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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

Do Chinese HQs respawn like the combat units?

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

I didn't know that about all HQs. I wonder if that has changed with the introduction of buying back destroyed formations with PPs?

BTW, IIRC from my current game then, yes, Chinese HQs do come back (without PP purchase) just as do the combat units.

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

Lusu War Area is the one that starts the scenario practically already trapped, right? My game is in Jan '43, so I'll check when I get the turn and see if it's back.

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ORIGINAL: Encircled

When you say "Mandalay must hold", do you mean "until we are out of China" or indefinitely?

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: Encircled

When you say "Mandalay must hold", do you mean "until we are out of China" or indefinitely?

My hope would be indefinitely. I can easily put fifteen Chinese corps there, including some "American armed" ones. Plus assorted Indian and British units, including arty. Supply will be the break-point. I've never defended the region from a human, so I could be tragically wrong. But I don't want to start the road back from Imphal or north of there. I hope to perhaps threaten Indo-China if he gets too frisky. But that's several seasons away at best.

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ORIGINAL: Captain Cruft

Err technically the Inland Sea is the "river" bit between Kobe and Shimonoseki. What you are referring to is the Sea of Japan.

Putting subs through Hakodate is not a good idea. The only safe way in is by skirting Wakkanai at the top end of Hokkaido.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

Very good points, Mr. Lenin. Are you perhaps an old hand with a new account/screen name?

I do need to figure out a defense halo around Mandalay. Defending NE of the river there would be better, but Mandalay has AF and terrain features I want. It's at Forts 3 now and still building; also the air field. I also need to take some time once and for all and figure out what the monsoon rules are now after being patched. I'm ashamed to say I don't even know the exact dates.

Lashio is also going to need some flanker defenders in the mountains and rough country nearby. If he comes with tanks as I expect he will right now, I need to be able to at least threaten getting behind them. My hope is that both garrisoning and distance from his big supply ports will stall any huge advance into Burma from China. I think his main effort will be from "normal" directions such as Rangoon and up from Indo-China. So far he has not shown a lot of love for big amphibious ops such as a landing to take Calcutta directly, or Madras, would entail, but I may be schooled on that at Pearl before any Indian expedition becomes reality.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
3) USS Sculpin, one of the first four HI patrols, hits a mine at Hakodate as she tries to penetrate the Inland Sea. No report of sinking, but sunk ship sound heard at end of phase. It was regular surface ship sound, not deep breaking-up sound usual for a sub, but the odds are it was her. I'd take the risk again, if only to tell Japan that the subs are around. I will penetrate again by a safer route to the north next try.

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

Lusu War Area is the one that starts the scenario practically already trapped, right? My game is in Jan '43, so I'll check when I get the turn and see if it's back.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

quote:

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Lusu War Area is the one that starts the scenario practically already trapped, right? My game is in Jan '43, so I'll check when I get the turn and see if it's back.

Following up on this, I checked mine and LWA is indeed in the Chungking magic queue 28 days out. So the manual is by the boards now.

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ORIGINAL: Crackaces

I think AE in the ground game is unique from many other wargame designs. My experience is that the typical wargame adopts a hex size (in this case 46 miles) and then designs around the unit size that operates on that front. 46 miles is the Offensive frontage for a good size Corps. The concept of ZOC from my perspective allows the idea of a larger frontage for defense in this case 138 miles. AE is unique in many ways from systems like I have described. For one, there are units of 1 squad that can exert influence in a hex of 46 miles! If you inlculde the concept of hexside control for establishing LOC's and this game has mechanics with has lots of ramifications in my opinion.

It sure does. In the "don't teach your grandma to suck eggs" category, it still bears mention that AE is a naval game with a land game attached. Naval is the dog, land the tail. A hex size of "reasonable" size for many of the LCUs--say 3-5 miles--would make the naval game unplayable, not to mention run into RAM restrictions pretty fast. Lots of compromises are needed with a game spanning Karachi to New York the long way around. To that you have to add the need to model continental land war with island land war. The only relief is that the compromises are imposed on both sides.

Just one thought as you mention -- getting behind the enemy. Combat takes place in the hex not between units in adjacent hexes like many other wargames [as you very well know but I mention to establish context]. This makes the naive attacker driving large stacks into the enemy seriously vulnerable.

