Introducing Zones: The Foundation of the TR 2.0 Campaign

Target Rabaul 2.0 is, of course, a combat flight simulator. It is also, however, a (hopefully) well-designed game of strategy. The game will be won or lost based on capturing enemy territory. Shooting down a million enemy planes will not, in and of itself, win the game for you. It might help you defend your territory. If you want to win the game, you have to destroy enemy ground targets, to enable your ground troops to capture enemy territory. I will cover the various kinds of targets in a future post.

Territory in TR 2 is divided up in land zones and water zones, as shown in this map:

Target Rabaul 2 Zones Map

The green circles and squares represent land zones. Any land zone with a line connecting it to another zone can be invaded without needing control of the adjacent water zone. Squares represent critical zones, but we have not decided exactly what that will mean yet in terms of game play.

Note: The red numbers are zone IDs used by the TR2 campaign engine, and will not be visible in the actual game.

How Zones Work

A zone can be either “contested” or not contested. Uncontested, the zone is happy and safe. Any “strategic” targets within it’s area are churning away making contributing to the war effort.

As soon a zone is captured by Side A, all neighboring zones owned by Side B become “contested”. Think of that as meaning that ground troops are actively fighting each other in that zone. Strategic resources are destroyed. Tactical resources (tanks, anti-tank guns, trucks, bridges, etc. for the side owning the zone are now available for the enemy to bomb/strafe. The number of tactical targets in a zone are relative to the hardness of the zone. Damaging the targets (100% destruction is NOT required) damages the zone. Once the zone runs out of defensive points, it is captured. Think of this as your airplanes tipping the balance of the battle in favor of your troops, by strafing enemy positions, smashing enemy tank columns, etc.

Zones will not necessarily each be the same toughness. Each zone will have a certain “hardness”, represented by points. For the sake of argument, let’s say 5000 for a weak zone, and 50000 for a super hard one like Rabaul. The numbers simply reflect how hard, historically, it was to capture that territory.

Sample Game Flow

Let’s go through a sample game:
1. Game starts with Japan owning most of the zones (our start date is Aug 7, 1942).
2. Allied forces have uncontested Rennell Islands, uncontested Henderson field (a tiny zone unto itself), and contested zones surrounding Henderson. In New Guinea, allied forces control several land based zones.
3. Allied forces attack up the Solomons, capturing Malaita, Florida, Russel Island, and Vura. This makes New Georgia contested for the Japanese, but they still have Rendova uncontested, and flying countless missions against Vura (allied, but contested). The IJN/IJA destroy Vura before allieds can complete destruction of New Georgia. As soon as Vura is captured, New Georgia resets to “uncontested”, and is safe. Now allied forces, if they want to capture Vura again, have to launch an invasion fleet. They start bombing vura again, and when it gets to 20% of maximum strength, an invasion fleet is automatically launched from a neighboring allied-controlled sea zone. IJN/IJA can destroy this invasion force to cause Strategic damage (more on that later) to allied territories.
4. While allied forces were busy in the solomons, IJA/IJN forces were concentrating on New Guinea. From Buna, they push over the Owen Stanleys along the Kokoda trail, and with heavy air support, capture the tough zones of Kokoda and Toribaiwa (Note: these will be very tough zones, even though they have low population density, to reflect historically tough nature of the battles there, and the rugged terrain). With a final push, the IJN/IJA capture Port Moresby, ending the game. (Capturing a square zone might mean the capturing side wins the campaign, or maybe 2 squares will be required to win). We are not final at all on victory conditions, so take these with a grain of salt.

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