Last night I was digging around in the campaign files as I finished adding American patrols to American waters. I was surprised to see that many of the DD escort in 1941 for Japan are rated 0 and 1.. not even competent! But the reality is the opposite.. early in the war there were more competent crews than later..

Also, there is a predominance of certain Destroyer types, and the AKIZUKI is used where it should not be employed. I'm changing the campaign selection to random. And of course, the game doesn't have any later Destroyer Escorts. I have already created the DE Matsu and Tachibana. The IJN converted the Minesweepers to escorts in 1943 and these were not represented in the game.. I'm making the conversion

I'll probably finish revising the 1941 Japanese convoy, SubHunter and TaskForce files today and release them as the next mod update. Then I'll move on to 1942 and 1943. I'll release the first set at least, the later sets I may reserve for a payware expansion which will include four new DD types and two new DEs... somewhere around 20 new IJN ships.

Link http://rapidshare.com/files/24511731/SH4-CP2.zip

Combat, be sure to check the EastAsiaCampaign.mis layer, as this is in effect for the first month of your career and includes a ton of convoys with innappropiate escorts (e.g. all the same type for each group, many Akizukis DDs and many Aganos CLs).

Thanks AKD, already on it..

Once one begins digging in this sandbox its amazing what is there to find. Also amazed by the harbor traffic layers.. looks to me like ships will be spawning over ships... can't see why someone didn't randomize placement so easy to do.. But better to create a series of layers anyway much easier to work with. And also odd what is not included.. certain cruisers and carriers simply don't appear at anchor. Whew.. many hours of work to do on these campaign files..

OTOH, will make for a nice expansion set. 20 new ships, reworked campaign files, batch of single and MP missions, couple of new patrol zones, possibly some new effects. Oddly, the particles.dat file no longer appears to do much and I really want to improve the smoke effects. As is ships look like they are running on propane

btw, going to need a few testers for all this.. drop me a note at combat@combatplanes.ca if you are interested and have strong powers of observation, excess time on your hands and willing to sign an NDA...

Incidentally, the ships and campaign files I have released are public domain so feel free to use them in your own mods

ok..i'll give it a test run..it's in now and seems to be stable so far...

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I think a lot of that has to do with the level of training that crews got in the IJN. The Japanese had a different philosphy of destroyer use than the USN.

The IJN never had to really deal with the Uboat threat in WW1 and early in WW2 (when the US was performing convoy duty without a declaration of war) so they never developed the ASW program that the US Navy created. This is part of the reason that the Japanese Merchant marine never really developed the convoy system that was a staple of shipping movement in the Atlantic.

Likewise the training of IJN crews in ASW was lacking at the beginning of the war. Most crews of Japanese destroyers were highly trained but more in torpedo attack and surface warfare than in antisub warfare. Several ships of the type were still not equipped with depth charges at the beginning of the war. It wasn't until the loss of large numbers of merchant ships before the IJN started taking ASW a little more seriously. Still, by that time is was literally too late to overcome the US advantage. It isn't suprising that the Allies completely marginalized the German U-boats by the end of 1943 but the Imperial Japanese Navy never could figure out the US Submarine threat.

correction...no testing...removed .....

Tom, quite right.. but still, setting a DD on "0" as many of them are is crazy... you could surface beside them.. they won't do a thing... I'm taking level 2 as the starting point.."competent"..