[WIP] Japanese Campaign

[Alfamemnon]

Originally Posted by keltos01

just the one :

USS Monaghan (DD-354) foundered during a typhoon in the Philippine Sea, 18 December 1944.

and :

USS Warrington (DD-383) foundered in a hurricane north of the Bahamas Islands,
13 September 1944.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq82-1.htm

but I don't know if that can be implemented ingame

keltos

Just one? How about USS Hull (DD-350), USS Spence (DD-512) and a group of other ships that were not DD by class? I also heard that a Typhoon sabotaged US Navy operations against some Japanese held island by damaging aircraft carriers. Only battleships in that task force were seaworthy enough to make it without even the smallest damage...and that same task force suffered the biggest weather related destroyer losses as far as I can remember. It is useless to talk about details otherwise but I just wish to point out that it would be a great thing if extremely adverse weather conditions could be implemented because they would not be only realistic but could make a BIG difference to many things and they could either hamper players efforts as well as sometimes could be used by the player to the point of saving his life, crew and sub. Horrible sea/weather conditions could for example make a hostile light cruiser give up a depth charge attack on the player because of getting bigger problems to worry about.

If these following features can be implemented, I would like to suggest them too:

1) It would be realistic if the player was also sometimes attacked by a hostile submarine. Sinking an enemy sub should bring some renown too. However if this cannot be implemented in a way that other players would consider a great thing rather than become annoyed by it (a terrible danger, little renown in prevailing, very hard to hit with torpedoes forcing you to waste many of them, difficult to find a submerged enemy sub even with a hydrophone), then forget it. If I was a sub skipper in real life, I would certainly not be happy to encounter an enemy sub either. Probably it could be made easy in the manner that the enemy sub made mistakes in these encounters often. The player could probably deceive it into surfacing if he was silent for a long time (lets assume the enemy skipper is a rookie but some enemy captains could be cunning and deadly too).

2) Another interesting feature could be if you could rescue hostiles from the sea in the same manner than pilots from your own side. Taking POWs should probably be scripted to give you less renown than rescuing friendlies though but still even enemy personnel would be worth something as your superiors could, for example, command them to build railroads and bridges to Burma (ever watch The Bridge on River Kwai? It does not tell the whole truth though). Hostile personnel in the sea should probably also be scripted to draw in enemy forces if they received his mayday but it should be safe to rescue the bailed out Dauntless pilot that just tried to bomb your sub a few seconds ago.

3) There should also be a feature for the player to commit atrocities but choosing to have any "fun" could result in the game telling the player he got in trouble with Allied war crimes trials at the end of campaign...though he could receive additional praise from some evil superiors during the campaign (being cruel to enemies was in Japanese religion & culture I think. Due to that, some American military personnel stopped having any sympathy on the Japanese).

4) At the end of campaign, the player could choose whether to surrender to Americans or refuse to accept the terrible disgrace of surrendering to enemies and rather sail to some faraway, neutral land (especially Argentina under Peron was symphatetic to some Axis personnel after WW2 and the player probably heard about this as a "well kept secret" told by some crew member of one of those monsoon uboats who happens to be a member of nazi party). Many of the Japanese Naval Infantry defending the islands, committed suicide rather than to surrender to the victorious boys of U.S. Marine Corps. Fleeing to another country could be an alternative especially to an atrocite committer.

5) The campaign could start from the Second Sino-Japanese War (to get pre-WW2 experience for you and your crew) but it would not include many patrols as I think it did not take long for IJN to completely eliminate Chinese fleet.