Pacific at War 1941-1945 v.3.63

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: ballyhoo
So how is Larry playing?

With both hands.

Thomas Harvey is my opponent and he's the scenario designer and is going to beat me. He always beats me.
He knows more about the scenario than I ever will. He's already forgotten more than I will ever know.
It's looking like I'm mired in a land war in Asia and meanwhile I have to invade and conquer as many of
the islands in the south pacific as I can and then defend them using the tools I have at my disposal;
the planes and ships and LCU's ( land combat units ). I don't have to worry about the logistics so much
like you do in WITP-AE so that's a lot of detail you don't have to worry about. Now is the time
when you want to be able to know where he's going to strike so you can prepare and concentrate your planes
and ships in the area he is attacking. To be there before he gets there is the goal. To ambush his ships
and maybe sink one or two. I've got Betty's that can reach out 80+ hexes to do sea int and unless there's
bad weather I don't think he can sneak up on me. Trouble is, the ships he has can sail from Ceylon to
Australia which means he can sortie out of Australia and hit me in my empire just about anywhere it's
important to defend. I can't defend the whole thing. I need a hint of where he's going. He doesn't always
tell me where he's going. So I've got sea int missions all along the southern border of my perimeter and
Midway. Maybe I should drive some picket ships out into the far reaches to give me advanced warning.
Which reminds me, I need to discuss the house rules with Thomas. We should have done that twenty turns ago.
No problem.

[thomasharvey]

ORIGINAL: ballyhoo

So how is Larry playing?

He is doing well so far. I have fled for the most part to avoid major losses to the fleet. If he takes what the Japanese did during the war then he has done very well. If is difficult to equal what the Japanese did when the allied player knows not to make the historical mistakes.

So far he has about as much of China as Japan was able to occupy. He has Midway which they never had and that is dangerous for ships at Pearl. In Burma he looks like he may come up a little short but he has the rest of Asia that Japan took.

[larryfulkerson]

Hey you guys....it's looking like Thomas needs to put a PO in this scenario so
the postings might be skimpy for a while.

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

Hey you guys....it's looking like Thomas needs to put a PO in this scenario so
the postings might be skimpy for a while.

warspite1

What does that mean exactly please? Is there an issue with this scenario?

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
Hey you guys....it's looking like Thomas needs to put a PO in this scenario so
the postings might be skimpy for a while.

warspite1
What does that mean exactly please? Is there an issue with this scenario?

So um.....when you play Pacific at War right now it's either hot-seat or PBEM because
there's no PO objectives, no PO tracks. It's got an AI but as of yet no PO. So
Thomas has taken it upon himself to try to put some objectives in the scenario
so it can be played against the PO. It's not going to be easy and not because the
map is so big. It's because there were lots of little dot bases in addition to
Rabaul and Port Moresby and Townsville and other big important places. It's going
to take quite a while to do.

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
Hey you guys....it's looking like Thomas needs to put a PO in this scenario so
the postings might be skimpy for a while.

warspite1
What does that mean exactly please? Is there an issue with this scenario?

So um.....when you play Pacific at War right now it's either hot-seat or PBEM because
there's no PO objectives, no PO tracks. It's got an AI but as of yet no PO. So
Thomas has taken it upon himself to try to put some objectives in the scenario
so it can be played against the PO. It's not going to be easy and not because the
map is so big. It's because there were lots of little dot bases in addition to
Rabaul and Port Moresby and Townsville and other big important places. It's going
to take quite a while to do.

warspite1

Okay thank-you. Hopefully not too long [:)]

[Silvanski]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
there's no PO objectives, no PO tracks. It's got an AI but as of yet no PO.

Any theater options for the side you want to PO enable have to be made event driven in order for the PO to have more or less the same advantage as a human opponent.

[Bamilus]

Was PO ever added to this scenario? Looking for a WITPAE replacement that doesn't take 5 real life years to finish

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Bamilus

Was PO ever added to this scenario? Looking for a WITPAE replacement that doesn't take 5 real life years to finish

I sent the scenario designer, Thomas Harvey, an email of inquiry just now and maybe he'll give us an update on his progress.

[larryfulkerson]

We got an answer to why no PO yet for this scenario. Here's what Thomas had to say about it:

To answer the question of a PO version of PAW, I do have one. However, in the bug section I have noted 3 problems that impact any naval scenario.

The main problem is the failure of the PO conducting naval air combat against ships. I sent you a PO version of PAW that had that problem. You verified that it worked perfectly for one turn and then the air units were restricted to only air superiority for the fighters and ground support for all other aircraft types.

The air units also do not progress to their objectives which makes large scenarios difficult. The third issue is minor and relates to ground units floating in a deep sea hex in a disembarked condition can not be sunk by fire from ships. They can only be destroyed or sunk by air strike.

The main problem is the lack of naval air combat as noted.

