A few frustrations

[jjdenver]

I've never been happy with the naval and naval air systems in warplan, and am even more frustrated in warplan pacific. While I love the potential of warplan as a system and look forward to a global game someday, I think I can't really enjoy warplan pacific as it stands. I'm a long-time WIF (world in flames) player and have played tons of other boardgames so I thought that since warplan apparently has some boardgame inspiration I'd really end up liking the naval and naval air systems - but I don't.

So just in the hope of helping to improve the game I'll briefly relate my frustrations. I've no idea if these are shared by anyone else, and no suggestions on how to improve them, they are just my own thoughts and observations. Maybe for everyone else the system seems like perfection.

1) Inability to base more than one type of plane at a single airbase. I have to choose to base either bombers or fighters at an island airbase in the pacific. This means that Midway has to have either bombers, or fighters, not both.
2) LBA (land based air) not being able to coordinate at all with sea battles. I can have fighters on a nearby island near a sea battle, but my carrier force that sails in to engage the Japanese blockading will get no help from the fighters.
3) Inability to reorganize, stack, or merge Chinese units in any way, leads to the ability of Japan to just push China around indefinitely - at least this is how it seems from playing PBEM for abut 15 turns. Each Chinese army is very weak and we have no ability to merge them or stack them in the same hex. This makes it just a bit silly because the Japanese can just sweep back all defenders around Changsha (for example) without ever taking many casualties. China can't concentrate forces to form a strongpoint or slow them down much.

Take all of these with a grain of salt as I'm _NOT_ a good player of this game at all, I'm quite bad really. I consider myself at best a beginner. But I don't think this makes my impressions as a beginner invalid.

[AlvaroSousa]

Thanks for input. I'll address these

#1 Next version will have sea zones. It will be easier to manage and good for the A.I. I was leaning on doing this and polled it on WPE forums. Players liked the idea more so than any other.
#2 Next version will have an air counter you put the plane type you want.
#3 30 strength Armies can be split in 2 for the Chinese. The Chinese should be on the defensive for pretty much the entire game. The Japanese should be able to push them around.

The key to the game is maximizing the goals you set against the clock with limited resources.

[Numdydar]

#1 is indeed an issue. Since a CV in the game represents 1-2 CVs plus escorts, then why cannot bombers and fighters be combines into a single unit? The single unit could have two ranges, one for escorted flight and one for non-escorted flight. That would solve this issue.

#2 It would have to depend on how close the LBA was to the battle. Obviously the closer the better [:)]. In War in the Pacific, there is a lot of randomness to LBAs helping out with CVs. Weather in the LBA base hex and along the path to the CVs, range, etc. Also in WitP, what does shows up, if anything does show up, is some percentage of the available LBA force. Even if you are just a few hexes away from the LBA base, typically a lot less less than half of the LBA force will actually show up. So unless you are in the same hex as the LBA base with CVs, you should not expect a lot of help from LBA. In all the time that I have played WitP, LBAs have never had a major impact on CV battles unless I was in the LBA base hex or just one hex away.

Also LBA forces were a completely different command for both sides. So LBAs would attack separately from any CV attack.

So in game terms I have no issue with this in WPP.

#3 The issue with China, as in the entire PTO is hindsight. It is not the Chinese units that are the issue, it is supplies/manpower for Japan. Once war broke out with the Allies, all major operations in China stopped as Japan did not have the supply/manpower capacity to support their offensive against the Allies AND China. So if Japan really wants to concentrate on overrunning China, and they should be able to, then they 'should' have to pay the 'cost' for that somewhere else in their Empire.

Again actual supplies, guns for the men, ammo, food, etc. was not an issue. It was the transporting of these things around was the issue for Japan. And it would have taken a massive amount of transports to supply Japan's men in China to have enough force to capture the country. Which of course would have meant that somewhere else was NOT getting these supplies since Japan's transport fleet was stretched to the limit as it was.

So it looks like there is no cost for Japan to do major offenses in China and they ae still able to go full tilt against the Allies. Maybe it should cost Japanese units in China double (triple?) supply cost to attack a Chinese unit. That might better affect the historical situation better than what you describe above.

Of course if you like the PTO, you should really be playing War in the Pacific AE anyway [:D]

[stjeand]

1) CVs do have both fighter and bombers...range is limited yes...so there is that issue. It would be quite a bit more work to have different types of units and different ranges on each carrier. Setting up a strike would take 20 minutes...6 CVs...6 sets of fighers could go or not...6 sets of bombers could go or not...Lots of micromanagement.
Basing one unit, again keep in mind, if not just "fighters" or "bombers". Each represents 300 or so aircraft, a mix, but the overall type is the majority of the planes. So a bomber is say 250 bombers, mixed types and 50 fighters for example. Not perfect but again you do not have to micro manage all your airforces.

2) I concur with Numdydar...trying to coordinate 3 carriers aircraft is hard enough...now add in LBA? Nightmare to make it work and it rarely ever did in reality.

3) Supply is a huge issue for Japan in China in the game. The Changsha and Sian rail lines are the key to China. The Chinese have to concentrate their major forces on the rail lines in the hills/mountains. Those are tough spots to attack and take. If the Chinese hold them then the Japanese can not travel all that far.
To really push China they need to move in more troops and focus less on India and Australia...which spreads their forces far to thin and opens up their islands for early invasion by the Allies.

I would love to play WitP...but I want to finish games before I die.

[jjdenver]

ORIGINAL: AlvaroSousa
#1 Next version will have sea zones. It will be easier to manage and good for the A.I. I was leaning on doing this and polled it on WPE forums. Players liked the idea more so than any other.
#2 Next version will have an air counter you put the plane type you want.
#3 30 strength Armies can be split in 2 for the Chinese. The Chinese should be on the defensive for pretty much the entire game. The Japanese should be able to push them around.

Thanks for the reply, fixes sound interesting. In particular the sea zones sounds really promising.

About China, I'm well aware that JP should not be seriously threatened by China and China should get pushed around. I haven't played out the China war long enough to see whether Japan will be able to easily conquer China - but from early play it seems that way. I know that historically the Japanese tried 4 times to take Chang-sha and could only do it on their last attempt in 44 with a big effort each time. I've always been bothered by games that allow Japan to conquer China (MWIF is one example where it's basically standard for the Japanese player to try conquer China every time and usually succeed), so seeing the Chinese forces swept around so easily in a few months looks like a harbinger of bad things to come, more specifically very ahistorical things....and the game doesn't have to follow history of course but it should within a historical framework imo. I'd like to see things move slowly in China and basically be nearly un-winnable for either side. Quite possibly my impressions are not valid because I haven't played deep enough into the game.

[FirstPappy]

I think the term "fixes" needs clarification as the points mentioned above might be for WP2 and not for WPP.