Slitherine

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esteban

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ORIGINAL: esteban

1. Is anyone else a little put off by the disadvantage the Japanese player is put at. Basically, if you play the "historical turn one" you are locked into the same attacks that the Japanese player made, the ones that turned out to be not enough to win the war.

If you do not play "historical turn one" the Allies can disperse their air squadrons and ships, and you miss out on your surprise attack. The speed on most naval shipping is high enough that you can avoid Kido Butai unless they move into the same hex as, let's say, Pearl Harbor. Even if you are in range of the Japanese carriers, their bombers have to be set to a naval mission.

This leads to a big disadvantage for the Japanese, because if you did bomb, lets say, Pearl Harbor, you would probably have to set your planes to a naval primary/port attack secondary. So if the Allied player didn't sortie from Pearl, you would not bomb until the afternoon pulse, so you would miss the surprise attack bonuses.

Also, if he thought you were going to launch an attack from point blank range, the Allied player might sortie his whole surface fleet, and try to catch KB in a surface action close to Pearl.

I suppose the Japaense player could entirely avoid this, by taking Kido Butai to the location of one or more of the American CV task forces. You could almost certainly force a fight and annihialate at least one American carrier TF, maybe even both of them. But that just opens the door to more cheesiness.

I already noted in another thread that the Allied player can respond by ahistorically evacuating the Prince of Wales and Repulse from Singapore.

What do you think of this level of foreknowledge, and what kind of house rules do you use/propose to try to restore a balance of some sort?

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ORIGINAL: esteban

Hi Gents:

I just wanted to ask a few questions and make one observation based on my play vs. the AI so far.

Questions

Observations:

1. Is anyone else a little put off by the disadvantage the Japanese player is put at. Basically, if you play the "historical turn one" you are locked into the same attacks that the Japanese player made, the ones that turned out to be not enough to win the war.

..... and what kind of house rules do you use/propose to try to restore a balance of some sort?

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ORIGINAL: mjk428

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ORIGINAL: esteban

1. Is anyone else a little put off by the disadvantage the Japanese player is put at. Basically, if you play the "historical turn one" you are locked into the same attacks that the Japanese player made, the ones that turned out to be not enough to win the war.

If you do not play "historical turn one" the Allies can disperse their air squadrons and ships, and you miss out on your surprise attack. The speed on most naval shipping is high enough that you can avoid Kido Butai unless they move into the same hex as, let's say, Pearl Harbor. Even if you are in range of the Japanese carriers, their bombers have to be set to a naval mission.

This leads to a big disadvantage for the Japanese, because if you did bomb, lets say, Pearl Harbor, you would probably have to set your planes to a naval primary/port attack secondary. So if the Allied player didn't sortie from Pearl, you would not bomb until the afternoon pulse, so you would miss the surprise attack bonuses.

Also, if he thought you were going to launch an attack from point blank range, the Allied player might sortie his whole surface fleet, and try to catch KB in a surface action close to Pearl.

I suppose the Japaense player could entirely avoid this, by taking Kido Butai to the location of one or more of the American CV task forces. You could almost certainly force a fight and annihialate at least one American carrier TF, maybe even both of them. But that just opens the door to more cheesiness.

I already noted in another thread that the Allied player can respond by ahistorically evacuating the Prince of Wales and Repulse from Singapore.

What do you think of this level of foreknowledge, and what kind of house rules do you use/propose to try to restore a balance of some sort?

So you don't like that an Allied player has the opportunity to make ahistoric moves even when a Japanese player has the opportunity to make ahistoric moves (with tremendous bonuses)?

I have to wonder if the IJN would have been able to maintain the element of surprise if they had planned on invading 30-40 locations all over the Pacific by 12/8/41. Seems at least doubtful to me.

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ORIGINAL: esteban
2. Do subs have more problems with minefields in WiTP than they did in UV? In UV, subs almost never hit mines. So far, in WiTP, none of my subs have hit mines either, but I am not sure if that has to do with minefields decaying (a great addition to the game, I might add) or that the subs themselves avoid the fields like they did in WiTP.

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3. Research and development on "advanced designs" like the Reppu. Has anyone been able to get a reduction in the Reppu or other "advanced design" delivery dates, using R&D they did in 1941/1942? I have heard one or two people say that you cannot make progress on producing one of these advanced aircraft until you produce the prior model in the upgrade path. (So you would have to get the A6M8 Zeke into production before you can research the Reppu, or the Jack or George before you can research the Shinden.

I suppose I can play a faux head to head game, with both sides stood down, and Japan's non-aircraft production turned off. That way I can test this out myself. But I wanted to see if anyone has already done this.

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ORIGINAL: Caltone

This is the main reason I have all but one PBEM on hold atm. We're going to restart once the patch arrives with the scenario that starts Dec 8th.

Even playing the historical 1st turn, the damage at Pearl cannot be replicated. Yes we all know it was not enough, but it did give them enough of a tactical advantage to hold on in decent shape till '43 when they can try and win on points.

First day strikes of other than Pearl open some interesting possibilities, but its still the best move to me. Funny after all these years thinking about the strategy here, now that I've got the chance I repeat Yammamoto's. Run wild the first 6 months, then hold on while you try and draw the US fleet into a decisive battle.

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ORIGINAL: Kid

I've played several games where we set house rules allowing the Japs to move on turn one and the Allied does not. Normall we also agree the Japs can't bomb any ports but PH.

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ORIGINAL: Drongo

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3. Research and development on "advanced designs" like the Reppu. Has anyone been able to get a reduction in the Reppu or other "advanced design" delivery dates, using R&D they did in 1941/1942? I have heard one or two people say that you cannot make progress on producing one of these advanced aircraft until you produce the prior model in the upgrade path. (So you would have to get the A6M8 Zeke into production before you can research the Reppu, or the Jack or George before you can research the Shinden.

I suppose I can play a faux head to head game, with both sides stood down, and Japan's non-aircraft production turned off. That way I can test this out myself. But I wanted to see if anyone has already done this.

Playing around with the production system in a test game is always a good idea as its not much fun when you ****-up your major fighter production during a serious game.

As for the A7M questions
-While starting R&D on the A7M early in the game (ie Dec '41) will still contribute to an earlier arrival date for the A7M, it just won't contribute much for some time. This is definitely one you should test for yourself (the editor is handy here) so that you know what to expect and can weigh it up against other R&D projects or production of available types.

-R&Ding previous upgrade step aircraft (like the A6M8) first is not neccessary to research the A7M.