Alfred
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Joined: 9/28/2006
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
quote:
ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury
Hello, you answered some of your questions with the snapshots of this thread:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2622371&mpage=1&key=Japanese%2Cemergency%2Creinforceme?
On the snapshots:
- they are white
- disband button is not grayed
- they should consume few ARM points, as they are mostly light inexperienced infantry
No, that was my brother. 
Funny thing about memory as you get older. I can recall my 8th grade English teacher's car--make, model, color. I can't recall my first wife's birthday, and I went through twenty of them. I don't recall ever posting those screen-shots. I have looked at the Allied ER posts many times, but not the Japanese. Somewhere in there I remembered "depot", but not the rest. Funny.
Anyway, the reason I asked was this. I'm in late-May 1942 and considering doing an SST landing on Japanese soil to activate the Depots. I realize everything is a trade-off. What I'm trying to do is make them eat HI supply. Lokasenna and I are in a scorched-earth game. He's told me supply is his constant worry as we're playing non-historical R&D and he went a little nuts right away. He's also expanded well past historical limits and is in reality kicking my behind in multiple areas, especially islands. I have let him to some extent since much of my navy has been consumed in an all-out war in the Aleutians which I think I've "won", but at a cost elsewhere. On my side, as I've retreated/been kicked out of Chinese cities, I have visited fire and destruction on the newly-Japanese base as I've been able, focusing on LI, with a view to making him haul supply to western China with all the waste that entails.
The trade-off with the Depots is multi-faceted. They are big but untrained. Six-eight months gets them to national experience averages though. They are pretty filled out, so Arms points don't look like a thing. Most of them can't be disbanded, so they're a little bit of a millstone. They're yellow restricted.
OTOH they're a bunch of decent-sized fighting divisions. Japan as I understand it has PP room in 1943. They could be freed up to go out to many places where a new division would help greatly. The Marianas come to mind right away. If they're not fighting they don't use THAT much supply. I'm not worried about facing them in the HI in 1945. If that happens I did something wrong. I'm worried about them rampaging in the first half of 1943. OTOH, I really need to exert supply pressure to the max right now, as auto-vic is on the table when Chungking falls. (He's relentlessly strat-bombed Chungking out of the supply business. It's getting by on 400/day.)
Looking at my excellent screen-shots I'm more on the side of not activating than doing so. Any Japan players have an opinion on THAT?
Bullwinkle,
You are underestimating the damage you can do if you pick the right target and launch a proper "volunteers" only mission. The JFBs are just trying to discourage you on purpose.
1. Only the Guards Depot div comes in at full TOE (actually it is overstrong). The other 9 reinforcing divs come in at only 65% of TOE. That means they will consume many armament and manpower points directly (and even more HI points indirectly).
2. It is absolutely irrelevant that the main component of these divs is "light" infantry. The cost to add a single IJA Infantry squad is based on load cost which is either 17 or 19 (check with editor to see which particular one has been used for these units). Hence the minimum cost, per single squad, is:
17 armament points plus 17 manpower points. Note that indirectly consumes 102 HI points, points which normally would never be used up by a Japanese player before 1945 and therefore unavailable to build advance aircraft in June 1942.
3. Not too many Japanese players build up a large armament pool by mid 1942. They just don't suffer the army losses to require one. their increase in consumption of armament points tends to occur later when they start to get normally scheduled reinforcements. Thus you would be forcing them to change their production priorities away from their beloved advance aircraft.
4. Rare is the Japanese player who has a substantial PP surplus in mid 1942. It will be a tough decision for them to expend PPs now on units which could not be really used on the frontline now (when the divs are cheap being at only 65% of TOE, but still a substantial expenditure) instead of supporting their frontline operations, or waiting until 1943 when PPs may be more plentiful but the divs will be more expensive if filled out.
5. Even if the PPs are spent, they will still use up new cargo space and incur unplanned for fuel consumption in being transported away from the Home Islands. Once there they create additional pressure on the SLOC. Once deposited on islands (which is what your JFBs are suggesting is their preferred use of the divs) you simply bypass them or if they have been deposited on an island which is in the headlights of the 3rd/5th fleets, being starving they present bonus VPs to the Allies.
From the above you can see I would not be deterred. But the trick is to capture a base with industry to make it worthwhile. Refresh your memory with s.13.6 of the manual.
(a) capture a Japanese aircraft factory it should become permanently lost to aircraft production
(b) capture a Japanese HI factory and it's production halves. Hence if initially it is size 100, the Allied capture brings it down to size 50. Then when recaptured by Japan it becomes size 25. It would therefore cost Japan 75k in supplies and 75 days to bring it back to it's original size. Not to mention the lost aircraft production in the meantime
(c) capture Manpower centres and the reduction is down to 10%
Japan starts with little in the Home Islands and most Japanese players do not reinforce the home front at the expense of the frontline. Therefore what you should do is:
(i) find out which production bases start off lightly defended on 7 December 1941
(ii) check through signit to see if they have subsequently been reinforced
(iii) send sufficient force (if necessary on xAP vessels) made up by "volunteers" of course (remember you can subsequently resurrect the destroyed unit). Travel silently
(iv) land and capture by coup de main the industrial centre. You just have to hold for one day to get the benefit
then hear the howls of protest from JFBs (but perhaps not from your opponent) at such a sneaky move. Have no sympathy for them for it will teach them rnot to play a soundly based military operations game using RTS tactics, forgetting all about rear area defence and all the non sexy things which they find to be boring.
Alfred
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Question for Those Who Play Japan (Lokasenna welcome now) - 
RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna ple... - 
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