A Sub Icon could mean a cruiser taskforce?

battle · Post by **battle** » Sat Aug 17, 2002 4:38 am

I gave the game a fair chance to become playable, despite the unfriendly interface and too many mouse clicks. I sailed a Task Force comprised of Destroyers and Troop Transports to try and reinforce Gili Gili. There were several Jap Sub Icons between me and Gili Gili. After identifying the sub icons with a microscope, I decided to run the gauntlet. Clearly they were sub icons, not a Surface Force icon, the Jap sub icon turned out to be a Jap Heavy Cruiser Task Force that decimated my transports. That made little sense. How are you supposed to make intelligent decisions on what strategy to decide on, if you can't trust the game icons to represent what they're supposed to represent? Has anyone else been f***** over by that one?

Yamamoto · Post by **Yamamoto** » Sat Aug 17, 2002 5:01 am

Perhaps you would enjoy the game more with the "fog of war" setting turned off. With it on sometimes your reports won't be accurate. Say la geurre! ( I have no idea how to spell that).

Yamamoto

ADavidB · Post by **ADavidB** » Sat Aug 17, 2002 5:03 am

Welcome to "Fog of War" - you don't have satellites, U2's or other neat technologies. If you've set your recon ac correctly they will search around and if you are lucky, report "something" back. By the time the coded message has been decoded, recoded and resent, etc., etc., there is a good chance that the report is plenty wrong.

Basic rule in this game - don't send troop/supply TF's into "harms way" without a separate and strong surface combat TF. The AI does it all the time, which makes for good pickin's.

As a general rule, you are better flying in troops/supplies into places like Gili-Gili unless you have already definitively established full air and surface control of the area. A very usable "trick" of this game is to use float recon craft to get initial groups of troops, particularly engineers, into bases, then let them build up the air fields.

Good luck -

Dave B

Spooky · Post by **Spooky** » Sat Aug 17, 2002 5:04 am

Do you mean "that's war !" in French ? In this case, the correct spelling is "c'est la guerre !"

Spooky

PS : BTW Battle, maybe you should take a look at the draft of the UV strategy guide in the website below ...

strollen · Post by **strollen** » Sat Aug 17, 2002 5:06 am

If you have clicked on a TF it will till you your best estimate of the composition of the TFs. If this is your first turn of contact with a TF and you don't have a lot of search planes up. The odds are excellent that the actually composition of the search force is really different than what is reported.

In real life, in the Battle of Coral Sea the Japanese launched a full strike against a reported carrier and several cruiser. It turns out the carrier was a Oiler and the cruiser was a destroyer and the rest of the ships were probably whales. Needless to say the crew of the AO Nesho (sp) and the DD Sims weren't happy to receive the strike but... it was a good thing. On several occassion I have sent a intercepting group of cruiser to protect a base from bombardment to find out the cruisers were actually the Yamato or other battleships. The fog of war sucks, but it is true to life.

tanjman · Post by **tanjman** » Sat Aug 17, 2002 5:07 am

battle,

Sound like you have "Fog of War" (FoW) on. This means that not all spotted TFs or battle reports will be acurate. See pages 7 & 24 (realism options), page 97 (spotting), page 98 (detection levels) and page 118 (special rules).

The best way to alleviate FoW is to use multiple recon assets to spot and properly ID enemy TFs. Hope this helps.

Drongo · Post by **Drongo** » Sat Aug 17, 2002 5:20 am

Battle,

All good info in these posts.

Historically, land based recon could be notoriously unreliable and many commanders would not rely on it without further verification. The game attempts to model this.

Are you sure it was the sub icon that was the IJN cruisers and not the fact that there was an unspotted surface force out there?

By the way, was it just an attempt at a cunning plan, to make an "outrageous" statement about UV that would piss off as many dedicated UV players as possible? Maybe so that any time you asked a question later, you could be sure that people would take note of it because of seeing your name?

Anyway, it's good to see you giving the game a go and trying to get some value for your money.