Gentlemen, first off a big <S> to Jimson for putting together the
terrain map for last night's "Tuesday Night In The AvA/Clash Of The Carriers".
I'm looking at these Tuesday night get-togethers in there as
basically the same as the "Wednesday Night Snapshot" events.
(Does the AvA crew run those as well?)
Turnout was outstanding and continues to grow each week.
When 9PM rolled around, we had 40 pilots in there. At its
peak last night, I believe Jimson said we had 43.
The sides at 9Pm were quite even with 20 Japanese and 20
American.
We called that a formal strike with escorts was to be formed up
right after 9PM. But unfortunately, only 10 of the 20 "Japanese"
pilots got involved in it.
Launching with 5 B5Ns with 5 A6M escorts, we proceeded to
extend away from our most Westerly ship, heading SW to
gain some extension from the good number of red "dots"
we were seeing on the map.
At 13,000 feet we levelled out and proceeded to our target,
the lead enemy fleet at the western point of their battle line.
Two fighters approached our group approximately 5 minutes
after takeoff, but both were either chased away or killed
by our Zeke escorts.
At appromately 8 miles away from the enemy fleet, two of the five B5Ns sustained
pilot wounds, but once the attack order was given and the B5Ns went
nose-down to the enemy fleet, all were capable of bomb drops
and several hits on the CV were recorded.
I believe only one of the 5 B5Ns survived, and he was pilot
wounded and oiled.
Unfortunately, nobody seemed to want to hold up for a reform,
so downed pilots in our cadre were just lifting and heading back
south on their own so a series of small furballs developed. Quite
often with uneven odds on both ends. (I'm guessing the American
side was pretty disorganized at this point as well.)
There were no large scale engagements, where one large group
of escorts/bombers came across another large group of enemy
planes. This is unfortunate as it would have made for a grand
beginning to the night's festivities.
In any event, we had some wonderful furball action for the most
part, and the Zero proved itself an outstanding fighter in that
environment. The F4Fs were overmatched.
There seemed to be a lot of "hiding in the puffy ack" by both sides.
But with so many fleets around and the battle area limited by
the fleet positionings pretty much anywhere one flew you were
either covered by or getting shot by auto-ack.
Jimson had solicited ideas on how we might tinker with this map/setup
to make it better game-play wise. With that in mind, here are
a couple of suggestions.
First, the map and fleet positionings:
As you can see the fleets started out basicall in a line-ahead formation, parallel to
each other with about 1 sector or less separating them. Given that some pilots
had already been flying in the arena and the exact positions of almost all
of the fleets were already known, the excitement of searching for and
finding a fleet was not to be had.
As well once one took off from a fleet and headed South or North, within
four minutes or so you were in the radar ring of the enemy fleet(s). Thus
the old "dot" icon on the map provided the enemy with both your positon(s)
and heading(s). This again took away a lot of the palm-sweating angst
which is always the case when attempting to locate an enemy over hundreds
of square miles and then getting a wonderful headrush when you finally locate
and begin engaging him.
It is my opinion that tinkering with this setup should entail a couple of
things right off the bat.
(1) radar turned -OFF- both for "bars" and "dots".
(2) Fleet auto-ack be toned down even further than the 1/4
it was initially set up at. (Jimson turned it down past 1/4 later
in the evening and it seemed to work fine with that adjustment.)
(3) Less fleets and more separation between them.
Lasty, the clouds. Some of the guys loved the fact there were so many
clouds and the cover at times so thick you got completely disoriented
as to which was your nose was pointed.
I'm thinking that cutting the cloud cover to half of what it
was would still provide a lot of "atmosphere" and the ability
to use the clouds as cover for an ingress to target, to hide a CV
under, etc.. but would allow for some better air to air engagements.
Setting these maps/scenarios up is very time intensive and a
labor of love. There's no other reason that a fellow would devote
so much effort to it. In this case it paid off handsomely and in
the vast number of cases, guys thoroughly enjoyed themselves
over the course of the evening.
But, just like using a "battle editor" in a standard wargame in which
maps are built from scratch, units positioned, etc...there's always
some tinkering involved to get it "just right", at least from the
scenario designer's perspective.
I look forward to playing on this one again very soon as I had
a blast with it. And once again, my sincere thanks to Jimson and
ALL of the Axis vs Allies Staff along with each and every one of
you who attended last night's battle. Were it not for your
time and efforts, it would not have been nearly as much fun
for us all as a group.
Best regards,
Oddball
The 47 Ronin
