Do you like WW2 grand strategy naval wargames?

[Llyranor]

War in the Pacific - courtesy of publisher Matrix Games - is a WW2 naval wargame focusing on the entire Pacific end of the war, starting from Pearl Harbor until potentially 1946. The scope is huge, and the amount of detail is apparently quite unsurpassed (down to individual ships and planes - which means thousands and thousands of units). It seems to be a WEGO turn-based system (similar to CM), with each turn being from one day to one week. Each hex is 60 miles.

 

That's a lot of hexes.

 

I've been hearing mostly good things from the game, and the reviews from wargamers are quite positive. Though, it's really from a strategic/operational level, with you as Fleet Commander. You don't directly control the tactical encounters.

 

Anyway, I never got the game, from the steep price and the fact that I couldn't testdrive it via a demo first.

 

Matrix is having a time-limited (ends tomorrow, actually) 30% discount, dropping it to a more reasonable price. http://www.matrixgames.com/news.asp?nid=372

 

I probably still won't get it at this point. Matrix is getting my money, but it's be for when the CC3 remake comes out.

 

So, alanschu, if you're still alive, in case you haven't received my harmless letter containing no dangerous materials at all yet, this might be something for you, since you apparently like naval wargames.

 

It certainly sounds more appealing than that Pacific Storm game, which sounds like it could just be dumbed down to accommodate too many tastes at once.

[Big Bottom]

I think Company of Heroes is about as much as my brain can handle, that much strategy would surely make my inner-general quiver.

[Krookie]

But Big Bottom, it's all the stress of a real war at your finger tips!

[alanschu]

I'm named alanschu!

 

And what I mean by that is I am TOFTT.

Edited December 20, 2006 by alanschu

[alanschu]

Heh, this game is pretty deep.

[Llyranor]

Wait, so you went for it?

[alanschu]

TOFTT = Take one for the Team.

 

So yes.

 

I zipped through the manual and the tutorials, and thought it was a good idea to just dive into the main campaign!

 

I think I'm going to start a smaller scale one now. A lot of stuff to think about, and I'm still learning the game.

 

Although I did whoop-ass on a submarine with a ASW taskforce I created out of pearl harbour. That felt cool!

Edited December 21, 2006 by alanschu

[Llyranor]

I'll want more expanded impressions later on.

 

Offer ends today, but I probably won't bite yet. If you do sound overly positive about it, though, it might be something I'll consider along the line. Not having 30% off won't be a big deal if the game is actually worth it.

 

Though, I still have my massive backlog of wargames to go through, not to mention the upcoming CC's.

Edited December 21, 2006 by Llyranor

[alanschu]

It's a much slower paced game that I have historically played, but so far it seems pretty neat.

[Llyranor]

Slow can be a good thing.

[alanschu]

It wasn't a criticism, just an observation.

 

 

Oh noes, north phillipines has fallen.

 

It also seems as though my failure to move the Prince of Wales has effectively neutralized it, since it's now taken about 50% system damage after the first day. Whoops.

 

 

Still sucking at the game, but my P-40s were able to shoot down/damage a few Japn bombers today, so I feel a bit better.

Edited December 21, 2006 by alanschu

[Pop]

*ahem*

[alanschu]

*ahem*

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Terrbily sorry if I offended you. I'll use Japn as an abbrevieation instead. Or perhaps JPN.

 

 

EDIT:

 

On second thought, if you don't want to come off as a disparaging twit, maybe you should just state straight up "Hey, the term "Jap" is a derogatory term" rather than being witty and going "ahem."

 

It was an innocent mistake.

Edited December 21, 2006 by alanschu

[jaguars4ever]

You can't jipper jappin' say jap you japperoo! Every japin' time you japin' say Jap, a japin' freakin Jap puppy dies! For Japs' Sake, Alan - think of the japin' puppies!

[alanschu]

Point taken.

[Pop]

[alanschu]

Believe it or not, I am actually familiar with the WW2 history of Jap as a derogatory term. Posting the cover of a comic book is not necessary. It's just a mistake that I frequently do since Jap is a quick abbreviation of the term Japan when I am writing typing on a keyboard. Much in the same way I'll use a term like Brit. It's also, for better or worse, a term I hear a lot when playing WW2 games. When everyone else is saying it, it's easy to let it out yourself.

 

 

I'd recommend staying away from War in the Pacific official forums however. The racism flying around there is rampant.

[Lare Kikkeli]

I accidentally tpye jap all the time too. Of course when i started doing it, i didnt know it was a slur. How come you americans/british need to have an offensive name for every other nationality? The most recent one i heard is people of indian/pakistanian descent are called pakis in britain.

