What does the Jap need to stockpile....

[Miller]

.....to keep them in the game during 44/45?

Approaching Nov 43 in my game any I'm already on the defensive. I suppose the answer is "everything" but what is more critical? I have plenty of surplus a/c engines but not many a/c, should I be cranking these up now whilst I still can?

I think I have plenty of Oil, Resources seem more critical......I have nearly a million HI points in the bank, is this a good amount? Any advice welcome.

[Shark7]

Supplies.  That is the thing that will run out first.  I try to move mine into bases that won't suffer as badly from spoilage.  I also tend to upgrade all the Home Island ports to help alleviate spoilage issues.  That is a little iffy though, since you have to spend supplies to expand, but I figure I can spare them in the front end of the game, and I need to not be losing stuff to spoilage toward the end.
 
Oh and luck if you can...you need lots of it. [:D]

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Supplies.  That is the thing that will run out first.  I try to move mine into bases that won't suffer as badly from spoilage.  I also tend to upgrade all the Home Island ports to help alleviate spoilage issues.  That is a little iffy though, since you have to spend supplies to expand, but I figure I can spare them in the front end of the game, and I need to not be losing stuff to spoilage toward the end.

Oh and luck if you can...you need lots of it. [:D]

supplies??? I have never heard of a game in 44/45 where the Japanese player ran out of supplies...

[blam0]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Supplies.  That is the thing that will run out first.  I try to move mine into bases that won't suffer as badly from spoilage.  I also tend to upgrade all the Home Island ports to help alleviate spoilage issues.  That is a little iffy though, since you have to spend supplies to expand, but I figure I can spare them in the front end of the game, and I need to not be losing stuff to spoilage toward the end.

Oh and luck if you can...you need lots of it. [:D]

supplies??? I have never heard of a game in 44/45 where the Japanese player ran out of supplies...

Thusly proving the quality of the advice

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: blam0

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Shark7

Supplies.  That is the thing that will run out first.  I try to move mine into bases that won't suffer as badly from spoilage.  I also tend to upgrade all the Home Island ports to help alleviate spoilage issues.  That is a little iffy though, since you have to spend supplies to expand, but I figure I can spare them in the front end of the game, and I need to not be losing stuff to spoilage toward the end.

Oh and luck if you can...you need lots of it. [:D]

supplies??? I have never heard of a game in 44/45 where the Japanese player ran out of supplies...

Thusly proving the quality of the advice

I have a tendancy to overbuild and over-supply. I don't 'run out' but I do run lower than I like in the home islands. I guess I do something you shouldn't, actually try to hold bases as Japan.

Different playstyles.

[crsutton]

You must have an ample supply of thousand person stitch belts for your warriors. Can't really accomplish anything without those. [8D]

[Yava]

There is no need to stockpile anything. It is only going to prolong the suffering. Thereby I would advice to surrender to the Allied forces.

[Mike Solli]

Yava:  Pffft...............................Dink! [:'(]

[Yava]

As you can see Miller, the squirrel is one of the best examples, a Japanese player who due to excessive gathering of materials ended up tearing his hair out when he figured out in 1945 that his efforts were useless. All he can do now is 'Pfffff' [:'(][:D]

[PzB74]

Engines - and not just any engine.
In the early game you need mostly Nakajima engines - this shifts abruptly in 44-45 when new advanced
interceptors are included.

So you need to increase Mitsubishi engine production gradually throughout the war.
If you maintain a nice stockpile of each you will be well of!

[Zebedee]

I try to make sure I keep some of the old aircraft in their stockpiles. With PDU turned to 'on', they make for ok kamikaze units - make those out-of-touch-with-reality historical plans come true!

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Yava

As you can see Miller, the squirrel is one of the best examples, a Japanese player who due to excessive gathering of materials ended up tearing his hair out when he figured out in 1945 that his efforts were useless. All he can do now is 'Pfffff' [:'(][:D]

Actually, the "Pffft" is the launch of a US sub torpedo, and the "Dink" is the rare occasion when it hits something. [:'(] [:D]

Now, the part about 1945 will have to wait a bit longer. I haven't gotten that far in my longest PBEM yet. [;)]

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Zebedee

I try to make sure I keep some of the old aircraft in their stockpiles. With PDU turned to 'on', they make for ok kamikaze units - make those out-of-touch-with-reality historical plans come true!

