mind_messing
Posts: 3393
Joined: 10/28/2013 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58 Saved from Nearly Page Three. I'll take some time out tomorrow to do a big update; I've not had much time with all that has been happening. Some good news, some bad news, but on the whole Japan's doing fine. quote:
ORIGINAL: PaxMondo OK, sure I will give you my thoughts. First, consider that you have far more IJA than IJN fighter groups. Your production needs to reflect that. 2nd, your IJA groups on average tend to be fighting more. Your KB groups only see action when the KB does, whereas your IJA groups are every day … Result is that you should see a need of almost 2:1 IJA fighters to IJN. In ’45, I want to build at least 1200 fighters/month and then another 400 – 600 bombers et. al. At that point you are burning HI faster than you make it for sure. I plan to have 4M HI banked by 6/44. If I do, I can support my ac build plan which is +20,000 AC per year for the last 18 months of the war. That's not the case here, with my re-sizing of most IJN fighter groups to 81 planes. It's at the point where most of the resized IJN groups are used for training purposes because I don't have enough Jacks, Georges and Zeros to progressively upgrade. That's not a problem in itself, as it means overall IJN pilot quality can increase (better ratio of training planes vs combat planes), but it isn't ideal. quote:
For IJN: Sam and Shinden. Shinden is about your best defender overall once you learn how to use it. Fast and heavily armed, it knocks down anything. 4x30mm CL are just amazing. These will keep all 4E attacks at night once you have enough groups equipped. Especially as I note you are oversizing the groups. Sam and Shinden are already being worked on. I've put a fair bit into the Sam, as I think it may well give the edge in any late war carrier engagements. quote:
For IJA: Ki-94, Ki-83, Ki-84r. pick 2 of those 3 and build. The 94 is 1E, the 83 is 2E but good range for counter strikes. In lieu of the 83, you can use the Oscar IV if you choose not to build it. I'm doing all 3. It seems to be that these three air-frames co-operate quite well together. The 94 provides that all important protection against the stratosweep, the 84r can handle itself lower down and the 83 exists for those long-range sweeps of death. quote:
Night fighters: Once you have the Shinden and stop the day light bombing runs, you have to be able to stop the night runs. Ki-102c Randy is it. The IJN really doesn’t have anything that comes close. Choose one of course to build, but they all have issues. I generally choose the Myrt only because it is 1E and doesn’t cost as much when they are shot down. I'm producing a little bit of everything in terms of night fighters, simply to diversify my pools. The Irving is crap, but I've had it for several months and I've a good pool. The Zero NF is crap, but it has a low service rating and only needs a single engine. The Nick NF is also crap, but it's the only IJA night fighter I can get early enough to have a good pool. Plus, IIRC the IJN get lots more night fighter groups than the IJA do, at least until the later stages of the war. Ideally, I want the Denko and Randy c as my main night fighters, but it's the practicality of getting them into action. I'll settle for having sub-optimal production of sub-optimal planes if it means I have a good pool of night fighters when the raids do come. From my experience, fighting the night raids has been an overwhelming case of simply having night fighters on station to drive up fatigue and drop the morale and accuracy of the attacking squadrons. quote:
Now to economy: My targets for 6/44: HI=+4,000,000 ARM= +100,000 VEH=+50,000 Supply=12,000,000 I don’t have targets for the rest, but your numbers look ok to me. However, note the huge gaps on two key ones above: HI and supply. The lack of supply is going to handicap you with respect to how many AC factories you will be able to build now. Given your current supply, I’m not sure you can invest in any new aircraft (meaning the ones you currently have is what you will end the war with) and you will have to be very careful in expanding them. 45 and 46 consume supply at an amazing rate. So many of your LCU’s are in combat every day that your supply consumption just soars. You build something like 30K per day, but in late ’45 I’m frequently using 70K/day prolly averaging 50K/day. That 20K/day differential eats up 1M supply in 50 days. Ergo, my 12M target covers 500 days and still gives me 2M for factory repair. The lack of HI means when after you lose the DEI and that source of oil, when you run out of fuel your economy crashes. Literally. You will not have any HI to build ac or ARM or VEH. The large pool I target allows me to run the economy full tilt for 12 months after I run out of fuel or more commonly, when I simply turn off my HI to conserve fuel for the IJN. I'm just off 6/44 in game time at present. I'll post the tracker data tomorrow, and I don't look forward to doing it. I've been playing the game in automatic mode for the past month or so simply because of RL constraints, so I've no doubt my handling of the economy has slipped somewhat. I doubt I've crashed it, yet, anyways, but I won't be anywhere near your numbers. Still, I'll take a good, long look at things tomorrow. There's plenty of drastic measures I can take - resource stockpiles should be such that I can turn off resource convoys soon and live off China and Manchuria till the game ends. That's a lot of fuel consumption saved. - Palembang is pretty much drained of fuel, so I can optimize oil/fuel convoys to reduce consumption. - China is a self-sufficient theater, so I can pull as much supply from there to the Thailand or Manchurian theaters as needed, or even back to Japan. - The IJN ain't what it used to be and what's left will likely be saved for the Decisive Final Battle (TM) Part of my problem is that I love digging forts. It's such a double-edged sword. Fort levels of 6 or more (especially in x3 terrain hexes) really give the Japanese a chance to inflict serious delays on the Allies, provided the troop numbers are equal, but the cost in supplies doesn't bear thinking about. I'll hold off from saying more until I've had a look at the numbers. It's been far too long.
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