Guadalcanal scenario

[Curty]

Well, I've got to the end of the Guadalcanal scenario (Feb 7th 1943) and nothing happened! I have since gone past this date by several turns and the game just seems to ignore the end date entirely and continue to let me play on regardless[&:]

Anyone else found this - regards

PAUL

[ChezDaJez]

The scenario actually ends of 4/3/43. You got a little ways to go yet.

Chez

[Curty]

If you go to Scenario selection and highlight the scenario, the time frame is 4th August 1942 to 7th Feb 1943[8|]

[jazman]

Just open the scenario in the editor and change the descriptive verbiage, then it will be working right.

[jazman]

There's probably some interesting land action on New Guinea they wanted to include even after the "Guad is secure" date.

The Battle of the Bismarck Sea happened late Feb/early March.

[Nikademus]

In all honesty, i figure if a decision hasn't been reached by Jan43 at the latest, it's pretty much over for the Japanese, at least for Lunga. Allied reinforcements snowball after dec42.

[Curty]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

In all honesty, i figure if a decision hasn't been reached by Jan43 at the latest, it's pretty much over for the Japanese, at least for Lunga. Allied reinforcements snowball after dec42.

At this point I have over 10000 points to Jap 1200 (by Feb '43). The Japs have no carriers left, i only lost the Wasp.

PM was no challenge as allied (normal difficulty) as jap efforts to take it were puny to say the least. The fight for the canal and Tulagi went a similar way.

Judging by what you have said Nik there is no chance of japs playing catchup before end of scenario is reached. I just used it as a test game to get used to how it all works. Now it's time for the grand campaign [:)]

[Nikademus]

well i've learned to never say never where players are concerned. Someone will probably prove me wrong [;)]

[SteveD64]

AI is winning right now pretty handily (I'm the Japs).  I've taken Milne but the AI has Guadalcanal and Munda.  I'm seriously contesting Munda and it's now a race to see who can reinforce it fast enough.  Great fun.

[Curty]

I should have played as japs[;)]

[Barb]

Well I as japs managed to fire over 100!!! submarine torpedoes against 3 US CVs sitting for a month over the same hex.
Sara got two, CarDiv 5 finished her. Wasp got one earlier and was sunk on the same day. Enterprise got two-three earlier and was retreating to Noumea when CarDiv 5 finished her.
Thats 3 US flattops down without scratch on mine.
I had also thrown EVERY combat ship in the whole map to get AI from around Guadalcanal - AI was quite tricky with amphib assault at Tassafaronga [:)] So I decided: I havent enough fuel to run all my ships around whole time - so lets get rid of some. Of course they took much more allied ones with them with little help from Betties and CarDiv 5... [:D]

[Nikademus]

wow.....Admiral Zhukov! [:D]

[Mynok]

[:D][:D][:D]

[SteveD64]

I made kind of a house rule that I'd only send a sub or two on a patrol zone around the US carriers instead of massed sub attacks against one hex.  Seeing as how I've lost 6 CA's on bombardment missions due to aircraft I may have given the AI a little too much advantage.

[Tazo]

Have you guys already faced/tested the second jap-AI behavior consisting in an immediate raid on Rabaul with 1 CV followed by the 2 others, sinking everything around and damaging badly Rabaul airfield and port ? With nothing to oppose for the jap-player and intensive raids on Lae, no way for the planes and ships to escape or for the convoys from Truk to pass through, for a long time. A big hammer. A far more challenging configuration when playing the Jap - when AI TF's remain too long on station my home rule is also to not route subs, my initial patrol zones are respected.

Also, in all my campaign tests as US the Wasp was sunk by torpedoes each time... and was crossing the canal only once (the 1rst one) and never stationnary. Yes it is easy to play the allied side on the average but a good jap player may find surprisingly efficient ways, however Guadal seems impossible to retake if renforced and the airfield occupied by 120 airplanes in a few days - maybe too short delay for the ground complete victory compared to history. Maybe a fair non historical variant could be to accelerate randomly the jap arrivals in the theater, at least for the AI. The jap-AI can certainly be improved to preserve the 2 main CV's during the counter attack (late august) but performed agressively and quite good, for instance when the AI rush occurs in bad weather my carriers were surprised more than one time (jap big strike from nowhere and strike back uncoordinated...) but instead of keeping the front line the AI continued advancing to Lunga, an avoidable mistake since moreover strong surface TF's took part of the raid to sweep convoys.

However, when played for the first time by non veteran players this scenario is a challenging and intense experience, so a very good learning of the system and it's changes. We can also give Andy some ideas to reinforce the AI scripts - keep the TF moving is the simplest improvement, more careful CV distances/behavior during invasions another one, randomly choosing (or checking the best requirements in the player configuration) among more scripts intending to hurt/surprise/destabilize a player. Unpredictability is the best weapon of the AI to ensure both better chances of success of the aggressive attacks - a powerful psychological weapon either - and replayability - the player don't know things in advance and still has nasty scripts to discover when the required mistake of him will occur. The raid on Rabaul was a good and impressive Andy-AI type surprise (I believed in the pursuit of my full speed fast TF initialy supplying Guadal unpunished but it was a massive raid indeed). This can be iterated - perhaps it is already, I'll check. Hence the real challenge in Guadal is a Jap victory (either AI or player) as far as I can see.

TZ

[SteveD64]

However, when played for the first time by non veteran players this scenario is a challenging and intense experience, so a very good learning of the system and it's changes. We can also give Andy some ideas to reinforce the AI scripts - keep the TF moving is the simplest improvement, more careful CV distances/behavior during invasions another one, randomly choosing (or checking the best requirements in the player configuration) among more scripts intending to hurt/surprise/destabilize a player. Unpredictability is the best weapon of the AI to ensure both better chances of success of the aggressive attacks - a powerful psychological weapon either - and replayability - the player don't know things in advance and still has nasty scripts to discover when the required mistake of him will occur. The raid on Rabaul was a good and impressive Andy-AI type surprise (I believed in the pursuit of my full speed fast TF initialy supplying Guadal unpunished but it was a massive raid indeed). This can be iterated - perhaps it is already, I'll check. Hence the real challenge in Guadal is a Jap victory (either AI or player) as far as I can see.

Agree completely.