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  03:42 A report comes in from one of the destroyers patrolling off Pearl Harbour that they have sighted what the Captain believes to be a periscope. This report is ignored, the Captain of the destroyer is new, and many other supposed periscopes have been spotted in the previous weeks. 06:53 Another report comes in, this time that something has snagged in the anti submarine nets off the harbour mouth. This is assumed to be debris and is once again ignored, beyond a note being sent to send a detail out later in the day to clear it. 07:02 The Operator of the newly installed radar station reports a large contact moving towards the island. This is the largest contact that the operators have ever seen. A report is sent to headquarters. 07:20 The commanding officer at headquarters receives the radar report, and thinks this is the 50 B-17's expected to arrive this day. He cannot tell the Radar operator this, as it is a secret. So tells them “Not to worry about it.” 07:33 A message is sent to Hawaii to inform Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, the commander of the base, that decrypted traffic from the Japanese Embassy has told the ambassadors that the will be breaking off the peace talks. This is seen by Washington as the first step to war. The Telegram warns Short of this so that he can be prepared for aggressive actions by the Japanese Due to atmospheric conditions, the order is sent by commercial telegram, which is not marked urgent. 07:49  Over a hundred and fifty Japanese Planes begin their attack on Pearl Harbour. These have been launched from the Japanese Carrier fleet, which, sailing under complete radio blackout, has moved into range of the Harbour. The six carriers launch all buy 6 of their planes at the unsuspecting Americans enjoying their Sunday morning lie in.  Below the US planes have been parked wingtip to wingtip to prevent saboteurs getting access to them.  This turns them into perfect targets for the Japanese fighters and bomber, with no US aircraft in the air, the Japanese attack can only be defended against using hastily manned flack emplacements.  But the Planes were not their main targets; soon the torpedo bombers begin their attack on the US's Great White Fleet – parked in what was known as battleship row. Torpedo attacks had been thought impossible in the shallow waters of Pearl, but the Japanese pilots were about to prove the American analysts wrong.   The Arizona was the first, soon bombs and torpedoes were dropping from the air and into the moored battleships, cruisers, destroyers and other ships of the American fleet. Some were more effective than others, the smaller 250lb bombs that hit the battleships did little damage, but when they hit a destroyer, they inflicted crippling damage.  In what may be some small consolation, one of the Japanese pilots was a little over enthusiastic, and hit PT-22, a patrol boat, with a torpedo. This completely obliterated the vessel, but saved a larger ship from being hit.  The Battleships get the brunt of the damage however, as the attacking pilots have been told to target them and the airfields. A large number of planes are destroyed on the ground. The Runways also take many bomb hits, making it impossible for any of the planes to get off the ground. 13:00 The Japanese had exhausted their fuel and their ordinance, and turned back towards the carriers that they must have been launched from. Smoke covered Pearl Harbour, and the air was filled with the sounds of screams, shouts and explosions from the crippled ships and wounded men.  The Battleships Nevada and Maryland now lay sunk in their anchor. Six had suffered heavy damage. A Destroyer, a Minesweeper and a submarine had also been sunk, and there were many other ships that crews were desperately trying to save. Only six confirmed Japanese bombers had been shot down. 15:00 General Short receives the Telegram warning him of a possible attack.  The Philippine Islands, contains the largest concentration of US troops outside of American owned lands. In the air above the numerous islands, Land based Betty bombers began raids on airfields all over the north of the Islands  The main US airfield, Clark Field was attacked by a combination of Nells and Betty class bombers, and the runway pounded by numerous high explosive bombs.  The south of the island chain was attacked by more carrier based aircraft. Although much smaller numbers of aircraft than at Pearl, but still demonstrating a much greater numbers of Carriers, giving the Japanese a greater ability to launch aircraft anywhere than the Americans could match.  Troops were also landed in Batan, and having no defending troops, the Island was quickly taken.  In Malaya, British forces also found themselves under attack, the small number of patrolling fighters were not able to stop the larger Japanese attack. The fact that these were older aircraft, now considered obsolete, did not help.  Although in some places they were able to inflict some damage on the attackers at least.  Later in the day a force was detected moving towards Singapore. It was detected by radar and every available fighter was scrambled to meet it.  Their target soon became clear.  The Battleship HMS Prince of Wales and Battlecruiser HMS Repulse had recently arrived in Singapore. The idea was to use their presence to deter a Japanese attack on British holdings in Asia. While the Repulse was an older ship, dating from the First World War, the Prince of Wales was a brand new King George V class, and the newest battleship in the British Navy. A year before she had put to see with contractors aboard to help in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck, and had landed the crucial hit that damaged the ships fuel tank before being driven away. Known of the presence of these two ships, the Japanese had launched an attack to try and sink them at anchor.  