|
Tazo -> RE: Guadalcanal scenario (8/14/2009 11:42:07 PM)
|
Have you guys already faced/tested the second jap-AI behavior consisting in an immediate raid on Rabaul with 1 CV followed by the 2 others, sinking everything around and damaging badly Rabaul airfield and port ? With nothing to oppose for the jap-player and intensive raids on Lae, no way for the planes and ships to escape or for the convoys from Truk to pass through, for a long time. A big hammer. A far more challenging configuration when playing the Jap - when AI TF's remain too long on station my home rule is also to not route subs, my initial patrol zones are respected.
Also, in all my campaign tests as US the Wasp was sunk by torpedoes each time... and was crossing the canal only once (the 1rst one) and never stationnary. Yes it is easy to play the allied side on the average but a good jap player may find surprisingly efficient ways, however Guadal seems impossible to retake if renforced and the airfield occupied by 120 airplanes in a few days - maybe too short delay for the ground complete victory compared to history. Maybe a fair non historical variant could be to accelerate randomly the jap arrivals in the theater, at least for the AI. The jap-AI can certainly be improved to preserve the 2 main CV's during the counter attack (late august) but performed agressively and quite good, for instance when the AI rush occurs in bad weather my carriers were surprised more than one time (jap big strike from nowhere and strike back uncoordinated...) but instead of keeping the front line the AI continued advancing to Lunga, an avoidable mistake since moreover strong surface TF's took part of the raid to sweep convoys.
However, when played for the first time by non veteran players this scenario is a challenging and intense experience, so a very good learning of the system and it's changes. We can also give Andy some ideas to reinforce the AI scripts - keep the TF moving is the simplest improvement, more careful CV distances/behavior during invasions another one, randomly choosing (or checking the best requirements in the player configuration) among more scripts intending to hurt/surprise/destabilize a player. Unpredictability is the best weapon of the AI to ensure both better chances of success of the aggressive attacks - a powerful psychological weapon either - and replayability - the player don't know things in advance and still has nasty scripts to discover when the required mistake of him will occur. The raid on Rabaul was a good and impressive Andy-AI type surprise (I believed in the pursuit of my full speed fast TF initialy supplying Guadal unpunished but it was a massive raid indeed). This can be iterated - perhaps it is already, I'll check. Hence the real challenge in Guadal is a Jap victory (either AI or player) as far as I can see.
TZ
|
|
|
|
