Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

quote:

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

Well, in the game as it exists you can only give a Fast Transport TF orders to evacuate. Only a limited range of ship types can go into such a TF. In AE, can you put whatever ships you like into this kind of TF? If not, your options may be unduly limited.

AE has added Amphibious TF, which can do evacuations.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

There are two types of troop transport TFs in AE - regular transport and amphibious.

Amphibious - which Yammy is showing - is meant to load combat-ready troops in combat mode and use them to invade an enemy base. Combat mode is less efficient than "regular" load and also requires the TFs load a miniumum 3-days supply for the troops (even if you select Load Troops Only). Amphibious TFs can also perform other missions that you would expect - they can unload at non-port or poor-port locations better than regular transports** and they do a better job of evacuations - includding loading troops from non-port hexes.
...

** Note that the ability of Amphibious TFs to unload a small ports is primarily based on amphibious capability of the ships in the TF, not the TF mission. APAs, with lots of embarked landing craft, will greatly speed up unloading at the dinky little port that Yammy always wants to use. A civilian freighter not so much.

You'll get used to all this. As mentioned somewhere up in the thread, loading and unloading is much more realistic in AE. That means it's harder, slower, and you have to do more planning. You especially have to make sure you are using the right ships for the right task.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

Japan does get a few interesting amphibious ships - the Army landing ships. Classed as LSD, with Shinshu Maru available on the first day.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

I send them to Bangkok rather than northern Malaya for several reasons.
1) They unload faster and out of harms way. Bangkok is a level 4 port and thus can handle 48,000 tons of shipping docked at any given time, so when the ships arrive I form 2 TFs. The first is docked and unloading. The 2nd is anchored (and subject to sub attack) so I put all my ASW ships in this TF. This one will unload, but much slower. When a ship in the docked TF is unloaded, I split it from the TF and disband it and add more to the docked TF until they are all unloaded. When I have enough disbanded in port to do something else with, I will form a TF and head out to points unknown, again using waypoints to take me where I want to go.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Local Yokel

Another question, if I may.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

I send them to Bangkok rather than northern Malaya for several reasons.
1) They unload faster and out of harms way. Bangkok is a level 4 port and thus can handle 48,000 tons of shipping docked at any given time, so when the ships arrive I form 2 TFs. The first is docked and unloading. The 2nd is anchored (and subject to sub attack) so I put all my ASW ships in this TF. This one will unload, but much slower. When a ship in the docked TF is unloaded, I split it from the TF and disband it and add more to the docked TF until they are all unloaded. When I have enough disbanded in port to do something else with, I will form a TF and head out to points unknown, again using waypoints to take me where I want to go.

As the game stands, TF's are immune from submarine attack in level 3 ports and above. I can understand this not applying to midget submarine attacks, where penetration of a defended harbour was the essence of the exercise. But in AE do all submarines get to attack TF's in port? Is there no port level that confers immunity from the 'base squatters'?

quote:

ORIGINAL: rroberson

Whoa! 24 hours for the first turn.  Hmm maybe this isn't for me after all.  I like to micro manage as much as the next guy.  But i'd like a shot at finishing a game as well.  Are you changing all unit dispostiions?  Or is there a Historical scenario that plays out the first turn as it happened?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Charles_22

quote:

ORIGINAL: rroberson

Whoa! 24 hours for the first turn.  Hmm maybe this isn't for me after all.  I like to micro manage as much as the next guy.  But i'd like a shot at finishing a game as well.  Are you changing all unit dispostiions?  Or is there a Historical scenario that plays out the first turn as it happened?

You haven't played WITP? It depends on how much you want to adjust the first turn. It seems most people want to dedicate that first turn to knocking out most of the adjustments at once, and not space it out, though naturally some things such as changing factories may be waited on till a following turn. I think it's everyone's guess, that things are generally easier to handle then because at that point there's nothing in your control yet (plus they may want to get control ASAP). If you wait till a later turn, especially to do much with your fleets, you start to wonder if what you're seeing is what you ordered, or if the game set it up that way. With doing it all at once, you know it's all you. The first turn is a fluke basically, though if you're doing a lot of planning, turns afterwards can still be long, they're not even close to that long though.

quote:

ORIGINAL: rroberson

Thus my question if there was a "historical" first turn available like vanilla.

quote:

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

quote:

ORIGINAL: rroberson

Thus my question if there was a "historical" first turn available like vanilla.

Having only played Japanese in PBEM in stock WITP with "historical start" for the reasons you name I can sympathize - and yes there is a "historical start" option in AE as well.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

quote:

ORIGINAL: Panther Bait

Ummm, wouldn't it stand to reason that in an atypically more devastating naval attack (as stated by the design team this attack was atypical) that flak losses would be lower than usual?  Meaning the damage was worse to the ships because the flak was unusually ineffective?  Or even the opposite, a lucky combination of early hits severely reduced later flak and therefore later waves of attack craft were more effective than usual? 

