Matrix Games Forums

So, I was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the 24 beta testers for War in the Pacific. What an honor! And after the response Snigbert and Iain got in their UV betas, I know I'll be busy.

I select the Allies vs. computer Japan in the full blown campaign with all options neutral. Unfortunately, I find - much like in PacWar - the setup is fixed, i.e., I can't change anything before the Japanese first turn. As expected the first turn is December 7th and - surprise! - the Japanese do hit Pearl Harbor.

The results seem pretty historical. Oklahoma and West Virginia are write-offs. California sunk but repaired in 18 months; Arizona sunk by repairable in 14 months; Nevada sunk but repairable in ugh! 22 months. Pennsylvania got off easy with two torps and a number of bomb hits repairable in 5 months. Maryland 9 months. Hmmm . . . the North Dakota nine months. That's a glitch Gary will want to know about. Lost two CAs, a CL, 2 DDs, and a minesweeper. Fortunately, the carriers are not in Pearl, though another tester indicated there is a random chance they might be in Pearl on December 7. Hickham and Wheeler hit hard losing about 100 planes. Unfortunately, nothing got off to find their fleet, so I don't even know what hit me. Shot down 25 planes, mostly by flak, but some guy named Kelly shot down three! He's got experience of 85 - promote the boy to Captain!

Elsewhere, recon doesn't pick up much activity and, for some reason, the Philippines aren't attacked at all. What's he got up his sleeve, I wonder? Prince of Wales and Repulse are still alive, and I'll have to get them out of there.

Okay, Allied turn. First, set China to be run on the computer. I've been tasked to focus on production bugs anyway.

The turn starts with the production cycle. Interesting. Lots of groovy options. I decide to scrap production testing of the F4U and commit it to speeding up production of F6F's. Not sure I want to dicker with B-17 production yet. I'd like to overwhelm the Japanese with long-ranged bombers, but right now the computer says that I'm getting 12 per week to be upped to 36 in January. That might do.

No CVE's in the pipeline, but I'm offered the opportunity to convert to CA's to CVE's - what the heck, why not? I'm not expecting much surface combat anyway, and you can always use more carriers, right? Wow! the raw materials interface is excellent and looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Ground forces look pretty balanced production-wise, so I'll leave that be for now. Besides I haven't read the rules on ground production yet.

I exit out of the resources interface to take a look at where they are coming from: South America and a long rubber pipeline from Indonesia. That will probably be cut soon, so I'll have to make some changes.

Then . . . . and then I wake up! Darn, it was just a dream.

Hey Great!

Always remember: screen shots are welcome

Hey was I asleep???? When did the call go out for beta testers for WitP????? Sod it!

Byron13,

Mate you have a task to provide at least one AAR every 4 to 5 hours......failure to do so will result in the great computer god crashing your 'poota !!!:D

Greetings, You really had me going......."Tex Ritter? and thats when I woke up" I am going to camp out in this forum night and day when the hunt for beta testers really begins.

Raverdave it was just a joke. (a well written joke)

Glad that was just a dream. Delaying production of the fighter that won the pacific war would be a mortal sin.

Originally posted by byron13


...Pennsylvania got off easy with two torps and a number of bomb hits repairable in 5 months.

Then . . . . and then I wake up! Darn, it was just a dream.

I am at work now and not within grasp of any reference material. Check that dream machine cause I think the Pennsylvania was in dry dock and not open to torps. Unless they were really shallow running torps :rolleyes:

This kind of mean spiritedness will get you labelled as an evildoer.

ehhhmm yea what have i missed?? when did they ask for testers??

I'm sorry. Okay, so I'm not really sorry.

What's disturbing is that I'm so depraved after reading the UV AAR's that not only am I craving AAR's as a substitute for playing the actual game, now I'm craving make believe AAR's as a substitute for actual AAR's as a substitute for playing the actual game. I could spend hours writing yarns about a game I've never seen before.

I thought California was in drydock. I remember California being somehow different. Maybe it was moored by itself at the end of the row. But you may be right. In any event, I doubt the game will take that into account in hard coding and will subject all ships to the same fair treatment.

Originally posted by byron13


What's disturbing is that I'm so depraved after reading the UV AAR's ....

I thought California was in drydock. I remember California being somehow different. Maybe it was moored by itself at the end of the row.

Those delicious UV AAR's have made us all depraved..

Yes, California was by itself at the end of the row. There with the 'Fighting Mad' oiler Neosho.

Sounds like a nightmare more than a dream. To have the historic first turn and the Prince of Wales and Repulse not get attacked, much less the Phillipines untouched, would make for very blind omissions. That should of clued us in right away. In PW, I always played with the historic first turn, because of if I did not, I couldn't attack Pearl on my own by 12/7. Maybe I missed something, but it seems to me that if you were playing without the historic first turn, then the game should've started you out some weeks prior to 12/7, so that you'd still have the option of a 12/7 Pearl strike in your own manner.

Hello...

It will be some time before we have a full beta version of WiP ready. We have many features yet to add. We will also have at least a half dozen December 1941 scenario variants, once we get the editor updated to allow for new computer opponent options.

At the moment. Gary is working on new ship types, Keith on the new mapping system and I am upgrading the data-base editor and working on the patch for Uncommon Valor. We will be adding some WiP features into that patch (really an upgrade).

Also, if we sell a goodly number of Uncommon Valor, it will encourage us to add more features to WiP.

Bye...

