Module:Carrier Battle: Philippine Sea

Publisher	Compass Games	Era	WWII
Year	2022	Topic	Naval
Players	1 to 1	Scale	Tactical
Length	60 - 240 min

Files

Filename	Filetype	Size	Date	Compatibility
1
CB -Philippine Sea Ver-1.4.vmod	Module	20.34 MB	2024-10-30	3.7.14
CB -Philippine Sea Ver-1.3.1.vmod	Module	20.32 MB	2024-10-30	3.7.14
CB -Philippine Sea Ver-1.2.vmod	Module	24.81 MB	2024-10-14	3.7.14
CB -Philippine Sea Ver-1.1.2.vmod	Module	25.81 MB	2024-09-19	3.7.14
CB -Philippine Sea Ver-1.02.vmod	Module	22.85 MB	2024-07-13	3.6.19
CB -Philippine Sea Ver-1.vmod	Module	21.05 MB	2023-08-03	3.6.19

Module Information

Maintainer	Kevin Conway [Jardic]
Contributors	steenkh

Comments

"Carrier Battle: Philippine Sea" is a solitaire simulation of the largest carrier battle in history, fought during the invasion of Saipan (June, 1944). As the U.S. commander, you maneuver your task forces and conduct air searches in a tension-packed contest to find the Japanese carriers before they locate and attack yours. Simple game mechanics control Japanese movement and determine the timing and strengths of their attacks. You will not know that a Japanese air strike is headed your way until it is detected by radar and you scramble your fighters to intercept.

The game has a total of nine scenarios. Four learning scenarios take you through the rules by programmed instruction using slices of the real battle. The other five are full-scale, fully replayable games. These include one-day scenarios for each day of the action, a two-day scenario for the whole battle, a hypothetical scenario presuming different US plans, and a hypothetical scenario in which Midway was never fought and the Japanese come armed with the full Pearl Harbor striking force.

Carrier Battle: Philippine Sea is based on Carrier: The Southwest Pacific Campaign – 1942-1943(Victory Games, 1990) but is a new, standalone wargame.

The current version is Version 1.4

Changes from version 1.3.1

Bug Fix: Scenario 3 was locked to <observer>, causing the Butai display to be useless.
Bug Fix: Air points lost in Butai 3 were sent to the Lost box of Butai 4, and vice versa.
Now an error message is printed if by pressing F1 on its Activation Chit, a force or Butai is supposed to be highlighted, but is not present in the map. This could happen if a force was detected to be a false contact before it was activated.
Japanese air raids and US air missions can now be rotated not just with the "Change Heading" command, but also with Shift+Right and Shift+Left.
Japanese air raids will now be returned to facing north when sent to their Butai or Guam raid boxes.
Forces and Butais will now have all special statuses turned off when sent to Available.
I have for some time thought that the rotation keys should be more intuitive, and so I have changed the keys to rotate forces' and Butais' directions for submarine approach: They are now rotated with Shift+Right and Shift+Left
Change of keys to rotate search patterns: They are now likewise rotated with Shift+Right and Shift+Left. The patterns are switched on with F1, and you change between standard and narrow patterns with F2.
The Turn Segment Marker now has two new commands: "Next Turn" (F5) and "Next Phase" (F6) that quickly moves the relevant counters. This should be a valuable time saver, and you will not forget to move the game turn marker, or set the Air Search marker back to normal.
The Yap/Peleliu and Iwo Jima activation chits can now record the Next Day modifier through Shift+Right and Shift+Left. In this way, you can return to the game after a long absence and see what the modifier was. These activation chits are to be found in the Unused stack in the Activation Cup window.
There is a "secret" keyboard shortcut to delete all the Scenario Help notes: Shift-D. Once you are familiar with all the notes for a scenario, you can use this command to avoid spending time deleting them all each time you start a new game.
The Delete command for US air units and Japanese forces has been changed to Ctrl+Shift+D because you are not generally supposed to delete them. For the forces, the normal Delete shortcut Ctrl+D now works like F4 and sends the force to the Available Box.
The commands for making Butais retiring or active have been changed to be similar to forces ("Retiring/Active").
Initial size of the Activation Cup window has been reduced a little.
There are now messages for air missions and individual ships that move on the map.
Japanese ship counters have been given a border to increase clarity when stacked.
Intel chits are centred in the Butai Intel boxes.
The Action Phase Marker is centred in the Action Phase Boxes
Guam is no longer called a "force" when distance to US is reported.
The outdated playtest versions of the Yap and Peleliu activation chits have been removed.

Changes from version 1.2

Bug Fix: Corrected "No Air Mission 2" so that it will create an "Intercept Mission 2" instead of an "Intercept Mission 1".
Bug Fix: Extra force counter text in upper right hand corner removed (scenario 6 and 8)
Bug Fix: All forces now on the map in scenario 8.
Naval air counters no longer have a maximum value of 16.
More spare Japanese naval air counters in the Butai display. They don't need to be cloned any more (a copy will be left when moved away), and you can set the strength to your own preferences.
Japanese naval and land air now have a new command "Send to Lost" (F6) that sends the air unit to the appropriate Lost box. If there is an existing unit in the Lost box the points will be added to that unit. It will not work if there is more than one unit in the Lost box.
New addition of arrows for forces and Butais to help deciding submarine approach. Switched on with F7. F8 and F9 change the arrow, and F10 draws a dot to signify no movement.

