Was able to game a hypothetical surface action a few weeks ago. It was more in the nature of a schematic, than a developing battle. The assumption was the two groups are simultaneously sighted by air reconissance shortly after dawn, the consolidated surface fleets turn towards each other, and are close enough they come within visual distance within two hours. The two fleets included all three IJN battleships, the four Kongo class BC & the accompanying IJN cruisers. The US Fleet had seven BB Standards, six cruisers. The destroyers were not represented one for one, but reduced for simplicity. Also for simplicity we waived away any air action.
The two fleets were placed in a tight battle formation and approached head on as they crossed to horizon into sighting distance, about 11 Nautical Miles. Both fleets continued straight for another few minutes, the began maneuvering for broadside fire and tactical advantage. We called the game after 42 minutes of combat. The two fleets were inside five NM of each other. As I expected the Kongos did not take much punishment before succumbing. The cruisers of both sides took heavy damage across the board as well. That left essentially three IJN BB including the Yamamoto, vs seven US BB. The US BB took some damage from the Japanese gunfire. However three series of IJN torpedo attacks sank half the US cruisers and put three of the seven US Standards out of action. When called the game left both sides severely damaged basically with three BB each and one or two cruisers effective.
The torpedo results seemed very ahistorical. of 97 torpedoes launched there was a hit rate of 25%. That is way above the actual IJN hit rate for the Long Lance torpedo, actually between 5% & 10%. This may in part have been because the Japanese side launched its torpedoes at a relatively close range of five NM or less. That was well under what I understand of the doctrinal range in daylight battles.
A second ahistoicality is the USN had to few destroyers present. Had we been a bit more through in our research the strength would have been 3-4 times what we had on the table.
A few question revolve around how to rate the training level of some of the USN BB. We gave them a median average rating across the board. No allowance for those with a reputation for elite crews, or substandard. The same for the IJN, except for the Yamamoto which was rated as 'green'. That affected its gun accuracy & effectively took it out of the long and medium range battle.
Altogether this test took seven hours to actually run, with another six to seven hours preparation time using two people. I'm hoping to run another briefer test in August modeling a initial encounter by a few cruisers in the outer scout screen.