Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 3: Fleet Command, Part 10

 This mission turned out to be an exercise on frustration. Not so much the mission itself but the image editing and report writing.

While the handling of the ships themselves went according to my expectations the management of the air units was a bit of a disjointed mess.

The auxiliary fighter doesn't have enough endurance to really be a factor (that was expected) which left me with only four (soon to be five) units that should be operated as a team.

I'm used to upgrading the F4F3 fighter and purchasing and placing the second core fighter in the deployment phase but disbanding and reforming the two infantry units in the previous mission to boost their experience meant I couldn't afford it.

Sinking the OPFOR's CVs (particularly the southern one) is a task most suited for the air units but it requires all three bombers working together while escorted by the fighters. Attacking the destroyers of Red A1 was inefficient and I should have been attacking the Coastal Fort while waiting for the torpedo bomber to arrive.

This snowballed into using the air units somewhat uncoordinated with each other and almost letting one CV exit the map.

While not crippling I think that I may show undue respect to the OPFOR's Coastal Forts in that I avoid engaging them with ships. On the one hand I recognize that I need enough targets to provide experience to my bomber but on the other hand I have this aversion to suffer avoidable damage. This leads to ships waiting outside their range until the bomber(s) do their job i.e. delays that might be equivalent to the time required for repairs.

After completing the mission I had 1'870 screenshots (to which I added another 70 from the no Fog of War deployment phase). About 500 of those were the raw ingredients for "General Overview (TM)", the start and end of turn full map picture (remember the end of turn 24 image?). I knew beforehand that those pictures would be too big to be posted in any numbers but I also knew that I would need some sort of reference to fall back on: if you go back to the images for turn 33 try to imagine what they would convey without the VP flag and the small islands.

Also a source of frustration was the work required to produce the plots for the ships as seen on the third post for this mission. As it is now it can be tricky to tell the CV and BB paths (in future I'll remember to use different colors) and I really should have added turn numbers to some of the points (I'm still learning how to add text). Adding the cruisers', destroyers' and submarine's paths would only have turned that map into an unintelligible spider's web. The aircraft's plots (not included, at least yet) are an even worse mess.

Depicting naval combat i.e. individual ship's attack is a problem I haven't solved yet particularly how to depict the various options each ship has during a turn. If you consider the slowest ship (battleship, at 3 tiles/hexes maximum) can end its turn in any one of 37 tiles/hexes each one of which can reach 126 (normal range 6) or 270 (Primary Guns with range 9) tiles/hexes you'll start to understand the magnitude of the problem. Granted that many movement options won't offer "target solutions" but if you place the expected results on the target tile you start running out of room and/or becomes difficult to differentiate from where you are firing. Or you have a different image for each one (or two, or three) moves and quickly ramp up the number of images that will be large and I'm trying to keep each post's total image weight under one megabyte (Ok, I hadn't mentioned this arbitrary self-imposed limitation before; no matter how fast  the internet has become it still takes time and in some cases money to download stuff and I think it is considerate to my readers; plus this platform doesn't state limitations for image weight but I'm sure eventually some will come into play).

All of this coupled with some real life complications provoked a measure of burnout and writer's block. The actual mission was played between July 9th and July 12th, 2023. The bulk of the screenshot processing took about a month (mid August, 2023). Then life happened and I'm writing this on June 20th, 2024. So... sorry about the sub-standard reporting of this mission (at least I feel it is sub-standard) but I need to get it out and move on with the campaign (because I only play a new mission after I finish writing the report for the current one).

In any case I expect that I will find the energy to revisit this report and add at least the air units' content.

Ok, enough griping... on to the mission.

This is a real learning opportunity for a new player and it should be played multiple times to try different options and solidify lessons.

As far as naval combat goes and after a brief introduction in the previous mission the new player should understand the value of superior odds and the perils of penny-packets. Generally speaking ships of equivalent "class" do minimal damage to each other (up to two points of damage), barely any damage to higher "classes" and substantial damage to smaller "classes". This in turn can be modified (usually reduced) by own movement length, target movement length, relative distance change (moving closer or farther away) or range proper (there's a sweet spot about two thirds of maximum range). Torpedo attacks can be devastating to heavier ships enabling destroyers to punch above their weight so to speak. Unless heavily damaged (less than three strength remaining) ships can still cause meaningful damage.

In short naval combat approximates the N-squared law and rewards the systematic destruction of enemy units by concentration of fire, maneuvering to obtain at least local superiority in numbers and the opportunity to fire first.

