Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Central Blue

I am a big fan of the choices made in the realignment of Allied restrictions in the last update. The arrival of Americal assets in Melbourne is just brilliant.

I do like most of the revamped OOB, but the appearance of units on the map outside the "country of origin" without the need to transport them to the destination base IMO does not feel right.

I understand that historically many units were created in the war zone by means of splitting, recombining, renaming, disbanding and reassigning etc. of existing forces. But the existing forces had to be transported to the war zone before - they did not teleport.

Historically, the "first batch" of what later became the Americal Division sailed from New York on January 23, 1942 and arrived at Melbourne end of February 1942.

In the game, the assets could become available at the East Coast base at that date (or a few days earlier to allow for loading time) and be transported to Australia or wherever the player thinks they are needed.

AFAIK the DBB is not designed to be played against Allied AI, so I don't think the reason for teleporting is to help the AI.

So I am wondering what is the reasoning behind the teleporting of the Americal assets to Melbourne?


Edit:

Hint for the naval modding experts - the convoy which carried the first batch of the Americal to Australia included the ships

SS Argentina
SS Barry
SS Cristobel
SS Erickson
SS McAndrew
SS Santa Elena
SS Santa Rosa
SS Island Mail

I have only found Santa Elena and Island Mail in the OOB.

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget

...

Hint for the naval modding experts - the convoy which carried the first batch of the Americal to Australia included the ships

SS Argentina
SS Barry
SS Cristobel
SS Erickson
SS McAndrew
SS Santa Elena
SS Santa Rosa
SS Island Mail

I have only found Santa Elena and Island Mail in the OOB.

Problem is that many of these ships only made a voyage or two in the Pacific and then left. Rather than a massive set of withdraw/returns, some ships were left out and others allowed to stay longer. Picture is Argentina, from: http://www.merriam-press.com/troopships ... warii.aspx

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget
So I am wondering what is the reasoning behind the teleporting of the Americal assets to Melbourne?

There’s not too many ways to do this otherwise. The ‘best’ solution is to have delayed entry loaded lift TFs show up in Balboa, on the right day, with sailing orders to Melbourne, Noumea, wherever.

There are still some bumpy things going on with off-map TFs that make this a less then optimal solution at the moment. I would hate for such critical reinforcements to get caught up in some off-map destination or fragment do-loop. People are looking at this, but the occurrences are far and few between, have strangely different manifestations, and are not very well documented, so they are very hard to nail down and solve. Once we get comfy with how this part of the system works, we can slip in some delayed arrival TFs in place of the transporter beam. For now, just think of it as an interim solution.

P.S. As Don mentioned a lot of Grace Line types were in and out of theater (and mostly out), so we just picked a bunch of Grace’s to stay in-theater for the duration. There’s the Santa Elena/Barbara/Maria/Inez/Paula, Rochambeau, Etolin, Maui, and Thomas Barry. Lots of equivalent ships to Argentina and Santa Rosa.

Thanks for your replies, gentlemen.

I understand that it not possible to include all ships which have been in and out of the PTO and that compromises must be made even in DBB.

Thus my remark was aimed at interested modders and not intended to criticize the scenario designers [:)].


Re teleporting - I don't see the need for off-map TFs in this case.

I have put the TF 6814 assets at the East Coast base with an arrival date in January 42.

It will be the player's job to find transportation to wherever he thinks the units should go.

Same principle applied to the other teleported units on the various atolls like Bora-Bora, Penryhn etc.


Thanks for the warning regarding possible problems with off-map TFs - I intended to use this feature to "make appear" the German Armed Merchant Raiders Thor and Michel, which both met their fate in the PTO.

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget
Thanks for the warning regarding possible problems with off-map TFs - I intended to use this feature to "make appear" the German Armed Merchant Raiders Thor and Michel, which both met their fate in the PTO.

Yeah, should reiterate that I don't "know" there's a problem, or if so, what the problem is. Just that some people have seen bumps in the road.

Seems to be related to off-map TFs that are doing things besides just showing up (loading, changing destinations, etc). You can't (shouldn't) put any J-side vessels in an off-map hex, in any case, but I'm sure you can have Thor and Michel appear at an on-map hex somewhere, at any time, without any problems. You might want to keep their entry hex at least two or three hexes away from an on-off holding box, just to be safe, but otherwise, late arrival TFs that appear on-map work just fine.

Thanks for the warning regarding possible problems with off-map TFs - I intended to use this feature to "make appear" the German Armed Merchant Raiders Thor and Michel, which both met their fate in the PTO.