Moving through the fighter screen, the bombers move in low and strike hard. Repeating Pearl Harbour on a smaller scale, the Japanese bombers hit the British Capital ships hard. The Prince of Wales takes two Torpedoes, and Repulse one, while only managing to shoot down one attacking bomber. Although upwards of 13 were thought to be damaged. That Afternoon, a British counter attack was ordered after a Japanese fleet was detected coming in to land troops at Kota Baru. Although just south of their border, the Japanese had opted for a naval assault on the base, allowing them to use their naval ships to support the attack.  They attack two cargo ships and two Kongo class battleships, but their attacks are in vain, and no hits are made.  Later that night, one of the two destroyers escorting the Prince of Wales and Repulse detects a Japanese Submarine and attacks.  It is thought that the submarine took roughly 11 hits and it is hoped that she was sunk.  Wake Island is attacked by bombers. The fighters protecting it, warned by the morning’s attacks on Pearl are airborne and manage to shoot down two attacking bombers for no losses.   While China had long been at war with the Japanese, Hong Kong had always been ignored, until today, where it to fell under the shadow of attacking fighters and bombers. The destroyers Scout and Thracian were attacked, but no hits were scored. Throughout the rest of the country there has been a lull in the fighting, the Japanese, who had not been advancing as before, had seemed to be waiting for something, seemingly today’s attack. Dusk came to the Pacific, and shock spreads throughout the world. In America, the sudden and surprise attack has left people reeling. Ladies and Gentlemen America is at War. Welcome to my War in the Pacific – Admiral's Edition Lets Play. As you may have guessed, this is a hex based wargame allowing you to control either the Allies or the Japanese in the Pacific war. It’s published by Matrix games, purveyors of many fine Grognard games. What makes this game different is that you can control every ship, every plane and every land unit across the entire war, with a turn cycle running from 1 to 3 days at a time. Each hex on the map represent 40 miles of land or sea for you to fight over. I will be running 1 day turns, posting one turn a day. You’re mad! You'll never do it! I'm not mad, I've spoken to Roosevelt and Churchill, and they both tell me they have absolute confidence in me. In reality, I don't expect to get to the end of this, in fact, I'm going out of my way to say this will most likely never get finished, I'm going to try and do it for as long as it holds my interest, be it a week, a month, a year or five years. I’ll keep doing it as long as theirs interest and its fun for me, once the time taken do write this thing becomes prohibitive, I’ll end it. One turn a day – that's not going to last. This is going to be the tricky bit, as there will always be days where you just can’t get to the internet, so If I miss a day, I’ll have to post two the next. Hopefully that won’t happen much. I’ve got a week off in May or so (if this is still going) but I’m told the site has wifi, so I should be okay to post – or I’ll try and rope someone in to do my posting for me. I’ll be trying to create a buffer, each turn after the first is taking me about an hour to an hour and a half to do, so I’ll be trying to get ahead to give myself some leeway. I’m going to try and get the buffer as high as I can, so when I burn out I have a chance to regain my interest before I run out of turns. As of this moment, my current buffer is 5 days. So I’m safe through to Friday. This is not ideal, but it’s the best way I can think of doing it – several months of planning have gone into this, the only reason I don’t have a bigger buffer now is because the patch was only released last week. but I don't understand everything that's going on! This is a very complex game, one that I've only been playing for four months or so since it came out. So I'm still learning as we go – but I'm a firm believer that the chance of losing something makes it much more interesting. On your half, I'll explain what I think you need to know, my next post will be the strategic orders for the turn, but as it will most likely be long, I'll not post it straight away to prevent a wall of text. Subsequent days should be a bit quieter than this, and I'll post both as one. I will not be explaining everything however, to keep the workload manageable. Plus you don't want to hear about me setting up 20 convoys to Sidney. I'll keep it to an overview and detail on the combat side. I will explain key mechanisms, but the subtleties of the game will just get boring. Think of this lets play as an overly ambitious failure that gives you the chance to follow the Second World War in (almost) real time. Let see how long it lasts and enjoy it while it does. Thank You. There is now a Wiki for this thread. If you wish to contribute, please do. http://warinthepacificlp.wikia.com/...Pacific_LP_Wiki Grey Hunter fucked around with this message at Sep 28, 2010 around 13:34 |
| # ? Dec 7, 2009 17:59 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 21:43 |
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You are crazy dear sir, but I still applaud your Bravado. I'm assuming you are playing the Japanese for this playthrough, correct? Then I suggest you finish off the Battleship and continue to harass american air strips.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2009 19:05 |
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I'll definitely watch this since I'm a big fat WW2 nerd, but I concur. You're nuts. Absolutely nuts. I hope this lasts at least the week! EDIT: Wait, geeze dude. Day by day for 5 years. I hope you run out of steam before the week runs out, because this is really, really nuts. Really nuts. Tiny Turtle fucked around with this message at Dec 7, 2009 around 19:32 |
| # ? Dec 7, 2009 19:25 |
