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RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J)

 
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RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/11/2013 12:46:51 PM   
obvert


Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011
From: PDX (and now) London, UK
Status: offline 		By the 9 minute detection time it looks like your radar didn't work at Kaveing or there just wasn't any radar. I hate having CAP up and not getting to unescorted bombers.

_____________________________

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 541
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/11/2013 1:08:55 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		The CAP was from Rabaul, long range and spilling both. The numbers you see here are those which were airborne at the time of the raid. Here is the lower part of the replay.

CAP engaged:
5th Sentai with Ki-45 KAIa Nick (9 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
(9 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.)
9 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 13000
Raid is overhead
Spc.Attck.Unit with Ki-45 KAIb Nick (2 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
(2 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.)
2 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 15000
Raid is overhead
Ryujo-1 with A6M2 Zero (3 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
(3 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.)
3 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 10000
Raid is overhead
85th Sentai with Ki-44-IIa Tojo (1 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
(1 plane(s) diverted to support CAP in hex.)
1 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 9000
Raid is overhead

In other words, those fifteen fighters were all I had, but they also were on the spot, and in the correct altitude band (9 to 13 k, while the bombers were estimated at 9 and attacked at 7, and with decent weather).

I'm not sure I see the point of radars and detection times in this specific case. Aren't they supposed to allow more fighters to scramble than those already airborne, or to compensate large altitude differences? My explanation is that Kavieng is probably a very large hex, and the airfield is very far away from the port...

Francois

(in reply to obvert)
Post #: 542
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/11/2013 6:12:23 PM   
PaxMondo


Posts: 9750
Joined: 6/6/2008
Status: offline 		Detection time relates to almost everything ... if your fighters only had 9 minutes to react ... that isn't much. Remember, your fighters aren't that fast, so closing speeds aren't that fast. They are loitering at cruise speed, they have to spot, move to attack position, and close on the bombers. In a tail chase, they are only gaining 1-2 mi/min depending upon the bomber. A B29, they are only closing a few hundred yards/min.

No, 9 mins means the bombers have a good chance to avoid many of your fighters until AFTER the attack.

_____________________________

Pax

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 543
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/14/2013 5:20:31 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 12th 1942

Akyab falls

Paras from Magwe captured Akyab today. The base was empty, and I had hoped that the forts (level four) would be kept, since the base was undefended, and this is what happens when you autocapture it. But no joy. Well, it was a good thing we didn’t have to fight through those four levels of forts, and a level six airfield and level four port provides a good jumping base for our attack on India.

Infantry from Burma (three or four divisions) should arrive tomorrow, tanks in a few more days. A air support unit is being air transported, and two squadrons are rebasing here.

The capture of Akyab poses an interesting question. My opponent holds Port Blair. So far, he did not really managed to prevent convoys to Rangoon, but now that Akyab is becoming my front line base, I wonder whether I should try and send convoys through the Indian Ocean, midway between Ceylon and the Andamans?

Burma is getting very short on supplies. Some do flow from China and Thailand, but levels are still very low everywhere, and so planning convoys from the DEI becomes a necessity.

Fuel, oil and resource flow

Most of my convoys to the Home islands are from Fusan. There are a few from Hokkaido, but I’m pretty much done with Hokkaido resources (160 000 tons left, down 150 000 a month).

Resources are nicely flowing to Fusan, and quickly brought back to Japan. We now have five million tons in stock, up 600 000 since last month.

Until recently, fuel did not flow up to Fusan, most of it remained in Singapore (where I now have 2.7 million tons of it), but I have begun starting small CS fuel convoys from Fusan, and it seems Fusan is slowly drawing fuel. In a week, the stock went from 10 000 to 100 000 tons, and my convoys are now bringing fuel to Japan. I am planning to try the same for oil. If so, it seems that fuel/oil draw from Fusan is a pretty simple affair. Just grow the port to maximum, then attach enough computer controlled fuel convoys, and there you go.


(in reply to PaxMondo)
Post #: 544
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/14/2013 6:13:32 PM   
obvert


Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011
From: PDX (and now) London, UK
Status: offline 		Just be careful where the fuel is coming from. I can draw it easily there, but it comes from Port Arthur and other Manchurian bases, and I never was able to get the draw from even Hong Kong, let alone farther south. I hope you can make it work.

_____________________________

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 545
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/14/2013 6:29:51 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		Hi Erik,

It is still too early to call as those draw graphs take a while to settle (and I've been adding more convoys recently), but monitoring by region seems to give a clue. Over the last ten days, fuel stocks in Korea went up 100k, Manchukuo was stable, and China went down 100k. So my hunch is that I'm drawing from China. A closer look suggests Hong Kong. Now, Hong Kong used to be drawing from Singapore, so the question is, once Hong Kong stocks get lower, do we end up drawing from Malaysia?

I suspect fuel is relatively easy to draw, rebase enough ships in Fusan, and this should probably do the trick. I'm more curious about oil, which seems to flow in very weird ways. Right now, I have difficulty getting it anywhere BUT Singapore (it doesn't even stay in Port Arthur). Maybe it is just a matter of having enough Oil CS...



Still on holiday, reading Les Misérables, which really is a great book, a poet’s novel (as opposed to novelist novels, like Tolstoi, Balzac, or Dostoievsky). The war is going on, but it is slightly boring at the moment, so I’m just pushing turns around, hoping something happens…

December 13th

I am having more and more difficulty supplying the Solomons. Last week, a convoy to Tulagi was torpedoed near Ontong Java, and today, a light cargo ready to unload in Tassafaronga was sunk by Beaufighters from Rossel Island. I am evacuating most of my troops in the area, but I’d rather keep what’s left supplied. I have no airfields there, and don’t intend to build any. What do you do against this? Have Rufes on LRCAP? Supply by air?



(in reply to obvert)
Post #: 546
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/14/2013 8:00:56 PM   
obvert


Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011
From: PDX (and now) London, UK
Status: offline 		I'd say some sneaky Rufe's moving in only when you have a supply TF arriving, and some night naval search and a following ASW TF with the transports.

I've not read enough of the French classics. I still must get through Proust, and Hugo and Balsac, but I'll put this on the list as well.

Have fun relaxing!

_____________________________

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 547
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/16/2013 12:01:37 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 14th

A tale of two islands

Several squadrons from Ndeni bombed Kirakira and Lunga today. This happened a lot over the last few weeks. Is an invasion on its way? KB is a few hexes behind, undetected so far (I hope it lasts), and would be in position to damage anything jumping at Kirakira or Lunga. Kirakira is almost empty, and I am evacuating Tulagi and Tassafaronga. Lunga will take a while.

I am quite happy to let Guadalcanal go in January 43, and if a few ships can be sunk in the process, this might keep my opponent on his current slow rate of advance. This suits me fine.

The islands north of Darwin have been bombed too, with little damage done. Again, I have carriers and surface groups not far behind, just in case. I am not ready to let those go now, as I need a few months to reinforce the line behind them.

I am very late in my fortification plan, I hope my opponent waits some more (right now, I believe he is waiting for the new planes he’ll get in mid 43, that would be perfect).

Milk run in Port Blair

Ships were detected in Port Blair today, and the airfield was repopulated with fighters. We swept them from Bangkok, and bombed them from Rangoon and Sabang, but lost quite a few Oscars to their Hurricanes (losses were 25 to 7). We did manage to put a fish into a light cruiser, though.

Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Raid detected at 38 NM, estimated altitude 5,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 13 minutes
Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 9
G4M1 Betty x 22
Allied aircraft
Martlet II x 6
Hurricane IIc Trop x 4
Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 2 destroyed
G4M1 Betty: 7 damaged
G4M1 Betty: 1 destroyed by flak
No Allied losses
Allied Ships
CA Exeter
CL Caradoc, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage

Every one is on alert tomorrow, Betties from Rangoon, and Sabang, and Georgetown, and Vals in Trinkat, and Oscars and Zeroes… Let us see if we can make this costly.

(in reply to obvert)
Post #: 548
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/16/2013 6:10:39 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 15th 1942

Ten milk bottles hanging on a wall

So, today, everything that could fly was sent against Port Blair, in the hope of shooting Hurricanes down, sinking cargoes, and perhaps getting a few more hits on poor Caradoc.

I had tried to play it by the book, and in fact everything went relatively fine. First, my sweeping squadrons were based closer than my bombers. I swept from Bangkok, Victoria Point and Trinkat, and bombed from Rangoon, Georgetown and Sabang. And in fact, two sweeps happened before the bombers arrived.

Morning Air attack on Port Blair , at 46,58
Weather in hex: Thunderstorms
Raid detected at 42 NM, estimated altitude 22,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 10 minutes
Japanese aircraft
Ki-43-IIa Oscar x 27
Allied aircraft
Martlet II x 9
Hurricane IIc Trop x 24
Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-43-IIa Oscar: 1 destroyed
Allied aircraft losses
Hurricane IIc Trop: 1 destroyed
Aircraft Attacking:
15 x Ki-43-IIa Oscar sweeping at 20000 feet

Morning Air attack on Port Blair , at 46,58
Weather in hex: Thunderstorms
Raid detected at 23 NM, estimated altitude 17,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 5 minutes
Japanese aircraft
Ki-43-IIb Oscar x 14
Allied aircraft
Martlet II x 4
Hurricane IIc Trop x 11
Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-43-IIb Oscar: 1 destroyed
Allied aircraft losses
Martlet II: 1 destroyed
Aircraft Attacking:
2 x Ki-43-IIb Oscar sweeping at 16000 feet

Both sweeps managed to remove most of the CAP, and the first bombing runs were met by only four Hurricanes (down from the 33 my opponent had on CAP). Those weren’t very successful : only one cargo was hit.