That sounds interesting. Would you mind sharing when/if you get those modded ?

I have been spending some enjoyable hours paddling round the creeks and backwaters of Da Babes, but when I looked in at Shanghai I was a bit surprised not to be greeted by Izumo. In CHS I found this vessel and sister Iwate a useful alternative to the Katoris for soaking up enemy fire during contested landings, so I wonder whether they might be candidates for inclusion in a future version. The CHS artwork unfortunately left them looking too much like Tokiwa, so I had a stab at improving it:

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

I have been spending some enjoyable hours paddling round the creeks and backwaters of Da Babes, but when I looked in at Shanghai I was a bit surprised not to be greeted by Izumo. In CHS I found this vessel and sister Iwate a useful alternative to the Katoris for soaking up enemy fire during contested landings, so I wonder whether they might be candidates for inclusion in a future version. The CHS artwork unfortunately left them looking too much like Tokiwa, so I had a stab at improving it:

A bit more info :

http://ww2db.com/ship_spec.php?ship_id=478

I hadn't paid attention to the Scenario section of this forum yet! Mostly because I thought AE was truly finished (and it is). Then Sardaukar mentioned this mod on the general forum. I downloaded it and... great mod! [:)] I like the Yo's ships [:D] Another big difference: the Base Forces have been radically changed. In AE vanilla you especially get tons and tons of USA Army Base Forces (= 200 support, mostly for the Southwest Pacific front). They disappeared here. Thanks for your effort. I will be using this mod, that's certain [:)]

ORIGINAL: stuman

Thanks for the warning regarding possible problems with off-map TFs - I intended to use this feature to "make appear" the German Armed Merchant Raiders Thor and Michel, which both met their fate in the PTO.

That sounds interesting. Would you mind sharing when/if you get those modded ?

Np - just drop me a PM with your mail address.

Here's a teaser:

Thor:

Note: I'm not an artist and only tool I have is Windows Paint. So if some graphics wizard wants to provide better side art - your are welcome!

You want this one as well?

I like the sailing ship. Were there many used in the south pacific?

I doubt that there have been many commercial "tall ships" left by WW2. The one above is the ex-German four-mast-barque Pamir. She sailed under Finnish colours and was seized as a prize of war by New Zealand when Finland joined Germany to attack Russia. New Zealand then used it for commercial and training purposes. She made several cruises between NZ, USA and Australia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamir_%28ship%29

There was the Snake Class Junks operated by the RAN, but was too late in the war for use in the South Pacific, with the first commissioned 30th December 1944. Although probably wouldn't fit into the commercial tall ships category at only 80 tons and with a diesel engine, as well as sails, being designed to resemble local fishing vessels found around Singapore. They were used by Services Reconnaissance Department Naval Section for intelligence gathering and transporting special operations units into Japanese held territory, after the success of the Krait in Operation Jaywick. Although armed with 4 x .50 Calibre Brownings and 2 x 20mm cannons, they relied more on deceptions and stealth to survive, they probably wouldn't be much use in their intended role or survive very long, if used in the game.

More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_class_junk

EDIT: Actually there was Falie, a Dutch ketch commissioned into the RAN in 1940 and the first vessel to detect the midget submarines as they made their way into Sydney Harbour on 31st May 1942 and was later used as a transport in New Guinea.

More info here: http://www.afloat.com.au/afloat-magazine/2008/november-2008/Is_Failie_Finished

Wasp-issue is still there, even after starting the DaBigBabes latest (published) version game with latest patch, I think this is also stock database issue. Problem is that Wasp VF apparently is set to re-size from 30 to 36, but there is some data problem. I think the re-size is incorrectly set in editor.

The squadron resize worked for me, VF-71 went to 36 in July 42, the same as the other USN carriers in Da Babes scenario 29, started with a clean install and the latest patch. Also appears to be identical to scenario 28 and correct in the editor.

Donno, not working for me. I'll try to move it off CV if it works and if that is not working, I send Wasp to SF to see if that helps. 

You mention stock, so I'll mention that in scenario 1 my Wasp fighters resized to 30. That seems correct, as Wasp has less aircraft capacity than the other USN fleet carriers. It has stayed that way through October '43. Perhaps it will later get larger as attack plane squadrons get smaller?

I am thinking that it may be working as designed in historical size-sense, just that somehow the text detail on unit display is somehow wrong/mismatch.