I have placed these issues in the bug section but they have not been fixed.

So, I can not put forward any scenario with naval air combat because the scenario fails. I will not send out a scenario that will not work properly. If is is fixed later it would be difficult to make a second first impression about the scenario.

I included 10 scenarios with the release of TOAW IV. Nine out the 10 now have PO versions that work well except for the above three bugs. They all require naval air combat.

Thanks Larry for the interest. I saw the comment by the gamer about a PO. There was a real uproar about no PO on my scenarios at the start of TOAW IV and I do not want to start another controversy.

[Bamilus]

Thanks, Larry. Sucks to hear but makes sense

[Zovs]

So it's not the scenario designers fault then. It seems the game engine's PO is not smart enough to understand how to use certain complex things. That does not mean the scenario would not play out with assigned objectives, just that certain aspects that are out of the designers ability to do anything about them. So if the Objectives are assigned then it still maybe playable against the PO.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Zovs
So it's not the scenario designers fault then. It seems the game engine's PO is not smart enough to understand how to use certain complex things. That does not mean the scenario would not play out with assigned objectives, just that certain aspects that are out of the designers ability to do anything about them. So if the Objectives are assigned then it still maybe playable against the PO.

I was thinking the same thing. You could lay down several tracks for the Allied player that leads to Tokyo and the PO could chose one at random so you'd get a different game each time. There's the straight up the middle route where the objectives are the islands leading to Japan and there's the DEI / Phillippines / Formosa / Tokyo route, and then there's the jump from northern China / Korea / Japan route, etc. I'm wondering what kind of game you'd get. And the objectives for the Jap player would involve invading and capturing territory for about 8 months of game time and then defend for the rest of the game. But still, I'm wondering about what quality of game would you have.

[Zovs]

That make sense Larry. Perhaps taking a smaller scenario and making multiple tracks and testing that out first?

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Zovs

That make sense Larry. Perhaps taking a smaller scenario and making multiple tracks and testing that out first?

That sounds like an excellent idea. I'm on it.

[gliz2]

The issue with PO is that it has no learning or reactive capabilities. It fully programmed. Hence it sucks big time in big and long scenarios.
No one can forsee every possible way a human can play plus the PO will focus on the objectives leaving gaps in the line or constantly shuffling troops between objectives.
In smaller and shorter scenarios the PO can work and even be challenging but as soon as you get bigger map and more time all its shortcomings become obvious.

[larryfulkerson]

I agree gliz2 dude ( Chris ) but I'm thinking that it might still be possible to add a rudimentary PO to "Pacific at War" since the idea is to advance from one objective to the next for any of the three possible avenues of attack on Tokyo. There are naval aviation bugs that are still lurking ( no CAP after the first attack ) and that will dampen enthusiasm for the scenario but naval aviation is only part of the war and happened so relatively rarely that it doesn't kill the joy for me. I've played this particular scenario about half a dozen times so far ( helping Thomas with the playtesting ) and I've detected very few anomolies. There's the lack of a night mission......which would be really helpful as the Allies try to take down Rabaul and Singapore. I'm thinking of installing the new version 5.1 of the TOAW database as a mod and giving both sides more of the exotic equipment that's available. The link for the TOAW database version 5.1 is:

tm.asp?m=4431184

[Bamilus]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson


I agree gliz2 dude ( Chris ) but I'm thinking that it might still be possible to add a rudimentary PO to "Pacific at War" since the idea is to advance from one objective to the next for any of the three possible avenues of attack on Tokyo. There are naval aviation bugs that are still lurking ( no CAP after the first attack ) and that will dampen enthusiasm for the scenario but naval aviation is only part of the war and happened so relatively rarely that it doesn't kill the joy for me. I've played this particular scenario about half a dozen times so far ( helping Thomas with the playtesting ) and I've detected very few anomolies. There's the lack of a night mission......which would be really helpful as the Allies try to take down Rabaul and Singapore. I'm thinking of installing the new version 5.1 of the TOAW database as a mod and giving both sides more of the exotic equipment that's available. The link for the TOAW database version 5.1 is:

tm.asp?m=4431184

Id be interested in this

[Profender]

I would love to be able to play against the computer as I lack people interested in playing this against me. Hope for the best. Or at least some smaller campaigns?
I do not own the game but am very interested I do believe it has two smaller campaigns of the Pacific right?
Anyways thanks for the AAR!!! Was fun to read

[thomasharvey]

Hi Profender

There are 5 small naval scenarios that I made that are included in TOAWIV. I added a PO version for each of them which is located in the forum new scenario section.
Operation MI is the battle of Midway. Others include Battle of Leyte Gulf 1944, Battle of Sana Cruz Islands 1942, Coral Sea 1942 and Battle of Eastern Solomons 1942.

You can download these 5 PO scenarios. If you have TOAWIV, you can play against either side against the PO.

Thanks