Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: ADB123

Andy -

I have some questions about how your CAP and CV TFs were set up:

1 - What altitude was you CAP at? Did you go for maximum altitude or some different altitude?

12 - 16k - Martlets at 12k hellcats 14k or 16k

2 - Were any Fighter groups on CAP at different altitudes?

Yes

3 - What percentage CAP did you have set? Did it vary from ship to ship?

50% acrosas the board

4 - Were all of your CV TFs in the same hex or different/adjacent hexes?

Same Hex

5 - Did your Search planes find the KB? If so, when?

No not in the turn some from Warangai did find them

6 - Did your CV TFs attempt to move into range of the KB?

No

7 - How many carriers did you have per TF, and how big were your CV TFs?

3 TF's were 2 x USN CV's and 1 x USN CVL
others were in one TF (3x RN, 1 x USN and 1 x CVL)
All CVE's in 1 TF each TF 17 - 18 ships

Thx -

quote:

All CVE's in 1 TF each TF 17 - 18 ships

quote:

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

Cannot even post combat replay basically KB nailed me with another 8 hex attack

quote:

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac
Cannot even post combat replay basically KB nailed me with another 8 hex attack that killed mutliple carriers in my fleet and totally screwed me despite over 400 aircraft on CAP the jap bombers waltzed through my CAP.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac
Despite my aircraft ranging to 10 - Hellcats, Avengers and SBD's are restricted to max 7 hex range
japan gets to hits to 8 anyone who says this game is an AFB's wet dream has never played it.

quote:

ORIGINAL: pat.casey
.... and you were the victim of a series of very bad die rolls.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

p.s. if you want a list of my strategic mistakes to go with my gripes above well here it is.

1. To much distance between TF W and TF K and E this was a real killer I should have taken the extra week and went in intact only sprinting with the fast TF when spotted that was the plan and would have left me all TF's hitting at the same point probably a week later
2. Kicked off my diversion to early one of the reasons I rushed 1. was that I though the TF's loading at PH story was starting to get old and PZB would smell a rat.
3. Allowing PZB to get inside my deciison loop when I reinforced Warangai rather than invding Roti witht he 2nd wave
4. Trying to invade omn the run (albeit with 100% prepped troops) I should have taken a few weeks to get North Australia sorted out before I attacked i now have 1000 auircraft how much easier would it have been to close the big AF's When PZB wasnt ready
5. Delay in Indian Ocean attacks - I am ready to hit objectives inIndian Ocean and Sumatra but am waiitng on a few ships

Basically overall I got buck fever and rushed the offensive without needing to and everything flows from that.

If I had hit Warangai in force then two days later captured Endeh and Roti.

7 days after that hit Koepang and Andaman Islands PZB would have probably had to back off.

Instead utimately it was faulty strategic execution thats got me where i am today

quote:

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

My frustrations of the last few turns

1. Helen II's on ASW killing every sub I put to sea
Without commenting on the specific aircraft model, I've strong suspicion that certain air missions get too much benefit from very high pilot skill. In my PBM with cap_and_gown his highly trained ASW pilots kill subs like they have 1980's radar and homing torpedoes. A metaphor but you get the idea.

2. 24/7 round the clock bombardment TF's 5 days in a row that nuke my base
He's doing a good job at that. IIRC a bunch of bombardments achieved nothing against the airbase so that's not all one way.

3. Allied SCTF's that achieve nothing despite being better ships witht he best leaders I have
I hear this a fair amount in AAR's. The one thing that does seem to be amiss is the lack of a way for ships to acquire experience other than in combat.

4. Useless PT Boats
Before the last time they were patched, PT boats were too powerful. Right now they feel pretty close to the mark to me. In other words, they are a danger and an impediment, but don't really achieve too much unless they penetrate an escort screen and get in amongst weaklings like xAK's. They still do get some occasional hits on warships and so are a danger for enemy TF's to deal with.

5. 8 Hex v 7 Hex strike range that a Japanese player can try to manipulate to force a decisisve result.
This was realistic in that it was a factor IRL, yes?

6. Allied CAP that achieves ZERO
I had an October 1943 2-day battle with cap_and_gown near Ponape with the Range-8 factor. My fleet's CAP (Hellcat plus Wildcats on CVE) did quite well, although plenty of raiders got through. I have forgotten the numbers, but they killed at least 750 planes. Or maybe it was 750 attack planes and over 1,000 planes total, I just forget. The point is that the CAP can do well and I don't know why yours did less well. Still, in my case lots of raiders got through and killed a total of 10 CV/CVL/CVE plus some other ships and damage to lots. Highly skilled pilots will often press on through the carnage, which also seems realistic to me.

Flak seemed to perform similar to what you saw, which in my view is significantly too low to be realistic. As I recall that was even the case in the pre-release AAR's that the AE team ran for the community in the months leading up to AE's release. If shipboard flak were appropriate, there would have been somewhat less damage to your ships but I can't say how much and it still would have been a beating, although the cost to the raiding planes would have been higher with more shot down + ops losses. Attackers of an up to date USN fleet at this point should see flak very deadly to them. Later, when proximity fuses become available it should be even worse for them. JWE has recalculated shipboard flak for DBB using the IJN 25mm as a value of "1" and based on the ratios of the physical parameters like shell weight, bursting charge, etc. (I don't recall each of them). I don't know if that will make it into the official scenarios or not.

7. Allied Strikes that achieve nothing
Chances are good that PzB's strike pilots were highly skilled. I'm sure your fleet had some such but they were likely less skilled than his were overall. Plus, he did significant damage without a return strike the first day. So, your strike planes were at a disadvantage after the first day. Very frustrating but I'm not certain if there is an identifiable problem there. In the second day of my battle with cap_and_gown some modestly skilled torpedo planes got through and did some damage to IJN carriers, so it might be that randomness is the difference.