While this mission can be won using only ships that would be a mistake. Learning how to use air units is important. Once more torpedoes are invaluable against heavy ships (carriers and battleships). Dive-bombers are quite effective against destroyers and will damage heavier ships.

The Green Team submarine will teach you that it is mostly worthless. The OPFOR's submarines will teach you what a pain it is to find them and kill them when submerged (when on the surface everyone in range can have a field day).

---

As promised, comments ARE enabled in this final post. Please be civil and on topic.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 3: Fleet Command, Part 9

 Figures 1 through 3 document the nineteen "Tutorial Messages" that popped up during this mission. That makes one hundred and four so far (seventy five in the first mission and ten in the second).

Figure 1 - Tutorial Messages

Figure 2 - Tutorial Messages

Figure 3 - Tutorial Messages

---

Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 3: Fleet Command, Part 8

 Figure 1 is once more a mosaic of nine screenshots. The "Fog of War" was lifted via a console command (#orbitalcommand). The image depicts the situation at the deployment phase before adding Green Team's core units. I've added the names of the Red Team's units, a zoomed-in view of the OPFOR's CVs decks showing the aircraft inside their hangars and the location of the sinking of the OPFOR's ships (type and turn number). Just in case you are wondering these screenshots were taken after the mission had been completed (not that it really mattered).

Figure 1 - Deployment phase

---

Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 3: Fleet Command, Part 7

 Special Events

The secondary objective "Destroy Coastal Forts" immediately grants $50 for each Fort and ownership of the island they are located by deploying an allied (Blue Team) anti-aircraft gun (Figure 1). This gives access to ports for repairs on both islands and the one airfield at the Red Home Base.

Figure 1 - Coastal Forts

The primary objective "Capture all Primary VPs" immediately grants $50 for each of the first/closest two VPs (and $20 for the final/farthest VP) and fully functional ships (Figure 2). The last VP doesn't trigger a pop-up. The second VP was taken on turn 34 but somehow I neglected to take a screenshot so this image is from a different playthrough.

Figure 2 - Primary VPs

The secondary objective "Destroy all enemy Carriers" immediately grants a fully functional PBY Catalina reconnaissance flying boat. Destroying the OPFOR's Radar Station replaces it with your very own. (Figure 3).

Figure 3 - OPFOR Carriers and Radar Station

Achieving the primary objective "Destroy the enemy Battleship" triggers the pop-up depicted in Figure 4.

Figure 4 - OPFOR Battleship

OPFOR

Figure 5 documents the data panels for almost all the Red Team's units. After the playthrough was finished I started the scenario once more, removed the Fog of War with a console command and took screenshots of these. The units missing are the OPFOR's F4F3 Wildcat fighters and SBD2 Dauntless dive-bombers (two each) because they were inside the carriers.

Figure 5 - OPFOR datasheets

Figure 6 is a timeline of the OPFOR's surface ships and installations remaining strength at the end of each turn with X meaning sunk/destroyed. I really should have included a legend on the image: grey cells indicate when I knew the squadron was active, yellow cells are for aircraft attacks and orange cells are for ship attacks; cells at 13 strength should really be grey; cells with a black outline indicate the heavy ships (CL or CA) in the squadron. There's no data on the two DDs escorting the CVs because they weren't attacked and exited the map.

Figure 6 - Timeline

Neither the submarines nor the aircraft are included in Figure 6 because I have no reliable information i.e. screenshots on when and how much damage each took. I do know that I sank both submarines and killed all three tactical bombers and one of two fighters. Which brings us to...

Green Team debriefing

Figure 7 is a report on the Green Team units at the end of the mission. This replaces the individual unit statistics from the previous missions because quite frankly they were a pain to edit.

Figure 7 - Green Team debrief

The values for CA 32 New Orleans and DD 423 Gleaves are for this mission only. The experience values for DD 424 Niblack and DD 429 Livermore do include the 2'000 bonus from the "Naval Academy" specialization.

There's nine points of damage ("Casualties") to core units that don't have HP/RP repairs (two for VB1, three for DD 242 and four for DD 429). I must have forgotten to take those screenshots because all of my core units are at full strength at the end of the mission and the RP summary on Figure 10 shows $50 more than the final screenshot for turn 61 ($887 vs $837).

When playing this scenario for my normal ("Captain") difficulty run I had some trouble with attacking only with my core units. Engaging Red A1, A2 and B Squadrons I just couldn't inflict enough damage fast enough and took more damage than I liked. Going in on this "Fleet Admiral" difficulty I knew I had to rely on the auxiliaries to assist but I set myself the constraint that actual kills would be reserved for core units.