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Wow, this is just the LP I wanted to see you do next. If you're playing as the Japanese, well, best of luck to you, you're going to need it.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2009 19:51 |
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Grey Hunter is just going all out in playing video games for the internet.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2009 19:55 |
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As there seems to be some confusion, this is an Allied play through. I thought about doing a Japanese one, but in the end, its more work as you have to manage production on top of everything else, and this is ambitious enough already. Welcome, Gentlemen, to Pacific Command. After the attack this morning on Pearl Harbour, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines, it has been decided that one man should command the entire Allied army. That man, it has been decided is me. Today has been a grim day, we can confirm the loss of two battleships, two destroyers, a submarine and a patrol boat, although the latter is not a real loss. We also have a number of heavily damaged ships, including the Prince of Wales in Singapore.  Intelligence estimates we shot down 21 enemy planes today, but lost 77 of our own, most of these being on the ground at Pearl Harbour. As we cannot confirm the kill of submarine I-121, we will have to leave it off our list for now. Maybe we can confirm its loss in coming days through our intelligence network. While it may look like we are in a strong position, this is not the case, most of our forces are spread out, and we will not be getting any real replacements for a while. Most of the bases we control are weakly defended, and we cannot hope to reinforce them in time to prevent much loss of life and ground to the enemy. The British forces are in better shape than the American ones, having been at war for two years already, but the majority of them are needed to fight Hitler in Europe, so while the units they have are well trained, they are few in number and needed to garrison their holdings. America has to train up its forces, it will be weeks, if not months before we see any real increase in our forces, and the Japs are working to a well planned timetable, we must take up a strategy of selling land dearly and conserving our manpower until such time as we can mount a counter attack.  Sigintel will supply us with all the information they can on the enemies movements, although why they could not tell us of the large Japanese fleet off Pearl Harbour yesterday I will not know! When I went down there to speak to the head of intelligence, the man was dressed in slippers and a dressing gown! Changes will have to be made there, let me tell you! For now, there is little of use, apart form telling us that something is going on just off Babeldaob, most likely more troops moving towards the Philippines. We cannot tell where the enemy has positioned his troops or where he plans to strike. We must now prepare the best we can.  I will now begin a sector by sector breakdown of our operations.  Pearl is a mess. The airfield is working at one third of its capacity and the port is also damaged. Add to that the Jap Carriers are still hanging about offshore. The first thing we must do is ready ourselves for another attack like this tomorrow! I want all our pilots in the air as much as possible tomorrow – 100% Combat Air Patrol (CAP). We may not know how much fuel the Jap’s have, but we can be prepared. This may seem odd, but in this game, the Carrier fleet starts with 100% fuel, not the historically low levels – so 2-3 day strikes at Pearl are common. And I don’t want three Pearl Harbours  The state of our fleet is terrible. We have not one undamaged battleship, and the Pennsylvania is still on fire, and it looks like we may yet lose here in the coming hours.  So, let’s go through the ship screen a bit, using the most likely doomed USS Pennsylvania. The first think you'll notice is the fire and the red text. The stuff along the side is the damage types and levels. Systems equates to the ships ability to function – radar, fire control, pumps, and other such things Flood shows how full of water the ship is, the first is the current flooding, the Major damage is the amount that cannot be removed – think sealed off sections of the ship, oddly, it’s the minor flooding that will kill you, as the major flooding won't increase, anything above the major flooding means your ship is taking on water still. And at 94% flooded, the Pennsylvania is not long for this world. As long as her pumps and fire control teams can keep going (the ships systems) she has a chance, but as their damaged as well..... Engine and fire damage are pretty much self explanatory. Minor damage can be repaired at sea in some cases, but major will require time in port, green damage can be repaired in a few days without taking the ship offline, but most other damage is either quicker or needs to be taken to the shipyard for repairs. Endurance and fuel tell you how long a ship can travel, high levels of these allow ships to travel long distances. The list of guns is also self explanatory; the ones in red are damaged or destroyed. You can also see the ship experience and Captain. I can change the ship’s captain, but I’ll only really do that for the Carriers where it will make more of a difference. I order these ships into the shipyard. Hopefully we can patch them up enough to sail back to the mainland for full repairs.  We may have to wait awhile for these ships. I have ordered our four surviving subs in Pearl to head north; hopefully we can sink some of those carriers and get some good news into tomorrow’s papers. It’s not all doom and gloom, the Jap's main targets were not in port, let me introduce you to my three beautiful daughters.  