dgaad
Posts: 864
Joined: 7/25/2001
From: Hockeytown
Status: offline
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Yes, I got the game today. Figured I'd share my first few attempts at playing with the group. Comments welcomed.
AAR - UNCOMMON VALOR
Decision in the South Pacific - May 42 to Dec 43
First Impressions of a Non-Beta Tester
Getting to the Game
1. The intros are nothing very special, as compared to the corporate and game intro files in some other games. This actually not only does not bother me, it seems good to me since, as a wargamer, I'm interested in good game systems, not flashy intro movies. If I want to see a movie, I'll go to Blockbuster.
2. The User Interface for all the Game Menus isn't totally intuitive. For example, the grand campaign is listed as Scenario 17, I had to look at all the different scenarios to make sure I was picking the one I wanted, and the one that should be the centerpiece of the game. Selecting the game preferences was equally confusing. There are toggle switches to set things like game resolution, fog of war, whether you have hex displays or not, but the problem is that its not immediately apparent what the current setting is. Same once in the game. When you look at a base that is currently building up fortifications, the display reads "build fortifications". I'm not sure if clicking on this means I'm now giving an order to start building fortifications, or whether that's what the engineers there are currently doing. It would be better if the display said "Currently Building Fortifications or something like that." Anyway, I may be being too unkind here since my professional life involves UI design, and I always find ways to make things more intuitive or easier for the lowest common denominator. Once I got used to it, I did understand what the toggles and displays represented, I just had to spend time figuring that out that I think I shouldn't have had to spend.
May 1, 1942
The level of detail is overwhelming at first. Individual ships and individual air squadrons have very detailed and granular types of orders and missions which can be set, down to which altitude to fly at, individual names of pilots, and so forth.
At this point, most things seem okay. One thing I've learned from reading AARs of the beta testers is the importance of supply and support. So I will monitor that. Right now, the way things are seem to be fine, except that at a couple of bases there isn't quite enough support but it shouldn't be a huge problem if I keep on top of it. Moreover there appears to be an Australian platoon north of Port Moresby that is totally unsupplied. I'm not sure how to deal with this other than to move it back, which I am not willing to do at the moment.
The other concern is the utter lack of ground troops. Strategically important bases have absolutely no defenses like Guadalcanal / Lunda, and Gili Gili. I also don't seem to have any way to move what little troops I have in Australia to New Guinea.
Well, its only the first turn. I managed to discover the ship status map, and the good news is that I have a number of ships coming in over the next month.
So I set the Air Combat TF 201, with the Lady Lex and the Yorktown, to move north by northwest, and the Replenishment TF to load fuel at Noumea. I know historically the Japanese fleet was attempting and invasion of Port Moresby around this time, so I'll head out and see what I can see.
May 2, 1942
The only thing that happened was that an enemy merchant was spotted near Shortland by coastwatchers. We flew 260+ sorties while the enemy flew about 100 less due to bad weather out of Rabaul.
Cooktown base still does not have enough support, but I don't seem to have any spare engineers.
I have a bunch of subs in Brisbane I'd like to send out on patrols, but everytime I click "Create TF" I get a display that I can't figure out, nothing gets created, and the subs remain at anchor not in a TF. Time to load up the PDF manual and see what the problem is. Later . . . checking the manual was not much help. Seems I'm doing what I am supposed to do, but nothing is happening. Ah, now I have it. I have to hit the "done" button. Hmm, another UI problem. Oh, well. I still like the game and have barely scratched the surface here.
I create 3 new sub groups, 2 for patrol and one for minelaying, and set specific destinations. We'll se how that works.
Finally, some combat. 17 Bettys escorted by zeros bomb Port Moresby. Our CAP was light and didn't hit anything, but 6 Bettys were damaged by flak. One "supply point" was destroyed by the bombing, whatever that means. I'll have to check it out.
A sub encounters 2 Jap light cruisers, missing them but escaping damage north of Shortland.
May 3, 1942
Cap levels for the fighter groups at Port Moresby were set to only 30 percent. I raised it to 80. Hopefully the enemy will attack again next turn and we'll see what kind of difference that made.
TF 201 is about a day and a half from Shortland, so we might consider a strike there once we are close.
Out of curiosity I looked through all the troops in Brisbane. Again, the displays are a little confusing to someone who is not a beta tester or who has read the manual from cover to cover. Most of the units have a listing numbers of second line troops and then a breakdown list of components. Of these troops at Brisbane, very few seem to have hardly any troops in their establishment. For examle, the 112th Base Force unit, which is supposed to be a support unit, is listed as having 4290 "Second Line Troops", but in the breakdown it has just 2 Aviation Support Squads and zero of everything else, including Radar support, which is only about 496 men. Meaning that it is only at 12% establishment. Gotta check the manual on this one. Does this mean that with all of these units in reality I have very few troops? Why does it say all those second line troops and just 2 support squad components.
The manual does not explain the specific troop display as far as I can tell. Wait, yes it does on pg 66. Ah, the number 0 next to the sub component units is the number of disabled units. Now, that is really counter intutitive. Why doesn't that column have a label on the display which says that???
Well the good news then is that the units are not understrength.
I'm really tempted then to get some transport groups together and reinforce some of the existing bases, particularly Port Moresby, Gili Gili, Efate, and Espirtu Santo. I'll wait a turn, to build up supplies and see what happens with the fleet.
I set the Hudson Squadron and a P-39 squadron at Port Moresby to attack identified enemy ground units at Lae, and we'll see what happens with that.