If the design team knows off hand, what is a typical range of Japanese air losses that you are seeing the PH attacks?

Right, but my point was/is Pearl was a unique event in the war. In game all attacks are treated the same, so the results we see for the Pearl attack will be the same kind of results we will see for all attacks (unless they've added something new to the engine).

So that said, the Pearl attack should probably always be worse than historical when it come to flak losses, as historically it was a total surprise, but the game should treat it as a normal attack if the game can't differentiate the Pearl raid from other attacks that occur in game.

If the average result is what Terminus posted (10-40 shot down out of 300+ attackers), then we can assume all attacks in game will see total surprise levels of losses instead of historical *wartime footing* levels of flak losses, which were much higher than Pearl.

Jim

IN PERPETUUM SINGULARIS SEDES

quote:

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

Docked and disbanded are 2 different things. Minis hit the disbanded ships (I think anyways, I have never seen them attack the TFs at Pearl). I dont think they would attack a docked TF. So (as far as I have seen) docked TFs are immune to sub attacks, period, regardless of port size. If Im wrong, Im sure Don will correct me

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I don't know about the rest of you, but the first time I loaded up WITP to play a full first turn of the grand campaign, I was quite daunted and it took me _hours_ just to look over everything and form a mental picture of what I had. Then I had to start planning... it was easily two days before I had that first turn done, but once I did it I had a much better grasp of WITP. After that, first turns generally took more like 3-4 hours and once I got further into the game, turns were taking me 15-45 minutes depending on what was going on.

Now with AE you will have that same experience, because so much will be new and different in terms of the map and the detailed orders of battle. Expect that your first turn (especially for the Japanese) will take a long time just to wrap your head around things. Try the small scenarios first, try playing against the AI first, etc. Once you get past that first learning "cliff" it will become much easier as it did with WITP and it will take less time.

It is also important to emphasize that with AE, there is more to setup on the first turn also in terms of getting patrol routes set, setting up waypoints and such. But these things save you time in the long run and make it easier to manage certain things than it was in WITP.

Nevertheless, there's a reason why we made WITP a requirement to own AE. We don't want folks who haven't played WITP to jump into AE without any preparation. WITP vets will be fine, given some time to learn the ropes.

Regards,

- Erik

quote:

the Japs only start with 2 - 45 plane groups that can be broken down into 3 squadrons of 15 each

quote:

ORIGINAL: Grotius

quote:

the Japs only start with 2 - 45 plane groups that can be broken down into 3 squadrons of 15 each

I had been under the impression that aircraft would generally be organized into chutai, not larger groups. Is this not the case?

quote:


I'm always reluctant to break down air groups in vanilla WITP because of past bad experience splitting and recombining units. E.g., I could use 9 Kates on a CV right now, but I don't know how the engine would react if I split a 27-plane group into three and disbanded one into the CV's Kate group. If AE still features larger air groups, are there any restrictions (e.g., rules, database limits or bugs) on breaking them down and recombining them?

quote:

ORIGINAL: dwesolick
Since there have been a lot of changes (WitP to AE), and since we apparently still have a bit of a wait until final release, would it be possible to release a bit of the manual early? Not all of it, but perhaps a chapter or even a few pages. Particularly if it covers big changes, such as TF loading/ports, etc...

Erik Rutins
CEO, Matrix Games LLC



For official support, please use our Help Desk: http://www.matrixgames.com/helpdesk/

Freedom is not Free.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger
Lilys arent really worth keeping, but I need a squadron of Lily-2s to convert a Babs squadron later, so I wont change the Lily factory yet (since it will auto upgrade to -2s in Apr 42).

quote:

ORIGINAL: pad152

Aircraft upgrades

Why do we see aircraft upgrading to the same types?

A5M4-Claude_________upgrades to A5M4-Claude?
Ki-15-II Babs_________upgrades to Ki-15-II Babs?

Versus
A6M2 Zero ___________upgrades to A6M2 Zen Baku-rd?

How does AE handle pre-production aircraft (like the Ki-44 Tojo's) that appear before R&D & production is complete?

Does AE handle aircraft downgrades, (airgroup of Ki-43 Oscars arrives but none in pool), will the group be formed with Ki-27 Nates?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

quote:

ORIGINAL: dwesolick
Since there have been a lot of changes (WitP to AE), and since we apparently still have a bit of a wait until final release, would it be possible to release a bit of the manual early? Not all of it, but perhaps a chapter or even a few pages. Particularly if it covers big changes, such as TF loading/ports, etc...

Yes, some of it will be released early as part of the promotion, but not most of it. I expect we'll release the first bit in a week or two.