War in the Pacific Balthazor vs Elessar YT AAR

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Turn 31 Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rASF79nMAZU&t=15s



A Chinese offensive towards Amoy gets dangerous.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Turn 32 Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn7BTe5bZ_I



The Japanese Marine Expeditionary Forces strikes at the advancing Chinese near Amoy while more assemble on Formosa. The 1st Fleet and Strike Fleet disperse towards the Home Islands to refit.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Turn 33 link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uis8kbI1cGo



A second wave of Japanese marines lands on the China coast. The Fleet gets ready to upgrade its fighters.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Turn 34 Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKfNdqLBmtY



This series will continue with Turn 35 and on forward to a climatic battle.
War in the Pacific Mod for Strategic Command WW2 World at War by Elessar.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Turn 35 Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztkKRUq9IGA


The Fleet continues to upgrade with new fighters.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Turn 36 Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv0n37oeuAo



The Fleet assembles into its Task Force Components.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Turn 37 Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHf9KTDDhd8




American sub scouts are detected east of the Marshall Islands.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Turn 38 Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVHAt8x56-Y



An American CV Task Force is detected east of the Marshall and Gilbert Islands. IGN subs on patrol engage with it, damaging a carrier.
War in the Pacific Mod for Strategic Command WW2 World at War with Elessar.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Turn 39 Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBVnNbLj_10



The Combined Fleet sends a squadron to attack the American battle group bombarding the Marshall Islands in an attempt to lure their carrier taskforces closer. IGN submarines to the east identify and attack AVL's transporting US marines steaming towards the west.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Turn 40 Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-gW5mQ4WP4&t=27s



The Battle of the Marshall Islands rages as the Japanese Fleet goes for broke.
War in the Pacific Mod for Strategic Command WW2 World at War with Elessar.

[Elessar2]

Now that OCB finally uploaded this turn, I can make note of some things which weren't obvious from my end... Otherwise I'll summarize some of the things that I had already noticed in my AAR.

I came in firmly believing that the player who got in the first strikes would have a big advantage. Up to this game tho I had only played AI games, and only as Axis (because to give the Axis AI any sort of chance would require either tremendously optimized AI "thinking" scripts, or a crapload of "free" unit scripts-turns out that while ex. the Russians get a lot of free units, the Japanese don't).

In those games I easily dealt with the USN, so much so that in my last full game I sunk around 50 USN ships + 20 transports of various kinds, for the loss of the Musashi & a few cruisers & destroyers. My experience definitely showed that first strike wins the fight, then my surface units would mop things up, news at 11. I knew having just upgraded my guys to L3 in both AF & NW that I would have an edge, given how my Radar tech gives a small defense bonus to carriers, and how I took -0.5 of a defense point away from the Japanese CVs (to model their poor damage control and vulnerability w/ their enclosed hangars).

I however severely underestimated just how much the National Morale difference would make here, however. Note I simply copied over the last patch's new NM penalty scripts for not holding certain key hexes; I had neglected to note that they began in "1939", which means as soon as the Japanese take them. [Also note OCB's game with Pavia does NOT have these scripts] I also didn't cut them down to size to reflect the greater # of turns/year that my scenario has.

I thus stuck with my original plan, to hit him in the 2nd half of 1943 when I would have a 12-9 advantage in fleet CVs (tho he would have 5 CVL's to my 2) with an edge in battleships/battle cruisers/fast BB's of c. 13-10. He would have more cruisers than I, however, and given my axis of advance an edge in land-based air. [Recall he chose to build 4 extra Shokaku-class CVs instead of the 3 Yamatos, a DE of my own making...talk about being hoisted by my own petard...]

I thus was hoping for the advantage of first strike. When it was given to me, on a silver platter, I naturally jumped at it.

But I also did NOT know that carriers defending in "Fighter" mode had a "hidden" defense advantage. But, you say, defending carriers ALREADY have a defense, in the form of the fleet's carrier air patrol, which would intercept incoming raids and blunt their effectiveness! How right you are.

But as it turns out they have a SECOND line of defense, as it turns out. One I had no idea even existed.

A carrier in Fighter mode gets the tech bonus, even tho this is NOT shown in either the editor or the manual. Oh, in the game you see the Fighter Tech level number there, sure, so if you were totally naive you would THINK that it would apply to defending vs. enemy carrier raids. Except that, if they are going an active intercept, it doesn't; both units use their base fighter ratings, with no tech. [3 & 2; the devs iirc told me that the 1st/attack number is used for intercepts, the 2nd for escorts, then for defending vs. the actual strike.]

So a newbie goes in thinking that FT helps. A more experienced player will note what the editor tells him, that it apparently does not. But the results of this turn make it clear that it does. In Fighter mode the defense number is (in our case, with Level 3 tech) 2 + 3 = 5.

