2nd Oct

A situation is developing.

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/9219/93818845.jpg

I had been using a few float planes out of Shortlands on Naval strike mainly to harass his shipping in the area. They aren't great, but tend to avoid CAP for some reason. Today they took off and passed into a big old ball of Wildcats - 35 or so, more than I expected.

Below them was the USS South Dakota, and although they never got a hit on her, it did make me realise that what was going on was a fairly major operation. Further checks showed a large number of cruisers, transports, destroyers and at least two carriers of indeterminate size. Probably CVEs but give I had a sighting of a fleet carrier several days ago I cannot discount the possibility that the Enterprise is here. I'd rather there wasn't a battleship here, but seeing as how Yamato TF now has 4 battlewagons, I won't lose too much sleep.

Given the huge amount of shipping in this area, I have decided to risk my Netties again. They should have escorts from Rabaul's contingent of A6M3s and, if the timing works out, they should get extra aid from KB1.

Strangely, I don't have a very good feeling about this. I feel like I'm being bated....

Oh yeah, R0-67 got thumped by one of the screens east of Tulagi. She's heading back towards Truk and will then return to Osaka. I don't expect she'll be back. I've taken notice of how much more dangerous his ASW platforms are than mine. Mind you, my subs have done the business on several occasions.

So....I should say, I'll be traveling most of tomorrow and I'll probably be busy tomorrow night...it might be a couple of days before we see the results of this....although I expect - with the exception of the betties - we won't see much until the turn after....

3rd Oct.

As I just said to CCIP when I sent his turn back, this is the first turn I've had that actually left me furious with the way the game is coded.

My Netties flew alright, except they flew straight for Moresby and litteraly died by the score: I lost 43 Betties and 20 Nells. The targets? A couple of supply ships and a sub chaser....meanwhile the huge score of capital ships further south - which we know are there - are pulling back. CAP over Lunga was smaller, it is HUGE over Moresby because CCIP beefed it up massively following our Coral sea battle.

And while all this is going on, I've had a dive bomber squadron sitting at Lae - with enough Zeroes to provide escort - for a couple of weeks now on naval strike. They haven't flown once. Not once.

There are several failings in the game that annoy me but the utter lack of control the player has over naval strikes is unforgivable in my book, especially when the AI makes such a terrible choice as this. It isn't the first time this has happened now, but it is the costliest. I have three wings of bombers who are no longer going to be effective units for at least 6 weeks game times, all because the AI decided it wanted to sink a sub chaser instead of cruisers and a battleship.

Why, for the love of God, can I not select a target for naval strike like I can for EVERY OTHER AIR MISSION?

I'm not the greatest player in the world, but I think I have a solid enough grasp on the mechanics of the game. But this.....this....feature does my head in big time.

Sorry for the rant. If I get home tomorrow (as long as the snow stays off and I can get over the pass at Drumochter,) I'm going to spend a couple of hours tomorrow night drinking a very fine Brunello Di Montalcino and beating the crap out of people in Batman: Arkham Ansylum. And every time Batman lands a punch, I'm going to imagine he's steaming into the guy who did the naval strike coding. :nope: :damn:

:Kaleun_Mad:

EDIT:

LOL, I just checked the weather. One of my float planes out of Shortlands hit a transport near Lunga - the weather was light rain. At Moresby? Thunderstorms - Go figure.....

I agree completely. It makes no sense that you can micromanage the exact altitude your planes fly at, but have no influence over what direction they go.

Ideally, I would like to be able to select the area they look for targets, and have some sort of 'risk tolorence' factor so they don't just go on some pointless banzai mission.

Does anyone know if it does any good to give your groups a secondary mission at a nearby land target to "steer" them in the right direction? I've tried this, but don't know if it works or not. (It probably doesn't.)

Secondary targets are a double edged sword, IMO, and I try to avoid using them whenever I can. In this case, however, I may give it a go. It can't hurt any more that what happened, can it? :) Good thinking TorpX. We'll see how it works - in about two months when I have enough Betties to fly a raid!

I spent a bit of time going through old threads at Matrix last night and this has been an issue since way back when Uncommon Valor first appeared and every iteration of the game has carried this same feature. I read a few - fairly weak, I have to say - excuses for it but nothing that made me think this isn' a massive mistake when it comes to the game mechanics. There must be some reason why it has never been fixed but I can't think of one.

Ideally, I'd simply like to see either the ability to choose a specific task force to attack or set something akin to search arcs where in naval strikes will try to attack anything within that area. In both cases I'm quite happy for the usual FOW, failures and other factors to scrub missions as and when they have to.

Ayway. No turn possibly today. My lap top is packed away and I'm sitting here watching the snow come down. It's going to be a long journey, I think. Still, we're getting a lift in my dad's motor caravan so if we do get stuck on the road because of the weather at least we'll have beds, a toilet, a DVD player and a cooker to keep spirits up!

Getting worried now. Several inches more snow and my trick knee is playing up now as well.

In short, situation is way worse than it normally is when my Betties opt for a duvet day...and I'm still going out! Leading by example is what it is!

If you sunk his carriers why don't you just send propaganda e-mails?

Because when I do his ships magically reappear from the mists of my rubbish Japanese intel..:DL

I'm home and have chilled out with Batman after a weary journey and other fun. Turn tomorrow.

It's actually a good tactic to confirm you sunk it if you do he'll send something back to you like you didn't sink my carriers.

I think he'd be more shocked if I used a good tactic in my game than in an email...:D

In actual fact the intel picture is quite misty just now. Of course, it can be months before any form of confirmation comes in. I don't have a single carrier on my list just now even though I know three out of four were very badly hit.

I'm not going to tell you but I know what happened because I looked on his thread.

Wait, what? Grrr....and he told me he was using that thread to recite a great Canadian folk epic....something about heroic Mounties I think.

You're not kidding. In my game I've had one IJN BB be declared sunk three times (so far) and pop up again afterwards. I guess it is a Japanese Flying Dutchman. :arrgh!:

I think you should give your intelligence people cheat cards. Because we all know the South Dakota is the only US BB out there why don't you do this: one strike, right now, it's over for him.

Or we could leave information like that out of this thread. As far as Egan knows CCIP could all 4 Iowas, 2 North Carolinas and 4 South Dakota Class BBs roaming about...

I know but of course he knows that the South Dakota is there. BTW the Iowa was not completed till 43'.