AE Grand Campaign - May 1942 start

[Mont]

Made some changes, corrected some things, would like to show everyone, but I don"t know how or if I'm allowed?

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

PJH and I have just started a game of this. I am Japan.

Initial thoughts:-

+ LCU placements are very good generally
+ Airgroup placements are fine
- Having the entire merchant marine at Osaka is a pain in the arse

Another negative is the lack of rear-area base development - everything is at Dec 7 1941 levels. This is not a biggie though.

One specific problem with 3 prominent fighter airgroups (64th Sentai, 77th Sentai, Tainan) which are all missing "Dets". Not being able to merge into the parent unit causes a few issues with pilot management.

Overall it's great though and I will probably do an AAR once things get going a bit.

Hi....been offline for while.

The decision to mostly group merchants at their auto convoy points (or in the case of Oz....at Sydney for their merchant fleet) was based on experiences from the stock 42/43/44 scenarios that largely left merchants both scattered all over the map and in their 1941 locations. It made the "turn 1" experience a real administrative nightmare so i figure this would ease player burden at the sacrifice of some realism (as it allows a quick redeployment of assets.....but players do that anyway.....this just eliminates alot of the foot work) I did spread some ships out to major ports like Singapore same as i did for the respective navies.......but ultimately....players will do what they do and assign assets as they see fit, usually in concentrated form

I did go through and build up key bases to a more 1942 level but only a few because between 1941 and mid 42, not alot occured there yet in the US case and in the case of Japan....their abilities on expanding facilities was somewhat limited, which is what made capturing ready made bases so important. Key SRA Japanse bases were expanded somewhat to allow full 2E ops. while some key US garrison bases were also increased. (as were the Hawaiian island bases besides Oahu. I may have missed one or two of course.

The decision to leave the primary sentais in Burma concentrated is based on several factors:

1) in real life, re-equipment of these units here (and elsewhere) required withdraw of the unit to Japan or close proximity. By mid 42 only the 64th Sentai was left in Burma....the others all withdrawn to re-up with Ki-43.

2) Due to the nature of the air combat model......"small detachments" are easy meat if attacked by concentrated fighter sweeps. Having alot of small detachments will do little but make them targets....esp light armed japanese planes.

3) Whilst the Japanese used detachments extensively in Burma and bounced around many fields to keep the Allies from hitting them on the ground......major strikes tended to be in sizes larger than detachments. On average 20-30 ....though sometimes made up of elements of 2-4 sentais.

I will admit that i'm biased against small detachments as i feel that squadron/group sized air units are enough of a management chore for players in an operational level game of this scale. Thats why Grigsby used the Group as the basic element in the first place.

thx for the feedback.


hope players are enjoying the scenario.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Mont

Hope Im not polluting this thread with gobs of errata, just some feed back. If there is a version 2 these are some things I think should be included, perhaps.
Hornet moved to Pearl, air group upgraded.
Saratoga arrival at Pearl 6/6/42 with upgraded air group including Avengers.
Arriving at Pearl: West virginia 7/44, California 5/44, Nevada 12/42, Pennsylvannia 8/42, CA Raleigh 7/42, CA Helena 6/42, DD Cassin 2/44, DD Downes 11/43, reflect battle damage from Japanese attack and times they rejoined fleet.
Increased air capacity, and air groups of Japanese carriers as per OB for Midway.
Americal Div 132,164,182 Rgts, 70 coastal artillery Rgt, 67 FS, at noumea.
I have made RAAF command unristricted so they can move into areas of SW Pacific control.
VF sqn's on Enterprise, Hornet, Saratoga, with F4F-4, perhaps.
VP 71,72, at Noumea.
Made some other minor alterations, like increasing aviation support at Moresby, Noumea, Midway, supply at Truk, Rabaul, and many other outlying locations on both sides. Wau still in allied hands defended by coy of Kanga force.
AO Neosho, Tippecanoe, AV Tangier, at Noumea.
Made some other changes like increasing experiance level of most front line allied Sqn, ( I think they are better than represented), and some moves here and there.
I think if your going to play allies against the AI, this is the start point to begin at, starting at 7/12/41 previously I was able to inflict some major losses to the Japanese especially their CA force. By May 42 the Japanese have most of the area they wanted, except for some instances where they stuck there necks out ie Midway, they where in a general defensive stance, the allies must hold and counter attack to win. May 42 gives the Japanese AI by default the area they gained in history.

feedback is always welcome, but please note that per thread starting post, this scenario is not meant to be a 100% accurate depiction of every unit's placement during May of 1942 save for a few key situations (such as Coral Sea....invasion of PM and the Burma sit. ) So i caution players about wasting too much time sending "errata" about this ship or that unit being at Nomeau or anyplace else. The idea here is that the first thing players do is redistribute....redeploy and go their own way. The major opponents are there for a Coral Sea matchup but i'm betting that most Japanese players will decline to face an equal # of USN carriers and risk losing their numerical edge in carriers so in most cases.....i doubt there will ever be a "historical" Coral sea!


