Nemo121
Posts: 5821
Joined: 2/6/2004 Status: offline
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Well, this game is back on at a rate of a turn per day. I've made the ASW changes to the database which should make it less lethal whilst not penalising less well armed ships too much... I'm not sure if they'll take hold in-game though when the database updates in a pre-existing PBEM. Guess we'll find out over the next day or two. Today was a disaster. The worst day for Japan of the war so far. I had sent shipping from Tokkara Retto to Amami Oshima ( APDs, xAKLs and LSTs ) to deliver two infantry divisions and a division's worth of tank regiments to Okinawa. I had 600 of my best fighters covering Tokkara and Amami Oshima. In total less than 60 took to the air to defend my shipping and SBDs and TBMs from Okinawa massacred my shipping. I lost about 20 ships and at least a half a division worth of troops to drowning. With that said I have gathered the second wave of the Okinawa invasion force - 5,000 AV of infantry and tank regiments - and am ready to commit them. The problem is if I cannot rely on my land-based air then I'm going to need to provide cover some other way.... that's where my CVs come in. I've shifted focus to building airfields ASAP and am gathering my CVs ( which can carry some 400 fighters ). With a little luck in a fortnight I could commit 1,000 fighters between CVs and airfields and cover a landing force for the 3 or 4 days it would take to unload ( due to the small port size I'd have to unload most of the force amphibiously, which would result in losses to unloading but is the simplest way to get 5,000 AV ashore in 4 days in a level 3 port. Since we went back in time and I'd fixed the Ohka upgrade issue my Ohka squadrons have now tripled their size and are repairing nicely. That will allow me to launch massed Ohka strikes at USN amphibious forces as they bear. In other news... In this part of the multiverse ( bonus points to anyone who catches the reference... answers on a postcard, or just in the thread if you do ;-) ) the J7W1's successor the J7W2 has jumped forward in development and is now available for production. I wasn't expecting it for at least a month, possibly two and wasn't checking on its progress. This has caused me problems as the J7W1 factories have auto-upgraded. So, I have 300+ factories producing the J7W2 which I didn't intend to be producing it and I have NO jet engine production at all - since I was, at best, thinking of a small production run of Ki-201s for one or two elite fighter units. Well, life is all about adapting. I've ordered a crash programme to begin producing jet engines - it'll cost an ungodly amount of supply but I have no real choice, I can't afford to lose 300+ fighters a month from my production runs. I am now also over-producing the engines of the J7W1. I'm making about 500 of these engines and only need about 150 for other production. Thankfully the A7M2 (120 being produced ) require this engine so I'm taking up some of that slack by doubling A7M2 production to 240. That leaves me with another 200+ engines to use. I wasn't making any Ki-74s but I'm thinking some long-range harrassing strikes might be useful to spread enemy CAP and with the huge surplus in these engines now available I am commencing a moderate production run of Ki-74s for long-range kamikaze use ( >25 hex range with 500 Kg bombs ). In other news I HAD planned to burn 500,000 tons of supplies in building more G9Ms. I am currently building 40 per month but planned to triple production to 120 per month. This requires an investment of 88,000 tons of supply for the airframe factories and 352,000 tons of supplies for the engine factories. I'm going to stop Ki-264 Tracy ( the transport version ) production entirely and reduce Ki-264 A ( the ground bomber version ) production to increase G9M production. I am considering commiting the Ki-264s to special attack duties vs isolated enemy carrier formations. I'm not sure how I can engineer this but their durability means most will make it to their targets and high pilot experience means most would hit their targets if they can make an attack run. 20 x 250Kg bombs means a single hit should sink any CV it hits. So a group of 32 Ki-264s could, potentially, assuming half make it through CAP and half hit their targets take out 8 CVs. That's an awesome exchange rate and would be well worth expending 32 bombers and top-notch pilots for. The problem is how to get the Ki-264 unit to take on the kamikaze role as you cannot turn a group with more than 50 Exp into kamikazes.... Theoretically that would require transferring the pilots out, changing the group to kamikazes and then transferring the pilots back in. There MUST be a better way though.... I'm going to keep looking till I find it as I really hate the huge bomber losses which come when sending medium bombers against the US fleet. The more I think about it the more I think I may just use my P1Y2s and Netties purely at night. They would be a lot less effective but they would also be a lot more survivable and might draw daytime fighters to night-time CAP, making the G9Ms' job easier whenever I do commit them.
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John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine." Well, that's that settled then.
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