War in the Pacific Release thread

[HarrySmith]

Hi guys,
Just some early feedback on the war in the Pacific. Ver 8.03
The game looks great and a credit to you all.
I started playing the Allies against the AI and i am not sure if this thread is geared up properly for AI play at this stage.
I am at turn Allies Feb 8th 1942.

Each turn the allies get the Japanese strategic advice notification about ensuring to have units on those cities in Manchuria to avoid Russian mobilization.

The Japanese have not attacked anywhere, except in China. No fleet attacks or amphibious landings. This turn the USA went to 100% mobilization but I still had to declare war on japan to attack some ships I found.

There seems to be too many partisans as the AI now in this turn has 7 partisan units active to attend to. One spawned and the Ai moved units to attack that one that then left gaps for others to spawn. It then kept increasing from there.The sheer amount of partisans i think, will become a headache for any Japanese player.Also i noticed that there are a number of partisans in Indochina , was that the actual case in reality as they seem to have joined Japan fairly cooperatively?
I have put a host game up on the server if someone would like to play?
Hopefully some feedback helps.
I have started playing the Japanese to see how that goes, but so far all good.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Hi Harry.
Just to let you know this mod is primarily designed for multiplayer. Take a look at Elessar's notes further up this page and you will see how daunting doing Naval AI scripts will be to do. He says doing his expanded European conflict map mod will be easier to script..

Elessar can weigh in better about this subject and SPing this mod.
I can say hot seating this mod both sides with FoW on works pretty good..just like the old days of solitaire play on the board games. This game is vast enough that not everything can be remembered fully..unless of course..if one has an eidetic memory. [:D]

[rjh1971]

Wow, impressive. Thanks for all your hard work and sharing the mod.

[Elessar2]

ORIGINAL: HarrySmith

There seems to be too many partisans as the AI now in this turn has 7 partisan units active to attend to. One spawned and the Ai moved units to attack that one that then left gaps for others to spawn. It then kept increasing from there.The sheer amount of partisans i think, will become a headache for any Japanese player.Also i noticed that there are a number of partisans in Indochina , was that the actual case in reality as they seem to have joined Japan fairly cooperatively?

Balthazor already mentioned my decision to not work on the AI (note I am primarily an AI player myself)-even adequately scripted it will basically require an Ironman approach (= tons of extra units) to give a typical human a challenging match. Note I did provide the unedited vanilla AI scripts as part of the download, if anyone wants to work on them (in which case I'd be glad to help out, but as said I am now mainly focusing on Euro 20k even as I playtest this one).

For partisans specifically, well that was indeed how things were. The Japanese did NOT control all of the territory that they had conquered, they simply didn't have the manpower. If they didn't have any troops on patrol behind their own lines in a given area, the countryside basically reverted to local warlord control. Only after a massive recruiting and training program did they (in 1944) have sufficient troops to actually try to take big chunks of the remaining country.

If you want to see what effect having low numbers of partisans (in vanilla) results in, check out the ongoing AAR of DimitryN vs. Taifun: it's only December '41 but China has already essentially lost. I calculated it and the IJA only needs a fairly modest number of garrisons to keep the partisans in check, and can basically blow off the resource partisan events if they aren't along their main axis of advance.

The notifications being seen by the Allies tho can be tweaked, so thanks for that.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

ORIGINAL: HarrySmith

Also i noticed that there are a number of partisans in Indochina , was that the actual case in reality as they seem to have joined Japan fairly cooperatively

There were political elements in Indochina that cooperated with the Japanese, and local forces were raised...as reflected in the Japanese production screen in this mod e.g. there are Indochinese units that can be purchased.
However, there were Nationalist (Cambodian, Lao, Vietnamese etc) factions and a vibrant Communist element like the Viet Minh. Ironically, the Viet Minh were supported by the USA during the war...the same group that defeated the French later on in the early 50's and led to the creation of North Vietnam.

