IF it is Spring 42, and you are the Allies, you are out of fuel!

[Sardaukar]

OK, here you see cross-load penalty for transporting fuel in xAK. First ship (and similar ones in TF, there is one bigger with 500t liquid capacity) have capacity of 5800t. It's divided to 5600 cargo and 200 liquid space. Ship could take 200t fuel with 100% efficiency and 2800t of fuel in barrels in 5600t cargo hold. So, you can load only 50% of capacity with this cross load. Looks very realistic to me. And remember, it loads and unload with cargo rate, which is only 20% of fuel/oil rate.







BTW, just noticed that TF commander has Leadership 17, Inspiration 13...Captain Bligh? [:D]

[John Lansford]

He's a merchant ship captain dragooned into the war; of course he's not in a very good mood!

[Bullwinkle58]

[/quote]

Well, you can ship fuel with your AKs in a pinch. It just is not as efficient, since they have lower cargo efficiency (modelling the shipping fuel in drums in cargo space). I do it a lot in my Scen 6 (Dec8 start) campaign when lacking tankers.

[/quote]

Ditto for me. I'm not proud; if it floats, it hauls gas. There is plenty of time to have the escapees from the PI and Hong Kong run by Borneo to take a load south. 100,000s of fuel into northern Oz. Same goes for the Perth eastbound run to Sydney. There are more than enough idle xAKLs hanging around waiting for Cape Town convoys to fill their own pipeline. I haven't fiddled with CONUS west coast fuel convoys on that long southern run yet. I'd rather try way-pointing from Abadan to Perth, swinging far to the western map edge, than risk the southern tier with its commerce raiders. Maybe the IO will fill up with raiders later on, but so far it's an allied highway.

[Buck Beach]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

Oh, also, a word of warning; the AI likes to make raiding TF's of a pair of CL's and some DD's and send them into the area bordered by the Marshalls, Palmyra, Pearl Harbor and PagoPago.  Unless you've got a CA or two with a TF, they'll chew up a couple of DD's or anything smaller and sink your ships. 

That may explain the AI's extreme interest in Baker and Canton, too; if you have those two bases you can spot enemy TF's fairly quickly, without them they can wander around without being spotted until they find a convoy to ravage.

Great information, BUT, this what Andy Mac has been trying to keep us from doing and spoiling the little AI surprises for the rest of us.[:-]

[Sardaukar]

ORIGINAL: Buck Beach

Great information, BUT, this what Andy Mac has been trying to keep us from doing and spoiling the little AI surprises for the rest of us.[:-]

Spoilers are bad. [:'(]

Well, at least according to him, there are 13 main "strategy" scripts and AI picks one when scenario starts (since he said they managed to squeeze in AI script selector). And there is total space for 99 (these are major ones, smaller ones go to thousands, I think he said main campaign now uses about 1500)...which I think will get used in modded scenarios. So there is immense replayability value.

[Justascratch]

Well crud. Now that I've read this thread I can see that I am in deep trouble with tanker losses. Looks like it's time for a restart - - - again.

[jazman]

ORIGINAL: Justascratch

Well crud. Now that I've read this thread I can see that I am in deep trouble with tanker losses. Looks like it's time for a restart - - - again.

You would have figured it out eventually: "um, er, hey! I need more fuel around here. So that's what all those sunk tankers were for...", and the lesson would have really sunk in. Like a tanker going under.

[JohnDillworth]

Well crud. Now that I've read this thread I can see that I am in deep trouble with tanker losses. Looks like it's time for a restart - - - again.

[:-]
More realistic if you play it through. I have lost 15 tankers and 6 AO's. I am going to slog through

[jazman]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Well crud. Now that I've read this thread I can see that I am in deep trouble with tanker losses. Looks like it's time for a restart - - - again.

[:-]
More realistic if you play it through. I have lost 15 tankers and 6 AO's. I am going to slog through

If you play a human, he may target the TK and AO, so it's good to figure out how to slog through. You may learn the slogging well, but what happens after that? You may never get to it.

[John Lansford]

So all of you concerned about "spoilers" aren't reading AAR's, right?  If no one can talk about the issues popping up in the game (like the need to escort all transport TF's, and not to build up bases too close to where the fighting is), then there's not much to talk about in the game.
 
Others have said to watch about the KB raiding into the Indian Ocean; well, that's not happened to me so is it a "spoiler"?  Someone else said they had a landing on the WC?  Is that a "spoiler"?  This is going to get really boring if we can't talk about some of the events that have happened in our games.

[JohnDillworth]

If you play a human, he may target the TK and AO, so it's good to figure out how to slog through. You may learn the slogging well, but what happens after that? You may never get to it.