Morning Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 8
G4M1 Betty x 13
Allied aircraft
Hurricane IIc Trop x 4
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 7 damaged
G4M1 Betty: 1 destroyed by flak
Allied aircraft losses
Hurricane IIc Trop: 1 destroyed
Allied Ships
xAK Subadar
DD Express
DD Electra
xAK Esperance

Morning Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Japanese aircraft
G4M1 Betty x 11
Allied aircraft
Hurricane IIc Trop x 2
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 2 damaged
No Allied losses
Allied Ships
DD Nestor
xAK Benrinnes
xAK Tanfield
xAK Jalakrishna

Morning Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Japanese aircraft
G4M1 Betty x 16
Allied aircraft
Hurricane IIc Trop x 2
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 3 damaged
G4M1 Betty: 1 destroyed by flak
No Allied losses
Allied Ships
DD Electra
DD Nestor
xAK Clan Macindoe, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage

Morning Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Japanese aircraft
G4M1 Betty x 24
Allied aircraft
Hurricane IIc Trop x 2
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 7 damaged
No Allied losses
Allied Ships
xAK Esperance
xAK Clan Macindoe, on fire, heavy damage
DD Express
xAK Talthibius
DD Napier

But the disappointing morning paved the way for a good afternoon: our first sweeps were hardly opposed

Afternoon Air attack on Port Blair , at 46,58
Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 22
Allied aircraft
Martlet II x 1
Hurricane IIc Trop x 3
Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 1 destroyed
No Allied losses

Afternoon Air attack on Port Blair , at 46,58
Japanese aircraft
Ki-43-IIb Oscar x 30
Allied aircraft
Hurricane IIc Trop x 1
No Japanese losses
No Allied losses

And then then bombers flew in unopposed…

Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Japanese aircraft
G4M1 Betty x 16
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 6 damaged
G4M1 Betty: 1 destroyed by flak
Allied Ships
DD Napier
xAK Esperance, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
DD Express
xAK Subadar

Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Japanese aircraft
G4M1 Betty x 30
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 13 damaged
G4M1 Betty: 1 destroyed by flak
Allied Ships
CA Exeter, Torpedo hits 1
DD Electra
xAK Esperance, Torpedo hits 1, and is sunk
xAK Pasha, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk
xAK Silverwillow, Torpedo hits 1, heavy fires
xAK Tak Sang, Torpedo hits 1, heavy damage

Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 8
G4M1 Betty x 11
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 2 damaged
Allied Ships
DD Express
DD Electra
xAK Tak Sang, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk
DD Napier

Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Little Andaman at 45,60
Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 8
D3A1 Val x 8
Ki-43-IIb Oscar x 11
Japanese aircraft losses
D3A1 Val: 1 damaged
Allied Ships
CL Caradoc, Bomb hits 6, heavy fires, heavy damage

Esperance, Pasha and Tak Sank are reported sunk. Silverwillow and Clan Macindoe are probably not in good shape. Exeter is reported sunk, but this must be FOW, Caradoc might be done with… We lost 12 Betties, 6 Oscars and 4 zeroes, for ten Hurricanes and four Martlets.

I am not attacking tomorrow. My squadrons are just too fatigued. Some bombers have been kept on naval bombing a few hexes short of Port Blair, to try and catch stragglers. A surface force was sent at flank speed towards the possible retreat path of the damaged ships, and some fighters were ordered to LRCAP it. There should be a lull tomorrow, but I’m sure hoping to catch more the day after tomorrow. Finishing the Exeter and some of the destroyers would be nice.


I realize I have enough force to try and blockade Port Blair. My opponent has sixteen units there, which most certainly use a lot of supplies, hence those milk runs. I am now considering capturing Little Andaman (which is still British and unoccupied), and developing Car Nicobar, so that we can make the position very difficult to supply, and let those units rot. This will help securing the sea lanes to Rangoon and Akyab.


The lazy empire

If I were to describe the game so far, I would say I have botched my way into a decent position. Enemy advance has been stopped in the South Pacific, the East Indies are under control, we hold all of China, are on the move in Burma and seem to be successful at last at isolating Port Blair, the economy is fine, and I think I have a decent understanding of the strategic situation.

Yet, my defenses are terribly weak. For months, I have been pushing front line units around, changing a few parameters, but didn’t really care about the details, and whole parts of the game have been ignored. As we speak, lots of reinforcements are still in Japan, pilot training is quite insufficient, a large part of my navy is collecting rust in ports, I have no naval search to speak of, and base building is not really supervised.

Now, I do understand I need to do something about this. I have been understanding this for months, in fact, and did try on many occasions to correct a few things. Yet I never managed to turn this into a habit.

I believe the problem is that whereas I have a good idea of what needs to be done in the long run, and usually manage to do all the little things that have to be done every day, I lack a list of mid-term tasks, general things I want done over the upcoming month, and which I can check from time to time, as it is just impossible to micromanage everything every turn.

I want to try using this AAR as some sort of scheduling tool, circling through a list of subjects which would constitute all my “midterm subjects”, one subject a day. I’d like to get to something like 20 subjects, so that we circle through everything in a couple of weeks.

Here is a first attempt at a list of subjects. I am trying to split the tasks by service (army, air force, navy, and logistics), by mission, and to differentiate between front line, depots and the rear. And so I came up with this list of 21 tasks.

LCU : reinforcements, movement to rear area depots
LCU : garrison planning (who goes where)
LCU : movement from depots to front line, unit rotations
LCU : engineers, and base building (forts, ports)
LCU : air support units, and airfield construction

Naval : ship upgrades, conversions and repairs
Naval : submarine patrols
Naval : tenders, rearming, forward bases
Naval : ASW
Naval : surface group rebasing/ patrols/ pickets

Air: production, R&D
Air: squadron upgrade and rebasing
Air: ASW
Air: patrol, naval search and reconnaissance
Air: base defense, CAP and flak
Air: Pilot training
Air: transport

Logistics : fuel/supply to forward hubs
Logistics : fuel/supply to front line units
Logistics : resource convoys
Logistics : fuel/oil convoys


I’m very interested in opinions and suggestions. Should I add some more general subjects, like leaders, or morale, or fatigue? Have I missed something obvious, or something you think really should be done?

Many thanks in advance…

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 549
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/16/2013 7:30:29 PM   
PaxMondo


Posts: 9750
Joined: 6/6/2008
Status: offline 		Hardly botched your way, you are playing quite well as usual.

_____________________________

Pax

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 550
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/17/2013 10:19:36 AM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 16th 1942

After the attack yesterday, I wanted to rest my fighter squadrons today. This proved to be a good idea. No enemy shipping was detected, which suggests they are still in Port Blair, and we can try to sink more tomorrow. Once squadron was left to sweep Port Blair, and this was a bad idea, as 12 Oscars IIb were shot down, for three Martletts and one sea Hurricane. In Burma, P40-K reappeared over Chitagong. We traded four for three Tojos.

Most of my units are rested now, and the battle for Port Blair will resume tomorrow. I believe my opponent will be in worse shape than me, as his fighters are service rating two, and mine are one. This, by the way, suggests a tactics for fighting enemy CAP. Sweep over long periods of time, resting one day as fatigue mounts. If service ratings correlate with fatigue and disablements, Japanese fighters should have an edge.


Here’s my first attempt at circling through a number of important topics. Not everything is related to the current game situation (this is the point of the approach, in fact), but I hope it will help me play in a more serious fashion.

Things to do: air transport

I have 13 chutai and three sentai of transports, for a total of 198 planes. All but three are unrestricted (or were bought). The last three will probably be at some point. Only one chutai is composed of float planes, the rest is regular planes, which need an airfield to land. This makes level one airfields important elements in one’s strategy. You can’t really fight from such an air strip, but you can use if to transport troops and supplies, or evacuate.

Patrol float planes (Emilies and Mavises) can transport troops too. I have about 150 of these, most of them currently being used to evacuate the Solomons. As those represent most of my float plane transports, I believe I will use them a lot for transport to front line bases.

Supplies can be transported from base to base, or dropped over friendly units. Most of my bombers can do this. So far, I never could move lots of supplies this way. The best it could do was to prevent one very small unit from starving. This needs to be tested.

As for troop transport, every squad and any device with a load cost of nine or less can be transported. This means all the mortars and infantry guns, and small caliber flak and AT guns. Some units can be air transported, others can almost be, a fast transport (Ansyu PB, which carry 1000 tons) being needed to take care of the few large items. At worst, the large devices can be disbanded, and will reappear later (at a cost in supply, naturally).

In practice, most infantry units can be air transported (save the SNLF battalions and some divisions that have tanks, or 88 or 150 guns). Light flak units (machine cannons and the like), HQ, engineers without vehicles, can be too. Air support can be air transported, save their radars or sound detectors. As a rule, base forces, artillery units, and armored units can’t be air transported.

I am planning to use air transport intensively. Right now, my patrol planes are evacuating Guadalcanal, redeploying the infantry north of the island chain in the Gilberts and in New Guinea. Once they are done, they will join my Mavis transport now busy sending construction companies to forward bases in the Timor sea, and then in Flores.

The rest of my (wheeled) transport squadrons are busy ferrying air support and small units. To reduce the dependence on float transports, I am beginning to build landing strips in many forward bases. In fact, every base I intend to defend must have a landing strip so that I can send reinforcements and supplies in, or evacuate part of my forces.

