It’s a gorgeous painting.
Yeah, he does good work. Mostly the old battlewagons, sadly not much in the way of CVs.
Agreed - but the map shown covers all of Melanesia right from New Guinea to almost New Caledonia. Plenty of transits there exposing ships to sub attack.
How to best account for that risk - and the friction created by needing to counter that threat - seems to fall within the scope of this game. In any case it is kind of a small thing, I wouldn’t expect that a sub takes one of the big carriers very often (but entirely within the realm of the possible).
Losing one out of a force of three carriers before the Battle of Santa Cruz - say when sailing along the Vanuatu archipelago towards the Solomons - would have been a big deal for the USN,tipping the scales in favour of the IJN, imo.
If you can have saved games, building good old IGO UGO multiplayer is quite straightforward. You can reuse all the code implementing the saving of the game state. What you need to figure out is:
- how to get the files travel between players
- what to do about savescumming
- how to protect files from tampering
All three things are kind of “easy” technically, but have ramifications.
I’d really love to have a good, dedicated PC carrier focus WWII naval game, with full fog of war (to me, the real tension in a WWII Pacific carrier wargame is the cat and mouse search for the other side’s CV carrier groups, sending out search aircraft and determining how much you trust their reports, etc.)
FWIW, one of the best PC wargames I recall that captured that tension was Grigsby’s old Guadalcanal Campaign. I remember staying up late sweating out whether that red little square that showed up was a carrier TF or a transport TF. Unfortunately, after finding a port I could play on my PC, its age really shows.
All that said, I’m not bought into this new/port at this point. At least not enough to pledge.
Uncommon Valour was the remake, one of the first releases by Matrix Games. I quite liked that one.
The follow up was a bit too much: I have always loved the scenarios, but the GC I have seldom played it for 6 months in game… it all goes crazy pants very soon.
Uncommon Valor may be my favorite Grigsby game. It has all the crunchy bits of War in the Pacific, but it’s limited in time and scope to the most interesting and balanced engagement in the Pacific War – the struggle for the South Pacific from mid-42 to early 1943.
That said, I also really enjoy War in the Pacific / Admiral’s Edition, and I’ve probably logged more hours in it than any other wargame. But I’ve yet to finish the grand campaign! I’ve made it to 1943. :)
That is awesome CW. Flagship of the Pacific Fleet. Sunk and reincarnated at Pearl.
What a great print that is.
(and here I am thinking “could it fit in the canal?”) I think it must have.
Yeah, that didn’t become an issue with the Fleet until the '60s.
Thank you KG. I got to tell that story to the artist over the phone, and he sent me a really nice signed print.
And yes, per Mr Onegun, all those BBs could fit through the canal. The proposed Montana class wouldn’t have.
California was a WWI Dreadnaught if I am not mistaken. She was a beautiful ship and a great profile.
Yeah, IIRC the Enterprise-Class was the first constructed class that couldn’t make it through the canal. I think she entered service in 1961.
I didn’t look it up but I am somewhat surprised the Missouri-class fast battleships could cruse through the canal. But In hindsight I guess they were spec’d for that.
Those prints make the grognards thread always a good stop by.
I wonder what the California’s service record was after they lifted her from pearl.
I just looked. She had a fantastic service record.
Yeah, she got a modicum of revenge at Surigao Strait.
Can you imagine a tough ship like that being hit by a kamikaze and it killing almost 50 sailors? Looks like she was one of those great fire support ships. Thx canned I am not a true grognard but I surface here occasionally. I was glad to talk about that beautiful battlewagon tonight.
Any time, KG. Happy to share.
Some interesting tidbits I recall from that journal: my grandfather witnessed a Zero bouncing off a turret, and the worst noise wasn’t the 14” inchers, it was the quad 40mm that would fire asynchronously, but would occasionally sync up with a head splitting crack
See the link earlier in the thread today I posted about the Liscome Bay, KG. 1 torpedo killed 900 men.
I just looked. And btw I disagree about submarines (U.S. side or Japanese side) NOT being part of a strategic pacific theater game. The fact that there were actually submarines in the water changed tactics. I would argue that a pacific theater game that models carrier tactics MUST include submarines.
We lost a lotta escort carriers. USS Liscome Bay was a terrible example. Our subs (and I almost say this with some regret) sunk a lot more of there shipping. And at certain times a lot more of their naval strength.
Interesting article from the past.
How The Panama Canal Changed The Shape Of War
Or at least the shape of warships
https://www.popsci.com/article/technology/how-panama-canal-changed-shape-war#page-3
I was wrong by the way, the Midway-Class was the first class too large for the canal.
The game being discussed is more at a Fleet action-level (not strategic). Subs would be cherries on the sundae. Nice, but not essential. Having said that, I ain’t getting it for a lotta other reasons.
Btw apparently the USS Tennessee and some battlewagons were pacific only. So it appears there was a sorta standard measurement to get ships in. But as battleships grew in the waste …
Which makes sense.
Btw anyone else have some nice prints like that good heavans post them. I recall a Great White Fleet print and now I am looking for it.