Luskan
Posts: 1897
Joined: 7/11/2002
From: Down Under
Status: offline
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Well, I'll just post a quick sumamry of the last few turns for you all:
1. Sumatra
My troops have landed at the northern tip of sumatra, as well being in complete control of the east coast. All that is left are a few piddly west coast bases I can take at my leisure and the southern tip base of Teclabagegong (or something like that). Let's just call it T!. for short. My troops have begun their march on T! - and in the first 60 miles out of Palembang they will encounter the hex where the trail that runs the entire inland length of sumtra meets with the highway. Of course, Raver's defeated units from Palembang are waiting there, and will try to hold, as when I cut off the top of that trail, there are 8-10 allied units, some small inf units and others are base forces on that trail drawing supply all the way from T. They'll be cut off, and will starve and cease to exist. After that, onwards to T! and once there I will have size 4 airbases at either end of java - one at bali and one at T!. This will be a prelude ot the invasion of java and Phase 1 of the DEI operation will be over.
No spotting of allied cvs yet - but I know they're out there. Raver is probably staying just outside dinah or mavis range from Bali, and soon he'll stay at least that far from T! as well.
2. The economy.
The last two turns have seen unprecedented amounts of resources and oil shipped from balikpapan, kendari, Brunei, Miri, Manila, palembang, Tarakan, amboina, sorong and Bulla, boosting supply levels in the home islands to around 150k of oil and resources each, suplpy levels at Hong Kong to above 100k each (hong kong has some nice industry I've expanded, but the real reason to unload here is to get that captured chinese industry working for me at the front - supply is looking very good in china for the first time since the start of the war as a result. Thanks to this I'll be starting a chinese offensive very soon.
3. Burma.
Well, Raver left his base at Tyuan Gi (let's just call it TG! for short since I'm not going to look up the real spelling and I'm not even going to be consistent with how I spell it anyway). So, I rolled an armoured unit up from Rangoon (I now have 6!) and took it without a fight. Taht is a free 2000 supply points and 100 resources or so a turn. There is a trail connecting this base to Rahieng, and so no chance of my unit getting cut off from supply - alhtough Raver has moved a small unit in behind my unit from TG! to cut them off railroad wise. There'll be a little skirmish here as my other armoured units roll forward towards Akyab, and I may divert a second unit up here to recon Pagan.
Raver has got to be unhappy with the amount of force he has shipped into Akyab and now can't supply or get out and thanks to the old spoilage rule he's having to rty to bulid the place as well to prevent supply loss. Rave'rs had some transports in the bay the last few turns, and my betties have had a few goes wihtout success. This is because of the massive number of hurricanes and Tomahawks over Akyab at the moment. 3 turns in a row my zeros went head to head with them (30 zeros, 30 allied fighters, about 3 betties since only 1/3rd of my little 9 plane squadrons launched -will be moving an air hq into rangoon to fix that!). My tally (from the intel screen, if I believed my pilots they've killed every pilot in the AVG 4 times each) is Raver has loast about 36 planes while I have lost 24. A victory, but not a good one, although my aces have enjoyed the battles, adding to their kill tallies. I'll have to do something about this as I'm not ready to settle into attrition warfare just yet.
Raver sent all 4 RN BBs towards Rangoon but they were spotted, and I was ready for him with the same number of BBs, and about 15 CAs, and 30 DDs. Unfortunately Raver hauled ass north and escaped and even managed to avoid the attacking betties. He'll try again later no doubt.
My ASW efforts off the burmese coast are still fruitless, and I'm running out of ideas.
So all in all, lots of burmese action here.
4. China.
Well, after bulding up my base at Hanoi to massive proportions, I based 100 sallies in there and set them to work bombing the crap out of . . . one of those chinese cities in the interior with resources. lets call it K!. K! doesn't have any fighter cap, no real AA to speak of and very few troops (as Raver's troops are all closer to the front). As Raver has tried to do unsuccessfully at palembang and rangoon to bomb my resources and oil (and north at lanchow) I learnt from his mistake. He simply didn't have the numbers of planes over the city to do any real damage and the damage was repaired by the next turn. I've knocked 50 resources off in 3 turns (net) and will continue this bombing campaign until he moves in some fighters or AA. Once that resources centre is wrecked, I'll switch to the HI, and then move my bombing targets on. The idea is that by crippling chinese industry, which I have a fair chance at doing considering the lack of AA and eng units he has, while I've got literally hundreds of sallies and lilies in squadrons with over 400 of each in the replacement pool, and squadrons of exp greater than 80 (thanks to the repeated easy bombings at bataan for 2 months straight) I think this is a worthwhile investment of time.
Especially since I can hurt him directly without taking any losses (and negate the yellow threat of his massive armies, which as Raver will tell you, are so big he literally can't feed them all). Supply in china is the nightmare for the allies and I'm going to add to it.
Hopefully this strategy will give Raver 2 options.
A. Cop the bombings and loose the resources and the supply and therefore the ability to repair the resources, and eventually watch his entire army melt away from starvation., or
B. Move the allied fighters from Burma into China to defend the place. Especially the AVG.
let you know how this turns out.
5. The logistics and construction part.
I've been doing the whole supply troop, base force CD unit buildup thing, and am pleased to announce that many many bases throughout the globe are as alrge as I can build them.
For all you jap players out there, all those eng units you start with, especially at Taan doing nothing etc - get them forme dup into large engineer armies and send them building. In China basically every base is fort size 9, and the ports and airfields are as big as they'll go in most locations. In the pacific, all my primary abses are all finished so i've moved units onto secondary islands to buld them up too. I have enough supply at places like rabaul, truk and kwajalein to last the entire war - even with the large numbers of troops I've been pumping in (all those CD units are for defence, but I'm unsure about whether or not the infantry I've been shoving into these places is for offence or defence yet).
I can pretty much guarantee that it would take 3+ full strength allied divisions to take any of my pacific strongholds at the moment, and I plan to get my secondary bases (places like maloaep(sp) and Guam and Tarawa and Wake) into similar sized servings.
I'll admit I aws surprised when Raver showed restraint at Wake by not sending in a division to retake it immediately. I had cds, troops, CVs, mines, the lot all ready for him and he never showed.
There should be a surprise next turn for Raver in Chinaas my new offensive comes online, but I don't want to talk about it until I've got the turn back and I can see if it all worked.
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With dancing Bananas and Storm Troopers who needs BBs?   |
Printable Version
RE: Liar liar pants on bloody fire. - 
. My bet is that he has grown tired of the brigade size recon patrols that I have and will look to swat these...................no big loss on my part of they are very small units anyway.........and I have millions waiting to replace them. 
RE: Air battle over Rangoon - 
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