How to create new hard - soft values for new units Japan 45?

[Mit Sigel]

My primary sources are from The Combined Arms Research Library collection of WWII operational documents. They are GHQ AFPAC O.I. NO.1, Staff Study Operations Olympic, and Downfall Strategic Plan for Operations in the Japanese Archipelago.

Numerous units are missing from the OOB that comes with the game. Some, like 8" and 240mm units can easily be picked up from other OOB's. Not sure why the designers left them out of 45.

None of the planned chemical mortar battalions are included. I can look at another OOB and see a mortar battalion with a strength of 18 and H/S as x and y. The information I have says the chemical mortars were organized as 3 12 tube companies. Can I just change strength to 12 and unit size to company without worrying about the H/S value?

How about new units I can't crib from some other OOB? Like the rocket units? The USMC was using rocket units that fired a Navy 4.5" which had a heavier warhead, and shorter range than the 4.5" deployed with the 422nd rocket battalion fielded by the Army.

How about the double-barreled 20mm Oerlikons fielded by USMC AA battalions? The Corps' AA battalions were reorganized defense battalions without the artillery. They featured 12 double 20's, 12 40mm's,  12 90mm's, 12 .5o M2 HB, and 12 .50 WC.  Is there any rule of thumb that guides determination of hard/soft values for individual weapons, much less blending them?

[Aaron]

Adding units to an already completed game is much easier than from scratch, take all for example AA units in the game and compare them and there capabilities to that of the new unit wanting to add and then everything can be done in the OOB editor, after that is just testing but as said if compared against all other units of that type for capabilities and done right with facts there really isnt much in testing except balance of the scenario, to strong or many of a unit could change the balance.

Graphics can be taken form other games and or countries or made from scratch.

Blending requires a little more thinking, whats the ratio is a question to ask and how many different types. If 2 types of units at 50/50 for each then just take the values of each and find a place in the middle as a starting point. One has 20 HA and other 10 then start with 15.

[Mit Sigel]

Thanks. Good points. I'm not afraid make stuff up by comparison to other OOB's if I have to. As a dry-run I haven't been able to locate 90mm AA guns, but I did find German 88's.

OTOH, it would be easier if there was some known rule of thumb for how the designers arrived at hard/soft values to begin with. Like inches/mm of penetration. Or weight of fire over a given time period. Then I can just research the weapon itself rather than troll through a bunch of scenarios looking for components that might be similar.

I'm still working out the assignments on paper. (The Register for Unit Decorations and Campaign Participation Credit prior to 1962 has been very helpful in sorting out the veteran units from the fresh assignments.) And I want to double-check the air unit assignments as well. So maybe someone will chime in.

I had planned on working with a new copy of the existing OOB since the majority of the changes are to unit names. And my first effort will be to begin modding existing beach-to-breakout scenarios rather than starting from scratch. The main changes there would be to set it up to two forward, one back, for regiments and divisions on the beach assaults. And then to attach engineers and divisional units to the regiments to form teams.

[Aaron]

Start small and learn before you go big is a smart way. As far as i know there is no real rule of thumb,theres been many designers over the years and as you can imagine they have there own ways and ideas but you can learn from past games and use them as guides to create new games and or scenarios by working off of those ideas that already work or adjusting some.

OOB work involves alot of research and ideas. Bolt OOB was completely redone and not anything near vanilla but involved lots of hours and months of work. Midge had an idea that i followed all the way through and set as my guide and that was every new variant needed to show a difference than the last and just having a 20 to 21 HA different didnt show enough so we went with 3, just about everything in the OOB is by 3s. From here i figured out what i wanted for the worst tank in the game. (21). And then the best (42) which also lead to higher numbers so we could show a bigger difference between a T55 and a Challenger. Once you establish the best and the worst its easier to fill in the ones in between using armor protection, gun and any other info you can find.

Its all about the research and having multiple sources, most sources copy someone else. More are wrong than right so you cant get your mindset on what 1 says but there is some holy grails out there but require lots of digging to find. If your looking for Japanese info then searching in Japanese on Japanese websites will get you better info. French then search in french. You will get much better info and meet people that live there that have better answers than English sites.

