Slitherine

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Attacking force 11795 troops, 71 guns, 8 vehicles, Assault Value = 423

Defending force 18194 troops, 93 guns, 354 vehicles, Assault Value = 288

Japanese adjusted assault: 0

Allied adjusted defense: 522

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 99 (fort level 6)

Combat modifiers
Defender: forts(+), preparation(-), experience(-)
Attacker: shock(+), disruption(-), supply(-)

Japanese ground losses:
12366 casualties reported

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so no DDs or DEs in the actual TF with the CVE?

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Obvert,
Apologies for the bolding, just wanted to make sure you didn't miss my reply to your post. Yes, Rader can throw a lot of men and planes at anything he wants to BUT does he achieve operational success when he does so? More to the point, if he DOES achieve operational success does it feel like it serves a well-thought out long-term, cohesive plan?

Throwing troops at something is one thing. Actually being effective and achieving worthwhile objectives is another. I know you know this but I think it bears stating with Rader's current play.

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ORIGINAL: obvert

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Obvert,
Apologies for the bolding, just wanted to make sure you didn't miss my reply to your post. Yes, Rader can throw a lot of men and planes at anything he wants to BUT does he achieve operational success when he does so? More to the point, if he DOES achieve operational success does it feel like it serves a well-thought out long-term, cohesive plan?

Throwing troops at something is one thing. Actually being effective and achieving worthwhile objectives is another. I know you know this but I think it bears stating with Rader's current play.

I'm completely with you on this one after seeing that this was a complete tactical blunder caused most likely by some combination of hubris and lack of a current strategic plan.

My guess would be that this game gets a lot more quiet for a while after this affair has finished. I think your assessment of Rader's long-term play is fairly accurate for this game. It's not that there wasn't a plan, but that it seems there was doubt in the plan when the most was at stake. If he had pushed through early enough and managed to take Karachi, we'd most likely be talking about a ground war in Australia right now.

If he doesn't shift to the defensive now and use the extra Divisions from China to set up for 44-46, then he'll be in trouble. I'd say for GJ now, it is the time to make sure he doesn't have leisure to easily set up those defenses. To set a clear multi-campaign offensive roadmap for the next year and get the pieces in place to make it happen.

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ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Also, the defender can act to effect/force a culmination point. Waiting for a culmination point to come into being is very passive - helping them come about can be more effective ( but much trickier ).

As to what Rader is doing: I think what was said some time ago explains it all. I commented many months ago about the appraisal of his level going on in this thread being inappropriate ( I think he's definitely better than average but I think a lot of the things being ascribed to him or more understandable when viewed with an understanding that glorifying the ability of the opponent acts to forgive one's own failures and magnify one's own victories - after all if the opponent is brilliant then being beaten around the park is less painful than if he is a sub-par player --- a lot of that thinking underpins a lot of the ancient warrior mythos which many of you may have read about from ancient times). I also stated that he didn't appear to have thought through his strategy and didn't appear to know how to use his operational success. At the time each of these three assessments was pretty roundly condemned by thread participants.

I think they do, however, show applicability to the current situation. There's no sense of a grand plan, a limited sense that the operations conducted are part of a cohesive, long-term strategy, limited sense of a killer instinct and, also, rather crucially no sense that there is any innovation in the tactical or operational employment of forces which could have yielded significantly more benefits at less cost. In the Solomons his reaction to your stance has been little more than to bludgeon hopelessly against your forces even when the previous hopeless bludgeoning hasn't worked.

Above average ( insofar as he has operational plans and strategic plans but I don't see that they dovetail well together and amn't convinced his strategic plans are fully thought through ) but not excellent, IMO ( which may not be worth a lot to you but I've been asked to comment so I will ) and I get a sense that simply because an inflated assessment of the threat he poses has been posted for so long people are now struggling to break free from the "anchor" which that assessment has become when ever more clearly the play doesn't merit that anchor.


Right now Rader has culminated and is engaging in strategically ineffectual attacks which give him a sense of operational initiative and well-being. It would be a good time to move over to the offensive and begin messing with his OODA cycles, orientation etc.

However ( and I say this objectively and not as a put-down ) I would advise you to remain on the defence for now. You are very much still learning and only beginning to glimpse entire layers of the game and PBEM play which you were previously unaware of. In addition there's a whole layer of theory underpinning play which I don't think you are familiar with and, most crucially, I don't see, in what you've written, a developed self-awareness ( as it pertains to PBEM/playing against other people in sport etc ). Since playing with OODA cycles etc requires a lot of these higher layers to be fairly well understood I think that you would be best staying on the defensive and just waiting until you have hugely excessive qualitative and quantitative superiority. Then you can afford to make mistakes and not suffer for it. I think that this ability to make mistakes without losing capability is important for you during this basic learning phase.

