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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 11:34:45 AM

Bearcat2

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Good luck on taking Truk; that Naval fort has wrecked a lot of my ships and if he has supply, plus a brigade sized unit in defense, it is a very tough nut to crack.

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 11:41:30 AM

Canoerebel

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quote:

ORIGINAL: palioboy2

Have you ever had an opponent launch the sort of all in air attack you fear? Was it against a DS as big as your current one and what was the outcome?

I don't mean any of this as a slight, just I've seen you rank the odds of this happen quiet high many times in the two AARs I have read but have no recollection of it ever happening.

Obviously it must be protected against, but from the way you describe Erik he doesn't seem like the type to impale his air force on DS when he knows how important it is to the strategic air war.

I just can't see him doing it unless you made some major blunder.

In my games with John III and Erik, at least twice I've seen modest-sized strikes make it through Death Star CAP and land hits by bombs/torps and/or kamikazes. In other games, I've seen all-out strikes do proportionately much more.

My best guess is that an all-out strike from Erik's bases - say more than 1000 aircraft - might sink five to ten carriers (hopefully, mostly CVEs) at a massive loss to Erik's aircraft. But that's just the "bell" of the bell-shaped curve, I think. Extremes lie at either end, and one of those ends is frightening.

I can afford to lose some carriers if Erik guts his air force in the process, which is why I have Death Star positioned about four hexes from Ominato, Hachinohe, Hakodate, Sapporo, Muroran, Bihoro, etc.

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Post #: 3392

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 11:44:25 AM

Canoerebel

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Bearcat2

Good luck on taking Truk; that Naval fort has wrecked a lot of my ships and if he has supply, plus a brigade sized unit in defense, it is a very tough nut to crack.

I scrubbed Truk last night. Erik is reinforcing by air, bringing in a Mixed Brigade. I think he already had the heavy weapons there, having previously removed the combat squads via air transport. That's a tricky move, but I'd been watching for it.

My transports are moving to Ponape, where they'll unload the Truk prepped troops. Then the transports will return to the Solomons to pick up the troops for a different target - one that dovetails more neatly with The Next Next Big Thing.

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Post #: 3393

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 11:58:19 AM

Canoerebel

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3/13/45

NoPac: Erik doesn't order an attack versus Death Star. As I awaited the turn, looking at the map and thinking over things, I increasingly felt like he would. DS will remain in place tomorrow, providing cover for the armada picking up an army, so I'll hold my breath again.

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< Message edited by Canoerebel -- 12/4/2018 12:01:03 PM >

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Post #: 3394

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 12:11:04 PM

mind_messing

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Scrubbing Truk is the right call. You can already effectively suppress it from Ponape, so it's no longer a dangerous airbase.

If you're worried about a lack of search at the Marianas and beyond, you should move on Woleai and Satawal for their potential for floatplane bases.

I think your strategic direction is a bit off here, however. I'm not sure what Truk would get you - you'd be better served smashing a path through Wake-Marcus-Bonin Islands. That lets you ship stuff directly from Hawaii, and the Bonin's give you a base to threaten the Home Island shipping lanes and a second vector of advance against the Home Islands.

Food for thought!

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Post #: 3395

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 12:31:41 PM

Canoerebel

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The plan to interdict the Home Island shipping lanes has been in place and prep for months. That's "The Next Next Big Thing."

Out on the periphery are certain bases worth alot of points. Some of those bases seem lightly garrisoned, if recon and SigInt are to be believed = low-hanging fruit. I'll take them with minimal commitment, if I can, but I don't want to get bogged down or lose more than an objective is worth.

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Post #: 3396

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 12:41:43 PM

mind_messing

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The plan to interdict the Home Island shipping lanes has been in place and prep for months. That's "The Next Next Big Thing."

Out on the periphery are certain bases worth alot of points. Some of those bases seem lightly garrisoned, if recon and SigInt are to be believed = low-hanging fruit. I'll take them with minimal commitment, if I can, but I don't want to get bogged down or lose more than an objective is worth.

I think Truk is definitely not in that category, even with a token garrison. Ask Bullwinkle about the fun he had trying to take Truk from a staunch defence.

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 1:27:39 PM

jwolf

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I don't think Truk is ever low hanging fruit. But I admit some other bases probably are.

