July 12, 1942 – I've come to a realization why I, and so many other of the players, get upset with WitP – it is because of the amount of time that we commit to it. When the game does something totally unexpected that is contrary to our understanding or our expectations, our reaction tends to be one of anger at the time that was spent, which now seems to be wasted.
One could find an analogy in Gardening as a hobby. Suppose that you buy and plant a Macintosh apple tree, spend the time necessary to help it get established, care for it, and watch it over the period of a year or more until it flowers, the fruit sets and you finally get your first few apples. What happens now if you find out that the Nursery didn't sell you a Macintosh apple tree at all, but instead sold you a crab apple tree? Your first reaction will be anger for having wasted so much time, and in anticipation of having to go through the trouble all over again to correct the problem.
Well, the 34th Division turned into my "crab apple tree" this turn. After so many turns and so much time setting things up so that I could extricate the unit, it finally moved this turn, but it didn't move to the East along the protected, short path. Instead the unit went south along the road, right back into an isolated trap where it is cut off from supplies again! [&:] [:@]
There is no way that the unit can reach Wuhan now without going into hexes that contain Allied units. The distance is actually longer to Wuhan now than it was before. What is particularly galling is that up until and including the previous turn, the movement "direction" that was listed for the 34th Division always read going "East".
I've given up trying to make the unit go to Wuhan, and have instead given it a destination and objective of Nanning, because there are no Allied troops along the roads that lead that direction. I realize that this is a total waste of time, because AuTiger will quickly move a few units in to trap the 34th again, but I can't think of anything else to do.
And that is the crux of the problem with this game. Instead of receiving satisfaction from planning and executing strategy and tactics I instead become unjustifiably angry and frustrated with the Game, because this sort of problem stands out much more than any of the small successes that I obtain. Most of the time I feel that I am wasting my time on almost anything that I do, because there always seem to be random problems that crop up on a regular basis.
When I step back and think about it, I realize, of course, that this one isolated situation won't make a difference in the long run, but never-the-less it subtracts from my overall enjoyment of the Game, and causes me to reflect upon all of the other little frustrations in the game. Essentially, instead of thinking about the "sunny days" spent admiring the young tree, I only remember the cold, dark, damp, and windy days spent trying to keep the tree alive. In my opinion, fundamentally a game shouldn't be like that.
That frustration aside, my major operation this turn actually worked out okay. My small CA/DD surface combat TF sailed into battle at Luganville and engaged a mixed Allied DD TF that was twice its size. My TF did quite well for itself in two engagements, damaging a number of the Allied DDs and sinking one of them, with no Japanese losses and no significant damage. In fact, the only real damage was accumulated during the final encounter when the two fleets were at 2000 yards and the US DDs in the Allied TF were able to use their 50 cal machine guns. Those 50 cal machine guns caused more damage than the 5 inch shells that the ships were lobbing around. There is no way that 50 cal machine guns should cause internal damage to a DD, but that is just another Design Decision, made by the same folks who designed the Movement System in this game, and there is no point complaining about more "crab apples".
Elsewhere, there was uniformly bad weather across the northern third of the Map, so only minor air attacks flew from both sides. I am trying one last fully supplied, zero fatigue, Air HQ present, full air support present, and greater than level 6 airfield, attack in China next turn. If that doesn't work I am going to give up and pull my planes back to Japan before AuTiger finally guesses the right air base and destroys 300 planes on the ground in one air strike.
Finally, in the Aleutians, my activities have alerted AuTiger enough that he is bringing his ships and planes forward again, so it appears that we will have another major confrontation at Adak next turn. I suspect that he will end up with the "edge" but I want to see what happens anyway.
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