Guadalcanal Scenario

[composer99]

Just read up the scenario victory conditions, and I would say, bo, that you're on the right track getting the Japanese light carrier force to try to intercept the Commonwealth fleet. (You probably don't need any further explanation, but I will explain it for others to see.)

=====
In the Guadalcanal scenario, each side earns victory points for destroying enemy "fleet" carrier (CV) units. However, light carrier (CVL) units do not give up victory points when sunk.

As such, bo has three good reasons to prevent the Commonwealth from getting to the Coral Sea:

First, assuming the USA will also be sending its carrier force to the Coral Sea, the presence of both Allies' fleets there, especially if they get into the same sea box (so the Japanese can't fight them separately and destroy them in detail), will most likely give them an edge, both in a carrier air battle and in a surface engagement.

That being the case, if a battle happens - and especially if the Allies surprise the Japanese - the results could go a long way to clinching the game for the Allies. Not the sort of thing you want to have happen in the very first turn.

So keeping the CW fleet out means the Coral Sea fight is probably closer to an even battle - indeed, the Japanese will likely have an edge with more land-based air in the area to commit.

Second, if the Japanese light carrier force gets the drop on the CW force, it could be the Japanese who instead earn some early CV-sinking victory points.

Third, early carrier losses would cripple the Japanese (as they did in the real war). If memory serves, this scenario has a fixed reinforcement schedule, and I doubt the Japanese come out ahead on the carrier front as far as reinforcements go.

[Numdydar]

Good work Bo. Please continue.

Also any thoughts on how it feels to play both sides? I assume it makes things harder as you have to track what both side are doing.

[bo]

ORIGINAL: composer99

Just read up the scenario victory conditions, and I would say, bo, that you're on the right track getting the Japanese light carrier force to try to intercept the Commonwealth fleet. (You probably don't need any further explanation, but I will explain it for others to see.)

=====
In the Guadalcanal scenario, each side earns victory points for destroying enemy "fleet" carrier (CV) units. However, light carrier (CVL) units do not give up victory points when sunk.

As such, bo has three good reasons to prevent the Commonwealth from getting to the Coral Sea:

First, assuming the USA will also be sending its carrier force to the Coral Sea, the presence of both Allies' fleets there, especially if they get into the same sea box (so the Japanese can't fight them separately and destroy them in detail), will most likely give them an edge, both in a carrier air battle and in a surface engagement.

That being the case, if a battle happens - and especially if the Allies surprise the Japanese - the results could go a long way to clinching the game for the Allies. Not the sort of thing you want to have happen in the very first turn.

So keeping the CW fleet out means the Coral Sea fight is probably closer to an even battle - indeed, the Japanese will likely have an edge with more land-based air in the area to commit.

Second, if the Japanese light carrier force gets the drop on the CW force, it could be the Japanese who instead earn some early CV-sinking victory points.

Third, early carrier losses would cripple the Japanese (as they did in the real war). If memory serves, this scenario has a fixed reinforcement schedule, and I doubt the Japanese come out ahead on the carrier front as far as reinforcements go.

Your funny Composer, no really you just made me a brillant admiral that I am not. [&:]

Actually I was doing the Bay of Bengal battle to show a naval air attack against surface ships and the Coral sea battle to show an all out carrier war. But your tactic is a very good one that I will use when the time comes and the best part, it was your idea, I will use it in Guadalcanal in the future, thank you sir. [;)]

Bo

[bo]

At ease gentlemen light them up if you have them. [;)]

This morning I will attempt to do a well done [hopefully] an AAR on carrier naval battles.

But first some observations about this game, I became aware back in 2006 of a board game which I never heard of being transferred to a computer. I lost track of it for awhile because I was a dedicated COD2 player, I came back into the forums around 2009, I was so vocal about the time delay you would have thought that crussdaddy and me were related, god forbid [:D]

I was so outspoken that I was called a troller
but I was like many people here just plain frustrated. The reasonable posters were mainly people who had and played the ADG WIF board game.

Well the days of the cat jumping on the table and knocking all the pieces around and the wife complaining about not being able to use the dining room table because of some stupid war game, the rules that were ruled incorrectly, the driving home of the player from drinking too much beer, the hanging of maps on the wall and using magnets, the moving away to other areas and can no longer play with friends, those days are almost over [&o]

I would like to recognize unsung heros here who have helped Steve put this masterpiece together, the beta testers. Orm, Lomyrin, Centuur, michaelbaldur, cad908, warspite1, Jimm, Paulderynck, greyshaft, Froomp, people who have left Extraneous, abj9562, Red Prince, if I missed anyone I apoligize to you, yes and even crussdaddy in a round about way he prodded us into bigger and better things [:D] everyone deeply appreciated.

