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Im no game designer by a long shot but i notice that Wake Island at the beginning is not garrisoned by a unit and the Japanese have an amphib transport in range and can take the island with no fight in the first turn. The real life marines at Wake put up a tough defense to the surprise of the Japanese and bloodied their nose before falling to a more concerted effort. I was wondering if it warrants maybe a weakened Marine unit or something to represent that or does it just not make a big difference in the big picture.

William Overby

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The battle was a short engagement that lasted a little over two weeks and included fewer than 500 U.S. Marines. But, the Japanese did get a bloody nose.

It is remembered well by U.S. Marines and today the fighter squadron defending the Island at that time now bares the name Wake Island Avengers.

Although I am of the opinion that the U.S. Commander having lost communications with a majority of the Marines gave up too soon. The Marines might have forced the Japanese to invade a third time. Also, the aborted relief convoy, if it had arrived, could have sparked a much larger battle; maybe the first all-carrier battle instead of the Coral Sea being the first.

Despite the stout defense on Wake and the potential for a relief convoy, I think Bill got this one right in the game. The scale of the fighting, unless the relief convoy was not ordered to turn around, does not rate a USA unit in the game map.

Semper Fi,

Robert

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After watching the Oliver North War Stories on FoxNews, in regards to the battle...those dudes had major courage. Out in the middle of nowhere, small island, Japs bombing, and landing. The Yanks thought help might come, but nobody wanted to risk the fleet just yet. The defenders of Wake Island were left out to dry.

After seeing the torture, beatings, labor camps, and starvation the captured Marines went thru...I would have gone down shooting on Wake Island. Might as well just get shot & get it over with.

Screw the Japs. Anybody who has knowledge of what they did to POWs & civilians knew they deserved a couple nukes.

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In the first beta versions we did have a US unit on Wake because I really did want to represent the stiff fighting that took place there.

Unfortunately we found in tests that the Japanese didn't always take Wake on turn 1, and when they didn't it could easily be turned into a US strongpoint and this really upset the timetable for Japanese advances, especially for the AI. So, with some regret I had to remove the garrison of Wake. Fortunately the Japanese will frequently suffer landing casualties on taking the island, so they don't always capture it for free!

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I guess the whole thing is a trade off and a game decision that had to be made one way or the other. In reality the island had no chance of defeating the Japs if they wanted it bad enough, just too few Marines and no relief showing up. In the big picture of the game it probably makes not much difference, i only noticed because i served in the Marines and know the story well, of course it caught my eye. Kudos on a well done game overall, no real complaints.

Semper FI

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Bill, the Japanese only take casualties if they don't land on the village. Is there any way in which you could make landing casualties higher on certain tiles then other. Something which I've always noticed was if you land an SNLF on a fortress at Malaya you take high landing casualties, meanwhile if you land an Army there you take no casualties. Something you guys might want to think about for future games. On top of that it might be a good idea to make the Allies take some sort of casualties whenever assaulting France...

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Oh one last thing about Wake, was one US Marine who I forgot his name destroyed a destroyer with a couple of shells from a shore battery. When the Japanese captured Wake, they looked for this gunner, as they wanted to execute him, however he didn't acknowledge the fact he was the gunner, as one of his fellow marines warned him that the Japanese were looking for this gunner to kill him, I believe he is still alive today and does various accounts about Wake, but I can't remember his name :(.

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Bill, the Japanese only take casualties if they don't land on the village. Is there any way in which you could make landing casualties higher on certain tiles then other. Something which I've always noticed was if you land an SNLF on a fortress at Malaya you take high landing casualties, meanwhile if you land an Army there you take no casualties. Something you guys might want to think about for future games. On top of that it might be a good idea to make the Allies take some sort of casualties whenever assaulting France...

Hi Scott

I've just tested this out in the latest patch and I think you must have been lucky in all your games, because my SNLF took casualties landing on the village at Wake, and an army took casualties landing on the fortress at Singapore.

Bill

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I guess I'm lucky then. It's not only just me, but the people I've played in multiplayer games, the AI etc. I'm not going to press the issue, because to be honest it really doesn't matter. Merry Christmas to all, or happy late Hanukkah depending on your religion.

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Not sure if this is a fact, I actually haven't tracked the losses, but it seems that possibly the efficiency rating of the potentially invaded territory is in direct proportion to the amount of losses sustained by the invading force.

If its not it should be. If the garrison is duly degraded by air and naval bombardment then the follow on amphibious assault should not suffer as many losses especially if the efficiency has been erroded to 0 or 10%. Of course surprise is somewhat compromised, but you do have the choice of going in with no prepatory bombardment and sustain the consequences of 50%(or greater) efficiency defensive effort.

Surely Hubert has coded it this way.

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