How the worm turns.........

[Elessar2]

Recall Ho Chi Minh himself was one of those partisans.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

ORIGINAL: Elessar2

Recall Ho Chi Minh himself was one of those partisans.

That's right. My wife is from PDR Lao, which is still communist (although its 90% Buddhist and they somehow co-exist well together). She went to college in Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh's thoughts and philosophy, plus his history early in the struggle with the Japanese..was taught.

During the 1980's, the help that the American OSS (precursor to the CIG then CIA) gave to the Viet-Minh wasn't really emphasized all that much in Vietnam and Laos.(of course haha). Only later on into the 90's and beyond did it become common knowledge..and was included in the curricula, the significance of American help to the insurgency that was brewing against the Japanese occupation.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Got 3rd turn in [Japan] Jan 12, 1942. Man, this mod is so faithful to the early stages of Japan's campaigns into Malaya, Borneo, et al that it's giving me shivers.[:D]

I don't know why..but I haven't been able to PM anyone through Matrix today..including you Elessar...hence this message: Its your turn.

(We may need to set up some alternative coms in addition to PMing..I have some idea's..already have those set up with a few others for emergency beta discussion and other situations that can arise. e.g. I have one observation atm I need to ask about.)

cheers..good times so far from Tokyo's point of view.

[jjdenver]

How do you install this with Steam? I think I've had probs getting mods working with Steam version of the game before.

Does the location in this pic seem right? Scenario doesn't show up when I select single player so I think it's not the right location.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

ORIGINAL: jjdenver

How do you install this with Steam? I think I've had probs getting mods working with Steam version of the game before.

Does the location in this pic seem right? Scenario doesn't show up when I select single player so I think it's not the right location.

You are close....you need to place it in World at War ...not War in Europe.

Btw..I have steam also...and everything works fine.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Here's a link to our first MP test. It will go up in an episodic fashion.

Putting up a short YT series announcement for our first test of 8.04. later today about 3pm PDT

Have a schedule:

Turn 1 [Japan] Dec 7 1941: Sept 30, 10am PDT

Turn 2 [Japan] Dec 25 1941: Oct 2, 10am PDT

Turn 3 [Japan] Jan 12 1941: Oct 4, 10am PDT

Turn 4 [Japan] Jan 30 1942: Oct 6, 1Oam PDT

Any subsequent turns will be made public on YouTube every other day.

cheers

Balthazor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gHsoZgo3Qo

[Elessar2]

BIG update coming later today. Alas I somehow had a total brain fart and the 3 US Atlantic CVs won't get transferred. That's ok since I have the other changes that I'd like to implement and test.

[Elessar2]

Took all day *whew* but I got the next version all squared away. Last niggling issue is the map flags-since I had to use an existing major slot, I now have Australia with Italy's flag. Balthazor has his 1st turn up on YT, so want to give that a look before I finalize the next build. [and we reload]

[Elessar2]

.805 10-1-21:
---------------

First major update. LOTS of changes:

1. The Australians are now a major country (replacing Italy, tho I can't get rid of the pesky Italian flag at the moment). This will allow them to get a Lend-Lease convoy line and to focus their own tech in a different direction than the UK.

2. As a result said Lend-Lease routes have been revamped, and now run in a chain from the US down south to Australia, then around the long way to India, then to the UK (the game only allows one convoy line from one major to any one other major), with large spreads giving the Allied player a lot of flexibility in how he allocates said MPPs.

Note I likely will add some alternates in case a major gets conquered and/or the source or destination ports are captured.

3. Second big change is creating the Fast Battleship unit for the US, for all of the modern battlewagons which were fast enough to keep up with the carriers (speed 20 average, tho I realize the Iowas [23] would handily beat the South Dakotas and North Carolinas [19] in a race.). The original Battleship unit will represent the prewar slow but sturdy tubs which once the war began were typically relegated to shore-bombardment duties (speed 16). This means the Alaska super-cruisers were deleted (names added to the Heavy Cruiser list fwiw), which is no big loss considering the positive consequences of the change in question.

