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I recently had some strange things happen in a PBEM game against Ralf and wonder if anyone has experienced anything similar.

I am playing Allies and received Ralph's last turn and the combat save a few days ago. We had a carrier battle in the vicinity of the Santa Cruz islands in mid June involving 2 of my fleet carriers and two of his. We traded punches at very short range which allowed my Devastators to participate.

When I ran the combat save the first time, one of my carriers survived the morning sorties and was able to get off two very limited sorties in the afternoon. Ralph had included the combat report in his email which did not indicate any afternoon sorties by the Americans. I ran the combat save twice more and on both reruns of it the IJN carrier force was obscurred by clouds in the afternoon and there were no afternoon sorties by the Americans. Ralph's recollections of his vewing of the combat phase before sending the save off to me also do not reflect the afternoon sorties by the Americans.

I mentioned this anomaly to Tocaff (who I have another game going with) and he chalked it up to the fog of war inherent in the combat reports and combat saves. I would think fog of war would result in differing results for any given sorty (representing the inaccurate reporting of the pilots). It seems really strange that entire sorties and hexes being clouded over precluding air missions against them, or not, would be subject to the vagaries of fog of war.

Since I am still a newbie at this game with limited experience to draw upon, I ask you veterans out there if this kind of disparity from multiple runnings of a combat save is a common thing.

Click the Combat Report icon at the top of the screen and see what it says; I have often seen air-to-air animation not entirely agree w/the final combat results, but I have never seen "ghost" sorties before in a Combat Save.

Are you guys playing different simultaneous games w/other players? Any chance a wrong file was sent to one of you?

ORIGINAL: Joe D.

Click the Combat Report icon at the top of the screen and see what it says; I have often seen air-to-air animation not entirely agree w/the final combat results, but I have never seen "ghost" sorties before in a Combat Save.

Are you guys playing different simultaneous games w/other players? Any chance a wrong file was sent to one of you?

I am playing three simultaneous games and routinely do 2-3 turns a night in 2-3 different games. I have indeed once sent Tocaffs game to Ralf but he noticed the mistake and of course couldn't have accessed Tocaff's turn without Tocaff's password. All three games are the same scenario but are running weeks apart as far as progress. Only one of them had a carrier battle at Santa Cruz this week so it wouldn't have been possible for me in a slightly dazed state after work to have mixed them up.

In my first run through of the combat save, which is where I saw the afternoon sorties that didn't occur in the next two runnings of the combat save, also resulted in fewer hits on one of my carriers than is indicated in the combat report (presumably the carrier that was still able to launch aircraft in the afternoon).

While the next two runnings of the combat save did reflect the lack of an afternoon sorty (matching the combat report) and exactly matched the combat report regarding the number of hits my carriers took, my subsequent player turn revealed one of my carriers had minimal damage which seems to reflect the apparently anomalous first viewing of the combat phase and contradicts the combat report (a little free intel for Ralph).

In the combat report and in the two subsequent viewings of the combat phase, both my carriers took two torpedoes and multiple bomb hits. In the first viewing of the combat phase one carrier escaped torpedo hits. This is what seems to be reflected in my following player turn as the minimally damaged carrier had almost no flotation damage.

It is all very strange.