Note that the Carrier and Structures categories only have damage caused by air units. The Structures are the Coastal Forts and the Radar Station, neither of which has any air defense and I probably should have engaged the Coastal Forts without the aid of the auxiliary bombers. The Carriers pose additional complications because a) they are set to leave the map once they and/or their air group takes enough damage; b) they are located in positions not timely accessible by ships.

Note also that there's four points of damage and one kill inflicted on the OPFOR's tactical bombers by the Green Team's tactical bombers. These were aircraft damaged/killed while aboard the CVs.

While I was successful in amassing over 2'000 XP for the tactical bomber (VB1), the fighters fell short. VF1 is close enough that I'm confident it will reach that goal in the next mission but VF2 might only progress to the US Pacific campaign on sentimental reasons.

Victory

Figure 8 is the Victory pop-up and Figure 9 is the corresponding Turn Overview. On the top right corner of Figure 9 are the turn/RP/CP counters (as per usual I only took the last VP on the last turn for the "extra" income).

Figure 8 - Victory

Figure 9 - Final Turn Overview

Figure 10 is a Resource Point cashflow report. Event rewards refer to Figures 1 and 2 and the final VP's $20. DD (destroyers) and VO (reconnaissance floatplanes) are two each. VF (carrier-borne fighters) include one full cost F4F4 Wildcat ($85) and one F4F3 upgrade to F4F4 ($42). As mentioned above the core unit repairs are most probably $272 and half of the auxiliary repair cost ($97) will be reimbursed at the deployment phase of mission 4.

Figure 10 - Cashflow

---

Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 3: Fleet Command, Part 6

Placeholder post for reconnaissance aircraft action

---

Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 3: Fleet Command, Part 5

 Placeholder post for fighter and bomber action

---

Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 3: Fleet Command, Part 4

 Figure 1 depicts the situation at the end of turn 24. Nothing dramatic has happened since turn 20 but there are some changes:

Figure 1 - Turn 24

a) the second OPFOR CV was sunk fulfilling one of the secondary objectives and the Green Team was awarded a core PBY Catalina reconnaissance flying boat (top left corner);

b) the first VP was taken and two auxiliary DDs became immediately available (center left edge);

c) the submarine has reached its final destination and is keeping the OPFOR's BB under a watchful eye; its torpedoes can only do about two points of damage once every four (five?) turns so I only use it for reconnaissance; it is lightly damage courtesy of the mine at the top center edge (there's more mines in that area);

d) the two core fighters are busy strafing the OPFOR's Radar because they can and they need all the experience they can get;

e) the blip South of the radar is the plane guard DD heading towards the exit points on the bottom right corner; the other plane guard DD has already exited through the ones on the top corner; the trickiest problem in this mission is sinking both the OPFOR's CVs before one of them decides to exit the map;

f) Red B Squadron has lost all five of its DDs (65 points of strength) and taken five points of damage to one of the CAs with only two Green Team auxiliary DDs lightly damaged (3- and 4-damage respectively); they started outnumbered but the real reason was they didn't fight as a cohesive unit choosing to come into range of my ships in ones or twos; note also that the full strength CA is on the other side of the island chain and can only fire at extreme range (and minimal damage) at my core CA and the two DDs by the VP while the other CA's movement is limited by the three DDs.

There's two more things I'd like to mention about this image.

It is a mosaic out of nine screenshots and I have one each for both start and end of each turn up to and including turn 28; technically turns 1 through to start of turn 9 are only six screenshots because nothing was happening on the East edge of the map.

There's an error on the bottom corner of the image: the medium blue of the aircraft radar range do not align at the right (west) edge. I have no idea if it was just mislabeling a screenshot, an error while editing or even if this was a turn that I had to redo because the game crashed and I ended up using screenshot(s) from both plays.

Figure 2 is from turn 33 both start (left) and end (right). At the start of turn 33 the Green Team is at the exit of the "Channel" and once more deployed in battle line. There are only four surviving OPFOR ships: the BB at the top corner of the map, the heavily damaged Gunboat making a suicidal attack and two undetected submarines in the vicinity of the (second) VP.

Figure 2 - Turn 33

I don't remember exactly what happened during the turn. The core BB, CA and two of the DDs fired and sunk the OPFOR Gunboat but that's too much potential damage against such a fragile target. Two of the auxiliary DDs also performed some action and at least one of them used Sonar to detect and fire on the OPFOR submarine which I believe is submerged (otherwise I would have fired on it at least with my third DD). I think the other auxiliary DD also used Sonar to detect the other OPFOR submarine on the surface and together with the BB and the core DDs managed to sink it.

