Scenario for Testing: Focus Pacific

[btd64]

ORIGINAL: cdnice

Thank you guys! I am almost to January and have not noticed any issues. Good fight going on with Japanese and Russians although a few Russian destroyers have made kamikaze runs at home island ports.

Cdnice, shortly we will be releasing a much more complete scenario. So you have two choices, keep going with your current game or wait for the new version. You can unzip the new files but I'm not sure you will get all of the new features....GP

[paradigmblue]

I'm excited to release Focus Pacific in a much more user-friendly form - an installer .exe that will automatically update all the files that you need to play Focus Pacific.

To use, simply create a new, updated install of WitP:AE. Run the installer, and ensure that the destination directory is that of your new install of WitP:AE. You may have to edit the text of the destination directory in the installer dialogue to do so - by default the installer will try to make a new folder inside your WitP:AE install rather than use your WitP:AE folder, even if you click on that folder as the target destination. For example, if you select "War In the Pacific Admiral's Edition" as your target destination, the installer will select a target destination of "War In the Pacific Admiral's Edition\Focus Pacific Beta". You will need to delete the "Focus Pacific Beta" portion of the target destination so it does not create that new folder and instead installs correctly to your WitP folder.

Once you allow the installer to complete, Focus Pacific will be playable on that install.

This is a huge improvement over the old system of manually replacing and adding every file by hand. It takes a vanilla install of WitP:AE, and makes the following changes:

*Adds Focus Pacific as a playable scenario in slot 71
*Adds the extended map
*Adds all of the ship and plane art for the scenario
*Adds Chemkid's Yamato Damashii extended map art to the game


Please try it out and let me know if it works for you!

If it does, I will make a new thread for the mod, as a new player has to read through 9 pages of posts right now to know what they are getting in to. This release will mark the first "beta" release for the mod, which I know consider out of the alpha stage, thanks to the tireless work of General Patton, Commander Cody, Lowpe and others.

[HansBolter]

Haven't downloaded the new version but got 17 turns into the prior version over the weekend.

Toyahara is still completely undefended.

Been plastering it every day with no response from the Japanese.

[cdnice]

Woo Hoo!! There goes my week and weekend.......and my wife hate's you.......

[cdnice]

Just noticed that the extra Canadian destroyers (originally envisioned to be extra U.S. saved from scrappers and tasked to RCN) are all coming in fully operational. They had some damage in the last version to denote the time that would have been needed to get them out of mothballs and into serviceable condition.

Ditto for submarines.

[cdnice]

I also noticed that all the ships in Balboa in turn one disappear and reappear in San Francisco on turn two. Is this supposed to happen?

[HansBolter]

My game is at December 24th and I wanted to report on what a huge psychological effect Prudhoe Bay is having on my mindset as an Allied player.

Even knowing the AI is likely never gonna exploit it I am completely rethinking my early game garrison strategy.

With a production of 2k oil and 10k stockpiled at game start getting a garrison there and to the bases along the Alaska coast seems like an absolute priority.

Can't imagine how this will open thing up in a head to head games.

[btd64]

ORIGINAL: cdnice

Woo Hoo!! There goes my week and weekend.......and my wife hate's you.......

That's the price we pay sometimes. In regards to your last post, did you download and install the new .exe version? I ran a one turn test and the ships were still at Panama....GP

[btd64]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

My game is at December 24th and I wanted to report on what a huge psychological effect Prudhoe Bay is having on my mindset as an Allied player.

Even knowing the AI is likely never gonna exploit it I am completely rethinking my early game garrison strategy.

With a production of 2k oil and 10k stockpiled at game start getting a garrison there and to the bases along the Alaska coast seems like an absolute priority.

Can't imagine how this will open thing up in a head to head games.

Hans, I'm going to find out soon....GP

[wdolson]

People can do whatever they want in a mod, but I think putting an active oil field at Prudhoe Bay is a bit like adding heat seeking missiles or F-4 Phantoms to the game. The technology to even find the oil on the North Slope didn't exist until the late 1950s/ early 1960s and the technology to develop the field was new in the late 1960s. The science and technology of oil exploration is very complex and a lot of technological hurdles have had to be jumped to get to the production that is happening today.

Seismology which was the science used to find the oil on the North Slope was in its infancy in the 1930s/40s. Some early companies were out there by the late 1930s, but processing the data was a horribly labor intensive job until digital computers were developed and became available in the 1950s. Before computers to process the data, you'd end up with a sea of numbers that needed to be crunched by hand. By the early 1960s Geology had been revolutionized with the new theory of plate tectonics (originally proposed by Alfred Wegner around 1910, but he was thought a crazy nut by his peers) which vastly expanded the knowledge of how the Earth was put together and allowed for more targeted Geology when searching for oil.

Anyway, it's just a bit of a nit for me. My older sister is a petroleum Geologist, it was dinner time conversation at her house when I was a teenager. Her husband at the time was working exploration on the North Slope, so there was a lot of talk of that too. Her specialty is California oil development. The largest oil field in the continental US is just outside Bakersfield, CA.

Bill

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

My game is at December 24th and I wanted to report on what a huge psychological effect Prudhoe Bay is having on my mindset as an Allied player.

Even knowing the AI is likely never gonna exploit it I am completely rethinking my early game garrison strategy.

With a production of 2k oil and 10k stockpiled at game start getting a garrison there and to the bases along the Alaska coast seems like an absolute priority.

Can't imagine how this will open thing up in a head to head games.

It is not a problem for Japan, in this mod, if Japan wants it they will take it. A joint India/Alaska/Canada campaign is definitely doable. Plus Russia.