These are our carriers, the Lexington, Saratoga and Enterprise. Luckily out of port today. While some people have already urged sending them north to deal with the Japanese fleet, I believe this to be suicide. And I'm going to do my best to prevent a dirty Jap from putting his torpedo into one of my daughters. As such, I've ordered the Lexington and Enterprise to Wake Island, which is looking very exposed about now. The Saratoga will remain in San Diego for now. Once we are sure that Pearl is safe I will form all three ships up there. Then we can think about using them more aggressively.  Looking at the situation, I have to say that the Philippines are lost. The Japs have a large number of fleet and planes in the area that we cannot hope to match. We are also critically low on supplies. I have therefore ordered an evacuation of those units we cannot afford to lose. The fighters that are availible have been ordered to set up a CAP, while all the freighters are being loaded with what they can carry and ordered down to Java or Port Moresby. The Philippine national army will be left to hold back the Japs as long as possible. Checking with Singapore, it seems that the reports of a hit on the Repulse were unfounded, she is undamaged. This is great news, as it leaves us with at least one active battleship in the pacific!  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Prince of Wales, who will need to spend at least a few days in the shipyard before she can take to the sea. The yard masters are reporting it will take 179 days to fully repair her, but hopefully she can be made seaworthy in a week, which the longest I think she can be safely docked. As with the Philippines, I doubt that we can hold Singapore, and with two battleships north of their position, any aggressive actions at this stage would be foolish. So I have ordered the Repulse to collect the other warships and set sail for our new fleet port in the region, Soerabaja.  This is repeated along the whole region. I don't like doing this, but we must conserve supplies and ships for now. Once we have formed up a decent fleet, we can think about looking for trouble. I would rather have to ship supplies back to where they are needed than give them to the enemy.   Burma is the current threat in this theatre. Especially Rangoon, which is almost on the border with Japan.  We have about 10,000 men in the area. I have ordered in more supplies to support them. But there are no free troops to move forward to defend the city. If we get some reinforcements soon, maybe we can get them in in time, but they will have to make do for now with what they have got. In India Proper, more ships are send out to pick up the supplies we so desperately need. Although China is not really our war, now we are all united, we will do our best to aid them in their battle with the Japanese. The first thing on our list is the immediate evacuation of Hong Kong. Unfortunately we can only pull out the Kowloon Brigade, the largest unit. The others will have to delay the Japs as long as possible. Cut off and deep in enemy territory, we have less chance of holding this city than Singapore.  Central China is a mess; the long war has left no real front lines. I'm going to have to work hard to pull this back into some form of order. The troops here are numerous but poorly trained. This is compounded by the almost complete lack of supplies; any attacks we make now are going to be nothing more than futile massacres. So we will hold until I can try and get some support for them. I order the units to fall back into greater concentrations so they will be easier to supply.  While not in any immediate danger, Australia and New Zealand are going to be important soon. They have a large number of ships, who are being sent to Cape Town and Aden to collect supplies, Fuel and troops from Europe. Some are also sent to the west coast to boost their numbers. Most of the troops here cannot be moved until enough political clout has been used to free them up.  The most important place at this time is Port Moresby, loosing this key port would give Japan a key port to stage their attack on Australia. I have begun to move supplies here, and will move troops as quickly as possible.  On the West Coast, it’s more a situation of waiting for troops to arrive, I have set up the flow of fuel and supplies out to Midway, Pearl and Canton and Johnston Islands. These will be key staging points. Wake has not supply, as I think it’s too far out to risk, it may be attacked any day. If I'm wrong, I'll send supplies there forthwith. This is all I can do right now. Over the next few days, as the situation develops, I should be able to make more decisions. But now we need to see what tomorrow brings us. Right, time to come out of character. Here is the map, as you may have noticed from the screen shots, it’s a little bit mangled compared to reality.  Click here for the full 2000x1601 image. Not big enough for you to see everything, but enough to get an idea of the scale of the thing. Those are 40 mile hexes remember, so we have a lot of land to defend. These two updates have just taken me 4 hours, but the next 4 turns took about an hour and a half each, but then I was distracted during each of those turn. Come back tomorrow to see me continue to lose the war!
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| # ? Dec 7, 2009 20:10 |
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This is going to be epic and amazing. As a colossal WW2 nerd, I will follow this like a dog after a bacon truck.
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| # ? Dec 7, 2009 21:30 |
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Uh.... I mean Kill dem drat Japs until they squeal like me Grampappies pigs! A very ambitious LP. I'll be sure to follow it as long as it is up though!
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| # ? Dec 7, 2009 22:46 |
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So Grey Hunter is Matrix games cutting you a paycheck yet?