---

Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 3: Fleet Command, Part 3

 Figure 1 shows the paths of both the aircraft carrier (CV) and the battleship (BB) during the mission. The CV's path (operating independently) is the U-shaped one along the edges of the "Bay". The BB's path depicts not only the ship's actual position at the end of each turn but also the approximate position of the cruisers (CA) and destroyers (DD).

Figure 1 - Naval tracks

Figure 2 illustrates the situation at the end of turn 1. At the top left of the image are the three OPFOR DDs (one is obscured under the OPFOR torpedo bomber VT) that I will refer to as (Squadron) Red A1 and which damaged the northernmost Green auxiliary DD (strength 9). The light cruiser (CL) from the previous mission would be part of Red A1 if it had survived.

Figure 2 - Turn 1

I didn't remember how to attack the DD under the VT with my auxiliary dive-bomber (VB) so I hit the easternmost one instead (for 4 points of damage). Tactical bombers attack the surface unit below them. If there's an enemy air unit above it they have to be moved to a tile/hex adjacent to the surface unit and then target (click on) that unit, which pushes the enemy air unit out of the way. My core VB (three tiles South of the damaged OPFOR DD) was deployed "airborne" and is moving North to assist.

The Green Team ships are in the process of forming a battle line with the DDs providing a screen for the CAs and BB with the P40 Warhawk (X/F1) moving to cover the two auxiliary CAs in range of the OPFOR VT. The CV launched VF1 (F4F3 Wildcat) and is moving South away from both the OPFOR DDs and VT.

Figure 3 documents a Special Event that in my experience always triggers on turn 5, a naval commander that grants a +2 bonus to attacks against large ships with a range of two tiles i.e. extends to all other of your ships in that range. I chose to assign him to my battleship also because the cruisers will generally be close to it.

Figure 3 - Naval Commander Joseph Wright

Figure 4 depicts Green Team's ships at the start (left) and the end (right) of turn 6. Note how the DDs screen the larger ships blocking the OPFOR's torpedo attack vectors. The heavily damaged DD (4-strength) is moving towards port for repairs. The OPFOR Red A2 (three DDs and one CL - the white radar echo at the top right) is already activated at this point. By the end of the turn the OPFOR has lost the westernmost DD (4-strength), suffered moderate to heavy damage on two others (from 4- to 1- and 13- to 4-strength) and light damage on a third (13 down to 12). That's sixteen points of damage inflicted by eleven attackers: six DDs (two slightly damaged), three CAs, one BB and a Coastal Fort.

Figure 4 - Turn 6

Figure 5 shows the situation at the start of turn 9. The OPFOR's Red A1 and A2 that started with six DDs and one CL are now reduced to two heavily damaged DDs and one barely afloat CL and will be at the bottom of the "Bay" by the end of this turn. The Green Team has taken moderate to heavy damage to its DDs with two auxiliaries at 3-strength and one at 8-strength (IIRC the 4-strength one from turn 6 after one round of repairs) and two core destroyers down to 7- and 9-strength. Note how the OPFOR split and tried to outflank the Green Team forcing me to use the two auxiliary CAs to screen my core CA and BB from torpedo attack. Not ideal but a calculated risk given how heavily damaged the OPFOR ships were.

Figure 5 - Turn 9

Figure 6 illustrates the situation at the end of turn 20.

Figure 6 - Turn 20

From turn 10 until this moment there was no ship-vs-ship combat, the Green Team ships underwent repairs at port and then maneuvered to reform a battle line.

Meanwhile the tactical bombers were busy destroying Coastal Gun A and the OPFOR CV Lexington. This sentence does not reflect the dog's breakfast that I made of those tasks: the Coastal Gun was initially bombed during turns 4 to 6 inflicting 7 points of damage, then the CV was attacked during turns 7, 8 and 10 leaving it at 1-strength; at this point the bombers had to disengage from lack of fuel and damage taken (one of the returning bombers inflicted 2 more points of damage on the Coastal Gun leaving it at 4-strength); after repairs and refueling the Coastal Gun was finally attacked and destroyed during turns 14 to 16 and the OPFOR CV Lexington was bombed and sunk in turn 17 in the vicinity of the northeast Victory Point (two or three more turns and it would have exited the map) in sight of the OPFOR's BB and Red B Squadron (2 CAs and 5 DDs); after viewing the replay I realized the motive for what I thought was the Red B's premature activation: I attacked one of the DDs with the returning VB 1 (SBD2 Dauntless) dive-bomber.

