Notes on "The War at Pacific" from personal point of view

[artik]

First of it was a great scenario - I loved it and enjoyed every moment - and I want to participate in more.
Thanks to all the teams and especial thanks to the Scenario CM Teams and its head ROC - you rock!

Absolutly Loved  

I loved the Perl Harbor surprise, it was amazing. It was great idea and I enjoyed it very much. The terrain was beautiful - the lines of the ships, the Ford base and much more... So much work and effort.  

I really liked the approach to the victory conditions: on the one hand achieve goals on the other hand don't forget the price. For example if you hit the target and destroy it but it costs you all the airframes - it can't be victory - both for Perl Harbor and the 4th frame. If USAAF can't sustain the damage it does not matter how much ground targets are destroyed.

Minimal AAA strength was great, using PT boats as fleet AAA was actually much better as it give serious chances to torpedo and dive bombers actually attack and survive if the target has no cover.

Well defined distinct battles and goals, instead of a single strategic target during the entire scenario, having well defined battles and targets - was a blast. It can be done for future scenarios even using the same terrain as long as the targets are well defined and organized - probably with only small overlap of the results. It pushed thinking, planning and organization to the limit as every frame had something different in mind. It also made the battles much more diverse.

Loved but I wouldn't want to see it every secenario

Airframe resource management was a good thing - we could squeeze more if the team can have it under control and we can give more rides to the players. But at least on US side it could cause under use because of being afraid to overuse the resources - because it is hard to count - because there are walkons who aren't familiar with rules - you should keep things fair - and give the guys their 2nd ride even if he hadn't lot a single plane and so on. (BTW it is a good point to ask HTC to provide life/resource management tools to SEA in AH, such that some rules would be system enforced)

As a result of total "free" allocation of resource we lost some historical immersion because we didn't use the historical uniform but rather had stuff like Alpha, Bravo flights that sometimes switched from fighters to bombers. It was fun sometimes to take SBD after F4F but yet... I think carrying a name of a real historical squadrons and playing its role is rather important for immersion, but from pure game-play "virtual" units are better as it tells less to the enemy.

And finally it looses some "value of life" per-se. Stuff like S&R becomes irrelevant. I think that having an ability to bail or ditch and not loose the life is a good thing as you actually care about life and not the plane. It would be great to see such a resource management in some scenarios but definitely not all of them.

Mixed Feelings

Big step in history and gameplay for the 4th frame: (a) The step from 1942 to 1945 - from F4F to Mustang and P-47, from Zero to Ki-84 IMHO is too big (b) drastic change in game-play - instead of defense and attack by both sides in naval battles it becomes a strategic bombing campaign like BoB or Big Week. It requires different team work and skills. The TBM, SBD, Val and Kate are very different from B-29.

I think that brought the USAAF to use tactical dive bombers (P47, P38) for a strategic campaign to increase the "impact" of bombing attacks as it was more familiar game-play. Although it was fun to fly late war plane and actually be able to fly at 30K at good speed without stalling (until I got discoed   )

Maybe changing one parameter instead of all of them would be better: move from 1942 to 1944 to fly some F6Fs in Philippines or Leyte Gulf or bringing invasion force instead of pure Naval campaign.

But this is probably a matter of taste...

Use of torpedoes by PT Boats... it was just too much "game", I can see as replacement of AAA - as it close unlimited etc but bring two fleets together and send PT Boats... if we had destroyers with torpedoes we wouldn't need PT boats. Maybe if they were limited - lets say up to 8 PT boats per destroyer group or something like that.

Rather negative

CV Hardness - was too high IMHO. It was the only pacific scenario where none of carriers were destroyed by a naval air force for all 4 frames... We managed to sink two CVs during Midway and one using the cruiser and other one thanks to B-17. It was almost impossible to bring 24K of damage to a target.

In the 3rd Santa Cruz frame USN had actually decided to give up on sinking CVs because sinking all 4 of them was just unfeasible. And IJN tried to put the same trick used in Midway - bring the cruisers to handle the 8'' duel. But unlike in Midway were CA had no cost in terms of victory, it had gave USN en edge as we managed to destroy them close to the "home". If we had much more reasonable harness like MA or 1.5 of MA we would see much more carriers sunk and they would remain the primary target.

In this Pacific scenario it was proven that actually CAs control the seas and planes are just there to provide the cover - something opposite of the WW2 experience.


Thank You Very Much For The Great Scenario!

[ROC]

Artik, great feedback, and thank you for the perspective.
With the turnout for scenarios being in the low 90s per side for a few years, it was a surprise to have 90 total flying, it did throw off the damage potential.  Larger, better defended groups could have done a better job on those carriers for sure.  That was one of the main reasons we went with resource allocation instead of limited lives. No matter what the turnout, there was still the ability to at least get all of the ordinance in the air over 3 hours.

Good thoughts in here, thanks for sharing!

[kano]

Agree with all your points Artik especially concerning the jump from frame 3 to 4. Personally i would of preferred some thing like the battle for truk atoll or some thing one carrier force against land based same as pearl just reversed with f6f's and later jap planes as well.

Still a great scenario Thanks to the CM team

 

EatG

[Brooke]

One of the difficulties with that is that the Pacific Theater went from Zeroes vs. F4F's (mainly -- frames 1-3) to Zeroes vs. F6F's, P-38's, F4U's, and P-47's (not the best matchup for playability) to later-war Japanese planes vs. later war US planes.  So, in scenarios, we have picked either Zeroes vs. F4F's/P-40's/P-39's or late war vs. late war.  For a fight that is not US strategic bombing but with late-war planes for Japan, it would probably need to be Philippines (Philippine Phandango type action):

http://electraforge.com/brooke/flightsims/scenarios/201008_philippinePhandango/philippinePhandango2010.htm

[perdue3]

Artik, great feedback, and thank you for the perspective.
With the turnout for scenarios being in the low 90s per side for a few years, it was a surprise to have 90 total flying, it did throw off the damage potential. 

You expected more?

[artik]

With the turnout for scenarios being in the low 90s per side for a few years, it was a surprise to have 90 total flying, it did throw off the damage potential.  Larger, better defended groups could have done a better job on those carriers for sure.  That was one of the main reasons we went with resource allocation instead of limited lives. No matter what the turnout, there was still the ability to at least get all of the ordinance in the air over 3 hours.

I thought of it and you are right. if we had ~150 players rather than ~90-100 we would have much better chances to sink the CVs.

In some of the cases we just couldn't realize full potential of the plane allocation having ~45 players (i.e. 4 planes per player) In most of the cases we were way under the quota - especially Allies side and could bring more - but lacked the time to do it.

I have strong feelings that Mondial had screwed some numbers.

One thing I could think of is to make scalable targets - such that non-relative goals may be smaller (for example destroy 75%/50% of CVs for major victory) according to the turnout. Something that I've planned for less predictable SEC: http://ahevents.org/events/sec/sec-setups/1058-1948-war-of-independence-operation-yoav.html