ORIGINAL: Lemurs!
Spence,
Those figures are for the entire war.
And i did down grade the Zero.
One of the most important things i am learning by following the AARs here, is the number of bone head strategies the players are willing to try and then scream that the game is broken because they lost something.
America did nothing but wait and build until May '42. Do you know why? because they could. It is as simple as that. Japan was busy with Burma, finishing off the Philipines, the East Indies, etc.
Japan had no major force left to do anything with.
The first PbeM game i played was against a very good player in most ways, but he attacked, for two days in a row, the Marshall islands in Dec '41. Why? He sank a few merchant ships and i think and old destroyer and many ships were damaged.
I lost 30 planes.
But he lost 160 planes when i sunk both carriers and a couple of heavy cruisers.
The American victory in WW2 was not so much due to great eqipment, although our equipment was the best in the world, nor was it through great field leadership, although in a few areas we had that as well. We won because we followed the best grand strategy of any country in the war.
We kept our eye on the goal and essentially never left our goals out of site.
Roosevelt, Marshall, Arnold, and King. Plus a few others.
Mike
Not entirely true, USN made many island raids vs holdings in Marshalls, Gilberts etc during early months historically, but don't try that with this game. Why? Well, a number of reasons. One is the incredible accuracy of torpedo planes in this game. They are more accruate than bombs it seems. Look at Betty and Nell performance in this game! Another reason is the incredibly silly ability to shuttle aircraft about. Planes can be transferred to their transfer range and still qualify for missions the same turn. This results in the longer ranged planes conducting long range naval attacks while theoretically they are still in the air transferring. This is BS and planes which transfer, at least out of their HQ, should be disabled. This strategic ability to become force mutipliers in a turn needs to be adressed in a big way.
While one can argue that retarded players are the reason to blame for Japanese dominance early in the game, let's not forget the game has some serious flaws which preclude many options available to the historical counterparts.
