This kind of skirmishing was not unique. It certainly was not "utterly outside contemporary military thinking at the time". It had been practiced for centuries beforehand (although admittedly the Patriots were particularly good at it). The British were perfectly capable of doing the same thing back, and did so on numerous occasions.
The problem with this kind of fighting is that although it can inflict casualties and delay an enemy, it is rarely decisive in its own right. Contemporary military commanders recognised this. They fought lined up in neat rows for a very good reason. It worked. It is rare for one combatant in a conflict to "steal a march" with some tactical breakthrough. It is even rarer for them to maintain that edge for very long. Similarly, I would suspect this hypothetical wargame navy won because it "played to the rules" of the game itself. It wouldn't work in real life for the very simple reason that the world's military would have deployed such a force if it did. They do, after all, spend their lives working this kind of stuff out. Straight off the cuff I would argue that a giant fleet of PT boats would struggle because a) they don't have much range and b) they aren't very seaworthy. They probably couldn't fire their weapons in rough weather and a gale would sink most of them.
You have to keep an open mind. Things do change. But you also have to be careful. There are very good reasons why some things are done the way they are. It's because they work better than any of the alternatives. :)
“a giant fleet of PT boats would struggle because a) they don’t have much range and b) they aren’t very seaworthy.”
I’ve never played this game, but I would also think that such a flotilla also would be very vulnerable to being taken out with just a few large weapons (e.g., fuel-air explosives, as one example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9xCgNdZPKk). So yes, the sheer number might preclude taking them out with individual rounds of artillery or whatever, but their small size and inferior seaworthiness would correspondingly elevate their vulnerability to other types of attacks.
Sure it did. Most of the martial small arms were horribly inaccurate at a distance and volley fire permitted them to be used as an area weapon.
That the Continental frontiersman was one who hunted for food, and the presence of rifles as opposed to muskets changed the battlespace. Accurate shots from cover at command personnel created disarray in the ranks, and that was thinking outside the box.