quote:

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

I think those fighter sweeps against Lunga were mistake when expecting carrier battle. They probaly added lot of fatigue and caused attrition to Zeros just when they'd be needed.

I think this was the killer (not necessary in terms of planes shot down, but for mission), not necessary the flak:

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 34
B5N1 Kate x 68
D3A1 Val x 9
D3A2 Val x 77



Allied aircraft
F4F-4 Wildcat x 117

Strike was not properly escorted and met enemy CAP with odds worse than 1 to 3...not good. Maybe, big maybe, if fighter escort had been 50-60 or more, success would have been better.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Cribtop

Thanks for this AAR. It has been a great read and the Guad scenario will probably be a good way to get used to AE.

A few questions if I may:

1) Regarding the carrier battle, one of the posters commented that it appeared Allied flak was the major killer. However, I noted that only 34 Zeros were on escort of the main strike. Can you comment on which factor was more important - CAP or flak?

2) At this point, do you believe you have any options that still result in Japanese victory, or at least keep this an Allied marginal victory?

3) Looking back, do you have any suggested tweaks to the scenario? In particular, do you think the IJA has enough ground assets to win? I am concerned that there may not be enough LCUs or supply to re-take Lunga or PM.

Thanks again for a great AAR. I particularly like your turn summaries - much easier on the eyes than reading combat reports and they contain the relevant info in just a few sentences.

quote:

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

And here is a pic of the ship repairs at Truk. The Unyo is using the repair ship and has repaired one sys dmg point every other turn so far. The Chikuma has repaired 2 sys dmg per turn pierside over the past three turns.



[image]local://upfiles/7611/5361A8F137AE4248A8ECE3EDBAABC4B7.jpg[/image]

quote:

ORIGINAL: castor troy

Only one single example again but please tell me that this is not the norm now. One sys dmg point per turn and the heavy cruiser two per turns when repairing at Truk? Does that mean you can now repair a BB with 99 sys damage in something like 2-3 months in a major repair yard? Even for a CA this would be far too fast IMO.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kereguelen

quote:

ORIGINAL: castor troy

Only one single example again but please tell me that this is not the norm now. One sys dmg point per turn and the heavy cruiser two per turns when repairing at Truk? Does that mean you can now repair a BB with 99 sys damage in something like 2-3 months in a major repair yard? Even for a CA this would be far too fast IMO.

There is a difference between major and minor damage in the AE. Minor damage may repair quite fast, for major repairs you'll need a shipyard and repairs will take much longer. Thus no full repair of a BB within 2-3 months.

If I remember correctly, Joe stated somewhere in this AAR that he did send back ships home (off-map in this scenario) that have suffered major damage because he could not repair them at Truk.

quote:

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

04-05 December 1942

Solomons
Our fleet launched a long range fighter sweep against Lunga, sending in about 30 A6M2 from two different ships, hard to tell exactly what the losses were, but looks like we faced about 34 Wildcats and lost 16 A6M2 for about 13 of the enemy. We see a giant USN carrier fleet several hexes East of Lunga, but they did not intervene in the action.

Amphibious units continued South towards Shortlands, as did the AOs.

B-24s continued day light raids against Shortlands.

Papua
Our Lily's from Wewak launched a night attack against PM losing one of their number of obtaining no results.

Planning
The fleet will withdraw WNW to refuel. The Amphibs will continue to the jump off position for the run in to Tass. It looks like Nik will not commit his carriers until we try to land supplies or troops on Tass - and that Lunga strike planes are set to short ranged missions so they don't "expend" themselves against our carriers at long range.

Here is a pic of the air action.


[image]local://upfiles/7611/453A0A9EEDFF4582BB31780CA336AFBF.jpg[/image]

quote:

ORIGINAL: Osterhaut


Does SYS damage also include some gun damage that is harder to fix than ordinary. maybe this is like major damage? Form what I see and read this is really good. There are easy to fix things and hard to fix things. if you fix the easy things you still have a ship but it is not as good as if you fixed every thing and if the major damage is too bad you have to repair in a port yard. This makes much sense to me.

MO

quote:

ORIGINAL: Tanaka
Firing arcs are still off in the art! [:(]

quote:

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

Right, I did send the heavily damaged ships back to Japan.

Comparing SYS damage in AE to SYS damage in stock is somewhat erroneous. SYS damage ini stock includes an abstraction of many types of damage including major damage. In AE much of this "major" damage is moved over to the floatation and engine "major" damage categories. Hence SYS damage is now the "everything else" category - and is generally easier to repair than in stock. In stock a ship with 20-30 SYS damage is pretty badly beat up - in AE not as much the case. Regardless it would be pathelogical to have a case in AE where a ship had 99 SYS damage and zero floatation or engine damage. If such a case arose - the ship would probably repair faster than stock - but I have never seen such a case in AE.