[Mit Sigel]

As far as i know there is no real rule of thumb,theres been many designers over the years and as you can imagine they have there own ways and ideas

Seriously? Values are assigned based on how people feel about how the game plays? 

I have collected a lot of material over the years to mod games that had predictable standards. US taxpayers paid for reams of it. But I don't see the point of sorting through it if there is no specific game mechanic to apply the data to.

I'll keep doing the research on the Olympic OOB because the topic interests me. My dear old dad was scheduled for the first wave with VAC in a JASCO (he called it a JANFU.) That's why I bought this game.

Not sure how much more effort I'm going to put into a game based on opinions. At this point I'm thinking I would have to go through the entire Japanese OOB as well. I see no reason to think their OOB is any better than the Allied side. I won't be buying any more in the Panzer Campaign series if what you say is the way it really works.

[Aaron]

" Seriously? Values are assigned based on how people feel about how the game plays? "

I wouldnt say values are created on how the game plays but research and OPINIONS.

All these games were built on lots of research, if i remember correct David flew to the Kursk battlefield when he was working on that title.

[-72-]

So if I understand this correctly, Zucker when he picks a strength value for the Imperial Guards - it just isn't right because it was his opinion (albeit based on research).

Ok - my entire hobby is invalid - I had no idea.

[Mit Sigel]

" Seriously? Values are assigned based on how people feel about how the game plays? "

I wouldnt say values are created on how the game plays but research and OPINIONS.

All these games were built on lots of research, if i remember correct David flew to the Kursk battlefield when he was working on that title.

Alright. Research. I can look at copies of German Explosive Ordnance (Projectiles and Projectile fuses) jointly published by the Army and Air Force in 1953,  Japanese Explosive Ordnance (Army Ammunition Navy Ammunition) another joint production from 1953, and finally TM9-1901 Artillery Ammunition, published by The War Department in 1944.

Let's say I wanted compare the relative effectiveness of some weapons in the 70-75mm range, like: The Japanese Type 92 7cm high explosive projectile. The weight of the fused projectile is 3.81kg, and the bursting charge is .59kg of TNT or RDX and ammonium nitrate. The HE projectile for the German 75mm mountain gun weighs in at 12 pounds total with a bursting charge of 11.6 ounces of "flaked nitroglycerine with nitrocellulose and nitroguanadine." And finally the M48 round for the 75mm pack howitzer weighs in at 14.5 pounds with a filler of 1.49 pounds of TNT. (I don't know why the publication on Japanese ammunition is metric.)

Having done the basic research, I could form an opinion about the relative effectiveness of each weapon. Or, I could apply a common formula, like the one found here.

Bursting Charge Power - The following approximations of explosive power may be used using TNT = 1.00 as a reference point.

• Before and during World War I
  • Black powder = 0.33 to 0.50
    
  • Guncotton = 0.50
    
  • Picric Acid = about 1.05 to 1.10
    
  • USA Explosive D = 0.95
    
• After World War I
  • German and Italian TNT = 1.00
    
  • British Shellite = 0.96
    
  • Japanese TNA = 1.05
    
  • USA Explosive D = 0.95
    
• Other Explosives (torpedo warheads, mines, depth charges)
  • Amatol (80/20) = 1.24
    
  • DD (Dinitronaphthalene/Dinitrophenol 60/40) = 0.82
    
  • PETN = 2.21
    
  • MDN (Mélinite/Dinitronaphthalene 80/20) = 0.88
    
  • RDX = 1.94
    
  • Tetryl = 1.39
    
  • Torpex (TPX) = 1.50
    
  • HBX-1 = 1.17
    
  • HBX-3 = 1.14
    
  • German SW types = about 1.07
    
  • Japanese Type 97 (TNT/hexanitrodiphenylamine 60/40) = about 1.07
    

Two rules of thumb about Burster Power
  1) The effect of the burster may be taken as being proportional to the square root of the weight of the bursting charge.
  2) For the same basic shell design, the size of the bursting charge is proportional to the cube of the bore size.