In a long-ago thread on para frags I used the phrase "trail of bread crumbs" to describe the need for the stacking attacker to hold the back door open. Very few players seem to do this.

If the attacker enters the defenders hex from only one direction the attacker only controlls one hexside in the contested hex. Simply stopping the advance for enough turns to get a unit, armor moves the fastest, to enter the hex from the same hexside that the attacker entered and those forces are trapped. Getting another unit to reenter to contested hex or winning the contest is the only way to free these forces. Better yet, though the defender might have advanced the unit from a position out of supply - once the trapping unit enters the contested hex it assumes the supply status of the hex. Once the attacking units lose LOC supply becomes an instant question and the situation for the IJ becomes critical -- especially in Burma where the IJ are pressured to achieve defensible positions before the Allies OOB enables offensive capabilites.

Taking the two cases--Lashio and Burma--separately, I hear you. I am also not inherently good at this type of thing while my opponent is. He thinks like the soldier he was. I struggle with maneuver and supply routes.

Looking at Lashio, which is likely to be my earlier headache, the terrain is interesting. The city itself is no more or less defensible than many others, but it is on the western side of a funnel through mountains sectioned by yellow road. That piece of the map is one I'm looking at as I bring the Chinese hordes through Paoshan. I still have a couple of dozen corps to come, and I could divert any number of them into the mountains in line abreast E-W, waiting to step down onto the yellow road after an attacking stack passes en route to Lashio and Burma. The only defense would be to peel off the stack and confront each in turn, since any one can close the supply route to the stack. If I do this now and they get some organic fort-building time they may throw some serious sand into the gears if he does bring those five tank regiments from Sian that far west.

In Burma I'm more uncertain of a plan. The rivers are very important. I had not thought of the malaria aspects you describe, but they are significant too. I can atomize some countryside Chinese corps and create some real whack-a-mole problems for his supply lines if I'm willing to risk or lose the frags. As long as I hold Chungking they'll be reborn, but at 1/3.

He's used his bombers to good effect on me already in Burma, and other than the Chinese refugee heavies I have nothing to use there yet. I have to keep pinching myself and reminding moi how early it still is. We've been playing a long real time time already, and in an AI game I'd be in fall 1942 by now. But as time passes air power will come into play a lot more to be sure.

The best hexes for this maneuver are rough/jungle with a single road because the defender has a defensive bonus making it easier to stop the advance and force a battle over turns.Another advantage in Malaira areas of fighting a low AV boosted by terrain vs. a High AV [the more units the better] is the attrition each turn from not being at a base. yes each side is attrited but a few units on the defense can force many attcking units to undergo attrition at a faster rate overall. Second, the attacker is typically advancing along the roads axis making the maneuver to reenter the hex simply a matter of seizing control of the road. Third, maneuever in the jungles of Burma makes reentering the contested hex from a different hexside than the road a laborious matter. The objective does not have to be to go on the offense. I surrounded 4 stacks in my last game and simply let Father time in a Malaria area do its thing while increasing forces from the OOB maneuvered freely.

Part of the question for me is how hard will he push in a no-rules, auto-vic focused game. So far auto-vic doesn't seem to be his goal. But his huge land force advantage from not having to pay PPs to use Manchuurian units could swing his thinking on the Asian landmass. That was the core reason I did the abandon China strategy. His stacks in north and central China so far have been big but not stupid big. At each big take-down he has paused a few days and let me escape the defenders west. He's doing that at Sian and Changsha right now and my Chinese are making 20-30 miles a day on good roads. Maybe he's waiting for garrison small-fry to come in from the east and SE bases, but he's being very methodical in China. I only have one intel hit on Lashio prep and none on Paoshan at all.

In Burma so far stylistically I've seen a great reliance on air power and not a big penetration by LCUs. He has a 2-stack headed to Taung Gyi right now which is, I think, a tank regiment slightly battered, and a base force. I have a medium corps and an HQ headed south to sit to TG's east on the yellow road intersection and see what he does. It's an experiment. I want to see if he feeds that flank, or if he comes directly at the Mandalay group. Mandalay has 1600 AV already, but I can't feed that, so some are going into the bush starting this turn. Chittagong has 10,000 supply and much more coming in from three sources. February will be an interesting month.

