[Consim-l] Flat Top question

[Markus Stumptner]

On Sun, 21 Jan 2007, Mike NotSpecified wrote:
> Yorktown might want to engage in some high speed maneuvering and rendezvous 
> with her oilier later, maybe after dark on 4 May, but that looks like about 
> the only possibility for doing something different.  

That's of course exactly what she did in the real thing.  Essentially, the
morning of May 4 gives you the chance for the historical strike at Tulagi
while the Japanese carriers are still far away.  The strike gives you some
easy VPs and may give you a chance to hurt the Japanese recon assets.  
(Historically it was a Mavis out of Tulagi whose unheard sighting report
on the 7th (I believe) spared Fletcher from being at the end of an all-out
strike before he had found the Japanese.)

Such a strike of course tells the Japanese that Yorktown is somewhere near
Tulagi so she has to scram.  Strike later in the game and you must assume
that the ships at Tulagi have left and that the Japanese carriers are
already close to or south of the central Solomons and such a strike will
be both less effective and set you up for a swift retaliation. So it's
pretty much a "now or never" thing.

> And it risks having the 
> oilier found and sunk before fueling is completed.

That is partially just a matter of prepositioning and the strike gives it
some hours' headstart.  You know there are no Japanese carriers to the
south of you. :-)  

> (just out of curiosity, how does Avalanche Press handle fueling in the SWWAS 
> series?)

More detailed. It works by ticking off fuel boxes, and according to Brian
McCue its accuracy isn't bad.  The system is after all essentially their
WW1 surface game with a simple air system bolted on.  In fact the search
system is so crude that I'd hesitate to classify it as a carrier game.  
Since even its surface combat system doesn't work well, I'd say that the
fueling system is pretty much the only thing that makes it stand out.

However, given that its scale generally restricts Flat Top to covering the
'hot bits' of every battle (the 5 days of the full Coral Sea scenario
really stand out), simply dealing with this in terms of time limits is IMO
ok.

Markus

Last 3 games played: Abensberg/Eckmuehl, Star Viking, WW I
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