OBC questions, comments, suggestions

[Major Tom]

Rich and myself were primarily responsible for putting together the OBC files for the new PacWar Patch. We spent a lot of time on the things, but, we could quite possibly have missed something, or, you might have specific questions about things like, LCU's (Strength, type, positions, etc..), ships (etc.), aircraft and airgroups (etc.) and so on.

Post any historical or gameplay questions you have related solely to the OBC files (like if a unit is missing, added when it shouldn't be, etc. or if something makes the game uneven to play) in this thread and we will either explain why it is that way (or isn't!), or quite possibly add it to some future upgrade.

I hope you enjoy this wonderful new patch!

Jeremy

[Steven Clarke]

A wonderful inprovement on my favorite game.

In the Marianas scenario many of the allied sub groups are based out of Wewak but that base is under Japanese control.

The Eastern US is producing a lot of F4F Wildcats.

I miss Leyte.

Thanks for the great work.


[This message has been edited by Steven Clarke (edited September 26, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Steven Clarke (edited September 26, 2000).]

[Major Tom]

I'll check out your Marianas US Sub-Bug.

The Leyte scenario will be appearing soon, and you can access it through the "Other Campaigns" button that replaced it. We will also be releasing a few new scenarios along with the Battle of Leyte Gulf over the next few weeks.

Also, there is a bug noticed about the Japaneese LCU's losing squads, artillery and tanks, as well as their entire complement when you try to transport them on ships. The reason for this is because the Japanese and Allied LCU base has been greatly expanded from the original, leaving less free spaces in which to divide units. I was unaware that when you placed a LCU on more than one AP in a task force to transport it, it actually divides up the unit for the duration of sea travel to fit on the other AP's. Yet, with less free spaces to divide the units the squads that have to be divided to fit on the extra transports are lost. I will have to rework the OBC41 scenario and remove some unimportant Allied and Japanese LCU's to free up some more open spaces (the other scenarios don't have to worry about this much, as units that were killed off earlier leave these free spaces).

Jeremy,

[Toro12]

Thanks for the update! Looking forward to delving in.

BTW, since the update, the Tutorial in the manual (dealing with the Guadalcanal campaign) no longer works. There are ships "missing," names of bases have changed, the local commander is not at the noted base, etc. I think someone can work through it (I did), but it might be a bit confusing...

Just thought you'd like to know.

[Major Tom]

Since I need to free up some space in the Japanese LCU list I will post some suggestions of units to remove from the OBC files, ones that I think aren't critical to the game.

17th IJA Brigade (there are plenty of other stronger units attached to Imperial GHQ)

Hong Kong SBF (rarely does Hong Kong get invaded, and even if it did, the Japanese would be dead soon anyway, plus, this unit did not exist)

121st, 122nd and 123rd IJA Divisions (these arrive VERY late in the war, and are attached only to the Chinese Expeditionary Army and do absolutely nothing to win the war for Japan)

Definietly remove one of the Thailand Armies. We don't want the Japanese forces in Burma to be TOO strong.

Any other suggestions or reasons why we shouldn't get rid of these units?

Jeremy

[sulup]

Originally posted by Major Tom:
Since I need to free up some space in the Japanese LCU list I will post some suggestions of units to remove from the OBC files, ones that I think aren't critical to the game.

17th IJA Brigade (there are plenty of other stronger units attached to Imperial GHQ)

Hong Kong SBF (rarely does Hong Kong get invaded, and even if it did, the Japanese would be dead soon anyway, plus, this unit did not exist)

121st, 122nd and 123rd IJA Divisions (these arrive VERY late in the war, and are attached only to the Chinese Expeditionary Army and do absolutely nothing to win the war for Japan)

Definietly remove one of the Thailand Armies. We don't want the Japanese forces in Burma to be TOO strong.

Any other suggestions or reasons why we shouldn't get rid of these units?

Jeremy

Perhaps we could even remove some of the Kwangtung LCU's in Manchuria as well? These guys don't do nothing but waste precious LCU space. May as well take the most redundant ones out.