BTW) Airpower is a great tool for slowing the IJ advance and breaking up IJ formations. AFAIK simply attacking a unit by air regardless of results transitions the unit into combat mode from move mode slowing the unit(s) in question by 1/2 as the movement phase is toward the end of the turn. A large stack might have 10 units and a smaller number of these units with movement cut in 1/2 suddenly starts stringing units along forcing the IJ to either coordinate the units again or advance with less and less force. This is insidious in a way because the player must go back through the stack and reset the operational mode back to 'move' from 'combat'. Forget this fact and the effect compounds.

He knows this in spades! [:)] Much of his road bombing has been to flip modes I think. It's worked too. I have responded by checking each . . . and . . . every . . . LCU . . . every freakin' turn! Also to never use the Follow button. Each LCU gets its own march order and if it is not flipped it moves ahead of the flipped-to-Combat-mode unlucky few. In a retreat this is not so bad as on the attack since the flippees are often the infantry units and not the base forces or HQs when a stack is hit. I think the game code has some reference to the DB line number for the units when choosing which take the attack, but I've never tried to correlate that. If it flips I flip it back the next turn and press on.

I have two PBEM games both scenario #1 where this operational methdology worked with dramatic results. Trapping the 14th Army and allowing the 1 AUS Corps free reign in Thailand. Once Allied Armor is in the plains of Thailand it is "Katy bar the door ..because the flood is coming ..' I would assume in scenario #2 that the biggest affect would be to simply tangle the IJ advance ...

That's all I'm hoping to do. I have no illusions about my accumen in ground combat. Burma has never interested me much either. I think this time I need to get more interested though. No HRs means it's his call how much he brings over and how fast.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
3) USS Sculpin, one of the first four HI patrols, hits a mine at Hakodate as she tries to penetrate the Inland Sea. No report of sinking, but sunk ship sound heard at end of phase. It was regular surface ship sound, not deep breaking-up sound usual for a sub, but the odds are it was her. I'd take the risk again, if only to tell Japan that the subs are around. I will penetrate again by a safer route to the north next try.

Went to visit the inlaws in San Antonio and brought Blair's "Silent Victory" along for the ride. Just finished reading up on the Allies first and second efforts to penetrate the Sea of Japan. Treacherous passage through La Perouse strait between Sakhalin and Hokkaido. The other avenues (at least up until early 1944) were considered suicidal. First and second efforts into the inland sea were costly for the Allies.

If you have to try to get in there, go in through La Perouse. Hakodate is almost certainly mined up the ying-yang. Same with Tsushima. The risk-reward on this may not be worth it just yet.

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It sure does. In the "don't teach your grandma to suck eggs" category, it still bears mention that AE is a naval game with a land game attached. Naval is the dog, land the tail. A hex size of "reasonable" size for many of the LCUs--say 3-5 miles--would make the naval game unplayable, not to mention run into RAM restrictions pretty fast. Lots of compromises are needed with a game spanning Karachi to New York the long way around. To that you have to add the need to model continental land war with island land war. The only relief is that the compromises are imposed on both sides.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

quote:

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
3) USS Sculpin, one of the first four HI patrols, hits a mine at Hakodate as she tries to penetrate the Inland Sea. No report of sinking, but sunk ship sound heard at end of phase. It was regular surface ship sound, not deep breaking-up sound usual for a sub, but the odds are it was her. I'd take the risk again, if only to tell Japan that the subs are around. I will penetrate again by a safer route to the north next try.

Went to visit the inlaws in San Antonio and brought Blair's "Silent Victory" along for the ride. Just finished reading up on the Allies first and second efforts to penetrate the Sea of Japan. Treacherous passage through La Perouse strait between Sakhalin and Hokkaido. The other avenues (at least up until early 1944) were considered suicidal. First and second efforts into the inland sea were costly for the Allies.

If you have to try to get in there, go in through La Perouse. Hakodate is almost certainly mined up the ying-yang. Same with Tsushima. The risk-reward on this may not be worth it just yet.

My Blair has not been read in about a decade. It's a time commitment. I'm stil trying to get through "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" which I started last Christmas when I decided to give WitE a try. The game is long shelved, but the book is still on the nightstand.