4. Other naval tweaks to go along with the above, including also making Japanese prewar BB's slower (20 to 18), reducing regular BB Naval Attack values for both the Japanese and Americans by half a point, Dreadnoughts' movement decreased from 20 to 19, and subs' move increased to 16 (from 15). Japanese Light Carrier movement reduced from 22 to 20.

5. Revamped the US Navy's Atlantic transfers to be more historically accurate (i.e. I had neglected to get the 3 Atlantic Fleet CVs into the build queue, tho the US also gets a few more cruisers and an extra BB as well).

6. Canada can now upgrade its units based off of UK tech, and Thailand off of Japanese tech.

8. Add a Russian mine in the NE near Yakutsk, while Russian starting Mobilization reduced from 30 to 20.

9. Bumped up UK ship build limits a bit, changed UK Industrial Modifier from 25% to 35%.

10. Some map changes:

* Moved the Borneo capital [Balikpapan] next to the sea (so it can be bombarded by surface ships).

* Some glacier mountain hexes in W. New Guinea.

* Added Christmas Island (the Indian ocean one) as a occupyable island.

* And Cold Bay AK as a useable base.

* New major port near San Diego

* More jungle hexes on that NE Australian peninsula

* Revamped some of the roads in China, repositioned an HQ and a fighter to be closer to the Japanese lines.

11. Some partisan changes: there are now some Communist China spawns, supply events in Thailand, and 2 spawn events in the Philippines. Note there are some other minor Resource events which are labeled "Communist Chinese Partisans" that happen from time to time (to both the Japanese AND the Nationalists).

12. Research sharing between all Allies, except the USSR, enabled.

13. Removed the extra DD that comes along as part of the 4 Shokaku event choice (it was originally put in to disguise the absence of the Yamato, since otherwise your opponent could see the extra ship in the graph unit totals, but he could still see the morale hit AND the Allies see the popup on their turn anyway). Japan needs all of the MPPs it can get early on before its various conquests' convoys go online.

Choosing the CVs over the Yamatos now gives Japan a -5000 National Morale hit (~4%; was -1000).

14. Some minor tech tweaks: Advanced Tanks costs 140 (from 125), Japan starts with Mobility, BUT the costs to upgrade are now pretty steep. Mechs and tanks however are a bit cheaper than infantry.

15. Industial Tech now has dynamic costs depending on the benefit for a specific country (from 40 to 250), in combination with tweaks to their % bonus per level:

Cost % gain MPP Gain
----------------------------------
UK 50 20% 10
USA 250 25% 90
USSR 50 15% 10
China 60 15% 12
India 50 10% 10
Aust 40 10% 8
Japan 75 20% 15

16. Deleted the extra attacks that Vanilla gives you for 1 level of Armored & Aerial Warfare for certain units (as in I had neglected to remove them-note I am using Crispy's 5 level schema, which would mean that at Level 5 these units would end up doing SIX attacks...you still get the 5% morale bonus per level however).

17. Gave Russia a Decision Event for shipping supplies to Russia via Persia, if they and Japan end up going to war.

18. Deleted 2 automatic events which reduce Chinese National Morale at the start of the scenario (carryovers from vanilla which are out of date). Cleaned up a few more which give morale bonuses (China & USSR).

19. Upgraded a couple of Japanese air units which I had overlooked.

20. Per a Crispy idea all surface ships (other than Amphibs) can no longer spot adjacent land units.

21. Tweaked some scouting & operational ranges for land-based aircraft down 1-2 hexes. Typically strike is now +2 above their scouting radius, except for strategic bombers. Japan still gets its usual +2 bonuses for Medium bombers. Fighters get the 2nd strike I originally intended.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

ORIGINAL: Elessar2

.805 10-1-21:
---------------

First major update. LOTS of changes:

1. The Australians are now a major country (replacing Italy, tho I can't get rid of the pesky Italian flag at the moment). This will allow them to get a Lend-Lease convoy line and to focus their own tech in a different direction than the UK.

