Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: FatR

Allied air activity over China was much lesser on 12th, hopefully that was an one-time burst. Also, I've invaded Palembang. My battleship cover sank four more tankers on the way. With extra carriers on hand and battleships deployed forwards, there is little reason to advance under LBA cover, particularly now, when most of British torpedo bombers were shot down. My vanguard of the Palembang invasion is rather weak, with only one infantry batallion, but it seems Yubari did not expect this move so soon and Palembang has only the initial garrizon, so I believe I have a chance of routing low-experience Dutch troops right away.

Note, that getting to Palembang as early as possible should, IMO, be the cornerstone of any Japanese DEI strategy. More the Allies are allowed to reinforce, more oil wells will be ruined when you finally take it. And Allies, for their part, should put there every base force they can scrounge. In stock, unfortunately, Japanese cannot safely move there until the middle of January at the earliest.

quote:

ORIGINAL: yubari

I have been playing against FatR with this mod and we have reached the 12th December and from an Allied point of view, this mod is absolutely brutal, there is precious little an allied player can do when the mini KB is around Palembang on the 9th of December and an invasion force lands there a couple of turns later! It has however made for an incredibly exciting and violent opening few turns, some of the most exciting that I have played in this game. The extra naval units that Japan gets plus the improved fighters should mean that Japan is far more competitive until a lot later in the war, which is something I welcome. However the decreased supply and fuel at the start of the game, combined with the greater resource and fuel requirements that the Japanese have due to their increased amount of industry should make it a bit harder for the Japanese player to run their economy and gives more reason for the allied player to try to attack the resource and oil convoys.

Another thing to note is that China is vastly more powerful than in scenario 1. A typical Chinese corps starts out with 100 percent of its TOE with about 50 percent of that being disabled whereas in scenario 1 a typical Chinese unit starts a lot weaker. Where did I get the aviation support from? All of the Chinese base forces start with most of their 24 aviation support squads active, enough to fly missions for maybe one or two turns.

A great mod and thanks to everyone who made it.

quote:

ORIGINAL: FatR
1)Japanese ASW. Holy ****. You can't believe it until you see it. The best result I noticed was kaibokan No.205 sinking one sub and near-sinking (damage into 80s) another in one phase. In the deep water She ran out of DCs for the main array too, otherwise it would have been two clear sinkings in one phase. And that with crew EXP less than 50. While American boats are quite accurate with their attacks, they don't seem to have much of advantage in avoiding detection, compared to early war. And if you get spotted by one of these E-class monsters, you are toast.
Now, I'm all for giving JFBs the ability to conduct an effective ASW campaign, if they invest appropriate effort and approach the whole thing meticulously. But "Just send your E-class ships to sea!" strikes me as an unsatisfyingly simplistic solution.

What can we do about it? We don't know how chances for detecting a sub are determined, so I propose reducing the accuracy of Type 2 DCs to 8 overall (other ships that carry them aren't as lethal as kaibokans, but still can sink subs even in deep water more often that I like) and introducing a subset of Type 2 DCs specifically for E-class escorts, that has accuracy further reduced to 7, to reflect that simple increase in the number of devices does not give an arithmetic increase in effectiveness. I mean, air combat suffers from this problem too, for certain planes, but at least there the problem doesn't break the whole equation.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

The Japanese get 2 of those U-Boats at start. They start at a good place to cause trouble and with crew experience at 90/90, they will be a PITA.

quote:

ORIGINAL: JWE

1) math thing - yes, lots of launchers show a power law result in the chance to hit. The more launchers, the more times the hit routine is called, so the waaaay better chance that one of them will get a hit. In DaBabes, we reduced the # of launchers from 12 to 6 for the late war C and D 'E'-types. Indeed, they had 12 launchers historically, and they were pretty bad juju, but as far as we can determine, they popped those off in salvos of 6 (right half, or left half, or front half-both sides, or back half-both sides). So we cut the launchers in half, but doubled the ammo. So they get exactly what they had in terms of total DCs, but the sequential hit probability is now based on a smaller number - makes it better, lots better, but still doesn't quite get to the brass ring.

quote:

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

Well...isn't one of those U-Boats commanded by Joachim Tiberius Kurk?