USS Wahoo was lost in La Perouse. This turn the good news was USS Sculpin did not sink. She has 48/36/3 damage, but might make Pearl on cruise before the war is over. Whatever the sunk-sound was it wasn't her.

I have another fleet boat coming in the northern route over the next two days, so we'll see. She has a patrol zone that includes Sapporo. Mines may get her too.

I have a different attitude toward the sub war than many game players in here. I see what to me look like whacky uses for them in some AARs, but to each his own I guess. My views are an amalgam of WWII thought (after the fleet scout role was abandoned on 12/8) on their use as commerce destroyers, and my own Cold War experience of subs as not only force multipliers for the fleet but also, to coin a phrase, "asset thieves." Subs by their very presence demand a response. They are cheap in VP and fuel and repair senses, yet they force investment of ASW assets far beyond their organic worth. They can do immense damage if ignored.

For those reasons I don't have no-go areas in my sub wars. I won't try the Inland Sea right now, but that's not to say I won't later. The Sea of Japan is productive from an asset-stealing sense if penetration keeps escorts and planes at home. It costs him fuel. The ops loss routines in the game favor the sub over the ASW airborne patrol. If he has to fly them he can't keep up with airframe fatigue management. He loses pilots to ops loss. He has to build planes he might not have or models he disfavors. Integrated ASW is the most complex, expensive naval operation there is. One sub costs the enemy a lot more than the sub owner pays.

Right now I have no idea to where my opponent is shipping resources, fuel, and oil from Sapporo and the other northern centers. He might be using Akita for all I know. It has a small port, but it's not in the widely-read Japanese economic primers which I too can read, so he might be using that and other "non-traditional" ports for some of his traffic. I don't want him to think that's always going to be a free pass. Part of that is psyops for sure, but some of it is also looking for soft, unescorted targets my bum-fish boats can have with gunfire. Every boat going north so far has gotten the very best, most-aggressive skipper I have in the pool. I want them on the surface blasting away for now. If that brings escorts to the SoJ, more the better.

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

In the 'keepin' it real' camp, I appreciated the book's discussion on the loss of Wahoo and another submarine from attempts to penetrate the inland sea. The commanders were floored by the loss of Morton and crew. The other losses hurt too. These losses prompted discussion between Fife, Lockwood and Christie that eventually ended attempts to enter the Sea of Japan.

Three Admirals agreed that the shipping in the SoJ was not worth the potential loss of boats, even if the SoJ was a target rich environment *and* lots of resources were moving through there. These decisions-real men, real consequences, real life help to color my viewpoint on how much risk commanders would take IRL. S'true-they wanted the information you seek too. But they weren't as disconnected from their losses and the risks to flesh-n-blood men as you seem to be.

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ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

In the 'keepin' it real' camp, I appreciated the book's discussion on the loss of Wahoo and another submarine from attempts to penetrate the inland sea. The commanders were floored by the loss of Morton and crew. The other losses hurt too. These losses prompted discussion between Fife, Lockwood and Christie that eventually ended attempts to enter the Sea of Japan.

Three Admirals agreed that the shipping in the SoJ was not worth the potential loss of boats, even if the SoJ was a target rich environment *and* lots of resources were moving through there. These decisions-real men, real consequences, real life help to color my viewpoint on how much risk commanders would take IRL. S'true-they wanted the information you seek too. But they weren't as disconnected from their losses and the risks to flesh-n-blood men as you seem to be.

I don't think they ended the penetration attempts permanently, as I recall reading accounts of subs penetrating near Tsushima using a sonar system that detected mines. I believe that was in spring 1945. When they got in there the subs found lots of targets, a nice change from the dearth of shipping left in the areas outside the S of J (thanks to a too-successful sub campaign against shipping and the long reach of allied bombers).

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ORIGINAL: Crackaces

quote:

It sure does. In the "don't teach your grandma to suck eggs" category, it still bears mention that AE is a naval game with a land game attached. Naval is the dog, land the tail. A hex size of "reasonable" size for many of the LCUs--say 3-5 miles--would make the naval game unplayable, not to mention run into RAM restrictions pretty fast. Lots of compromises are needed with a game spanning Karachi to New York the long way around. To that you have to add the need to model continental land war with island land war. The only relief is that the compromises are imposed on both sides.

