Matrix Games Forums

Lesson 1

First think You need to know is Headquarters system.
Press CTRL+F (or ALT+F I don't remember). You'll see a complete list of Your HQs. There's a name, a location of its home base eventually target and always : mode of control.
Choose one at will and press ALT+K, select human full control.
Do it with all HQs. This will prevent AI from messing.

Each HQ has a leader and an air leader - later You may change them, but it's not much important while getting started.

Each HQ has also an main base. Protect it from capturing because Your leader will commit hara kiri or will be captured. Depends of style.


HQ can change its location to a Task Force (TF) or to another base. It costs 5 preparation points (PP). If You have none the action wouldn't be possible. There can be only one HQ located in one base.


Lesson 2

If You have all HQ's under Your control, find some ships and create a TF. Do not choose "auto select".
TF's have various types :
Air Combat - only way to put Carriers at sea.
Surface Combat - only fair way to make Your guns fire.
Bombardment - to punish land troops for living.
Transport - to move troops (eventually supplies or planes)
Replenish - (must have an AO) to fuel Your ships at sea.
and other - less important.

Use "space" key to move between screens if port is full.
Set the destination and the home base (the ships will return there after withdrawing from destination base). Set also a standoff range and eventually the target (for Air Combat TF's).
Set a leader.

more will follow

Auto select works well for me for Air Combat and Surface Combat type TFs, but I always check to make sure that the TF composition seems good, the commander is acceptable (some of yoru best air commanders will get assigned to surface combat and that is not always a good thing), and the destination is the one that I want. I usually change the move option to "Return to Base" if it is a surface combat TF.

Believe me, auto select saves time. Particularly when you are simultasking invasions of Guam, Tinian, and Saipain, and daring the IJN to show up.

Thanks. Okay, let me ask you this, since I did this sort of thing over the weeknd, got through SEAC and Malaysia and was in the middle of ABDA when honey-do list called. I've been wondering, though, how to get the ships spread out in ones and twos in the Philippines safely down to ABDA areas. It seems that when Houston steams out by itself, it will just get jumped by a tom of planes, same with Boise Ithink it is, etc. If I just leave them there, though, they'll just sink when the bases are taken.

Your best bet to get ships in danger out of danger is to do the folowing.

On turn #1, immediately reorganize your fleet. I always do this for the Allies, it does use up all of the 50 TF's, but is critical for minimizing losses. Send out ships individually as it takes too long to group them, and then send them.

On turn #1, even with historical first turn, you have a good escape route through the Borneo-Celebes strait to Sorabaya.

Set individual TF target to a base in Borneo or Celebes (Tarakan, Balikpapan, etc...) and home base to Sorebaya.

This will get your TF out of the Philippines as fast as possible. If you set Sorabaya as Target and Home base, then the TF will sit around the Philippines until the end of the turn (i.e., through 2 enemy aircraft resolutions). If you set Another base as Target, and Sorebaya as home, then the TF will move out ASAP.

I agree with Jeremy. On turn 1, the objective for Asiatic Fleet is to run like hell, don't walk or tarry, to Timor, thence to someplace else. Also brigade all your MCS together and run away. Houston, Marblehead, the flushdecks &c are all fast enough to make the getaway on turn 1 without being hit by aircraft. On Turn 2 you can still make a break for it and probably succeed, although you may take some damage in the process.

Turn 1 is all consolidate, consolidate, consolidate in a rear area that is defensible.

Which inclines one to eschew first-turn historical until you are ready for the challenge, since the AI not only loses you a turn but uses it counterproductively. The only consolation is that the results aren't as bad navally as in real life, only 1 or 2 BB sunk at Pearl and POW & Repulse usually surviving, although the airfields do indeed get worked over but good.

Well now that I think about it only 2 BB were sunk in real life at Pearl anyway, Oklahoma and Arizona. The rest survived to give payback to many garrisons and ultimately poor old Yamashiro.

Apologies. My comments re "Turn 1" were meant to be for the first player turn in which the Allies get to do anything using a "Historical" start. So in effect I was talking about "Turn 2" when I said turn 1, and "Turn 3" when I said turn 2.

Asiatic Fleet can escape and all those MCS consolidate in a historical start. Indeed, if you are really clever, in a historical start the US can also evacuate most of the decent ground forces in the Philippines.

The Repulse and Prince of Wales were only attacked by around 60 bombers in two raids. The game currently has them attacked by a little over 60 bombers.

Historically, the Repulse and Prince of Wales sank way too easily then they should have. The Repulse did very well until the Prince of Wales went down, and was the sole focus of all of the remaining bombers. The Prince of Wales sank due to a near miss wrecking power on one entire side of the ship (cutting pumps and 50% of their AA). Much like Miday, the destruction of Force Z was due more to a series of circumstance/chance instead of an inevitable outcome.

The historic first turn is very important in getting the AI off to a good start. Otherwize, they are usually 2 months behind where they should be (but it is good to learn).

I get it. The historical first turn is necessary for the Japanese AI to be on an even footing with a human allied player.

And you are right about the POW, it did take a freak hit right at the beginning.

The british repair groups on the POW failed to repair the power ring line - instead they repaired other things .
Repairing this ring line may had given power to the pumps and FLAK guns and she may had survived .

If you presume to give lessons on this game, you need to have had a decade and a half of experience with it. I'm sorry, deVada, but your comments reveal that you just don't have it.

pasternakski If you presume to give lessons on this game, you need to have had a decade and a half of experience with it. I'm sorry, deVada, but your comments reveal that you just don't have it.