Of course, air transport is not magic, you need a while to move a big unit around, and so you can only reinforce or evacuate a base if the enemy advances slowly. But my current opponent seems to belong to the methodical variety.

I have not yet experimented with supply transports, but I will and try to define a policy in three weeks, when I’ll be back on the subject.

(in reply to PaxMondo)
Post #: 551
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/17/2013 8:29:14 PM   
PaxMondo


Posts: 9750
Joined: 6/6/2008
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: fcharton

I have 13 chutai and three sentai of transports, for a total of 198 planes. All but three are unrestricted (or were bought). The last three will probably be at some point. Only one chutai is composed of float planes, the rest is regular planes, which need an airfield to land. This makes level one airfields important elements in one’s strategy. You can’t really fight from such an air strip, but you can use if to transport troops and supplies, or evacuate.

Patrol float planes (Emilies and Mavises) can transport troops too. I have about 150 of these, most of them currently being used to evacuate the Solomons. As those represent most of my float plane transports, I believe I will use them a lot for transport to front line bases.


That's about average number of transports, but you have a lot of patrol planes. Or at least more than i build in a standard game.

_____________________________

Pax

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 552
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/22/2013 10:25:24 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 17th 1942

Most of the action, today, was over Burma. At night, Liberators bombed Rangoon, with little success. Four planes were destroyed on the ground, and three Liberators we lost on their way back. I am happy with this kind of trade.

In the morning, we swept Port Blair with squadrons rested yesterday. Fatigue was probably mounting among the defenders, so we shot down nine Hurricanes, four Sea Hurricanes and two Martlets, for twelve zeroes and six Oscars. I am pretty sure we are done with the CAP over Port Blair, bombers will be back tomorrow.

Finally, we swept Ledo from Paoshan, and found a couple of P-40K there. Four were shot down.

In the afternoon, my opponent tried to bomb Akyab. I had only seven Tojos against 13 Warhawks and as many B25-C, but five Mitchells were shot down for no loss on our side. Those fighter pilots must have been very junior, or fatigued.

Plane losses today were 27 allies for 29 mine. I’m comfortable with this.


Kalemyo was attacked again. It takes a long time to get supplies back after each round, so I can’t attack more than once a week, and this gives my opponent some time to rebuild his forts. The silver lining is that this also provides time to repair my disablements.

Here’s the result for today. I was happy with the morale (-) indication, which suggests we’re progressing.

Ground combat at Kalemyo (59,42)
Japanese Deliberate attack
Attacking force 57736 troops, 513 guns, 84 vehicles, Assault Value = 1809
Defending force 19019 troops, 282 guns, 627 vehicles, Assault Value = 550
Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 2
Japanese assault odds: 1 to 1 (fort level 2)
Japanese Assault reduces fortifications to 2

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), forts(+), preparation(-), morale(-)
experience(-)
Attacker:
Japanese ground losses:
2027 casualties reported
Squads: 3 destroyed, 108 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 15 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 21 disabled
Allied ground losses:
212 casualties reported
Squads: 8 destroyed, 17 disabled
Non Combat: 3 destroyed, 8 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 10 disabled
Vehicles lost 29 (5 destroyed, 24 disabled)


Things to do : Garrison planning

Of the 638 bases (including dots) Japan now holds, only 345 have garrisons, and 278 have engineers. I really need to garrison more bases, and to begin moving large units bought in China to their final positions.

There is no way I can provide all my front line bases with decent garrisons. But since my opponent has been quite prudent so far, I can probably go a long way with mock garrisons everywhere. The plan, right now, is to try to garrison everything, even with fragments, so as to avoid any autocapture, or free lunch. I don’t know whether this is doable, but I sure will try.

In term of units, troops from China have been relieving Southern Army units in Malaysia, and Burma, and I will soon begin moving those to the DEI. I am receiving a few militia regiments soon, which can probably play a role.

I probably should set up a large excel file, with a list of all units, and their destinations. This looks a bit like a huge endeavor.

Things to do: a note on troop transport speed

So far, troop transport seems to follow a relatively simple rule. All planes (large or small, float or not) transpot one squad or device per day on long distance, and 1.5 on very short ones (5-6 hexes for Emilies, 3-4 for the others). The number of squads transported (or the time needed to move a unit) therefore depends on the number of planes flying, which again depends on fatigue, and the percentage of the squadron resting, or training.

This puts a limit on what air transport can achieve. By concentrating my squadrons, I can probably move a lot of troops relatively fast. But on average, troop transport is a slow process.



< Message edited by fcharton -- 8/22/2013 10:26:43 PM >

(in reply to PaxMondo)
Post #: 553
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/30/2013 2:49:37 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		With the holiday season ending, I am badly overworked, and the turn rate went down. Unfortunately, my current day (and evening, and night, right now) job does not mix well with AE. I am mostly programming user interface and utilities (file saves, shared parameters, that kind of things), all tasks which require a lot of attention to detail. So, in the evening, AE just looks like work. Anyway, the game is now at December 24th, the Allied offensive seems to be beginning at last, and I have a lot to report, so there is some catching up to be done.

December 18th

More action around Port Blair today. As suspected, enemy fighters had left, and the bombers had a free ride.

A first raid was soaked by the destroyers that escort the unloading cargoes. This usually results in no damage (enemy DD are probably too fast), but the second one went through

Morning Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Weather in hex: Light rain
Raid detected at 33 NM, estimated altitude 10,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 11 minutes
Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 13
G4M1 Betty x 25
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 3 damaged
Allied Ships
xAK Talthibius
xAK Pellicula, Torpedo hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Birchbank
xAK Subadar, Torpedo hits 1, heavy damage
Massive explosion on xAK Pellicula

And then in the afternoon, xAK Pellicula was nowhere to be seen, and we finished Subadar

Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Weather in hex: Light cloud
Raid detected at 30 NM, estimated altitude 8,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 10 minutes
Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 13
G4M1 Betty x 38
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 5 damaged
Allied Ships
DD Electra
xAK Subadar, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk
DD Express
DD Nestor
xAK Talthibius
xAK Jalakrishna

Afternoon Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,58
Weather in hex: Light cloud
Raid detected at 29 NM, estimated altitude 12,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 10 minutes
Japanese aircraft
D3A1 Val x 10
Ki-43-IIb Oscar x 9
No Japanese losses
Allied Ships
xAK Silverteak, Bomb hits 9, heavy fires, heavy damage

Only xAK Subadar was reported sunk, but a steady increase in VP over the last few days suggests several more cargoes went down unreported. Several task forces were detected on their way back to Ceylon. I am sending a surface group to try and finish some (CA Exeter would be a nice find…)

I will be bombing Port Blair again, but overall, I am happy with the action today. Quite a few cargoes were sunk, some in the beginning of the operation, which means lots of supplies sent to Port Blair (where my opponent has 16 units) were probably lost. This means Port Blair will have to be resupplied again soon, and we can sink more cargoes.

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 554
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/30/2013 10:38:56 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 19th 1942

Little action today, most of my bombers were too tired to fly, we sank another cargo near Port Blair, but that was all. Sweeps over Ledo shot down a couple of Warhawks.

In the East Indies, one long range raid by 24 B-24D was all it took to destroy ALL the oilfields in Boela (from 25(0) to 0(25)). This doesn’t really hurt, since I took most of the DEI fields intact, but I am more than a bit puzzled about the efficiency of strategic bombing, and the concentration of resources and oilfields. Somehow, I would have thought that whereas industry and refineries were concentrated over small areas, and might be easy targets, resources and oilfields were more scattered, and therefore difficult to bomb, or destroy upon capture. Oh well, I’m a grognard, I like it rough… or I suppose…

December 20th 1942

A few days ago, as the battle around Port Blair, I sent a surface group to try and intercept cripples, or cargoes on their way back to Ceylon. Today we caught two cargoes.

Night Time Surface Combat, near Trincomalee at 36,51, Range 12,000 Yards
Japanese Ships
CA Tone
DD Hakaze
DD Shiokaze
DD Yakaze
DD Tachikaze

Allied Ships
xAK Tanfield, Shell hits 8, heavy fires, heavy damage
xAK Varsova, Shell hits 7, Torpedo hits 1, and is sunk

In Port Blair, a few Sea Hurricanes on CAP were easily swept away, and Betties from Rangoon sank a couple more cargoes on their way back.

Morning Air attack on TF, near Port Blair at 46,53
Weather in hex: Overcast
Japanese aircraft
G4M1 Betty x 16
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 4 damaged
Allied Ships
xAK Talthibius, Torpedo hits 3, and is sunk
xAK Jalakrishna, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk

This concludes the battle over Port Blair. I am counting ten British ships, two cruisers and eight cargoes, sunk during this resupply operation, plus a few more that probably failed to make it back home.

In the air, losses were 6 to 19, in our favor. My opponent is bombing my troops around Kalemyo, which does a good job in reducing supplies, but also causes quite a few losses to fighters on CAP. I am counting 40 B24-D lost. He will run out of them, eventually…


Carrier aircrafts were detected over Lunga, and a large task force was spotted near Rennell Island. Could this be the Allied offensive against Guadalcanal? If it is, we might be in for interesting times, as KB is near Ontong Java, on its way to Truk. Rufes were sent to patrol over Lunga, we’ll see tomorrow.

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 555
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/30/2013 11:05:31 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 21st 1942

The carriers spotted near Guadalcanal were gone today. But there were P38 sweeping Lunga. Oh my poor Rufes! No other task forces were detected today. I am not sure what my opponent is doing, but I very much doubt an invasion is forthcoming. Sending the carriers first sound like a strange idea, and then the absence of bombardment task forces, or even subs, is strange.

