Pacific campaign game

[vonfriedman]

In this thread I would like to start a discussion about the feasibility of a campaign in the Pacific.

In the North Sea, Baltic and RJW campaigns the distances to be covered are of the order of 1000 nm or less, between completing the mission and returning to the base (in the Mediterranean, excluding the Gibraltar-Suez route is the same). Correspondingly the playing time of a scenario can be limited to 3000-4000 virtual minutes, most of which are spent in the Ultra Fast mode.

The distances of the Pacific are of another order of magnitude: 5300 nautical miles separate Pearl Harbor from Manila and over 3000 separate Tokyo from Guadalcanal.

There is another difficulty: in the campaign game there should be both landings, base conquests or the creation of new bases (eg Ulithi), depending on how the game proceeds.
 The importance of logistics, with its train of supply and refuelling ships, cannot be forgotten.
What suggestions would you give to develop a Pacific campaign - possibly to play with airpower and, why not, with a more realistic submarine warfare?

[vonfriedman]

In order to keep this interesting discussion ... with myself alive, I tell you the plot of a Pacific campaign I'm working on.

Gekokujō

This naval campaign is based on another variant of ours counterfactual history.
As in the reality a Naval Conference opens in Washington, D.C., on November 1921, with the aim to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction.
These objectives were unpopular with much of the Imperial Japanese Navy and with the increasingly active and important ultranationalist groups. They feared that the Western powers would be able to stop, by legal means, the rise of the Japanese Navy, by this way putting an end to any hope of Japanese expansion in Asia and in the Pacific.
It is supposed that suddenly news leaks out that the Cypher Bureau (a US intelligence service) is spying on the Conference delegations' communications with their home capitals. In particular, Japanese communications are being deciphered thoroughly (as in the reality).
This unexpected revelation causes political turmoil in Tokyo. Ultranationalist Army and Navy officers lead assassination plots against political leaders and military commanders loyal to the Government, in order to "purify" Japanese society of pro-western political influences that they believed were preventing Japan from attaining its rightful place among nations through Asian expansion.
Within a week the ruling government is overthrown and a military dictatorship is established under the leadership of Admiral Kanji Kato. The Japanese military decide to act as soon as possible in order to force the US Navy to defend the US possessions in the Philippines. They were aware that the US Pacific fleet is not jet fully modernized (in 1920 its 1st and 2nd Battle Divisions were still composed by pre-dreadnoughts) and are relying on the recent Japanese dreadnoughts and battlecruises as well as on the torpedoes of their highly trained light cruisers and destroyers to weaken the US fleet. After having seized the Philippines, the Imperial Navy would wait, at a relatively short distance from its own bases, for the decisive battle (Kantai Kessen) with the remaining part of the US fleet.
While these events are happening in Japan, the US Government unwisely sends the older ships of the Pacific Fleet to Subic Bay, near Manila. It is planned to reinforce this advanced detachment, as soon as possible, with newer battleships taken from the Atlantic Fleet. In the meantime the US base in Guam is enlarged in order to accommodate the modern battleships of the Pacific Fleet.
On December 7th 1921 the Japanese makes a surprise attack against the Philippines, sinking some US ships and taking control of the port of Aparri, from where Japanese troops begin to advance in the Philippine hinterland.
The game starts here. You can command the slower but more numerous battleships of the US Navy, or to lead the fast battleships and battlecruisers of the Rising Sun.
The game ends on September 1923, when the Great Kantō earthquake struck the main Japanese island of Honshū, almost completely destroying Tokyo and many of its war industries, including the site where the battlecruiser Amagi was under construction.
In this game the earthquake is regarded as a warning from Heaven, which leads Kanji Kato to commit seppuku and the Japanese government to resign. Shortly afterwards peace negotiations begin.

[hschuster44]

… My impression is that it would be very hard to draft a working Pacific campaign (WW1 or 2) within the SAI game logic. Some reasons might be found here nws-online.proboards.com/thread/1163/naval-game-ww1-raider-focus

Board games seem to be more suitable to cope with those vast distances or even a seven seas theatre. Against this background I tended to use board games and to amend or to develope (dice) rules for relevant solitude play in recent years. Sad that such vast distance campaigns with micromanagement of squadrons or single ships seem to be a niche with not a lot of interest for PC based strategic game developers. 

  

[vonfriedman]

I continue to hope that - sooner or later - a SAI2 will appear where the various problems relating to a campaign on extensive sea areas, such as the Pacific, have been addressed and resolved.
In addition to those that are already to be solved in order to obtain a realistic raider campaign (refueling, etc.), I would add the following:
a more realistic management of meteorological situations, with mobile weather perturbations of varying intensity,
a specific attention to landing operations and the possibility of making the conquest of islands and parts of the territory depend also on the results of the naval war.

[seawolf]

I feel like the Guadalcanal campaign would be the only feasible part of the Pacific War to represent through a SAI type engine