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| # ? Dec 7, 2009 23:27 |
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Well, the war in the Pacific lasted approximately 1,400 days, so I have my doubts this thread will see the Atomic Age unleashed on the world, but it should be interesting non-the-less. Out of curiosity, what other nations are present in the game? Do you ever see or engage other forces (ie. Nazis, Soviets, Chinese, etc.)? Or do Japan and the Allies have the place all to themselves?
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| # ? Dec 7, 2009 23:31 |
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How is this game? I've been looking at buying it or War Plan Orange, but the price tag is pretty high.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 00:18 |
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Grey, you're insane. Gloriously so. I hope we get through at least a few months. Hey, maybe you'll convince enough people to buy the game we could turn it into a succession LP as and when you do finally burn out. On secondary notes, I recommend you fire your Office of Stratigic Planning and replace it with an Office of Strategic Planning, it will serve you better. Also, the map seems fine to me, it just isn't a Mercator projection so it looks funny to people used to that. It would be a bit daft to use Mercator for this, because the shortest distance between two points on the Earth isn't a straight line on the Mercator projection, so it would all be rather odd with lots of distorted hexes if you wanted ships to take historical paths. This map looks like it is using a stereographic projection, which looks weird but preserves the angles so your navigation can go in a straight line. Ilanin fucked around with this message at Dec 8, 2009 around 01:09 |
| # ? Dec 8, 2009 01:07 |
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What about Hong Kong?
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 01:21 |
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This is going to be interesting. And all of a sudden I have a huge urge to continue reading Max Hastings Nemesis again.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 01:33 |
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SpRahl posted:So Grey Hunter is Matrix games cutting you a paycheck yet? No, but they did give me Crown of Glory for free. (YAY) Its not my fault all the games that I want to LP are published by them. I don't like doing the same old thing over and over again, so I have to get creative. That normally means going off the beaten track a bit for my games.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 05:24 |
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Although alluded to by some, I'll post this in case this didn't dawn on anyone else. Grey Hunter here is going to play this game based on the pacific theater of WW2. One in-game turn per day. He also posted it on Dec 7th, (anniversary of Pearl Harbor attack). The real-life conflict lasted from Dec 7th 1941 to around Aug 8th 1945, when the second of two nuclear warheads were deployed. Japan's surrender was formalized on Sept 2nd, 1945. Although it's quite possible he can win it much faster in-game, Grey Hunter has just committed to a multi-year LP. As an aside, Grey Hunter, I presume you have played this through, what's the fastest time you've won the war in it? Teledahn fucked around with this message at Dec 8, 2009 around 09:01 |
| # ? Dec 8, 2009 08:53 |
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I wouldn't worry about Wake Island. I fought in that battle, like, a hundred times, and it's pretty easy. Some douche on the Japanese side will doubtless ram the carrier into the island and flip it, and from there it's cake.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 11:14 |
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Not charging in with all battleships on day one just because of some minor damage Grey Hunter? Playing a wee bit conservative aren't you *cough* pussy *cough*? 
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 12:19 |
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John Pastor posted:I wouldn't worry about Wake Island. I fought in that battle, like, a hundred times, and it's pretty easy. Some douche on the Japanese side will doubtless ram the carrier into the island and flip it, and from there it's cake.  so do you control only the logistics and strategy or do you produce and research too?