Steve hmmmm, where do I go with this, he has been called just a dedicated fanboy doing a computer game and a few other names also. I call him a dedicated WIF board game player who happens to be an excellent programmer. Oh he's taken to long, whats the problem why so long. That's all been said about him.

I thought about this last night and just some observastions from my perspective.

How long did it take Gary Grigsby to do "War in the East" who knows he never told anyone that I know. It could have been 6 months or a year or just maybe 7 years. He is now doing War in the west which just might be a copy of War in the East with a different map.

Steve has been open and honest since day one, he put his heart on his sleeve rode through all the criticism, displayed his mistakes for all the posters to see and hid nothing.
I have never seen a game brought out with so much conversation on the forums like this
one. If Gary Grigsby [not picking on him] did not like a certain way the program was going like calcualtions were not just right I am sure he dropped them and went in another direction, who knows.

Steve does not have that luxury because every WIF board gamer knows the rules, knows what the map looks like and how the game should look. The game is exact to the board game in every way except it is on a computer, and the best thing about that is if your losing just turn the computer off [;)]

My agenda for the coming week.

1- Do a naval battle AAR on Guadalcanal scenario.
2- Go through the interface to show you how complete this game is, if for some strange reason you do not like this game, you just might become the most informed player of WW2 about the way things were at that time.
3- Show charts and help items to allow you to navigate through this very complex game.

Let get cracking.

Bo

[bo]

This is the opening phase of the battle in the Bay Of Bengal.

The Japanese have just move their light air craft carriers into a sea box. Their attack sea to air value is only a 6 distributed among three air squadrons the other 2 have no air to sea attack factors, [upper right corner of the nato image] In another situation [the fighters] they would be used for escort duty if these bombers were going to attack a port or against other carrier fighter planes.

Just a comment here I will allow the program to play the battle out just as if it were on your computer at home with no interference by me, the only thing that I will do different is, I will force the interception, if I did not do this there would likely be no AAR. I will try to explain that.

When you have the game on your home computer and the CW naval assests are coming out of Calcutta, you the Japanese have only a 30% chance of finding them in good weather, when there is rain or a storm those odds drop. The Bay of Bengal in size is 838,000 sq. miles not easy to find a few ships that maybe cover 2 miles if their in a row.

Several things can happen after the program asks me "do you want to intercept the moving naval units" Decision time.

1-If the opposing naval unit is much stronger than I am I just might decline, if I do that then the CW naval units can leave the Bay of Bengal and proceed to whatever sea areas their range will allow them or stay in the Bay of Bengal if they so desire without any interference by the Japanese carriers.

2-If the Japanese player says intercept them then the program calculates the search for you, if you find them [and of course I will [;)]] then the program goes into battle mode.

Bo

[bo]

messed up

[bo]

This the first screen of the battle sequence. What you are seeing are the two naval combatants side by side, because the japanese surprised the CW 3 battleships and 3 cruisers the Japanese gets suprise points to be spent in any way you want.

Option 1 - spend 4 points to avoid combat [No I want to fight]
Option 2- spend 4 points to choose naval combat. [Why? I have aircraft carriers I prefer a naval air battle, if the CW fleet found me at the same time they would prefer a sea battle. Decision, Decision, Decisions boy what a humdrum game [;)]
Option 3 - move to the next part of the program by just clicking ok which I will do, you may do it another way which is fine. You can only choose the option on this screen that is lit options 1 or 2.

Bo

[bo]

Oh no another decision when oh when will this end [;)]

Interesting screen. I have to decide now do I want these units to fly as bombers or as fighters. 1st image a B5N1 aircraft with an air to sea attack factor of 3 [upper right corner] I have 2 fighters already and really have no use for them so I will click on the first icon and click bomber and the yellow circle with the 3 in it will turn green indicating that it is now a bomber, I will also do the same for the next 2 icons. Then I click done.

Remember only units with an air to sea factor can be bombers.

Bo

[bo]

Wow another decision am I scaring you oh well go play Panzer corp.

