Early Allied Moves

[findmeifyoucan]

Hmmm, very risky keeping your American small Carrier Force in Wake where it can be easily spotted. Against a human player and 6 full strength Japanese Carriers I can't see how you would have a chance and it would be the American Carriers sunk and not the Japanese with your oil tankers being picked off later.

Tony

[jeffs]

findmeifyoucan is absolutely right. A human will see you and go your location at warp speed.
 
What works with stupid AI does not work with humans. In WITP/AE human opponents of even average ability
will hammer mistakes right away.
 
 
 

[AW1Steve]

ORIGINAL: findmeifyoucan

Hmmm, very risky keeping your American small Carrier Force in Wake where it can be easily spotted. Against a human player and 6 full strength Japanese Carriers I can't see how you would have a chance and it would be the American Carriers sunk and not the Japanese with your oil tankers being picked off later.

Tony

If you are going to hit Wake, make it a hit and run raid. And be prepared to run in a strange direction where your opponent doesn't have much LBA patrol. You can use this to draw his KB elsewhere. Preferably where you have LBA patrols and can keep an eye on him. Unlike playing the AI, PBEM calls for lots of PSYCH WAR and doing the unexpected. Or to put it in classical warfare term, seizing the initiative. While you can't really go on the offensive, you can make him chase you. If he's chasing you , he's not hitting you elsewhere, and you can guide him to some degree , where you want him. And , more importantly , you can "bell the cat" by leading him into heavily patrolled areas where you can keep an eye on him.

[Graymane]

Ok, I might as well report on some of the stuff I've tried/learned playing the AI as the allies. I won't be specific on what the AI does so no spoilers.

PI - I tried evac with the 3 Asiatic Fleet BFs. I did this by gathering every single air transport I could find and basing it in the southern PI and pulling those forces there, then to the DEI, then to Soerabaja then by boat to Perth, then to the NE coast of Oz.

PI - I defended at Clark. I'm sure I lasted maybe a week or two longer. Not really sure. Once the Japs got serious though, it didn't seem to matter. I was never able to build forts because of supplies and because the Japs kept bombing me almost daily. The P-40s did nothing.

DEI - Moved everything to Soerabaja. Left the other regions in the area alone pretty much. Left the warships. Evac the NL-KNIL Eng units. Got Soerabaja to level 4 forts and had all the AV in the area there. Lasted about 2 days total. What a waste.

Malaya - Got the entire AV except a couple of units to Singapore. Lasted a few weeks.

Burma - Pulled back to the Chittagong/Ledo line. Have retaken Cox Bazaar and moving against Akyab.

Oz - Holding PM and using that to attrit the Japs.

Pacific - Building a chain of bases (PH->XMAS->Pago->Suva->Noumea). By building those bases and then a couple of smaller ones between them, I'm able to set up a fighter shuttle service between PH and Oz. Planes go via PH->Johnston->Palmyra if they have the legs or they are shuttled to Palmyra. From there, they can hop to Oz.

Some other things I now always do.

• Stopped doing ASW patrols with planes. Just use 8 or so ASW points in stuff you care about.
• Escort every convoy. For really important ones, make sure you have CA/CL + DD. If the unloading will take more than 2 days, pull those escorts out into a surface TF at the unloading point.
• Put planes on naval search in places you care about near the front.
• Put surface combat TFs in forward areas you care about where you will be unloading fuel and/or troops.
• Use your carriers and air support to support your base construction.
• If you have your carriers in port, take off the air units and use them because they are some of the only planes that can do decent naval attacks.
• Don't waste your time with land-based bombers doing naval attacks. With the current XP model, you will never get pilots capable of doing naval attacks, even training at 60% for 6 months or doing naval attack + 20% training.
• Put all those little YP and other types of ships with 1 ASW into 4 ship TFs. The Jap subs will kill them, but will shoot a bunch of torps on these 1 point units thus saving your important shipping.

[vlcz]

Don't waste your time with land-based bombers doing naval attacks. With the current XP model, you will never get pilots capable of doing naval attacks, even training at 60% for 6 months or doing naval attack + 20% training.

There are notable exceptions to this "rule",
-Dive bombers ,even the low experience banshees begin to be a force to be feared after two/three months in the business
-British land based albacores and swordfishes are great indeed, but keep them heavily escorted
- A20 havoc, almost by error I have found this ones quite useful against small vessels

[John Lansford]

Yeah, Allied 2E bombers are next to useless against naval targets; I've probably hit less than 10 ships and I'm up to May '42 already.  Put them on land target missions (port/airbase/ground unit) and they'll do a lot more good, or on naval search.  The DB and TB's though are great for naval attacks; one of my Banshees out of PM put a 1000 lb bomb into Kaga last night and sent her wobbling off towards Rabaul.
 
 

[Graymane]

I'm really talking about land-based LEVEL bombers, not TB and DB, althougth I see I didn't make that distinction before.

[Graymane]

Processing Turns. I'm terrible at this.

• I think a great idea for either staff or tracker would be to come up with a Calendar view that shows arrivals and withdrawals of various units.
• I've got an excel spreadsheet that does distance calculations, I need to add something to do the reverse though and tell me what day I need to leave port to arrive on a certain day. This would really help me for getting stuff to offmap locations more efficiently.
• I need to make myself follow a rule to not move any kind of unit unless I have a plan/destination for it. Otherwise, I forget what the heck I was doing about 2 days later. That is at least one use for putting units under different commands, easier to remember what you are doing with that whole command that way. I do this with Air Units. All the squadrons under the same group are used together for the same missions in the same areas for the most part. That has really helped me out.
• Name TFs. Since they have a port and a dest, you don't really need that in the name. I usually do it by operation. Operation Zulu would have names like Zulu SC, Zulu AC, Zulu Amphib, etc. for surface combat, air combat, etc.
• I really need to organize things by operational areas or I just get lost. India, China, Oz, SP, CP, NP/Alaska/Can, West Coast/Off Map.

[SuluSea]

Some of those air units which are to be disbanded losing all pilots and planes I've been changing the C.O. to the worst possible leader  so I don't lose any leader with good qualities.

[terje439]

When it comes to the Philliphines, I put my Catalinas on Naval Attack, 20% search. There are bound to be so many ships around that they are bound to find something, and then they will attack with torps.
I've actually sunk quite a bit of Japanese shipping this way in PBEM games. True I might lose a catalina or two every turn, but I think that to be a fair trade off for a torp or two in Japanese invasion fleets.

[John Lansford]

The PBY's are really fragile, though, and once fighters start covering those TF's their losses go way, way up.  I tried that for a while but then decided I'd rather have some very experienced search squadrons, and transferred them south.

[findmeifyoucan]

Okay, so what does DEI mean? LOL

Tony

[Gilbert]

DEI means Dutch East Indies

[tbridges]

Its short for Dutch East Indies - currently Indonesia.

[findmeifyoucan]

yes, hit and run's work just fine all over the place for the Allies at least for the first two years I think.

Good advice. I agree whole heartedly!!!

Tony
p.s. Won't say what I would do as I have a PBEM I just started and my opponent could be reading this. LOL ))

[findmeifyoucan]

Oh cool thanks. I knew I would feel stupid after asking the question. LOL