December 22nd 1942

More of the same... sweeps over Lunga, but my Rufes are gone. Beaufighters attacked the port, and probably think they sank an ACM.

Afternoon Air attack on Lunga , at 114,138
Weather in hex: Thunderstorms
Allied aircraft
Beaufighter Ic x 13
Allied aircraft losses
Beaufighter Ic: 2 damaged
Beaufighter Ic: 1 destroyed by flak
Japanese Ships
ACM Choan Maru #2, Shell hits 8

In reality, the ACM has 2 sys damage…

I am now pretty sure no attack will come here. My opponent might have tried to attract KB with his carriers. I’m retiring to Truk.

December 23rd 1942

Taberfane it is! Today, several task forces were detected in Taberfane. Why they didn’t bombard or unload is beyond me. Waiting for the night in the harbor?

Tomorrow should be interesting, as I have a large surface group near Ambon, which should be able to disrupt the invasion tomorrow. I have sent Betties and Oscars to Ambon and Namlea (my closest air base), which might achieve something, too. Finally, a carrier division (Hiyo, Junyo and Zuiho) is near Koepang, and will sail towards Ambon. It should be able to intervene the day after tomorrow. KB is also on its way and will try to strike over the isthmus, near Nabire, and ships from Singapore and Surabaya on their way.

Taberfane has a mixed brigade, a RF gun unit, and a tank regiment, behind level two forts. It might prove a bit tougher than the previous bases my opponent took, but most importantly I think I am well positioned to damage his amphibious groups. Unless he has carriers in the area (I doubt it, since I saw some of his carriers new Lunga two days ago), his air support must come from Darwin, and that’s a pretty long range.

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 556
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/30/2013 11:23:05 PM   
SqzMyLemon


Posts: 4239
Joined: 10/30/2009
From: Alberta, Canada
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: fcharton

I suspect fuel is relatively easy to draw, rebase enough ships in Fusan, and this should probably do the trick. I'm more curious about oil, which seems to flow in very weird ways. Right now, I have difficulty getting it anywhere BUT Singapore (it doesn't even stay in Port Arthur). Maybe it is just a matter of having enough Oil CS...


I've got Fusan drawing fuel on a regular basis and Port Arthur seems to draw as well consistently having between 75-150k on hand most days. Oil is another matter at Fusan and doesn't really stockpile well for me, but I'm only drawing small amounts. Fusan will completely dry up on me in terms of resources though. I can export a lot for a week or two, then it seems to stop and the stockpile reads as the daily 400 for a week or more until another large influx arrives again. I thought this would stop with my recent gains in China, but it hasn't. I do not draw resources from Singapore on a regular basis so I don't think that is affecting anything.

I export fuel/oil from Singapore big time, but I also notice that Saigon is drawing fuel from Burma I believe. Since game start it has increased from a stockpile of 300k to over 400k now. I've started to try loading load oil at Saigon and have enough after a few days to fill up two 7950 or 8150 capacity tankers. This tells me it's either drawing oil from Singapore or Rangoon. I know it's not that far from Singapore in terms of shipping, but oil is moving east along the land route when loading at Saigon, it just won't stockpile in any appreciable amount. I'm going to start trying to load oil from further along the land route, maybe even as far as Hong Kong to see what happens.



_____________________________

Luck is the residue of design - John Milton

Don't mistake lack of talent for genius - Peter Steele (Type O Negative)

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 557
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/30/2013 11:50:26 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		Hi Joseph,

For me, Fusan works very well for resources. It seems to be drawing very large quantities (over 200 000 tons, on average), every nine or ten days, and I am sending about 25 000 per day to Japan, so it is basically stable.

Fuel level used to be low, until I began basing many fuel convoys there. Stocks now vary between 10 and 100k. The number of ships you use seem to matter more than their capacity. So you might as well use all the small tankers.

Oil is weird. It looks like I'm drawing 20 000 tons every other day, and sending them back to Port Arthur the next day. I am still exporting enough to keep Japan stocks stable (fuel and resource stocks are up, oil is stable, around 2 million tons), but it doesn"t seem to flow the same way.

I suspect other convoys (from Port Arthur or Shanghai) are causing some those variations in oil flow. I want to try stopping all oil convoys except those from Fusan. I will test this once I get that Taberfane affair under control...

I have been exporting oil from Singapore too, but most of my oil is staying there (I have about a million tons in Singapore).

Francois



< Message edited by fcharton -- 8/30/2013 11:52:59 PM >

(in reply to SqzMyLemon)
Post #: 558
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/31/2013 7:42:17 AM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 24th 1942, Taberfane, first wave

As expected, the Allies landed in Taberfane this morning. The initial bombardment was not very impressive.

Pre-Invasion action off Taberfane (82,117)
Defensive Guns engage approaching landing force
88 Coastal gun shots fired in defense.
Allied Ships
CL Concord
DD Mustin
AP Crescent City
DD Clark
Japanese ground losses:
Vehicles lost 1 (1 destroyed, 0 disabled)
Allied ground losses:
38 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 5 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

And so the landing damage was high. My opponent is using an Australian division, probably reinforced with tanks. This might be a bit low to take the place, especially if they go one losing troops like this.

Amphibious Assault at Taberfane (82,117)
TF 86 troops unloading over beach at Taberfane, 82,117
Allied ground losses:
664 casualties reported
Squads: 2 destroyed, 173 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 50 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 54 (1 destroyed, 53 disabled)
Vehicles lost 45 (0 destroyed, 45 disabled)
3" Mortar lost in surf during unload of 6th Australian Div /3
11 troops of a AIF Inf Section 42 lost from landing craft during unload of 6th Australian Div /8
11 troops of a AIF Inf Section 42 accidentally lost during unload of 6th Australian Div /9


Then, in the morning, my surface group showed up.

Day Time Surface Combat, near Taberfane at 82,117, Range 26,000 Yards
Allied aircraft
no flights
Allied aircraft losses
SOC-1 Seagull: 2 destroyed
Japanese Ships
CA Mogami, Shell hits 1
CA Mikuma
CA Kumano, Shell hits 9, on fire
CL Agano
CL Jintsu
DD Makigumo, Shell hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
DD Samidare, Shell hits 1
DD Suzukaze
DD Satsuki
DD Hatakaze
DD Fuyo, Shell hits 1
DD Myojinami

Allied Ships
CA Portland, Shell hits 12, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk
CA Louisville, Shell hits 9, on fire
DD Lang, Shell hits 3
DD Stack, Shell hits 1
DD Sterett, Shell hits 1
DD Dunlap, Shell hits 6, heavy fires, heavy damage

Portland is gone, and Louisville is probably in bad shape. On our side, Makigumo had to be scuttled, and Kumano is good for the yards. A good trade, I think.

As I suspected, the Allied carriers are not around, and my opponent is fighting with Naval 4E (we have no home rule against it…) for little effect. My CAP was composed of Oscars from Ambon, fighting at long range, and therefore not very efficient.

Morning Air attack on TF, near Taberfane at 82,117
Weather in hex: Light rain
Japanese aircraft
Ki-43-IIb Oscar x 6
Allied aircraft
B-24D Liberator x 10
P-38G Lightning x 11
Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-43-IIb Oscar: 2 destroyed
Allied aircraft losses
B-24D Liberator: 2 damaged
Japanese Ships
CA Mogami
CL Agano
DD Satsuki

My Betties flew many sorties, but only scored a few hits, here against a bombardment force.

Morning Air attack on TF, near Taberfane at 81,120
Weather in hex: Heavy cloud
Japanese aircraft
G4M1 Betty x 9
Japanese aircraft losses
G4M1 Betty: 3 damaged
G4M1 Betty: 1 destroyed by flak
Allied Ships
BB Idaho
CL Honolulu
CA Minneapolis, Bomb hits 1

And then, much to my surprise, my carriers attacked at 8 hexes, Kates with bombs.

Morning Air attack on TF, near Taberfane at 82,117
Weather in hex: Light rain
Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 7
A6M3a Zero x 18
B5N2 Kate x 14
Allied aircraft
P-38G Lightning x 2
No Japanese losses
Allied aircraft losses
P-38G Lightning: 1 destroyed
Allied Ships
DD Sterett, Bomb hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
DD Mustin, Bomb hits 1
CL Concord, Bomb hits 1, on fire

None of those ships will sink, but every damage counts, and all those raids pretty much eliminated all opposition by P-38.


In the afternoon, more Betties raiding only resulted in more Betties lost, but the same was true for enemy B24D. And then, the remaining cruisers and destroyers found the enemy transports

Day Time Surface Combat, near Taberfane at 82,117, Range 26,000 Yards
Japanese Ships
CA Mogami
CA Mikuma
CL Jintsu
DD Samidare
DD Suzukaze
DD Satsuki
DD Hatakaze
DD Fuyo
Allied Ships
CL Concord, Shell hits 3
DD Hammann, Shell hits 1
DD Mustin, Shell hits 1, on fire
DD Clark
AP Wharton
AP Harris, Shell hits 1, on fire
AP J. Franklin Bell
AP W.A. Holbrook, Shell hits 2, on fire
AP Heywood, Shell hits 2
AP George F. Elliot, Shell hits 5, heavy fires, heavy damage
AP President Jackson, Shell hits 1
AP President Adams, Shell hits 6, heavy fires, heavy damage
AP President Hayes, Shell hits 4, heavy fires
AP President Polk
AP Crescent City, Shell hits 1
AK Libra, Shell hits 3, heavy fires, heavy damage
AK Titania
AK Electra, Shell hits 3, on fire
xAP Red Jacket, Shell hits 2, heavy fires
xAP Harpoon
Allied ground losses:
69 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 2 destroyed, 21 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Vehicles lost 5 (1 destroyed, 4 disabled)

I am quite happy with this first day. One enemy cruiser (Portland) and one destroyer are reported sunk, and several transports and cargoes are probably done with. In exchange, I had to scuttle one destroyer. My surface group is low on ammo, and will retire, and KB is a few days away.

