CAW campaigns

[Moggy-the-Admin]

As I understand it, with the final CAW map we settled on we hope to cover the following major actions in this addon:

The raid on Truk 17/2/44

The Mariannas - Saipan 15/6/44, Guam 20/7/44, Taipan 23/7/44

Battle of the Phillippine Sea 18-20/6/44

Palau landings 10-17/9/44

Leyte landings 15-19/10/44

Battle of Leyte Gulf 23-25/10/44

Have our campaign people given any thought yet as to how the campaigns will be structured, bearing in mind that the positions of both sides in each of these actions will very different, and the action takes place over a very short time period - the principal air battles over a matter of 2-3 days at most.

[geg]

how does the game handle carriers? IE...if they're moving each sortie...or will there be bases coded in before hand and the sqn's change bases all the time? just wondering...

[Pobs]

Hi Greg,

interesting question... I suppose we can have seperate airfileds.dat files with different activated bases which could be swapped in and out making the positions of the carrier fleets appear to move with time... the main carrier fleets will be based on airfields so they wont move but 'target carriers' could be trains based on railway lines and can move to make targetting them a bit trickier... we can modify the exe to make the train a suitably big, and tough target... we still haven't identified the random number generator in the exe that determines the number or type of carriage on a train yet though...

cheers,


Pobs

[Moggy-the-Admin]

My worry here, and I would very much like Andy's opinion on it, is how to make the eight or nine major carrier actions each with separate launch locations and target list, and lasting generally over a period of just a few days, fit into the EAW campaign engine. I think it's quite possible that we may need to swap in and out campaign files and target files, and are probably going to need a front end manager.

[Moggy]

Just spent some time looking through the CICPAC communiques for 1944, and I can see how possibly we can make "The Mariannas" (Saipan, Tinian, Guam) - an action over a period of weeks - a discrete campaign perhaps with moving front line. Perhaps what we have will be a mixture of campaigns and single mission mission packages for the such things as the Raid on Truk.

[Captain Kurt]

Sorry, dbl post

[Captain Kurt]

I was thinking along the lines of using the EAW engine's capability of moving a squadron to a new airfield to change the attacking fleets locations as the front line moved around the ocean.

In between the major carrier engagements and the big strikes, the carrier air groups were quite busy striking convoys and small shipping, various smaller ground target locations - including small airstrips, repelling air attacks from ground based aircraft, offensive fighter sweeps, anti submarine patrols, etc. So a carrier location for a major battle could be used for a number of other actions before a base change is required.

Is reassigning airbases an option to move the carrier to new locations?

Cheers

Capt. Kurt

[geg]

Is reassigning airbases an option to move the carrier to new locations?

correct me if im wrong, but wouldnt there be carriers there at all times on these bases? or at least, when the front line moves, theyll appear there when not wanted? or am i completely off track, again.

[Captain Kurt]

Yes they would, but since the next base would be about a thousand miles away, you would not likely ever see the old base again - out of range.

Cheers

Capt Kurt

[geg]

RGR Kurt.

if say, you're on an American carrier, and its attacked by Japanese planes, and sunk...would the campaign be over, say, or????

[Moggy]

I think Kurt is right about the way various Carrier locations could be used, they would all be on the map, but the player would not necessarily notice this, the Pacific is big, and there were a number of US carrier groups in operation. He moves from one location called "USS FlatTop" to another one called exactly the same, but as Kurt says, a thousand miles away. The CICPAC communiques record "Navy" fighters carrying out almost daily raids on various locations on remaining Japanese locations. If we can divide the campaigns into component parts, and assign specific groups of targets to those component parts, it will work. Andy ?????

If the carrier location is knocked out, it would be the same as if your airbase is knocked out in the default game. But I think there is a "rate of repair" hidden away in the game mechanics, so it may not necessarily be the end.

[Pobs]

Moggy,

every ground target has a rate of repair value in the exe table, we could work with that...

regarding airbases being there if we disable them... I think if we ff ff ff ff them in the airfields.dat then they don't appear for the relevent year... so they would not be there at all.... of course since the airfield is invisible under the carriers anyway we could just remove the ships in the target files and move them to a field nearby which we could also activate for the relevent year, so they would appear to have moved over time....if this was was the home base this would need to be co-ordinated with the squad moving though ...!!


the movement of these files in and out would need a front-end manager I suspect...unless we could somehow tie them into the 'phases' in the mission files...??

cheers,


Pobs

[Captain Kurt]

BTW, to add to the original list Moggy as suggested we should consider adding:

The Yap, Palau, and Woleai pre-invasion air strikes flow on 3/30 and 4/1, 1944

The Leyte landings support strikes 10/15 to 10/19, 1944

And the second big Truk raid 4/29 1944

Cheers

Captain Kurt