Do you like WW2 grand strategy naval wargames?

[Nick_i_am]

alanschu is obviously a racist.

[Rosbjerg]

have any of you tried Hearts of Iron 2 ? and if so, how does this game comapre to it? I'm a real big fan of these kind of realistic stragety games .. but most of them aren't that good imo.. and this game looks really interesting!

[Llyranor]

alanschu, Nick and me are big HoI2 fans. We had a coop session going on a while back, until alanschu pulled a jerkface on us.

 

Since he's played both, he should be able to do a fair assessment of them.

 

That being said, I think the naval part of HoI2 is pretty weak, so it might not be so fair. But yeah, different focus.

[alanschu]

I'm still willing to play that MP game!!!

 

 

The games are pretty different naturally. I'm more familiar with HOI2, but it's mechanics are much, much simpler. You don't deal with the small parts of your army, it's just a division, with a strength and organization rating.

 

While you don't directly deal out who gets what rifle unit and so forth, keeping tabs on the composition of your ground units is important. You'll want to check it's TOE with it's current stats (which is done with a button that toggles between the two), to see if it is missing equipment. I'll post some screens to explain in a minute. Right now it's crunching the turn as type this.

 

The pacing of War in the Pacific is significantly slower. I was reading up that it's not uncommon for sieges against Chinese towns to take upwards of a month of near daily fighting. Supply is immensely important, as units that aren't properly supplied take a 50% hit to their assault rating before other modifiers are taken into consideration (such as fatigue, morale, disruption of the unit, unit experience, leader experience, the presence of a Command HQ, the presence of a Corps HQ). Units with no supply start at 25% assault rating. I'll post a bit more in a moment, as my turn just finished crunching.

[alanschu]

Woo, my first real naval surface encounter. I moved some ships out of Singapore to see if I could do some damage to the transports my planes keep spotting. Unfortunately the Prince of Wales took some Torpedo hits and had to return to port, but not before shooting down 7 of their planes. The thing is a mobile AAA platform!

 

But here was the results! That's got to hurt!

 

 

 

 

 

SO anyways, I was talking about land combat. Here's a screenie of an infantry division:

 

 

 

You can see clearly the unit composition. If you click on Show Unit TOE, you can see what a standard infantry division is composed of. I'm not sure how it all works yet, but the standard inf division doesn't include those 17 M3 Stuart Light tanks. I'm not sure exactly how they got there. I've noticed that sometimes I have more artillery guns than my TOE as well. I think maybe since I have Allow Replacements (in the lower left) checked, and I have an overabundance of supplies on Pearl Harbour, an HQ, and no other place for an M3 Stuart to go, maybe it just grabs the odd one from the supply pool. Oh well.

 

Along the left are your unit characteristics. The division is lead by Major General Millins, who has 71 leadership and 76 inspiration. It's attached to the Central Pacific Command HQ, and is a US Army (important for what type of reinforcements it will get) division, station in Pearl Harbour which has 6 forts. Leadership is a mod for your attack efficiency, and inspiration helps with troop morale. Just below that is Experience and Morale (both of which are mods for your attack efficiency). Those are pretty straight forward. This unit is actually really good, with values in the 80s. Experience is super, super nice to have! You can see how many supplies it has, and how many it requires. Unless you're low on supplies, this is usually identical (or really close). If you get caught up in battle, apparently if you have sufficient supplies you can see them take on double the requirement, and they end up with a 200% attack efficiency base. Sweet deal! You can see that this unit has 510 support, and requires 611. It's green because the support is being managed by another unit that has surplus support units. And then there's the assault strength. Assault strength seems to be more related to just the number of infantry units, as you can have artillery brigades that have lots of guns, but no assault value. You need assault value to actually fight in battles, so I imagine the guns just work as a modifier and do extra damage in battles. Just below is the cost in cargo room it would take to load it onto an AP ship (troop transport), AK ship (cargo ship), or a Landing Ship. Most APs have a capacity of around 6000, so I'll need at least 3 AP ships to carry this beast. Most AK cargo ships hold 7000, so this wouldn't work so hot for them, quantity wise. Though you typically have a million AK ships lying around, and I'm only a month into the war. I get a new one almost daily.

