Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

A look a the air war, which has been pretty intense.

My F4F losses are high, considering I've only lost CV Wasp and two CVE. The losses reflect the bitter, lengthy campaign in Sumatra, when I stripped many fighter squadrons from my carries and posted them at Sabang. They performed very well and, as a result, my Hellcat squadrons have a lot of very good pilots.

John has lost a lot of Franks and Georges, which are good fighters. I think, but I'm not certain, that he has an issue with pilot quality. My good fighters typically get the best of his good fighters. But he doesn't commit his fighters often. He has done so recently in Burma, with poor results.

But he may be saving elite pilots and his best squadrons for the Philippines campaign.

But I am modestly encouraged by the state of the air war: the quality of my pilots, their performance against good enemy fighters, and John's apparent reluctance to commit his air force of late.

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A level seven airfield can handle at least 200 more fighters than a level five. That's a big difference.

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ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

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A level seven airfield can handle at least 200 more fighters than a level five. That's a big difference.

Ummm... I thought that it was 50 engines per AF level, not 100?

I tend to try to build my AFs up to level 8 as soon as possible, since I have found (in DBB at least) that a level 8 AF doubles the value of the the air support squads. This is an important force multiplier, IMO.

quote:

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

quote:

A level seven airfield can handle at least 200 more fighters than a level five. That's a big difference.

Ummm... I thought that it was 50 engines per AF level, not 100?

I tend to try to build my AFs up to level 8 as soon as possible, since I have found (in DBB at least) that a level 8 AF doubles the value of the the air support squads. This is an important force multiplier, IMO.

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

quote:

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

quote:

A level seven airfield can handle at least 200 more fighters than a level five. That's a big difference.

Ummm... I thought that it was 50 engines per AF level, not 100?

I tend to try to build my AFs up to level 8 as soon as possible, since I have found (in DBB at least) that a level 8 AF doubles the value of the the air support squads. This is an important force multiplier, IMO.

FYI, that's a program feature, not a mod feature, so it will happen in all games.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

4/14/44

The game has slowed a bit as John has had a series of real life adventures and misadventures that took a lot of time. But today we resumed the war. It was a quietly, productively good day across the map

Burma: The map shall speak for itself.

Fun House: The next map shall speak for itself.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

The intent here is simply to draw John's attention and assets. My army is so small that I don't expect it to go anywhere important for a long, long time to come (after reinforcements, much later). I've tried to explain before, probably unartfully, that I want John's army fighting forward in Burma - not retiring in good order somewhere else. So the status quo suits me.

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ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

That would be great, but it's one of those things that seems great in "isolation" (ie, apart from the realities of the current game).

In the context of the game now it wouldn't work. I've spent a year shifting my forces and setting up logistics to handle the campaign in a certain manner. That has resulted in Fun House, which is far closer to John's heart than is Sumatra or Java or Borneo. So I won't be looking backwards anytime soon. I'll keep going forward. Eventually, once KB is neutralized, I'll attend to key enemy bases in the rear, both to shut down oil production and to seek points need for a game-terms victory (some enemy bases are worth a lot of points, but John will also be hiding ships in little ports and dot hexes when his empire truly collapses).

But I don't actually expect the game to go that far. Once KB and the Kaigun truly collapse, I think John will concede. That may be a long time away...or it may not.

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A year ago, while discussing long-range plans, I wrote that there would be two major operations after Big Tent - this one and one other. That other one is planned for the autumn months. If John is still hanging in there as we go into 1945, then there may be others. But from the outset, the three-fold plan was to: (1) attrition the IJ Navy; (2) disrupt John's oil LOCs; and (3) obtain the airfields necessary to implement a strategic bombing campaign against Home Island industry.

The wheels can still come off. The only way I really see that happening is if John won a big carrier battle, isolated the Philippines, and destroyed my army. That would be tough to recover from.

Aside from that, I'm in position and on schedule to carry through with the three-fold plan.

(in reply to JohnDillworth)

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Michael will laugh at me, but I think this is really a psychological block. John simply doesn't want to commit KB in a suicide run. He's a navy guy first, even above his love of playing the Japanese. He won't banzai. He's trying to come up with clever ways to avoid the reality of the situation he's in.