Michael Wood
__________________________________________________

Originally posted by Charles_22
Sounds like a nightmare more than a dream. To have the historic first turn and the Prince of Wales and Repulse not get attacked, much less the Phillipines untouched, would make for very blind omissions. That should of clued us in right away. In PW, I always played with the historic first turn, because of if I did not, I couldn't attack Pearl on my own by 12/7. Maybe I missed something, but it seems to me that if you were playing without the historic first turn, then the game should've started you out some weeks prior to 12/7, so that you'd still have the option of a 12/7 Pearl strike in your own manner.

I was had! Damnit! And I was looking forward to reading AARs!

Well, for RaverDave's benefit:

So, I have selected the "Debacle in the West" and "U-Boat Terror" variants in which it is presumed that Britain did not manage Dunkirk and North Africa went poorly, resulting in a serious draw down of British land, sea, and air forces in India. I think the U-Boat terror is going to delay reinforcements from the Atlantic. Quite startling how weak India is. Other than a light cruiser force with destroyers in Columbo, the Prince of Wales and Repulse is all there is for the navy. I don't know what the historical land deployment was in India, but what I have now looks terribly weak.

The first week went quickly. I consolidated the U.S. Fleet around Pearl and am cleaning up that mess. I hadn't realized it, but the Japanese apparently did go after the oil storage depots there because I only have 10k gallons of fuel there! I've loaded up a bunch of tankers in California to fix that problem. The Philippines have been hit heavily by air power and, though the P-40s have been holding there own, they are being attrited rapidly. I'm down to 38 serviceable a/c. The B-17s have made a couple of runs at shipping but havent' hit anything. As for production, I nixed the F4U because, according to game stats, the Hellcat is about as capable, and the manufacturing screen indicates that pushing R&D from the F4U will accelerate introduction of the Hellcat by four months. That's quite a reward, so I went that way. Sorry if others disagree, but then you can do your own AAR and do something different!

I just watched the Japanese second week move. It's obvious now that it's taking advantage of the weakened British position and is doing an "India First" strategy. An invasion fleet just steamed by the Philippines escorted by two unidentified CVL's. The B-17s and A20s lit out after them with a piddly escort. The P-40s gave as good as they got, and I only lost three bombers. The B-17s were, once again, worthless, and even from 12,000 the crews could hear the Japanese laughing. The A-20s did better as I put them on the skip-bombing routine, and one of the groups had an experience rating of 76. They managed a total of five hits with 500 lbs. bombs, and one transport turned turtle. But they cruised on by with no other losses. I may have missed a heavy escort force: I didn't see anything, but I can't believe that the force I saw is going to try and make it by Singapore alone. The land forces in Indo-China also started moving south, so India and Singapore better watch out! Too bad I didn't have any subs in the area. I'll post some to get the Japanese on the return home.

Production is humming along smoothly. With no fuel oil at Pearl, I've got nothing to move to threatened areas, and I've tasked my available transports to haul additional rubber from Indonesia while it's still available. Then I . . .

Huh? What? Another dream??? Ah, sleep is such a wonderful things these days with visions of fleets and armies dancing before my eyes. :p The world is mine to conquer. Now, if they'd only get WitP out as well! Hey, need any beta testers to do some gaming while I'm actually awake?

Ah, yes, Mike. The old "buy this game so the next one will be better" routine. Okay, I'll buy three copies of UV.

Originally posted by byron13
I thought California was in drydock. I remember California being somehow different. Maybe it was moored by itself at the end of the row.

Pennsylvania was in drydock with 2 DD's Cassin and Downes. Both DD's were wrecked, but Pennsylvania was only lightly damaged.

Originally posted by Admiral DadMan


Pennsylvania was in drydock with 2 DD's Cassin and Downes. Both DD's were wrecked, but Pennsylvania was only lightly damaged.

Not in my game.

Hello...

Originally posted by byron13
Ah, yes, Mike. The old "buy this game so the next one will be better" routine. Okay, I'll buy three copies of UV.

Great. You will be three times blessed.

Gary has put a lot of work into the resource and ship building/replacement routines. I will be polishing them and adding the Matrix touch later in May and June. The design is pretty historical. No building ships classes from scratch like one might do in a grand strategy space conquest game.

The production routines do require resources, however, which is what the war is really all about anyway. Each location can have a number of resources of various types and factories manufacturing different items. I will be able to give you more detail once I have started working on that part of the code. we have noted suggestions from this forum, along the way, and will entertain more once we have a solid base of code.

Bye...

Michael Wood

Good one Byron13. Repayment for my UV post earlier. Really hope some of us hardcore forum freaks get the nod to playtest WITP...it must be obvious that we have lots of time and take this gaming passion a tad too seriously. Go back to bed.

Yup, I hope so too. I can see where playtesting WitP will be more difficult since there are, presumably, many more subroutines to test out. Maybe the really dull stuff is done in earlier tests ("alpha testing?"), but I could see where some dumb schmuck is asked to concentrate on the production cycle by running 100 turns by the end of the week to make sure that the figure for rubber or steel points acts the way it is supposed to.

Anyway, Mike, Ron and I are hear for you, and the Ben Franklin is on the way to persuade you to put us at the front of the line.

I gather from your previous post that you actually waded through the several huge posts in which we, the public, argued over production issues. I hope we did give you all some ideas that will be incorporated - especially mine. Mine were the best. There really were some good ideas in those threads, though it was easy to get carried away.

Any thought being given to scenarios starting in '39, '40, or earlier '41 so that the Japanese can REALLY change history?

Yup....Ready Aye Ready, Load Load Load, Arty Arty Arty, and so on and so forth...............................