Nemesis...

[modrow]

Nemo,

I think you need to mod in a P-666 before Damian takes over [8D].

Hartwig

[Nemo121]

Hartwig,

THAT is an excellent idea. I still haven't heard back from my opponent - whom I emailed on Friday - so I think this PBEM is stuck until such time as:

a) he gets back to me ( if he ever does ) or
b) michaelm or someone can crack the turn file, figure out what the password was and give it to Damian.


AnthonyS,
Ok, I'll post some links. I would say though that since you are new my AARs tend to be a bit more "metaphysical, metaphorical and theoretical" than most albeit I probably explain my thought processes more than most also. I'll find some links of my old game with Damian also as I think that's quite instructive. I'll also recommend a couple of AARs within the AAR forum which I think are instructive. It'll take me a day or so to get the time to run down those links.

[AnthonyS]

Thank you Nemo, I appreciate it.

[Nemo121]

Well I ended up running down quite a few links.... Some are WiTP, some AE and one set is even in a JOhn Tiller game. I thin all of them illustrate either AE play or strategic points ( or both ).

1st 2 AARs. Game vs JOhn3rd of Tiller's Gettysburgh game. I think this shows the danger of assumption ( and also me making a few rookie mistakes since I was very, very new to that game ) and how you can use assumptions against people.
My side: Union Side
His side: Confederates


2. Origin of Festung Palembang
I think the key lesson in this game wasn't actually Festung Palembang - which is what I think people took from it. I believe the key lesson was that if you look at things from a Soviet perspective and think of each region as a Strategic Direction then by phasing and co-ordinating those properly it proved possible to stretch a force with interior lines of communication. Take that Frederick the Great !!!

On a tactical level the key points were:
a) Survival of the Allied air forces and their ability to gain Air Superiority over a critical theatre by March 1942
b) China on the offensive: A how to guide.
c) The use of surface raiding TFs in a high threat environment ( particularly around Singapore and northern Borneo )

My Side:Festung Palembang
1EyedJack's side: Japanese Side


3. WITP game
Mass has a quality all of its own. This is by far my favourite game of WiTP/AE and the one which pushed me to the limits.... plus Damian's a lovely, cool guy.

Allied side ( from where I took over after ny59giants retired ): Allied Side
Japanese Side


Michaelm kindly extracted the password for us ( I still haven't heard back from my opponent since November 12th ) so Damian's run the first turn. This game is ready to commence again.

[jeffk3510]

Good deal. Look forward to following again.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

...so Damian's run the first turn. This game is ready to commence again.

Very good news. Look forward to this!

[traskott]

Good luck !! New enemy, new LOOP [8D]

[Nemo121]

Well we've played about 4 days so far.... We're still just getting started but the basic ploys/plays so far are as follows:


1. I've been night-bombing Saipan with Ki-264s. Over the past 3 days I've destroyed about 18 B-29s on the ground and that's a loss rate I'm quite happy to facilitate. I am being VERY obvious about the origin of the night-bombers ( Tokyo ) since I have gathered ALL my radar-directed FlAK and about 80% of ALL the FlAK of 100mm or greater in all of Japan + about 120 night-fighters ( almost all radar-equipped and staffed by my best night-fighter pilots ). If he comes at night I expect the night-fighters to disrupt him and the FlAK to kill and damage ( thus lots of ops losses ) scores of bombers. Seriously, I've never, ever even come close to concentrating this amount of heavy FlAK in a single base in any other game. If, instead, he comes in the daytime he will find himself facing 1200 fighters and fighter-bombers as Tokyo is where all of my fighter and fighter-bomber groups go to train, re-organise, take on replacement planes and pilots and upgrade. Once they are upgraded, filled out with good pilots etc etc they move out to other bases over Japan to provide CAP but bottom line over Tokyo during the daytime you will not face a small group ( 300 to 400 fighters ) of high-quality pilots in the best planes I have but you WILL face about 1200 pilots ( mix of first and second rate ) flying a mix of 1st, 2nd and 3rd rate ( I even have A6M2-Ns and Ki-44s flying CAP here ) planes and numbers have a quality all of their own.