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 13:19 |
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Teledahn posted:Although alluded to by some, I'll post this in case this didn't dawn on anyone else. Grey Hunter here is going to play this game based on the pacific theater of WW2. One in-game turn per day. Don't underestimate Grey Hunter. He's put up with hundreds of pages of goons roleplaying through the entire Civil War. Twice.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 14:30 |
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Hattusa posted:Don't underestimate Grey Hunter. He's put up with hundreds of pages of goons roleplaying through the entire Civil War. And we're fighting the Napoleonic war at this moment.... That said, I've defiantly not Toxx claused myself on this one. I know that its going to fail, but I'm going to ride it out. Teledahn posted:Although alluded to by some, I'll post this in case this didn't dawn on anyone else. Grey Hunter here is going to play this game based on the pacific theater of WW2. One in-game turn per day. Check the time on the post as well. I'm a little annoyed no one noticed that. hint, check what the time difference to Hawaii is I've not finished the game, but I got to September 1942 - so ten months in. and it was no where near a win, this is going to be brutal people. Today's turn up in an hour or so after I've given it its third proofreading of the day.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 16:17 |
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How many wars will Grey fight. -The world wonders.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 17:16 |
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 A Japanese Submarine puts three torpedoes into the side of a patrol gunboat. It seems that these Japs are a little over enthusiastic when it comes to expending ordinance. This is not a bad thing though, those are three torps we won't see going into a troopship or aircraft carrier.  Then a wave of bombers met a decent cap above Clark's field. After yesterdays more ad hock response, this is an improvement, but with a lot of damaged planes on the ground, it will be a few days before a strong CAP can be put into the air.  The more experienced Zero pilots made mincemeat of the allied fighters, shooting down four of them for the loss of one of their own planes. When they returned in the afternoon however, the USAF pilots made a better showing of themselves.  This is a baptism of fire for the American pilots, they have not seen much action, and the fact that they are shooting down anything is a testament to their training. Overnight the Japs bombard Kota Bahru to support their landings there. The two battleships lay down heavy fire with the support of at least one cruiser and several destroyers. The next morning, the RAF once more go up to try and stop the bombing of the key bases in Malaya, and shoot down a Sally and a Nate bomber for the lossof one outdated Buffalo. The Hurricanes and Spitfires that won the Battle of Britain have yet to be seen here in any numbers. Production of these fantastic planes is such that they are all tied up in the European war, the Buffalo is old and slow, and will not hold up to combat against Zeros. Hopefully in coming days and weeks we will see them arrive as reinforcements, but for now we need make do with the older slower planes. So far they are holding their own against the bombers, but only time will tell how we will do long term.  Another attack on the landing force shows that the bombers used are no better, without torpedoes, they have little chance of doing any damage against the battleships. This attack costs them 3 planes. Later attacks also had little effect. Despite three sorties towards the landing force, not one hit is reported. On the ground, the Japanese army advances behind the rolling bombardment from the 15 and 16 inch guns of the battleships, and the unprepared British forces retreat or surrender before them. Soon they are in complete control of Kota Bharu. With unprepared troops in small numbers, this is unsurprising.  Right, combat is complicated, the basic unit is the Assault Value (AV) - the higher it is, the better the unit is at fighting. This is compared to the enemies during combat, and modified for fortifications, leaders, experience and other factors, and then the game lets you know who won. Disabled units are ones that have taken losses enough to remove them from combat, but have not been wiped out, a high number of disabled troops can quickly weaken an army.  Japanese planes attack the ships loading in Hong Kong Harbour; the Ming Sang takes two torpedo hits. Other planes bomb the airfields and the harbour. Casualties are not too heavy, but the loss of the Ming Sang means we will be able to get less troops out before the Japanese army arrives. In China proper the Japanese army continues its attacks on some of the Chinese units, causing some casualties but not dislodging any of them. This is still not a large scale attack, but the attacking of some weaker units could be a prelude to a new offensive in the area. Another day of disasters, but none as catastrophic as yesterdays.  Not much change here, let's hope it stays that way. We are fortunately holding our own in the air, if we can keep this up then we will be able to slow down the enemies advance. They do seem to be following the German blitzkrieg style tactics, aiming for our bases via sea rather than trying to advance across jungle terrain. The weakness to the this strategy will become our own weakness, the reliance on shipping to perform any operation, every cargo ship sunk is one less to carry troops, if one is sunk with troops on board, then that is a greater effect.  Sigintel inform us of the locations of many enemy units, it seems that Guam is going to be attacked, but we cannot do anything about that right now. That island is too far out and to close to the enemy to be properly defended. Its loss will be a blow, as it is a useful staging point for attacks and supply convoys, but we will have to live with that.  The USS Pennsylvania continues to burn. It's only by the heroic efforts of the crew that she has not yet succumbed to her wounds. There was no repeat of the attack yesterday, but the carriers are still hanging around out there.  Repairs have begun on the damaged ships, port and runway, but they will take time, the runway should be up and running an a week, the same for the port, but the ships in harbour will take much longer to repair, some are looking at nine months of repairs before they are back to the state they were two days ago. Supplies are on their way here now; Pearl will now have to be our main staging area for attacks in the south pacific.  