Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Here's how New Britain looks now (I edited the picture to remove the faulty Sea Area Boundaries Steve).

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Is this really what is intended/desired?

My only question concerns which of the New Ireland hexes borders 3 sea areas. As you have drawn it, the hex east of Rabaul borders the Bismarck, Coral Sea, and The Solomons. I had thought it was the hex NE of Rabaul. That would make the hex east of Rabaul border only 2 sea areas: Coral Sea and The Solomons.

It makes no difference to me; but I would need to edit the data file to produce what you have drawn.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Is this really what is intended/desired?

My only question concerns which of the New Ireland hexes borders 3 sea areas. As you have drawn it, the hex east of Rabaul borders the Bismarck, Coral Sea, and The Solomons. I had thought it was the hex NE of Rabaul. That would make the hex east of Rabaul border only 2 sea areas: Coral Sea and The Solomons.

It makes no difference to me; but I would need to edit the data file to produce what you have drawn.

From the WiF FE map, this is the southeast hex of New Ireland that is on 3 Sea Areas.
Same on the MWiF map before we moved Rabaul.

So I think that it should be that way.

quote:

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

I would support Option 2, for the naturalistic reason that it is not really believable that an invasion force from the Bismarck Sea could just slip past a hostile Rabaul heading south to invade the extreme southern tip of New Ireland, nor that an invasion force from the Coral Sea could just slip past a hostile Rabaul heading north to land northwest of it.  It is just about believable that an invasion force could approach the jungle hex from either side.

If that jungle hex is to become a three-zone land area, perhaps it should be changed to mountains ... as it will otherwise become quite a desirable piece of real-estate? (Perhaps make the extreme southern tip of New Ireland jungle in compensation, as that whole large hex is jungle in WiF FE?)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

quote:

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

I would support Option 2, for the naturalistic reason that it is not really believable that an invasion force from the Bismarck Sea could just slip past a hostile Rabaul heading south to invade the extreme southern tip of New Ireland, nor that an invasion force from the Coral Sea could just slip past a hostile Rabaul heading north to land northwest of it.  It is just about believable that an invasion force could approach the jungle hex from either side.

If that jungle hex is to become a three-zone land area, perhaps it should be changed to mountains ... as it will otherwise become quite a desirable piece of real-estate? (Perhaps make the extreme southern tip of New Ireland jungle in compensation, as that whole large hex is jungle in WiF FE?)

You provided more details to my reasoning.

We might consider making both the hex east and NE of Rabaul jungle. The WIF FE map offers 2 jungle hexes in those locations from which to attack Rabaul - though with marines only.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp
We have 2 places left in our countries list. #252 and #253 are free.
We could create the Territory of New Guinea, containing the northeast part of Papua, with 2 minor ports, Lae and Wewak.
This would render the conquest of the Papua more historical, as the Japanese controlled the northeast, exactly what correspond to the Territory of New Guinea. This would allow the Japanese to do the historical conquest they did of the northern half of Papua.

Edit : We would leave New Ireland, New Britain and the Admiralty Islands alone.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Norman42

Perhaps have New Guinea be one territory and New Britain/New Ireland/Admiralty Isles be another (Call it Bismarck Archipelago perhaps)

That way there is some differentiation of these mandates without the requirement of excessive Japanese forces to capture them.

Japan would need to occupy Rabaul to 'conquest' the NB/NI/AI territory(the crucial conquest for Japan), and Wewak and Lae to 'conquest' the New Guinea Territory. Conquest of the Papua Territory would therefore require the overland attack on Port Moresby, giving Japan the incentive that they had historically to attack southwards across the mountains(the Kokoda Trail failure), or to control the Coral Sea for a naval attack (which they also historically failed in the Battle of the Coral Sea).

This all would allow the realism of the mandates to be felt, while not excessively punishing the Japanese capabilities to take these places.

I think that this is a brilliant idea.
Also, we would go from 4 countries (Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, New Britain, Papua) to 3 (Territory of New Guinea, Papua, Bismarck Archipelago), disminishing the number of countries in the game .
Reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismarck_archipelago

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We might consider making both the hex east and NE of Rabaul jungle.

