[font="Arial"]Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.[/font]
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CEO Nwabudike Morgan: The Ethics of Greed
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6/14/42 – 6/16/42
Battle rages at the southern tip of New Caledonia as Japanese forces try to overrun the Australian and American defenders of Noumea. So far the Japanese are only getting 1 to 2 odds and the worst of the casualties but they have knocked the forts down to level 2. Q-Ball seems to be gloomy about the ultimate outcome of the battle.
So, I find myself thinking, if you’re Q-Ball what do you do? Give up 30,000 troops, including an entire US Division? Not willingly. To save them he needs to reinforce or evacuate them. But Kido Butai and almost the entire Combined Fleet are in his way.
To get them to move he needs to strike at something vital, something I can’t ignore. Looking at his choices I think I can rule out Burma or the DEI. Targets in the southern half of the Pacific seem unlikely because my forces are close enough to interfere quickly. But attacking somewhere from, say, Kwajalein on north…ah, that makes sense.
In that case I ought to be on guard for an attack at someplace like Wake Island or the Kuriles. The thing is, I’ve already made what defensive arrangements I can in those places. I am going to deploy more air units and submarines and send more aviation support to Hokkaido but that’s about all I can do.
Supply and Demand: resource convoys are just beginning to arrive from their new ports of call so the shortage in resources (and resulting drop in HI levels) should soon be a thing of the past. It really takes a lot of hulls to keep those resources coming in. I mostly use the 10 and 12-knot freighters for this, reserving the faster ships for long-haul work.
Supply levels took a big hit in the patch. Almost a million supply at Osaka vanished overnight and other cities lost large reserves as well. The graphic below, from WITP Staff, shows the drop, as well as my current stockpiles of everything else. Fortunately this really has little practical effect, as the 999,000 supply at Tokyo is sufficient reserve. I am sending out lots and lots of supplies at the moment, though, especially to China. Shipments totaling about 125,000 supply have recently reached or are en route to Shanghai, Tientsin, and Tsingtow.
Oil, fuel, HI, and etc. seem to have been unaffected by the patch. Mind you, I am not complaining, just commenting. Overall the patch gets a big thumbs up here at Cuttlefish HQ.