On to what the figure actually depicts.

At the southern edge of the map the OPFOR's CV Saratoga is being pummeled by the Green Team's dive-bombers and will sink in turn 22. Its plane guard DD is too far to provide AA support, the AI might have been duped into trying to hit my CV at the southeast corner of the "Bay" for a faster turnaround; in the CV's hangar is the auxiliary VT repairing and IIRC reconfiguring as a level bomber.

Slightly North two Gunboats guard the VP and despite having been bombed the previous turn by the dive-bombers "en route" to attack the Saratoga are not yet activated. Nearby is an intact Radar Station never mentioned in the briefing which will eventually be destroyed by the core VFs (it has no anti-air defense and the fighters need every last point of experience they can get). Lying in ambush in the shallows northeast of my CV are two yet undetected PT Boats.

The OPFOR's Red B Squadron is spread-out over the top right corner of the image. The only ship actually in sight is a CA, the radar blip to its North is the other CA and the remaining five blips are the DDs. Note the light blue hexagon in the center of the image, that's the visual range of the Green Team's P40 fighter that started the turn in its middle and is barely visible over land directly East of my CV. By a quirk of OOB it (and every other aircraft) is equipped with radar ranging six tiles/hexes and thus has detected four out of the five Red DDs. Likewise one of my scout planes sighted the visible CA and detected the last Red DD at the start of the turn, moved North three tiles (half of its movement allowance) to detect the other CA and returned to its initial position.

Lastly the Green Team ships (top left corner) are deployed in a battle line ready to engage Red B. If you look closely there's eight tiles between the Green DDs and the closest two Red DDs. This is by design: destroyers have a maximum movement and firing range of four tiles so even if the OPFOR's DDs move as far as they can they won't be able to attack my ships; if the AI chooses to move any closer I will then be able to at least destroy one and heavily damage the other.

---

Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 3: Fleet Command, Part 2

 Force composition

Let's address the air component first. We're allowed twenty CPs to bolster our initial two tactical bombers and two fighters. The aircraft carrier and the airfield provide ten supply points each and at three supply points per air unit that leaves eight supply points readily available for two more units. More than that will require additional aircraft carrier(s). Note that aircraft carrier supply points only allow the deployment of carrier-based air units which (spoilers) makes land-based air units a poor choice for most of the US Pacific campaign.

There are three classes of air units to choose from (four if/when reconnaissance is included):

a) Strategic bombers, all land based, expensive and atrociously ineffective against naval units which means I won't buy any at this moment;

b) Tactical bombers: the A20C Havoc suffers from the same "flaws" as the strategic bombers and so it is also discarded; that leaves us with the SBD2 Dauntless and the TBD Devastator (which can switch between torpedo and level bomber modes), the latter is surprisingly effective against aircraft carriers but as IRL very vulnerable to enemy fighters and (spoilers) in-game a tech-tree dead-end;

c) Fighters: the F2A Buffalo has a poor IRL reputation and in-game is worse against small aircraft than the other options so I've never even tried to use it, the P40 Warhawk is a land based aircraft with abysmal endurance at only eight turns (this is a critical piece of information that is sadly left out of air units' datasheets) which leaves the F4F4 Wildcat as the only worthwhile option at this time; and

d) Reconnaissance: the L4 Grasshopper and the OS2U Kingfisher are interchangeable in strict reconnaissance duties which makes the latter a better choice as it can be deployed from cruisers, battleships and aircraft carriers; the PBY Catalina can only be deployed from aircraft carriers and costs twice as much money while only offering a four-tile sight range versus the three-tile sight range of the other two (sight range is also absent from air units' datasheets).

Having shortlisted the F4F4 Wildcat ($85), the SBD2 Dauntless ($110) and the OS2U Kingfisher ($20) I then have to choose how many of each to buy remembering that (other than the reconnaissance) I'll want to have at least 2'000 XP per unit at the end of the tutorial. Knowing what kind of targets I'll face in the two scenarios remaining I opt for one each F4F4 and SBD2 and two OS2U for a total cost of $275. The gift core F4F3 upgrades to the F4F4 for $42 thus I will spend $317 on air units from an initial budget of $590 leaving $273 for ships.

Except... except that I will defer upgrading the F4F3 (until it returns damaged from its first sortie) and buying the F4F4 (until turn 5) so I will actually have $440 for ships.