2. As a result said Lend-Lease routes have been revamped, and now run in a chain from the US down south to Australia, then around the long way to India, then to the UK (the game only allows one convoy line from one major to any one other major), with large spreads giving the Allied player a lot of flexibility in how he allocates said MPPs.

Note I likely will add some alternates in case a major gets conquered and/or the source or destination ports are captured.

3. Second big change is creating the Fast Battleship unit for the US, for all of the modern battlewagons which were fast enough to keep up with the carriers (speed 20 average, tho I realize the Iowas [23] would handily beat the South Dakotas and North Carolinas [19] in a race.). The original Battleship unit will represent the prewar slow but sturdy tubs which once the war began were typically relegated to shore-bombardment duties (speed 16). This means the Alaska super-cruisers were deleted (names added to the Heavy Cruiser list fwiw), which is no big loss considering the positive consequences of the change in question.

4. Other naval tweaks to go along with the above, including also making Japanese prewar BB's slower (20 to 18), reducing regular BB Naval Attack values for both the Japanese and Americans by half a point, Dreadnoughts' movement decreased from 20 to 19, and subs' move increased to 16 (from 15). Japanese Light Carrier movement reduced from 22 to 20.

5. Revamped the US Navy's Atlantic transfers to be more historically accurate (i.e. I had neglected to get the 3 Atlantic Fleet CVs into the build queue, tho the US also gets a few more cruisers and an extra BB as well).

6. Canada can now upgrade its units based off of UK tech, and Thailand off of Japanese tech.

8. Add a Russian mine in the NE near Yakutsk, while Russian starting Mobilization reduced from 30 to 20.

9. Bumped up UK ship build limits a bit, changed UK Industrial Modifier from 25% to 35%.

10. Some map changes:

* Moved the Borneo capital [Balikpapan] next to the sea (so it can be bombarded by surface ships).

* Some glacier mountain hexes in W. New Guinea.

* Added Christmas Island (the Indian ocean one) as a occupyable island.

* And Cold Bay AK as a useable base.

* New major port near San Diego

* More jungle hexes on that NE Australian peninsula

* Revamped some of the roads in China, repositioned an HQ and a fighter to be closer to the Japanese lines.

11. Some partisan changes: there are now some Communist China spawns, supply events in Thailand, and 2 spawn events in the Philippines. Note there are some other minor Resource events which are labeled "Communist Chinese Partisans" that happen from time to time (to both the Japanese AND the Nationalists).

12. Research sharing between all Allies, except the USSR, enabled.

13. Removed the extra DD that comes along as part of the 4 Shokaku event choice (it was originally put in to disguise the absence of the Yamato, since otherwise your opponent could see the extra ship in the graph unit totals, but he could still see the morale hit AND the Allies see the popup on their turn anyway). Japan needs all of the MPPs it can get early on before its various conquests' convoys go online.

14. Some minor tech tweaks: Advanced Tanks costs 140 (from 125), Japan starts with Mobility, BUT the costs to upgrade are now pretty steep. Mechs and tanks however are a bit cheaper than infantry.

15. Industial Tech now has dynamic costs depending on the benefit for a specific country (from 40 to 250), in combination with tweaks to their % bonus per level:

Cost % gain MPP Gain
----------------------------------
UK 50 20% 10
USA 250 25% 90
USSR 50 15% 10
China 60 15% 12
India 50 10% 10
Aust 40 10% 8
Japan 75 20% 15

16. Deleted the extra attacks that Vanilla gives you for 1 level of Armored & Aerial Warfare for certain units (as in I had neglected to remove them-note I am using Crispy's 5 level schema, which would mean that at Level 5 these units would end up doing SIX attacks...you still get the 5% morale bonus per level however).