2. I've begun filtering small groups of kamis into bases around Formosa to conduct nuisance raids into the Phillipine operational area ( I sent out 8 twin-engined kamis today and was rewarded with a hit on the DD Laffey II by a G4M1 Betty carrying 2 x 250 Kg bombs ) and if he DOES try to invade Formosa I can have about 2,000 kamis and 2,000 conventional strike aircraft there within a day. I plan to simply overwhelm him with numbers and try to sneak in under his radar once my Shinyos have disrupted his actual landing sites and scattered his shipping out of their LRCAPPed hexes.

3. He is actively reconning everywhere and has taken out about 90 fighter airframe factories so far. They were uncapped as I'm ruthlessly concentrating CAP in only the most vital of areas at this stage.

4. The pilot training HI cost hit today and I have a total of 1 HI point left *sigh*. I wish we could turn this off. I only have 6,000 HI daily with which to run my entire war effort and pilot training costs about 900 HI per day - which really, really hurts. That's an additional 50 fighters per day I could be making.

5. I think it is instructive to look at the number of offensive sorties per side today. Japan made a total of 50 offensive sorties today ( 42 Ki-264s and 8 kamikazes ). The Allies flew a total of 1,053 four-engined strikes alone today. The number of twin-engined and single-engined strikes is even higher. He is currently hitting every airfield and base in Formosa with several hundred offensive sorties per day. I think he might be trying to land there next... Either there or at Ishigaki to reinforce his bridgehead. I have a plan to drop another 2 divisions there over the next 3 or 4 days though which should help.

6. I've planned some night raids over the next day or two in which I'm going to send some 500 twin-engined bombers in to bomb airfields in northern Luzon at 100 feet. He is basing masses of twin-engineds and four-engineds there and I want to remind him I can still hit back--- forcing him to consider basing them farther back, increasing his ops losses etc etc. It is also pretty much the only way I'm going to thin out his B-17 and twin-engined airgroups as I can't put fighters up to oppose them and neither can my FlAK down them.


So, overall, I'm just biding my time, upgrading fighter and fighter-bomber groups with new production and waiting to hit his fleet as it either lands at or moves past Formosa. The number of ships at Manilla has fallen by just under 500 in recent days and I am seeing multiple TFs in the seas between the Philippines and Vietnam/Hainan - I've deployed 100 Ki-43 Kamis to sortie and give me a look at what I'm facing ( recon by terminal dive ) but am holding the main force very much in reserve. The IJN is mostly commited in the north as I expect invasions there soon but light naval forces ( DDs, MTBs and Shinyo suicide boats ) are filtering into position north and east of Formosa ready to strike should the enemy make for ( or past ) Formosa.


Two questions:
1. Does anyone have any info on how to set switches for widescreen? I have -px1650 -py1050 set for my monitor but the game itself still covers the full display but looks as though its resolution is 640 x 480. IOW the appearance is unchanged whether I have the switches or not, it still covers the whole screen at 640x480. Previously I had it set up so that it used 1650x1050 but I accidentally deleted that install and can't seem to replicate whatever settings I had.

2. Does anyone know anything about setting up Moodle on a server? I'm asking because for work I am looking to set up a VLE and I need to change the file upload maximum size - but cannot touch php.ini as it is an externally hosted server. My understanding is I need to play around with .htaccess and put a version of .htaccess into the moodle root directory to affect the php max file upload settings as they apply to that local programme in that directory ( .htaccess doesn't affect global php.ini settings ).