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ORIGINAL: hakon
One more thing. There is a small island group between New Ireland and Rabaul. This should make crossing the gap quite easy. If using those islands as staging points, the straight can be crossed by doing 8-10 km jumps, only. This is about half the distance from Gibraltar to Er Rif, for instance, and may warrant a straight crossing arrow between the Rabaul and the hex to the NE. Taking Rabaul this way should not be very hard for the side that has naval dominance. Though fighting your way through New Britain would involve qutie a lot of mountain fighting, the terrain within about 30 km from the actual town, is really quite flat. This should help ease any crossing or landing attempt.

quote:

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

There was a crossing arrow between Rabaul and south New Ireland in the original 1985 map, but it subsequently disappeared ... presumably for play-balance reasons.

quote:

ORIGINAL: hakon

I've been looking at google earth too, and to me the hex directly east of Rabaul (southern New Ireland) seems VERY mountainous. Not only are the mountains quite tall (up to about 2000m/6000ft), the terrain is also quite broken. Adding jungle to that only makes it even less accessible.

To the NE, the mountains gradually become lower, and the island of New Ireland much narrower. Modelling this as jungle seems correct.

Basically, I agree with the terrain of the map as drawn.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Mike Fisher
- the three clear hexes at the mouth of the fly river in s. PNG are inaccurate, even today that area is mostly lowland swamp. at most i would only retain the hex south of the river mouth as clear and convert the other two to marsh/swamp. it is debatable whether the remaining clear hex oughtn't be swamp as well, it would have been mostly swamp in the 40s. you don't want to attract activity to an area that in WW2 was very difficult, unhealthy and remote country.

quote:

i should just say which maps i used for mountains and land use, acknowledging there will have many changes since. the original digital map i did was not a copy of the WiF map, although i did use it as a reference. i can see that game play arguments would over time (and it is more than 10 years) would probably pull the digital map back towards the paper WiF map.

anyway the map i used for mountains was a world surface configuration / local relief map; the advantage of this is that it clearly shows mountainous areas. the problem with a contour map is that high elevations can be misinterpreted as rugged country when they may not be; conversely rugged country may be missed, especially on large scale maps. the sort of categories it displays are level plains (relief less than 30m), gentle slopes (30-90m), broken lands (>90m), hill studded plains (90-300m), mountain studded plains (>300m), hills (<300m), mountains (300-1500m), high mountains (alps, >1500m). this map was reprinted in the australian macquarie atlas, reference is:

- University of Chicago, Encyclopedia Britannica Inc 086, Compiled by Edwin H Hammond, A-51000-9874 (i could not find any matches with a Google search).

i used the last two categories for mountains, sometimes allowing for passes and gaps, and the latter category to place alpine hexsides. going by the Australia and Solomons maps mountains on the MWiF map seem pretty much consistent with the original source.

for land use i used a modern (probably 90s) Rand-McNally map that showed urban, cropland, mixed cropland and woodland, cropland and grazing, forest/woodland, swamp/marshland, sparse grass and shrub (desert), barren/tundra. its reference is B-590200-96. this required a bit of retro-estimation especially as regards clearance of forests and rainforest since WW2 (mostly in developing new world countries, forest cover in Europe and East Asia has been remarkably stable since the 1600s).

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ORIGINAL: Froonp
I believe that straits hexsides are only added to places where there are ferries that allow regular crossing of the straits.

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ORIGINAL: hakon

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp
I believe that straits hexsides are only added to places where there are ferries that allow regular crossing of the straits.

This sentence made me imagine the proud US marines trying to assault Gibraltar from a ferry.

Good laughs.

quote:

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney
No need to laugh. It's been done, by 'the proud British marines' from the cruise liner Canberra, still painted bright white, in San Carlos Water in 1982.

quote:

ORIGINAL: hakon

quote:

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney
No need to laugh. It's been done, by 'the proud British marines' from the cruise liner Canberra, still painted bright white, in San Carlos Water in 1982.

Against a defended beach?

What I am trying to say is, that for attack purposes, the existence of a ferry would have no effect. What matters is the distance that you have to cross, and to some extend how easy landing is when you get there. The existence of a ferry, or maybe more importantly, the harbors and roads associated with a ferry COULD have some effect for tracing supply, etc, later, but for the actual assault, it's irrelevant.