The Japanese player on this screen still has 8 suprise points left, one column is lit so that is your only choice or is it?

Decision time again do I reduce the CW's Fleet combined Anti- aircraft fire with each 2 points I could spend and save my points for Naval combat [results of dropping bombs or torpedos on the ships] Hmmm! AA fire can be deadly, possible results 1- plane destroyed[:@] 2 Lower bomb damage [ you know trying to dodge AA fire not as accurate because you are trying to avoid getting hit] or the AA missed you completly. [rare]

I decided to use 4 points to reduce AA fire and the other 4 points to add to my attack value.

Bo

[bo]

This is the damage screen.

There are 3 lines to consider.

line 1 axis choice- possible destroyed outcome-Japanese picks the battleship Resolution and gets a favorable outcome and the battleship is sunk.

line 2-allied choice[CW] he picks what ship you attack next. He decides on a lesser ship the Cl Gambia which is damaged.

line-3 axis choice [JP] he chooses Revenge which is damaged.

First round of combat is over.

Bo

[bo]

In the screen before this one which I failed to save [:@] it asked if both axis and allies wanted to continue the battle. I answerd yes for the sake of the AAR. If on the other hand if either had said no then the battle would have ended both sides aborting and have to return to their respective bases. But being bloodthirsty I said yes and the battle continued and the picture below was the result of the second part of the battle.

The Revenge was damaged in the first round of combat but could not durvive the second round[sunk]

The Gambia also damaged in round 1 has now been destroyed [sunk]

2 more cruisers the Canberra and the Frobisher have been aborted and if there had been a round 3 these 2 ships would not be in the equation they would have fled and the remaing ship would have been attacked. Only the BB Renown is left without damage and being a fair minded player I let her escape. Actually I forgot about her [:@] Oh well!

Destroyed 3

BB Revenge
BB Resolution
Cl Gambia

Aborted 2

Cl Canberra
Cl Frobisher

Escaped

BB Renown

Final: if I had the carriers in the Coral sea instead of these small carriers in the Bay of Bengal no one would have escaped.

I will attempt to do the Battle in the Coral sea soon, it will include air to air combat first and you will see how that plays out. It seems maybe like this took a long time for the battle but you will be suprised at how quickly it plays out except for the constant decison making. [best part of the game]

Bo

[Neilster]

Am I wrong or is there an A5M1 fighter unit that has no other abilities and an air-to-air factor of zero? Surely they weren't that bad and what use is it then? Second fighter in an air-to-air combat (from my vague memory of the rules)?

Cheers, Neilster

[bo]

ORIGINAL: Neilster

Am I wrong or is there an A5M1 fighter unit that has no other abilities and an air-to-air factor of zero? Surely they weren't that bad and what use is it then? Second fighter in an air-to-air combat (from my vague memory of the rules)?

Cheers, Neilster

Hi Neilster hopefully better people than me can answer that question.

Cheers

Bo

[Centuur]

ORIGINAL: bo

ORIGINAL: Neilster

Am I wrong or is there an A5M1 fighter unit that has no other abilities and an air-to-air factor of zero? Surely they weren't that bad and what use is it then? Second fighter in an air-to-air combat (from my vague memory of the rules)?

Cheers, Neilster

Hi Neilster hopefully better people than me can answer that question.

Cheers

Bo

Of course, Bo. Air-to-air factors of fighters (FTR) or in this case Carrier planes (CVP) acting as fighters start at 0 and goes up. There are indeed CVP which can only act as a FTR and have an air-to-air rating of 0.
The air-to-air table is based on the difference of the front FTR's air-to-air factor of both sides (where additional FTR's add an additional point as bonus). So if the CW has an air-to-air CVP with a 1 (and he also has got some low numbered CVP FTR's at start), and the Japanese only one with a 0, the results for the CW are rolled on the +1 column and the results of the Japanese on the -1 column, if both sides have only one FTR in the battle. Of course, the -1 column is worse than the +1 column...

It isn't the air-to-air value of the planes that are important, it is the difference between yours and the enemies air-to-air factor that gives you an advantage or disadvantage...

[bo]

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

Good work Bo. Please continue.

Also any thoughts on how it feels to play both sides? I assume it makes things harder as you have to track what both side are doing.