What I have in .htaccess is

php_value upload_max_filesize 209715200
php_value post_max_size 209715200
php_value max_execution_time 600

Anyone have any ideas? I wouldn't normally ask but I've been stumped by this for a few days cause according to tech support its a moodle problem, according to the moodle forums it should work fine the way I have it and it is some unspecified server problem ( which my .htaccess file should fix no matter what ). So, I'm a bit stumped and I thought someone around here probably has struggled with moodle or hosted serve php.ini files themselves in the past.

[Captain Cruft]

Per-directory .htaccess files don't automatically override the system-wide defaults. It depends on how the "directory overrides" are setup in the Apache config files, assuming it's Apache on Linux.

I also suspect, though am not sure, that Moodle has its own upload size limit too.

[PaxMondo]

Your LCD monitor (I assume its an LCD) is not continuous resolution like a CRT, it has a set number of resolutions that it supports.  right click on your background, select properties, then choose the settings tab.   scroll the slider from less to more and note the settings.  choose one that is at least one lower than your current setting and use that in your scrpit.  should work fine.

Also be sure that you TYPED the -px and -py into the script and did NOT copy/paste from the doc. There are some esc chars imbeded in the doc that cause the settings to be not read correctly. [;)]

[Richard III]

"Nemesis"... Resurrected ! With two of the very best.

A wonderful New Years gift.[8D]

[Nemo121]

Captain Cruft,

Moodle has its own upload limit of 16 Mb. Going by the Moodle.org forums this can be over-ridden by either apache, php.ini or .htaccess. I don't have access to apache settings or php.ini settings as it is a shared host so, my understanding ( which I'm sure is VERY imperfect ) is that my only option is to try to overr-ride the global settings locally using .htaccess..... but that doesn't seem to be working and, obviously, the moodle guys say it is a server problem and the server guys say you can set it from within moodle ( which I haven't found to actually work ).

So, a bit stumped right now and the IT guys are, helpfully, stating that actually getting an elearning site up and working isn't anything to do with them .



As to the game. Damian's leaped forward and strick Amoy and Swatow. I had abandoned both of those bases as part of my "abandon almost everything in China and pull it back to Korea and Japan proper to make a strong inner ring" so, at present, the Japanese have less than 3,000 AV throughout all of China having withdrawn over 6,000 AV over the past two months. The resources etc in China are destroyed, I've pulled out literally every last drop of fuel and oil and supplies are in the red or yellow in every base as I've removed them also. China is only rich in RESOURCES and even there I have about 150,000 tons of shipping dedicated to pulling that out - it should be gone by month's end - along with another 1500 AV.

Basically I'm going to consider leaving some 1500 AV to contest Shanghai but may even pull that out. My plan always was to let the Allies land easily in China and divert them for several months in a nice, long, slow march through the Chinese hinterland slowed by lack of supplies and terrain, but not by the IJA. To this end I've evacuated Hainan Island ( which began this game with about 40,000 troops ) of all but a single static base which cannot be evacuated ( I pulled the last of them out 2 days ago and got my APD TF past the invading Allied fleet on a high-speed night dash just 1 day before they invaded ).

Damian seems pretty pleased with his invasion but I'm even happier with the fact that by landing at Amoy and Swatow he has committed himself to ferrying in more troops and supplies and will give me the opportunity, if I plan it right, to hit him with anti-naval strikes.


I had some 600 kamis in the region and 400 launched. Aerial CAP was weak but still downed some 200 of the kamis including ever single high-flying kami. Only the ones flying below radar stood any chance of getting through. Unfortunately of the 200 or so which got through not a single one managed to hit an enemy ship despite finding an entire BB TF of 7 BBs with only 40 or so fighters flying CAP. Ah well, c'est la guerre. Okinawa is too far from the front lines for a proper fight in any case. I'll have to wait for him to get a bit closer - once he does my investment in G9Ms should pay off - I have increased production and over the next 45 days expect to build about 200 of them, more than doubling my committable force. When he comes for the Home Islands my plan is to hit him with a hammer blow of every single G9M en masse, blow through his CAP and sink multiple CVs, giving my twin and single-engined attack groups an opening to get at the BBs and amphib TFs.