For infantry to attack Gibraltar from Er Rif would probably require regular amphibious landing craft. It's simply a bit too far for provisional rafts etc.

Hakon

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pre-existing ferries being the deciding factor

quote:

ORIGINAL: Norman42

quote:

pre-existing ferries being the deciding factor

I don't think its all that hard to believe really. 

More then the ferries themselves, I think the *infrastructure* available for sea transport is the important factor in crossing arrows.  Embarkation points, docks, dredged channels, navagation marks, and removed sandbars/reefs, etc.

Crossing a 40km water gap when both departure and arrival points are covered in unmapped and dangerous coral reefs, unmarked channels, and jungle covered landing zones(a la Rabaul > New Ireland) is a far cry from having those points be well marked sea passages, with warehouses, cranes, docks, roads, navagational buoys, etc etc like existed between Gibraltar and Er Rif, or many of the other current straits arrow areas.


Edit: That being said, there *should* be a crossing arrow at Dover/Calais. Guessing play balance is the reason there isn't.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp
We have 2 places left in our countries list. #252 and #253 are free.
We could create the Territory of New Guinea, containing the northeast part of Papua, with 2 minor ports, Lae and Wewak.
This would render the conquest of the Papua more historical, as the Japanese controlled the northeast, exactly what correspond to the Territory of New Guinea. This would allow the Japanese to do the historical conquest they did of the northern half of Papua.

Edit : We would leave New Ireland, New Britain and the Admiralty Islands alone.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Norman42

Perhaps have New Guinea be one territory and New Britain/New Ireland/Admiralty Isles be another (Call it Bismarck Archipelago perhaps)

That way there is some differentiation of these mandates without the requirement of excessive Japanese forces to capture them.

Japan would need to occupy Rabaul to 'conquest' the NB/NI/AI territory(the crucial conquest for Japan), and Wewak and Lae to 'conquest' the New Guinea Territory. Conquest of the Papua Territory would therefore require the overland attack on Port Moresby, giving Japan the incentive that they had historically to attack southwards across the mountains(the Kokoda Trail failure), or to control the Coral Sea for a naval attack (which they also historically failed in the Battle of the Coral Sea).

This all would allow the realism of the mandates to be felt, while not excessively punishing the Japanese capabilities to take these places.

I think that this is a brilliant idea.
Also, we would go from 4 countries (Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, New Britain, Papua) to 3 (Territory of New Guinea, Papua, Bismarck Archipelago), disminishing the number of countries in the game .
Reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismarck_archipelago

OK, so I would like to put this one to the foreground again.

Presently, in this area we have 4 Territories :
- Admiralty Islands
- New Ireland (Where Kavieng -- named location only -- is)
- New Britain (Where Rabaul is)
- Papua (Where Lae, Wewak & Port Moresby are)

The historical situation was that all of them (NE part of Papua only) plus Bougainville were part of the "Territory of New Guinea" Territory.

So, the solutions we came up with to be more historical were :

1)
- Create the "Territory of New Guinea" Territory, containing the northeast part of Papua, with 2 minor ports, Lae and Wewak.
- Leave New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty Islands and Bougainville as they are now. Bougainville is unsatisfactory, as it is part of New Ireland here.
- Leave Papua as it is now.

2)
- Create the "Territory of New Guinea" Territory, containing the northeast part of Papua, with 2 minor ports, Lae and Wewak.
- Create the "Bismarck Archipelago" Territory that would include New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty Islands and Bougainville (New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty Islands would be deleted as independent Territories in the game).
- Leave Papua as it is now.

So, what are the people's opinions about that ?
Mike, as the original WiF FE map designer, any opinion or hint you'd like to share as to why the "Territory of New Guinea" does not appear on the WiF FE maps ? (You can't even imagine the tons of questions I would have to ask you if I dared).

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp
We have 2 places left in our countries list. #252 and #253 are free.
We could create the Territory of New Guinea, containing the northeast part of Papua, with 2 minor ports, Lae and Wewak.
This would render the conquest of the Papua more historical, as the Japanese controlled the northeast, exactly what correspond to the Territory of New Guinea. This would allow the Japanese to do the historical conquest they did of the northern half of Papua.