Air losses were 40 japanese to 30 allies, but I suspect his defenses will be low tomorrow, as all his planes have high service ratings.

In his return email, my opponent was a bit puzzled by the lack of surprise. He seems to believe I saw his troops sailing through Horn Island. I am not denying this, since it might encourage him to move the long way around Australia, the next time. But in fact, I was expecting something in this area, and had prepositioned cruisers and carriers after I saw him sending fuel to Darwin (you don’t do this to support defensive forces), and aggressively patrolling this area. I only regret that I sent my carriers around Koepang a week ago. Positioned as they were, just behind Ambon, they would have been in position to intervene yesterday, and it would have been a very bad day for the good guys.


So, what now? I have no surface forces to engage tomorrow. Cruisers and destroyers from Singapore and Surabaya are on their way. KB should arrive in two or three days. As a result, my only force is the carrier division which is now north of Taberfane. It has a light cover, and therefore is vulnerable to a raid by enemy surface forces, but so far, my opponent never tried to engage carriers with surface groups. I am taking the risk, and moving closer… I might live to regret it, but if we can launch a few raids tomorrow, I believe we can make this invasion very costly (and then have the KB mop up whatever is left).

I don’t think I can prevent the Allies from taking Taberfane, but once it falls, it will be very vulnerable, like Port Blair is now, and further advance will be difficult. Also, the heavy ship losses (after those in Ndeni, and in Terapo) might help my opponent keep his prudent stance. Delay is the word.

On a different level, I am somehow relieved to see the Allies move at last. I have noticed that long lulls make me complacent. I tend to play my turns to fast, without attention to all the details. Some pressure, and risk, should help a lot. Besides, I want to learn defending as Japan, and you need the Allies to cooperate, and take the offensive, to do so.


In Burma, another attack on Kalemyo achieved very little. Three divisions are now closing on Imphal. A bombardment of Cox Bazaar revealed that the base was abandoned. Only four units are left, and the base should fall tomorrow. I am cancelling the bombardment mission that was supposed to soften the base, but am keeping those ships around : yesterday, my search Betties detected the Hermes, 15 hexes from Rangoon (just out of Zero escort range). If my opponent tries to be smart, he might be in for a surprise…

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 559
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/31/2013 8:52:04 AM   
obvert


Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011
From: PDX (and now) London, UK
Status: offline 		That is a very good day for the IJN! Well played!

I would agree, move in while you have an opportunity. He may send something at you but it looks like you've damaged or crippled most of his surface forces, so he may just be thinking of getting everything out of harms way tomorrow.

If any of your DDs from the previous day have god ammo left you might send 1-3 ship TFs right at him to both allay any surface forces heading toward you and to sneak in and get to whatever remaining ships/cripples hang around.

_____________________________

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 560
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 8/31/2013 9:51:05 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 25th 1942, a strange turn

No Allied transports unloaded in Taberfane today. Our attacks yesterday apparently cause some disruption. However, the 330 AV that managed to land yesterday achieved 2:1 odds on their first attempt, and reduce the forts to level one.

Ground combat at Taberfane (82,117)
Allied Deliberate attack
Attacking force 8253 troops, 136 guns, 134 vehicles, Assault Value = 327
Defending force 4852 troops, 61 guns, 128 vehicles, Assault Value = 196
Allied adjusted assault: 231
Japanese adjusted defense: 82
Allied assault odds: 2 to 1 (fort level 2)
Allied Assault reduces fortifications to 1
Combat modifiers
Defender: leaders(+), preparation(-), fatigue(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
12 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Vehicles lost 28 (2 destroyed, 26 disabled)

Allied ground losses:
385 casualties reported
Squads: 1 destroyed, 43 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled
Vehicles lost 2 (1 destroyed, 1 disabled)

Assaulting units:
6th Australian Division
2/7th Armoured Regiment

Defending units:
1st Tank Regiment
21st Ind.Mixed Brigade
5th RF Gun Battalion

I would have thought the terrain would help… until I checked: the map says jungle, but the editor (or “1”) says “clear”. By the look of it, it seems Taberfane will fall tomorrow, and that a brigade, a tank regiment and some AT guns (all with experience over 60, the tank regiment at 78 exp), behind forts cannot resist half a reinforced division. I'm a bit puzzled by the efficiency of all this. There was no prior bombardment, the landings didn't go well, I have more than a token force, raw AV are balanced, yet...

Yesterday, the contested landings cost the Australians two squads and one gun (destroyed). Today, they lost one squad and one vehicle. Am I the only one finding this curious? I want to have a look at previous landings, but it seems that apart from coastal guns, all landings are unopposed so long the troops are prepared.


I thought enemy carriers weren’t around, I was wrong. Three carriers, in three task forces were detected today one hex east of Taberfane. My “mini KB” was four hexes away, and with only two fleet carriers and one light carrier, things might have turned very bad… except neither of us launched, despite detection and good weather. A strange turn, as I said…

As a result, there was very little action around Taberfane. KB is two days away, undetected. If the Allied carriers try to chase my guys, or just remain around, they might be in for a bad surprise.


In Burma, Cox Bazaar fell, Rangoon was resupplied, and Imphal was invaded by two divisions (two more will arrive in two days). Tomorrow, I am attacking Kalemyo and bombarding Imphal to see what I’m facing.


< Message edited by fcharton -- 8/31/2013 10:13:08 PM >

(in reply to obvert)
Post #: 561
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 9/3/2013 11:57:10 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		I am not having enough time for the game. Last week, we exchanged only three turns, and this week will probably not be better. As I mentioned before, programming user interface at work (and trying to make it "oh so simple", which means abominable code that ends up looking intuitive to the end users because you the coder made all the ugly choices for them, and rewrote the damn things again and again) makes one very impatient with AE. Gary Grigsby and the AE team wrote an impressive game, no doubt about it, but I'd be very happy to recommend their UI guy to my competitors...

Today was the first day of school, here. As an old, and divorced, and remarried, guy, I am blessed this year with one in grade one, anxious to learn her letters so that she can read Tinker Bell all by herself, another one (grade six) done with Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, and ready to jump into Jane Austen and the Bronte girls, yet another one who spent her summer learning latin and greek, and reading Howard Zinn's popular history, and Walden, because the history theme, this year, is "American society from Lincoln to Truman", studying for an exam she'll most probably flunk, and the oldest one who just discovered russian novelists and modern french writers (Perec). Fighting pixel wars is fun, but having kids is enlightening.

I realize I haven't posted music links in a while. Here is some Schubert, by one of the best cellists ever (Boccherini, Casals, Shafran, that's pretty much it, I'm afraid)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38QwLRYK8X0
This piece was written for a weird instrument that no longer exists (the arpegione, a strange mix between a cello and a guitar), and it has been transcripted for many modern instruments. So far, I played it with a flutist and an altist, here's a cellist...

December 26th 1942

Taberfane

Enemy task forces have retired. Carriers are between Taberfane and Darwin, surface ships and transports have retired to Eastern Australia. On the ground, the clear terrain is proving very costly. Liberators took a heavy toll today

Morning Air attack on 21st Ind.Mixed Brigade, at 82,117 (Taberfane)
Weather in hex: Heavy cloud
Allied aircraft
B-24D Liberator x 23
Allied aircraft losses
B-24D Liberator: 5 damaged
Japanese ground losses:
250 casualties reported
Squads: 2 destroyed, 12 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 22 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Vehicles lost 8 (2 destroyed, 6 disabled)

But the troops held against today’s deliberate attack, and caused quite a few losses.

Ground combat at Taberfane (82,117)
Allied Deliberate attack
Attacking force 8032 troops, 136 guns, 134 vehicles, Assault Value = 285
Defending force 4611 troops, 61 guns, 124 vehicles, Assault Value = 154
Allied assault odds: 1 to 1 (fort level 1)
Allied Assault reduces fortifications to 0

Japanese ground losses:
75 casualties reported
Squads: 1 destroyed, 2 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled

Allied ground losses:
224 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 26 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 9 disabled
Vehicles lost 1 (1 destroyed, 0 disabled)

I have no idea where my opponent stands, in term of supplies and fatigue. If he needs to rest tomorrow, we should shake disruption off, and might hold a few more days. I he doesn’t, well…

I am a bit lost as to what to do. I don’t think I can defend against such an attack, even after having surprised their ships unloading.

Burma

This is the bright side of the war. Rangoon, and lower Burma, are now supplied, and a convoy should reach Akyab (and Cox Bazaar) soon. Along the coast, the British are in full retreat towards Chittagong. I don’t know where they intend to make a stand: all the area between Chittagong and Calcutta is clear terrain, and I now have a level six airfield in Akyab, and a level four in Cox.

In Central Burma, an artillery probe against Imphal revealed a mixed lot, about 400 AV, probably between forts. I will have four divisions surrounding the city tomorrow. Fort levels are probably high, but Imphal is in trouble, and the main supply path to Kalemyo is now cut. I am resting tomorrow, and will attack again the day after.

In Kalemyo, a deliberate attack reduced forts to zero, and destroyed a dozen squads. Losses are high, but we are getting there.

