Different how?

[Bo Rearguard]

Hate to rain on this parade but Elessar has already done this scenario, War in the Pacific.

A grand effort on Elessar's part, but most players will be interested in a Pacific wargame with fully functioning AI opponent.

[Elessar2]

If the devs actually plan to give the AI some teeth, I may after I import my scenario into the new engine finally finish the AI. [the one for Crusade In Europe will likely kill me first tho]

[Kriegsspieler]

I'll just toss in my thoughts here, in case the dev(s) are paying attention to this sampling of the vox populi.

The various suggestions that have presented in this thread for handling the SC game engine's limitations with naval operations are excellent and well meaning, but I fear that the opportunity for influencing that part of the game ended months ago, probably before it was even announced. This is one of the drawbacks with Slitherine/Matrix's comparatively short lead-in time between announcement of a new game and release. Hell, with Grigsby's games, you barely have time to read their "dev diaries" before the game is released! But Grigsby is kind of an outlier there.

Anyway, I really like how SC War in Europe plays. It's an excellent two-player game and it does pretty well too as a solo game. The AI is not too incompetent, which places SC's AI in what -- the top 10 of recent computer wargames? Even the submarine war plays pretty decently. Kind of abstracted, but not necessarily the worse for being abstracted. Sometimes games get into a mess by trying to be too cute with submarine operations (I'm looking at you, HOI4!)

The problem is, as many others have said here, you can't have a Pacific wargame without better modeling of naval operations and logistics than we have seen in SC games so far. SC World at War was ok, in my opinion, but just ok. I worry just a little that this most crucial feature of the game -- i.e. a new way of representing naval operations -- hasn't been discussed yet. But maybe Hubert and Co. are saving the best for last! I certainly hope so.

[Numdydar]

Also, Pacific War is about task force, its composition, its screen and when I see the screenshots, I am under the impression that you can't put a BB with plenty of AAA guns to protect your CV in the same task force counter. Am I wrong?

Thats' always been a glaring issue with Strategic Command games...the one unit per hex rule. You can't stack units or ships, so no task forces per se. As a result, by 1945 in some games of SC World @ War I had Japan literally surrounded by a triple wall of Allied ships when in reality all of them could fit in one hex with room for hundreds more.


shipwall.jpg

I just read Dev Diary #4 about the Solomons Campaign and if what they showcase there, that there is STILL just one ship per hex, this will likely be the 1st SC game I do not buy. I can't imagine any additional features in the game that would overcome not having TFs in a Pacific campaign.

It is the Pacific!!! You HAVE to have TFs. Still having one ship per hex is very disappointing. Especially when Warplan Pacific has them.

[sschenkel]

So we have SC World at War, Warplan Pacific, plus other titles. How is this game going to be different other than a SC WiE re-skin?

Obviously the scale will be different than WaW so smaller unit sizes as a guess. but that alone does not seem to be enough of a difference.

Will WiE be able to tie in as an option? I doubt it but would be nice. The main issue I had with WaW was the scale was too big. So, it would be really nice to have the scale of WiE in the Pacific. I do not care that most of the map would be water. It's a computer game. It's not like we have to have a huge physical space to play it.

More details on how this title will be different enough from existing games to be worth a buy.

Another game comparison question:

How is this different than Gary Grixby's War in the Pacific (Admirals Edition)? (old school grigby beast of a game!)

Thx

[Platoonist]

Another game comparison question:

How is this different than Gary Grixby's War in the Pacific (Admirals Edition)? (old school grigby beast of a game!)

Thx

Far simpler obviously. In this game you're not managing thousands of ships down to the level of harbor patrol craft and sub chasers. The turns aren't one to three days. You're not going to be training tens of thousands of individual pilots in various specialized skills. The economics and logistics are simpler too. You don't have to ship supply, fuel and resources to every atoll that needs it. No aircraft engine factories to manage. Some people love that amount of detail and micro-management but it's not everyone's cup of tea. Personally, I quite enjoy WitP/AE but the steep learning curve often felt like alpine training.

Although much detail is left out this game will probably play out faster in terms of time spent. War in the Pacific can take a year to play even at a quick pace. Often in PBEM it takes far longer.