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Elessar2 -> War in the Pacific Release thread (9/13/2021 10:16:43 PM)
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Version .815
Version Notes .815
OBSOLETE Hotfix version .814
[Forgot to increase turn lengths in the description below from an early alpha value. Also recalculated the expected tech times in accordance with the correct # of turns per year.]
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Strategic Command WitP Beta Version Notes
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OK, here it is, the long-awaited Pacific Theatre scenario. I copied over and changed a bunch of default scripts, and added a few of my own; it is quite likely some may have the wrong countries, hexes or dates or something, so just bear with the process.
Files:
* Put the Campaign Folder & Campaign Files into your MY Games Campaign USER folder for SC: WaW (i.e. NOT into the default game directory, which is for official campaigns that came with the official install).
* The Land Combat Table is simply an easy way to see the land combat changes that I've made.
* Vanilla AI Files: Pacific AI scripts from the default 1939 campaign copied over AS IS (i.e. will require quite a bit of work to convert them to this map & scenario).
* This file
* Listing of militia spawn events (typically triggered only by the close approach of one or more enemy units)
OK, here it is, the long-awaited Pacific Theatre scenario. I copied over and changed a bunch of default scripts, and added a few of my own; it is quite likely some may have the wrong countries, hexes or dates or something, so just bear with the process.
***TWO IMPORTANT NOTES***:
1. There are **NO AI scripts** (as explained below). If you attempt a game vs. the AI, it basically won't do much of anything other than short range attacks, reinforcements, and upgrades.
2. This is essentially a beta at the moment, and will need some additional playtesting to get the balance right and squash any remaining bugs.
3. I am using SIPRES' counter set for Crispy's Fall Weiss series of scenarios (since the scale is corps & divisions). The use of any other counter set may have weird effects with units having the wrong NATO symbols...
Changelog
1. The map. This is officially been built upon the efforts of samspackman, who in turn based it off of Gary Grigsby's War in the Pacific AE map. The hex grain is opposite in SC than it is in WitP, but he did a good job reconciling the two schemes. I basically added all the ports, roads and railroads, quite a few new island bases, and used lake hexes to create atolls, which visually worked out pretty well I'd say. For playability reasons I made Borneo a separate country to give it is own convoy line; this will minimize the issues of the DEI's oil being in one basket, but will provide yet another target for Allied subs outside of the 8 lane highway in the South China Sea. Korea is now a conquered country, also allowing for a convoy route.
The scale is 40 statute miles per hex. The United Kingdom is on the map-in the extreme NE corner of the map, with 2 sets of 4 loop hexes each. Decided adding Germany would be too much of a pain, given that her contributions to the Pacific involved just a few commerce raiders & u-boats. Italian East Africa was British by the start date.
2. Weather. Based this as best I could off of Wikipedia data for all major cities. You'll likely find China to be much wetter than in vanilla; it may not be raining a lot on any given day, per se, but in quite a few areas there was often fog to deal with. I put in the Intratropical Convergence Zone (the equator itself is indicated by a red line across the map); basically +/- 4 hexes north and south of the equator will get a lot of rain and mud. Zones were extensively interconnected; interesting to see how that works out.
3. 9 day turns, alternating, so effectively 18 days between each player turn, 20 turns per year per player. Simultaneous gives a huge edge to the first player (Axis) in terms of knowing what his opponent's weather will be like, and, unlike in say WiF, there is no mechanism for the initiative to flip. Income has been normalized to 28 days; the US will outproduce Japan (at the latter's high water mark) at about a 2:1 ratio (500 to 250), which is likely Japan-friendly and thus subject to a US-favorable tweak in the future.
4. Tech operates on 32221 for levels 1-5 respectively, either 2 or 3 max chits depending on the tech, price reduced a bit per chit to compensate (~70-80% of vanilla's costs). I disliked vanilla's all or none approach to the key techs; sometimes you want a tech to percolate along at a low but not null level when other things have more priority (this is actually how SC used to operate note, with up to FIVE chits possible per category). Vanilla's 2nd chit also was too unbalancing, allowing one to get something in ~6 months. Correlated to the turn length, 1 chit progression [for levels 2-4] will be ~2 years, ~9 months slower than vanilla's single chit; 2 chits will take ~1 year, 3 months faster than vanilla's single; 3 chits will take ~8 months, ~2 months slower than vanilla's 2.
Japan has some early advantages, such as w/ Long-Range Air & Naval Weaponry (reflecting the Long-Lance and derivatives), while the US gets an edge in Spying & Intelligence as well as in the industrial techs. Catchup & S&I bonuses will count for more proportionally than in vanilla given the lower chit % levels. Since the 2 chit investment will be more expensive than the vanilla single chit investment AND I left the maximum MPP investment levels more or less unchanged, this will require more judicious choices and will hopefully cut down on the "everybody has Level X in every key tech" syndrome that so often happens late in games.