[Don Bowen]

I was intrigued by the new 85th and 87th RAAF squadrons that appeared at Perth in the Matrix Project’s new OBC41. I did a little research and found:


No.85 Squadron:

Formed Guildford 12 Feb 1943
Moved Pearce 16 May 1945
Disbanded Pearce 10 Dec 1945
Detachments- Exmouth Gulf (Potshot) 27 Apr 1943 to 6 Oct 1943
Derby 1 Feb 1944 to 31 May 1944


No.87 Survey Squadron:

Formed Laverton 3 Jun 1942
Moved Hughes NT 28 Aug 1942
Moved Coomallie Creek 7 Dec 1942
Renamed 87 Sqn Coomallie Creek 10 Sep 1944
Moved Parkes 12 Nov 1945
Disbanded Parkes 4 Jul 1946


The RAAF squadrons stationed at Pearce (in the Perth area) in December, 1941 were:

No.14 RAAF Squadron with 12 Hudson II
No.25 RAAF Squadron with 18 Wirraway


I am very interested in a reference to Buffalo fighters in Western Australia at this time. Does anyone at Matrix Games have a reference for this? Perhaps some of the Dutch Buffaloes still in route?

Don

[lodine]

Sorry, posted this in wrong thread. I assembled a TF of AP's to transport a division and when I noticed that I didn't have enough AP capacity to hold the division (believe it was the 21st or 27th) selected, I backed out using the ESC key. Went back to check what other divisions I had at the base and the division was gone. Happened on johnston I. Did the whole process again and I lost another division (can't recall which one). I don't remember this happening with the original pac war, but maybe I am mistaken. Anybody run into this?
Mark



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[RevRick]

Good Evening:

Regarding losing units - that has happened to me on odd occasions - and I really can't remember the exact sequence of events - but it happened with ships as well as LCU's.

My wonder is about the new Gearing class - six 5/38's and six 3/50's. I wish.... and so do a few guys who stood in off Okinawa. Also, Happened to notice that the Fletcher in late war still had 4-40mm and 7-20mm across the board. Isn't that a tad weak for 1944 and later ships.

Tried to run first round of Guadalcanal scenario. Ran up to The Canal, and found a level four airbase in Aug. of 42 with a flock of 65 Zeros and 39 Bettys buzzing around my carriers - 100 miles south of Guadalcanal. Glad as all get out I put the North Carolina in a bombardment group for that round or it would have gotten really nasty. Is this a possible mistake?

God Bless;
Rev. Rick

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tincanman

[Bulldog61]

Have done about a dozen historical first turn opens and still lose at least 5 battleships at Pearl Harbor(That was the best start) Also have Japanese landing on Midway on 12/28/41 turn with 41st and 51st Infantry Divisions. Both are listed belong to the China AG.
The pearl Harbor problem is simple too many torpedos! After pasting the airfield with about 300 planes in first strike. There are between 102 and 120 Kates in the second strike all carring torpedos. The Japanesse only had 40 torps fitted to run in the shallow water at Pearl. I shudder to think what the might have done with 60 to 80 more torpedos. Then the third strike comes in with at least another 45 Kates carring gues what! Two games with all 8 battleships sunk, two with 7 sunk, 7 with 6 sunk, 1 with 5 sunk. This has been a problem in the past I know. Idon't remember starting a game with less than 4 battleships sunk at Pearl. But I'd hoped.... Anyway, the graphics are really great congratulations and thanks to all those who have done a fantastic job on this game.

[Major Tom]

I will lower the Guadalcanal airbase to 3 for the Solomans campaign. I wanted to have a base large enough to warrant invading that Island over that of, say, New Georgia. Having it at level 3 will keep the Betty's out of there but still allow USMC SBD's! I was not aware that in a non-historical first turn the IJNAF goes psycho in reinforcing the island!


The Gearing class, well, I used an old Warships of the World (published around 1979) and it stated that they had 3" guns in place of 40mm. I will take another look at this, as it seemed odd to me when I read it, but, the source is very trustworthy on other ships (as I could coroborate their stats with other sources). I will give them an appropriate number of 40mm Guns.


