(long-winded post ahead)
I’ve been thinking on how the dev team at Darkflow would have to balance a pacific campaign, based on certain truths about the campaign in real life, which pose a unique challenge for balance. It’s common knowledge the US military and allied forces outclassed the Japanese military at land, air and sea by the mid-late war.
Specifically:
Infantry:
The Japanese possess no semi-automatic or automatic small arms intended for use by the average infantryman. This is an issue for a potential Japanese Assaulter class, who would either have to use mass amounts of prototype SMGs only produced in small numbers, or have to use captured or donated foreign weapons. The most likely SMG candidates are the type 100, MP28/34, or ‘schnellfuer’ Mauser C96 pistols.
Rifles are pretty simple, begin with the type 38 carbine if early-war, begin with the ‘last ditch’ type 99 rifle if late war, then hand out nicer type 38 and type 99 variant rifles as time goes on.
Type 38 rifles use a .25 caliber cartridge, which was regarded as somewhat anemic, so slap them with 13-14 damage. Type 99 rifles used a .31 caliber cartridge, which performed better, so making them 15 or so damage works well.
The japanese have few anti-tank weapons, the few they do possess are light field guns, oddly-designed grenades, and other uncommon weapons:
Some examples:
The type 3 AT Grenade: A shaped charge grenade thrown like a football. Stabilized by a ring of streamers at the base. 70mm of penetration.
The Type 99 Magnetic Mine, which would be thrown to the side of a tank where it would stick. 32mm penetration
The ‘Lunge Mine’, a suicide anti-tank weapon. 150mm of penetration at 90 degrees
Type 4 Rocket Launcher, a bipod-mounted counterpart to the bazooka, wth a 7cm HEAT charge
For snipers, start with the Type 38 sniper rifle, a .25 caliber gun, and then move up to a Type 99, a .31 caliber gun, for a slight damage and range boost.
For flame troops, the japanese had two issued flamethrowers, a Type 93 with 30m range and 12 second flame time, and a type 100 model, which was essentially the same thing, but feel free to make the type 93 slightly worse for the sake of progression.
Machine gunners are easy as well, the type 97 and 99 LMGs are essentially ZB-26 copies with fantastic accuracy and reliability.
Tanks are sorta tricky. Historically the japanese used very few tanks, and for battles the size of enlisted’s, which are really more skirmishes, they likely wouldn’t use any at all. However, that’s boring and lame.
Light tank/starter would have to be the Type 97 Shinhoto Chi-Ha, an upgrade of the original Chi-Ha.
Its 47mm gun has around 55mm of penetration, which means that it could deal with it’s american counterpart, the M5 stuart. It’s only got around 5-15mm armor however, which makes it around as vulnerable as a BT-7 or T-26 is.
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If we follow the American counterpart mode of thought, the next tank would have to be the Type 2 Ho-I, a Chi-Ha hull with a 75mm mountain gun strapped on. The gun was mostly intended for anti-infantry work with a number of shrapnel, smoke, and HE shells, but DID have a shaped charge shell with 102mm of penetration. Still vulnerable to american starters, but dangerous to later american tanks. essentially the same armor as the Shinhoto Chi-Ha
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Once again, if we’re following the need for rough equivalents to american tanks, the next most likely tank to match the sherman is the Type 4 Chi-To. 12-75mm of armor makes it beefier than the previous tanks but far from invincible, and it’s Type 5 75mm gun can penetrate around 75mm of armor. So far, japanese tanks i’ve examined follow a ‘glass cannon’ tendency in comparison with contemporary foreign designs.
The final japanese tank really depends on what the endgame american tank is. If it’s a jumbo i’m not sure what the best counterpart would be at all, most likely some kind of thin skinned SPG/Tank Destroyer with a very big gun.
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I’ll shove pistols here in at the end:
Starter pistol: Type 26 revolver, it’s an anemic double-action pop gun, make the damage 4.5-5 maximum.
Next pistol: ‘Baby’ Nambu, it’s a semi-auto and only slightly more impressive than the Type 26, 5-5.5 damage
Final pistol: ‘Papa’ Nambu, its the same as the previous gun but more accurate and has a larger magazine. Same dynamic as the Walther PPK/PP.
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Overall, the japanese side of a pacific campaign should be very focused on infantry, and make the best of its poor small arms situation. Swords should be fairly common in comparison to other campaigns, but should take up a primary weapons slot instead of being a melee weapon, which would be the bayonet. All soldiers carried a Type 99 ‘sword bayonet’ regardless of whether they carried a rifle. I personally think that a mechanic that doubles score for suicide kills would be a very good thematic mechanic for the japanese side, especially in a late-war campaign. Japanese tankers are, and should feel outclassed by their american counterparts, even if frustrating it’s more accurate to reality (as inaccurate as regular encounters between US/IJA tanks may be).
I don’t really play aircraft and am not particularly concerned with what the devs choose or decide there, beyond the fact that i do know that the japanese military did have equivalent planes for all roles in enlisted.
