Topic: Coming soon: War in the Pacific, Struggle for Japan, an After Action report

[Dracho]

Does it work like the old Grigsby Pacific War game where, if the engineers are at 25 experience, they have a minimal chance of actually particpating in the attack?  Until they reach 50 experience?

[Dracho]

Found it:

8.4 and 8.4.2

Fortification is dropped by one if combat odds are 1:1 or greater.  If no units are using deliberate attack (i.e. using bombardment or shock attack) the fortifications will be reduced by 1 for each odds level (i.e. 4:1 will recuce fortifications by 4).  Also, combat engineers participating in an attack may reduce the fortification level by up to 1 per day. 

6.1.25.2 seems to indicate that naval bombardment is likely to focus on infrastructure rather than fortifications.  However, the manual also states that a naval bombardment is the same as a bombardment attack by land units, and 8.4.1 goes back to indicating that 8.4.2 is in play.. logic loop...

[Lloyd007]

From reading a lot of AAR's bombardments of any kind land, sea or air will never reduce fortifications. A major problem in some games is where apparently the Japanese player has turned every island and land base into the Maginot line and it takes 200k men 6 months to dislodge 20k men. Although some of the more ridiculous fights like 500k men on Wake and Iwo Jima and etc. do show the need for some coding limit for islands and atolls. I mean even though Japan has it hard as it as after 1943 it doesn't seem much fun for either player when to take a 5 mile square piece of sand you have to bombard it for months with the entire pacific fleet and then land every single troop and tank and when you do get the 5 mile patch of sand you can base 1000 B-29's on it to flatten every base in the Home Islands.

AE looks like it should fix a lot of those problems nicely.

[Panzergranate]

Bombardments are intended to destroy men and materials, who shelter in fortifications in order to avoid becoming victims of the bombardment.

I would expect that fortifications made of wood would easily be destoryed by bombardment, as they are in the real world.

Concrete should prove a littel tougher but not indestructable.

However, stone fortifications do seem to survive through many wars and bombardments. Take the Serbian Navy's futile attempts to penetrate the old Medieval coastal fort with numerous gunboats and frigates during the Balkans War in the 1990's...... they used up there ammunition over several days and only managed to chip the stonework.

 

[Mog]

Panzer, the general commanding Singapore was General Percival not Gordon Bennet 

You really need to check your facts more.

[Panzergranate]

The had it on history channel.... Percival was Bennet's second in command and took the surrender. Bennet was on a warship heading away after he had arranged a cease fire with the Japanese and a time for the surrender.

He surrendered his men and then abandoned them. The Australian government sacked him from the Army.

[AcePylut]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Gordon_Bennett

[Panzergranate]

Now if an ordianry private decided that it was in his country's interests to run away (dessert) he'd be shot.

So the History Channel was actually wrrong (once more) on somwthing!!

[Dracho]

After reading the Wikipedia page, it rather sounds as if the nationality of the historian would play a major role in the opinion of Bennett's actions.

[AcePylut]

Well I found an opponent for a PBEM game.  I'll be the allies, he'll be the japs.  Like me, he's a historian of the era, doesn't know all the exploits of the game engine, and seems most interested in playing the game for fun, not playing it to exploit every gamey bug to "win".  We have a couple of house rules, and both of us are willing to discuss and address anytying gamey we "discover" throughout the game.

He launched his attack on me, and far more aggressively in the DEI than the Japs did irl. I see Borneo, Java, Malaya falling much quicker than irl.

[Panzergranate]

I've played quite a few 20mm. wargames around WW2 in the far east and even ended up converting a couple of A12 Matilda II tanks into Aussie "Frog" flame thrower tanks.

I'm still working on a A13 II Covnanter bridge laying tank and the Aussie Sentinel  tank models.

I do prefer playing the Japs though (well someone has to in a game) as the morale structure is always more favourable, some of the tanks are quite good compared to the hand me downs the Allies received from the middle estern theatre, anti-tank weapon, especially the infantry ones, are bizare (Luinge Mine or Cherry Picker anyone??) plus I can use grenade snipers.

It is just that playing Japs allows me to put up a formidable defence to my opposing players with very little in the way of equipment than I could if playing a defence with Allies. Make for a good game as well.

Best moment in a WW2 Jap versus US game..... taking out two of the four M4 Sherman the other players had in a game with a Type 1 tank destrioyer a minute after they claimed that the Japs, quote, "Don't have any decnt tanks that can take out an M4!!"

Another player took out a thrid M4 the on the next turn with a Lunge Mine (HC bomb on a pole porpelled by a running Jap soldier) and the final one was finished later with a Type 3 Ceramic Thermide Grenade.

Needless to say, we won that convention game!!

I think that you're in for a tough war for the first part, at least, due to limit resources and manpower, until Allied war production picks up.