The waters around Singapore seethe with our subs, mainly the Dutch ones. For some reason the captains at Manila have yet to put to sea. We are hoping that this is just due to their ships having to spend a day resupplying. Once they are out in the sea, we can start to use them to disrupt the enemy shipping. The repairs on the Prince of Wales continue apace, and we have been able to move all other combat ships out of range of the land based aircraft. Once they have formed up at Java, we will be able to plan some sort of retaliatory strike. These ships are being joined by all the Dutch ships in the area and American cruisers moving out from the Philippians. This should give us a fair fleet when they all arrive. Today there is little else we can do, all the orders are out, and it is a matter of waiting for ships to load. But I spent a lot of time studying the replacement schedule.  While by no means a complete list, this shows us the most numerous planes available to replace losses, as well as the number we have used in the last couple of days and the replacement rate we can expect. This is key, if we are using too many of a certain plane type, then I may have to disband some of the units defending American airbases to allow their planes and pilots to be shipped out to the front.  We can expect the USSYorktown to arrive in three weeks time, and the HMS Indomitable, a British carrier in a month and a bit. With the Yorktown, we can think about challenging the Japanese Carriers, although waiting for the USS Hornet to arrive may well be a better idea. If we can sink some of the Japanese carriers via submarines or land based airstrikes, all the better, but I don't think we have enough torpedo or dive bombers to do the job, and the British are showing how poor normal bombers are against sea targets.  The surface combat ships show a similar spread. We will have to protect what we have. We will be getting two more American battleships soon, as they are currently undergoing repairs in the Seattle dockyards. The problem is that Pearl Harbour has shown us that they are easy prey to airplanes, and may well now be best used as mobile artillery platforms. For ground troops, in 22 days we get access to the 35th Division, this is the first decent unit, but will in all likelihood be needed to plug a hole in our lines. There are other regiments being mobilized right now, but they will need to be used en mass to get any real effect. So once more, we must wait.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 17:18 |
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I don't want to be a dick, but your banner has Duch East Indies instead of Dutch and another has Stratigic Planning where it should be Strategic. But I already love the effort you are putting into this  Unrelated, I swear: Perhaps you could outsource your proofreading, so you don't burn yourself out too fast? Playing, writing and re-re-re-reading every post is going to suck the fun out of it in no time.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 17:44 |
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Hm. It's almost very tempting to do a couple of  posts for whenever the historic battles appear such as Wake, Guadacanal and so forth. To just show how the battle went on in reality. Granted I'm sure most people who are reading this know enough for that to be kinda moot.  DatonKallandor posted:I'd appreaciate some Oh. I'll see what I can do whenever one of those battles comes around then.
Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at Dec 8, 2009 around 18:50 |
| # ? Dec 8, 2009 17:56 |
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I'm rooting for the Pennsylvania, but I think it's going through its deathtroes. Come on Pennsylvania, don't you die on us! 
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 18:09 |
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Is the Arizona still afloat? If it is, I demand it exact justice!
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 18:13 |
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Cooked Auto posted:Hm. It's almost very tempting to do a couple of I'd appreaciate some , since I don't know a lot about the pacific war.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 18:38 |
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nimby posted:I don't want to be a dick, but your banner has Duch East Indies instead of Dutch and another has Stratigic Planning where it should be Strategic. But I already love the effort you are putting into this Fixed for the next update onwards. If someone wants to proofread my updates, I'll be happy to send them to them - contact me by PM if you are willing to put up with some terrible spelling mistakes. remember, that proofread three times, so anything missed there will be missed for evermore. I've just done two more updates, so I have 6 more ready to post. also, posts are fine by me, even though they may not have any relation to reality after a while. Saturdays update had my heart in my mouth.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 19:24 |
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I'm not underestimating Grey Hunter, I was just surprised at the potential scale of this LP. Seems like it's shaping up. Good Luck.
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| # ? Dec 8, 2009 23:48 |
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Cooked Auto posted:Hm. It's almost very tempting to do a couple of of course, given the pace you'll have plenty of time to prepare
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 00:28 |
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UberJew posted:of course, given the pace you'll have plenty of time to prepare Well I've got almost the entirety of January to write before Uni starts again so I guess I need to keep myself occupied with something. Guess I'll have to start reading Nemesis now so I have other sources to use than just Wikipedia. =P
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 00:37 |
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Oh nice. I never heard of this game before, and I also don't know a whole lot about the Pacific theater, so this should be really interesting.Cooked Auto posted:Hm. It's almost very tempting to do a couple of
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 00:49 |
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Will you try to go along historic lines or do you abandon space in an accelerated pace, in effort to prepare for Midway sooner than it historically happened? Specifically, will you make a concentrated effort to defend Manila or will you leave it as soon as you can finish loading up the troop ships? Good luck with this project. Matrix makes the best games, you won't lack things to do in this project. If I guess correctly, at some point you'll have to fiddle more with supplying troops and production than actually fighting. Regarding that, surely the game keeps on giving you casualties from things like lack of food, malaria etc?
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 00:55 |
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Great choice for an LP; I actually remember having played this game a few years ago, though not very much. I'll be following this one with much interest. Also, nothing beats a great history lesson accompanied by pretty screenshots.
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 00:55 |
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Please please please don't sacrifice the Canadians in Hong Kong like in real life. Have them join up with Aussies and then do something awesome.
