Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Plane builds:

I am building 9 Tojo IIc's a day. 270 a month. I do not plan on increasing this, so I need to be quite cautious with them. Considering my IJA fighter stocks were quite low prior to the Tojo IIc build coming online, I will never field a full IJA airforce until the Oscar IV and Tony KI-100I come on stream in the third and fourth quarter of 1943.

I do have adequate A6M5c's, 130 in the pool, construction turned off, but I lack IJN pilots since they have been suffering heavily in the absence of any decent IJA fighter. So, I need to be equally cautious here.

I also build 1 KAI Dinah and 1 Nick KAIa a day too. I had been thinking about eliminating the KAI Dinah, but got to thinking that one Sentai can splinter into three providing night fighting CAP at three different industry locations. They are not great, but they are definitely better than nothing. The Nick has the disturbing trait of actually closing with night bombers and subsequently they get shot down.

I build one Rufe every 3 days.

That is it. My fighter builds.

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ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe
My first foray in pbem, past nasty player, this game is a pickup from late July 42 after 4 IJA divisions were crushed on Java & the original quit. Game was a complete, utter, mess which I tried to document as well as I could.

I would like to think I turned the game around, but I fell short of my goal of getting Rangoon. Got everything else, and even a little more than I originally thought.

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe
George only. I will get the first one maybe 2 months early. Not ideal.

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe

NF's: I am always worried/planning these. Choices suck until so late and none of the IJN versions have armor. Do you have any R&D setup on any of the late models?

I am r&d Irving, just to have something, but really Frances is my plane of choice here. No Denko. If I knew how good KAI Dinah was at disrupting these early night raids, without heavy losses, I would have skipped Irving all together.

Army Nick KAId, again to have something, Dinah for the big recon squadron that converts to it and nothing else, but most on the Peggy. When I picked up the game I had grave doubts about reaching the radar activation date for Randy.

So Frances and Peggy with a squadron of Dinahs thrown in.

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ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lowpe
George only. I will get the first one maybe 2 months early. Not ideal.

So July or thereabouts ... 3 months or so from now.

So, a couple of suggestions that you may or may not already have in place.

1. Get your Ha-45 engine factories revved up and going full bore. It is one of you key end game engines. Try and get 3 factories on it, get it R&D completed and then build up to about 360 (3x120). You'll use that at least, most likely a lot more.

I have got it, already, about 112 in pools, and building the factories nicely, but so far only two of them. I will look at swinging a third over...

2. Take a hard look at all available IJN fighter groups, tally them up. Getting them upgraded to George will help a lot. George can work for you into late '44 as a front line fighter. In 45/46 it still will work as a backstop fighter. Factor this in for how many factories you commit to George. Then, commit those factories now if you haven't already.

I will be switching some Zero factories over to George, but only closer to actual production. For now they will sit idle. I am hoping to have Sam J in early 45, perhaps even late 44.

3. Remember that George is an SR3 fighter ... you need to learn how to work with those if you don't already know. Later fighters are even higher SR.

What joy, SR 3. I need to learn SR 4.

Then do the same for the Frank. You should have at least 9x30 on the Frank now. There are a lot of IJA units to equip with that.

Ooops here. I do have 270 factories dedicated to the Frank, but unfortunately it is far short of 9 factories....they are more like 2 size 30 factories and a few mutant ones. Can you say huge...does huge describe a 130 r&d factory?

quote:

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo
My thoughts on NF's are pretty simple: they have to be able to catch a B29 or they aren't going to do much good. That eliminates a lot of the IJ NF's. Don't worry about the on board radar of any AC. When it goes active, great, it means you've almost made it to '46.

Sure, you have to start with Irving(IJN) and the Helen(IJA) as they are the first you get for quite a while. You hope that they will at least interfere with night bomb runs better than day fighters on night, and basically they will. That is until the B29's show up and leave them in the dust. At +360, the B29 is so much faster than either of those that they get at most one pass, and many times nothing. Therein lies the problem.

None of the IJN NF's get armor and that means you are going to lose quite a few. This doesn't bother me much because I don't really have that many groups that I can afford to convert to NF's.