[Llyranor]

How's the interface, dawg?

 

I mean that in a non-derogatory way. I am not implying you are a canine person. I know that you are a human person. It is a term of endearment.

[alanschu]

If I felt you were calling me a canine, you'd call me dog, not dawg.

 

 

The interface seems all right. There are places where it'd probably be nice to be able to type in a number rather than using arrows, but the numbers are never that big that it's that big of a problem. Changing missions and stuff for your units is straight forward. Getting reinforcements for planes is straightforward. Still getting the hang of reinforcements for land units though. Need to have appropriate supplies (as well as units in the pool), but I think I also need HQ units in the area too. Or maybe HQ units just speed things up. The manual unfortunately seems to have errors, so the fora are coming in handy.

[alanschu]

I finally found the bugger. He took out a destroyer and damaged two others before I finally got him.

 

 

 

I don't have confirmation that he's sunk, but I followed this up with another 3 or 4 hits.

 

I still have a smaller patrol out there, but I have lost him on my radar, so I think he may have buggered off/sunk.

 

 

I also just got my first huge resupply from the West Coast, so I'm going to look to resupply and garrison Wake Island, as well as Midway. Just sort of biding my time. I set most regions to AI control, so I can just focus on the North and East sections.

 

Moving armies to Pearl Harbour, as well as supplies. Building up the infrastructure on some of the neighbouring islands. THere's a constant stream of new transports becoming available in San Francisco, so I have a healthy stream of supplies in coming. I've also sent some up to Anchorage and some of the Alaskan islands.

 

I did take control of some armies in Brisbane, and am moving to garrison Guadalcanal so I can start building forts, airfields, and ports there.

[Llyranor]

Sounds intriguing.

[alanschu]

One of my destroyers had heavy "Float" damage, and he sunk while returning to Pearl Harbour.

 

I should have thought to have gotten one of the Destroyer Tenders (a boat that helps repair, as well as reload, Destroyers) out to him, though he only lasted a day so it may not have arrived.

 

The Phillipines is about to fall, and I'm worried the CPU automation may be losing it way ahead of schedule (I'm still in the first month of the war). But then I saw they have a ton of units loaded up in the final base there, so they may actually hold out for a while.

 

Still biding my time, not really doing a whole lot. Reinforcing Wake Island so I can safely get Catalinas doing naval recon out there.

 

Much like real life, it seems as though ship to ship combat will be a relatively rare thing. You can set your Combat Task Forces to intercept within a particular hex radius, but you need to detect them first. Those land base air forces seem like they'll be important.

 

I'm also garrisoning some of the islands in the South Pacific and am planning on throwing Catalinas in there as well. It's tough, because few places can support a large naval base, which greatly speeds up transfering supplies at port. Pearl Harbour is freaking amazing, but I imagine it will be a bit cumbersome (and slow) to have everyone coming and going from there once I move on to the counter attack. On the plus side, most single transports can stockpile a small base pretty well, so for smaller garrisons and construction it's not too much of a problem. Maybe I'll just have to spread out my forces. Though the bigger ships will still need bigger harbours if I need to do repairs.

 

Part of the reason why I'm moving to Guadalcanal is because it can support a large airfield and a large port, especially compared to most of those islands. Turk looks nice too, but it's currently a Japanese port.

 

I was considering moving along Alaska, but there are issues with the northern areas during winter (and southern areas in the Northern summer).

 

 

One thing I wish was possible was to set a patrol radius for ships. While surface combat missions have the option of intercepting enemy task forces in a certain radius, they don't actually move around. With ASW TFs, they just stay in the same hex. Sub patrols in the same hex, and stuff like that. I haven't seem to have figured out a way to have them follow some sort of waypoint or area, so I may have to micromanage things a bit. I always had to order my ASW ships to go to the hex where the subs were detected. It's not hard to do that, but it'd be nice if I didn't have to.

 

 

Subs not patrolling is a bit less of an issue, as I'd tend to put them in a choke point anyways. Plus, it's really easy to give the computer control over sub task forces, which will have him giving orders to do so. The 20 or so subs in the Phillipines are covering the area just east of Singapore and south of Indochina quite nicely while on automatic. I was able to pick off and damage a few cargo ships, and troop transports, which is just what I need. Set fire to some as well, which can continue to cause damage if they aren't able to repair it, so maybe I'll get some additional casualties.

