Once Again into the Breach - Mike (J) vs. tc464 (A)

[ny59giants]

The Americans have the BIG 11th Air HQ at Anchorage that he can buy out relatively cheap and move to Cold Bay or even closer to Adak. When I say BIG, she has 180 Aviation Support. [X(] That should be large enough to support a few air groups worth of B-17s. [:D]

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

The Americans have the BIG 11th Air HQ at Anchorage that he can buy out relatively cheap and move to Cold Bay or even closer to Adak. When I say BIG, she has 180 Aviation Support. [X(] That should be large enough to support a few air groups worth of B-17s. [:D]

Cold Bay starts as 1(2) ... so it will take a while to build up. At 14 hex range, his B-17's can reach. Not sure anything else can early in the game. Very hard to protect them up there. As Nemo states: easiest way to kill 4E's is on the ground.

For me, if the allies want to play up here its good. Adak is the best base around at 5/4 ... means when fully built you can re-load almost everything (lvl 8 port) and have a solid lvl7 AF to support your naval op's. Granted it won't stand more than 5 minutes against the allied death star in '44, but until then .... guess we'll see what Ted does.

[Dan Nichols]

Fun in the frozen north

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

Hi Mike I have a few R&D charts for personal use there's a couple adjustments I would make in retrospect but I'll be glad to post both for you and the contributors of your AAR at the very least if it gets a player thinking about their own R&D strategy it's a good thing.[:)]

Please post them. R&D is not one of my strong suits. Thanks!

[Mike Solli]

Gotta get up early for drill. A couple of quick notes. I just ran the 18 Dec turn so I'm 2 turns ahead of the AAR. Hong Kong fell. I learned that if a TF is following another one, the one doing the following will not unload. [X(] Ah well, just a day's delay, at Kuantan and Mersing. They're safely ashore now. Anyway, I'll catch up tomorrow night. Night all.

[obvert]

Maybe run a fast transport over with a small SNLF just to get Cold Bay on the cheap before the Allies have anything there, and so he can't just fly in support and build it up easily?

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

I learned that if a TF is following another one, the one doing the following will not unload.

Really?

interesting. Sometimes mine do and sometimes mine don't. I've got a couple in transit now ... have to watch the outcomes.

[ny59giants]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants

The Americans have the BIG 11th Air HQ at Anchorage that he can buy out relatively cheap and move to Cold Bay or even closer to Adak. When I say BIG, she has 180 Aviation Support. That should be large enough to support a few air groups worth of B-17s.

Cold Bay starts as 1(2) ... so it will take a while to build up. At 14 hex range, his B-17's can reach. Not sure anything else can early in the game. Very hard to protect them up there. As Nemo states: easiest way to kill 4E's is on the ground.

For me, if the allies want to play up here its good. Adak is the best base around at 5/4 ... means when fully built you can re-load almost everything (lvl 8 port) and have a solid lvl7 AF to support your naval op's. Granted it won't stand more than 5 minutes against the allied death star in '44, but until then .... guess we'll see what Ted does.

If you want to try this, I'll take you up as an Allied player. [:)]
I mentioned using Cold Bay to start with and then there is a dot base just next door that has a larger AF potential rather than going over to Umnak which can go to size 8 AF, but has a very small port. Cold Bay is exactly 14 hexes away from Adak, so Zero op losses will be high at max extended range. By late '42, I can make it very uncomfortable for Japan.

[SuluSea]

Here's an engine and airframe image I stitched together
 

[SuluSea]

Here's an R&D image I put together that shows upgrades relative to airframes I intend to research at some point or have interest in.

[SuluSea]

Here's what my starting research looked like last game. I subscribe to the 30 is the sweetspot theory that more experienced players than myself have tested so the plan is to have everything built up to the 30 threshold.