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 04:11 |
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I think the most impressive thing about this idea is that you lined up the leap years - february 29, 1944 will be faithfully represented by february 29, 2012, if we're all still here then
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 04:22 |
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OOOOOO Doggy thats a helluva game, Will read. Good luck. By the way, I own WitP:AE and if you want a mediocre human to play against, I would be more then happy to provide. I've played through an allied game.
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 04:50 |
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  Submarine I-112 hits one of our airplane transports off Borneo. One of its four torpedoes hits,sinking the ship. Then the destroyer escorts get their acts together and begin to attack the sub.  Its unknown how much, if any damage was done to the sub during this attack, But it is not much, as soon it is back and trying to sink a much larger prey.  Its torpedoes miss this time, and the destroyers hunt once more, driving off the sub, but we know that its out there, waiting for our ships to pass. Singapore is attacked. Thanks to some clever camouflage put in place by the dock workers, they ignore the repairing Prince of Wales and attack the other ships in the harbour.  Losing another ship while loading, the crews on the dockyard redouble their efforts to repair the pride of the British fleet in the pacific. Another later strike sinks a tanker loading in the harbour. In the Philippines, S-39 attacks a freighter, hitting it and leaving it burning. This is a good start from our Captains, and puts to rest fears yesterday that they were not going to involve themselves in the war.  Following this attack, some Patrol Gunboats move in to try their luck, but withdraw upon seeing the escort destroyers. This is thought to have disrupted the landings for a time, so is not a wasted engagement. It would have been suicide for the gunboats to approach the convoy in daylight, just spooking them is enough for me.  In the air, our planes shoot down twelve Betty Bombers without loss as they once again strike at Manilla. We lose no planes, but some get through and hit the ships loading at the docks. This is unavoidable at this point.  The B-17's take to the air today, but they fail to hit any ships they are aiming for, tomorrow they will be ordered to attack the landing troops, where accuracy is less important. There are another wave of massed troop landings, this time capturing Vigan and Appiri without any opposition. We need to maintain our defences of the key cities, even if this means giving the enemy landing zones for their forces. While this may cause problems in the long term, its better than watching the Jap's sail a force into an empty Manilla.   At Wake, the long range bombers once more attempt to destroy the airfield, Without loss, our planes destroy three Bettys and a Nell, and limit the bombing to some inaccurate hits. Then things really begin to heat up as planes from the Carrier Lexington detect an incoming invasion force. Every plane aboard the carrier is scrambled, and move to attack the ships. Without a carrier or land based CAP to protect them, the attack is described by the pilots as “Shooting Fish in a Barrel”  Command's decision to move the Carriers here has proven a wise one, the losses inflicted were heavy, one confirmed sinking and three more ships, one a cruiser, badly damaged. But this is not enough to prevent the other ships beginning their attack. There is no place to hide out here in the open of the pacific ocean.  But, warned by the Carrier fleet, the Marines on Wake were ready for this, and as the Japanese troops came ashore in broad daylight, they were met with murderous fire.  They are not repulsed fully, but they take heavy losses trying to hold on to their thin stretches of sand on the beachheads.   Today has been a mixed day, the successes of the Lexington are outweighed by the losses in other areas, but at least we have a victory to tell the people in the papers. It looks like the sting has been taken out of the Wake invasion, and hopefully with further support we can push them back from the island.  We are only getting the one freighter confirmed as killed, but the other ships are damaged, and in the case of the cruiser, the Japanese are not likely to lose face this early on by admitting its loss, if it has sunk from damage received. It will be many days, if not weeks, before they admit their losses for today.  We now have our first fighter ace. Kliewer has shot down five planes in just two missions, and three other pilots are soon to join him as Aces. So far, Pilot losses have been light, with only 16 killed and 24 wounded. With two missing in action.  The Carrier fleet, now known to be called the Kido Butai, or mobile force, is moving off. They seem to be moving in the direction of Wake. This must be watched, as we do not want our carriers being caught by the much larger force. We will allow the Lexington one more day of operations in the area, but the Enterprise is being returned to Pearl by a safe northern route. The CAP in Pearl has been reduced to 50% to give the pilots some rest, as it seems that the danger has passed for now. The Pennsylvania continues to burn. The Prince of Wales is now as fit as she will be in a short amount of time, but it will take three days to make her ready for sea. She may still sink when she reaches the open sea, but that is a risk we will have to take. High command thinks it better that than scuttled or taken as prize by the enemy. I also order our badly damaged mine layer to dump her mines in Singapore Harbour. This will slow down the enemy if they decide to move a large force into the harbour.
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 16:36 |
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| # ? May 19, 2013 21:43 |
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How will the defence of Wake fair if that Jap CTF reaches it and you retreat with your last carrier there? Could their CAG air support turn the tide on the beaches? Things are looking up otherwise.
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| # ? Dec 9, 2009 18:06 |
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