Kolkata War 1916

[Korpen]

There we also examples of vectored attack and of hydrophones. 

Impressive daring from the French to dare to basically shut down their engines to use the hydrophones.

As the French move on the port itself the Battleships begin a duel with the coastal defense guns.  Only the 240mm have the range and power to do any type of damage.  French 340mm and 275mm guns begin to shell the batteries; the batteries are silenced after 10 minutes. Then the army defense citadels are shelled for half an hour.  At which point the French fleet switches fire too the ships in harbor.  50,000 tons of Bharat deep sea and oceanic shipping are soon left sinking in the harbor and tied up along the docks.

How come the batteries did not open up again when the french switched targets?

[miketr]

Perhaps because the French SILENCED the guns...  Bharat had a total of TWO 240mm guns to cover the port.  Sure there were other weapons but they much lighter stuff; next biggest was 140mm. 

[Desertfox]

Not in the first 2 years of the war. I see plenty of rammings, gun kills, torpedoes, mines, accidents, even nets before I see the first depth charge kill. And I don't think there where any vectored attacks untill the last year of the war.

The problem is that already we are seeing WWII style AA suites, pretty soon we will be seeing WWII style ASW suites. Tanks are already showing up, fighters are showing up (without combat experience). I did put MGs on a few of my aircraft, but only after fighting two war which saw a number of (inconclusive) air to air engagements. I can understand taking action against perceived threats, but we are taking action aginst non-existant threats. We are seeing ships with AA suites, capable of defeating massed aerial torpedo attacks, when very few aircraft can fly more than 50 miles from shore, and even fewer yet can even take off with a torpedo.

I guess its time to start work on nuclear shelters and 'Duck and Cover'...

[maddox]

OOC
Guys.

1) Miketr has offered himself to moderate the Kolkattan war, and whatever you say, the French clock is being cleaned.
The overkill on the port of Madras ain't a victory, it is a slaughter. but the first thing France "won" in this war.

2) The 3 current moderators have endorsed the report as brought by Miketr- and yes, I asked about the superbe ASW materials France has.... better than I expected.
The conversation about that shows why.
I added a few bits.
France got a northern neighbor with over 50 "unproven submarines".
The supplier of French subs, the OR, never has hidden the fact that France ain't the only foreign buyer.
In the latest NS war, the French superliner got torpedo'ed by a submarine. Expensive to repair, thank you DF.
France lost submarines in that war too.
And during tests with them ( Ionian sea somebody. I should dare to think that the MN has a reasonable incling about the capacities of a well handled sub.
Hydrophones. In game, France is researching sound based direction finding for more than a decade.
The "EARS" and "ERADe" equipment  is result of that. Water is a better sound carrier than air.

3) It isn't known that the sub, with a crew handling it for a few months at best, is sunk.

[Desertfox]

Like I've said before, while IC I do want the Indians to succeed, I have no problem with the sub being 'sunk'. I just don't like the way it was 'sunk', as it will open a whole new can o' worms. There's plenty of ways to sink a sub, why that one?

Yeah France does have plenty of experience with subs, thought I think NS is the only one to have actually sunk a sub in combat. Pity I couldn't finish of the superliner...

[Phoenix]

Guys, for the record... this is still... you know... by the way actually...
a game.

In games things can and do happen that may not have had their equivalent in real life. It's because we use chance when calculating what happens, and you all know about chaos theory I suppose. Butterfly simply thought it was nice to sit on that depth charge for a little while, that's all.

Cheez... start planning your next nasty attacks instead of whining.

[RAM]

I'm not worried or concerned by the submarine loss thingie. I couldn't care the less. The french got a Bharat sub in a bad position and (supposedly) sent her to the bottom with DCs. DCs the french have. Hydrophones the french have. As much as unexperienced might be the french in DC-ing, the bharat crew would be as much as unexperienced dealing vs the DC attack.
and in the end good or bad luck play a long role in any engagement. It's not unknown of individuals or crews during wars putting that "one in a million" shell or bomb exactly where it was required to doom an enemy target. It was also not unknown of individuals and crews to miss huge chance shots that would've doomed an enemy. Luck plays a big part in war.

