Howdy ho everyone!
The date is now December 20 1941, and the Empire of Japan has geared up its operations in China, invaded Philippines, Malaya, Dutch East Indies, Burma, New Guinea, Wake Island, Guam and many other places. The Germans are at the gates of Moscow and nearing Egypt while their submarines are about to win the tonnage war in the Atlantic. The old world order is about to be shattered under the iron boots of the Axis.
The game is Matrix Games' War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition. If you've read my previous WitP:AE AARs you know the deal. Here they are:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=76300.0http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=94021So once again I've started a PBEM, and we have about 2 weeks behind already. My opponent is Iroquois. You can follow and reply to the actual day-by-day AAR here:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3590172There are so far no screenshots, but I'm intending to include them later, as much as the first AAR had. Once the in-game situation clears up within a month or two there'll be more time to do in-depth planning analysis on a lot of stuff that doesnt turn upside down the very next turn...
On these forums, I've thought to write a diary of a fighter unit, from which each reader may claim pilots from. I want the air unit to have a fresh start history wise, but many fighters units have already seen action, including all CV units, all but 1 Navy land-based, some IJAAF Ki-27 and all the ones with modern Ki-43s. The options are now limited to the Chitose Ku S-1 stationed at Truk(Caroline Islands) with one of its detachments at Marshall Islands, or one of the IJAAF units stood so far in reserve that are currently being upgraded to the Ki-43-Ic.
Each Bay12er would claim a pilot and the doings of the them and the air unit, as well as everything else around the air units' base, gets tracked with written reports, small stories based on after action reports(by me and you!), screenshots and old wartime photograps. Whether we want to follow a Navy or an Army air group or squadron is up to you! Once we've started(and if your guy gets killed) you can of course still join by claiming a replacement pilot.
To make things more interesting, each pilot may also if necessary become a unit leader, get promoted, moved to reserve/training command, become missing(may be found later!), wounded, or transferred to another unit to fly even a different plane type. There are lots of skills and experience that get tracked individually, as do sortie numbers, kills and fatique(individual aircraft also have fatique and damage tracked). The only problem is that tracking which kill was which plane type can be difficult because the pilot names arent shown if the fighters engage bombers or strike aircraft, or if the enemy plane gets damaged in combat animation but actually does crash/there is enough evidence to credit kill. Though realistic in the way that in real life, pilots very often misindentified enemy aircraft and overclaimed their kills.
Remember to vote and reply your preferred or wanted qualities of your pilot! I'll let the poll run for 5 days.