[Japan] Some Questions

[engineer]

Some partial answers: 

Protecting TF 2 hexes away:  High morale CAP over the base will sometimes give CAP over a friendly units two hexes away (but not often).  The surest way is to use LR CAP.  Morale and range reduce the amount of LR CAP that will actually be available over the friendly unit.  For instance, I've been flying LRCAP with Zeros based in Kuching over Palembang and getting 7 - 9 planes on station out of 27 in the unit with morale in the mid to high 90s.  I suspect your problem is probably low morale in the fighters. 

Yenen Oil:  This is out of your control.  The engine moves oil and resources around to meet your industrial needs.  Divert some of the SRA oil to your Chinese ports that have a rail line to Yenen.  More oil should increase the odds that it will get to Yenen. (Do the Chinese have a unit blocking the lines of communication?) Also, make sure that your industry/resources in Yenen weren't damaged in the battle to capture it. 

Nate City:  You have a couple of options.  As you finish converting your Nates to Oscars then eventually all but 99 planes will get scrapped and you'll get a 900+ Nakajima engines back in your pool and, I think, some resources.  Otherwise, you can keep a handful of Nate Squadrons around and use them for human wave defenses against Allied planes.  I don't recommend the latter since they'll just become target practice for mid to late war Allied fighters with rookie pilots in the cockpits of your Nates.  Has your last Nate factory converted to Oscar's yet?  Obviously you don't need to keep building Nates.   

Ops Losses:  Planes may suffer mechanical failure in flight or crash on landing.  Operating from too small fields also increases losses.  EDIT: In an ops loss there is a die roll if the pilot is killed or survives - END EDIT. Some tips:
[ol][*]Check your deployments and try to keep single engine planes operating from at least a size 3 field and twin engine planes operating from at least a size 4 field.
[*]Stock WitP assigns combat missions from the outset of virtually all of your squadrons (including home defense and Kwangtung Army).  Reassign your float planes and patrol planes in Japan to ASW to start attriting the US sub fleet.  Fighters, bombers, and recce should be grounded or assigned to training. Grounded planes suffer no ops losses, but training can improve pilot experience.  High inspiration commanding officers also improve the rate at which experience is gained. 
[*]Keep an eye on air unit morale and be sure to rest your units with a stand-down to training to rebuild morale.  High morale units will fight through hostile CAP to hit enemy ships while low morale units break and abort their missions. An aborted mission accrues ops losses without putting any bombs on target.  [/ol]

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Arkain
I have now nearly 1k Nates in the pool (upgrade to oscar), what can i do with the nates?

Use them to train up your disbanded IJA units. When they come back they will get Neanderthals for pilots. Convert the unit to Nates and train them up in ground attack against some isolated foe. Once they're up to what ever experience level you deem to be acceptable for frontline duty, convert them to a better airframe. No reason to have your Neanderthals smear themselves and a good aircraft against a mountain. Let the Nates (and Claudes for the IJNAF) be your fighter trainers.

[engineer]

Ditto Mike's comments on training.  That's a "Doh" on my part.  I'm still learning the game on the Japanese side and working within the engine to get trained replacement pilots into the pilot pool is a place where I'm still at the bottom of the curve.
 
A question of my own:  Do Japanese armaments points and manpower points convert to guns and squads by a fixed ratio? 

[Arkain]

thanks for the tips, again.

but the disbaned airgroups will only return in the disbanded size (9 aricrafts). So is the trick to build oversize Nateairgroups (50+ aircrafts) upgrade them to oscar, divide them to 3x 27 planes and use them huge amount of disbanded natesuqads to train again in 50+ Squads? Isn´t it a nearly work on it´s own, only a little los of a group by winning about xx nwe airgroups. I explain it better in numbers, what i mean.

3x 27 Nates

2x 27 divide into 6x 9 Nates

this 6x9 Nates will be merge with the last 27 Nates to a great 81 Nates airgroup

the 81 Nates will be upgrade to oscar and than divide to 3x 27 oscar

after 90 days 2x 27 nates will arrive with untrained pilots

I am right or wrong?

if i am right, i can get a realy hugh airfleet until the war changes against japan.
I would test it, but 90 days is a looonnnng time in witp.

[Ambassador]

the 81 Nates will be upgrade to oscar and than divide to 3x 27 oscar

No, they'll upgrade to 27 Oscars, not 81. Their standard maximum size is 27, when they upgrade, they only receive that number, not the same number of the older planes. They'll have 81 pilots, that's right, but with the pilot bug, it might not be a great idea to have that many pilots...

Only way to have 81 Oscars in the daitai is to convert everybody before disbanding the two daitais earmarked for training. But I don't think they'll all fly, you'll just end up with 27 active Oscars and 54 "reserve" Oscars in the daitai. Even if you have enough pilots. The only advantage is to have all the planes & pilots handy in case of attritional fight.

[Arkain]

ORIGINAL: Ambassador

No, that's not his problem, as I read :

ORIGINAL: Arkain

so, two new Questions:

How, or is there a button to prevent tbs and dbs to take a port attack? The settings for the bombers are naval attack, second rest and Nav Search 10%, It is not funny to loose bombers because they fly over a city instead a tf.

As far as I understand, you complain that your planes attack TFs that are in the same hex as a base, not that they conduct port/airfield strikes. This is not a port strike, it's a regular naval attack. The AA of the base is not involved, but any CAP from the base's fighters will defend the TF too.

Except reducing the maximum range of the squadrons (lower right of the window), there's no way to prevent them of targeting a TF in a base hex if it's in range. You'd better give them escorts, or conduct airfield attacks with LBA to damage the runways.

ok, now i have the same problem again.

