[EA SITREP #9] New scenario next week, latest bug updates

Note & credit: Action screenshots were provided by players on the game’s Discord — today featuring Miko275, Nafeij, Munchlol, Pidgeyarmy, Minga, Rockgunner & Spicywolf1292! Big thanks to them!

Routine update

As mentioned in the last update, we're not running these on a weekly basis anymore so as to dedicate more time to actual development - and to keep these for larger news.

We still want you to have your regular fix, so we'll be keeping posting them at least twice a month. Here's the first entry for April 2026.

Latest Patches

Three minor patches have been released since the last update. Many long-standing crashes have been fixed after weeks of patient work. It is both difficult and rather pointless to describe their causes - they occurred regularly across different setups. This means you might have only encountered them once, but we had multiple instances to work from. Even if they did not feel like a major inconvenience to you, they were an extremely frustrating issue for us.

Beyond these fixes, we have added most of the gun animations. This is the first wave of visual improvements we have been working on, and they hopefully bring a small but welcome sense of life to the environment.

The contents of the updates are as follows, and are fairly self-explanatory:

• 3 April 2026

  • Improved land avoidance by ships within a given fleet.

  • Work in Progress recoil animations on most large caliber guns.

  • Fixed many crashes.

• 7 April 2026

  • Improved fallback carrier selection when the original carrier is unable to retrieve planes due to damage or lack of capacity.

  • Fixed a landing sequence lock caused by a bug with arresting barriers aboard carriers.

  • Fixed a waypoints bug happening when merging two fleets.

  • Fixed bugs in enemy carriers AI logic that prevented them from cycling certain air ops.

• 10 April 2026

  • Fixed two major crashes.

A New Scenario (finally!)

Following the integration of a Midway setup into the mission generator, we will be releasing our first original scenario in the next few days - at last. It will be the first of many, and the pace will accelerate as the tailor-made features required for these scenarios become available, reducing the workload for future ones.

On that note, we are introducing new AI logic and strategic objectives for the player, to which the AI will also react. With two or more active strategic objectives that can be completed or failed independently, players will more often face the prospect of a strategic draw - or even outright strategic defeat - than before.

Notably, you will now be expected, for instance, to:

• Prevent specific enemy forces from reaching a designated area - useful when trying to stop an invasion force from achieving its objective.

• Ensure that certain friendly forces reach a designated area - for example, withdrawing your carriers to a specific location before a given time.

• Protect specific friendly ships for the duration of the scenario - losing a carrier will no longer be just a tactical issue, but may also result in the failure of a strategic objective.

Although this will not be active in the upcoming scenario, this logic also applies to the enemy. You may, for example, be assigned a specific target to sink in order to achieve victory - independently of your overall tactical performance.

This new scenario has also led us to add new skins (we needed a Pearl Harbor-era "Amber Val"), expand carrier capabilities for certain aircraft types (mainly the SB2U and the F2A), and introduce new ships, such as Chitose, whose ability to conduct advanced seaplane operations while underway makes it a particularly complex addition.

As such, consider this scenario for what it is - a test bed for some of these new mechanics, as we work to ensure their proper functioning before rolling them out more broadly to both new and existing scenarios.

The date is December 9, 1941, a little less than 48 hours after Pearl Harbor.

When the first wave of Japanese aircraft appeared over Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet's three carriers were at sea - USS Enterprise returning from Wake Island where she had delivered Marine fighters, USS Lexington ferrying aircraft to Midway, USS Saratoga still on the West Coast. "Too Little, Too Early" is built around the other side of that question: what if the carriers had been close enough to respond - and what if Japan had given them something to respond to?

The Pacific Fleet's battle line is on the harbor floor. USS Enterprise (TF 8, Vice Admiral Halsey) and USS Lexington (TF 12, Rear Admiral Newton) are the only assets the United States Navy has left in the Pacific - and they are now racing westward toward Midway Atoll on the strength of fragmentary patrol reports and a command decision that might be either brilliant or catastrophic.

Yesterday, PBYs of Patrol Wing Two out of Midway reported surface contacts to the west. The reports are unconfirmed. Fleet intelligence cannot say with certainty what is out there, how strong it is, or whether heavier units are operating in support. CINCPAC has chosen to act anyway.

This is the scenario's central premise: what if Japan had moved on Midway immediately after Pearl Harbor, before the Americans could consolidate?

Historically, Midway was actually shelled on the night of December 7-8, 1941. While the carriers were striking Pearl Harbor, two destroyers of DesDiv 7 - Ushio and Sazanami - were detached and sent to bombard the atoll, at the end of a long trek with an oiler at their side. They opened fire into the dark at the island's installations before withdrawing without waiting for a counterstrike. The bombardment caused limited damage and no American aircraft were destroyed, and the Japanese fleet would retire from the vicinity of Midway, which was to be left undisturbed besides the occasional bombardment raid or submarine shelling until the fateful event the following June. But what if Midway had received the same kind of attention and treatment Wake did?

On the Japanese side, a modest invasion force is approaching Midway from the west. Its core is the seaplane carrier Chitose. Supporting it at distance are some carrier assets, fresh from Pearl Harbor. The Americans don't know any of this. They are eager to fight back, but will they bite more than they can chew? The US carriers are green, but are not toothless. Enterprise and Lexington carry a combined ~156 aircraft. Their fighter complement is mixed - VF-6 has F4F-3 Wildcats, while VF-2 on the Lexington is still equipped with F2A-3 Buffalos, which will be outclassed by the Zero in almost every engagement. VMSB-231's Vindicators are slow and vulnerable. VT-2's Devastators need fighter escort and favorable attack geometry to survive. Whether it will be enough or not remains to be seen.

But the scenario's core tension is informational, not numerical. As the American player, you know an invasion force exists. You do not know whether fleet carriers are in the area. The PBYs of VP-21 are your only long-range search asset, and eleven Catalinas cannot cover every bearing - considering they are being controlled by the AI, you cannot have them sweep an area in particular. You will have to decide how aggressively to push your strike groups before you have a clear picture - knowing that the longer you wait, the closer the invasion force gets to Midway, but also knowing that committing everything against the wrong target could leave you exposed.

There is also the matter of the withdrawal order. Whatever the tactical situation, both task forces must retire to the designated area by December 10, 0500 hrs. This is not optional. It is a hard clock on the engagement and it forces difficult choices: do you pursue a crippled enemy force and risk the deadline, or do you disengage while you are ahead? We will see if the US carriers can rise to the challenge under your command! See you next week for your feedback.

Discord & Modding – Quick Reminder

Reminder about the modding discord here, where Matlock3462 will entertain you with his experiments (see screen above):

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE BUORD DISCORD

And as you know Task Force Admiral also has its own server. For any in-depth, direct support for technical issues, please do pay our tech support section a visit.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE OFFICIAL TFA DISCORD

That's all for today. Hope those among you who read until the end had a good time. We'll be back.

Until then, cheers & take care.

The TFA Team