My comment is not so much that the ground game is borked .. but more it is very different and takes very different thinking IMHO to be successful. Especally agasnst someone who does understand the implecations of the design.

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

In the 'keepin' it real' camp, I appreciated the book's discussion on the loss of Wahoo and another submarine from attempts to penetrate the inland sea. The commanders were floored by the loss of Morton and crew. The other losses hurt too. These losses prompted discussion between Fife, Lockwood and Christie that eventually ended attempts to enter the Sea of Japan.

Three Admirals agreed that the shipping in the SoJ was not worth the potential loss of boats, even if the SoJ was a target rich environment *and* lots of resources were moving through there. These decisions-real men, real consequences, real life help to color my viewpoint on how much risk commanders would take IRL. S'true-they wanted the information you seek too. But they weren't as disconnected from their losses and the risks to flesh-n-blood men as you seem to be.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

quote:

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

In the 'keepin' it real' camp, I appreciated the book's discussion on the loss of Wahoo and another submarine from attempts to penetrate the inland sea. The commanders were floored by the loss of Morton and crew. The other losses hurt too. These losses prompted discussion between Fife, Lockwood and Christie that eventually ended attempts to enter the Sea of Japan.

Three Admirals agreed that the shipping in the SoJ was not worth the potential loss of boats, even if the SoJ was a target rich environment *and* lots of resources were moving through there. These decisions-real men, real consequences, real life help to color my viewpoint on how much risk commanders would take IRL. S'true-they wanted the information you seek too. But they weren't as disconnected from their losses and the risks to flesh-n-blood men as you seem to be.

As we've discussed in the past I am pretty disconnected from any impulse to treat the game as history. Too much 20/20 hindsight, too many abstractions. I know things those very smart admirals didn't. For example, I know exactly how much the Japanese economy depends on petroleum. This was not fully grasped and acted upon in RL until 1944. I know exactly when my torpedoes get better, and I know I have a problem with them right now. Not in denial. I know that I will face completely ahistorical Super-Es in 1944 and I need to prepare for that. I know in advance which skippers are great, and don't have to wait five patrols for them to accumulate stats. They show up as superstars.

In terms of the game I'm also driven right now by the reality that Midway is not a viable refueling base, for various reasons. As such some very good patrol areas, such as near the Pescadores, are so far I have very limited station time from Pearl. The NE SoJ is closer and gives me more work for the time invested. A squadron in Brisbane is months away due to fuel. I am working historic basing in Java as much as I can, but most of the fleet boats are near Pearl and by the time I could get them to Java I'd have to pull them out again due to base loss. Many of the Manila boats were sent to Pearl to address the ahistoric Japanese drive to threaten Pearl well into 1942; they didn't go to Java and Oz. And so on.

In the game a sub is worth about what a good merchant is worth in VP terms. I think that's too low, but it is what it is. Right now I don't have a lot of fleet boats with 10k endurance. The T-class and P-class of pre-war boats are C+ at best. Gatos are arriving slowly, but right now patrols past Truk are only moderately useful from Pearl. For the Gaatos I have the SoJ is a small footprint where I KNOW ships exist nearby. I know in general terms where they go and where they come. I also know there are a lot of mines, but there are mines at Truk, Kwajalein, and Babel-de-bob as well.

In addition to the SoJ I have Shark in a triangle of deep water south of Kobe, and Triton on a long NE-SW coastal route almost to Yokahama and north to Ominato. Only one boat is going into the SoJ today. It's just a start, bnut it won't be a central focus either.

None of this might work, but I'm going to try to drive my subs in the best way I know how. You will never see a checkerboard of Allied subs one hex apart carpeting a whole sea as I see in many AARs. But I also won't treat them as fragile flowers either. A lot will be lost. Same as history.

Appreciate they input, JFB. [:)]

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ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

In re-reading Blair, I'm also struck with the incredibly actionable ULTRA intel that the submariners received. With the exception of about 4 months in early 1943, the Americans were able to read the Japanese mail with incredible accuracy. Several skippers (jokingly) complained to Lockwood that the Japanese convoys were 15 minutes behind schedule at their expected intercept coordinates. I know the Allied SigInt isn't what ULTRA was, but have you found it useful for identifying intercept coordinates or patrol zones?