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I still think that the One Week/Turns of Pacific War are better at simulating the tempo of operations in the PTO than the One Day/Turn of War in the Pacific: AE.

In the real world after you put together a plan you have to search for the needed resources, send appropriate orders to from Fleet Admirals down to platoon leaders, maybe have a disagreement or two with your staff... In WitP: AE all of this happens in a sort of "outside time", or "limbo between days". Factually, in AE you put together your plan and right the day after the ships sail.

I find a bit surreal, when I read the WitP: AE forums, to see debates about "openings" (like in chess [X(]). Check a very interesting book called "Pacific Crucible", by Ian W. Toll. It is about the US Navy in the first six months of war, very well researched, and it shows how the Navy started to have a real clue about the situation, about what was happening in the Pacific, and how to use this new "Aircraft Carriers branch" around the Marshall Islands raids - not on day one like it happens in AE.

ORIGINAL: CaptBeefheart

I may need to fire that up. I used to play that game quite a bit, along with War in Russia.

Cheers,
CB

Absolutely had a blast with both of those as well. My main memory from Pacwar was getting P-61 black widows that could not only clear the skies, but carried 500lb bombs and would clear the seas as well.

ORIGINAL: Podolano

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: fcooke

Crikey - even though I am retired I haven't managed to launch an AE game recently. Pacwar got me into this in the first place. I have been tidying up stuff recently and bumped into my original Harpoon game. Of course it is on 5 1/4 floppies and I don't have that tech anymore. Also now have a hankering for CIV, Caesar and other 'rule the world' games - thanks forumites!

You can get Harpoon and a lot of other great old games at the Steam or GOG (good old games) sites. They have DOSBOX free to get the downloads to run. The prices are extremely cheap and the old access "protections" like keywords or rune translations have been removed. I had a bunch from GOG until my hard drive crashed and I haven't had time to get back to them. My account is still there because I get e-mails from them.

Gee,

That reminded me of the beloved Carriers at War, from SSG, that I used to play a lot on my Apple IIe in the 80’s!
It was the best of its kind at that time.


I loved that game. Played it on my C64 all the time. Even had a few of the magazines that would give new scenarios, such as the Final Countdown. Spent a lot of time entering the data in Commodore basic. But the look on my opponents face after the Nimitz launched it's F-14s, worth every hour of typing.

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69

I still think that the One Week/Turns of Pacific War are better at simulating the tempo of operations in the PTO than the One Day/Turn of War in the Pacific: AE.

In the real world after you put together a plan you have to search for the needed resources, send appropriate orders to from Fleet Admirals down to platoon leaders, maybe have a disagreement or two with your staff... In WitP: AE all of this happens in a sort of "outside time", or "limbo between days". Factually, in AE you put together your plan and right the day after the ships sail.

I find a bit surreal, when I read the WitP: AE forums, to see debates about "openings" (like in chess [X(]). Check a very interesting book called "Pacific Crucible", by Ian W. Toll. It is about the US Navy in the first six months of war, very well researched, and it shows how the Navy started to have a real clue about the situation, about what was happening in the Pacific, and how to use this new "Aircraft Carriers branch" around the Marshall Islands raids - not on day one like it happens in AE.

I think that is a misfire.

You can't unlearn what history has taught us. Everyone one of us go to play War in Pacific with our culture with lessons of last 80 years.

ORIGINAL: Dili

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69

I still think that the One Week/Turns of Pacific War are better at simulating the tempo of operations in the PTO than the One Day/Turn of War in the Pacific: AE.

In the real world after you put together a plan you have to search for the needed resources, send appropriate orders to from Fleet Admirals down to platoon leaders, maybe have a disagreement or two with your staff... In WitP: AE all of this happens in a sort of "outside time", or "limbo between days". Factually, in AE you put together your plan and right the day after the ships sail.

I find a bit surreal, when I read the WitP: AE forums, to see debates about "openings" (like in chess [X(]). Check a very interesting book called "Pacific Crucible", by Ian W. Toll. It is about the US Navy in the first six months of war, very well researched, and it shows how the Navy started to have a real clue about the situation, about what was happening in the Pacific, and how to use this new "Aircraft Carriers branch" around the Marshall Islands raids - not on day one like it happens in AE.

I think that is a misfire.

You can't unlearn what history has taught us. Everyone one of us go to play War in Pacific with our culture with lessons of last 80 years.

Sometimes plans would be vague on the targets because they were unknown. Other than, go to this area, scout and recon, attack targets of opportunity plus these locations. By the way, we do not know what is at these locations other than a general idea and we don't know what the area really looks like.

As far as a landing goes at a base, that is what preparation is for.

ORIGINAL: Dili

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69

I still think that the One Week/Turns of Pacific War are better at simulating the tempo of operations in the PTO than the One Day/Turn of War in the Pacific: AE.

In the real world after you put together a plan you have to search for the needed resources, send appropriate orders to from Fleet Admirals down to platoon leaders, maybe have a disagreement or two with your staff... In WitP: AE all of this happens in a sort of "outside time", or "limbo between days". Factually, in AE you put together your plan and right the day after the ships sail.

I find a bit surreal, when I read the WitP: AE forums, to see debates about "openings" (like in chess [X(]). Check a very interesting book called "Pacific Crucible", by Ian W. Toll. It is about the US Navy in the first six months of war, very well researched, and it shows how the Navy started to have a real clue about the situation, about what was happening in the Pacific, and how to use this new "Aircraft Carriers branch" around the Marshall Islands raids - not on day one like it happens in AE.

I think that is a misfire.

You can't unlearn what history has taught us. Everyone one of us go to play War in Pacific with our culture with lessons of last 80 years.

But this is true for both sides, something which turns the historical events into academia. Useful academia but still academia. You don't plan against historical events, but against the specific situation(s) evolving in a given game. It doesn't matter if you are the Allied or the Japanese: the decision cycle (analysing the objective situation ---> developing a plan ---> send the orders to the involved people ---> analysing the new state of things after the plan is complete ---> go back to step one) should still require a realistic time - not one day.

Planning invasions, as RangerJoe pointed out, is a step towards realism. However it covers only a slice of the whole game. The rest is still planned in a sort of "outside timezone". A player decides what, for example, his ships will do, the commanders get the orders at once and the ships sail at once. This would be impossible today, imagine in the 1940s, even with the best communication gear the time could offer. And of course no time is spent in the game to come up with a plan in the first place.

One day looks cool on a pamphlet about the game, but I'm still convinced that PW's one week turns are still more realistic. The whole of the Allied forces in the Pacific didn't react in a coordinated way with a plan already in mind on day one of the war - like it now happens with the aforementioned "chess openings".

Well it is impossible to put incentives in place that makes every general in game play their own fiefdom. Neither you cant select a Japanese Corps and say take Java.

The game is also dissimilar in what you can do, you can for example set the patrol of 2 squadron floatplane in a cruiser but you can't say that a TF arrive in day X at Y hours to hex z,w.