 

 

On the right hand side are orders. You can set a destination hex for this unit. If you want to engage in combat, you have to be in the same hex as an enemy unit. From there, you can choose to defend, bombard (use your big guns with certain ranges), a deliberate attack (just a standard engagement), and a Shock Attack (more aggressive. I believe the defense gets two chances to fire back on defense. But you'll overtake positions and cause more disruption in the enemy). If you have it set to Pursue enemy, you'll start off the next turn 15 miles towards the enemy in their new hex (each hex is 60 miles, so 1/4 of the way there). 30 miles if you're an armoured unit. Below the orders are the ability to set all to do the command listed. Pretty straightforward. The Set future objective is the next part, and it's pretty neat. By specifying an objective, your division prepares for an attack on that spot. So you'll end up with a bonus to your assault value when attacking in that hex. Units gain 1-2 points a day, and it sounds like it's instrumental in amphibious assaults. So it prevents ridiculously stupid fast island hopping. You can also use it for defense, so if you prepare for the town you're fighting in, you'll get additional bonuses. Once the Objective bonus is at 100, the unit trains instead, moving it's experience up to a number determined by the unit type (US Army cap is 50 or so, with the USMC being 60. So this unit wouldn't benefit from the training).

 

 

The supply model is neat too. There's essentially 4 different land tile types as far as supply is concerned: highway/rail, road, trail, and cross country. Highways have a cost of 2, roads cost 5, trails cost 25, and cross country cost 50. Essentially, if your value doesn't pass 50 to a base that has more than double it's required supplies, it can push supplies to a land unit not at a base. So yes, if you're cross country and not beside a base, you're not getting fresh supplies.

[alanschu]

As for how I'd compare Distant Guns. I'd say this game would probably play quite similar to Distant Guns as if you just simulated every battle in Distant Guns.

 

Ships are slow to repair, and quite inaccurate except at closer ranges. Fire damage also seems to play a big impact, though I don't know if it's as big as Distant Guns. The weapons in WW2 could actually get through armor, especially if you're using a main naval gun. So you'll find flooding a bit more common. There's also a Systems damage, in addition to Flooding and Fire. The more systems are damaged, the less efficient your ship will run. Some specialty ships require the system damage to be less than 50% to operate. These ships are ships like repair ships, supply ships, and the various boat tenders.

 

The oversea supply mechanism, while not perfect, is lightyears ahead of HOI2s though. Sinking convoy ships actually hinders the movement of supplies! It's actually possible to starve out Japan's industrial base, which is impossible to do in HOI2, given the large stockpiles on the capital.

 

Japan needs to worry about ferrying resources and Oil to it's factories, so it can refine fuel and generate heavy industry points. The US, not so much. Though it's technically possible for Japan to start bombing US industry and screwing things up from that perspective. Good luck with that though. You'll have better success bombing the industries of Australia, India, and New Zealand.

 

 

And I just got a message the IS-5, a submarine that I had been fighting for a long time and never officially sunk, sunk the other day. Yay!

[Llyranor]

You sure talk a lot.

 

EDIT: Anyway, lots of good info. Sounds like it might be a tad too overwhelming/time-consuming for me, though.

Edited December 22, 2006 by Llyranor

[Rosbjerg]

this made me think how much of a pain in the ass organizing WW2 must have been..

 

But thanks for info Alanschu.. I think I'll try it sometime next year, when I have better time!

[alanschu]

You sure talk a lot.

 

EDIT: Anyway, lots of good info. Sounds like it might be a tad too overwhelming/time-consuming for me, though.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

It certainly is slower. Fortunately I found out that I could speed up turns by setting the message delay to 0.1 seconds instead of 1.0 seconds. I don't need a delay telling me that the CPU is planning it's moves with its barges. For any big event, it slows down. For instance, most ASW attacks zip by at 1000 mph, but if there's actual hits, it slows it down a bit. Plus there's the combat report at the end which you can read.