I'm not a fan of idle R&D factories and tolerating the facilities doing little for years are something my plans have tried to eliminate. It will cost more HI and supply to run it this way but I broke the R&D up into pre 1/44 and post 1/44 to try and run a more dynamic program, as airframes start to come online the plan is to let one or a few factories convert to production depending on the model and the date of the war effort and the R&D that doesn't convert to production will either be moved along the upgrade path or invested in other models such as the KI-84 line and so on. I tried to use the closest model to production to benefit from more facilities repairing and as they repair I'll move along the upgrade path. If someone finds this helpful great, it's not the easiest way to run R&D but with improvements that's sure to come with more experience I believe it's a better alternative than idle factories for years.  [:)] [:)]

Clear as mud, eh. [;)][;)]

[Argos]

Thank you for posting those SuluSea. I'm new to the empire and these will be greatly helpful as I try and setup my first PBEM.

[Cribtop]

Great stuff, Sulu!

[jrcar]

You don't have a future to save for unless you are first victorious on the batlefield...

You can then turn that stuff off.

In March 1943 we are saving 2500-3000 HI a day, have a total of 580,000... I don't even know how much is enough

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: jrcar

Ref Vehicles and Armaments.
You need more of the former, no more of the later. We ended up by about Aug 1942 with:

259 vehicle points
95 Armaments producing (500 turned off)

Both are about right, although we can now aford to turn off some of our vehicles as we fnally have a decent surplus, it took a long time though.

We converted armaments factories to vehicles, and have 8 armaments factories (about 500 points worth)turned off.

In March 1943 we have 9000 vehicle points spare and about 144,000 armament points spare.

Cheers

Rob

+1

And depending upon you battle outcomes, you might even need more. But, I target VEH=250 as a minimum. It is one of the things that eats up my economic expansion in the early game. I figure I can only expand 15 factories at a time and still have some supply gain. With 6 VEH expanding for almost the first month, that leaves only 9 engine/ac factories to expand. Decisions. Decisions. as to which ones expand.

That's truly amazing. How do you guys ever save HI for the future? I usually don't worry about supply too much the first month. I know I'm going to pull a lot out to send to the SRA. I've already shipped out ~200k supply and it's only 18 Dec in the game.

[jrcar]

Also I'll add we did very little R&D changes, or increases (just the basic most obvious ones) until March 1942. By then we were fairly secure and good spend supply and HI to do the R&D changes. We over did it on Frank, but the rest are about right. You can see the info in our AAR.It did almost break us though... supply was very tight.

I think it is best to get as much supply out of the HI early on to your main hubs, fight the war, then set in for the economic long haul. The Japanese economy is probably more robust than her combat forces!

Cheers

Rob

[Mike Solli]

17 Dec 41

Sub War

The S-36 allegedly sank from hitting a Mk 6 mine (one of theirs!) in Manila. I'll take it. It's one with real torpedoes. [:D]

Very quiet day today. Not much to discuss. Three Buffalos were shot down over Malaya.

Zamboanga (Mindinao) was taken in a 3:1 DA. 10(0) Japanese casualties to 241(15) Allied. The Naval Guard will chase the remnants. One of those nasty Do-24k-1s sank an xAK unloading supply. Zamboanga's infrastructure is intact:
Manpower - 1(1)
Resources - 20(0)
LI - 20(0)

Other Stuff

The nine Fubuki Is are headed back to Kobe for their Jan 42 upgrade, which will give them more AA and DC racks.

[Mike Solli]

18 Dec 41

Sub War

The Ro-67 sank an xAK off Pt. Moresby. A day or two ago she spotted a CM. I suspect Pt. Moresby is now mined. He knows I'm going after it.

5 Fleet

Nothing new to report.

4 Fleet

I landed at Tarawa without incident.

SE Fleet

The Guards Brigade is unloading at Truk. Once it reloads, the invasion force (Gds Bde, 144 Reg, Maizuru 1 SNLF) will sail for Rabaul. The support will sail separately a day or so behind. Most of the 23 Air Flotilla is at Truk.