We probably should look at those values. The early U-Boats would be good but not THAT good. What would be more reasonable?

Michael sent you the updated 3.0.1 File FatR. I'm gonna load it and take a look. If either you or me does any work on the Mod File lets be sure to let the other know and then roll the last number (EX: 3.0.2, 3.0.3, etc...). Think that makes good sense. I don't plan to touch anything until we hammer out the experience topic.

quote:

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

The Japanese pilots, historically, weren't very good at all upon graduation due to the Japanese never starting a rotation system of bringing in experienced veterans to help teach the hard-won lessons. Also the Training Program stayed too elitist through 1941-1942.

RA changes that where Yamamoto pulls out about 15% of ALL veteran IJN pilots and institutes a real, expanded training program. This holds until 1943-1944 when the war breaks through the system and causes it to fall apart.

Changing US Torps is something I would not like to mess with. That scandal cost the United States sooooo much that it is--for me--a key thing to understand in the frustrating first year of the war. HOW could you have TT that were never HONESTLY tested? How could the Sub Command Admirals IGNORE what their own Sub Captains were reporting? Boggles the mind...

quote:

ORIGINAL: FatR

Okay, about late-war stuff.

1)Japanese ASW. Holy ****. You can't believe it until you see it. The best result I noticed was kaibokan No.205 sinking one sub and near-sinking (damage into 80s) another in one phase. In the deep water She ran out of DCs for the main array too, otherwise it would have been two clear sinkings in one phase. And that with crew EXP less than 50. While American boats are quite accurate with their attacks, they don't seem to have much of advantage in avoiding detection, compared to early war. And if you get spotted by one of these E-class monsters, you are toast.
Now, I'm all for giving JFBs the ability to conduct an effective ASW campaign, if they invest appropriate effort and approach the whole thing meticulously. But "Just send your E-class ships to sea!" strikes me as an unsatisfyingly simplistic solution.

What can we do about it? We don't know how chances for detecting a sub are determined, so I propose reducing the accuracy of Type 2 DCs to 8 overall (other ships that carry them aren't as lethal as kaibokans, but still can sink subs even in deep water more often that I like) and introducing a subset of Type 2 DCs specifically for E-class escorts, that has accuracy further reduced to 7, to reflect that simple increase in the number of devices does not give an arithmetic increase in effectiveness. I mean, air combat suffers from this problem too, for certain planes, but at least there the problem doesn't break the whole equation.

2)Night interception. There doesn't seem to be a meaningful difference between high-end nightfighters, like S1A1, with experienced crews, and trash manned by green pilots. In both cases they shoot down anything only as a fluke. Granted, this is stock, where S1A1 is shafted by carrying horrible 37-mm cannons, and fighting B-29s might skew the picture... Still, I think dedicated nightfighters (on both sides) need a bit more muscle, where it can be added without making them unrecognizable as historical planes.

3)Allied flak seemed a bit anemic, but I haven't seen it in action much, Japanese AI is not good at sneaking planes past CAP. Japanese land-based flak was not effective, but this might be due to lack of proper concentration.

4)Not much conclusions can be drawn about air combat. Different experience levels skew the picture alot, and AI flies its planes at low altitude. I dread to see what Thunderbolts can do, when ordered to fly stratosweeps. Will need a controlled testing.

quote:

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

FatR is spot-on with his commentary. As Michael would attest, I did a rapid expansion at the beginning of the war and worked on the premise of a regular scenario. BIG MISTAKE! Darned near ran dry on resources and am struggling to get a stockpile rebuild right now.

Just got my last 1942 CVL and now have to wait for Sho-Kai's. Going to be long spell without a new flattop! I've got the first Sho-Kai coming in at the normal time and have accelerated number 3 to come in with number 2 at the same time. This should work pretty well getting a PAIR of heavy carriers on the same day.

Have also been working to bring the late-Unryu's forward too, however, this has been a little slower since I want to get Musashi completed and open up a bunch of shipyard points.

Has anyone got any commentary regarding the 1942 warships produced:
1. Does the CVs coming in slightly early really help?

2. How about the improved Agano's? They seem pretty good to me! At least they have a bit of a punch now.

3. My DD construction has outpaced my losses to this point and that is nice.