 

I guess some people have been playing PBEM games for a year on their forum.

[alanschu]

Woo, I was scrambling a cruiser to get it the heck out of the Philippines before all is lost, and he stumbled on a small transport fleet!

 

 

I have recon on some carrier fleets in the area though, so I'm going to continue on my way to Australia.

 

 

I also had some excitement with an assault force off the Dutch East Indies. The base had a couple of CLs and DDs, so I figured I'd send them out to help bombard the enemy (by casualty estimates, it seemed like a good idea). Day 2 of bombarding, had them bump into a Japanese fleet with 2 BBs, 2 CAs, and 4 DDs. While I only have one ship critically sunk, I'm not going to stick around for much longer. That base is on its own. I record 5 and 3 hits on the BBs, but I have a feeling my shots just bounced off, given the size of the weapons. Maybe some minor system damage.

 

Fortunately, I have 4 subs in the area, so I figured I'd move them in and around those hexes. Maybe I'll get lucky. I'm sure a torpedo hit on the BB will be a pleasant surprise. And given how long they seem to take to repair their system damage, hopefully I can take one out of commission for a bit.

 

The Light Carrier Hermes is now near Singapore, helping with the extraction. I'm not sure how I'm going to get those troops out of there, but I have to find a way. Their holding up, but I won't be able to supply them as well as the Japanese. I'm flying planes out slowly but surely, and pulled the ships out of the harbour (man would it suck to lose the Prince of Wales, an awesome King George V Battleship, because I had to scuttle it!). Right now those ships are bombarding the japanese forces in Singapore. I plan on pulling them back to either India or Australia, not sure which at the moment. I'm leaning towards India however.

 

 

I also had some submarines lay some mines near the island base of Turk. Here's hoping! I believe a transport hit two mines just off of Bataan, the last place I hold in the Philippines. They seem screwed like Singapore, Hopefully I can take out a fair number of Japanese soldiers with me! Supplies are starting to grow scarce though.

[alanschu]

Why carriers rock:

 

 

[Llyranor]

Keep up the AAR, chief. This is awesome.

[Deraldin]

For those of us (ME!) who have no clue WTF the abbreviations mean, could we possibly get a translation?

[alanschu]

What is WTF?!?

 

They are ship abbreviations. If you think about it, I'll bet you'll figure some of them out. Some are more obscure, but I'm less likely to drop them around as often as BB, CA, CL, DD, and so on.

 

In any case, here they are:

 

 

AD

Edited December 23, 2006 by alanschu

[alanschu]

I just found out a new frustrated (but in a good way) game mechanic.

 

I moved a whole bunch of planes in Singapore to a base on Borneo. Turns out, there's not enough Aviator Support people there, and as a result most just sit on the runway unused! It's something I never had to worry about in HOI2. What's that, plop 40 Heavy Bombers on that random island with an airbase, noooo problem.

 

It will definitely slow me down (which is probably a good thing, since the war has still only just begun, and I probably shouldn't rush into things to fast, lest the Imperial Japanese Navy whoop my butt). Most base divisions provide 30 or so aviator support troops (need 1 per plane), but there is some Aviator divisions that provide over 300. There's a few of those in India, so I figure I'll go provide air support to the Indian push into Burma (which is probably still about 3 years down the road from my original planning haha).

 

Moving troops from Western India to Burma as we speak. The Japanese are still sieging Singapore. My planes and boats are gone, but there's going to be a lot of troops surviving I suspect. Supplies are starting to wane.