That means for me, most of my NF's are going to be IJA groups. The Tony KAI is good EXCEPT for the engine which I cannot afford to build. So that means I go Helen -> Dinah -> Randy. The only good news in this progression is that the engines are all easy and plentiful.

You can put the Helen KAI into production now and you'll have something at least. You won't need many, 2 groups or so should be enough unless your opponent really starts going to Night Bombing which most don't until they get their B29's in early '44. By then, you will need quite a few NF groups which will still be Helen (with some Irving, but again IJN groups are so few), but your Dinah should be not too far away at that point. Once you get Dinah, start working on the Randy ... it isn't optimal, but not much more you can do.

And yes, any NF works better at night than most any regular fighter (equal exp pilots),

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lowpe
[Ooops here. I do have 270 factories dedicated to the Frank, but unfortunately it is far short of 9 factories....they are more like 2 size 30 factories and a few mutant ones. Can you say huge...does huge describe a 130 r&d factory?

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe
My air strategy is no way shape or means streamlined. I have purposefully under built in 42 (at least the half year I was in charge), am not challenging the Allies for air dominance but rather contesting every now and then, and really playing for the final generation fighters.

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Helen KAI?

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ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe
[Ooops here. I do have 270 factories dedicated to the Frank, but unfortunately it is far short of 9 factories....they are more like 2 size 30 factories and a few mutant ones. Can you say huge...does huge describe a 130 r&d factory?

Ouch. As I understand it, once an RnD factory is 30, it maxes out its contribution of 1%/day. So, 130 is way overkill. Now, when it switches to production you will get the full 130 benefit. Until then though ... you may wish to put another factory or two for RnD. And of course get your Ha45 pools up to 500 ASAP to get the engine bonus.

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Economic notes

I am very close to 4.5 million supply, more than half of that in the HI. I am going to start reducing the number of planes on ASW and Naval search for submarines in an attempt to save more. I will actually break down and assign search arcs to maintain coverage.

I am pleased with the continuing supply growth given the expansion of vehicle factories, engine factories, and having to ship supplies to Burma.

Heavy industry is down to 3400 gain a day, with all the armament factories turned on and the new growth in Vehicle production. Not building a lot of planes helps here, too. But I am building way too many ships, just can't bring myself to turn most of them off.

I still cannot get enough oil/fuel into Fusan to grow stocks on the HI, but it continues to improve. I believe oil/fuel is starting to move out of Indochina into China now which is a big improvement. I am short tankers for all my needs despite using all of them, and all the std c and above I have converted to tanker usage. I am actually using xak to transport fuel from Fusan to HI, but I really need more oil transport capacity.

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ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Economic notes

I am very close to 4.5 million supply, more than half of that in the HI. I am going to start reducing the number of planes on ASW and Naval search for submarines in an attempt to save more. I will actually break down and assign search arcs to maintain coverage.

I am pleased with the continuing supply growth given the expansion of vehicle factories, engine factories, and having to ship supplies to Burma.

Heavy industry is down to 3400 gain a day, with all the armament factories turned on and the new growth in Vehicle production. Not building a lot of planes helps here, too. But I am building way too many ships, just can't bring myself to turn most of them off.

I still cannot get enough oil/fuel into Fusan to grow stocks on the HI, but it continues to improve. I believe oil/fuel is starting to move out of Indochina into China now which is a big improvement. I am short tankers for all my needs despite using all of them, and all the std c and above I have converted to tanker usage. I am actually using xak to transport fuel from Fusan to HI, but I really need more oil transport capacity.

Nice pool of supply.

Ouch on using all those small TK's and xAK's ... they are really inefficient.

If the oil/fuel in Fusan in improving, just keep working it. The resource AI is VERY slow to change, but once you get it started it will just keep moving. Keep pushing in at the other end and draw at Fusan. Having a lot of convoys based from Fusan helps the draw for fuel ... the AI knows it needs fuel for those TF's ... Exactly what I have done to draw fuel here.

If Fusan fails, you did inherit this game, then PA should work and PA is still far better than Singers. 50 - 60 hexes each way better actually.