Hi Numdydar

Sorry I missed this post, will try to answer your question. I find it easy to do and I am no grognard, with the information Steve has put into this game, it is amazing you can keep track of anything anywheres. I will begin a post on the interface and maybe that will help all of us. This is a game that can be played solo though if someone had said that to me 2 years ago I would have thought they needed a shrink.

Bo

[bo]

Before I do the the rest of the Guadalcanal AAR [Coral sea battle] I wanted to introduce some charts that you might find interesting. This is the optional rules screen.

You may use as many or as few as you desire, many will not change the course of the game much, but a few will drastically change the game IMO.

This is my chart for the rules that I use. When you get the game on your computer most likely it will have a fast start with novice rules, now I am not sure of that, that is up to the powers that be, it is beyond my pay grade.

I will comment on rules that to me are game changers, just my opinion.

If I do not get these perfect or to your liking please correct me. There is more to the rules then what I am showing.

1-Limited overseas supply-optional--this rule changes the way supply is handled for supplying troops over water [oceans,seas] without this rule Japanese troops on Tarawa or other islands are supplied automatically. With the rule in effect you need convoys chained together from sea area to sea area, I personally find the supply routine the most difficult for me to cope with, but thats just me.

2-Scs Transport rule-When in effect it handles how troops invade enemy shores. With this rule any infantry unit, divison, corp, army can invade an allowable hex. Also CL's can trasport Marine units and infantry divisions, very helpful for the Japanese in the Pacific theater.

3-Amphibious rule---This rule IMO changes the game. When this rule is in effect only marine units and infantry divisions can be used for invasions from transports. All large infantry units, Corps, Armies must invade from an Amphibious craft. This is just general information, a little more complicated than that.

4- Bottomed ships-- interesting rule. This rule makes port attacks a little more hazardous. If carrier planes attack a port, Pearl harbor, Calcutta, etc or any attack by any nation on any Port in the game, they have to deal with anti-aircraft fire first with maybe little rewards. If they bomb ships at sea and do great damage the ship might be destroyed [sunk] but possibly the same destruction in a harbor could lead to destroyed or a bottomed ship, the ships keel sits on the bottom and it can be salvaged in time.

5- Carrier planes [favorite rule] Without this rule carriers are the planes [implied attack power] I believe most new players and the WIFer's will use the carrier plane rule, your plane units are actual units with squadron names etc. Maxium 2 units on one carrier as long as they do not go over the carriers storage capacity.

6- Pilots - You need to train pilots to man the planes, you might have 3 planes available but one trained pilot so you have to careful as to what plane you assign him to, a carrier plane, land bomber or land fighter plane, what are your military needs at that time.

7-Oil rule- better people than me can explain the oil rule, I understand it but I might explain it wrong to new people.

If I make some mistakes hear I apoligize as I am pretty new at this game, I am just trying to give people here other than beta testers a taste of what's coming.

Bo

[bo]

ORIGINAL: bo

sorry another screw up one day I will get this transferring pictures down right. doubt it.

Bo

[bo]

This screen is probably the most important decison screen in the game. In many computer war games there are no restrictions as to how many moves you can make[units] [air] [naval] which could be very unrealistic.

In WW2 the US marines did not attack Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Kwajaline, Rabaul, Truk at the same time they had to do it in increments, they did not have enough landing boats to do all that at once and many other problematic things would impede such moves.

This screen keeps that in check.

Selections-Naval-Air-Land-Combined-Pass.

I will just do one the rest are self explanatory.

Naval selection

Air Missions -- allowed 2 air missions

Naval moves--unlimited --you can move every naval unit you have as long as it has moves coming [not disorganized etc.]

Rail moves--none

Land Moves--none

Land attacks --none

During one turn in MWIF [2 months] you may have as high as 6 of these impulses per side depending on the time of the year. Planning is essential to win. I am no Nimitz, I found that out.

One impulse you might do an all naval with 3 or 4 troop ships carrying marines for an invasion. Then on the next impulse use the land move selection which allows you to land all the marines into different areas and do unlimited ground attacks.

Personally I find this system amazing. If I have made mistakes please correct me and if I cannot answer a question because of lack of knowledge I will get one of our other beta testers to answer your question, I hope I am being helpfull.

Bo

[JimMerson]

BRAVO!!!! [&o]

I love this AAR so far and can not wait for the Coral Sea battle.

Keep them coming!

Jim

[bo]

Playing with novice rules is like driving a lechtractor [:@]

Bo