YH v TS - round 3 <no 8 legged creatures>

[Yamato hugger]

ORIGINAL: Przemcio231

Hmmm qestion will the manual have upgrade paths and such shown???

Dont need it in the manual and the manual wouldnt be accurate for mods. Everything you need to know is on the aircraft replacement pool screen.

Look at the example below:
The A6M3 (red line) comes on line 6/42 (yellow line). Just to the right of the date available you will see an "upgrade to" column. This is the plane that the A6M3 upgrades to. In this case it is the A6M3a (which is the next line down). The A6M3a comes on line 12/42 meaning your A6M3 factories will auto upgrade then (unless you tell them not to). The 3a upgrades to the A6M5 which you can see is available 8/43 and this upgrades to the A6M5b which is available 6/44 which upgrades to the A6M5c in 10/44 and on to the A6M8 in 8/45.

[Przemcio231]

Cool thanks:)

[Kaletsch2007]

YH,
firstly, thanks again to you (and everybody else involved) for giving us the possibility to have a look into AE. It still makes the waiting harder, but it shortens my days a lot.
Two questions:
Why are you not going for DAVAO ?
CAYAGAN is a level 3 airfield, right ? If so, is the AirHQ the reason for making it a torpedo-bomber capable airfield ?

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

The attack on the lower PI:

Straightforward charge. The 2nd tank regiment will land at Butuan ("A") which is a level 3 port. 65th bde will land shortly after at Cayagan ("B"), with 15 nav gd and an airfield co landing on Jolo ("C"). An air HQ and a air base forces will be following up at Cayagan to establish a torpedo armed Betty base here. A naval base forces will land at Butuan to help repair ships. Tankers will accompany the base force for patrol refueling. The Ryujo (group "D") will cover the landings.

[Yamato hugger]

Cayagan is a level 4 field. Davao is a level 2 but a level 3 port. Im not going there this time because I went there last time and I expect the Houston, Marblehead, and Boise to be waiting down there this time.

And yes, the HQ is for the torps.

[Kaletsch2007]

Thanks for the fast reply !!![:)]

[Local Yokel]

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

Japanese air production (PDUs on):


Torpedo Bombers:
B4Y (Jean) v B5M (Mabel) v B5N1 (Kate) v B5N2 (Kate). Japs start with no TBs in production. The Kate 1s and 2s are even R&D aircraft at start (although you have some in your pool at start) not coming on-line until 4/42. The only good thing to say about the Jean is it carries a torpedo. The Mabel is actually over all your best B5 model because of maneuverability and range. I will convert some factories to the B5M (40-50 I would say).

I can see some justification for there being no B5N production at the outbreak of war - all the lines had indeed been shut down, and attack plane construction was indeed a bottleneck.

However, both B5N1's and B5N2's had been in production pre-war, so all necessary jigs and fixtures were available. I can't see a basis for saying the Japanese would have had to take nearly four months to dig them out and get the lines re-started if the demand was there. If we're expected to manage japanese production, let us get on with managing it: the game should not be a re-run of Japanese production as it was, but should reflect what we can make of it.

The effects of this may be mitigated depending on the extent to which the Japanese player can draw from the pre-war production pool or swap to the front line units a/c from training units - which was what the Japanese actually had to do. How big is the pool of available B5N's? How many in training units?

[Chad Harrison]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

A more accurate way to put it is that the overall demands of the Japanese industry (both civilian and military) are included in the calculations for AE.

Thats going to make a tremendous difference. Great to see that in there.

[Dili]

Concerning G3M it had its offensive weapons outside so it is expect a speed and range hit.

Ida and Sonias with less one engine(less expensive) might be good to do CAS instead of Ki48. What are the offensive loads of them? Maybe they should be classified fighter bombers?

[Monter_Trismegistos]

What is A6M2 Sen Baku available 44-02?

[Grotius]

Edit - moved one other question to the Air Thread.

Edited again - because I'm an idiot. Never mind, nothing to see here.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

ORIGINAL: JuanG

I counted 79 hits in that report. As 144 B5N flew, if exactly 4/6 were on Port Attack, that makes 96 torpedoes launched.