What makes this even worse tho is that, if it is in Naval/Tactical mode, it does NOT get this bonus, at all, just a defense of 2 vs. the actual bombing run.

Which means if you try bombing the enemy in N/T, doing so will leave your carriers in said mode MASSIVELY vulnerable to the enemy's counterattack the next turn. While this "ghost" CAP will completely decimate their air wings. A double whammy which I went in almost completely ignorant of.

Which is precisely what happened. My low NM decreased my strike effectiveness by ~50%, so instead of doing the average of about 3 points per run (taking 4 maybe 3 hits to sink an enemy carrier), I actually only did 1.36. Note it took me EIGHT hits to destroy one IJN carrier. On his turn, knowing that half of my flattops had a weakened "real" CAP nor this "ghost" cap bonus, he went in so confident in his edge there that he DIDN'T ESCORT A SINGLE STRIKE (the first few went in in Mixed mode tho). [I'm not sure if he knew he would have a huge edge in doing so, not worrying about either my intercepts or my own bombing runs the next turn]

My carriers in Fighter mode with their strength, supply and readiness dropped from their escort runs weren't of much use dinging his strike wings. They flew in and sank 4 of my fleet carriers, both of my lights, and enough of my BB's that his surface elements were able to finish off 10 of the latter.

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. Not just at the piddly damage my strikes were doing, but also at how virtually all of my strike wings ended up at ZERO strength, meaning they were completely worthless for the rest of the battle.

Now.

As a game balance mechanism (if it was intended that way of course), to avoid the first striker decimating the enemy without the latter having any substantive chance to return the favor, I can see being a viable game design choice.

From a historical perspective it's completely nonsensicial, of course. Both navies had communal CAPs which would cover all ships in a given task force. They most certainly did NOT have an ADDITIONAL "close-in" CAP, unique to each carrier (set to Fighter mode note) which would engage the enemy as they actually bombed that specific ship, but blithely ignore any other strikes on nearby friendly ships. They DID have AA guns of course, and if the game engine allowed a 4th tech to be available to all units that would be infinitely preferable here, and make tons more historical sense.

I am well aware of what happened to the Japanese in the Battle of the Marianas where their strike wings also got decimated, and in this battle the IJN did also have the edge in experience. I remain amazed that he used no escorts, and got away with it! My interceptors are taking MORE damage than his bombers, and despite having no escorts they STILL shredded my fleet!

The most nonsensical thing about that is that this "ghost" CAP only does damage to the enemy strikes AFTER their runs were completed! Tho it also may have reduced damage before exacting its retribution. It also seemed to me that (if the strike was successful in severely damaging or sinking the target) that it would do little to no damage to the bombers, but the devs in another thread swore to me that this was not the case.

This is hard to see in vanilla, because there each carrier unit represents ~2 actual carriers, so clashes there typically involve 3-5 flattops per side, at the most, where the first striker likely WILL come out victorious if he sends 2 of the enemy CVs to the depths. The 2nd player will have maybe 3-4 strikes left to get maybe one enemy carrier, then would be open to lose one more on the subsequent enemy turn. With these huge fleets a significant percentage of defending flattops would be sitting out the first set of enemy strikes, and be at full health, supply, and readiness on their turn.

Even then, that NONE of this was ever noticed by the community prior to this battle is absolutely amazing to me. My guess is that the IJN edges in both experience & national morale tended to disguise things if they got in the first strike (which in the AARs that I have seen seems to be the case).

Anyway, my hat's off to OCB for his victory here. If we had kept playing my large MPP edge would likely have allowed me to rebuild my shattered remnants quicker than he could his, plus I had several other capital ships rolling in by the following March, all while he was losing ground in China, India, and New Guinea.

I have yet to see an AAR using the new NM scripts, so I have yet to see if they will have as deleterious effect on the USN that they did here. Another thing I noticed from his end here is that if one of his experienced CVs intercepted, they often took NO damage at all.

Looks like his predictors greatly overestimated the amount of damage he would take too (at least vs. my non-carriers), which is what I was alluding to above-but again the devs swore that the damage isn't reduced on the final retaliation if the initial attack does a lot of damage, but it sure seems that way to me. His bombers did get more torn up than I had thought, tho.

Only now do I see that he had only Naval Weapons L2, while I had L3 (those tiny numbers on the ships can't quite be read by my old monitor). So much for my tech edge...

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Final Turn and Episode Link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-VsqPbm2T8



This is the conclusion of this series by mutual agreement between Elessar and I. We are currently testing a new version and will have a new match in the future. Thanks to all of you for watching and commenting.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

San Francisco 100 years after the final victory over America on May 20, 1947.



Virtual Fashion designed by Stephy Fung.

[BillRunacre]

[:D]