I lost a lot but I think I can recover. Burnt much fuel, but sunk 2 CV's and a CVL with no losses ship losses of my own. I lost to many aircraft. I will not be doing much for months anyway. That is probably[:)] also realistic

[Don Bowen]

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

OK, here you see cross-load penalty for transporting fuel in xAK. First ship (and similar ones in TF, there is one bigger with 500t liquid capacity) have capacity of 5800t. It's divided to 5600 cargo and 200 liquid space. Ship could take 200t fuel with 100% efficiency and 2800t of fuel in barrels in 5600t cargo hold. So, you can load only 50% of capacity with this cross load. Looks very realistic to me. And remember, it loads and unload with cargo rate, which is only 20% of fuel/oil rate.







BTW, just noticed that TF commander has Leadership 17, Inspiration 13...Captain Bligh? [:D]

If you want to calculate the offset, just click on one of those ships and then mouse over the cargo. Then a little simple math.

[Sardaukar]

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

If you want to calculate the offset, just click on one of those ships and then mouse over the cargo. Then a little simple math.

Yep, but in this picture says more than 1000 words. [8D] This game has already given me more than my money's worth of enjoyment. [:)] Gotta love the detail.

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns
There needs to be some way for the allies to respond to difficult situations that develop in game. The ridiculously low replacement pools and under-represented tanker and AK fleets are just too damned restrictive if they suffer high losses. In reality it would have been easy to order more tankers, airframes, tanks, guns, etc. produced if they were needed. But because they weren't needed historically, the allies don't get the capacity to build them that they historically had and easily could have used if needed.

If you do some reading about the war, the Allies had a tanker shortage until 1944 and even then supply just kept up with demand. Tankers are usually larger than regular merchant ships and require larger shipyards. The number of ship yards in the US which could build tankers were limited and many were building higher priority ships like cruisers and carriers.

At the start of the war, the Germans recognized the tanker shortage and sent their u-boats to the East Coast of the US in an attempt to force Britain out of the war by strangling the fuel supply. The u-boats focused on tankers moving from Texas on up to form up into convoys in Canada. The campaign was very successful, but Doenitz, fearing losing a significant number of u-boats far from home pulled back his boats before finishing the job.

The CVEs Sangomon, Santee, Chenago, and Suwanee were converted from Cimarron class AOs. They were much better CVEs than later built CVEs, but the shortage of AOs and TKs prevented any more being converted. The subsequent CVEs all had to be built on much smaller AK hulls. If the US had the capacity to build as many TK hulls as it wanted, all CVEs would have been built on tanker hulls.

So the tanker shortage is realistic. With some practice, you can get enough fuel to Oz to keep the war going.

A couple of things to keep in mind if you are doing a fuel relay. Make sure the intermediary ports are large enough. Fuel and supplies spoil if the levels are over the limit for the port size. Dumping large amounts of fuel in small ports will probably result in fuel loss due to spoilage.

Another thing to keep in mind is the time trade off between sending the tankers on one long trip vs the time taken to load and unload at intermediary ports. Some ships don't have the fuel capacity for long trips, so shorter trips, or mid-point refueling are necessary, but thinking through the logistics can be important.

Making sure the destination doesn't get too crowded is also a factor. If you have too many ships trying to unload at one port, a lot of ships will sit there waiting to unload which could be time spent moving to the next port. Sometimes congestion may be inevitable. Historically Noumea had some huge back logs before they got the port facilities running right.

Bill

[Don Bowen]

And rembember guys, you can part a (full) Tanker at a small port and use it as a gas station. Until it runs dry, that is.

[Central Blue]

may I suugest the Table of Distances Between Ports Via The Shortest Navigable Route? It is published by the Navy Hydrographic Office and is available for free on Google books. You can consult the differences between the 1918 and 1920 editions, but I don't think they were accounting for continental drift in those days.

Consider that the distance from Auckland to Panama is 6,512, from Auckland to Frisco is 5680. So if you are interested in a safe southern route to build your relay.... Anyway, I plan to test it.

The publication is probably handy for other purposes as well

[wdolson]

Of course the continents have moved a grand total of a few inches since 1918.  Probably not worth worrying about in game terms. [:D]

Bill

[Central Blue]

yeah, no trouble at all for those 18 knot oilers currently hiding out at MINSY. They are looking forward to building up experience on a nice milk run from the east coast to Cristobal with no U Boats to worry about.

[afspret]

With all the rail lines running from ports in western & northern Oz, I don't understand why some of the fuel off loaded in these areas can't be shipped to the eastern & southern ports?  The same thing was true in WitP as well.

[sfbaytf]

ORIGINAL: afspret

With all the rail lines running from ports in western & northern Oz, I don't understand why some of the fuel off loaded in these areas can't be shipped to the eastern & southern ports?  The same thing was true in WitP as well.

The designers and programmers would then have to model in the number of rail tanker cars, locomotives and rail capacity to keep everyone happy!