Im assuming some of those 79 hits are FOW, but even then, if we go by 60 actual hits, its still a 60-65% hit rate. Impressive.

Also, I note that neither of those two 'lost' CLs were in the actual report, meaning its not that hard to figure out when wrong ships get posted. Same for the 'Colorado' in the sunk ships report, its reported as West Virginia in the combat report.

90 torpedoes are missing from the supplies on the carriers. Which is nearly a 90% hit ratio. This is the purpose of testing and tweeking [;)]

90% sounds high, but in all honesty, the ships at PH are literally sitting ducks. I wonder how high the hit % would be against moving targets?

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

ORIGINAL: pad152

Right now only 5500 of Kyushus excess resources is reaching Honshu. The remaining 20,000 per day will have to be shipped over. And thats just getting started. That still puts us over 90,000 a day short.

Per Day?

Thats's 2.73 million per month ((90K x 365) / 12), 32.85 million per year (90K x 365) for just resources for one of the Japanese islands (Honshu)!

Does Japan even have the shipping to move 2.73 million resources per month? I don't think I've ever moved more than a couple of 100K of resources per month in WITP? This doesn't include moving troops, supplies, oil, fuel, or aircraft. Is it even possible to load and unload that much 90K per day with the new loading system?

This is in 1941, with no expansion of Japanese industry, what hell are these numbers like in 1943 or 1944?

This is starting to sound more like solving the US budget deficit, instead of a war game. [8|]

Note that these values are still being reviewed and adjusted, but the end result should be that the Japanese need to import approximately 40-50 thousand resources per day to the home islands from elsewhere. This does not account for transfers between the home islands (such as between Hokkaido and Honshu). These are historical values, and yes they are much greater than in the current game.

In short, the current game underrates the amount of resources the Japanese needed to haul around by about an order of magnitude. Another way I have seen this described by players on this forum is that the civilian economy is not modelled in WitP - that is, many of the resources that the Japanese required to run their economy were not represented in WitP, so they didn't need to use the ships to transport them either. That is one thing we have corrected in AE.

Regarding the question as to whether the Japanese have enough ships to move the resources around - yes they do.

Andrew

So basically I will no longer have ~400 AKs sitting in ports doing nothing, as I currently do with CHS. More to protect, more juicy targets for Allied subs. JFBs will actually have to develope good ASW skills and proper convoys. Sounds like a challenge.

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

ORIGINAL: Barb
Actually:
In november 1941 Japans total shipping amounted to 6,720,000 grt of ships over 100 tons. Servicable were 5,980,000 grt including 360,000 grt of tankers

of these 3 milions grt of shipping was reserved for nonmilitary use.
Army get 2,100,000grt until end of march, then figures were lowered each month to reach 1 milion grt at july.
Navy got 1,800,000grt each month (270,000 grt of tankers included)

Just to clarify: the increased supply demands in AE of the Japanease industry is used to reflect the need for non-military supply to come back to the Home Islands?

And I have no idea how to get numbers that Barb posted above, but is this about the same feel that you get in AE? In other words, that about 1/2 of your total shipping is being used to run supplies?

Thanks in advance.

Chad

Barb’s numbers are pretty good – close enuf. Here’s what we used for AE.

AE has 1169 of the 1435 freighters, representing 4,214,770 of the 4,424,000 grt totals. We didn’t dial down to all of the dinky ones; they would be xAKL and unusable by the AI and who wants to herd a gazillion ants. Their sum total capacity shortfall is less than 5%.. We have almost all the passenger ships and tankers. Cargo capacity, in metric (game) tons is significantly less than GRT.

Japan cargo ships have a switch “AK carry troops” that converts 1/3 of cargo capacity to troop space (creating a quasi AP), to model Japanese usage of xAKs early war. Takes 7 – 14 days to do, and is “Reversible”, you can switch back when you return to cargo service.

Large/fast/modern (high capacity) xAKs “may” convert to Naval auxiliaries (AS, AV, AR, etc..), but this is not “Reversible”, once done, it is for forever. So the merchant fleet is a wasting asset. Enthusiastic over-conversion will cause serious import issues.

