Order of Battle: World War II, U.S. Pacific, Mission 1: Pearl Harbor, Part 5

 Fifteen turns have passed, the scenario ends (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - Outcome event

All secondary objectives have been accomplished (Figure 2), even surpassed with eight enemy aircraft shot down.

Figure 2 - Final Turn Overview

$100 will carry over to the next mission. This is due to foreknowledge. I deliberately did not repair damaged units because most of them were auxiliaries and wouldn't advance further in the campaign or because the core fighter will be of either very limited use or even a liability in the next scenario.

I did indeed upgrade DD430 Eberle to a '41 model. It was dirt cheap ($5) and enhancing her AA capabilities was thematic. It may even have helped the survival of the last allied Colorado battleship.

It was possible to disband DD430 Eberle, revive and redeploy it. The revived DD430 would then benefit from the "Naval Academy" 2'000 XP bonus for a net cost of $45 ($55 purchase price, $10 "scrap value" refund). That will happen in the future but a) extra experience in this mission wasn't required; b) it would have to wait until turn 5 to have enough RP to do it; c) I know I'll need as much RP as I can scrape together for the next two scenarios during which I won't have need for a destroyer.

Probably the one thing I should have done differently in this scenario was to not use the core P40 Warhawk "5th (Hickam) Fighting Sqdn" as offensively i.e. it shouldn't have taken as much damage as it did.

Even though I haven't yet decided whether I will deploy it in the next mission or not, there is a specialisation that grants 2'000 XP to air units. This allows the disband/revive mechanic to trade RP for XP. The "scrap value" refund is proportional to the health of the disbanded unit so a heavily damaged unit's net revival cost is higher than a healthy one's. By the way, this is not foreknowledge: the specialisation panel can be accessed before playing the Pearl Harbor scenario. You don't have points to purchase abilities but you learn which abilities are or will be available during the campaign.

On a side note, the "17h12" text is a recent bug introduced with version 10. There is an unofficial fix from a reputable source but I'm leaving my game as vanilla. That's just me being chicken but also if I start introducing unofficial modifications I open myself to questions of what else has changed.

Figure 3 aggregates all units' statistics, or at least all core and auxiliary units. The allied (blue) units' statistics aren't accessible (I think). There's no data for turn 1 because I have no screenshot for DD430 for turn 1. It was the only unit that could have done anything and I don't remember if I just forgot to take a screenshot or if I looked at the pop-up and it was blank. If there was anything there then it is combined with turn 2. On that note, the data for each turn aggregates support fire during the AI's turn with deliberate action during the player's turn. In some cases it will be easy to tell which is which.

Figure 3 - Unit stats, total and per turn

Figure 4 expands and clarifies Figure 3. It pertains to the AA units. Whenever there's a single engagement in a turn it was player initiated.

Figure 4 - AA units stats

Figure 5 is mostly for flavour. It portrays the datasheets for the land units, mostly allied but there's the Studebaker transport thrown in. Most relevant is the 37mm M1 AA gun that all US forces used during this scenario.

Figure 5 - Land unit datasheets

Figure 6 presents the statistics for DD430 Eberle. One thing to note: HP is recorded on a 0 to 100 scale but presented on a 1 to 10 scale. If XP is earned exclusively on damage caused then on the 2nd and 7th turns the actual x/100 damage was less than required to round to y/10.

Figure 6 - DD430 Eberle stats

Figure 7 portrays the datasheets for naval units. The allied Gleaves-class DDs couldn't contribute support AA fire. Upgrading to Gleaves '41 gives a big boost to AA and assigning Admiral Clark puts Eberle on a par with the 37mm M1 AA Gun and the allied Colorado battleship.

Figure 7 - Naval unit datasheets

Figures 8 and 9 present the statistics for the fighters.

Figure 8 - Air unit stats

Figure 9 - More Air unit stats

Again if it was a single engagement in a turn it was almost certainly player initiated.

Figure 10 displays the datasheets for the air units, now including the enemy aircraft. Note how highly thought of the A6M2 is when attacking "Small Aircraft". Note also the attack values against naval and land targets of the B5N2 in torpedo bomber configuration. Those are not torpedo attack values but rather the unique ability of Japanese torpedo bombers to attack ground units while "reloading" their torpedoes.

Figure 10 - Air unit datasheets

Overall this is an interesting mission even if as the player one isn't given much flexibility. The AA guns aren't mobile enough to be chasing aircraft (and they shouldn't be) and most of them are too far to be of any practical use. It takes half the scenario to gather enough air units to even consider proactively intercept enemy aircraft. There's the constant tension of "Is any of the battleships even going to survive?" This is absolutely the mission where the "Restart" button earns its ready availability.

I should have used the console command #orbitalcommand to lift the Fog of War at the start of each turn to document the number and positions of the enemy units (I did it in one of my previous runs). That entails reloading the automatic save file at the start of each turn (to switch it off, otherwise it becomes permanent for the mission and the AI also gains that knowledge). I didn't quite think it through but at the time I was staying at an alternate location where I had to balance my laptop on a shelf on top of my knees and it was hot enough that after about an hour of play I had to shut off because it got too hot. So I didn't do it. That means I can only estimate that I was facing at least 16 units, four of which were B5N2/T torpedo bombers and at least two A6M2 Zeros leaving some ten "normal" bombers between D3A and B5N2/B (of the latter at least two never went near Battleship Row).

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