question on airplanes and patrol requirement

[Bellarmin]

Hello to everybody here!

First, let me tell you that I´m a German wargamer (I guess one of the few Germans playing this game ). By the way, I´m working on a little AAR for a Strategy and Wargame Forum to make other wargamers in Germany familiar with WPP. Ok, Bavaria (where I live) is far away from the Pacific but I love the PTO because of the combination of naval and air warfare. WPP is a great game, easy to play and not a burden of micromanagement. After playing some campaigns I have a question concerning the way how airplanes are handled by the game.

Is there any difference between allied and Japanese airplanes (maybe something like early war and late war quality) or are they all generic? With other words, is an US-fighter exactly the same as a Japanese fighter for example? There is a roster for the ships with different attributes but no roster for aircraft in the manual. On the other hand in the aircraft folder of the game I can find names like Betty, P40, Zero and so on…

Ok, a second question: Is there a penalty, if I choose to ignore the patrol requirement after an enemy raid to one of my home bases? As far as I can see nothing happens. The patrol requirement will increase, that’s all… Or I´m missing something?

And an interface suggestion: I know there is a task force list but IMO it would be easier to manage the fleets by a base list.

At last: I ´d like to see the distance (in nautical miles) between the bases on the main map…

Greetings

[JMHawkins]

Bellarmin,

Great to hear there's a Pacific fan in Bavaria.

The aircraft do have differences, both between different nationalities and different periods of the war (Allied aircraft get much better later in the war, for example). But none of this is shown to the player just to keep things simple.

For a patrol requirement, if you don't allocate enough ships to patrol, when the Execute timer counts down to zero, it will reallocate enough ships to meet the requirement, cancelling whatever other operations it must. I have a feature request in the list for a possible future patch to give the player a warning first.

I'll add your two suggestions to the suggestion list for consideration.

Thanks,

[Bellarmin]

John, thank you for the quick response! The points I mentioned above are now more obvious to me.

Your words on the aircraft confirm my impressions that the US Fighters get stronger during the game, especially in the late war.

In my last game I was forced to patrol the Japanese Home Islands with a strong TF and I was wondering why the program did not execute a Invasion order I gave to some carriers. Now I know the reason: I tried to ignore the patrol requirement and wasn´t aware of the reallocation rule.

Maybe it is not a bad idea to add those helpful clarifications to the manual (or to make an appendix document). And yes, it would be nice to see a warning message in the game.

I read the transcription of your chat and now I am really looking forward to an Atlantic and/or Mediterranean type of game (including submarines, convoys, merchant ships and destroyers for ASW).