Already you've moved from being utterly new and really a total walkover to being able to formulate some of the right questions, understand the tactical level of play and achieve a level of competence at the operational level. That's a lot of progress in 1 game. By the end of the game I think you'll have some strategic competence and may begin to be able to properly subordinate operations and conceive them within an appropriate framework.

Next game we'll see whether or not you want to move beyond the basics. So far so good though.



Obvert,
Apologies for the bolding, just wanted to make sure you didn't miss my reply to your post. Yes, Rader can throw a lot of men and planes at anything he wants to BUT does he achieve operational success when he does so? More to the point, if he DOES achieve operational success does it feel like it serves a well-thought out long-term, cohesive plan?

Throwing troops at something is one thing. Actually being effective and achieving worthwhile objectives is another. I know you know this but I think it bears stating with Rader's current play.

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i think he has shown that he had a good plan in his mind and that plan will surely make him be in a better position than his RL japanese counterparts, which is already a victory for Japan

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If he doesn't shift to the defensive now and use the extra Divisions from China to set up for 44-46, then he'll be in trouble. I'd say for GJ now, it is the time to make sure he doesn't have leisure to easily set up those defenses. To set a clear multi-campaign offensive roadmap for the next year and get the pieces in place to make it happen.

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And Nemo...i agree with you 100%...i'm not ready yet to start the offensive....i need few more months...but sooner or later my time will come!

Won't comment on your statements about Rader's abilities compared to my own...won't be kind of me.
I just wanna say that Rader's strategy sounds fine to me (even if he has made a couple of mistakes at Tulagi and here)....he has created a strong perimeter and now he can easily sit and wait for me to make my own offensive mistakes...

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ORIGINAL: GreyJoy
a BB TF composed by BB Kongo and Haruna...those very same BBs that ate more than 150 500lb bombs at Rabaul 3 months ago....how these two beasts can already be 100% operative is beyond my comprehension...

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ORIGINAL: Nemo121

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i think he has shown that he had a good plan in his mind and that plan will surely make him be in a better position than his RL japanese counterparts, which is already a victory for Japan

My assessment is that he doesn't have what constitutes a "good" plan in his mind. Yours is that he does. Well, we can agree to disagree.

As to the strategy I ( and I believe Obvert ) are discussing. We aren't limiting it to his push on India. That was one thrust. His strategy since then has been rather unclear and that's where a lot of the issues that have been highlighted became very clear.

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If he doesn't shift to the defensive now and use the extra Divisions from China to set up for 44-46, then he'll be in trouble. I'd say for GJ now, it is the time to make sure he doesn't have leisure to easily set up those defenses. To set a clear multi-campaign offensive roadmap for the next year and get the pieces in place to make it happen.

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ORIGINAL: House Stark

I'm not sure if sending a few carriers only is a good idea. Rader should have at least 9 CVs if not more, plus some CVLs. I'm no expert but thats what, something like ~800 aircraft max? You've seen a few in the Solomons, and Kaga was hit recently, but might he use a damaged Kaga, or sprint the Solomons carriers across the Pacific for an ambush? Even he must realize that he'll need numbers for a carrier battle, and probably isn't going to want to fight on even terms. At the very least I'd assume he'd have the Solomons carriers headed north to try to intercept cripples from an Alaska fight headed back towards Pearl/West Coast.

Then again, he has a lot more to lose in a carrier battle then you. If he sinks your entire CV fleet you've still got the original six, and would replace losses by the end of the year. And given his pilot quality, it's unlikely he could get such a one sided result unless he had an extreme advantage in numbers, an 8-hex attack, or several sub hits before the engagement.

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ORIGINAL: desicat

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And Nemo...i agree with you 100%...i'm not ready yet to start the offensive....i need few more months...but sooner or later my time will come!

Won't comment on your statements about Rader's abilities compared to my own...won't be kind of me.
I just wanna say that Rader's strategy sounds fine to me (even if he has made a couple of mistakes at Tulagi and here)....he has created a strong perimeter and now he can easily sit and wait for me to make my own offensive mistakes...

If you don't already have theater campaign plans in motion you may want to consider that you can use Rader's earlier successes against him. Some would think that he is over extended and his campaign in the Solomons has bled him plenty.

His forces in India/Burma are only of value if you decide to take them on - you don't really need the resources. Your success in the Solomon's has the makings of a good springboard for further campaign to cut/threaten Japanese SLOC's, and it is a remote enough threat axis to make reacting to a second campaign in a second theater difficult to coordinate.