Worked very closely with Andrew Brown to match capacity with requirements. We wished to force the actual dilemma onto the game – do I move resources, or do I invade everything in sight. Think we have succeeded.

[Q-Ball]

WOW! I can tell that playing as Japan just got alot more complex!

I think in WITP, playing Japan is somewhat more complex than the Allies, because of the production decisions you have to make. Is it fair to say that this gap has WIDENED in AE? Or do the Allies have alot more production complexities to manage as well?

[Chad Harrison]

WOW! [X(]

Thats amazing JWE. Thanks for the reply. Crazy changes. Did we mention that we cant wait? [:D]

[JWE]

I don’t really think so Q-Ball. The production system, per se, isn’t radically different. On one level, if you are content to leave well enough alone, the game plays pretty much like WiTP-1. Tracker/Decoder will still show how much of what needs to go where and when; saiew.

On another level, with careful, judicious attention to the game’s flexibility, you will achieve better than nominal results with the Japanese. This is the more complex part and the more fun.

The actual production part hasn’t really changed, but what has changed is “what you can do” with the output. You are a military commander, not an industrialist, so the thought, care, and planning process goes into fleet make-up, aircraft selection, etc..

What we did do was remove the opportunity for the bizarre. No more shutting down the merchant shipyards to gain HI points (believe me, you are going to need the yards). No more gazillion assault transports humping armys to invade everything in sight (believe me, you are going to need them to hump resources).

We think this system will appeal to the military aficionados out there, when put in the context of a strategic game, like WiTP. You can do a little, or a lot. And as you get better, the possibilities open vast new vistas. Just be careful of the cliff. [:D]

[Andy Mac]

p.s. the same goes for the allies to some extent no more shoving 100+ British/Dutch&nbsp;AK's to the SOPAC for an early attack they are now needed to convoy&nbsp;supply, fuel&nbsp;and men from off map bases to India or from India to the front.
&nbsp;
Also protecting them is a full time job...
&nbsp;
Allies don't get the xAK to quasi xAP conversion so you need to look after the AP's you get to bring troops from Aden, Capetown and Mombasa to India.
&nbsp;
Until the Middle East opens up and Aden starts getting convoys arriving supplies all need to be humped from Capetown and Fuel from Abadan
&nbsp;

[Don Bowen]

ORIGINAL: Andy Mac

p.s. the same goes for the allies to some extent no more shoving 100+ British/Dutch AK's to the SOPAC for an early attack they are now needed to convoy supply, fuel and men from off map bases to India or from India to the front.

Also protecting them is a full time job...

Allies don't get the xAK to quasi xAP conversion so you need to look after the AP's you get to bring troops from Aden, Capetown and Mombasa to India.

Until the Middle East opens up and Aden starts getting convoys arriving supplies all need to be humped from Capetown and Fuel from Abadan

If you want to get a feel for the troopship shortages faced by the allies and the difficulties of sending supplies to the Middle East and India when enemy air made the Mediteranean, may I suggest Winston Specials, Troopships via the Cape by Archie Munro. ISBN 1-904459-20-x.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Chad Harrison

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

A more accurate way to put it is that the overall demands of the Japanese industry (both civilian and military) are included in the calculations for AE.

Thats going to make a tremendous difference. Great to see that in there.

Yes, more targets for US subs!

[kfmiller41]

I am very much looking forward&nbsp;to the release of AE. The changes all look for the better.&nbsp;As a Japanese player most of the time my one feverent&nbsp;hope is that there will be some competent computer control of some of this&nbsp;shipping at&nbsp;least in the rear areas so it is not to overwhelming. I have no problem with some level of mocromanagement (anyone hwo plays this has to be willing to have some[:D]) but as was said earlier if it becomes to much then it is work, and I can get paid to work at work[:)]&nbsp;If I can get the economy up and running and convoys setup in the home island areas that work with just a little oversight then I can concentrate on doing all the little things everywhere else and not have my home front fall apart[&:]&nbsp;Hope this is possible and keep up the great work.