"4Coral"
- okay, way better
- first impression: too many strong units in my team, game balance wise; and the amount of aircraft for Australia and blue team seems overwhelming, too
- with about 2,5min AI thinking time per turn during FOW and about 4-5min during battle, that's quite good this time, considering the map size
- map was large, but okay for naval; most of the southern/southwestern areas and (coastal) units (aircraft, recon, subs) seemed unnecessary for this battle; this time I even wouldn't mind Australia and blue team to be controlled by the AI actually (recon flights and close range aerial defense of Moresby preferably)
- far too many core units as of now, some with same names, as I have two BB "Tennessee" and "North Carolina"
- still not a single core destroyer, yet (but this may not be a bad thing, as long as there are enough aux. available)
- I've decided to treat like 5 battleships and carriers, 10 cruisers, 5-7 fighters, 8-10 tact./torpedo bombers as my
real core units (with elite repair, experience, commanders and such), the rest as expendable aux. units instead; let's see how that goes...
- Really like those early Lexington-class carriers with the nice 6-hex range and decent firepower against small ships, far better than my destroyers. Never upgraded them to the 3-hex range latter models in the official DLCs and they became my only ever 5-star carriers...
- you may rethink the location of my deployment zones to be somewhere closer to the main fleet's - why not in the middle of it? My deployed, supposed core forces, never could catch up with the rest of the fleet
- with enough fighters and numerical advantage, even the Zeros become manageable

(EDIT: at first...

)
- wow, the Japs must be real desperate to attack with such an incredibly neat formation of recon planes. And my fighters still weren't able to shoot down a 2HP Aichi recon plane with a "5" defense value in one turn. I didn't dare to attack the 3HP ones as I could've suffered losses. In comparison, the Japanese pilots seem extremely skilled with respect to their American counterparts

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- the 2-3HP Jap. recon planes should mostly be removed and less of them be spread out more; the enemy found my fleet without problems anyway
- couldn't repair my blue team's planes at Moresby's airport due to "cut off supply" message - and all this 'cause
one bombing run of the Jap. strat. bombers. Just "2" supply?

Or is that supposed to be the right tactic to prevent enemy ground-based planes to repair? Okay, I'll try. (EDIT: It works, but shouldn't maybe. And the AA's and coastal guns lose efficiency real fast, too)
- the green teams capture flags looked weird being just green
- I think the subs and AA have no AI team, coastal guns seem okay
- the "do not lose any carriers" prim. objective could be failed from the beginning again (if previous losses occurred), I guess, and has no "complete" trigger
- no sec. obj. "complete" trigger (ships arrive at Moresby at turn ~30, too late)
- no end-of-scenario trigger ("prevent the capture"/ no "complete" trigger)
- one idle strat. bomber over "Shortland" (and idle recon plane) and "Rabaul" and one strat. bomber flying straight to the south edge and back (?)
- the rest of the AI scripting seemed okay
- at around turn 12-14 the enemy was mostly done for, wanted to do some mop-up after that to gain some experience and destroy the Japs completely, but the AI's stuck after turn 15. Thinks forever, must be some loop: tried restarting, that usually always helps with the memory issues when playing too long in one session. And using #johnconnor works, so must be some AI/trigger problem as there are not many units left to calculate. My first guess would be some kind of left-over multiplayer "team 2" triggers or objectives contradicting themselves at some point or something like that.
EDIT: After playing two turns with the AI off, at turn 17 it worked okay again, so I don't know...

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Overall impressions
- at this mission, the number and composition of the provided fleet (without me adding units) seems optimal. Not too many, but more than enough. Make them aux units and remove the BB and carriers and allow the player to add additional core units, like 1-2 BB and one or two cruisers, some planes and carriers or something like that. 30 naval-CP maybe?
- the Japanese fleet stength poses no real threat as to the success of the mission, they need considerably more stronger ships (a single Devastator torpedo hit did 4 damage to Jap. battleships!) as there's no repair possible at sea. Plus, I have an enormous amount of bombers and air-CP at my disposal to lay waste to any fleet before my ships even arrive - and can use them to shoot down Zeros at the same time. The Jap. DDs stayed mostly in proximity of the carriers, which was okay, but they were missed to attack my ships and defend the forward Jap. battle group. The transports supposedly invading Moresby seemed without naval escort (or did I destroy them too early)?
- the strat. bombers and the tact. bombers were my best offense against the Jap. fighters!

I'll need to buy more core B-17 strat. bombers! That's where my money goes from here on out...
- you could "spice up" the sec. obj. a bit, as it's always been "destroy x ships" or "escort transports to" so far. That's okay for prim. obj. however. And maybe you should add one or more air commanders in earlier missions already.
- at the moment, only the pure superiority of the Jap. Zeros causes some kind of challenge (and headaches...) - I'll have to revise my tactics in that regard. As long as the air defense values of my bombers are equal or higher as my fighter's, the enemy Zeros keep attacking my fighters instead of the bombers and therefore rendering them useless as escorts and support. They could be used to lure Jap. fighters away from my bomber formations however - just to be destroyed real fast... I'll have to ponder over this further, but right now, my Wildcats are being shot down in "flocks"
- But as you can see I'm in a really good mood: I really liked this scenario otherwise. Just needs cosmetic work and balancing IMO. Thanks!

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