Pacific War

[Scarz]

I have both SC War in Europe and World at War, but can not seem to find the Pacific War. Is there a specific product I need to purchase, or is it a DLC?

[OldCrowBalthazor]

There's a WaW mod by Elessar actually and its called War of the Pacific. Important to note its only designed for MP (multiplayer) by PBEM or Hotseat. Here's a link for v9.03 on the first page of this huge post: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 9&t=373218

I tested and played this a lot as the Japanese against Elessar and there are numerous video's I made for YouTube including an early game test and a series.
Here's a link to one a test of turn 1 as the Japanese: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3lP2ek ... ex=2&t=10s

There is also a campaign and a mini-series called Pearl Harbor to the Battle of the Gilbert Islands on my channel that can be found by going to the playlists.
The mini-series is the latest version of this mod...as during the earlyversions we found some tweaking to do.

Its really good.

[Scarz]

Thanks for the info. I will definitely check it out. And I am enjoying watching the game with the Col!

I found the SC title I was thinking of on Wiki - This is from the entry: Strategic Command WWII Pacific Theater is a grand strategy computer game developed by Canadian studio Fury Software, and published by Battlefront.com in 2008. The third game in the Strategic Command series, Pacific Theater is a turn-based strategy set in World War II, focusing – for the first time in the series – on Asia and the titular Pacific Theater. The player controls all of either Axis or Allied states.

I also attached a picture.

I guess this is a separate game, didn't see it on Matrix or Steam.

SC Pacific.JPG (114.72 KiB) Viewed 3153 times

[BillRunacre]

This older game is included in our Strategic Command Classic: WWII package:

https://www.matrixgames.com/game/strate ... assic-wwii

[Scarz]

Thanks. You said its an older game, is the game being supported and updated?

Thanks.

[BillRunacre]

It did receive updates after release and should be stable to play, though we are not updating it anymore.

[dopedwizard]

Hi,

is there any chance SC Pacific Theater will get an updated release to the current engine?

Thnx

[PanzerCro]

It did receive updates after release and should be stable to play, though we are not updating it anymore.

I think if there will be a new game of SC in WW2, it should be only on Pacific theatre. It would be a gem.

[FOARP]

It did receive updates after release and should be stable to play, though we are not updating it anymore.

I think if there will be a new game of SC in WW2, it should be only on Pacific theatre. It would be a gem.

The problem a Pacific war game requires SC work well in an area that typically isn't the focus of this series (naval warfare). It also requires the AI to be able to do things that in most strategy games it doesn't do well (amphibious warfare).

Even setting those issues to one side, there's the historical issue that Japan was less of an industrial power than, say, Germany or the UK. Japan did not build many capital ships between 1941 and 1945. In terms of fleet carriers they completed the Kaiyō and Taihō in 1943, and Katsuragi, Unryū, and Amagi were completed in 1944. They fielded four tank divisions, but these were fairly low-strength - e.g., 2nd Armoured had a strength of circa 220 light and medium tanks compared to the circa 350 fielded by the British 7th Armoured division. Japan was never able to field a full-strength airborne division, lacking the transport aircraft to do so. Japan had no divisions of marines - the SNLF were only ever fielded in weak units of regimental strength.

There was also no potential allies to be influenced on to the Japanese side - the only neutral country on 7 December 1941 was Thailand, who the Japanese invaded and turned to their side. Otherwise the Japanese were simply trying to keep the Soviets out of the war against them.

Having a Strategic Command game centre around the Japanese war effort (as it inevitably would for the Axis player, given that there were not other major Axis powers in the area) therefore faces a number of problems not present in modelling a war in Europe where the focus is on major industrial powers with a number of minor powers ready to be influenced over to their side.

That said I'm sure it's possible, just would require some modification of the existing system seen in. I've not played the old Pacific Theatre game so I can't say how it dealt with there, and the small number of reviews available on line are somewhat un-enlightening. I also haven't played SC:WaW so I can't say how that handles the Pacific war, though I own the game and will give it a try some time.

I could take some guesses as to how to do it. The deployment turn from SC:WW1 would be a good feature for a game like this as it would allow the player to balance the various invasions rather than being locked in to the ones that historically happened in the weeks after 7 December 1941. Some way of interacting with occupied territory to swing potential local puppets over to your side in the Philippines, Vietnam, Burma, China etc. might also make diplomacy more interesting for the Axis player. Naval warfare would need spicing up, but a lot of games already exist that do the typical stacking solution so I don't know if Fury Software would want to go that way, but how to do without that I don't know. Smaller units - particularly more division-sized units - would also give the player more to do. The entrenchment system from SC:WW1 might also be appropriate here as it would help simulate the fortification of islands better.

PS - I can understand why people get confused about what games exist in this series and when they were released. I've been updating the Wikipedia article on the series and I count 22 titles in this series in total, including the re-releases, expansions, and bundles, many of them with pretty similar names and without any number to indicate which game engine was being used (what's the difference between Strategic Command: European Theatre and Strategic Command: War in Europe?).

[Platoonist]

Even setting those issues to one side, there's the historical issue that Japan was less of an industrial power than, say, Germany or the UK. Japan did not build many capital ships between 1941 and 1945. In terms of fleet carriers they completed the Kaiyō and Taihō in 1943, and Katsuragi, Unryū, and Amagi were completed in 1944. They fielded four tank divisions, but these were fairly low-strength - e.g., 2nd Armoured had a strength of circa 220 light and medium tanks compared to the circa 350 fielded by the British 7th Armoured division. Japan was never able to field a full-strength airborne division, lacking the transport aircraft to do so. Japan had no divisions of marines - the SNLF were only ever fielded in weak units of regimental strength.