Got some new tech goodies in store tho. I used Crispy's Production techs to good use, replacing his Armor one with a Naval one. This means that if you want more planes or ships, you will have to spring for these techs. This will model the Japanese issues involving pilot training & engine shortages on the one hand, and limited slipway/dock availability for new ship construction & existing ship upkeep on the other. Amphib Tech will also increase the build limits of Special Forces. Fighters now have Ground Attack capability (with some antiship bonuses), and Subs have AA (at half the effectiveness as surface ships, but with 3 levels available). HQ's have Infantry Weapons, in case they end up having to act as defenders somewhere.
Tech descriptions are now much more specific, esp. in terms of the numerical bonuses provided.
I decided to use an otherwise empty slot for Radar Technology (2 levels for the moment, max 2 chits 140 cost per chit). US & the UK start with level 1. This provides several benefits to certain units:
Fighters get a +0.5 bonus per level to their attack factors vs. Bombers and Carriers (but not other fighters). Since 90% of the time this will be during interceptions, I think that will work out ok even tho it would also give them extra power when strafing/bombing said units. [The game makes no distinction between either, tho terrain can help with defense]
Surface combat ships get a +0.5 bonus per level to their Naval Attack levels vs. other surface ships (to reflect the advantage of gun-laying radar directors).
Carriers get a +0.5 bonus per level to their Defense against all air units. [I considered applying it to their attack factors but unlike fighters those are used in both interceptions, escorts, AND bombing, which would make it too unbalancing. But Carriers don't get any AA OR Fighter Tech bonuses, so this provides a way to maintain their survivability as the war goes on.]
Submarines get a +0.5 bonus per level to their Naval Attack ratings against all other surface ships, + 2 MPP Raid Multiplier/+5 National Morale loss per level, AND a 20% evasion chance per level as well [as of .815]. Turns out that this roll is applied to ANY attack against the sub (reflecting for ex. the US SD & SJ radars).
5. In a fit of pique I took off all at-start tech chits, leaving each power with a large pool of MPPs to spend on pretty much anything the heart desires. I disliked in vanilla being stuck with suboptimal choices which didn't fit my strategy, was too confining, which made for predictable play. Now you don't know if your opponent will buy a bunch of ships, tech, or what have you (tho the graphs can give you clues of course). If this proves to be too unbalancing I'll put in a few single chit "must-haves".
6. China: as indicated in some comments I've made about this, there are a LOT more partisan hexes, both supply hits (32; all those are on resources) as well as spawns (71; yes you read that right). Note the front lines are historical; Japan has much less territory than in even the 1939 vanilla scenario. There are a lot of Japanese garrisons available, but of course you likely need many of those for island defense. This will force some tough choices for the Japanese player in terms of where to allocate his limited manpower (the ability to expand the number of front line units is limited, which is historical-toyed with making a Production tech for that, will implement for next version).
7. MPP income: still tweaking this: Japan will need to be increased some based on testing, the Commonwealth nations decreased a bit. The US has a lot more room in terms of Industrial Tech to grow, however. [Went with +15% vs. +25% respectively as of .815, other countries also tweaked, see .815 notes]
8. I also disliked teleporting MPPs; whenever humanly possible, I made a convoy route. The only exceptions are from unconquered countries like Japanese-controlled resources in China. This means tons of targets for Allied subs, but with some for the Japanese to raid as well. [Note I haven't added all Allied routes for countries within the Japanese high-water mark area yet.] Note Japan's numerous convoys do NOT benefit from Industrial Tech...
[There is a bug which has significantly decreased convoy income, will have to wait on the devs for that fix...]
9. Australia has been made a major country. I've gone back and forth on this; one benefit is giving them a Lend-Lease US convoy line, but one pain is that they would have to rely on their own tech, and not the UK's (tho catchup bonuses will help). India is basically in the same boat but I left it at the default vanilla major status (again for now). Thanks to a recent forum post which reminded me that all Aussie supply sources are secondary, made Sydney a primary one (thus allowing full ship repair & refit).
10. Pearl Harbor. I made the start date the historical December 7, 1941 date, with Kido Butai in the historical position 200 miles N of Oahu. An alternate scenario that starts in say October is doable at some point, if the Japanese player wants to avoid a Pearl strike & do something else with his carriers.