You have drawn blood in the Aleutians, they are close to Allied supply centers and combat forces, an offensive campaign in this theater renders the bulk of his defensive perimeter irrelevant, the harsh conditions create system damage on his numerically fewer combat units in a greater proportion, the norther approach to the HI's are far removed from the Solomon theater, and the logistical details to begin a campaign in this theater can be put together more quickly than in other areas. You may want to consider a campaign from the north - just my 2 cents.

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ORIGINAL: princep01

and Reek the Sneak, remember what I said about mass, not dribblets (well, probably Heinz and a lot of others said it first)? You THREW the Perth and those DDs away as sure as my name is Bolton. Do...or not do, go or don't go; but stop with all the dribblets here and droplets there. Mass and STRIKE (with an objective in mind)...preferably where he does not expect you to. Preferably at multiple, widely separated points timed to put him on the horns of a dilema as where he will attempt to intevene. Nothing is more gratifying than watching the KB charge all over the Pacific, only to arrive and find a new fire breaking out on the other side of the Japanese perimeter. Well, maybe flaying a persons toe is more fun......

For wasting the Perth, you owe me a toe, Reek. Now get in there and let's see another good head count or I'll make it two. Unleash the dogs of war on those chumps trespassing on Tulagi.

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ORIGINAL: jmalter

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ORIGINAL: GreyJoy
a BB TF composed by BB Kongo and Haruna...those very same BBs that ate more than 150 500lb bombs at Rabaul 3 months ago....how these two beasts can already be 100% operative is beyond my comprehension...

i'll just butt in here to note that BBs (and CAs too) can often shrug off a 500lb bomb hit, which won't penetrate main turret, deck or side armor, or spill the captain's coffee (though radar & AA weapons are easily damaged). Rader obviously felt that these ships were ready for operations. they might not have been at 100% all-round, but they weren't no burnt-out hulks!

kudos to your Shemya defense forces - both air & ground - they kicked some serious asterisks there, thanks to your foresight in keeping them well-supplied, building up their forts, & reacting quickly w/ air-transported reinforcements.

but i don't understand those posters who demand you wipe out the remaining enemy LCUs at Tulagi. Ain't it to your advantage to leave them alone for the present? they can't hurt you, if you eliminate them you'll allow the withdrawn elements to rebuild to full strength. I don't see the need to land-attack these remnants, until the time that your own Tulagi forces are needed elsewhere.

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Mass and strike is a good principle, i agree. But timings are important too and i sometimes you have to throw what you have at hand...

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ORIGINAL: Nemo121

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Mass and strike is a good principle, i agree. But timings are important too and i sometimes you have to throw what you have at hand...

And, as this AAR shows, when you go with insufficient force which just happens to be nearby you tend to lose it, creating the necessary conditions for having insufficient force available the next time ( since you lost ships which could have been present next time and made a sufficient force ). It is a cycle of negative outcomes. Against a truly good player you would face situations designed to invite you to continue this wastage of forces time and again.


As to your other reply in which you talk about Rader's play prior to Tulagi and after Tulagi... I'd point out that some people in this thread clearly pointed out his lack of killer instinct and cohesive planning long before Tulagi came into being. I'd also point out that given your level of inexperience when the game began his reaching so deep into India really cannot be taken to be a sign of brilliance.

Vs a child even a one-armed man seems like a man capable of great feats. When this game started you were, in AE terms, a child. You can't say that his success against you then is a sign of being a very good player. You really can't. In addition when push comes to shove and the Tulagi operation is analysed it'll be clear that at Tulagi he ended up playing into your hands and defeating himself. That's not a sign of brilliance either.

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ORIGINAL: String

Regular sys damage (not major) can be repaired quite qucikly in a large shipyard.

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ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

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ORIGINAL: String

Regular sys damage (not major) can be repaired quite qucikly in a large shipyard.

Kongo got 78 500 lbs hits and large and extensive heavy fires... too fast i'd say! but probably i'm a victim of FOW here...

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ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

My CVEs were escorted only by SCs cause i didn't have any more DDs to spare at SF...they were preceded by an ASW TF with 3DDs and 1 APD

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One developmental step from "child" to "adult" is the ability to synthisize information and extend that information into new environments. As I read this thread from beninging to end, I observe very closely the synthesis of knoweldge and application to different situations. This maturity is still not realized by Rader, and it continues to result in disaster. So rather than a comparision of a "child to a man" ... I would just say a better comparision is blissfully ignorant vs. Rader's arrogantly ignorant. The former requires simple appreciation and synthesis of the experince. The latter requires deep self-examination and rebirth of the learning process.