Major boo boos like ships that were sunk being present are welcome......the first pass for ver one was based on the latest version of AE grand campaign (the editor has entries for "sunk" to aid modders)

Version 2 will primarily focus on adding an AI and correcting any blatent errors and useability improvements.

[Mont]

Hi Nikademus, sorry if I'm alittle over the top with my errata post, just wanted things a little closer to historical, made my own mods to the start, and have modded four AI files based on GC campaign.
At first it takes alittle time to set up playing allies but once that is done the game moves along quite quickly and is fun to play, But still looking forward to Andy macs AI work. Hoping to see version 2 soon.
Thanks again for your work it is appreciated.

[sfbaytf]

Did AM's AI get done for this?

I'd like to give it a spin.

[Nikademus]

Andy's been swamped by work. I'm afraid the AI is still a work in progress.

[Andy Mac]

Sorry guys day job and vacation mania its (high) on my list to get finished I promise.

[Mozo]

Andy,

Thanks for this labor of love - I've been waiting for this and the summer is perfect timing (I'm a teacher so I'll be free in a couple of weeks).

Quick Q - you'll be making scripts for the Allies too? I really want to play as Japan with this scenario.

Again, thanks so much for putting your personal time into this for all of us.

Regards,

Mozo

[Andy Mac]

Yes allies as well but in many ways its a lot of work

Its easier because you dont need to deal witht he Japanese expansion but its still a massive amount of scripts to be re written.

Will take a fair bit of time spent some more on it this weeken and its going to take a fair amount of time to adjust the scripts

[Mozo]

Well I appreciate the effort - I'm looking forward to finally playing Japan when you are done. I'm off during the summer so hopefully I'll get a chance to try it then.

Regards,

Mozo

[Andy Mac]

Made some progress over the weekend will try to make more over the coming weeks in some ways its eaier in others harder but I will get there

[Nikademus]

cool.

I should probably do a revision scrub as well now that i have some more time.

[:)]


EDIT: I'll try to keep any to a minimum so as not to mess up the scripts and will send you a change log.

[Andy Mac]

The biggest issue I am finding is on the Japanese side as usual and its the usual I set up the AI to duplicate a number of eng bns on key bases because players were sinking so many of them in transit and some of the bases were critical for air transits.

What it means is some of them are in the wrong location which is a pain in the neck because for the 1st month the AI is tying up all its shipping redeploying LCU's from SOPAC to Burma and vice versa

Finding the worst of those is my biggest challenge

[Nikademus]

yikes.

[X(]

[Andy Mac]

its just time running an AIvAI game for 4 months to work out which ones are going weird takes a night or two each time

[Kitakami]

Greetings,

I downloaded the scenario, and started looking at Japanese ships. As I checked capital ship locations, BB Haruna and CS Chitose were not to be found anywhere. I checked the database and, sure enough, there they are, but when I load the scenario, I can't find them. I wonder if it is my installation or if it is some type of bug in the scenario files?

Cheers!

[Nikademus]

thx....i will take a look

[Kitakami]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus
thx....i will take a look

This is what I have found so far:

- CS Chitose & CS Mizuho are assigned to TASK FORCE / 722-Singapore. Changing it to BASE fixes the problem.
- BB Haruna & CA Takao are assigned to BASE / 217-<inexistent>. Changing it to BASE / 228-Hiroshima/Kure fixes the problem.
- DD Ikazuchi (219) is assigned to TASK FORCE / 8000 - TFMIN, but the TF does not appear in the TF listing, and the ship does not appear in the ship listing.
- DD Inazuma (220) is assigned to TASK FORCE / 8008 - , but the TF does not appear in the TF listing, and the ship does not appear in the ship listing.
- SC Ch-23 (875) is assigned to TASK FORCE / 8123 - , but the TF does not appear in the TF listing, and the ship does not appear in the ship listing.

Will go through the Allied ships to check if there are other obvious things as soon as I have the time.

Cheers!

[Kitakami]

The only other ship that I see in such a situation is 3234-Tromp... but I do not know if you have it active or not. I can't find more.

[jackyo123]

is there a download link/location for version 2 with the ai scripts yet? thought i read that andy M had the first set of Japanese scripts ready. am willing to play it out.