So, the french got lucky at the same moment the Bharats got unlucky. Result: One indian submarine to the bottom. I can perfectly live with that.

As for historical DC attacks being unsuccesfull (or unexistant) up to late 1916...well we are in 1916 in the game. And given that a compromise exists that most of the techs in the sim can be reached with years of advance vs what happened OTL its not strange, nor surprising.


However one thing I must agree with:

The problem is that already we are seeing WWII style AA suites, pretty soon we will be seeing WWII style ASW suites. Tanks are already showing up, fighters are showing up (without combat experience). I did put MGs on a few of my aircraft, but only after fighting two war which saw a number of (inconclusive) air to air engagements. I can understand taking action against perceived threats, but we are taking action aginst non-existant threats. We are seeing ships with AA suites, capable of defeating massed aerial torpedo attacks, when very few aircraft can fly more than 50 miles from shore, and even fewer yet can even take off with a torpedo.

Not only that. I bet that not much beyond 1920 we will be seeing flush-deck aircraft carriers with a smart design allowing for quite big air complements, a sound and workable air wing doctrine (which IRL took great powers more than a decade of experience to develop, and not all of them reached the right conclussions-see the british CV concept), ...while IRL at that time the only nation toying with carriers was the RN, which at the time had meet no great deal of success in their experiments anyway.

So, yep , this is true. But is a difficult thing to deal with without any rules controlling people using hindsight when designing their ships/armies/planes. And I guess we don't want more rules, so while the problem indeed exists, it's a difficult one to solve...unless each and every design/idea/etc is submitted to the moderators for their review, and that no design/idea/etc is to be done without their explicit approval.
And that would get the mods overworked to the extreme.

The problem is there but is difficult to deal with, unless someone comes with a brilliant idea which can prevent this without putting too much of a strain on the moderators. If that idea is not found, I'd say we will have to live with this, accept it as part of the game, and not letting the problem mess with our enjoyement of the SIM. Which, btw, it's not a hard thing to do :).

[Korpen]

Perhaps because the French SILENCED the guns...  Bharat had a total of TWO 240mm guns to cover the port.  Sure there were other weapons but they much lighter stuff; next biggest was 140mm. 

Silenced is not the same thing as knocked out of action. If the gunners take cover below the gun the gun is silenced but capable of returning to action the moment it is no longer suppressed.

If you mean that they was knocked out, say so as then the French got extremely lucky then, after all, the costal gun is a target like ¼ as large as the ballistic (then the ships movement will increase that spread a few multiples) spread of a 34cm gun at 10km.

[The Rock Doctor]

Not only that. I bet that not much beyond 1920 we will be seeing flush-deck aircraft carriers with a smart design allowing for quite big air complements, a sound and workable air wing doctrine

Maybe, but you should see the piece of crap I'm trying to design as my first carrier.

Anyway - nit-picks aside, the general flow of events seems reasonable and I'm enjoying it.  Go Bharat!

[ctwaterman]

Hey folks take the discussion of Hindsight and everything like that to the discussion forum I want to tune in here to see how badly my Ally is getting his behind kicked on the ground  ;) ;D

[miketr]

Perhaps because the French SILENCED the guns...  Bharat had a total of TWO 240mm guns to cover the port.  Sure there were other weapons but they much lighter stuff; next biggest was 140mm. 

Silenced is not the same thing as knocked out of action. If the gunners take cover below the gun the gun is silenced but capable of returning to action the moment it is no longer suppressed.

If you mean that they was knocked out, say so as then the French got extremely lucky then, after all, the costal gun is a target like ¼ as large as the ballistic (then the ships movement will increase that spread a few multiples) spread of a 34cm gun at 10km.

I said silenced for a number of reasons...  I will explain in more detail after the war is over.

Michael

[Blooded]

Greetings Coplayers!

Overall I am happy with the events as they are occuring. We probably do take too much hindsight into account. It should be mostly self moderated though, with encouragement by others to go in the right direction.

