War in the Pacific: AE - Map Mod

[Hairog]

Good choice.

[samspackman]

Guadalcanal - really just tidying up some islands all that's left.

[Boonierat1972]

Looks awesome samspackman, can you show us a screenshot of the map zoomed out?

[Hartmann]

I'm so impressed - this will turn out to be the best map mod ever. [8D]

[samspackman]

Not finished yet - but I put a beta version up at [see below] if people want to check it out.

[Hairog]

Crap! I forgot how to use the file. Do I just put it into my campaigns folder? When I try to open it in the editor, there is an error saying it needs Script/event/convoy.txt.

[samspackman]

OK lets try that again. Extract the .cgn and folder into Campaigns you should be good to go.

https://gofile.io/?c=CxjxXQ

[Hairog]

Works like a charm now. Good work! Very impressive.

[Hairog]

Any updates on this massive undertaking?

[Elessar2]

My hope is that this map can be combined with a single ship mod & the mechanics of the Naval Warfare mod. Single ships from CA's on up, the entire Pacific crawling with them...

[Hairog]

That is certainly possible. I did the the Community Naval Mod and that is very doable.

[samspackman]

TBH after spending 100+ hours making just this map over several months and posting it up here I'm kind of done with it for now. Other than some of the smaller South Eastern pacific atolls the map is pretty much complete. People are welcome to use it as they want.

[Hubert Cater]

Thanks for putting this together samspackman, finally had a chance to fully check out the map and it is very impressive work to say the least [:)][8D]

[Elessar2]

Welp, I've been trying to hammer out a workable playable map out of this...

So, with all due respect towards samspacksman (piecing together coastlines is a job for a total masochist, putting a typical mega jigsaw puzzle together to be child's play by comparison), but he may not have been aware of some issues:

1. He added map tags for all the towns and cities, but didn't input them into the actual city properties. OK, took me all weekend, but that's done at least.

2. Unfortunately cities in SC are not ports-ports are an extra attachment you can stick onto a sea space which has at least one bit of land somewhere...

3. Alas I discovered that ports CANNOT be put onto a 100% water space. I'm not sure why that is [Hubert?], but to put a port next to a city in the right spot I often have to add a nonexistent tiny island first, then drop the port on top of that. All depends on how the coast in a given area was drawn.

4. Not entirely happy with some areas, most notably Manila & Bataan-he put the fortress 1 hex N of the peninisula in question since NO land installations can go on 51%+ sea spaces, but a larger peninsula would block ocean access to Manila [and obliterate the port I currently have there].

After all that it would be all downhill, copying all of the appropriate scripts from vanilla while changing any relevant map coordinates etc.

1st alpha will likely have a LOT of ships, probably everything down to and including the CA level.

Turn length will likely be 10 days alternating, ship movement curtailed a bit, tech tweaked downward likely to 3 & 2 [1 & 2 chits], reduced total investment caps.

Communist China will be bigger than in stock, w/ larger force pool to match.

The Kongos will become battlecruisers, which they basically were, no matter what the IJN may have called them.

The Yamatos/Iowas & Montanas/Lions/[& H class if this was a world scenario] will all go into the Dreadnought slot.

Not sure if I should make CVE's into CVL's [swap ASW for Naval tech], will have to think about that. Maybe IJN units will be CVL's, since they had no ASW doctrine, while the US did.

Japanese cruisers will get +1 to their attack ratings, to reflect the power of the Long Lance. Other country-specific tweaks will also undoubtedly follow.

I'll probably lose my mind before it is done. But stay tuned...

[Elessar2]

Fixed Manila & Bataan.

Manila

[samspackman]

Awesome work Elessar - I’ll freely admit there are still a lot of things about the editor I don’t know about/stuffed up!

Glad it can be of some use still despite that! Yeah the Philippines was tricky. The entire coast line was actually done by hand from scratch since I only found out about the map generator tool when I was about 50% done!

[Elessar2]

I'll have some new screenies uploaded this weekend (I found out that one can make cool-looking atolls by putting a "lake" on an island hex [lake vs. "major" lake], land units & cities/towns can still exist there), just want to throw this out there...

WI I put in EVERY warship from CL's on up, but also including individual submarines + smattering of DD hunter/killer groups? Would we have a massive amount of carnage on the 1st turn of total war, followed by most ships laid up for the rest of the game because it would be too expensive to repair them all? Would the micromanagement become a hell? Would the AI be able to handle it (tons of new AI scripts to be written, yay)? Or a typical person's system?

If I gave a lot of MPP's for repairs and rebuilds would a clever player just dump them all into tech and land units? Thus requiring me to make ships cheaper to compensate? Can I adjust what the different tech levels of Production Tech do %-wise to reduce build/repair costs?

Am definitely taking a look at the Naval War Mod's changes too.

[Hairog]

I handled the repairs in the Naval Mods by giving different costs and build times to the various task forces. Only Screening and Recon TF can rebuild at a fraction of their original costs. This simulates how many of these units were made and lost. Hundreds of destroyers were lost in combat whereas very few capital ships were. The Screening TF Recon TF are easy to shatter but inexpensive and fast to rebuild. Whole task forces were not destroyed just damaged enough to make them inoperable. So they went back to base, got replacements and sallied forth again.

Capital ships are a different matter they are costly and slow to build and cannot be rebuilt.

The main changes in the Naval Mods is the virtual elimination of the hit and run tactic. Because of the addition of naval zones of control, if your opponent (including the AI) uses their Screening TF properly it is virtually impossible to attack a task force that is being protected and then have enough movement points to run away. You will take your lumps like any surface task force that was able to get close to another task force did. In addition, all TF have a high defensive evasion rating which simulates just how rare it was for task forces to actually intercept each other at sea. For example, a Fast Carrier Task Force has a defensive evasion rating of 70%. This means that even if you can get close to a Fast CV TF you still only have a 30% chance of having a successful attack. As history has shown you just didn't get many if any chances to confront any enemy Task Force on the high seas. Sneaking up on a Fast Carrier Task Force was virtually impossible.

[Hairog]

two

[Hairog]

three