Good advice. Just remember to keep at least one daitai or chutai of each of the obsolete plane types at all times or you won't be able to use the planes in the pool. Kwantung is good place to keep them.

[Zebedee]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli
Good advice. Just remember to keep at least one daitai or chutai of each of the obsolete plane types at all times or you won't be able to use the planes in the pool. Kwantung is good place to keep them.

Against the AI, there's no point using new models to train with when you have eg 1000+ nates sitting there doing nothing. And 1000 resources gained by trashing them is not a good return. Once you start to run out of nates, start using up the oscar 1bs, then the oscar IIs.... that way you never actually kill the replacement pool as there's always sufficient units active to keep it at full size.

Against a human player, I think I would be far more circumspect though. The AVG properly employed would totally nullify this approach. [;)]

[Mike Solli]

Zebedee, against human opponents, I use the model you described.  I still have several hundred Nates and Claudes in Apr 43 and use them just for training.  I'd rather smear a Nate or Claude with a 20-30 exp pilot rather than the frontline models.

[Zebedee]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Zebedee, against human opponents, I use the model you described.  I still have several hundred Nates and Claudes in Apr 43 and use them just for training.  I'd rather smear a Nate or Claude with a 20-30 exp pilot rather than the frontline models.

I'd certainly consider doing it away from any allied CAP (other than Chinese heh) but I think I'd hesitate to do it in any form of contested air space. Knowing my luck, it would be only the semi-decent pilots who are just about to get transferred out who'd get shot down...

I'm just very aware that any advice which holds good for beating up on the AI has to be taken with utmost caution when used against a human opponent. Interesting to know that you use it Mike. It must tie up a fair proportion of your airforce though in training missions? And I'd imagine that you'll get very few graduates from school or am I wrong in how aggressively Allied players use AVG?

[Mike Solli]

The April 43 PBEM is against a guy who is just beginning be able to pound my major air fields to rubble (Rangoon and Rabaul).  He's taking huge losses doing it though.  Here's an example from the most recent replay:
 
Day Air attack on Rangoon , at 29,33
 
Japanese aircraft
J2M Jack x 24
Ki-44-IIb Tojo x 65
Ki-61 KAIc Tony x 36
 
Allied aircraft
Wellington III x 30
Liberator VI x 71
A-20G Havoc x 7
B-25C Mitchell x 58
 
Japanese aircraft losses
J2M Jack: 14 damaged
Ki-44-IIb Tojo: 3 destroyed, 37 damaged
Ki-61 KAIc Tony: 4 destroyed, 25 damaged
 
Allied aircraft losses
Wellington III: 9 destroyed, 10 damaged
Liberator VI: 35 destroyed, 1 damaged
A-20G Havoc: 2 destroyed, 3 damaged
B-25C Mitchell: 18 destroyed, 21 damaged
 
Japanese ground losses:
46 casualties reported
Guns lost 1
 
Airbase hits 3
Airbase supply hits 1
Runway hits 19
 
Aircraft Attacking:
 1 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 1 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 2 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
25 x B-25C Mitchell bombing at 1000 feet
 2 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 1 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 2 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 2 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 3 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 2 x A-20G Havoc bombing at 2000 feet
 1 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 3 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 2 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 2 x Liberator VI bombing at 6000 feet
 3 x A-20G Havoc bombing at 2000 feet
 
Rangoon is currently holding its own, as you can see.  Several months ago, he plastered Rangoon by getting lucky and catching all my CAP on the ground.  I lost a couple hundred planes on the ground.   It took about a month to recover from that one.
 
The same thing happened to Rabaul 3 game weeks ago.  My CAP didn't fly and he destroyed 380 planes on the ground.  I don't think I'll recover at all from this one.  At least so far he pretty much as destroyed the facilities and has free reign over Rabaul.  We're playing stock so the air losses are nasty.  He's training up his air force by bombing bases that I have abandoned.  Most of my training is against Chinese ground forces from bases ranging from Haiphong to Hong Kong.  I have cut off a force of about 70k troops and am bombing them out of existance.  I do use experienced fighters to cover them.  I'm probably training close to 500 planes. 
 