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Post #: 3398

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 2:42:51 PM

Canoerebel

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I've never assaulted Truk before, but I was willing to give it a try if the garrison was 6k, light on combat squads and low on supply. The purpose of bombing the base for the past four or five turns, along with sending in a YMS and a small bombardment TF, was to see if there was supply and to see whether Erik reinforced (he did) or had KB in the area (I still don't know). What I saw persuaded me to scrub the mission. I'm weighing whether to keep the troops in the area, perhaps prepping for some of the Marianas, or whether to employ them in NoPac, for reasons set forth three or four turns back.

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Post #: 3399

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 4:41:49 PM

Lokasenna

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Why are you even bothering with interdicting the shipping lanes? What good is that going to do (with the shipping lanes in particular)?

It's 1945. The shipping lanes don't matter anymore. What does matter is what pressure you are able to apply, and where. Maybe additional vectors coincide with the shipping lanes, but they shouldn't be placed because of the shipping lanes. If you were taking Truk to then take the Marianas, with its boatloads of base VPs, then that's reasoning I can get behind. Taking Truk to enable getting into the shipping lanes in 1945 doesn't make sense. I saw that you scrapped Truk, but decided to use that as an illustrative example anyway.

Also, Ponape has a dedicated naval fortress as well. Personally, I don't see why you wouldn't go for Marcus and then the Bonins, which would enable you to cut the body off at the neck (Bonins - Okinawa/Ryukyus) as opposed to having to cut across the broad shoulders of the equatorial Pacific (Philippines and all targets leading up to them).

It's 1945.

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 5:06:31 PM

Canoerebel

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The difficulty in keeping an AAR of this length and detail is that nearly nobody has time to read the whole thing or to commit this much detail to memory. As a result, readers regularly post in exasperation/disbelief based upon incomplete or totally inaccurate understandings of the Allied plan or situation.

If you go back through the past month, you'll see most of your questions/posits were covered in detail: (1) Truk was indeed to be a stepping stone to the Marianas, for points reasons; (2) I've had Ponape for a year; (3) Marcus is on the menu; and (4) The Next Next Big thing is configured to dovetail with Russian activation and the situation in SEAC - enemy shipping lanes had nothing to do with it, but it so happens the plan does impact those lanes.

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 5:23:57 PM

AcePylut

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I�ve only been doing my AAR for a couple months, but I understand exactly where you�re coming from.

If you were to write down �every single thing� going on, why you�re doing it, how it impacts grand strategy, then each post would be about 20-30 paragraphs and the reader would be lost, or get bored easily.

I know that you focus mainly on �where the action is� because that�s what�s exciting to the viewer. As a result, though, the reader may believe that �nothing is going on elsewhere�, and that�s just not true. I prefer your AARs the way you do them: Short, Sweet, Easy to Follow, and Focused on the Hot Spots. You�ve also done them through a couple of wars, and I know that all these apparently baffling, frustrating, �why the heck are you or aren�t you doing THIS� question the reader might have, are things that have been in progress for a while, but you are "just now" talking about them, so it seems to be spontaneous 'Do something to do something' actions, but they aren't.

There�s no need for me, anyway, to question your �grand strategy�, I know you�re not flying by the seat of your pants. Any questions I have on that subject are me simply wanting to "know what you're thinking". I do tend to ask questions about tactical things, though, just because I want the knowledge or the reasoning why you did, or didn�t, do something on a tactical level. Not because I question what you�re doing (although it may come off like that) but because �I would have done it differently� and I �want to know why you did it that way�.

Also, as you have stated 10,000 times, every day there�s something �new� to learn in this game, and I want to learn those things �not� the hard way.

So, Soldier On, Mr. Kayak Loyalist

< Message edited by AcePylut -- 12/4/2018 6:24:50 PM >

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 5:43:27 PM

Canoerebel

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Thanks, Ace. That covers it well.

I suppose all of us AAR recorders enjoy fielding questions and comments from readers. It's one of the pleasures of doing this.

Sometimes - more often than I'd have expected - readers express frustration at a plan they don't understand and that seems nonsensical to them. Rarely, that frustration can get extreme, coming across in their comments as contemptuous.

In my game with John III, John had a carrier TF sliding up the Makassar Strait from the Java Sea. Death Star was somewhere up in the Philippines. I expressed uncertainty as to what John might be up to. A reader posted a comment that went something like this: "Come on! We all know what he's doing!" Well, I didn't. I could think of about 20 possibilities, each as likely as the next. Over time, that reader continued to take exception to what seemed, to him, my obtuseness. Finally, I said something about it. To my knowledge, that reader never returned to my AARs. I regret that, because he's a real gentleman.

