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For the third time running in one of my PBEM games my opponents CV taskforce has been anihilated due to the "Do not react to enemy" order not being obeyed.

In each instance his CV's moved one hex towards my CV's (away form his land based CAP) and then failed to launch at all or only against another less important target....to say my opponent is pissed off is an understatement[X(]

It is hard to obtain any pleasure from outcomes like this and they can spoil the rest of a game.....is there any logical explanation for this happening all the time[&:]

Aggressiveness of the TF commander.

ORIGINAL: Miller

For the third time running in one of my PBEM games my opponents CV taskforce has been anihilated due to the "Do not react to enemy" order not being obeyed.

There is no logic, but there is a "workaround."

After you form your CVTFs, create a SCTF and order your CVTFs to follow it. Put the CVTFs on "do not react" (do the same with the SCTF) and even the most aggressive admiral will behave himself.

Oh. And order everyone not to retire (unlike me; I'm already retired).

Gents,

No, that won't work either.

In my current game against SneakyJap we're in September 1943 and the Allies are about 2,000 points ahead.

But WAY back in the early part of the game, Sneaky was making his move on Luganville with the KB and everything else. I wanted to get all the US CVs and main combat ships out of harm's way and over in SWPAC where they might do some mischief. I set a large SC TF on "do not retire, do not react" and sent them west from Noumea. The CVs I set "do not react, do not retire" and ordered them to follow the SC TF.

So what happened? While sailing west in the vicinity of Koumac, the SC TF reacted (!) and headed straight for L'ville. The CV TF followed suit. I lost all my CVs and started the game in a tremendous hole.

This is a silly bug. If you order your ships to "do not react" they shouldn't. You shouldn't have to jump through all kinds of hoops in order to prevent it from happening with a real risk that even jumping through the hoops won't work. How many games has this problem spoiled, turning what would be fun, competitive matches into disasters that inspire the aggrieved party to quit?

P.S. So, how did the Allies come back successfully against Japs in my game vs. Sneaky? While he was concentrating on L'ville, I did manage to retake GG (temporarily) and PM (permanently). From PM, the Allies were able to eventually mount a comeback.

No, there's something else afoot here. The "follow a SCTF" trick works without fail.

What I suspect is that your SCTF commander decided that the big, bad Japanese were too big and bad and decided to make a run for home, which, unless I miss my guess, was Luganville (you say they were steaming west past Koumac, so Noumea apparently wasn't the TF's home port). He wasn't "reacting," he was "screwing the pooch." Besides, only CVTFs react toward enemy forces, not SCTFs.

No bug here, although the amount of cowardice in the face of the enemy that is built into "leadership" in this game system is ridiculous. When I used to play this thing, it always amused me to see transport, minelaying, and other TFs run from enemy carriers that were so far away nobody had even spotted them yet.

Yet a transport TF will cruise straight through the Gilberts...

Maybe implement a ZOC thing for the ocean??

Nope, that's not how it happened. I had vacated my big ships out of L'ville quite some time before to get them out of harm's way. Both the CVs and combat TF were based out of Noumea. The CVs were not in port - they were just a few hexes north of Noumea. I created a combat TF in Noumea and sent it to a point near Koumac set "do not react, do not return" and ordered the CVs to follow (also do not react, do not return). The Japs were still north of far enough north of L'ville that my TFs were safe and were going to steam towards Townsville to make some raids in SWPAC. The Japs sent a combat force in to bombard L'ville and my combat TF reacted. From a point near Koumac, the combat TF reaction sent the ships all the way to L'ville. The US CVs followed suit and ended up close to L'ville. The Jap CVs were NW of Wunpuko, but close enough to completely savage my CVs. It was a total disaster for the US navy.

Well it would seem to make any further games a pointless exercise....a shame[:(]

pointless being an exaggeration?

The Japs generally win any CV battle early in the war simply because the KB is much larger than what the Allies can muster. This means that when the "failure to honor do not react" bug strikes in the opening months of the game it nearly always results in a big Jap victory. Alot of Allied players (the less experienced ones) give up at that point, frustrated and thinking that the game is hopeless. In truth, many times the Allies can mount a comeback even with their CV forces decimated as long as the Japs don't hold L'ville and get an auto-victory. But that bug is nonetheless extraordinarly frustrating.

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Nope, that's not how it happened. I had vacated my big ships out of L'ville quite some time before to get them out of harm's way. Both the CVs and combat TF were based out of Noumea. The CVs were not in port - they were just a few hexes north of Noumea. I created a combat TF in Noumea and sent it to a point near Koumac set "do not react, do not return" and ordered the CVs to follow (also do not react, do not return). The Japs were still north of far enough north of L'ville that my TFs were safe and were going to steam towards Townsville to make some raids in SWPAC. The Japs sent a combat force in to bombard L'ville and my combat TF reacted. From a point near Koumac, the combat TF reaction sent the ships all the way to L'ville. The US CVs followed suit and ended up close to L'ville. The Jap CVs were NW of Wunpuko, but close enough to completely savage my CVs. It was a total disaster for the US navy.

It's been my experience that if a SCTF is fairly close to an enemy bombardment TF target, the SCTF intercepts most of the time....regardless of settings or leader ratings....