 

Same goes for Bataan and the Philippines. It's a large force, but I'm not thinking I'll last as long as history (March). I was able to get the Prince of Wales and the Repulse (A BC) out of Singapore. I had to go around through some of the Dutch East Indies (DEI) rather than just head up north. Too many Japanese air patrols. I've now cleared them and am heading up to India. As it turns out, the HMS Indominatble just arrived as well, and it will rendezvous with the Repulse and the Prince of Wales (which is what was supposed to happen in history, but the PoW and Repulse were sunk by Torpedo bombers).

 

The CVL - HMS Hermes is biding its time around Singapore. I'm staying out of range of the air units, and having the Swordfish Torpedo Bombers wreak havoc on the shipping in the DEI. Remember that exchange where I had 7 damaged Swordfish, in exchange for 2 Torpedo hits. Well, my Swordfish are repaired. I'm guessing that the heavily damaged BB Ise will be out of commission for quite some time, assuming it can make it back to an appropriate port. I don't know how much flooding damage I did to it, but the WERE torpedoes. If I had gotten a critical hit, I may have put her on the slow lane to the bottom of the ocean!

 

Though realistically, she's probably just going to be out of commission for a year or so. Which is good enough for me! Anything to buy me some time!

 

 

I got some new cruisers from Australia as well. The bad thing about Australia is that it doesn't have the supply deposits that America and India have (since both of those places get huge amount of "free supplies" to simulate the offmap production). But, I can take a trip from India to Australia without getting close to Japan, but it's going to take a while.

 

And my Catalinas off of Wake Island have found another submarine! I think this one may have been damaged from the assault at Pearl Harbour. One of my floatplanes had made a successful attack on one, and after a month it still seems to be slowly limping towards the Philippines. I just sent out 3 Hunter Killer groups to hunt that thing down and send it to the bottom of the Pacific. Nowhere to hide out there now. I have two carriers in the area to help keep tabs on them. I'm curious who will sink it first, one of the Bombers from the carriers, or the destroyers!

[alanschu]

Ack, I bumped into one of his carrier fleets!

[Llyranor]

Yeah, I'm loving the supply/logistics vibes here. This is the most attractive feature, especially in contrast with HoI2.

 

In any case, looks like you're getting your money's worth.

[alanschu]

Heh, my recon planes say there's about 8-12 CVs in that area. Based on what attacked me, I think he has mostly torpedo bombers on it wreacking havoc. I'm going to send a ton of subs that are nearby, as well as my own bombers. Hopefully I just have to deal with the AA from the ships. Or maybe he left most of his fighter escort at home so I'm running into a trap!

 

I keep telling myself not to worry about it, I'm just biding time. If I can damage/sink a CV, all the losses are worth it.

[alanschu]

I sent in some Kamikaze PT boats, but the best they could do what get a torpedo hit on a destroyer. Though if I'm lucky he'll fall behind and be a juicy target all by himself.

 

I'm making a bold move with the CVL Hermes, and trying to do a night time Swordfish Torpedo run to hopefully catch them with their pants down.

[alanschu]

Well, I didn't get any confirmed kills, but I know I did hit a few of their carriers. By my account it looks like I did heavy damage to two light carriers, and some damage to a fleet carrier. One of them in particular was hit with I think 4 torpedoes over the course of a few days, as well as numerous bombs (though typically just 100 lb and 250 lb bombs, so they wouldn't have done too much damage, though may have caused additional damage to the fighter squadrons). A few destroyers were unfortunate enough to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time as well, so I'm thinking I won't need to worry about them again.

 

My Light Carrier Fleet had the HMS Revenge battleship take two torpedoes, but fortunately the damage was minimal. That fleet his headin to Sri Lanka to top off repairs. I just got two battleships this past day as well, a New Mexico class in San Francisco, and a Royal Sovereign class in Karach, India. They are both older (i.e. slower) battleships, but with the Arizona just finishing up its repairs, I'll have 3 Battleships ready for action at Pearl Harbour in a few days. Repairs in San Francisco on 3 other BBs are going nicely, and the a pair of cruisers just finished repairs in Los Angeles, and will be executing the CV Yorktown to Hawaii.