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Post #: 3403

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 7:59:57 PM

Lokasenna

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The difficulty in keeping an AAR of this length and detail is that nearly nobody has time to read the whole thing or to commit this much detail to memory. As a result, readers regularly post in exasperation/disbelief based upon incomplete or totally inaccurate understandings of the Allied plan or situation.

If you go back through the past month, you'll see most of your questions/posits were covered in detail: (1) Truk was indeed to be a stepping stone to the Marianas, for points reasons; (2) I've had Ponape for a year; (3) Marcus is on the menu; and (4) The Next Next Big thing is configured to dovetail with Russian activation and the situation in SEAC - enemy shipping lanes had nothing to do with it, but it so happens the plan does impact those lanes.

Yes, somehow I had missed that you had Ponape and inferred from a different post about being able to suppress Truk from there + landing the Truk troops there that you did not have it yet. The difficulty in following an AAR is sometimes that there is too much to digest in the time budget available, as you mention

. I would actually argue that the difficulty you imply or have referred to on other occasions (that we readers don't have full info) is not because of the length and detail, but in fact alleviated by that. I read the new posts here (or at minimum look at the maps, although on my work computer my horizontal resolution can be inconvenient) every time I log in. Usually at least daily.

I am always posting with that knowledge (that we don't see everything) in mind, because it's really why I don't keep up with my own AARs. I can't share everything, and unless I can share everything the value of feedback or input is much diminished (to me). My response, entirely loving yet bereft of all subtlety as it was, was spurred by the comment made about interdicting the shipping lanes being the Next Next Big Thing, and to probe/test your planning and thinking process. The implication from the comment is that the interdiction of the shipping lanes is the goal of the Thing, which as I understand now from your response is not the goal of the Thing. But that's how I reached that conclusion, and what spurred my blunt challenge.

I know in other posts (typically in the general forum or at least not in the venue of AARs), I can slather on the sarcasm and terseness to a greater degree than some have an appetite for. My most recent was merely meant as an emotionless "are you sure you're looking at the right reasons for doing a thing?"

Going further, part of the reason I haven't had anything to say about the Malaya/Lower Burma actions (and "high" losses there) is because there is really nothing critical to say about them. They have a clear (or clearly implied) greater purpose, and assets are all expendable to one degree or another.

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Post #: 3404

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 8:39:30 PM

Canoerebel

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It would be helpful to readers - and exceedingly boring - to repeat somewhere in each post everything that's happened before. Newspapers try to do that, more or less, so that the 58th time you've read a story about Senator Porkchop being indicted for corruption in taking bribes to approve the construction of a space hub in Poughkeepsie, the newspaper repeats that entire synopsis on the off-chance that one out of 2 million readers won't be aware of the facts, would read a story about "Senator Porkchop being indicted," and would complain to the newspaper about be incomplete. Etc. Etc. Etc.

I don't know what's worse: incompleteness or purple prose!

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/4/2018 10:39:05 PM

Canoerebel

Posts: 21100
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3/14/45

NoPac: Vast armed forces in proximity, but little in the way of sparks and flames today. That suits me.

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 12:50:20 AM

MakeeLearn

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

It would be helpful to readers - and exceedingly boring - to repeat somewhere in each post everything that's happened before. Newspapers try to do that, more or less, so that the 58th time you've read a story about Senator Porkchop being indicted for corruption in taking bribes to approve the construction of a space hub in Poughkeepsie, the newspaper repeats that entire synopsis on the off-chance that one out of 2 million readers won't be aware of the facts, would read a story about "Senator Porkchop being indicted," and would complain to the newspaper about be incomplete. Etc. Etc. Etc.

I don't know what's worse: incompleteness or purple prose!

The Iliad... Odyssey... Simei�seis

< Message edited by MakeeLearn -- 12/5/2018 12:11:48 PM >

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Post #: 3407

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 2:35:42 AM

Capt. Harlock

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quote:

It's 1945.

Yes, but it's only March 1945 -- and AE is quite capable of going into 1946.

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 3:16:31 AM

BBfanboy

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For docked ships. transport mode is faster loading and unloading. But you could probably load units like tanks and artillery in undocked/beached LSTs faster than you can put them in transport mode and load them on xAPs and xAKs. I don't have the figures handy to compare APA loading/unloading in transport vs amphib mode and docked vs undocked.

Having to stop the loading and move the TF off is probably a good thing for spreading the risk of losing an entire unit if ships get sunk.