 

It is neat that ships have a chance to sink based on their Float damage. The more there is, the greater the chance of sinking. I guess some people have had CVs and BBs listing heavily and kick the bucket a few hexes away from port. Makes the Repair ships more useful, as they can help put out fires and decrease the chance of the ship sinking. The idea that fires can spread out of control is also something I liked in Distant Guns. The fact that my sub doesn't need an instantly fatal hit to sink a ship is a nice bonus.

 

Speaking of subs, I got lucky and was able to place a random sub fleet shortly after the start of the war just north of Midway. It turns out that that is where one of the BB fleets near Pearl Harbour was going, and I was able to get a shot in (and a hit!) on their BB. I took some minor damage from the counter attack, but it was just simple system damage, and not much of it. I've noticed with my BBs from Pearl Harbour (of which I didn't actually lose any) are taking a looooong time to repair.

 

In fact, I sent most of the minor ones to San Francisco (which has a better ship repair yard), and repair ships to Pearl Harbour to help out in the repairs. There is 4 battleships that have suffered greater than 80% system damage, and repairs are going slow. I'm working on creating a secondary port with some Destroyer Tenders on the Hawaiian Islands to deal with smaller ships that have taken heavier damage. I'm thinking once things get going, I'll probably just ship them back to the West Coast, and keep the Hawaiian Islands ready for minor repairs. Problem is, one of my BBs has 98% system damage, and a speed of 0. So he's in it for the long haul. It was at 99% system damage (and like 70% float damage with 50% fires...I think I'm lucky to still have it). It's an older Colorado class BB, so it's not like it's the end of the world. But it'll be nice to have it around for naval bombardments in the future. And I'm sure its 16" guns will still hurt any other ships it may come across. It's not very fast, but it's tough enough that it might work out as a decent flagship for a convoy raider. A max speed of 20 knots is still almost twice as fast as most cargo ships. And most things that are faster than it aren't as powerful (though may have torpedoes. But that's what the DD/CL/CA escort is for!). They have float planes on them, which help in finding enemy task forces as well.

 

 

They did some interesting things with the industrial might of the US. First, they made a city in central US called "United States" that has killer resources and a lot of Oil. It also produces a lot of supplies and fuel (though not as much as San Francisco, which is easily the Hub of operations. Insane supply/Fuel production, and most ships seem to appear there. "United States" feeds it the resources to work though). I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get any say in building factories or units as the US. It seems as though when a ship is sunk, the US allocates resources to build another one (it's a bit of an abstraction. The manual mentions it can also be seen as reinforcements from the Atlantic Theatre). It comes with an appropriate delay, which I think averages around 550 days (so losing a ship is still a big deal). But in essence, it seems as though the US has almost an unlimited supply of ships, since it'll just build new ones. Of course, if you get your butt waxed, waiting a couple years for a replacement carrier is still going to help Japan immensely).

 

Seems like the production for Japan is quite a bit different. You have more control over your factories, and have to be more aware of feeding them resources (as the Allies, you also need to be aware of feeding resources to industry in Australia and India as well). You can also expand your factories, and can determine what they build. Changing the focus of the factories results in a retooling penalty that puts the factory at 50% damage, to simulate a Gearing bonus for focused factories. You'll also need to worry about garrisoning Manchuria, otherwise you make awake the Soviet Union (which is inactive until 1945). Garrisons wil also be required for keeping Chinese partisans under control.

 

I haven't looked at Japan's construction too in depth yet, but it is certainly more involved than the USAs. While the US has to worry about building aircraft engines and stuff for its planes as well, managing which factories are building those engines is certainly different.

 

It also sounds like if a Japanese ship is sunk, it's kaput. If you want a new one, you better place the order.

 

 

There's also various flavour things about the game as well. The Allies have superior damage control systems, making it more likely for the crew to fix repairs at sea, and to help keep fires under control (heavy duty fires seem like a real bitch). The Japanese also have their specific sub doctrine, which is to engage warships, not transports. I've noticed that my submarines, if they hit, tend to hit the ships I want them too (big capital ships, or a type of transport ship). Of course, I haven't encountered any subs with anything other than ASW DD/DE groups, so I haven't really seen this in effect. Most of my transports are still east of Hawaii, which doesn't seem to be too occupied with enemy subs.

[alanschu]

Oooo, I just figured out all the HQ structure of the land units. That will help.

[Llyranor]

Hmm, pretty neat stuff. If a bit overwhelming. Can't say I'm well-versed in naval warfare, so the little details will go over my head. That being said, the naval part of HoI2 is completely disappointing.

 

It's nice to see that supply and detection play a good role, though.

 

Barring the completely different scope, how would you compare the game to Distant Guns?