[EA SITREP #10] New scenario "Too Little, Too Early" available - Patchnotes

Note & credit: Action screenshots were provided by players on the game’s Discord - today featuring Minga, Orbital, Munchlol, QJW, Alan & Reis. Big thanks to them!

As mentioned in the last update, we're rolling out a new scenario. It is not meant as a turning point or anything, but it is an important stepstone in regard of contents, as we hone our skills and team organization towards more tactical situations, which will every time imply a couple more functions that will end up being active for existing contents too, and as such useful to the overall picture. We methodically enrich the game, in terms of quantity and quality of the gameplay experience, and hopefully it shall soon enough become an episodic rythme de croisière with (fingers crossed) 2 to 3 scenarios per month. But let's not get ahead of ourselves and let's see what this one brings us.

A New Scenario : "Too Little, Too Early"

The new scenario - the first in a regular series (hopefully) - is to be found in the first section of the scenario database. It puts Enterprise and Lexington in their historical markings a couple of days after Pearl Harbor, in a peculiar situation. With their rather green crews, they are expected to repel a hypothetical early invasion of Midway island, reminiscent of the original coup attempted against Wake island.

In this parallel dimension, Enterprise did not have to refuel and Lexington remained in the area of the island, where she was supposed to deliver the flying marines of VMSB-231. In our scenario, the marines haven't flown off to Midway yet, and the US carriers are prowling in the darkness south of the American outpost, about to strike at a small invasion group spotted by Catalinas the day before.

Currently, we went "nice" on the difficulty, and your air groups are hitting true more than ever - probably more than they should be. We might increase difficulty by decreasing their overall experience, but we want to gather some feedback about the scenario first. Let's see how you perform and whether you need a hand - or a kick where it hurts.

Steam post image

The new functions

In this new scenario, a few new things are attempted:

• You are now fighting with composite air groups made of different types: Lexington in particular embarks SB2Us as part of the Marines detachment, and F2As as her fighter complement, in addition to her SBDs and TBDs.

• We have set up new objective logics, and it's not just about making the enemy retire anymore: you are expected to sink a select number of ships in the invasion force, keep your two carriers away from harm (not sinking will be enough), and retire said carriers to a designated area before 05:00 the next day. Only then will you be able to claim a total victory — but achieving 2 out of 3 objectives will be enough to claim a favorable strategic outcome.

Independently, this patch also comes with the following:

• A new 5 CV option with Saratoga in the Midway battle generator, for those who want to go all guns blazing.

• A new Forget Ghost Contacts option in the contextual menu of the strategic map, to clean up the board.

• Japanese AI air ops logic has been tweaked: the enemy will now try to get more scouts in the air at the expense of strikes, so as to have more of those strikes find their target overall. It remains possible to confuse them by making the right turn at the right time - but a more advanced strike AI for both sides is in the works.

• Target assignment among aircraft of a given package has been improved, generally allowing for more efficient distribution across contacts. More advanced doctrine choices will be available to the player eventually.

• Shells should be more effective, with corrected fuze timings allowing them to inflict greater damage.

• SBD canopies now stay open in a dive, as they often were after Coral Sea experience showed that keeping them closed fogged the telescopic aimsight optics. Visual refinements are still to come on that front.

• Finally, several crashes and bugs have been fixed overall, as always. Hopefully these are getting rarer and rarer, but don't hesitate to share any new hiccup you might come across.

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 is all for this time. We'll come back next week with some news regarding surface combat functions, that are being developed in parallel of the new scenarios. Until then we'll be happy to hear your opinion about the new battle, don't hesitate to share it in here, on Steam, or on Discord.

Cheers & take care!

The TFA Team