Bill Ramsay - 04:55am Sep 12, 2000 PST (#8546 of 8566) "Steady Monty. You can't speak to me like that. I'm your boss." - Ike john, For the benefit of people like you, who don't actually play wargames, I'll summarize my views on SOPAC: The basic system from the Great War at Sea series is used. The Operational sequence is similar, with the addition of Air rules, for the most part. All operational naval movement is plotted, with four separate mission types - Bombardment, Transport, Intercept and Escort. Depending upon the type of mission, you have to plot your moves in advance: Bombardment and Transport missions are plotted for the entire scenario (or until the task force completes six turns in a friendly port). Intercept missions are plotted one turn in advance, while Escort missions aren't plotted at all, but are assigned to follow the plot of the mission they are escorting. The sequence of play is simple - Weather, Air Patrol, Orders, Air Search, Air Strike Plot, Naval Movement, Submarine Attack, Surface Combat, Air Strike, Air Readiness, and finally Special Operations (consisting of bombardment, repairs, loading/unloading cargo and troops, refueling, etc.). Task forces are represented by a counter on the operational map, which has offset squares (in a hexagonal pattern... jH's nightmare). Naval combat is fairly simple, using roll-to-hit to get results. More below. The Air rules are also fairly simple. Pros: Excellent graphics. Once again a terrific job by the Landslide Graphics Gurus. Fairly simple game system, with no apparent rules holes. Plenty of options for play - 10 Battle scenarios (only using the Surface combat rules) and 10 Operational scenarios. The OoB includes every ship that fought in the area, plus some that didn't (some old U.S. battleships). Cons: The ratings of some of the individual ships seems off to me. Since the gun combat system uses roll-to-hit, the game gives the ship with what seem to be better guns more dice to roll. The problem with this is the same as the problem with most roll-to-hit systems, the "better" ship didn't have more guns, it had guns which did more damage (at least theoretically). In this game, however, you get two more chances to score a hit with the Yamato than you do with the South Dakota, which doesn't compute (in my book). Hopefully, Avalanche will someday provide a more comprehensive tactical resolution system for this series. The speed ratings for some of the ships don't quite make sense to me, however, this is more of a preference issue than anything else. I'm not sure why they rate the Japanese Shokaku as a 3+ speed rating and the U.S. Enterprise as a 3, when they both had a top speed of 34 knots, while the Ryujo, with a top speed of 25 knots, has a speed of 3 as well. Probably just quibbling, though. The game's designer (Joe Keller) originally stated the game included a 700 turn Campaign game, which has apparently been excised from the published version (with no indication that I could find in the game as to why). Since Avalanche has abandoned ConsimWorld, it's probable we'll never know what happened to it. So, john, anything else you'd like to know? Regards, Bill