Until I get that opening though there's very little point in me showing my capabilities and so, apart from minor strikes with Ki-43s and Ohkas to make it look like I'm serious about resisting him I won't be doing much resisting....

Another plus of this invasion is that his B29s etc will be tied down in airfield suppression missions covering future resupply runs and every day of that buys me about 30 modern fighters. Already many of my best squadrons are flying Ki-94 IIs ( 2 x 30mm cannon ) or J7W2s ( 4 x 30mm cannon ) or are re-equipping to fly twin-engined Ki-45s ( 2 x 30mm cannon in the nose ). I'm becoming more and more confident of my ability to really hurt his B-29s if they come back to bomb crucial bases in the Home Islands. Another month of upgrading fighter squadrons should, I believe, see the Home Islands almost immune from significant B-29 attack---- what I mean by this is not that B-29s can't attack but that IF they attack they will be so disrupted and have taken such losses that their bombing will be inaccurate and that they won't be able to maintain a multi-week tempo of attacks. In short the Allied ability to end this war by the end of the year ( which they most certainly have ) is rather rapidly slipping away.

[jeffk3510]

Very glad this is back up and going.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: jeffk3510

Very glad this is back up and going.

+1

[Nemo121]

Looking at the pilot lists:

Since this game began before michaelm introduced the hard limit on pilot training and numbers I'm running into tremendous trouble utilising kamis right now. I have about 900 IJA pilots in training right now and then can only graduate 150 per month after that. Since I can use up 200 or 300 IJA pilots in a day with kamikaze strikes and even on a routine day am losing 30 or so pilots in aerial combat, recon missions, training accidents etc there is going to be a significant bottleneck for the IJAAF and IJNAF coming soon.

Obviously if I'd known this change was coming when I initially made the mod I'd have worked around it:
1. Boost pilot training to about 6,000 per month ( using the 120 pilots lost per day around Okinawa as a guideline and adding 50% to cover losses in all other theatres at the same time ).
2. Make an on-map Japanese base with sufficient HI, resources, oil, refineries etc to produce 360,000 HI per month on its own but make sure it had no way to ship that fuel and supplies to the Home Islands
3. Introduce an HR to make that on-map base off-limits to Japanese and Allied forces.


As it is, since the rule was introduced mid-game it is introducing some significant problems for my pilot training and may actually preclude me using kamikazes ( which was a mainstay of my defensive strategy ) routinely any more. In anticipation of this I'm trying to switch towards more re-usable platforms ( G9Ms, Graces, P1Y2s etc ) but, obviously, my production strategy isn't tooled to producing these sorts of airframes in the necessary numbers.

[PaxMondo]

The latest patch has "fixed" the pilot issue. You should be able to draw down the schools now with either your training or kami groups. At least in my testing, I can.

[pws1225]

ORIGINAL: jeffk3510

Very glad this is back up and going.

+2

[Nemo121]

Ah but when the schools are empty you can't "draft" in 1 Exp nobodies... which is the only way for scenarios designed pre-patch to get anywhere close to allowing historical kamikaze usage...

Anyways, just another opportunity to excel and all that eh? Japan: Doing more with less since 1941 [:D]

[bigred]

about 120 night-fighters ( almost all radar-equipped and staffed by my best night-fighter pilots )

Hi all, how do you see if a pilot is night fighter trained?

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Ah but when the schools are empty you can't "draft" in 1 Exp nobodies... which is the only way for scenarios designed pre-patch to get anywhere close to allowing historical kamikaze usage...

Anyways, just another opportunity to excel and all that eh? Japan: Doing more with less since 1941 [:D]

True for the Downfall/nemesis mod. I think in the GC, you might actually have accumulated sufficient numbers to be ok. Certainly in Scen 2. I'm testing my mod (again) now. I'll let you know how it all goes.