:21 pm
Carriers have a better defense against Battleships from fighters? Id switch them
Carriers were lined with AA guns, but I do see you’re point. Would you suggest switching them, or setting both to the same number? I need input like this.
Just switch them. A carrier had far less AA guns than a Battleship, while a cruiser was an AA gun platform.
Quote from: Imperious Leader on July 10, 2007, 06:48:21 pm
Why cant artillery defend or attack against planes while tanks can?
Tanks had a mounted machine gun on the top, that would fire at the plane. But I can’t see an artillery hitting a plane out of the sky.
The German 88 was used also an an AA gun as well as others. That machine gun is like in 95% of tanks mounted in the front body of the tank and not on the turret. And moreover, it was seldom used in such a manner against planes. The guy in the turret firing it had a very narrow arc of fire. He could never hope to grow arms 5 feet longer to move and aim the gun around his rearground, unless the turret moved as well and that could never happen against a plane moving at 500 MPH.
Quote from: Imperious Leader on July 10, 2007, 06:48:21 pm
Why are bombers getting attacks on fighters at 2? Id make it one
Also a good point, I can change that and see how it works.
Quote from: Imperious Leader on July 10, 2007, 06:48:21 pm
Why/how do submarines attack planes?
As the same with tanks, subs had a machine gun on the top. As well, most had an AA gun on top too so when they had to come up for air they could defend themselves.
LMFAO!!! Against air targets a submarine could only hope to submerge and avoid total destruction. Their is no case where the deck gun of a sub EVER hit any plane.
I am not sure who Imperious Leader is, but he has fed you a lot of wrong information.
With respect to subs and torpedo fire, torpedos could be set to run a lot deeper than 6-10 feet. The standard setting for firing at a battleship or carrier was 25 feet, with the same setting for aerial torpedoes. The only time you would set a torpedo that shallow would be when firing at a destroyer or small cargo ship. As for subs verses subs, the US submarine Batfish sank 3 Japanese subs during World War 2 when it caught them on the surface. If you wish, I will go through my Conway’s Warships of the World for both WW1 and WW2, and send you a list of all subs sunk by other submarines when they were caught on the surface. Note, the list will be sort of long. There was also one case in WW2 of a successful attack by a submerged British sub on a submerged U-boat. It occurred in 1945, when the HMS Venturer sank a U-boat with a submerged torpedo shot at 50 feet. World War Two subs spent a lot of time on the surface running on their diesels to reach patrol areas and chase targets. Snorkels did not come into widespread use until mid 1944. and then only by Germany. So an attack of 2 by a sub verses a sub is perfectly acceptable.
Carrier having far less AA guns than a battleship. That depends on the carrier. US and British fleet carriers had about the same AA firepower as a battleship. Japanese carriers were roughly comparable to Japanese battleships, which is to say, not very good. The Graf Zeppelin was designed with both a 150mm surface battery and a 105mm AA battery, with limited automatic weapons, so about the same as Bismarck and Tirpitz, for a so-so AA battery. The Italian battleships had a pretty good AA setup, and based on performance against the same type of British aircraft, better than the Germans. The adoption by the US and UK of radar and the proximity fuze massively improved AA fire from 1943 on. If I were rating them, the US and UK would get 4 for defense against aircraft, the Italians maybe a 3, the Germans a 2, and the Japanese a 1. That probably would really bug Japanese players, but I did an analysis of antiaircraft performance for another game design team, and the Japanese were really bad. You could be generous and give them a 2. The record for aircraft shot down by a single ship in one engagement was achieved by the USS South Dakota, a battleship newly fitted with 40mm quads, at the Battle off Santa Cruz in October of 1942, when the ship shot down 26 Japanese aircraft while supplying AA cover for the carrier USS Enterprise.
Both the UK and US built special purpose AA cruisers, which were not quite as good as a battleship, so could be a 3, while war-built US heavy and light cruisers were close to a battleship in AA firepower. The British cruisers never got close to a really good AA battery, while the Germans, Italians, and Japanese all lagged quite a bit behind even the British. Part of the US advantage was the best naval AA firecontrol system of the war.
Machine guns on Tanks: Again it depends on the tank. Almost all US tanks carried either a .30 caliber, and if a Sherman, a .50 caliber machine gun on the tank turret top for AA and antipersonnel use. Same thing for tank destroyers. The British normally carried a Bren gun in an AA mount on British built tanks and a .50 caliber gun on US supplied Shermans. As for the rest, neither the Germans, the Russians, the Italians, or the Japanese normally carried an AA machine gun. However, all armored units normally had automatic AA weapon units added to them. The Germans used the quad 20mm and the single 37mm, the British used a variety of 20mm and 40mm mounts, while the US used the quad .50 and the 40mm twin Bofors. The Russians used a quad machine gun mount on obsolete light tank chassis, and the Italians also had some mobile AA mounts. Since each tank represents an entire armored division, giving tank units, and also artillery units, AA fire is reasonable.
Bombers attack on fighters: Again, it depends on the bomber. If you are talking Japanese fighters against B-17, the odds are on the B-17 to shoot down the fighter before being shot down. The typical exchange rate was about 4 to 6 Zeros per B-17 shot down. The B-17 was a very tough aircraft, and the Japanese Zero was not that well armed. However, if you are talking a US Hellcat verses a Japanese Betty, a 1 is being generous, and a 4 for the fighter attack is not high enough. The Japanese nickname for the Betty was One-Shot Lighter, for its tendency to catch fire immediately upon being hit. The problem is making everything fit a single value, when you really need nation-specific charts. I keep thinking about requiring two hits to knock down a B-17 to avoid getting into a mass of charts.
Subs verses Planes: There are a fair number of instances of subs shooting down aircraft, mainly German subs shooting down British aircraft. When the British really started to mount sustained daylight aircraft patrols against the German subs transitting the Bay of Biscay, Doenitz beefed up the AA battery of the subs to try to fight their way through. If I remember correctly, and I have the documents from the National Archives, the exchange rate was about 10 aircraft per 6 subs sunk. Definitely in the British favor, but not totally without loss either. The real deadly air attacks were the radar directed attacks on the U-boats at night, using the Leigh Light as the last minute to illuminate the target for dropping depth charges. Those sank a lot of subs. By the end of the war, the ASW bombers were using sonobuoys and homing torpedoes with some success, while the Magnetic Anamoly Detector was used very effectively in the Straits of Gibralter in combination with the retro-rockets. There should be an Allied tech improvement to also bombers to attack subs without destroyers being present. Oddly enough, the Japanese could get that as well. They had a pretty good MAD set, and a good system to use it.
I also use a rule that British carriers required two bomb hits to sink, but only one torpedo hit to sink. The reason for that is the British carriers had an armored flight deck that could keep out any bomb of 500 pound weight or light, and limit the penetration of heavier bombs. Since the Japanese dive bombers never used anything heavier than a 550 pound bomb, the British carriers could take a fair number of hits. Generally, when a Kamikaze hit a British flight deck, it broke up and skidded off into the sea.
One other variant that I use is to give US and British transports an attack of 1 and a defense of 2, as they were normally pretty well armed with both surface and antiaircraft guns. The Liberty ship, USS Stephen Hopkins sank the German merchant raider Steir in the South Atlantic, and was reported by the Germans as being an auxiliary merchant cruiser.
