Playtest of Pacific at War 3 25 14

[larryfulkerson]

Here's all the Allied planes except for the spotter planes. Those were in amongst the ships and I didn't feel like doing a lot of cutting
and pasting. I'm posting this here to store it on a Matrix hard drive rather than my hard drive. Once I've got the Jap list going I'll put
them together and that way we can see the differences better.

EDIT: Yeah, I just noticed that too. There's a repeat of the Avenger and the Wildcat at the bottom. I have no idea what that's about.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the compairison and as you can see eventually the Allies will win the attrition war. Just a matter of time. Problem is that with
just the resources I have left the Allies might take until 1947 to take it all back. Maybe that's not the way to win this war. Maybe I
should try to take Tokyo or some of the home islands to rack up enough points to win.

EDIT: The numbers on hand are out of sync as those for the Japs are in T1 and the numbers for the Allies are T84.

[larryfulkerson]

A couple of my P-40 units in China are starting to get their P-38 replacements and the range of the unit is reflecting that and
so far there's more P-40's than P-38's so I'm setting the range of the unit to the range of the P-40's since it's much smaller
than the range of the P-38's. That way they will tend to fly together and not that lone P-38 off by itself somewhere.

[larryfulkerson]

I did another air strike on Lae and got high losses again. But I need do keep doing it.

[larryfulkerson]

I did a recon by bombing and found out what's there in a specific base in Java. I don't remember the name of it. I probably can't
spell it anyway.

[mmarquo]

How are you setting aircraft range?

Thanks

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Marquo
How are you setting aircraft range?

It's a new feature of the newest executables. It's in the beta I'm testing.

[thomasharvey]

The allies can recover but you have to change your methods. The carriers must be kept as far in the rear as possible so they do not receive an attack. You will have to bait the Japanese aircraft and their surface fleet into a battle and defeat them. Over time that can be done. You could find an area that has plenty of your land bases and then come forward just with some destroyers covered by aircraft based on land. Be sure to have mostly fighters but have a few naval bombers (based on land) on sea interdiction in the event the Japanese go for surface action.

If the Japanese do not fight you invade an island to retake another air base. During this time you keep receiving more ships and planes and you get stronger with better types of aircraft. At least that is what I would do. I have done that with the Japanese in this contest and it seems to work.

The power of an aircraft carrier is its main battery, the aircraft, not the ship itself. You can base a lot of the aircraft on land. And continue to bomb Japanese airfields on all fronts every turn regardless of loss. With better fighter types you will eventually take down an even number of the enemy. That way your losses will be replaced better than the Japanese.

It is true I have a big lead right now so you have your work cut out for you. You can use the remaining turns to find a method that works for the future. The Bettys complicate things due to their great range. But if there are no ships larger than a destroyer in the attacks they will be shot down for little to show for it.

There are a lot in reserve so it will take a long time to wear them down. Like a snowball, the losses increase over time as the battles get larger and larger.

[larryfulkerson]

New moves from Thomas, new turn. This is the face of India still. We're battling back and forth and bombing each other and there's
all kinds of furballs. The dead units that are respawning are starting to pile up in the northwest of India and they are resting from
being killed so recently. They will be usable in a couple of turns. Then this fight will really be on.

[thomasharvey]

Based on the large numbers of allied aircraft in the replacement pools, more attacks should be made all over the map. Every air unit must be engaged every turn, regardless of loss, until the replacement pools are reduced. Otherwise the Japanese have the advantage when they should not. At some point the Japanese will have to pull their aircraft back until the time is right to bring them forward all in one turn for a massive battle or series of battles. That would be at a time when the Allies have a large landing underway in an important area that provides a lot air bases for the Japanese.

[larryfulkerson]

I just now got through putting all the separate pieces of units back together and now the formation is whole again. But most of the
units are really tired. Supply levels are in the teens to high 20's. Something like that. They are going to need a couple of turns at
the very least to get back into shape. However their proficiency is a bit higher than normal so I guess they have all seen some
action or something.

[larryfulkerson]

This is typical of what I'm seeing. This is a Communist Chinese unit that has a proficiency of 90% when the usual Chinese unit
had a proficiency of like 20% in Dec. of '41. I'm guessing this unit has seen a lot of action. They are labeled as veteran.
I need to get this bad boy on the front lines.

[thomasharvey]

The Chinese have been hardened by years of service! Fortunately for the Japanese they do not have a lot of offensive power.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the face of India now. I'm starting to fight back with the dead that have rested sufficiently to not die when pressed into
service. I'd like them to at least be in the green before I commit them but that can't always be observed. I'm seeing Tom sail
a lot more troops into the area and he tells me via email that he intends to stay there the rest of the war if necessary.

[larryfulkerson]

I've gotten into the habit of doing carrier raids with the Essex and this time I went out about 45 hexes SW toward Wake island
and I was finally intercepted and we both lost a bunch of planes, me Wildcats, about 27 of them, and I shot down about 11
Betty's etc. And then when I checked the Essex's fighters again I found it "not deployed" again. So what I usually do is put it
on rest status first of all and THEN put it on whatever mission you want. I usually would leave this one on rest status because
of the shape it's in.

[larryfulkerson]

I drove the Essex group TF north toward Alaska and got a really strange accident. I evidently ran into a 4 DD Jap ship unit. I lost one
of the last 2 carriers I had. D'oh.

[thomasharvey]

I am shocked you happened to run into the lone ship unit in the north. I forgot I left it up there. As a matter of fact, I think it was an accident. It was a replaced unit that moved from Pearl Harbor north to there and then I never checked the map again. It was replaced to 4 DD from what it had.

Now, if the Carrier group TF had moved slowly allowing the Japanese unit to be disclosed before running into it first maybe it could be avoided. In fact, in theory, if spotted the wildcat fighter could have been staged out and then fly in a naval bomber unit and sink the DD group without the loss of any ships.

Here is perhaps a perfect example of never moving a carrier as the lead ship in any direction. Always move another TF ahead of it just in case you run into something. I follow this rule to avoid aircraft interdiction. If the aircraft strike I do not want it to strike my carrier force. I want it to strike the group running interference. I then may decided to withdraw the carrier or bring in more for the battle. That means the carrier group, with their air units on air superiority or bombers on naval interdiction, must be several hexes behind. that way they scout ahead but also protect from behind.

This seems to work with these naval rules.

[larryfulkerson]

There I was moving my TF from Midway toward Wake and got intercepted by the Japs and I lost 2 DD's but I shot down a lot of
Jap planes. It was almost worth it.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what India looks like now. We're shooting back and forth and there's a lot of pushing and shoving and I'm hoping I'll eventually
be able to take India back. Tom tells me he's through with his expansion plans and it's up to me to make this game exciting. Well I just
got another CV and two CV's that can carry one unit each so I'm thinking it's time to try to take something back.

[larryfulkerson]

I've gotten into the habit of driving a TF of DD's toward the target island and allowing it to intercept me so that I can use my AA guns
to shot down a lot of the planes. This is me driving from Midway toward Wake and getting intercepted and me shooting down most
of the attackers. This result is typical of my experience with this technique.

EDIT: I guess this makes my question: Is the AAA leatheality level pumped up too high?