Regarding the Fletcher, there were many different variants of the Fletcher's AA armament, I just took what appeared to be the average. Unfortunately PacWar doesn't like to upgrade USN DD AA weaponry, so, what we put in for AA will remain that way from start to finish. Fletcher class DD's get into service in late 1942, and having them stocked full of AA guns will give the USN too much AA power too soon. I was trying for a compromise, I will slightly increase the number of guns to make up for the shortfall in the later scenarios.


In regards to the Australian Buffalo squadrons. I found a few sites dealing with the Australain airforce (one about Dutch Buffalo's used by the RAAF) and it has the #85 Squadron and the #87 Squadron both equipped with the Buffalo I to start the war off in.
http://www.iol.net.au/~conway/ww2/squadrons.html

In another site (that I don't have off hand!) states that the majority of RAAF Buffalo's were stationed at Perth. This is all that I am really going on, plus, Perth should have some sort of air defence.


I am working on a few ways in getting rid of the LCU/Transport bug. It occurs because I used many of the originally blank LCU spaces to create new units. I left only around 4-8 spaces free for each side, as I thought they were only used when you divide a sub unit. I didn't realize that when a TF has more than one group of transports carrying one unit (ie 20x AP and 12x AP Carrying one unit vs. 32x AP Carrying one unit) that it divides the unit up. If there are no spaces left for the forced division (due to the rest being taken up by other divided or transported units) the troops divided are lost at sea. I am going to fix this by removing some uneeded Allied and Japanese units.


Regarding Pearl Harbor. Possibly if the census is that the IJNAF is too strong that I will lower the preparation level of the Combined fleet from 200 to 150. This will result in less planes taking part in the strikes, and less USN ships being sunk as a result.


For some reason if the Japanese is on the AI it cheats and gets the 41st, 51st and 20th Divisions transferred over from the CEA WAY too early (like on turn 1!). This happened to me in the old unmodified PacWar many times as well. Historically they should only appear in time to help defend Northern New Guinea and get destroyed there (late 1942?). I might be able to correct this.


Thanks for all your replies!

Jeremy,

PS. I will hopefully send out replacement OBC files after we see if there are any more bugs.

[RevRick]

Major Tom c/o Ground Control:

Regarding Guadalcanal: I would suggest dropping it back even to a level two airbase. Several grunts I know (and I hope they aren't reading this) - including my uncle - have said that it wasn't much more than a bulldozed wide spot in the palms when they got there, and never got a whole lot better until the engineers got a time to work on it when they weren't dodging 14" and 8" shells and various and sundry other projectiles.

Same uncle, by the way, who flew both F4F's and F4U's in South Pac said that the Wildcat was not the pig some folks believe it to be. It wouldn't dice it up with a Zero (climb rate next to a brick), but it could roll and dive with the best of them (see brick analogy) and was stable as a brick on a rear approach deflection shot. I suspect it also shared a brick's glide characteristic. Might check on the durability of that bird, as well.

Regarding Gearing Class: The 3"/50 cal. dual was intended to replace the 40mm, but never entered service during WWII because 40's were too light to destroy kamikazes. It wound up on some cruisers (generally Baltimores and successors)and some Gearing/Sumner/even Fletcher class from about '46 on (although slowly with post war budget cuts.) Some late Fletcher's wound up with 10 40mm and 12 20mm at the expense of forward quintuple torpedo tube launcher (redundant at that time.) Think Halsey would have liked some of those around the Canal - Very near 1/2 of a light cruiser in AA.

God bless, and Bravo Zulu!!!
Rev. Rick.