17. Gave Russia a Decision Event for shipping supplies to Russia via Persia, if they and Japan end up going to war.

18. Deleted 2 automatic events which reduce Chinese National Morale at the start of the scenario (carryovers from vanilla which are out of date). Cleaned up a few more which give morale bonuses (China & USSR).

19. Upgraded a couple of Japanese air units which I had overlooked.

20. Per a Crispy idea all surface ships (other than Amphibs) can no longer spot adjacent land units.

21. Tweaked some scouting & operational ranges for land-based aircraft down 1-2 hexes. Typically strike is now +2 above their scouting radius, except for strategic bombers. Japan still gets its usual +2 bonuses for Medium bombers. Fighters get the 2nd strike I originally intended.

This is ALL great!

[Elessar2]

Hotfix for an issue with Russian readiness on the way.

[Elessar2]

.806
--------

Hotfix for Russian readiness (was testing their income, forgot to change it back, ironically right afterwards I decided to run tests on a separate install for this exact reason).

[Elessar2]

.807
------

Two more important changes, one that's been bugging me, the other a simple oversight after my recent flurry of alterations:

1. For Tactical/Medium/Maritime Bombers, reduced Long Range Tech strike ranges from 2 to 1, while increasing their starting values for that tech (+1/+2/+1 respectively). There wasn't much room in such relatively small airframes to increase fuel loads. Starting scouting ranges and LR Tech increases unchanged from the recent rebuild. Strategic bombers remain unchanged. Japan's Mediums still get an extra +2 for both scouting and striking, Japanese Tacticals +1 additional.

2. Got the US Fast Battleship costs and build times in line with their original costs (325). Also bumped down regular BB costs & build times (from 325 to 300), for Japan too.

3. Gave the US a Garrison on the West Coast.

[Elessar2]

Aircraft ranges were probably the thorniest problem I have had to wrestle with while making this mod. On the one hand, we have the historical data for each aircraft type & the country in question, that's pretty straightforward and what I used to craft the original ranges.

But they ended up running up against playability issues. A typical carrier task force can move 22 hexes per turn (assuming no ship types slower than a fleet carrier), and a Long-Range Amphib 20. If I make searches 20+ hexes, then any ship will be automatically spotted if within that distance, which may be too distant to enable the ship to attack the enemy island. Carriers of course have greater flexibility, can be 27 hexes out and can still get off at least one attack before they go grey and immobile for the rest of the turn. Slower warships however don't have that margin of error. Recall the game engine is capped at a max speed of 25 for any ship.

In actuality there is a tradeoff between search range and detection %--the farther out you fly the smaller the slice of the pie that a single plane can patrol. If I increase the radius by only 25%, the area to be searched is increased by 56%. If I double it, the area quadruples. SC of course is 100% deterministic in this regard, it's either 100% perfect or 100% null.

So if I make search too great, the enemy will be able to spot fleets at ranges long enough to give it an early warning sufficient to allow its own fleet to warp in via Cruise one turn ahead of schedule (this is why I originally had Cruise as only 1.5x Combat speed). This gives too much of an edge to the defender. In reality the 2 week turns would allow any warship to go at least ~4000 miles, which is 100 hexes at the scenario's scale; if we just look at it as one week alternating, that's still 50-60 hexes. The defender won't typically know that they are under attack until the bombs are actually falling, not a week beforehand. [Assuming either S&I or another unit hasn't detected them of course, which is fine. I'm finding in my AARs with Balthazor that I have to sweat any major task forces from being spotted by S&I, which makes things a bit more dicey and I like that uncertainty.]