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 11:03:31 AM

HansBolter

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It's the TFs attempting to fully load supply that always seems to upset my timetables on when a large TF grouping manages to sortie.

Sometimes, canceling the loading of supplies after troops have loaded doesn't stick, because the setting for not loading supplies wasn't chosen when loading started.

My Okninawa invasion sat at Agrihan loading supplies for five days longer than I expected. I was fuming over the delay and changing supply loading settings midstream wasn't working.

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Post #: 3410

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 11:59:52 AM

Canoerebel

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Some good insights gentlemen. Thanks.

Hans, indeed my TFs were set to "Load Troops Only," both to speed the loading and to leave the maximum amount of supply at this forward base. (The TF loading the assault division bound for Onne thus will lack supply, but fully loaded supply ships were prepositioned at Uruppu Jima.)

BBFanboy, your suggestions got me to thinking. I think I'll convert all the arty and armored units to Combat mode and, next time, load them aboard LSTs and similar craft. The infantry divisions (and similar units) will remain in Strat mode. I think the larger port size and the addition of considerable Naval Support will allow more expeditious loading.

The eight or so TFs that spent two days loading range from 10% to 100% loaded, with the average somewhere around 30%. IE, a lot of loading capacity was left unused, darn it, necessiting another trip. Another trip = another foray into exposure in proximity to Erik's massive nest of airfields = another chance for a clever opponent to craft an attack plan. The nature of this beastly game.

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 2:34:41 PM

Lecivius

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I don't offer much, because I read all the AAR's. Better to stay silent than be stupid

In this case, I just pose a question, or perhaps better stated, and observation. I note in several of your posts you mention 'mouseover' recon. In the case of Onnekotan (and others earlier), are you using aerial recon as well? I know from experience such recon greatly increases results. The drawback, of course, is your opponent see's such recon. By now you should have a lot of such assets. Reconning the entire Japanese mainland is not out of the question. This would drive your opponent nuts, since he can't be everywhere. I am curious as to your thoughts on this.

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Post #: 3412

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 2:41:05 PM

Canoerebel

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I do mean regular reconnaissance, which provides much of the info I glean from the "mouseover."

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 4:19:49 PM

Lokasenna

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quote:

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

It's the TFs attempting to fully load supply that always seems to upset my timetables on when a large TF grouping manages to sortie.

Sometimes, canceling the loading of supplies after troops have loaded doesn't stick, because the setting for not loading supplies wasn't chosen when loading started.

My Okninawa invasion sat at Agrihan loading supplies for five days longer than I expected. I was fuming over the delay and changing supply loading settings midstream wasn't working.

When this happens, click on "unload" and then click on the yellow text under the TF picture to change it to Do Not Unload to stop the unloading you just ordered.

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Post #: 3414

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 4:26:13 PM

Canoerebel

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That can be tricky. Usually, the "Unload" followed by "Do Not Unload" doesn't work. The TF keeps loading despite those efforts. What I have to do is to click on the "Adjust Load Troops Only" or "Adjust Load Troops" and manually click on the green "Loading" text beside the unit. That and only that actually stops the loading. This is a tricky matter that really messed me up until I figured out how to handle it.

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Post #: 3415

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 4:28:58 PM

Canoerebel

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3/15/45

SEAC: Playing with a bit of paranoia is a good thing, usually. I figured that any red-blooded Japanese player would cast longing looks at the RN Death Star in the Andaman Sea. I know John III would have. And sure enough, KB showed up today. It may have been here - in some configuration - all along. Or it may be newly arrived.

Erik has used his "fleet in being" carriers well. I'm pretty glad I didn't blunder into them improvidently.

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 4:40:50 PM

Canoerebel

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3/15/45

Ops Report: Today's report includes news meaningful to future grognards.

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RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 4:42:08 PM

jwolf

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Hah! Nice catch on that pilot!

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Post #: 3418

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 4:46:48 PM

Canoerebel

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3/15/45

SigInt: Gleanings.

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< Message edited by Canoerebel -- 12/5/2018 4:47:22 PM >

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Post #: 3419

RE: Notes from a Small Island - 12/5/2018 6:16:17 PM

Canoerebel

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From: Northwestern Georgia, USA
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3/15/45

NoPac: Death Star broke contact with Kushiro and moved east, as ordered. That was actually a complicated maneuver requiring careful, thorough clicking in just the right sequence. It's one of those aspects of the game that would catch a newcomer unaware in a teeth-gnashing way.