Buying an aircraft carrier (either a Lexington-class at $300 or a Yorktown-class at $320) doesn't make sense campaign-wise because a) it only leaves enough resources for one more air unit in the deployment phase and b) experience being the only transferrable asset onto the US Pacific campaign it is very much a negligible advantage for what is essentially a moving airfield (if your carrier is ever in a position where it can fire at - or be fired upon by - an enemy you have done something horribly wrong).

Let's address the naval component now. Dismissing aircraft carriers as an option leaves us with:

a) Battleships (BB): the North Carolina (5 CP/$320) is clearly the better choice;

b) Cruisers (CA): the Support Ship is a niche unit that never really caught my eye (mine warfare is too passive for my liking and healing damage at sea didn't feel necessary during my run at normal difficulty); both the New Orleans (4 CP/$120) and the Wichita (4 CP/$140) look like valid choices;

c) Destroyers (DD): PT Boats are a niche unit that can be ignored at this point which leaves the Gleaves '41 as the obvious choice (3 CP/$55); and

d) Submarines (SS): I never found a use for submarines in the Boot Camp/US Pacific campaigns (not that I ever looked very hard).

Deploying the CA and DD from the preceding mission is an obvious decision leaving 13 out of 20 CP to flesh out. This allows room for an extra 4 DD (12 CP, $220) or better yet 3 DD and 1 CA (13 CP, $285 or $305). Buying 2 CA would only leave room for 2 extra DD which means a CA heavy core force with an understrength DD screen. Buying 1 BB only leaves room for 2 extra DD (11 CP, $430) for a core of 1 BB, 1 CA and 3 DD which is a little light on the DD screen but workable alongside the auxiliaries (1 BB, 1 CV, 3 CA, 7 DD and 1 SS total force). Plus I want one battleship in my core, it can be useful ;)

---

Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 3: Fleet Command, Part 1

 Welcome to the third mission (Fleet Command) of the OOB Boot Camp tutorial campaign.

I chose the "Naval Academy" specialization (granting 2'000 XP to newly purchased naval units) because that is what makes most sense before a mission focused on naval combat.

Figure 1 - Briefing

The mission briefing has three critical pieces of intelligence: a) capturing primary VPs will add more units to our force, b) the OPFOR includes a battleship (the screen moves to the top right of the map hinting on its location) and c) both sides include aircraft carriers (one on the Green Team, two on the Red Team).

The campaign map also provides some information: a) the light cruiser sunk on the previous mission won't be present in this one, b) paratroopers will be available to the Green Team in the next mission and c) the Red Team will have the initiative (move first each turn) on this mission.

This last bit of data is quite obscure or at the very least I've been quite negligent in noticing it: the red arrow in the campaign map appears to be the convention the designers chose to indicate initiative.

I've included as an insert the mission "button" for the previous mission where a green arrow is evident - spoilers: the next mission also has a green arrow but I haven't checked if the US Pacific campaign follows the same convention.

Figure 2 - Turn Overview

The second image depicts the deployment phase Turn Overview with an insert detailing the initial resources.

As primary objectives we're tasked to destroy the single OPFOR battleship (BB) and take three VPs. As secondary objectives we're advised to not lose our (single) carrier (so that it will be available in the next mission), to sink both enemy carriers (for a core reconnaissance air unit) and to destroy two Coastal Guns.

At this point I have $590 and can deploy 20 points of naval and air units each. Available (as auxiliaries) are one Yorktown-class aircraft carrier (CV), two New Orleans-class CA, four Gleaves-class DD (not upgraded to '41 version), one Tambor-class submarine (SS), one P40 Warhawk (land-based) fighter (airborne adjacent to the airfield), one SBD2 Dauntless tactical (dive) bomber (airborne adjacent to a Gleaves-class DD with a TBD Devastator tactical bomber overhead both belonging to the OPFOR), one TBD Devastator tactical (torpedo) bomber (aboard the CV) and a Coastal Gun. Also available (as a core unit) is one F4F3 Wildcat (carrier) fighter aboard the CV.

Figure 3 - Strategic Map

The third image is the "Strategic Map" at the end of the deployment phase. The Green Team starts at the Western edge of the map with most of its strength towards the South close to the islet where the Coastal Gun stands. Further North three (auxiliary) DDs form a picket line with a Red Team DD and TBD in sight.