So now the max search radius is by a Maritime Bomber at L5 Long Range, giving it a radius of 18. BUT: they also can do 2 manual searches beyond the base default Spotting distance, and I figured given the math above of patrolling a huge area, it was fair to allow 2 manual searches beyond the bounds of the Spotting distance (+3 as I recently modded it). But now thanks to something that happened in my last AAR with Balthazor, the actual effective detection range can be upwards of 28 hexes! But Maritime Bombers can only go out 16 + 5 = 21 hexes, which isn't that big a deal, just 3 more than Spotting gives them (tho you have to include the extra revealed hexes around each hex flown through)...

Except that the carrier task force will try to intercept the bugger if his search point is within their Intercept radius. When I saw one of his Maritimes intercepted by one of my carriers like that (and yes it was 26 hexes away), my heart sank. Now to do a raid the carrier task force commander will have to risk turning off Intercepts and hope he doesn't get ambushed during his opponent's next turn. In '41-'42 it isn't that big a deal, since the effective Japanese Maritime strike range will be 18 + 7 = 25 if the CV's intercepts are on, and the carriers can just barely get into strike range on their next turn if they start 29+ hexes out. But Long Range Air now becomes crucial, and the Allies need to rely on the US edge in S&I AND the catch-up bonus to not fall any further behind. When I had search AND strike +2 per level for land-based buffs the math there became very problematic. I may increase Long Range Amphibs to 22 or so that they aren't auto-detected (and then bombed by the Japanese air unit) at LR level 4 or 5, and decrease the Spotting ranges by an additional hex.

Note that Strategic Bombers still get their big strike distance bonuses, since the USS at least will need it if they want to hit the Japanese HI's from the Marianas and/or
China. So your choice is whether you want to use Strats for naval search when they may be more useful bombing things.

Also had some choices for Fighter ranges. I eventually decided to apply +2 only to Escort ranges (giving them an Escort range of 18 at L5); when doing their own strikes they'll be weighed down by ordnance so no room for drop tanks, but while they can carry drop tanks during Interceptions, it would be kind of silly for a fighter unit to intercept a raid many hundreds of miles distant (720 miles at 18 hexes).

[Hellfirejet]

Hi Elessar2, In a mod I'm working on I use the Unused Airship slot in the editor, and rename it as UNIT_ID_28= Aerial Reconnaissance it now represents aircraft like the Catalina. In the editor I adjusted all the Attack settings to zero, It has land and Sea spotting only, the aircraft have Cameras instead of bombs etc, and have a small defensive armaments to fight other aircraft that attack.

Maritime patrol

PBY-5A of VP-61 over the Aleutian Islands, 1943
In their role as patrol aircraft, Catalinas participated in some of the most notable naval engagements of World War II. The aircraft's parasol wing and large waist blisters provided excellent visibility and combined with its long range and endurance, made it well suited for the task.

A RAF Coastal Command Catalina, with Ensign Leonard B. Smith of the U.S. Navy as copilot, and flying out of Castle Archdale Flying boat base, Lower Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, located on 26 May 1941, some 690 nmi (1,280 km; 790 mi) northwest of Brest, the German battleship Bismarck, which was attempting to evade Royal Navy forces as she sought to join other Kriegsmarine forces in Brest. This sighting eventually led to the destruction of the German battleship.

On 7 December 1941, before the Japanese amphibious landings on Kota Bharu, Malaya, their invasion force was approached by a Catalina flying boat of No. 205 Squadron RAF. The aircraft was shot down by five Nakajima Ki-27 fighters before it could radio its report to air headquarters in Singapore. Flying Officer Patrick Bedell, commanding the Catalina, and his seven crew members became the first Allied casualties in the war with Japan. Patrol Wing 10 of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet had 44 Catalinas under its command but lost 41 within 90 days. Patrol Wing 10 also lost its main seaplane tender, USS Langley, to Japanese aircraft during the Dutch East Indies Campaign while it was transporting 32 Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter planes.

A flight of Catalinas spotted the Japanese fleet approaching Midway Island, beginning the Battle of Midway.

Regards, Kirk23