11. Land units: corps and divisional level; note the IJA called their larger formations "armies" but in terms of size they were typically the same as the corps in western formations. I wanted to narrow the gap between corps and divisions, so there is currently no distinction between "soft" and "hard" infantry units (i.e. stats are the same against both). Stats certainly subject to tweaking as playtesting indicates; Special Forces may be overpowered but have to balance them against corps and divisions. Note SF build limits can be increased by the Amphib Tech. Garrisons now have 6 hit points not 5 (should make them more hardy when acting as island defenders).
I included a text file in the zip showing the relative land attack & defense ratings in a convenient table.
The Japanese player now has a chance to build some Thai infantry units, which, given the IJA's manpower issues, may be desirable.
Engineers have been given more front-line oomph, good on defense, -2 De-entrenchment.
Scorched Earth is more stringent than in vanilla: cities etc. 50-70%, resources 40-60%.
12. Air units: I had a series of tough decisions to make in terms of aircraft ranges, esp. scout ranges. Right now scouting distances are pretty liberal, going 5/7/9/11/13/7 for fighters/tactical/medium/strategic/maritime/carriers, then +1 per Long Range tech, tho I recently reduced them down to these levels. The issue is that scouting is purely binary: detect everything inside the radius (except for submerged subs), detect nothing outside, but in bad weather detect nothing.
I may cut down said ranges even more if they prove to be too unbalancing, esp. if subs have the unenviable decision to go in fast and be detected, or go in submerged but slow. [Any AI that is developed will thus likely struggle w/ its subs] Naval scouting is also an issue vs. Ampibious Transports, so I set it such that even at +5 tech even Maritime Bombers can't spot a Long-Range Amphib at its maximum movement range from an enemy target (20 + tech). Note one can still scout twice manually, and strike ranges are longer for all land-based air, giving you a chance of spotting units outside of the default scouting radius. All air units have 2 actions; this is to balance them against fleet carriers who have their default two.
I did give all air units more Action Points to make it easier to rebase them, but lowered escort ranges a bit (vanilla gave some very silly extended ranges, kept driving me crazy when a fighter halfway across the map kept escorting my bombers).
13. Ships. Each capital ship counter represents one individual vessel. For Cruisers they represent 2; for Destroyers ~4-6, Subs ~5-8. Escort Carriers were replaced with Light Carriers (switching in Naval Weaponry for Anti-Sub tech; Naval Warfare will still give both types of carriers some small tech bonuses against subs), so there is basically no room for CVE's, which is fine since I dislike having say 20 of the buggers swarming around the map. That was the main issue behind doing double cruisers and etc.; put too many ships down and it will become a massive spamfest. Decided that all of the "tween" Japanese carriers (e.g. Hiyo and Junyo) were to be considered to be Light, not Fleet CVs; they typically didn't operate with Kido Butai due to their slow speed. Japanese carriers have a -0.5 defense penalty to reflect the subpar Japanese damage control. Carriers across the board now have +0.5 extra ground unit attack capability, +5% morale loss, +0.5 for both per each level of Naval Weaponry tech (Resource attack too). I wanted to ensure that they would be effective in softening up enemy-held islands. Naval Weaponry has 3 levels now, note.
The Kongos are now Battlecruisers; the Yamatos are Dreadnoughts, with +1 superior stats vs. default Battleships (Didn't like vanilla's +2 Experience on top of a regular Battleship which would vanish if they took any heavy damage). The US can build their own DN units if desired (the Montanas), also gave the British the Lions but they were virtually equivalent to the Iowas. Battlecruisers were renamed Fast Battleships [.810: to help differentiate the slower prewar US BB's from the faster modern ones]. Ships from Destroyers on up now have overlapping Zones of Control for 2 or more vessels, -8 movement penalty for any enemy which sails into said Zones (as do Coastal Guns). [Thanks to Hairog for his idea here.] As playtesting may reveal, the penalty is subject to either an increase or switching all applicable vessels to single ZoCs. This alas meant that I had to eliminate single unit ZoCs for major land units, which is more than an equitable trade given the heavy naval emphasis in this scenario and the lack of army-sized units on the ground. However, note there are no evasion chances for any ship, including transports (except for shore bombardment, where I have already reduced damage received back). I may expand the number of destroyers to provide the needed screening units. [.815] I instead modded Motor Torpedo Boats to be Destroyer Escorts, giving countries a cut-rate alternative to protect convoy lines.
Discovered that Shore Bombardment by surface ships in vanilla was basically almost completely worthless, so progressively beefed up everything from Light Cruisers on up. All Capital Surface Ships do -1 entrenchment when performing shore bombardment, attack ratings against land targets now range from +0.5 for cruisers up to +1.5 for Battleships & Dreadnoughts. Cruisers now have a better chance of doing damage to installations, and naval defense of (regular) ports has been lessened from 2 to 1 (found it silly to have the larger ships lose 2 points per attack, esp. when cruisers wouldn't do any damage at all). Any units on a resource now have a base 40% chance of being hit when bombarded (or bombed by Strategic Bombers), +10% for each level of Naval Weapons and Strategic Bombers respectively.