Ground combat at Kalemyo (59,42)
Japanese Deliberate attack
Attacking force 68618 troops, 616 guns, 84 vehicles, Assault Value = 2110
Defending force 18752 troops, 282 guns, 632 vehicles, Assault Value = 514
Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 1
Japanese assault odds: 1 to 1 (fort level 1)
Japanese ground losses:
2227 casualties reported
Squads: 10 destroyed, 184 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 18 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 27 disabled
Guns lost 22 (2 destroyed, 20 disabled)

Allied ground losses:
462 casualties reported
Squads: 10 destroyed, 37 disabled
Non Combat: 1 destroyed, 14 disabled
Engineers: 2 destroyed, 6 disabled
Guns lost 22 (2 destroyed, 20 disabled)
Vehicles lost 29 (3 destroyed, 26 disabled)

I have good hopes of taking Kalemyo and Imphal relatively soon. Once this is done, we will march to cut the Ledo valley, which I think my opponent will evacuate. Capturing Ledo is important, as it helps securing my industrial bases in China.

Waxing strategic

Even though the game is moving slowly at the moment, the situation is becoming very interesting, as the consequences of Japan’s “China First” strategy are beginning to unfold.

By taking China out of the war in 1942, Japan can reinforce Burma, and threaten India in 1943. At this point, I don’t think India can provide auto-victory. Right now, VP are 43k vs 15k. Auto-victory in 43 means at least 20k more points, too much for India. But I don’t think the Allies can defend India with the troops they have there, and I doubt they can shrug it away.

And there you have my Burmese gambit: by threatening India, I want the US to commit there, and fight a land war over India, Burma, and China, which buys me the time to make a fighting retreat in the Pacific, and build a strong inner perimeter. Ideally, the war in India would absorb a large part of the US war effort in 1943, and delay operations in the Pacific and East Indies.

Can this happen? Right now, I suspect US reinforcements are on their way. This would explain why there were no moves against the Solomons or the Gilberts, and why the Brits are evacuating the Burmese border. Now, if I can conquer Bangladesh and use those large airfields, we’re in for a long a protracted campaign in India, and this part of the plan would be fine.

What about the Pacific? Allied carriers are there, obviously. I am not too afraid about Taberfane. moving from there into Ambon, and Kendari and Manado should be slow and costly. This is no good carrier country, and I have built quite a few bases. I don’t see the Allies going for Java or Sumatra either, and they can have the Solomons whenever they want (I’m about done with the evacuation anyway).

This leaves the Central Pacific (Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas) but so far nothing ever seemed to happen there, and the Kuriles, which I am now building.

Industry

I forgot to mention I hit the two million HI mark at the beginning of December 42. This isn’t as costly as it seems: we’re producing 1 250 aircrafts per month, about 2 000 engines, have 50k armament and 30k vehicle points in store. In other words, it is all paid for by the merchant marine, where we hardly build anything (we have 70 yards, and 1500 points in the bank). I need to check my late war naval programs too, probably can save there as well: I had kept all the subs, I’m having misgivings, now that I’ve seen what 1942 DE can do. On the other hand, I might keep some of the late war fleet carriers, just in case.

Aircraft production can certainly be increased. I am getting pretty good fighters now. I have the Tojo IIb, and the A6M5, and the Nick 1c in January. Looking at the figures posted in other AAR, I noticed that most successful Japanese players spent a lot of planes (sometimes achieving rates like 1:2). On the contrary, players prudent with their aircrafts tend to die young. I believe this is because aircrafts are by far the cheapest weapons in this game. LCU cost a lot to build, and use, and fight. Ships dig holes in your HI budget (and they’re very constrained anyway). Aircrafts cost a couple dozens of HI each, use little supplies, and are very advantaged when used in large numbers (knowing that Allied production is limited). So my recommendation to fellow JFB would be more planes. There is probably a limit with pilots, but then, if you have enough planes, you can waste a few pilots, ad those who survive train fast…

Resource-wise, my fuel and oil convoys from Fusan seem to be succeeding. Home Island stocks are on the rise, and Malaysia oil seems to be flowing north. This is not the case with fuel, but I have huge stocks in China, and getting them to the Home Island is my first order of business.

As of today, I have 5.6 million tons of supplies, 8 million tons of fuel, 4 million tons of oil, and 16.7 million tons of resources. Japan has 1 million tons of supplies, 2.4 of fuel, 5.2 of resources and 1.8 of oil. This is not good, but it is improving.

I am happy with the current state of the economy. PDU off and a “no ship acceleration” rule help a lot, and I should have decent stocks by the time things get though. Of course, all this might be offset by the efficiency of strategic bombing. You can have as many HI as you want, if you don’t have factories… and what I’ve seen so far suggests that strategic bombing is extremely efficient in the game (just look at the point totals of end games…) But then, if the game hard codes “4E in range = game over”, so be it, I will have had my fun anyway.


< Message edited by fcharton -- 9/4/2013 12:10:44 AM >

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 562
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 9/4/2013 2:27:35 AM   
SqzMyLemon


Posts: 4239
Joined: 10/30/2009
From: Alberta, Canada
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: fcharton

Resource-wise, my fuel and oil convoys from Fusan seem to be succeeding. Home Island stocks are on the rise, and Malaysia oil seems to be flowing north. This is not the case with fuel, but I have huge stocks in China, and getting them to the Home Island is my first order of business.


Nice job with the economy Francois! I think I could have reached 1.5 million HI by the end of 42 in Scenario 1, but I decided to turn all armament and vehicle factories to full to get the stockpiles up. I am just banking under 3k HI daily now from my usual 5-6k.

One thing I wanted to mention. I began disbanding ships in port at Hong Kong and loading fuel from the port. Last turn there was 30k worth of fuel. In two turns my tankers are almost full at 30k and there is still 30k+ of fuel at Hong Kong. Fusan and Port Arthur levels remained roughly the same as last turn so the fuel is coming from somewhere other than these too bases. I didn't really look at the CRB, Saigon, Bangkok or Singapore totals yet, but this fuel has to be coming from Burma or Malaya. Saigon is now at 420k so it is definitely drawing more. I'm going to track things for awhile to see if I can figure out where it is coming from. I know there's spoilage with fuel moving overland, but maybe it's not as much as used to ship it in the first place. Just think of the fuel savings if it does draw overland.

< Message edited by SqzMyLemon -- 9/4/2013 2:28:39 AM >

_____________________________

Luck is the residue of design - John Milton

Don't mistake lack of talent for genius - Peter Steele (Type O Negative)

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 563
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 9/5/2013 11:39:58 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		Still very little time left for the game, it is probably a good thing, as I’m in one of those phases where I have lots of difficulty taking it seriously.

December 27th 1942

Taberfane falls

After difficult landings, and two consecutive days of attack, the half strength Australian Division in Taberfane attacked, and took the base. A preliminary bombing by B24-D from Darwin had kept my troop disruption high, clear terrain helps.

Ground combat at Taberfane (82,117)
Allied Shock attack
Attacking force 7987 troops, 136 guns, 133 vehicles, Assault Value = 266
Defending force 4282 troops, 61 guns, 117 vehicles, Assault Value = 125
Allied adjusted assault: 52
Japanese adjusted defense: 7
Allied assault odds: 7 to 1 (fort level 0)
Allied forces CAPTURE Taberfane !!!
Combat modifiers
Defender: leaders(-), disruption(-), preparation(-), fatigue(-)
experience(-)
Attacker: shock(+), disruption(-), fatigue(-)

Japanese ground losses:
1157 casualties reported
Squads: 31 destroyed, 7 disabled
Non Combat: 39 destroyed, 4 disabled
Engineers: 12 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 38 (38 destroyed, 0 disabled)
Vehicles lost 98 (98 destroyed, 0 disabled)
Units retreated 3

Allied ground losses:
598 casualties reported
Squads: 4 destroyed, 68 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 8 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 14 disabled

Defeated Japanese Units Retreating!
Assaulting units:
6th Australian Division
2/7th Armoured Regiment
Defending units:
1st Tank Regiment
21st Ind.Mixed Brigade
5th RF Gun Battalion

Since yesterday, my good leaders (+) became bad leaders (-), and experience is now a negative (all units are over 60 (the tank regiment is 79). KB, five hexes away, managed not to launch (I suspect it is because it is in a coastal hex, I’ll move it one hex away tomorrow and see).

I have to say I am a bit underwhelmed by the Taberfane affair. My opponent attacks a base defended by a brigade, and tank regiment and a RF gun unit, behind light forts, but forts. My troops have good morale (in the 90s) experience over 60 (80 for the tanks) decent leaders, and supplies (over 10k as the invasion began). I intercept the landings, sink part of the transports, get a carrier division in position, and have KB a few days away. And in fact, only half an infantry division and a tank regiment land, probably with a good level of disruption and disablement. Can things go any better for the Japanese?

Yet, three days is all it takes to conquer the place. I wonder what happens if the Allies commit a bit more somewhere, and I don’t get to attack on the first day, and I can’t wait until 44, when they have better squads and devices.

Little else happened today : four B17-E visited Rabaul at night, and were met by five Zeroes, and 10 Nicks, we lost three Zero and a Nick, and were fortunate that the flak shot one Buff down. 4E night combat at work, I’m afraid…

In Burma, I’m again waiting for the supplies in Imphal and Kalemyo. I can’t quite figure how supplies flow to combat areas. A few days ago, everything seemed very smooth, now, I have more supplies in the valley, but they don’t seem to move. Also, it seems easier to get supplies to flow to Kalemyo over the jungle, than in Akyab over the road. A convoy has reached Akyab, which should be supplied tomorrow (unless they flow back to Rangoon… at this point I am ready for anything).


