Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Ian R

To expand Alfred's abrupt but correct advice -

Where bases have damaged runway, services, etc those will be repaired in priority to any further expansion of port or aerodrome facilities.

The digging of fortifications will continue, in preference to port/aerodrome expansion, if you turn the latter off, and insofar as the repair of built facilities allows.

Short version: DO.NOT.BUILD.UP.THE PORTS.AIRFIELDS. in Manila, Singapore, Sorebaya & Batavia in the initial phase of the war. It makes it harder to fix damage and get the focus on fortifications.

quote:

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Yes. Don't do your enemy's work for them. They love it when you expand port and airfield facilities in bases they will soon occupy. They also love it when you repair the damage they did to those facilities by bombing, rather than fortifying. It's so sneaky of them to bomb the stuff you won't be able to use anyway and get you to fix it up for them. There may be occasions when the best policy is to not even have any engineers present that will be on your payroll but working for them.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dragonlead
This seems like a possible update for the devs since this is a reasonable tactic that either side can use without unbalancing the game. It also seems rather realistic in the human sense...i.e. the enemy is massing in front of me, but I'm going to go to the city and rebuild the port they just bombed, because, well, that's really more important than getting overrun.

quote:

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dragonlead
This seems like a possible update for the devs since this is a reasonable tactic that either side can use without unbalancing the game. It also seems rather realistic in the human sense...i.e. the enemy is massing in front of me, but I'm going to go to the city and rebuild the port they just bombed, because, well, that's really more important than getting overrun.

There will never be an update like that - because it is WAD. Damage to facilities abstracts damage to infrastructure, and with the latter present it is hard to do any building. A reasonable tactic is to bomb infrastructure to prevent your enemy from building up fortifications.

Granted there is some wiggle space for the logic on the lower end, cause grunts might use their spades for forts 1 regardless of bombing. However with the discrete nature of attack odds it would be annoying to try get 3:1 and stomp forts 1 each and every turn you attack.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Chris21wen

quote:

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Yes. Don't do your enemy's work for them. They love it when you expand port and airfield facilities in bases they will soon occupy. They also love it when you repair the damage they did to those facilities by bombing, rather than fortifying. It's so sneaky of them to bomb the stuff you won't be able to use anyway and get you to fix it up for them. There may be occasions when the best policy is to not even have any engineers present that will be on your payroll but working for them.

One of the first things I do for both sides for different reasons is turn off all repair for everything, ports, forts, AF, oil, resources, factories and anything else you can think of. For the Allies it's the above reason, for Japan it's supply.

Once off, I seletively turn them back on.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dragonlead

Appreciate the quick, if unhappy, news. I was afraid I might have missed something in the manual. This seems like a possible update for the devs since this is a reasonable tactic that either side can use without unbalancing the game. It also seems rather realistic in the human sense...i.e. the enemy is massing in front of me, but I'm going to go to the city and rebuild the port they just bombed, because, well, that's really more important than getting overrun.

quote:

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

quote:

ORIGINAL: Dragonlead

Appreciate the quick, if unhappy, news. I was afraid I might have missed something in the manual. This seems like a possible update for the devs since this is a reasonable tactic that either side can use without unbalancing the game. It also seems rather realistic in the human sense...i.e. the enemy is massing in front of me, but I'm going to go to the city and rebuild the port they just bombed, because, well, that's really more important than getting overrun.

It's not a bug and is hardwired into the engine and cannot be changed even if they had wanted to, which they didn't. It is intentional.
It amounts to air interdiction, similar to how you can knock a unit out of move mode into combat mode just by bombing them. There are a lot of things like that in the game that may confuse at first. For example when you want to expand a factory you turn on repairs. There's no damage to repair but you use the repair function to build. At the games start many factories, oil fields and refineries show "damage". It's not damage, it's just the range of available expansion. One player I know of researched factories in Japan historically and couldn't find any with any "damage". I suppose like damage from the '23 quake? So he went to the editor and "repaired" all those factories from the get go. We sometimes call that cheating.

quote:

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Don't forget to turn off everything auto: sub ops, replacements and reinforcements and anything else the AI wants to do poorly.