Sneak Attack, (an idea based upon Pearl Harbor)

[Atrocities]

I must admit, after seeing this awesome movie, a brilliantly directed movie by Michael Bay, written by Randall Wallace, and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, is well worth the price of admission. How can I say this? This movie is a great inspiration to behold. It is brimming with cameos and good acting. I really like this movie a lot, and will see it again. It’s a strong cross between Titanic, (love affair with a really unusual twist and turn) Saving Private Ryan, (For the action, and one of the actors), Thin Red Line (for drama effect.) The movie does a very professional job of explaining why the Jap's did what they did, and how they were able to carry it out. Historically speaking, it is damned accurate, and damned compelling.

Again, the movie is full of cameos, and good hearted drama mixed with historical facts, chick flickness, and stand up and cheer "Lets get it on" down home, country loving action. From the appearance of "Armageddon's Captain Willie Sharp (don't recall the actors name) and his dramatic response to being called a German, to the end of the movie, you'll be enthralled and entertained. This is no boring chick flick guys, this is a must see movie.

Now onto the topic at hand, seeing this movie inspired me to think of a new game scenario.

Sneak Attack

Basically, you start the game out with 5 systems, 50 worlds max, in a small section of the galaxy. At the start of the game, all the players are buddy buddy, while everyone is plotting to sneak attack someone. The goal would be for you to try and figure out who's going to hit you, while making plans to hit someone. Everybody would have 3 to 5 specific military bases with between 20 to 100 ships at each protecting that system.

Think of it, you're making plans to hit player 3, while player 5 makes plans against you. You launch your sneak attack, and before you can get to your objective, player 5 glasses your 5th colony system, obliterating your entire 5th fleet leaving your home system open to invasion.

Muuuumm what a thought. This would be a heavy Intel based game as well. Every player would know every player. It would start out with an entirely explored galaxy, and the objective would be conquest. Of course, sensors to scan for cloaked ships would be excluded from this scenario as that would give too much of an advantage. Also, mod in Cloaking devices for fighters, while making large ships like battle cruisers and above too big for a cloak. That would add a lot of flavor to the game.

Again, if you have not seen Pearl yet, please go see it. The hype on this one is on the up and up. It is a darn good movie.

[Phier]

Any movie which was worried about offending the Japanese over their actions in WWII and edits it accordingly is NOT historical. Some time read the history of the Japanese Empire in WWII, the things they did in China alone you can not forget once you read them. This isn't racist, I just don't like to see history rewritten.

As for your idea, thats basicly how I play my games anyways. Be buddy buddy until the fleets are in place and then fry them. I did run into a problem with it in my current game. I didn't have any sensors on my fleet and when I attacked his two battleships in his home system I found out it was his 26 battleships and dreds. Opps.

[This message has been edited by Phier (edited 26 May 2001).]

[sunzoner]

While the world worries aboiut offending the Jap, they continue to rewrite history to reflect their "liberation" of Asia-Pacific and their "advancement" into China...
BTW, the AI should be able to send a message to player that goes along this line:
"[Ai empire] deplore all wars. We have not converted your planets to our side by use of intellegence. We are offended by your racist remarks!"

[Atrocities]

quote:

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Any movie which was worried about offending the Japanese over their actions in WWII and edits it accordingly is NOT historical. Some time read the history of the Japanese Empire in WWII, the things they did in China alone you can not forget once you read them. This isn't racist, I just don't like to see history rewritten.

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To be honest with you, they did not edit what happened. They dipicited the FACTS that lead the Japanes to do what they did. They did not hide or alter the truth. In fact, there was a very bloody shoot out at the end of the movie that clearly showed the Japanize were not nice.



[This message has been edited by Atrocities (edited 26 May 2001).]

[Magnum357]

Hey Atrocities, that is a neat idea on a senario of sneak attack for SE4. It would be great for a short PBEM tournament game. See which player in your group can decisively win a war!

As for the movie, I haven't seen it yet, but I have to admit that I'm a bit skeptical if it is any good. I'm pretty critical on my war movies. I like them acurate, and I don't like them to be "chick flicks" (hey, its war! Theirs nothing romantic about warfare!). A few of my favorite war movies are "Tora, Tora, Tora", "Glory", "Gettysburg", and a few others. I hope your right Atrocities about the movie. I hope in my opinion that they did a good job with it.

[PsychoTechFreak]

quote:

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Originally posted by Atrocities:
... It would start out with an entirely explored galaxy, and the objective would be conquest. Of course, sensors to scan for cloaked ships would be excluded from this scenario as that would give too much of an advantage...

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You just have to set omnipresent view to active and you are set. With this setup every sensor is completely worthless (bug?) and cloaking at the lowest level turns you absolutely invisible.

Best scenario to improve persecution mania.


[This message has been edited by PsychoTechFreak (edited 26 May 2001).]

[danjel]

[OT]

Phier: Oh, come on.