Changes from version 1.1.2

The Activation Cup window has been expanded to hold boxes for the picked chits, where the number of boxes depend on the chits per phase calculation. There is a button to send the chits to the Activation Cup, calculating the numbers to pick, and put in the correct number of No Op chits. There is also a holding box for unused No Op chits, and another for other unused chits.
The Level 1 cup window has been expanded to hold a box where you can put the three L1 markers for the optional Double Forces (described in rule 7.52).
A stack (technically a deck) for available forces has been placed in the upper left hand side of the main map. Below it there is a counter that tells the number of forces in the stack.
Beside the new stack of available forces there is a new button that handles the arrival of 1/3 of the available forces. The rules for proximity of US carrier task groups have been implemented in this action. (Info for designers: Because scenario 7 has a special rule that changes the Japanese force arrival, a hidden immovable counter has been placed not far from the upper left-most corner (it can be selected by clicking there). The scenario number can be changed through this counter)
Because the new automatic method of placing arrivals makes obsolete the old method of finding the arrival hex, I have changed the keyboard shortcut to F3 and moved "Find Distance" to F1. This means that when you pick a new activation chit, you press F1 on it to highlight the force, and on the highlighted force you press F1 to find the distance to the US task groups so that you can determine the actions.
Oilers can no longer be crippled etc. But they can be deleted. You only need to do this if you put too many oilers on the map.
Forces can now be deleted too. You might want to do this after the Carrier Commitment Limit has been reached
A message telling the value is now printed whenever a track marker is moved. This includes the Game Turn marker. They are also centred in their box.
The Chits per Turn marker on the General Track is moved to its correct position when the "Prepare Chits" button in the Activation Cup window has made an automatic calculation of the value.
The on-map strike and intercept counters' initial position has been moved away from the fuel tracks.
The stationary marker that tells you if an air mission is a strike or intercept, has been given a slightly different look from the "real" air missions that are placed on the map.
When a new fuel marker is put on the map, it is placed in position 14 for strike missions, and position 16 for intercept missions. The only times this would not be correct is when an intercept mission contains strike aircraft (which could happen when transferring planes), or it is formed out of CAP aircraft. It is easy to move the markers manually to the correct position.
Fuel decrementation: A new button has been added at the top of the fuel tracks. Pressing this button subtracts 1 fuel from all air missions on the track. For single air missions, pressing Ctrl+Down on a fuel marker will subtract 1 fuel, and pressing Ctrl+Shift+Down will subtract 3 fuel. The marker status ("+10", Normal, and "Critical") is handled automatically, but if so wished, Shift+Up or Shift+Down will still switch status.
Japanese forces now have a right-click command that can replace them with a Butai (the lowest available Butai is chosen). The activation chit will also be replaced. The force and its activation chit will be put in the Available Forces stack, and Unused Activation Chits stack, respectively).
Retiring and activating a force is now done with a single right-click command.
Messages have been tightened up somewhat.
Phase and segment markers on the Game Turn Flow Chart will now give off a message when they are moved. This should help recording in which segment something in the chat log happened.
An invisible, immovable counter has been placed at Guam. You can select it by clicking on Guam, and then you can press F3 to get the distance to the US TF and TGs.
Highlighting counters on map: When picking an activation chit, it can be difficult to find the corresponding force, Butai or US submarines on the map. Pressing F1 on the activation chit will cause the corresponding map counters to be highlighted. The highlighting can be removed by F6 on the counter, or simply by moving the force.
Activation Chits are now flipped with CTRL+F (it is rarely used, and F3 has other uses on other counters).
On the Butai display, a spare naval air counter has been put on the top that you can clone to provide you with needed naval air. This is easier than finding them in the counter palette. By the way, the spare counter can only be cloned, and can't be moved. But the clones are normal naval air counters.
The Search Segment marker has got a "Done" side to mark if the Search Segment has been executed this turn. Flip with F1.

Changes from version 1.0.1

(Version 1.1 and 1.1.1 have been replaced by 1.1.2 because of serious bugs)

Bug fix: Scenario 6: Missing air units added.
Bug fix: Scenario 6: Missing TF58 added (TF58 and all TGs added to the palette also).
Bug fix: Butai counters now have a Retire side.
Bug fix: Butai counters now have a Retire side.
Japanese ships have been moved from the palette to a new window where they are randomized for L3 and L4 selection.
"Distance to US forces" command (F3) added to Japanese Force and Butai counters.
"Chits per Phase" command (F1) has been added to the "Chits per Phase" marker.
Hit Markers can now change between Current Turn, Previous Turn, and Permanent Hits with Shift-Right and Shift-Left.
Submarines now show pin, and shadow status in the corner without the need for separate markers.
Search patterns can now be rotated with all the correct patterns, including Narrow search patterns.
Search Origin markers can now be created from TF and TG markers (and as before, from US air units).
Max Radius markers can be created from the Search Origin markers (in which case they'll get the number of their origin), and will change between Narrow and Standard Search through right-click commands on this marker, or its Search Origin marker. Changing the search mode on either will change the pattern to the new one.
An empty randomizer is supplied for Japanese target selection, if necessary.
Added setups for scenario 7, 8, and 9 (8 is identical to 6)
US air units can now rotate 30 degrees instead of 60 degrees.
Air mission counters now get the number of the marker that created them.
Air missions counters now have a command "Send To TF 58" etc.
When an air mission is set to "No air mission" the air mission counter on the map and the fuel marker are deleted.
The Used Chit Cup now holds chits with the front up (for some reason you still need to turn the first one front up manually).
Intel markers now don't stay back when you move its force.
Clone command has been removed from US TF and TG counters.
The Japanese Air Raid names on the Butai Display are now correct (no more all 1-A and 1-B)
Irrelevant detection layer removed from Japanese air raids
(For developers only: Counter refresh no longer causes unit layers (crippled, inoperable, crash) to be active.)
(For developers only: Counter refresh no longer causes Help Notes to lose the text)

Screen Shots

Players

Kevin Conway
Kellmat74