 

 

Singapore continues to hold on, but I don't think it will for much longer. The AI is starting to get more assault advantage, and has now surpasses my assault value. The force in the Phillipines however, despite being limited in supplies, is fortified enough in Bataan that it seems to be inflicting more and more casualties with each attack the Japanese try to make. They tried a few assaults, but were beaten handily, and have resorted to going back to bombardment attacks. The Allied forces there consistently inflict more damage than the Japanese force though, and they are both similar in size. They have more guns, but I have bigger guns! I also had the pleasure of witnessing one of their troop transports run into a mine just off its coast!

 

I also sunk a transport off the coast of Indochina, which apparently had troops in it (most of my transport casualties seem to "only" be the boats). It resulted in a rather morbid sound effect, as you hear gurgling water with mean screaming. I'll take it!

 

Still only two months into the war, but I've started to fortify Guadalcanal. The only thing really left for me to do there is to send some airplanes, and maybe a few more troops. It won't be a naval base for quite some time though, as my best source of fuel, the US mainland, would have to cut through a few Japanese islands likely with airfields. I can get supplies fairly easily from Australia, and I can safely send large quantities of supplies, and some fuel, from India, but those land on the West side of Australia, so they'll still need to be transported to the east side.

[Llyranor]

Hehehe, keep it coming.

[alanschu]

SINGAPORE FALLS!

 

 

After 1.5 months of hard fighting, the Japanese finally broke through, and 50,000 troops were forced to surrender. The super carrier fleet also happened to stay at the base one day, which resulted in the utter devastation of on bombing run. Over 20 planes all lost, and all I had to show for it was a single downed zero. I now have that whole area laced with submarines, and there aren't very many hexes that they can get through without encountering some sort of submarine attack. Unfortunately, it's still early war and while I've been somewhat happy with the success my submarines have had, many of my torpedoes are duds. But any successful hit I can get makes me a happy man!

 

I also have the odd Light Cruiser in the area, but I only employ hit and run at night. The Japanese have brought some planes to the island of Borneo, as well as Singapore. Speaking of Singapore, I had left the port there heavily mined, and by my account I have sunk another two ships long after I have left. Just a bunch of crappy DDs and coastal gunboats, but both of those are armed with depth charges, so I'm actually happy. More happy time for my subs.

 

 

I have also learned that you can set attack runs at the fun altitude of 100 feet. This means that the planes can also strafe the boats. Not likely to sink anything, but if I'm lucky I can inflict some system damage, and perhaps future runs not have to worry about as much AA fire. It also looks funny to see "Shells hit 35" as each strafing run is considered a "shell."

 

Troops from western India have finally arrived at the Burma border, and some infantry divisions, as well as one armored division, are heading to Mandalay, preparing for an assault on Rangoon. If I can take back Rangoon, it opens up a solid rail line back down into Malaysia and Singapore, as well as into Indochina and Siam (I'll have to cut through Siam). My Aviation divisions also just arrived in Eastern India, so I have a large airbase to perform recon and air support for some of the Japanese troops heading into Burma.

 

 

And the Philippines is still holding on. We have similar numbers, but I tend to do double the damage (an estimate on my part though, those numbers could be wrong....I once saw an assessment of the enemy say they have 8 guns, and then destroyed an estimated 12 guns in the battle!) that they do to me in the bombardments that fly back and forth.

 

 

Most of the lighter ships (CAs and CLs) from Pearl Harbour are almost done repairs in Los Angeles, while the medium damaged BBs are making steady progress in San Francsico. Two of the heavier damaged BBs in Pearl Harbour have been repaired enough that I feel comfortable sending them back to San Francisco. There's still two that have absolutely insane damage. They are solid enough AA platforms, so I'd like to include them in some of my Carrier task forces.

 

And it seems as though I maxed out on fuel in Pearl Harbour, at 999999, so I've started sending it in a loooooooong round about way to Australia.

