P&F Bloody Tarawa team game - calling all participants.

[Jeff Conner]

My thought on the NGO team was not that they could see the whole island, but that if they tried to use interdiction fires, they would be able to keep the rounds somewhere close to where they were intended. You can't really do that currently, as it is almost impossible to see into the interior of the island with the visibility limit and terrain. With a scatter range of six hexes to the target hex and then additional scatter from there, it can be kind of risky, especially with weapons that have a two or three hex radius (plus the Japanese are usually in bunkers and trenches while the Marines are out in the open.

One of the problems with the boat NGO team is the limited visibility. I am not suggesting you change this, I agree with your rational and if anything, it might be too large. The NGO team's main purpose is to call in smoke on the first turn. This is tough to do well as the leaders can only see a portion of the beach hexes (none on the Parrot's Beak) and only in a few areas can they see more than one hex inland. The options are to fire blind and risk scatter (keeping in mind that any smoke round that lands in the water is lost) or to only fire smoke onto those areas they can see and accept that about half of the rounds are going to land in the lagoon. A setup radio (it could be in the boat for that matter, although the Japanese would probably shoot at it if they could see it) would help quite a bit here.

The only way to simulate a Kingfisher that I can think of would be to create a helicopter unit, something you mentioned you didn't want to do. It might be something to think about the next time the game is updated though. It would be tough to keep it from getting shot down though, given the number of AA units on the Island. I don't think that the altitude set in the pdt file for helicopters affects the range, but I have another project where I might tinker with that a bit. I think your idea of a pillbox on an island is the best solution. I did something similar in one of the Falklands scenarios to represent FO officers on a distant mountain. It does/did attract some AI fire, but never with any effect. If you want to allow the Marine player to see the whole island, but keep your visibility limit, you could suggest that the scenario be played with fog-of-war turned off. I am not sure I would recommend this, but it is another possibility.

It's a good scenario, one of the best large ones that I have seen. I would recommend it, especially for team games.

Jeff