After some back-and-forth on ship speeds, I have gone back to vanilla's Naval Cruise setting of 2.0; I was concerned about the "Warp Speed" feature (where an entire fleet can be rapidly zipped over to threatened areas), but discovered during editing that there is a hard cap on normal ship movement of 25 spaces (destroyers). Ship movement rates have been tweaked for average ship class speeds based off of the 25 figure (~.70 of average top speeds, so 23 for a heavy cruiser, which usually could go ~33 knots). Subs as per the historical record are now slower than the combat surface ships, note.
There are no longer any "surprise" penalties, land OR sea--if there is one "traditional" SC feature that I've come to loathe, it's that (the editor misleadingly calls it the "hidden attacker readiness bonus"-should be "hidden defender"). Aside from the silliness of trying to model a low-level tactical situation on a large-scale strategic simulation, units on war footing were very rarely tactically surprised just by sailing or moving into unscouted areas (this is why they had radar, recon units/planes and support ships like destroyers): historically it was MUCH more likely that the "nonmoving" side would be surprised, not the moving, since the latter is typically looking for a fight. The only exception is for subs because of their stealthy profile; cranked from the default 25% to 50%, which seems apropros and will make them more dangerous. In addition, ships no longer get a readiness bonus if they attack before they move (land units still benefit from prepared attacks of that sort however).
I wrote some new decision events, including one on the first turn for the Japanese player to choose 4 more Fleet Carriers over the 1st 3 Yamatos (albeit with a fairly large national morale penalty and a moderate MPP penalty). I also allowed Japan to convert the 2 Chitose-class submarine tenders to Light Carriers.
14. Atomic bombs. I _was_ going to have them replace Rockets & the associated tech (1000 MPP per chit!), until I found out that they are, inexplicably, NOT transportable by sea. Then after testing it (and writing a teleporting script), found out that the range penalties reduced the damage to pitiful levels at the distance from the Marianas to Japan. So I had to go back to using events, but now instead of a ridiculously cheap 600 MPP cost charged in the summer of 1945 when the war is all but over anyway, the US player will have to fork over 3000 MPPs total (-50 over 60 turns) starting in 1942. He also now gets 1 decision per bomb (3 total, including one destined for Osaka in September).
15. Diplomacy will be of limited use in this scenario, so I may limit or even eliminate the number of chits available per side (there typically wasn't the massive kind of wheeling and dealing that happened in Europe, not by the historical start date at least, and w/ most key countries already at war the opportunities would be scarce in any event). Costs per chit have been doubled across the board.
16. AI. Right now none of the AI files have been converted/modified/created. I am deeply skeptical that even a marginally challenging noncheating AI can be made for this scenario, even if I slave away on the Fleet scripts to my satisfaction. [Tech & Purchase scripts & bonus units are easy peasy by comparison] An example of one issue that no script can remedy is that damaged ships will beeline towards the nearest friendly port for repairs, even if they are supply 5 ports which can only repair up to strength 8. US ships often end up parked in Russian ports as well-in both cases they'll simply languish there (Aleutians too) for the rest of the game if they are far enough away from the main battle areas. With the necessary reduction in turn income the AI may be less inclined to buy expensive stuff (i.e. carriers and battleships). Even if you don't peek at the Fleet scripts the AI in vanilla is pretty predictable, and the time put into crafting a bunch of new ones isn't likely to be worth it.
I decided to provide the Pacific-only AI vanilla scripts in a separate zip, if someone is interested in converting them over. As said the Purchase and Tech ones would need a major reworking, the Fleet & Amphibious a lot of careful thought (and tons of coding) to guide the AI to its objectives successfully.
17. Future: may add synthetic oil capacity for the Japanese along with a penalty to MPPs and/or supply if the DEI is retaken by the Allies (based off of some Crispy scripts). In addition to an October '41 version & a 1937 one, I may add an ahistorical alternate scenario akin to John the 3rd's ones for WitP which give the Japanese quite a few more ships. 2 Ironman ones (for each side) may also be done, but only if those pesky AI scripts get any work by someone...
18. Design limitation frustrations: The biggest one is no stacking. I fully grasp why Hubert did it the way he did it, but it means that a large task force will take up many hundreds of square miles on the map, affecting things like spotting ranges and so on. Already mentioned automatic spotting.
--Elessar 9-13-21
--Elessar 10-17-21
Thanks:
samspackman for his map.
Crispy for giving me permission to use some of his scripts.
SIPRES for his divisional counter set.
Hubert & Bill for helping me to track down & fix some bugs
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