I am a little worried about the viability of Russia since it is active since day 1. I sincerely think Russia doesn't generate enough supplies, so in effect there are two Chinas' now....lots of land combat VP for Japan. The Japanese garrison of Manchuko is huge.

Russia does have time to evacuate and avoid losing half their starting Army however....

I have not downloaded the latest, looked a while back and Japan's starting economy still way too strong. I believe that was one of the next changes to be made.

A viable strategy in this game is to hit the continental United States. A landing at Coos Bay for example, and some paratroops to Ogden could be very, very scary. It would mean going easy on Russia, but no other sacrifices early on. With the Liz, it opens up a huge amount of strategic bombing to an aggressive Japanese player.

[paradigmblue]

Don't under-estimate the strength of the Soviet border forts they have arrayed around Manchuko Lowpe. I've found that the Japanese need at least 2 divisions to take each one in a timely manner. Don't get me wrong, Japan can smash through those forts, but it's not a cakewalk, and the Japanese forces need to be consolidated in a few spearheads rather than pushing across the map. The Soviets have a lot of great artillery and strategic depth to slow down a Japanese advance. Also, I've found the Mig-3 to be a very nasty early game fighter, so air superiority isn't a sure thing for the Japanese, and there are lots of places where the Soviets can slow the advance of the Japanese through bombing.

The Soviets are most vulnerable at Vladivostok, where the Japanese can conceivably cut it and the hexes around it off from the rest of the Soviet Union by assaulting the thin strip of coastline just North of the city.

As far as Soviet supplies, supply shortage hasn't been an issue for me yet, and I have a vs AI game in late April right now.

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: General Patton

That's the price we pay sometimes. In regards to your last post, did you download and install the new .exe version? I ran a one turn test and the ships were still at Panama....GP

Did the installer work correctly for you Patton?

[cdnice]

ORIGINAL: General Patton

ORIGINAL: cdnice

Woo Hoo!! There goes my week and weekend.......and my wife hate's you.......

That's the price we pay sometimes. In regards to your last post, did you download and install the new .exe version? I ran a one turn test and the ships were still at Panama....GP

I did yes, love the installer by the way!

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: paradigmblue

Don't under-estimate the strength of the Soviet border forts they have arrayed around Manchuko Lowpe. I've found that the Japanese need at least 2 divisions to take each one in a timely manner. Don't get me wrong, Japan can smash through those forts, but it's not a cakewalk, and the Japanese forces need to be consolidated in a few spearheads rather than pushing across the map. The Soviets have a lot of great artillery and strategic depth to slow down a Japanese advance. Also, I've found the Mig-3 to be a very nasty early game fighter, so air superiority isn't a sure thing for the Japanese, and there are lots of places where the Soviets can slow the advance of the Japanese through bombing.

The Soviets are most vulnerable at Vladivostok, where the Japanese can conceivably cut it and the hexes around it off from the rest of the Soviet Union by assaulting the thin strip of coastline just North of the city.

As far as Soviet supplies, supply shortage hasn't been an issue for me yet, and I have a vs AI game in late April right now.

The Russian air force can be really nasty...and it has implications across the map.

In a normal game as Japan I would attack further north in an attempt to cut the railroad and supply to Vladivostock and let them starve, probably have to bomb the industry.

However, I am not sure how it would play out with Russia active from day 1. Something to look forward to.[:)]

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: cdnice


I did yes, love the installer by the way!

Glad the installer worked!

This will allow me to release new installers as "patches", which means that after you install the full mod, I can release new installers that just modify the necessary files. Keeping up to date on the mod will just require running the most recent "patch" installer, which will be a small download. This will streamline workflow and remove the need for any manually updating of any file on the player's part.

I'll look into the Canadian ship issue this weekend - though I haven't been able to replicate the teleporting ships bug - and I've also added some Japanese fighters to Toyohara, as well as tweaked some French aircraft dates. Clemson and Wickes class DDs under Canadian command will start the game with 10 system damage to represent the time needed to get them back into active service. Those changes will be out in a patch this weekend.

[btd64]

ORIGINAL: paradigmblue

ORIGINAL: General Patton

That's the price we pay sometimes. In regards to your last post, did you download and install the new .exe version? I ran a one turn test and the ships were still at Panama....GP

Did the installer work correctly for you Patton?

Para, Yes it worked OK. Needs a little man handling, but works fine. I've been under the weather the last two days so haven't had much energy let alone time to look at a lot, but I'll take a look at the ship thing tonight and send you an email with my findings....GP

[btd64]

I have fixed a problem with the Admiralty T class DD upgrade path. The AAA value was decreasing with the upgrade instead of increasing. So I added a couple more 20mm's. The new files have been sent to Para.

cdnice, I played a short game to dec 10th and did not have the naval units at Balboa warp to San Diego. I'm not sure what happened with your game, but my suggestion would be to restart and see what happens. If it continues, Reinstall a fresh copy of WITPAE and call it WITPAE FOCUS PACIFIC and the short cut FOCUS PACIFIC. Makes it easier to find. Then update to the latest version. Then install the Focus .exe file and try again to run the game....GP

[HansBolter]

GP,

Please consider deploying some Japanese fighters to Toyahara ay game start.

The AI won't move any there to cover it's vulnerable factories, but if you put some there at game start they will defend their base.

It's still a huge hole for any game against the Japanese AI.

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

GP,

Please consider deploying some Japanese fighters to Toyahara ay game start.

The AI won't move any there to cover it's vulnerable factories, but if you put some there at game start they will defend their base.

It's still a huge hole for any game against the Japanese AI.

Hi Hans, I've added a Sentai of Zeroes to Toyohara to go along with the Kates that are stationed there. I should have a new release out this weekend with the change.