Takao airfield on Dec 7, 1941

[Yaab]

Scen 1,33 and 100, Japs, non-historical start.

EDIT 10 2023: The jpgs are missing - their hosting site has been defunct.


Why is Takao airfield such a mess at start? It is level 8, has over 1200 aviation support, 360 aircraft and 558 stack level on Dec7. No problems, right? Well, I noticed that the airfield overstacking symbol, namely the "*" sign, only appears after turn's resolution.

Takao pre-turn on December 7:



Once you plot you air missions and resolve the turn, the "*" sign appears saying the engine stack level at Takao is 558 of 400! It seems you need to do some crazy aircarft shufling on Formosa to get to some reasonable engine levels in Takao. My choice was to base all experienced IJN air groups in Takao and disperse the less experienced IJA air groups all over Formosa.

Takao after the shuffling:




I still couldn't get under the 400 engine limit, but I was still able to fly this coordinated attack on Clark Field




Now I understand, why the Jap AI is so grossly inefficent and suicidal in the early raids over Clark/Manila. There is no way either human or AI can create coordinated raids without this tedious reshuffling on Formosa. The Jap first turn is dreary.

[GetAssista]

If you remove some airframes from bloated at start reserves, you can get them into stack limit

[Yaab]

Brilliant! Shaving seven 2Es should get me under the 400 engine count. Thanks.

[Yaab]

SPOILERS

Takao:
-combine all Zero A/B/C detachments in Takao into two 45 Zero strong air groups in Takao
-combine Nelly detachments in Takao
-move Sally and Lilly units to Kagi – they need level 4 to operate with full bombloads, they FAIL to join raids on Clark Field at 11 hexes, which is EXTENDED
range for them. Make them attack i.e. Hong Kong port from Kagi (range 9 hexes). In total, they are 45 aircraft strong, and you have 39 aviation support in Kagi
-move all light bombers ( Ann, Ida, Sonia) to Taichu
-move the Betty unit from Taichu to Takao. When weather is different in Taichu and Takao, sometimes this unit (which has very nice exp 70) was flying alone
without any FIGHTER escort and suffering heavy losses
-move Dina recon to Heigchun ( south tip of Formosa). Dina's max normal range is 10 hexes, so set Dina to recon Manila from Heigchun.
-fly the big Nate unit to Pescadores, and set it CAP over Pescadores ( CAP with range 2 hexes will overfly Takao)
-fly small Nate unit to Heigchun
-move the two least exp (exp 45 and 60) recon Babs units to Taichu, stand them down in Taichu
-move the other three recon units to Heigchun (you should have now 21 aviation support and 28 aircraft in Heigchun)

Now you should have 6 groups and 419 stack level at Takao

EDIT 10 2023: Grammar and orthography corrections.

[Tanaka]

Thanks exactly the issue I was trying to figure out!

[Ian R]

It's a non issue - see other thread:

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=5074911

[Yaab]

Found a jpg from 2017.

A raid on Clark Field, conducted from Takao, after I had reshuffled Japanese aircraft in Takao.

EDIT 10 2023: It seems this jpg still has the Betty unit joining the raid from Taichu (the second red line converging on Clark Field in the screenshot). After the complete reshuffle, the Betty unit flies from Takao together with other veteran air groups.

[Yaab]

Bump for the Discord crowd.

Please bear in mind the orginal jpg in this thread are missing. I used a third-party site to post jpgs, the site has been defunct for some time, the jpgs are lost.

[Chris21wen]

As Ian R said, no problem.

Once you get to a level 9 AF overstacking is not a problem. HQ's will either add their full command range (or half if not in the same cammand) to the AF size. As Takao is already an 8 AF you only need one air HQ in range to effectively bump it to a 9. Any HQ bonus provided is not refelected in the AF window.

The basic turn sequence is house keeping then execution, When a scenario starts there is no house keeping.

You can set some ac to rest, resting count nothing to admin (goups) totals and only 1/3 for aircraft.

Please read Airfield Capacity (9.4.1) in the manual or the guide here. https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 3&t=396274

[Yaab]

Yes, but after I had reshuffled the groups are Takao, my escorting Zeros flew twice in the same day.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1#p4179151

[Chris21wen]

Yes, but after I had reshuffled the groups are Takao, my escorting Zeros flew twice in the same day.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1#p4179151

Not down to overstacking, overstacking limits how may fly a mission not how many missions they fly.

[Yaab]

You are right. Manual. p 214 mentions overstacking influencing the number of aircraft flying.

See my post here for an alternative theory of the extra missions:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 4#p5132014