What now? I have to say I don’t really care. The next turn was played in three minutes: rest a pair of squadron, dock a task force, and hit done… I probably have forgotten a lot of things, but does it really matter?

I mean, we’re in this game where you can besiege Chungking in May 1942, because your opponent forgot to lock the door in Changteh (thousands of miles away), where the same opponent can lose 80 Dauntlesses in one day, because they decided to fly unescorted into enemy carriers, morning AND afternoon. But it evens out, because the next day, you can have enemy carriers find themselves both detected, three hexes from each other, yet none launch a single attack (this happened to me twice already, out of five carrier encounters), and then you might get lucky detecting an invasion, sinking part of it, but it wouldn't change anything to the outcome (in fact, it proved more difficult for my opponent to capture Terapo, defended by a lone para unit, than to get Taberfane, where I had a brigade, and tanks, and guns).

I have to say all this gives a very strong sense of futility. In fact, I often feel that I spend a lot of time focusing on the economy and areas of the game where my decisions matter, to compensate for the fact that in other parts (combat notably), my actions are much less relevant.


And the more I play, the more the statistician in me is convinced that something is fundamentally flawed with the way the game model is implemented. More precisely, I believe that the way the game was made realistic, by adding layer upon layer of complexity, translates into some form of deterministic rigidity, and end up favoring extreme results governed by a few die rolls. In other words, adding more mechanisms to improve realism results in the opposite.

Let me try to explain (and if you’re not into stats, applied maths and that kind of things, you might as well just quit reading here).

Picture actions in a game as series of steps. Those steps are the basic blocks the game routines are made of. Think of them as lines of codes, or sub-phases in the sequence of play, or successive calculations in the model. The more complex the game, the more steps it involves. For instance, a very basic combat model would include one ratio calculation, a die roll, and a check against a result table. A complex model, like AE, might split this into several fire phases (barrage, counterbattery, offensive, defensive, exploitation, assault), introduce a variety of tests (morale, leadership) to control the sequence, add bonuses and modifiers, and repeat the process (or parts of it) over many units participating in the combat.

We tend to believe that the more steps a model has, the closer to reality it becomes (provided those steps describe reality, which I don’t dispute), and the more realistic its outcomes are. This is not true. In reality, complex system tend to include a lot of feedback, randomness and weak interactions, which cause many of the steps to “average out”, and effectively disappear. In practice, the net result of that “averaging process” is the bell curve, which we observe everywhere, and which tends to limit the effect of complex models (in short, all models, simple or complex, end in gaussian distributions, because randomness "kills" complexity, (in the real world, it is even worse, because stability kills outliers, but that's another story)).

Now, our calculations, and programs, and man-made models, tend to be much more deterministic. We do have die rolls, but less than in reality, and often with “flat” (ie uniform) distributions, whereas nature tends to be Gaussian. And as those deterministic models average less, they tend to vary more, and favor extremes more than random models. You can picture this as a “walk” the possible destinations after a number of steps. In a deterministic walk, distance between possible destinations vary as the number of steps, in a random walk, it varies as the square root : the more steps you have, the worse the difference.

I believe this is the problem with many complex models. As all man made tools, they are much more deterministic than reality, and therefore end up varying more than they should. An interesting side effect is that such deterministic but complex models tend to appear as more “random” to us, players. Since in a deterministic model, every step is strongly correlated to the previous one (this is pretty much the definition of determinism), the first steps you make (in a game the first die rolls and a number of parameters that are taken into account at the beginning of the routine) get an inordinate importance, because the model is complex (and the more complex it becomes, the more importance they get).

In AE, you see this a lot in after action discussions: one single fact explains a catastrophic defeat. You had no radar, and so 2:1 odds turned into 1:10 losses. You lack AT guns, and therefore a tank regiment can rout an infantry corps, and so on.

Right, just me rambling, I’m interested in feedback about this (on such days, I really miss Herwin).


< Message edited by fcharton -- 9/5/2013 11:52:03 PM >

(in reply to SqzMyLemon)
Post #: 564
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 9/5/2013 11:52:07 PM   
GreyJoy


Posts: 6750
Joined: 3/18/2011
Status: offline 		I understand what you mean Francois, but, to be honest, i don't feel quite the same.

It's true that there are many die&rolls in the game, that can change the military outcome of an engagement.
But, at the very same time, this game (and that's why i really like it) it's not just a sum of battles. The gran scheme is where the player really has the chance to change the final outcome of the war.
It's not the tactical environement but the strategical one that really matters.

I Always try to imagine i'm the commander in chief. I give orders every day, but knowing that my subordinates won't Always do what i want them to do. Then there are the indipendent variables... an unlucky storm over your CVs...a mine... a bad day of your infantry unit... things that happens in war and that can change the course of battles.

These variables, to me, rapresent not just simple die&rolls but those things that can never be rapresented by cold numbers.
You may have a unit with 90 morale...an elite unit.... but can't it have a bad day? Cannot the commander gets diarreah just when the smart enemy decides to attack. Cannnot a very good leader, one day, simply give the wrong order? Defend the hill 322....while the enemy decides to invest hill 399....and so you get a 1-2 instead of a 3-1....happens

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 565
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 9/6/2013 1:13:46 AM   
PaxMondo


Posts: 9750
Joined: 6/6/2008
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

I understand what you mean Francois, but, to be honest, i don't feel quite the same.

It's true that there are many die&rolls in the game, that can change the military outcome of an engagement.
But, at the very same time, this game (and that's why i really like it) it's not just a sum of battles. The gran scheme is where the player really has the chance to change the final outcome of the war.
It's not the tactical environement but the strategical one that really matters.

I Always try to imagine i'm the commander in chief. I give orders every day, but knowing that my subordinates won't Always do what i want them to do. Then there are the indipendent variables... an unlucky storm over your CVs...a mine... a bad day of your infantry unit... things that happens in war and that can change the course of battles.

These variables, to me, rapresent not just simple die&rolls but those things that can never be rapresented by cold numbers.
You may have a unit with 90 morale...an elite unit.... but can't it have a bad day? Cannot the commander gets diarreah just when the smart enemy decides to attack. Cannnot a very good leader, one day, simply give the wrong order? Defend the hill 322....while the enemy decides to invest hill 399....and so you get a 1-2 instead of a 3-1....happens

+1

_____________________________

Pax

(in reply to GreyJoy)
Post #: 566
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 9/6/2013 8:18:42 AM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		Hi Greyjoy,

I agree that there are lots of random factors and unintended consequences that the game should (and does) model through die rolls. This is fair and realistic. However, I believe the global effect of such randomness should be to average everything away. That's what we call Murphy's law (which is in fact the law of large numbers). In other words, unintended consequences should result in everything taking longer than one expects, and no victory being as easy as it looks on the paper.

And this is where I think the game system doesn't work: we should get a lot of average/indecisive results, but in fact, the game seems to favor extreme outcomes. Hence those air battles where 70 or 80 bombers are shot down, and just one or two fighters are lost, despite the ugly weather, and the difficulty to coordinate long range patrols. Hence those night raids which take out every ship in a harbor, moonlight or not, despite the CAP. Hence those tank regiments that not only holds a pair of chinese corps, but causes them huge damage, in just one day.

To be fair, I have the impression this happens less in naval combat, and not at all in the economy/logistics game (which seems to lack any random effects), but the land and air models seem a bit extreme to me (and I think that deep down, the problem is not the presence of die rolls, but the lack of them. or, rather, the fact that they don't work as die rolls should).

And the net result are those crazy paces that players sometimes wonder about, and those big successes and losses we have been accustomed to. Just for the sake of comparison, have a look at amphibious landings in 42 and 43. In late 1943, in Vella Lavella, it took almost two month for a division to stamp out a battalion sized unit (a nav guard, in game terms), without coast guns, tanks or all the stuff that might help in AE. In Treasury Island, it took two weeks for a reinforced brigade to eliminate a pair of companies. How long do you think it would take, in game? A day, perhaps a week if everything went incredibly wrong?

Munda, New Georgia, seems to be comparable, in size to Taberfane. The Allies had a 3:1 superiority there, yet it took two months in 1943, with better troops and equipment, and a Japanese empire which was already crumbling. At the very end of the war, Iwo Jima took 6 weeks to capture, with four of very heavy fighting. Do you think this could happen in AE?

And finally, if the game follows a somewhat historical path, ending in 45 with the Allies on the doorstep of Japan, do you think you would have Japanese units still fighting in the south pacific islands in late 44 and 45.


Of course, this cuts both ways. The same mechanism allowed me to besiege Chungking in May 42, and have a dozen crack division ready to march into India in January 43. It turns counter invasion as the only viable response to an amphibious landings (since your defenders will be eliminated in a few days). And it does cater to our player and AAR writer need, to have something to say about the war everyday. As such, it is not quite a game breaker, even though I suspect it partly explains the faster collapse of Japan you observe in many games.

But still, those extreme outcomes seem much too common in the game.

Francois



< Message edited by fcharton -- 9/6/2013 10:08:20 AM >

(in reply to PaxMondo)
Post #: 567
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 9/6/2013 2:27:09 PM   
PaxMondo


Posts: 9750
Joined: 6/6/2008
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: fcharton
Since yesterday, my good leaders (+) became bad leaders (-), and experience is now a negative (all units are over 60 (the tank regiment is 79). KB, five hexes away, managed not to launch (I suspect it is because it is in a coastal hex, I’ll move it one hex away tomorrow and see).