Edit : We would leave New Ireland, New Britain and the Admiralty Islands alone.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Norman42

Perhaps have New Guinea be one territory and New Britain/New Ireland/Admiralty Isles be another (Call it Bismarck Archipelago perhaps)

That way there is some differentiation of these mandates without the requirement of excessive Japanese forces to capture them.

Japan would need to occupy Rabaul to 'conquest' the NB/NI/AI territory(the crucial conquest for Japan), and Wewak and Lae to 'conquest' the New Guinea Territory. Conquest of the Papua Territory would therefore require the overland attack on Port Moresby, giving Japan the incentive that they had historically to attack southwards across the mountains(the Kokoda Trail failure), or to control the Coral Sea for a naval attack (which they also historically failed in the Battle of the Coral Sea).

This all would allow the realism of the mandates to be felt, while not excessively punishing the Japanese capabilities to take these places.

I think that this is a brilliant idea.
Also, we would go from 4 countries (Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, New Britain, Papua) to 3 (Territory of New Guinea, Papua, Bismarck Archipelago), disminishing the number of countries in the game .
Reference : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismarck_archipelago

OK, so I would like to put this one to the foreground again.

Presently, in this area we have 4 Territories :
- Admiralty Islands
- New Ireland (Where Kavieng -- named location only -- is)
- New Britain (Where Rabaul is)
- Papua (Where Lae, Wewak & Port Moresby are)

The historical situation was that all of them (NE part of Papua only) plus Bougainville were part of the "Territory of New Guinea" Territory.

So, the solutions we came up with to be more historical were :

1)
- Create the "Territory of New Guinea" Territory, containing the northeast part of Papua, with 2 minor ports, Lae and Wewak.
- Leave New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty Islands and Bougainville as they are now. Bougainville is unsatisfactory, as it is part of New Ireland here.
- Leave Papua as it is now.

2)
- Create the "Territory of New Guinea" Territory, containing the northeast part of Papua, with 2 minor ports, Lae and Wewak.
- Create the "Bismarck Archipelago" Territory that would include New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty Islands and Bougainville (New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty Islands would be deleted as independent Territories in the game).
- Leave Papua as it is now.

So, what are the people's opinions about that ?
Mike, as the original WiF FE map designer, any opinion or hint you'd like to share as to why the "Territory of New Guinea" does not appear on the WiF FE maps ? (You can't even imagine the tons of questions I would have to ask you if I dared).

Well, not mucj feedback on this one, really. Except for Norman.
But not much people opposing the change either.

Also, I've just received the "WW2 Pacific Island Guide" that I don't know who linked here from google, and there is a chapter about this area that pretty much describe the "Territory of New Guinea" as a 3rd solution :

3)
- Create the "Territory of New Guinea" Territory, containing the northeast part of Papua with 2 minor ports, Lae and Wewak, and New Britain, New Ireland, Admiralty Islands and Bougainville (New Britain, New Ireland*, Admiralty Islands* would be deleted as independent Territories in the game).
- Leave Papua as it is now.

* Need to check these again to see if they are part of the territory.

I think we ought to do that change Steve, as it was discussed here and it seems that the historical way of things would be better respected that way : conquering Rabaul, Lae and Wewak gives the Japanese their historical gains, as opposed to never being able to conquer their historical gains in Papua without also taking Port Moresby.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
I am not convinced.

Why should conquering those 3 ports give the Japanese all their historical gains in the other nearby islands? Why shouldn't they have to visit each of those islands (a marine on foot could do that) to take possession of them?

What you are proposing is to modify the definition of a territory's boundaries so the Japanese can more readily achieve the historical outcome.

quote:

Instead, I would be much happier working from fundamental principles, with: (1) the definition of territories worked out as best as we can, and (2) taking control of territories based on a single standard rule. Then we just let the chips fall where they may - que sera sera.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Instead, I would be much happier working from fundamental principles, with: (1) the definition of territories worked out as best as we can, and (2) taking control of territories based on a single standard rule. Then we just let the chips fall where they may - que sera sera.

quote:

What you are proposing is to modify the definition of a territory's boundaries so the Japanese can more readily achieve the historical outcome.