Norm Koger describes the formula he used for the first version of TOAW here. It looks similar to the formula from navweaps.com

The lethality of a long range indirect fire artillery piece, for example, is based on the size of the round. Lethality per round is equal to the square root of half the caliber of the round (in millimeters) cubed. L=(c/2)^(3/2). Why? The amount of explosive in the round is based on the volume of the round, thus the cube. But the damage done by an explosive round falls off with the square of the distance from the point of impact. So a 150mm round is not simply twice as nasty as a 75mm round. It is almost 3 times as lethal. But lethality per round does not tell the whole story. If you look at the figures for these two weapons in the manual you will see that the 150mm gun is only about twice as lethal as the 75mm gun. Why? The 75mm weapon has a higher rate of fire. Indirect fire artillery lethalities are modified by a function intended to represent the effect of rate of fire on overall lethality.

He never got around to describing the function. And IIRC, there were people at the time that thought he used a different formula once the game included modern weapons. Those conversations could probably be dredged up from the Matrix forum archives.

Of course it is possible to get even geekier. Like at Nigel Evan's website on WW2 British artillery. Here he goes over some of the research done by the British War Office.

It doesn't take much of a search of the internet to find newer and more complex formulas that allow for the comparison of different types of projectiles. Like this one from the Australian Army that cites Nigel Evans.

[Strela]

" Seriously? Values are assigned based on how people feel about how the game plays? "

I wouldnt say values are created on how the game plays but research and OPINIONS.

All these games were built on lots of research, if i remember correct David flew to the Kursk battlefield when he was working on that title.

As I’m the David mentioned, I thought I’d chime in. 

We have a standard methodology for official releases. We have used Ed Williams McNamara values for all new PzC games since 2010. All PzB releases have also used equivalent values. Mr McNamara created all the values in Advanced Squad Leader I believe with a pretty extensive formulaic approach. Ed can probably comment on that more.

I have a master spreadsheet that covers off a huge amount of equipment and if you post what you’re looking for I will see if I can provide the values. Please keep in mind that units such as AA regiments were probably not included due to the belief that there would be minimal enemy air units and that they were not used offensively like German AA units. There is always game creation decisions like that to reduce ‘clutter’ and prevent players using units ahistorically. Glenn Saunders did the initial OOB for Japan ‘45 and is a known ‘minimalist’.

One comment, around my going to Kursk was less about equipment values, but more about seeing the lay of the land, and researching the OOB and scenarios. It’s amazing how our perceptions or normally completely wrong based on reading books or watching documentaries....

David

[Mit Sigel]

" Seriously? Values are assigned based on how people feel about how the game plays? "

I wouldnt say values are created on how the game plays but research and OPINIONS.

All these games were built on lots of research, if i remember correct David flew to the Kursk battlefield when he was working on that title.

As I’m the David mentioned, I thought I’d chime in. 

We have a standard methodology for official releases. We have used Ed Williams McNamara values for all new PzC games since 2010. All PzB releases have also used equivalent values. Mr McNamara created all the values in Advanced Squad Leader I believe with a pretty extensive formulaic approach. Ed can probably comment on that more.

I have a master spreadsheet that covers off a huge amount of equipment and if you post what you’re looking for I will see if I can provide the values. Please keep in mind that units such as AA regiments were probably not included due to the belief that there would be minimal enemy air units and that they were not used offensively like German AA units. There is always game creation decisions like that to reduce ‘clutter’ and prevent players using units ahistorically. Glenn Saunders did the initial OOB for Japan ‘45 and is a known ‘minimalist’.

One comment, around my going to Kursk was less about equipment values, but more about seeing the lay of the land, and researching the OOB and scenarios. It’s amazing how our perceptions or normally completely wrong based on reading books or watching documentaries....

David

Thanks David. I'll put together a list over the next couple of days. It's pretty short. But I have some other things to take care of.

I would also be interested in the method used to determine the values if it's OK to share them. I always like a peek under the hood.

I'll never forget seeing the "ridges" at Gettysburg after growing up with the AH game in Missouri where there are real ridges.