A decade and a half of experience indeed - that would rule out quite a few computer games I expect, apart from space invaders and pacman.

Hanging out for 2010...

If a player can create a TF and knows what the HQ it is good time to make some troops move.

First You gotta find some troops.
For Japs - all Land Combat Units (LCU) except those belonging to Imperial General Headquarters (IGHQ) can be loaded on ships.
For Allies - some forces in Australia (Australian divisions) and those from 4th Army (or West Coast in previous versions) and NZ divisions cannot be moved from bases of their HQ's.
Each LCU has its size.

Then You gotta find some AP's or APD's or LST's. The only ships capable of taking troops on boards.
Each ship type has its capacity.
Move the ships to base where the toops rest.
Create a Transport TF.

I.e. - having three Henderson Class AP's, each with capacity of 100 You can load whole LCU with size equal or less than 300.
Program shows You after pressing "L" and selecting an unit how much percent of this unit can be loaded to ship.

Check capacities good because game is broken, and units dissapear if selected to load and cancelled. The same as air units.
Check the manual for details.

Remeber that ship pool is available sometimes in some ports where You can incerase or decerase amount of ships in one pack.

After loading a LCU on ship simply choose destination and parameters. A leader with good Land skill would be helpful.

Capture the enemy base.

In defense of deVada I had solicited this thread from him, he had offered to describe how he learned the game to me by e-mail and I suggested he post it instead becasue I had looked for a thread that gave a better tutorial than the manual.

Originally posted by pasternakski
If you presume to give lessons on this game, you need to have had a decade and a half of experience with it. I'm sorry, deVada, but your comments reveal that you just don't have it.

I guess I don't have it either, eh?

Personally, I have never used the 'get transport' or 'auto-select TF', as I always have my own personal perception on what I want to do. My TF's are alwayscustom built, even at the end of the war. Each ship class is ranked for their maximum ability.

(not including carriers which have very few ship roles)

Some ships make excellent surface combat vessels (durability, weaponry, speed)

Some ships make excellent carrier escort vessels (speed, AA factors)

Some ships make excellent cargo/transport escort vessels (AA, slow speed) [the 18 kt Katori class CL is the dream escort, especially late in the war when it gets a lot of 25mm guns)

For the Japanese, never, EVER waste your CVE's on replenishment duties. You cannot afford the aircraft experience hit (every time you do this, the experience level on your CVE's drop). Other then their speed and durability, the IJN CVE's are about the equal of any of their CVL's. When/if you make a big gamble carrier attack, your CVE's are important in giving you an extra CV Task Force, either as a decoy, cover an opreation (this TF targets land bases, others target TF's, so you don't repeat Midway), or in hope that your main carrier TF's have weakened enemy CAP enough that the CVE TF can send a strike group through.

I do agree with mdiehl that the computer does create very good TF's, but personally the little extra time it takes to pick and choose yourself is probably not more then ensuring that the correct ships get in the correct TF's afterward. It is basically getting a CV TF of 1900 AA values or a CV TF of 2000 AA value. Which is not much, but just adds piece of mind.

Number of Ships per TF.

You might think, why not just pack in as many ships in a TF as possible? You get the most flak, and most guns!

What you lose out in is secrecy.

Smaller TF's are harder to spot by Signit, as well as enemy LBA patrol wings. When spotted, they tend to be rather inaccurately depicted.

This is one of the reasons why I micromanage TF's, as I tend to make my main TF's high quality to make up for a lack of quantity. When one great ship can do the job of 2 mediocre ships, it is better to use the single vessel.

Carrier combat has some vital aspects to it (which can revolve around TF size)

#1. Good TF leader (get the max airstrike from your ships) [there are a few level 7 or 8 AIR leaders out there, beware if they have high aggressiveness as they will send your carrier TF off to oblivion!]

#2. Good speed (get the TF moving as fast as possible) [for the IJN leave out the Kaga (28 kt) and Kongo (30 kt) ships as they slow down TF's by a few critical kts. for the USN leave out the very slow BB's]

#3. Good AA (protect against the inevitable enemy breakthrough) [find the ships that have the best AA, and save them solely for carrier duty]

#4. Small numbers (spotted later, and probably get the first strike) [don't pack your carriers full of ships unless suprise is not an issue, i.e., if you are attacking somewhere completely obvious, or unobvious and know that your enemy would not send a counter strike on this turn]

The first strike is critical. If it is large enough to break through enemy CAP (due to good leader) you can expect to damage or sink at least one enemy carrier. This will weaken their retaliation attack.

Okay, I have some questions about LCUs.

When you look at an LCU, you get several categories, INF, ART, AFV, ENT, EXP, READY, and SIZE. Entrentchment, Experience and Readiness I understand. I assume that ART and AFV refer to the number of guns and tanks. Does the INF line refer to the number of squads, or the nubmer of men? Is INF 100 ten squads or 100? Lastly, I learn from deVada that the Size refers to the capacity of transport necessary to load it which is helpful.

What are the target sizes for various land units (I know that a tank divsion is bigger size wise than an infantry division, so I'm not referring to teh SIZE stat here, rather the number of units across the INF, AFV and ART catergories). For instance, if I have a division, and it has 175 INF, is that strong or weak? I know it doesn't really matter in the game mechanics whether the LCU is called a division or a battalion, what matters is the stats. I'm more concerned about understanding what the manual and hints file are saying when they say, for instance, you need so many divisions to make a successful amphibious assault.

If you have an isolated base you need to create and run supply TFs to it because it won't get routine supply. How do you get supplies to an isolated landlocked base, such as those in eastern India and in China, or Clark Field.