About Uncommon Valour: Campaign for the South Pacific

The game consists of a tutorial in which players learn the basics game functions, plus 18 scenarios of varying length that allow players to recreate specific battles and campaigns using the historically available resources, or hypothetical scenarios that allow wargamers to determine the outcome of the "what-ifs" of History, such as; "What impact would there have been on the South Pacific Theatre of Operations if the decisive Battle of Midway had not taken place?" Uncommon Valour allows players to answer these questions.

The game recreates for players the challenges faced by the historical commanders in the theatre, in that they never have sufficient resources available to achieve the objectives, and that ultimately they rely on the skills ability and bravery (uncommon valour) of their frontline soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Players must create task forces made up of different mixtures of ship/aircraft types depending on the mission such as Sea Combat, Bombardment and Amphibious Assault, as well as the mundane re-supply missions. The player must then co-ordinate these forces to attack and defend the various base locations scattered across the vast expanse of the South Atlantic.

Two key locations became the focus of the historical commanders: Port Moresby in New Guinea and the Island of Guadalcanal. If the Japanese Captured either or both of these locations and established Airbases, they would effectively put Australia out of the war and deprive the allies of the bases it needed to regain the territory lost since the Attack on Pearl Harbour, and subsequent invasion of South east Asia and the South Pacific.

Before commanders could do anything they had to achieve local air superiority to prevent their ships being exposed to torpedo and dive-bombers. This meant using their aircraft carriers together with their escorts to protect the assaulting amphibious convoys. This resulted in two major carriers vs. carrier battles which weakened the Japanese sufficiently to prevent the invasion of Port Moresby and enable Allied forces to strengthen their base on Guadalcanal from which they were able to launch attacks on Japanese strongholds and eventually push them back far enough to no longer be a threat to Australia.

The challenge for players is to analyse why the historical strategies succeeded or failed and attempt to produce strategies that produce better than the historically achieved results. This is achieved via a points system with points being awarded for destruction of enemy forces, and for capturing and holding key locations. The relative points score will then be compared to historical achievements.

Release:: May 2003

Minimum Requirements:
PC CD-ROM supporting Windows XP/2000/ME/98/95
DirectX 8
Pentium II-400
64MB RAM
16bit Direct sound compatible sound card
8mb video graphics card 16bit colour
8x CD Rom
900Mb free hard disk space
UV works in 800x600 or 1024x768 resolution