True. Japan's decision to go to war with the Allied nations (one of whom had ten times it's industrial strength) while bogged down in China is often referred to as the height of folly or a strategic imbecility. Seems like a poor subject for a competitive recreation.

However, due to a host of factors like hindsight and the peculiarities of the Pacific War, Imperial Japan usually fares better in games. I've noticed over the years in a number of board games and computer games (even including the intricate War in the Pacific: Admirals Edition) that a Midway-like disaster almost never befalls the Japanese. The unique nature of this battle with its mix of tactical dithering, tunnel vision, hamstringing orthodoxy and just plain luck is probably too hard to code in a strategic game outside of a catastrophic die roll event that players would likely hate. Plus, most Japanese players assiduously avoid the mistake of breaking up the Kido Butai so Japan always keeps that six-carrier edge. The result is that the Japanese CV fleet often stays competitive late into most games.

Another area that is hard to recreate in most games is the armistice-like nature of the war in China between 1941 and '44. Chiang was content to mostly sit back during this period to let the US win the war for him and it seemed to suit Japanese purposes at the time as well. Doesn't usually happen in a game environment. A Japanese player will go all out to conquer China because he knows it'll free up troops for invading India or fending off the Americans or Soviets. Since it's difficult to simulate the episodic nature of this war, Japan will often finish off China and then plunder.

ASW is another area where Japan fell down historically but a Japanese player probably won't. If the game allows you to invest heavily in escort vessels or ASW technology or to create and route convoys under air cover you're likely with hindsight to hop on it in a way that Japanese naval orthodoxy didn't allow for. Japanese submarine mismanagement is another aspect you can avoid in a game. A smart Japanese player will probably set his submarine fleet loose on the merchants in those Pacific convoy lanes in a way that the German naval attaché in Tokyo always begged for.

A Japanese player will also make more aggressive use of his battleship force. Outside of the fast Kongo-class BBs most Japanese battleships spent the early months of the war in home waters conducting crew training, radar experiments and gunnery exercises. The mighty Yamato and Musashi are famous for spending most of 1942-43 idly anchored at Truk acting as HQ ships. Not likely to happen in a game where a player sees these ships as powerful assets to be used. If they burn up precious oil so, be it. (Plus, I've yet to see the game where the battleship Mutsu randomly blows up in port.)

I could go into other factors like the destructive IJN/IJA schism rarely getting simulated in games, but the list would get long. I'm not saying these omissions and hindsight make Japanese victory automatic, but in games they do seem to make up for a lot of the imbalances of the actual war.

[Shellshock]

I've noticed over the years in a number of board games and computer games (even including the intricate War in the Pacific: Admirals Edition) that a Midway-like disaster almost never befalls the Japanese.

Just the ability to rotate good pilots out of front-line squadrons and into training other pilots in that game gives Japan a fighting chance. Unlike the "fly until you die" mentality of the actual Japanese military.

I think in any game based on the Pacific War you automatically have to leave out the strait-laced, doctrinaire and self-destructive methods of the Japanese military in order to make the country remotely attractive to play. I agree it would be mandatory to include oil usage in some form to put realistic constraints on the Japanese as well. The too easy logistics of long-range amphibious transport is another issue that has to be fixed as I've seen too many SC:WaW games where Japan rather effortlessly land troops in North America, the Panama Canal or Africa in much the same breezy way that Germany can invade Iceland in the European game.

[FOARP]

Another area that is hard to recreate in most games is the armistice-like nature of the war in China between 1941 and '44. Chiang was content to mostly sit back during this period to let the US win the war for him and it seemed to suit Japanese purposes at the time as well. Doesn't usually happen in a game environment. A Japanese player will go all out to conquer China because he knows it'll free up troops for invading India or fending off the Americans or Soviets. Since it's difficult to simulate the episodic nature of this war, Japan will often finish off China and then plunder.

This in particular is a problem. The essential dilemma Japan faced in China was they could not conquer the country, and would not have freed up any troops if they had done so since it would have taken more troops to occupy the whole country. The one solution - a puppet government - couldn't work since no government that the Chinese people would even grudgingly accept would give them the deal they wanted. The solution seen in strategy games of conquering China and deploying troops elsewhere is not realistic.

Whilst the embargo prompted by Japan's war in China was the catalyst to the Pacific war, the linkage between the conflicts was weak in a way that's hard to show in strategy games. Little of what was useful in the Pacific could be usefully employed in China. Japan lacked the logistics to support the forces it deployed in the Pacific so little of what was deployed in China could have been redeployed to the Pacific. Japanese forces in China mostly lived off the land and did not rely much on supply from Japan, so they also did not absorb supplies that would have otherwise gone to the Pacific.

China also was not a stalemate as shown in most strategy games. Japanese forces did not stop advancing in China because opposing Chinese forces stopped them from going any further. They mostly stopped in 1940-44 (the main exception is the Changsha battles 1941-43, but these were a local affair) because they had switched to a strategy of seeking a political accommodation. When they started advancing again in the 1944 Ichi Go offensive, Chinese forces showed no more ability to stop them than they had in 1937-40, but advancing in China did not help the Japanese forces there at all as it just meant more territory to occupy.

All the above is really tough to simulate, and even harder to make fun. I think the closest SC could do it to provide a large map with plentiful partisan hexes so China is difficult to occupy, and use build-limits and fuel constraints to show the difficulties of the Pacific War. If you have to mostly use special forces to invade islands in the Pacific, you won't be using those forces in China as the regular army is already there. You also won't be launching ninja invasions of mainland North America, or not without first conquering Hawaii, as you'll be out of range to do that.