Matrix Games Forums

Hoping for some advice/ideas from the elders of WITP AE .

Had the game for some time but only recently got round to actually playing it. Mightily impressed but at my age it takes 3 months to master the manual for the electric toaster ........! It's possible ( probable ) that some of my problems are due to a lack of understanding the correct procedure but here's what I seem to be having trouble with. Played two scenarios......

Guadalcanal - very enjoyable but noticed that every turn I had bad weather when it came to getting reports from ship's scout planes. Weather window said ' clear' and obviously there are going to be local spots which prevent scouting but this was every ship, every time over the whole campaign..........

Marianas - ground actions no problem, captured Wake and sent the Corps ashore at Guam, tough fighting but we overcame. On the naval side I put together a TF to hunt down the Imperial carriers. Finally cornered them near Pellau and that's where it all went wrong. Every time I tried to come to grips with Mushasi and co both sides evaded/withdrew. And I tried on a lot of occasions. In the end I was just playing turns involving the two opposing TF's but no go. The final straw was when the Japanese TF ( BB's, CA's etc ) surprised a 4 ship troop convoy escorted by 2 DD's and promptly evaded/withdrew. ( OK , I know my reputation as a second Halsey probably struck terror into the evil Japanese but .....!) So somewhere I am either doing something wrong or I have a glitch. Never happened in Guadalcanal.

My last problem is no doubt self inflicted. I send my Liberators and Mitchells off in numbers to pound enemy airfields and shipping but I can't seem to provide them with suitable fighter cover. Using the 'escort' option and assigning the target as the bomber objective seems obvious but they don't show up and the bombers are shot down in flames. Kinda like the 'turkey shoot' in reverse. If anyone could point me to a suitable You Tube tutorial on using aircraft properly I'd be grateful. I have spent hours with the manual and You Tube but it ain't easy when your practically old enough to remember the real thing.....
Other thing as I still seem to have the scouting/bad weather thing again.

Thanks in advance to the WITP sages. Chickens will be sacrificed at the Temple of WITP knowledge.

falkonsix

PS - Read somewhere that people with multi processors ( particularly AMD ) have problems. Exactly what I have........

The weather "forecast" at the bottom left of any base screen is the general weather for a huge area of the map which influence the relative mix of good/poor weather during the next turn.
In an individual hex, the weather your ships and other units report is what the weather was at the end of the last turn, not the forecast.

And you are correct, during the turn the weather will be transient during any particular attack or action. Weather is random and can change a few times in each hex during the turn! IOW, it is not predictable. Most players just set their air units to strike and hope it happens!

I have tried to find a pattern and the most I could figure out is that a hex with "Light Cloud" or "Partial Cloud" is unlikely to have really bad weather next turn. Surprisingly "Clear Skies" often brings "Severe Storms" next turn! There seem to be a lot more bad weather effects (for aircraft) than good ones.

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The Marianas scenario requires you to be very focussed on taking the three target islands - Guam, Tarawa and Saipan in the time available without any diversions to secondary targets. There is no time nor resources to waste. So you keep your Carriers and heavy ships just to the west of the Marianas while the amphibs (with CVEs) go in and no Japanese ships should get through. If you charge off to Pelelieu you leave the chance for the IJN to sneak around your flank.

Carrier TFs are programmed to avoid surface battles as much as possible so that is why you could not corner them that way. You should emulate Spruance and just let the Japanese expend their aircraft on your CAP and AA, and only then send your air strikes after his carriers. Make good use of your Catalina search planes. There is a dot base nearly impossible to see on the north coast of New Guinea. Send a couple of AVDs there and a squadron of Cats to search the area east of the Palau group. Put Cats on Guam as soon as you capture it.
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Don't know about You Tube tutorials, but basically be aware that escorting fighters are at a severe disadvantage against CAP, and of course they must have the range to make it to target. Sometimes it is better to send your fighters to sweep the enemy base to engage his fighters more equally - but there is no guarantee the sweeping fighters will arrive before the bombers. There are so many variable in air battles I cannot go into them here. When you have about 10 posts you will be able to upload screenshots so we can assess the situation and give specific advice.

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Re: the processors - I am not aware of any issue with AMD alone. Your problem may be the need to set "switches" on the shortcut to the game program so that your processor and video card will work properly with whatever version of Windows you are running. There is a large thread on Win 10 issues in the Tech section that discusses switches, what they do and how to set them in a shortcut. If you cannot find it post again and I can make a link to it.

Many thanks for the comprehensive answers BBfanboy, all of which are perfectly understandable. It's encouraging to know that it's me being dumb rather than technical bugs.

Much appreciated...........

falkonsix (RN)

As for seewping before bombers, you can try this method
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