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tincanman

[Svar]

Major Tom,

According to Jane's Fighting Ships of World War II 1946/47 (the first wholly uncensored issue following the war) reprinted in 1989 with amendments and late additions to the original volumn incorporated, the orginal Fletcher's from the 1940-41 building program had 6-40 mm. Bofors and 10-20 mm. Oerlikons. The Improved Fletcher's from the 1942 building program mounted 10-40 mm. AA and 8-20 mm. AA. The Sumner and Gearing class both mounted 12-40 mm. AA and 11-20 mm. AA. BTW the Sumner was an improved Fletcher while the Gearing was an improved Sumner and didn't enter the war until about a year after the Sumner's introduction.

It appears your reference source is The Encyclopedia of the World's Warships by Hugh Lyon published in 1978, it mentions that the Gearing had 3in (76mm) guns replace a number of 40mm guns but that was probably after tne war. The table also shows 4-6 3in (76mm) guns as well as 4-16 40mm guns. If this was the reference for the armament for the Fletcher's as well the table mentions that the later armament was 6 x 40mm and 11 x 20mm or 10 x 40mm and 7 x 20mm which pretty much aggrees with my first reference (Jane's).

[This message has been edited by Svar (edited September 27, 2000).]

[Major Tom]

Here's what I have so far (am going to bed, as I have classes tomorrow!)...

I have fixed the Preparation points for the Combined fleet so that the forces in Pearl Harbor don't get quite as thrashed.

I have fixed the Fletcher and Gearing DD's AA armament to match Svar's numbers.

I have also done a bit of tinkering dealing with Guadalcanal (now at 2 for OBSOL).

I am also working on fixing the disappearing LCU bug. There are a few possible solutions.

Jeremy,

[This message has been edited by Major Tom (edited September 27, 2000).]

[Cmdrcain]

Originally posted by Major Tom:
I'll check out your Marianas US Sub-Bug.

The Fix can simply be to either Put Base under chinese control, or people will need rebase the subs, subs can be based at a base thats been taken over, I think need then manually rebase them so they will resupplie.

Also, there is a bug noticed about the Japaneese LCU's losing squads, artillery and tanks, as well as their entire complement when you try to transport them on ships. The reason for this is because the Japanese and Allied LCU base has been greatly expanded from the original, leaving less free spaces in which to divide units. I was unaware that when you placed a LCU on more than one AP in a task force to transport it, it actually divides up the unit for the LCU's to free up some more open spaces (the other scenarios don't have to worry about this much, as units that were killed off earlier leave these free spaces).


Perhaps , since apparently there more AP units, one can just add ap's at port and be sure have 100+ pct cap and so transport
the units all on one AP ship unit.

Ie: if 9Ap's comes to 76pct, don't load unless can up the AP numbers... Of course the computer may be having fits..

Perhaps now we know why Gary left a bunch of blank Lcu slots ;--)

Jeremy,

[Cmdrcain]

Originally posted by sulup:
Perhaps we could even remove some of the Kwangtung LCU's in Manchuria as well? These guys don't do nothing but waste precious LCU space. May as well take the most redundant ones out.

Except they represent the actual historical IJA presence, removal of them would alter the historical presence, allowing you to be un-historical by allowing other areas be too strong if intent is to keep some suggested units for removal.

The Engineer units could be in a few instances combined into one Eng Division I would think too, where theres like 2-3 small Engineer Units, combine into one, a player/CPU can STILL sub divide those as wishs..

[Cmdrcain]

Originally posted by Major Tom:


Regarding Pearl Harbor. Possibly if the census is that the IJNAF is too strong that I will lower the preparation level of the Combined fleet from 200 to 150. This will result in less planes taking part in the strikes, and less USN ships being sunk as a result.

Thanks for all your replies!
Jeremy,

bugs.

Lowering prep may not do the trick, historical turn japanese have surprise,
that and other factors also result in how many planes go in.

I'd suggest more you cut the number of Kates down, one try might be not Remove them, but "damage" a number of kates so not all can fly
in to port.

Torps sink Bb's, alot of Bomb hits would just damage em up, putting them out of action.

The Big problem with Pacwar is the BB's at Pearl "sunk" could be retrieved, unless like occured with The well known Bb, it took a Magazine hit..