My losses have been rather low.  I've lost 8794 to his 9706 planes to date.  Here's a breakdown of losses:
 
Type               Allied       Japanese
A-to-A            4943        2117
On ground        1826        3899
Flak                675          896
Op Losses        2262        1883
 
Kind of interesting.....

[Mike Solli]

One other thing.  I use Mogami's training method.    When an air unit takes losses, I disband trained chutai into it to bring it up to strength.  When those units come back, I put one trained pilot in and fill up the rest with untrained pilots.  I put them on train and when the average reaches about 40, they go to China to get their experience up.  I try to keep them in training until their experience is >80.  After that, they're pulled out and kept as trained reserves.  It usually takes a few months to train them up.  So far, I'm keeping up with the demand, but my trained reserves are slowly dwindling.  It's inevitable though. 
 
I try to keep some land based Navy fighters and all the land based Vals and Kates as a reserve to replace carrier plane losses.  I've been rather lucky and have destroyed fair portion of his navy.  I've killed 4 prewar CVs and lots of other capital ships for the loss of Kaga and one BB.  I've lost no CAs, a couple of CLs and a handful of DDs, mainly obsolete ones.  I still control the seas, so he's counterattacking within range of his land based air cover, mainly from New Guinea.  I made the mistake of not taking Pt. Moresby.  That's the fatal chink in my armor.  The up side of all this is that once (if) he takes Rabaul, he'll have nowhere to go without having to deal with KB. [:D]  I do know that, in addition to Hornet and Enterprise, he has at least 1 Essex class and 2 Independence classes.  There are the 4 British CVs too, but they're locked up in the Indian Ocean.  My Bettys flying out of Pt. Blair have the RN bottled up.
 
He has only 5 prewar BBs and (I think) 3 fast BBs.  The British have only 1 BB left.  I ambushed the rest early.  He does have most of his cruisers though.  I rarely see them, and usually they're escorts to the carriers. 
 
Basically, he owns the skies over Rabaul, is contesting Rangoon and I own the water in the Central Pacific and the Indian Ocean.  Interesting game.

[Zebedee]

Those are very interesting figures Mike. Let me give you the breakdown for my current AI game (10/3/43, 1.8 patch, CHS 1.8, no air mods).

Sorties
A 4300/1550410
J 4569/1900796

A2A
A 6/701
J 1/325

Field
A 0/1431
J 0/6

Flak
A 0/74
J 0/558

Op
A 1/592
J 1/1239

As you can see, quite a difference! One thing which really strikes me about my figures is that my total loss rate is around one-tenth of one percent - roughly one-tenth of what I would have expected it to be, and that's with my operational losses roughly twice what I could get them down to with more micromanagement.

I have 120 planes training in China, all other units have experience of 70+. There are 5200 planes in my stockpiles and I'm producing a steady 1100 per month.

With regards to replacements, that's pretty much how I do it - disband the training units into operational units to maintain quality. And then train them back up once they return after 90 days. I don't think the AI currently has any CVs other than a couple of severely damaged British ones - and won't have for another 6 months or so I reckon - my fleet carriers have just had the Feb/March upgrades and are just waiting to clear a couple of points of sys damage before they head on back to beat up on the Allied shipping. I've lost two fleet carriers but they and 2 CLs are the only big ships I've lost. I think the AI has lost something like 1110 ships and I've lost 72. Similar story with land losses - I've taken 500 points of losses, the AI has managed to lose 13000.

It would seem your pbem game is far more interesting than my poor old AI game. I might switch to Allies soon and see if I can get them competitive again. Or at least give the AI chance to lose all the Japanese CVs!

May I ask what's shooting down all the Allied bombers? Is it the Jack because I'm not getting anything like those results when the AI sends out 4 engines against Tojos and Tonys so far. And my fighter squadrons on the frontlines are all 75+ xp. [&:]

[pauk]

Japan player has to stockpile nerves. A lot of nerves.

In case that he done worse or even as it was in RL, he will need nerves for watching his "cuning plans" crashed day by day....

In case that he done better than RL, he must save nerves for being accused for gamey playing, taking advantage of game model, cheating and/or countless fruitless debates with envious lurkers, often camouflaged as "for Gods sake we need historical game!" fanbois.

In any case, you will need a lot of nerves.[:D]