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After playing through the Aleutian campaign and starting Guadalcanal as Japan (both on Historical difficulty), I've noticed that the results of surface engagements are, uhm, unexpectedly disappointing. The first warning was PG Charleston surviving, I kid you not, 52 127mm and 140mm hits during a two-phase battle. Okay, looking at its stats from Allied side of the scenario, it is fairly (amazingly) well armored, but still, if we base our assumptions on reality such massive number of hits (most of them at fairly close range at night) should have wrecked even a heavy cruiser. For the rest of the Aleutian campaign surface engagements were few, because the Allied radar pretty much allowed them to avoid surface contact at will, unless a TF was unloading troops. Thankfully, the notably braindead AI allowed me to pretty much just park carriers next to Attu and bomb his amphibious taskforces until I'm out of sorties.

But at Guadalcanal... Well, first AI returns the favor by parking his carrier task forces nearby and bombing everything that moves on the sea - with infinite sorties. (If you try to exploit the fact that the day naval movement phase should, according to manual, happen before air phase, this just doesn't work. No, AI does not pursue, his airgroups just go first and sink your cruisers, even though the manual says they shouldn't.)

But this wasn't what aggravate me to the point of registering here to ask this question. The outcomes of surface battles with Allied ships covering Tulagi was. Out of morbid curiosilty, I've replayed this battle about 20 times, both at night and at day, with Allied or Japanese forces as AI (to figure out, whether it is another AI cheat, or the real balance of forces). In most of them I had 5 CA + 3 CLS vs. 3 CA + 1 CL + 4 DD. You would think that it is a pretty favorable conditions, but the absolute best that Japanese can pull of here (with the best commander on the list, at night - note, that most of these ships have 90+ night experience) is a marginal victory. Generally, it's a draw. Allied ships seem to fire more often, and they definitely hit more often - they have scored more hits in every single replay so far. If Japanese ships end up in seemingly better condition by the end, that's because their hits penetrate more often, thanks to having a lot of 203mms, and even then, Allied ships practically never are sunk - at best, 1-2 of them take engine damage. Oh, and torpedoes from Japanese cruisers almost never hit anything - I've witnessed maybe 2-4 hits per these 20 battles. In short, Allies seem to have a considerable advantage in surface gunnery even against best of the best of Japanese navy at their peak form, and their ships plainly refuse to sink or lose ability to fight (above-mentioned Charleston still seemed to have at least one functioning gun by the end), unless suffering from a fairly rare torpedo hit or buried under overwhelming avalanche of gunfire. In combination with their radar, which still seem to keep their non-unloading TFs effectively impossible to engage unless they don't want to (just forget about trying a historical surprise off Savo), and other strangeness, such as Bettys just refusing to attack Allied naval units around Guadalcanal, I'm at a loss about how you are even supposed to fight in this scenario for Japanese (without serious save-scumming) or find any sort challenge for Allies. Is this some kind of bug, or things are seriously supposed to play out like this?

FatR,

first of all, you talk about runnig several replays. If I am not mistaken, if you resolve an identical save file several times, the results will remain identical (possibly modulo FoW). In order to get a different result, you need a different save file (I think just changing slots is not sufficient, something else must be changed as well). Did you do that ?

If you look around, you will find a lot of complaints about outcome of naval battles - Japanese players complaining about Allied victories, Allied players about Japanese victories. I think it tends to even out. In general, I think that the bandwidth of possible outcomes of a given battle has increased with AE compared to WitP and some of them are surprising at times.

Regards,

Hartwig

   I seems, that you can get different results even by straight save-scumming, if you care to. For example, Wasp/Hornet sometimes got torpedoed by a submarine during those test turns and sometimes remained unharmed. Also, I've tried approaches from different directions and on different days (maybe that changes in imput have contributed to different results in other places), this failed to appreciably change the outcome.  

EDIT: Air battles indeed have produced a fair range of results, which are sometimes downright surprising, such as Allied carrier airstrike getting repulsed almost entirely by flak during Coral Sea scenario. Surface battles, see above...

What version are you using? Prior to patch 1, naval battles were skewed in favour of the Allies. After the first patch, things are a lot more balanced.

  Ah, that must be it. I'm using the version 1.00. Looks like it is time to download the patch.

EDIT: Yes, the patch improves the Japanese gunnery noticeably. Also, it seems that gunfire is more effective for both sides. Before the patch the usual result of night battles at Lunga was 1-2 really crippled ships on each side at most), but this time 2 Japanese and 2 Allied cruisers, as well as 1 Allied destroyer were sunk outright during the 4-part engagement, and most of the other CAs were shot to pieces ("heavy fires, heavy damage"). Then carrier planes have arrived and obliterated the remnants of Japanese TF as usual [:D].