KB at victoria point, no ships in the port, some troops and some airgroups at vp.

Settings of the bombers are prim. naval attack, sec. recon, nav. search 0%, range max. and the whole KB airfleet attacks vp.

With no recon all is fine, but thats "stupid" i would send out my bombers to look around and they attack everything they see.... [:-]

at any time i play witp i will find now questions.. i captured canton island, port ist 2(2) but i can´t disband my as in ci, only dock. is it, why canton islnad is an atoll?

[Shark7]

The advice on moving those engineer units out of China is good for the reason stated, but also for another.  Personally I would not enlarge a single Chinese base simply because the bigger it gets the larger its garrison requirement.  Enlarging those bases just increases the number of troops you are going to tie up garrisoning them.
 
That said, building fortifications won't increase the garrison requirement, so leave 1 or 2 engineer units to run around building up the fort levels, but I would not even consider increasing airfield or port sizes in China.

[Ambassador]

ORIGINAL: Arkain
ok, now i have the same problem again.

KB at victoria point, no ships in the port, some troops and some airgroups at vp.

Settings of the bombers are prim. naval attack, sec. recon, nav. search 0%, range max. and the whole KB airfleet attacks vp.

With no recon all is fine, but thats "stupid" i would send out my bombers to look around and they attack everything they see.... [:-]

at any time i play witp i will find now questions.. i captured canton island, port ist 2(2) but i can´t disband my as in ci, only dock. is it, why canton islnad is an atoll?

In the "animation", what does the screen look like ? Bottom half, I mean, not the planes. If it's a sea, it's a naval attack. If it's ground, it's port/airfield/ground attack. My guess is that it's sea, given your orders.

They don't attack Victoria Point itself : they attack a fleet that happens to be in the same hex. Remember those hexes are 60nm across. It's still a naval attack.


As for disbanding TFs in port, it needs to be size 3 to do it. As you write, Canton Island is size 2, so it's not enough.

[Yamato hugger]

ORIGINAL: Arkain

ORIGINAL: Ambassador

No, that's not his problem, as I read :

ORIGINAL: Arkain

so, two new Questions:

How, or is there a button to prevent tbs and dbs to take a port attack? The settings for the bombers are naval attack, second rest and Nav Search 10%, It is not funny to loose bombers because they fly over a city instead a tf.

As far as I understand, you complain that your planes attack TFs that are in the same hex as a base, not that they conduct port/airfield strikes. This is not a port strike, it's a regular naval attack. The AA of the base is not involved, but any CAP from the base's fighters will defend the TF too.

Except reducing the maximum range of the squadrons (lower right of the window), there's no way to prevent them of targeting a TF in a base hex if it's in range. You'd better give them escorts, or conduct airfield attacks with LBA to damage the runways.

ok, now i have the same problem again.

KB at victoria point, no ships in the port, some troops and some airgroups at vp.

Settings of the bombers are prim. naval attack, sec. recon, nav. search 0%, range max. and the whole KB airfleet attacks vp.

With no recon all is fine, but thats "stupid" i would send out my bombers to look around and they attack everything they see.... [:-]

at any time i play witp i will find now questions.. i captured canton island, port ist 2(2) but i can´t disband my as in ci, only dock. is it, why canton islnad is an atoll?

So whats the problem? The save you sent me was a 2 day game allies vs Jap AI. You are concerned that the Jap AI launched attacks on Victoria Point? Why? You have no control over what the AI does.

[erstad]

ORIGINAL: Arkain

at any time i play witp i will find now questions.. i captured canton island, port ist 2(2) but i can´t disband my as in ci, only dock. is it, why canton islnad is an atoll?

A port has to be at least size 3 before you can disband a TF into it.

[Arkain]

thanks for the help.

no, i am the japan player. it is not anymore a problem for me, i will give rest as second order, i don´t understand why the flights attack ports because recon is on. here the pictures.

combatreport



settings



enemy port

[Yamato hugger]

Well like I said, the save you sent me was an allied vs Jap AI 2 day turn game.

[Arkain]

hm what excactly do you need? I have saves from everyday +-5 days from the save i sent to you. Is there a special way to save it right? 

[Yamato hugger]

All I need is a save right after this raid you say shouldnt have happened. The .txt file with it would be nice also along with a description of what specifically you think is wrong. Please dont send it before the replay, I dont need to sit and watch 30 mins of cartoons to take a look at something that will take me 10 secs.

[Arkain]

you got a mail (combatreport, save day after and an explonation). Sorry for the problems. I thought it is a problem like: "ah, it´s normal, do this and this and everthing is fine". [:(]

[Yamato hugger]

Before you even say it, some of the scenarios have ships at start disbanded in ports smaller than size 3. If they leave port, they cant re-disband.

[Arkain]

i think thats the last question.. maybe...

if i conquer singapore, north china etc. i will get a bunch of high industry. Do i need it or can i halt them, to save ressources?

[Yamato hugger]

No reason to not use it. If your resources falls below a certain level you may want to shut some down, but I have never done so.

[Arkain]

k, thanks. Ok, only to repair it.

[Ambassador]

Actually, repairing might not be a sound move.  Each point of HI needs 1000 supply points to repair.  Each point of HI gives one supply point and one fuel point per day of use.  If you count one fuel point = one supply point, it means you'll need 500 days of operation before you come even.
 
500 days = eighteen months = one and a half year.
 
One and a half year before you get some benefits of the repair.  Won't you have crushed Japan in that time ?  Will some dozens additional supply points matter then, more than dozen thousands of supply points now ?  And this is without even counting the need to ship ressources and/or oil as needed.