Figure 4 - Strategic Map

The fourth image is an edited "Strategic Map" where the "Deep Water" tiles appear in white with black borders and no units are shown other than the Green Team's Coastal Gun and the (AI controlled ally) Blue Team's AA Gun.

Deep draught ships (aircraft carriers, battleships and heavy cruisers) cannot enter "Shallow Water" tiles and thus the Green Team heavies exiting the "Bay" are forced to follow the "Channel" in order to reach the "Ocean". Following this path is further reinforced by the location of the VPs. While destroyers can navigate shallows they lose the support of the larger ships and reduce the strength of the latter's screen.

The presence of ports is not only thematic in a naval scenario, they are also the only location were ships can be repaired efficiently. Ships can also be repaired by "Support Ships" but these require money and Command Points and I've only used them in the very last mission of the US Pacific campaign so my understanding of their capabilities and limitations is lacking.

The Red Team's Coastal Gun locations can be deduced by careful analysis of the map. They will have to be placed on land tiles and their range of nine tiles (same as our own) makes their placement in the North-South stretch of land bordering the Green Team's deployment zone illogical. The two islands with villages and ports (and an airfield in the one in the Southeast corner) are the most logical candidates but any of the islands in the Northwest-Southeast diagonal is a possibility.

---

Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 2: Island Hopping, Part 11

 Island Hopping evaluation

I'll reiterate what is becoming somewhat of a mantra to me: approaching the tutorial campaign as an iron-man prelude to the U.S. Pacific doesn't do it justice.

The designer steers you towards what he feels is important in re force composition: two destroyers and one cruiser on the naval side, to be augmented by an additional destroyer after winning the first naval battle; two regular infantries, one engineer, one (light) tank and one artillery on the land side, with two additional infantries (one of them an Heavy) after taking the first VP, two Marines after the first enemy destroyer is eliminated and a third Marine plus a second engineer once the southernmost VP is taken.

Where the additional units are made available is also important: the first two infantries appear in the Southwest corner of the map, shielded from the enemy destroyer, the Marines and the third destroyer at the Southern edge of the map close to the nearest beaches, the last two units at the middle of the West edge of the map where they can be sent towards the Paratrooper's Island or towards the middle of the Eastern Island bypassing the southernmost river.

The choice of which units are added to the Core Force is again important: two regular infantries and one artillery. Vanilla infantry can easily be dismissed by the "oh shiny" player and artillery is an expensive support branch that doesn't do much direct damage.

The player is also provided with sixteen Land Command Points to experiment with, eight of which can be used with the units provided in the first mission and up to five more if there were units purchased then. There's also six Naval CP to experiment with: one cruiser/battleship/aircraft carrier, up to two destroyers, up to three PT Boats/submarines or a combination of these.

Organizing a beach landing can be a daunting proposition if you're trying to be efficient: while units can move through one another, there can only be one ground (either naval or land) unit in each tile so moving each unit in a manner that doesn't block the other's paths is a non trivial matter especially when they can only move three tiles per turn. There's also the necessity of leaving point(s) of access for supply ship(s) because supply does indeed play a role and cannot be ignored or cavalierly dismissed.

The player is also faced with new unit types that s/he has to learn how to deal with, particularly tanks and artillery. At this stage I handled the OPFOR artillery by suppressing it with longer range artillery of my own or with naval gunfire until the point where I could reach it with my infantry and/or tanks. The Red Team's tank I handled by placing my infantry in close terrain, (mostly) keeping my artillery out of its reach and brute-forcing my attacks with little regard for casualties. In the tutorial the Red Team's tanks don't really pose enough threat to merit Core Anti-Tank units and (spoilers) when the Japanese field tanks in the U.S. Pacific campaign there's usually an auxiliary AT available.

There's one new tactical problem introduced: how to cross a river that is defended. I brute-forced the crossing on the Western coast leveraging the M3 Stuart's ability to split its movement in two pulses. On the Eastern coast river crossing I did something for the first time in seven years: I had an Engineer build a pontoon bridge that bypassed the defender's ZoC, mostly because I wanted to showcase that ability and the 2D World Map's quirk.

---

As promised, comments ARE enabled in this final post. Please be civil and on topic.

Order of Battle: World War II, Boot Camp (tutorial), Mission 2: Island Hopping, Part 10

Island Hopping debriefing

The Green Team

Starting with the auxiliaries there's something new compared to the previous mission: the repairs insert which shows both normal and elite repairs and the one I actually chose is filled in light green. When both normal and elite repairs are white that's just an FYI on how much it would cost to repair at the end of the mission i.e. the unit ended the mission under strength. Actual repairs amount to $32 total and I expect to be reimbursed $16 in the next mission.