May 4, 1942
Holy Cripes. The Hudsons were practically wiped out. The reason : enemy carriers in Lae Harbor, identified as the Shokaku and the CVL Shoho. Where the P-39 escort was is anyone's guess. We'll I think we found some indication of enemy intentions. Port Moresby looks like their target.
My response? Move the B-17s to within range. According to what I can tell from the displays, the 4 B-17 wings need 123 support at whatever airbase I move them to, and I also know from reading the beta AARs that we need to have sufficient supplies and fuel to be effective, and the base has to be a certain size. Cairns seems to fit the bill. I also set everything I have at Port Moresby to attack the last know location of the enemy carriers. Finally, I have TF 201 change direction and sail west to support Moresby. Its predicted to be a cloudy day tomorrow however.
We set up a couple of transport TFs in Brisbane, with the ultimate object of moving one RCT in Noumea to Luganville. A supply transport TF will load directly in Brisband and head there, while the troop TF will go to Noumea first and load the RCT.
May 5
Hudsons again tried to penetrate the CAP over the Shokaku group, and were again decimated. I set that airgroup to training hoping to pull them off that type of mission again, without actually disbanding the group. All the other groups failed to find anything.
Enemy destroyer and minesweepers sighted off Gili Gili, so it seems the enemy is looking to land there at some point.
We now set up another two TFs in Brisbane to move the AUS 29 BDE from Rockhampton to Gili Gili, and drop supplies there.
Our carriers are still steaming west, possible action today.
May 6
Pretty much a repeat of yesterday, but this time our dive bombers at Port Moresby attempt attack. No hits reported scored by any airgroup. Our carrier group did not engage, probably out of range.
Enemy landings at both Buna and Gili Gili.
FLASH : enemy DD Yayoi hit by 500lb bombs from B-17s, heavy damage
May 7
Both Gili Gili and Buna captured as they were undefended. Need to get troops up to Port Moresby post haste.
Air battles were conducted again, but no real damage. One of our subs was caught and is badly damaged.
I'm really not sure why our carrier group is not striking the enemy ships, not even the ones at Gili Gili, which is only 10 hexes away from its current position. I didn't even get a message like failed to find target. Its like they didn't even launch. I change the reaction status to "React to enemy", see if that helps.
May 8
A disastrous turn. Both our carriers are nearly sunk, most of our airplanes either damaged or destroyed from air to air or flak, total damage on enemy fleet was against the Zuikaku, which took a total of 6 bomb hits. All of the carrier based air diverted to Port Moresby, where some more casualties ensued.
I'm beginning to question the flak values of the Japanese fleets. I've had entire wings wiped out by flak alone. Meanwhile, our flak hardly touches the Jap planes. Am I doing something wrong? I can understand few enemy casualities from our fighters, whose planes are not as good as the zeros (at least, not as manuverable) but the huge difference in flak casualties is a little disturbing. This in fact was the difference in the air battle. We had several escorted strikes of TBDs and over 60 Dauntlesses, less than half returned, most destroyed by flak.
Here are a few examples of the combat report. Note : combat reports are saved in the "Save" directory, and you get one combat report per day. Each game turn (day) that goes by, the file is saved anew meaning you lose the prior day's reports if you haven't copied and renamed it. Seems like it would be nice to have all the combat reports from each day saved automatically and uniquely named by the game instead of having to do it manually for detail freaks (like me, and I suspect a good portion of people who will play this game).
Here is an example of an entire wing wiped out, with only 3 of the losses coming from air to air :
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Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 12
Allied aircraft
TBD Devastator x 12
Allied aircraft losses
TBD Devastator x 2 destroyed
TBD Devastator x 12 damaged
PO1 C.Fujiwara of EI-1 Daitai is credited with kill number 2
Japanese Ships
DD Ariake
CV Shokaku
CVL Shoho
Here's what happened with the escorted 60 Dauntless strike. Most of the bombers concentrated on the already burning Zuikaku. Only 3 planes were damaged in the air to air, so all other casualties are from flak.
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Air attack on TF at 16,40
Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 19
Allied aircraft
F4F-3 Wildcat x 9
SBD Dauntless x 60
Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero x 4 damaged
Allied aircraft losses
F4F-3 Wildcat x 1 destroyed
F4F-3 Wildcat x 4 damaged
SBD Dauntless x 7 destroyed
SBD Dauntless x 18 damaged
CPO W.Banno of EI-1 Daitai is credited with kill number 2
Japanese Ships
CV Zuikaku, Bomb hits 5, on fire
CVL Shoho
CV Shokaku
DD Yugure
Here's the big Japanese response strike, note the disparity in plane damage, attributable entirely to flak
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apanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 19
D3A Val x 40
B5N Kate x 37
Allied aircraft
F4F-3 Wildcat x 23
Japanese aircraft losses
D3A Val x 2 destroyed
D3A Val x 8 damaged
B5N Kate x 9 destroyed
B5N Kate x 8 damaged
Allied aircraft losses
F4F-3 Wildcat x 1 damaged
Allied Ships
CA Chester
CA Portland
CV Lexington, Bomb hits 1, Torpedo hits 2, on fire, heavy damage
DD Hammann
DD Alwin, Bomb hits 3, on fire, heavy damage
CV Yorktown, Bomb hits 1, Torpedo hits 1, on fire
CA Astoria
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These aren't all the reports for this day, but it give you an idea.
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