There is two sides to every story. Yes the Japanese were absolutely vicious in China. I don't deny this.

Yet, I have a problem with people pointing out such stuff with complete ignorance as to the causes of WWII from the Japanese perspective.

In the late Edo period, the declining power of the Tokugawa shogunate allowed for an opportunity to be taken by outside powers. This opportunity was initially taken by the Americans, who sailed frigates into Tokyo bay and threatened the shogunate with bLasting the *%$# out of Edo, until the shogun allowed the Americans unrestricted trade (including Opium, but the Japanese never really took it up) in Japan. While trade restrictions remained, in some ways (mainly due to cultural resistance), do you believe this is a fair and decent way for a nation to act towards another nation?

That was soon followed by the disbanding of the warrior class in Japan, and the castration of power from the Japanese people. Since that time, until WWII, the Japanese had an extreme dislike of particularly Americans (which survives today, btw). This was the cause of the war between the Japanese and the allies.

What about after the second world war? The Japanese people, like all Asians, were subject to a whole range of racist attacks in the Western World (I'm personally most familiar with the "White Australia" immigration policy in Australia).

Yes, the Japanese committed a number of atrocities before and during the second world war. But, every country has commited crimes against humanity at some stage, even if one is ignorant of what their own country has done. Winners write history.

[edit]
I remember that I've seen a movie about how Japan was opened up by the black ships. It wrote the Americans as heroes, it was a complete joke..

I agree with whomever said that movies about war should be written without consideration as to whom it would politically offend.
[/edit]

[This message has been edited by danjel (edited 26 May 2001).]

[capnq]

quote:

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Historically speaking, it is damned accurate, and damned compelling.

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You're the first person I've seen describe _Pearl Harbor_ as historically accurate. What few opinions I've read about have accused it of exactly the opposite.

------------------
Cap'n Q


The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft

[Atrocities]

What can I say? Aspects of the back ground details are accurate. Sure The Iowa did not flip over as the shallow water in the harbor prevented that, but the producers of the movie went to great lengths to insure that actuall true facts were regularly put into the movie.

And remember, most of the people reviewing this movie thought that Gandi was the most exciting movie of the 80's too.

The veterains that I have heard talk about it, especially the ones that were hat Pearl Harbor, feel that despite a few inconsistancies, the movie does a great job of representing a glimps of what they experienced.

[Noble713]

Um, the Iowa hadn't been built when Pearl Harbor was bombed. It was the Oklahoma that capsized. http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/battlesh/bb37.htm

I just got back from Pearl Harbor, and I was certainly disappointed. It was a sappy love story that tried far too hard to follow in Saving Private Ryan's footsteps, and it failed miserably. The action sequences weren't too bad, unless you happen to have a serious interest in the Pacific Theatre and naval warfare in general, and know what the various ships looked like. Some of the errors were so blatant you could spot them almost instantly, despite the ships being obscured by clouds, explosions, smoke, etc. I had heard that there were CGI errors in the commercials, and that these were supposed to be fixed before the movie went to the theaters. Apparently they didn't bother. (Uh-oh! I didn't get good CGI and I heard they were gonna fix it! The movie is incomplete and I want my money back! )

What I've noticed so far:

1) Other than the battleships, almost every ship that gets blown up onscreen is not of a WW2-era design. The ships have very boxish superstructures, and little or no equipment forward of the bridge (such as gun turrets, cranes, etc.). Nothing large and immediately noticeable, anyway.

I've gone through photos of every ship damaged at Pearl http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq66-1.htm (the 2nd to Last paragraph has a list), with the exception of the tug USS Sotoyomo (YT-9) and Floating Drydock Number 2, the only one that even comes close to matching what's onscreen is the seaplane tender USS Curtiss (AV-4), and even that's a stretch.

After going through Navsource's image archives, the destroyed vessels bear the most resemblence to Spruance-class destroyers and Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates, which we all know were around in 1941.

2) Like the US ships in the Pearl Harbor attack, what seems like ALL of the Japanese carriers were in fact American supercarriers! Almost all WW2 carriers have long and fairly narrow rectangular flight decks with few irregularities. These ships, on the other hand, have very wide flight decks that taper at the front and back, much like a Nimitz does. I think the only carrier that they got right is USS Hornet.

3)Not too certain about this one, but many of the ships travelling in the Japanese fleets looked like Aegis destroyers or cruisers. Glimpses of the fleet were short and infrequent, so it's hard to say.

Really, I'd have to go see the movie again to double-check everything I've said, but there is no way I'm wasting another $4.50 and 3 hours of my life just to confirm my points about the effects screw-ups. I'd rather go downstairs and watch my recording of Tora! Tora! Tora!; it's a far better movie, and is actually interesting enough that I've never bothered to look for effects errors (good movies do that, keep you interested in the characters and events and not the things that go BOOM!).

[This message has been edited by Noble713 (edited 27 May 2001).]