Figure 1 - Auxiliaries tally

All told they account for 27/1 (11/0 by the destroyers) damage/kills to Infantry, 5/0 (0/0) Armor, 6/0 (2/0) Anti-Tank, 2/0 (0/0) Reconnaissance, 4/0 (4/0) Artillery, 25/0 (10/0) Structures, 6/0 (6/0) Destroyers and 4/0 (4/0) Cruisers for a grand total of 79/1 (37/0).

As for the core units all repairs were elite, to the tune of $197 - there's one point of damage missing for Cav/A Coy that cost $9 and was sustained when destroying the 1st RT Paras. I've included the data for the three core units that carried over from mission #1 (the inserts with white borders).

Figure 2 - Core tally

Figure 3 - Core tally

Figure 4 - Core tally

All told they account for 160/13 (30/1 by the Navy) damage/kills to Infantry, 8/1 (0/0) Armor, 49/4 (1/0) Anti-Tank, 11/1 (0/0) Reconnaissance, 39/3 (14/0) Artillery, 40/5 (3/0) Structures, 20/2 (20/2) Destroyers and 9/1 (9/1) Cruisers for a grand total of 336/30 (77/4). If you're inclined to do the math the Red Team repaired 5 HP Infantry, 4 HP Artillery and 3 HP Anti-Tank.

I'm quite pleased with the performance of my units, they have earned a good chunk of experience.

Postscript

The blue border inserts pertain to the second run of the scenario. I relied more heavily on my core forces and that shows.

X/A Coy was hounded by the RT mechanised force and that accounts for the eight engagements and ten casualties (it was reinforced as it took damage so it didn't die).

X/USMC/C Coy landed at the port on the North Island, waited for the village to become a supply source and then took the town by the airfield thus cutting off the RT Paras. I was late providing shore bombardment so they were attacked twice by the Paras who would later be destroyed by the combined effort of the core cruiser and destroyer.

The auxiliary DD only fired their guns against their counterparts and that meant that there was more damage and XP for the core units.

My core land units finish the mission with roughly 5'000 XP more than in the first run, 4'000 of which from the specialisation bonus but also from 25 extra damage inflicted on the OPFOR. The Navy also earned about 900 XP more. These gains were at the expense of the auxiliary units who earned roughly 2'200 fewer XP.

Some of the auxiliaries were repaired: X/A $24/10HP, X/Eng/A $3/1HP and X/USMC/C $12/4HP for a total of $39. All core units' casualties were repaired before ending the mission: 1/A $10/2HP, 1/B $11/3HP, 1/C $16/4HP, Eng/A $20/5, DD 423 $26/5HP and Cav/A $64/7HP for a total of $147.

Figure 5 - Victory

Figure 6 - Final Turn Overview

I delayed taking the final VP until the 50th and final turn. There's a quirk in the income calculation where the amount earned is made available only at the start of the following turn. This slipped by the developers when computing the income carried over to the next mission/scenario and if you end the scenario before the last turn you miss out on one turn's worth.

In any case I have $421 at the end of the scenario: $156 from the previous scenario, $120 as a scenario "booster", $250 as scenario income (50 turns @ $5) and $300 as VP "loot" add up to a total of $826 inlays; I spent $5 upgrading DD 423 Gleaves, $118 converting the artillery into the 105mm, $30 purchasing the Engineers and $56 (2x ($35 - $7)) boosting the two Infantries experience for a total of $207 investment in "Fixed Assets", $10 building a pontoon bridge ("Operational Costs") and $186 in units' repairs ("Fixed Assets Maintenance") for a total outlay of $405.

The Red Team

The OPFOR is hobbled by its mission: it has to defend everywhere at the same time and that leaves it outnumbered everywhere. Case in point the GT starts with two destroyers and one (heavy) cruiser, the RT with two destroyers and one (light) cruiser. The RT's ships however are widely separated and unable to support each other which is compounded with the arrival of a third destroyer for the GT.

All the primary VPs and the East Island secondary VP include one Anti-Tank Gun to give pause to those relying heavily on tanks.

We're introduced to (regular) Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Paratroopers, (light) Tanks and Artillery as opponents. We're also confronted with a new terrain challenge - rivers - and a new operational challenge, naval landings. Naval combat is also a new thing but I don't feel it's very challenging in this scenario (it could result in some expensive surprises if the RT ships are allowed to fire torpedoes on the cruiser).

---

Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.