[alanschu]

Well, the Japanese are trying to invade some key islands in the Dutch East Indies, which complicates things. They are proving very useful, especially Java Island, since it has a naval port capable of reloading submarines. I also scored my first real big hit of the war. Reports are that CVL Ryuko is at the bottom of the ocean. The cool thing was that I hit it with an attack about a week ago. I also had an excellent bombing run against an escort carrier. Anything to keep Japanese planes out of the sky.

 

In Burma, it seems as though I will lose Mandalay. The 2 Armored divisions, and one Armor brigade could not get there in time (no railroads over the hills from India into Burma), so I'm falling back to the borders of India. Both choke points involve having to cross a river, which causes heavy disruption to attacking forces. Plus I have reinforced that part of the border quite well now, with more troop still coming from Karach. When I get a larger force amassed, I'm hoping to push back into Mandalay.

 

I sent out two probes from PH to the Marshall Islands, and met with pretty solid success! One of their islands has a rather beefy garrison, and quite a few ships nearby. The first probe involved the CV Lexington and CV Enterprise. While Enterprise took a single torpedo hit, damage was not too severe. Both carriers launched air raids in the morning and the afternoon. I didn't get within range for my torpedo bombers, but the SBD Dauntless Dive Bomber carries a 1000 lb General Purpose Bomb, which can do a number on pretty much any ship. Hit a fair number of cruisers, a battleship, as well as some transports. Since the Enterprise took a hit, planes were no longer able to land there, so they had to land on the Lexington. Unfortunately this put the Lexington over maximum capacity for aircraft, so flight operations are suspended. So I recalled both back to Pearl Harbour.

 

As that probe was coming in, I sent out another two Carrier Task Forces, one with the Saratoga and another containing the Yorktown. Yorktown's Torpedo Bomber group was substituted out for another Dive Bombing Dauntless airgroup. The first wave had a light cruiser take 15 bomb hits. I don't expect it to last the night. A separate attack was against 4 tankers, that saw every ship get hit with at least 1 bomb, and two with 5 hits. Those two that got hit 5 times also took 1 and 2 torpedo hits each from Saratoga's Devastators. The New Orleans Cruiser took a torpedo and has been separated from Yorktown's task force. Hit has some pretty heavy damage, so I'm sending out a repair ship to rendezvous with it en route to Pearl.

 

All in all both probes were quite successful. In order to avoid any surface combat, I've decided to pull back both TFs. Recon shows a lot of heavier capital ships in the region, and I'd rather their main gun batteries never get a shot at my carriers. I expect to make another probe though shortly afterwards, perhaps adding the Lexington to the mix as well.

 

 

Guadalcanal had a shipment of an Base Division intercepted as they were being unloaded. A task force consisting of CAs and CLs did a shore bombardment, and engaged transports in the area. They did this a second time, so I've sent 4 BBs and 2 CAs from Pearl Harbour, and 1 CA and CL from Sydney. A few of the BBs are Colorado class, which are slower pre-war BBs, but have decent AA ratings and big 16" main guns (because the 14" ones on the Pennsylvania Class BBs are just *so* useless ). Here's hoping that port raider encounters a fleet consisting of those heavy ships. Unfortunately, work on the airfield has been slow (and it didn't already have one on it), so the only planes I can fly out of there at the moment are the Catalinas, which are capable of landing on the water. While typically a scout plane, I have them set to night time naval attacks, in hopes of getting an attack off on that fleet. I've yet to see a night attack show any real success (I had some NIght Bombers near Borneo score some hits with some weak 100 lb bombs), the primary load out of the Catalina is a pair of torpedoes, so if they can score a hit it should be rather devastating.

[alanschu]

Wooo, my first successul night strike with torpedoes.

 

And it hit a good target!

 

 

 

 

While not shown here, hitting Carriers also adds plane damage, and can also suspend it's flight operations, so hopefully they'll be a little less annoying over in this area!

[Llyranor]

Stop making thoughtful posts. People are saying turn-based gaming is dead! Soon we'll get WW2 grand strategy naval action games. Gaming is dead!