So "sunk" in Pearl actually= just damaged
in a real sense even if they rolled over, sunk down.. water wasnt too deep not to retrieve them, If grigsby had the room to code probably could have coded in that ships Sunk in certain Ports reappeared after x turns to represent the fact the ports waters are shallow.

And so Salvageable.

[Cmdrcain]

Originally posted by Major Tom:


For some reason if the Japanese is on the AI it cheats and gets the 41st, 51st and 20th Divisions transferred over from the CEA WAY too early (like on turn 1!). This happened to me in the old unmodified PacWar many times as well. Historically they should only appear in time to help defend Northern New Guinea and get destroyed there (late 1942?). I might be able to correct this.
Thanks for all your replies!
Jeremy,
bugs.

Might I suggest one way to fix might be to
remove the cheating units from active to
arriving as Replacements a bit before they would been available?

Tried that?

[Don Bowen]

Thanks for the RAAF reference. Here is a very detailed (and very slow loading) Australian Veterans Site that has details for virtually all units active during World War II. Warning - very, very slow loading. Also has quite a few typos and errors - including some for No.87 Squadron.
http://www.dva.gov.au/commem/commac/dandd/wwii.htm
And, what I think is the best WWII order of battle site on the web: http://www.freeport-tech.com/WWII/index.htm

In general, RAAF squadrons at the beginning of World War II were numbers 1-25, with a few special units forming in the lower 30's (including those forming with ex-civilian large flying boats). Three digit numbered squadrons were in the RAF numbering scheme, officially RAAF squadrons but generally under RAF control. These included No.453 Squadron in Singapore and a number of bomber and fighter squadrons the gave excellent service in Europe. The same is true for No.488 Squadron RNZAF.

Also, the 3/50 AA gun was developed in 1945 as an emergency anti-Kamikaze measure, but was not available until 1947. They were deployed at a general rate of one 3/50 twin for each 40mm quad and one 3/50 single for each 40mm twin. Removal of other equipment, such as torpedo tubes, was frequently done when AA was upgraded - primarily to reduce topweight. The USN was loath to give up it's torpedos after the battle off Samar.

Also, the heavy overloading of the Fletcher/Sumner/Gearing classes resulted in very significant operational speed reductions. The U.S.S. Sarsfield (DD837 - a Gearing) had a top speed of 33.2 knots as built (compared to 36.8 designed). This equated to about 31.6 knots at full load. And it was generally calculated that destroyers on fleet duty would lose a full knot of speed due to hull fouling and minor problems with machinery. This made the calculated fleet speed of the late-war destroyer force about 30.6 knots.

Don

P.S. Sorry to be so pedantic, but this has been my hobby for over 40 years.

[This message has been edited by Don Bowen (edited September 27, 2000).]

[gdpsnake]

I only lost 4 BB's in my historic first turn and one of those was a one-hit wonder. (even gameplay setting). I did have several other ships attacked and even sunk which rarely happened in the old Pacwar. Perhaps that is why my BB count was lower than other postings.
I thought the Jap ground battles were way too good! Single divisions were taking out everybody despite my leadership, troop count, or readiness. Malaya, Rangoon, Mandalay, Phillipines fell like rain! Even Bataan fell to a single division despite high entrenchments and fair readiness. It used to hold out a little more realistically in the old Pacwar as did Singapoor. Is there too much readiness boost for the early Japanese? They seem to attack every turn. None of these places made it into mid Jan 42 except Bataan which fell in late Jan 42.
I also felt the Midway attack in '41 and Johnston in Jan '42. That was exciting!
All in all a great update (see bug I posted elsewhere-sorry) and much enjoyed! I haven't had any of the other problems in the postings but I'll let you know.
If space is needed I would also recommend eliminating all the units facing Russia that don't enter as reinforcements. Whats the point if they never do anything anyway.
Finally, my sub warfare is pretty useless. Without enough subs to put a ring of boats around Japan, the computer just runs the convoys around them. I'm unable to manage any interdiction of Jap merchants. In the new Pacific game I hope the process is strategic in nature and subs on the map represent the anti-shipping effort.