Somewhere there is a post about this ... need Alfred to find it though. Anyway, until then, my memory will have to suffice.

The indicators above are NOT aggregate indicators. It means that ONE leader (at least) failed his leadership roll. It could have been a base force or an engineering ... you don't know which leader. Same for exp ... one unit failed an experience roll. However, it could have been your main ID that failed. You can only tell that based upon the actual results. Here, it does look like your Armored unit failed at least one of those rolls. It can happen, EXP<>100, so there is a chance to fail that roll. Ditto for the leadership.

How? Hey, an OP gets taken out before it can give warning. An arty strike hits the command tent with the first salvo. There are any number of really real things that can and do happen. As GJ says, you have to know these things can go either way and not get too caught up in it. The reason why the 'rules' of thumb for attack (3:1, 4:1 if you can) are around is because of these issues. Sure, you can win 1:1. But why attack if you know you only have a 10% chance of success? 3:1 means you have a very high chance of success. The allies were in Taberfane in sufficient strength to take the position on average. The first day results should not change that opinion. Unless you can reinforce the posiiton, Taberfane was likely to fall. It did. That's all.


Francois, I know that you know all this. It is hard to remember it though, especially through a war that will last +3 years. Me, I have a 'sticky' on the top of my monitor: "Grigsby is against you!"

_____________________________

Pax

(in reply to fcharton)
Post #: 568
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 9/6/2013 9:48:52 PM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 28th 1942

Today was a night and naval day. I had managed to sneak a task force into Akyab, to resupply the base. Tonight, a British cruiser squadron managed to intercept it in port.

Night Time Surface Combat, near Akyab at 54,45, Range 2,000 Yards
Japanese Ships
DD Shinonome, Shell hits 9, and is sunk
DD Shirakumo, Shell hits 13, heavy fires, heavy damage
AK Kyushu Maru, Shell hits 17, Torpedo hits 3, and is sunk
AK Tosan Maru, Shell hits 5, heavy fires, heavy damage
Allied Ships
CA Dorsetshire, Shell hits 24, Torpedo hits 2, on fire, heavy damage
CL Hobart
CL Mauritius
DD Arunta
DD Isaac Sweers

I am calling this a draw : I lost my four ships (scuttled the last one this morning), but I am pretty sure I got the Dorsetshire. Akyab now has some supplies, but the flow from Rangoon is really slow.


In Taberfane, a cruiser squadron sank the last transport unloading troops, and a good number of squads (by the VP count, about 65 squads and devices were destroyed today).

Night Time Surface Combat, near Taberfane at 82,117, Range 9,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
CL Nagara
CL Natori
CL Kinu
CL Kiso
DD Asakaze
DD Matsukaze

Allied Ships
xAP Harpoon, Shell hits 43, and is sunk

Allied ground losses:
555 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 22 destroyed, 47 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 5 (5 destroyed, 0 disabled)
Vehicles lost 30 (3 destroyed, 27 disabled)

Over Rabaul, a night raid didn’t do much damage, but shot down three Nicks and a pair of Zeroes. I am reducing night CAP over my bases, and limiting it to A6M2, which I have in quantity. Having some CAP seems to make a difference, but having more planes in the air just means losing more to defensive fire.


I spent a little more time on the turn than yesterday, maybe twenty minutes, but I have to say I find it more and more difficult to get involved in the details and the bureaucratic fun. Somehow, I think I know enough of the system to manage, but that playing really well would mean an investment I am not ready to make (because I don’t see the benefits anymore). I am probably going to play fast, more regularly, to see what happens. If I learn a few things on the way, it will be all the better, if I don’t, that’s fine too.

Somehow, this reminds me of learning Chinese characters. Like AE, it takes a lot of patience, for very frustrating results, and you often get told by those who’ve been there before that it is because you don’t work hard enough, and that you need to suffer, but that you won’t succeed anyway because you’re a foreigner (in the case of AE, because you didn't read the good books, or because you didn't serve).

At the beginning, it is fun anyway. Because you learn a lot of common words (tactics in AE), that you can use very often. And so you can see the results. And you can compare with the total beginners that can't even write their name. But soon comes a time (after a couple hundred characters in chinese, a couple months of play in AE) when you’re supposed to memorize the character for Argon, or the axle hub of a chariot (yes there is a one for that), or the name of a tree you don’t even know in English, or one of those four character expressions you have no chance ever using (and should avoid anyway, because they sound so pedantic, and most of the time, you use them in the wrong context), and it all seems useless, and futile, and boring, and the teachers insistence on all the useless details begin to sound strange. So you drop the class, burn the books, bury the scholars, and decide that you won’t rote learn anymore, that you'll just use what you know, and see where it leads you, and that no, you don't need to be an expert to have fun. And then Chinese becomes fun, and, surprisingly, you actually learn a lot more this way…

Music, I think, works the other way around. It is tough at first, but it gets easier as you progress, because you realize technique is just a means, and not an end. Maybe the problem with AE is that it is only technique… (or perhaps it is just me who fails to realize the beautiful end behind it).


< Message edited by fcharton -- 9/6/2013 9:57:02 PM >

(in reply to PaxMondo)
Post #: 569
RE: Perfection, of a kind, spence (A) vs fcharton (J) - 9/7/2013 10:09:50 AM   
fcharton

 

Posts: 1112
Joined: 10/4/2010
From: France
Status: offline 		December 29th 1942

Taberfane

There is little to report. A squadron of fighters was based here today. The airfield is level one, so they won’t do much, but it suggest the transport I sank yesterday was unloading an engineer unit.

B24-D from Darwin raided the neighbouring hexes. Dobo is better terrain than Taberfane, and so the Liberators only disabled a few squads, but disruption and fatigue went up very fast. I am a bit helpless against such raids, as my closest base for LRCAP are too far away to provide meaningful support.

I’m afraid I am witnessing the beginning of the allied strategy… Build a base (Darwin) and base 4E there. Then bomb the nearest base where 4E can be based (Taberfane). Once it is reduced to dust, move troops in, and build the base, and so on (gee! sounds like fun!)

4E bombers seem to be the main weapon of the Allies. B25-C hardly to any damage in protective terrain, and are relatively easy to shoot down. 4E do a lot of damage regardless of terrain, are very precise at night, and do a very good shooting down fighters.

What can I do about it? In Taberfane, not much, I will try to build a few airfields to base a couple of Nicks, and shoot a few B24 down, but it won’t be very efficient. I can try to get ready for the next step, once B24 are based in Taberfane. With Japan, getting the airfield from level one to seven would take a lot of time, but I somehow suspect the Allies can do this in a few weeks.

Can I try to have him run out of 4E? In the long run, I can’t, by the end of 1944, hundreds of those are produced every month, and thousands arrive as reinforcements. But 1943 is another matter, especially as my opponent commits his 4E bombers a lot.

So far, here are the models the allies produced, and their fate:

LB-30: production has now ended, 24 planes were built, 17 are reported shot down (in Tracker)
B-17D: production ended, 54 built, 37 lost
B-17E: production ended, 207 built, 97 lost
B-17F: production ended, 48 built, 34 lost
B-24D: production ending in January 43, 161 built (or to be built), 45 shot down so far
Liberator II (British): production ending in July 43, 29 built so far, 50 total, 6 shot down
PB4Y-1 Liberator : production began this month, until June 44, about 30 produced so far, 335 to be built, none shot down so far.

So, out of about 540 4E bombers built so far, 240 were shot down, and my opponent has 300 (some of them restricted). He is using them a lot : today, I counted 90 4E bombers flying, over New Guinea, Taberfane and Cox Bazaar.

Right now, he is producing 34 planes per month, and will produce 52 in February, 56 from March to July, 61 in August, and 78 in September. This means 740 planes produced this year, but including those which arrive as reinforcements, the total is about 760, plus 300 in store now, call it a thousand.

So the maths are pretty simple: I need to shoot two 4E every day to prevent his pools from growing. At three I am depleting them by the end of the year, and any larger number will limit his capability to use 4E as he does now. We shot two B17-E down today.

Burma

In Kalemyo, another deliberate attack reduced the forts and achieved 1:1 odds. I am getting a good number of destroyed squads and devices, but we’re not there yet.

Ground combat at Kalemyo (59,42)
Japanese Deliberate attack
Attacking force 67675 troops, 614 guns, 84 vehicles, Assault Value = 2016
Defending force 18428 troops, 282 guns, 633 vehicles, Assault Value = 465
Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 1
Japanese adjusted assault: 1309
Allied adjusted defense: 706
Japanese assault odds: 1 to 1 (fort level 1)
Japanese Assault reduces fortifications to 1
Attacker:
Japanese ground losses:
1426 casualties reported
Squads: 10 destroyed, 110 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 10 disabled
Engineers: 2 destroyed, 15 disabled
Allied ground losses:
250 casualties reported
Squads: 9 destroyed, 33 disabled
Non Combat: 7 destroyed, 13 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 25 disabled
Guns lost 13 (2 destroyed, 11 disabled)
Vehicles lost 37 (16 destroyed, 21 disabled)

I was hoping the supplies to arrive in Imphal today, so that I could attack, but it went the other way around, and I need to wait again. The British are reinforcing Imphal.

Near Cox Bazaar, a bombardement probe revealed 650 AV, a mixture of defeated units and fresh reinforcements. They tried to attack today, and got 1:2 odds, which means disruption, fatigue and all that.

I am having a lot of difficulty keeping Burma supplied. More convoys will come from Singapore, but Manchukuo and Korea seem to be hoarding all the Continent supply. I will try to draw more from Rangoon, see if it works.


(in reply to fcharton)
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