For example Russia had an 'Air Cruiser' as of 1910 or so. with multiple Seaplanes. that should be the 1915 tech for me. But I sure won't push for that. I have just let them gather dust until tech catches up.

I think we should carefully consider each war as it comes along and try to modify things as they come up. In the Pacific War I felt that we had way too many sucessful torpedo hits and the pace of events went far to fast. I also felt that convoys should not be used yet.

There was a war in Northern Canada with Earls UNK. That also was very fast paced with infantry moving at top speeds in poor terrain. IMO in this era supply would breakdown very quickly, leading to 'pulsed' flows of battles. Push forward.... slow... stop... regroup.... resupply.... rest... repeat.

If anything seems out of place with this war I would suggest slowing the pace down. So far the overrun has been less that a month(?). With many kms of trenchs built very quickly. If the time frame was doubled(or more) it might be better.

I am not familiar with the terrain, would it be mostly steppe or jungle?

If we can agree on small alterations I think the Wars can turn out very well done. We don't have to altered events that have occured, just learn for the future.

BTW, I would agree with Korpen that CDs should be very hard to take out.

Back to you....

[P3D]

I agree with Blooded that field fortifications are being built too fast, as if they'd be full trench system. Or seems to me by their effectiveness.

[miketr]

As to the rate of advance by the Bharat forces.  The French have been all but incapable of offer resistance.  Bharat attacked with six 5/3 corps and six 5/1 corps vs. a pair of 4/2's, a half strength 5/1 and one 5/3.  The combat advantage is CRUSHING in favor of Bharat.  The French have been able to do little more than back peddle as up to 10 to 1 advantage in favor of bharat manpower ratio's occured.  So in effect many times Bharat faced NO resistance and the limits on their rate of advance were purely logistical.  As such an advance by these tech level troops with HALF being light infantry of over 15 km a day is VERY reasonable.  The more common rate of advance is 10 km a day and some times 5 km when the French attempt a fighting withdraw.  There are repeated examples of Bharat out running their logistics train and having to pause or resorting to living off the land.

At this point the French are running out of room and the front his narrow enough they can avoid being outflanked.

As to the trench issus if people note up till this chapter there have been no massive defensive battles with large field works.  This posting saw two example.  The battles of the 8th and 22nd Bharat vs. the French 5th near the Haldia.  The 5th started to dig in on March 5th and Bharat attacked on the 22nd.  Thats 17 days of effort for 50,000 men plus whatever civilians they could press gang to create a defensive system.  The other example was the battle of Keshabpur which started on the 24th and the French had again 50th men digging from the 13th to 21st when the the 3rd Kolkatta pulled out as the Hapsburg and French vets showed up and then they had another 3 days to dig in more before Bharat attacked.  That is enough time for troops to setup entrenchments of multi layers.  One of the battles saw Bharat stopped cold (very bad dice rolls) and the other battle after week of pain the French bumped out.  If you note the follow on battle to Keshabpur at Chanpadanga saw the French and Hapsburgs bounced out for comparatively light losses; the French and Hapsburgs didn't have two weeks to dig in.

My assumption is that late WW1 trench lines are actually our defensive lines.  They took a great deal of time to setup, saw lots of digging, concrete, etc get sucked into them and would take some time to build.  Just having earth and wood reinforced trenches say 6 to 8 feet deep in multi layers is possible.  The assumption is that ever week or 7 days see's troops dig a better level of defensive line.  People are getting too caught up on assumptions.  You are assuming that because I said there were 3 and 4 lines of trenches that its the Germans 1917 Hindenburg Line; its not.  The Hindenburg line would have concrete pill box's and strong points, bunkers 20 or 30 feet under ground for troops to shelter in.  Cover for the artillery, field hospitals, munitions, etc.  What Bhatat ran into was impressive because as I said before the French never had the time to go to the degree they did or the motivations to attempt to stop Bharat cold; Hindenburg Line it was not though.

Michael 

[P3D]

Thanks for the clarification.