China

I attacked a Chinese Corps southwest of Suchow pushing it out of the hex. I took 48(0) casualties to 500(74) Chinese losses.

Hong Kong

As I mentioned earlier, Hong Kong fell today! I got 2:1 odds and took 404(2) losses to 5295(862) Brits. In addition, 6 Walrus and a Vildebeest were destroyed on the ground. Here's the status of the infrastructure:

Manpower - 5(0)
Resources - 26(24)
HI - 47(33)
LI - 127(93)
Shipyard - 30(20)

I'll repair everything except the LI. I'll consider expanding the HI when the SRA is captured.

Philippines

I hit Clark Field in a DA getting 1:1 odds. I took 1707(9) to 609(5) Allied losses. I need to soften it up a bit more. Fortunately, there are no forts there.

Mindinao

Nothing new to report.

Borneo

I captured Brunei taking 26(0) losses to 172(14) Allied losses. The oil field is 10(10).

56k supplies will begin unloading at Miri tomorrow.

Malaya

Today was brutal in the air. Ted lost 6 Buffalos, a Blenheim IV, 3 Hudsons and a Blenheim I to my 1 Oscar Ic, a Lily and 5 Vals (ouch). The Vals flew against an xAKL at Singapore harbor with no escort. Oh well, breaking a few eggs and all that....

Because of the amphib TF following another amphib TF most of my forces at Kuantan and Mersing landed yesterday and will attack tomorrow.

[Mike Solli]

19 Dec 41

5 Fleet

Nothing new to report.

4 Fleet

Nothing new to report.

Malaya

The Mersing and Kuantan attacks occurred:

Kuantan - 2:1 attack with level 1 fort. Losses were 74(1) for me and 278(8) for Ted. I'm attacking again tomorrow.

Mersing - 5:1 - Success! Losses were 107(0) to 1721(181). The Brit forces were the 27 Aussie Bde and 28 Gurkha Bde. Looks like they were trashed. They withdrew to the SW to Johore Bharu. I'm sending the 5 Div after them and a tank regiment and infantry regiment due west to cut off Malaya from Singapore. Looks like 39 units will be in Singapore and I see 8 units in the north. We'll see what I'll be up against. Right now the 5 Div is at Mersing, 18 is at Kuantan and IG Div is by Georgetown. The 56, 2 and 38 will be there anywhere from a day to about a week from now. That'll make 6 divisions for the final assault on Singapore. There is also a 50k+ supply convoy that's at Cam Ranh Bay that's about to head to Malaya.

A couple enemy bombers were shot down for no loss to me.

Burma

I found the AVG, or rather, they found me. I sent a small bombing raid to Pegu (7 Nates and 6 Marys). Four H81-A3s showed up and shot down 3 Marys. Ah well, it was bound to happen. At least it wasn't too bad.

Mindinao

The 2 tank regiments attacked Surigao to try to knock off the regiment there. They caused 264(30) casualties for no Japanese loss, but the remnants ran into the jungle. I'm pursuing with one of the tank regiments while the other heads back.

The 4 BB TF was still hanging around just west of Mindinao and stumbled across 2 Allied xAKLs. They didn't last long.

Other Stuff

21 IMB and 2x SNLFs are about to land at Singkawang. They'll leave one SNLF there and the rest will head to Tobali. The 22 Air Flotilla HQ and some engineers will follow them to Tobali.

The 21 Division is a couple days out from Tarakan. Then, they'll take Balkipapan. After that, they and the 21 IMB will land in Java, probably a couple weeks from now.

There are some small units that are loading and will head to Kendari with the 21 Air Flotilla HQ. Then they'll start to spread out from there.

Finally, the 4 Div is prepping for Palembang. Shortly after the invasion of Java, the 4th will go in to Palembang. This will give the 5 Air Division time to reduce the remaining enemy air power in Malaya and the 22 Air Flotilla (in Tobali) to reduce the Dutch air power in Java.

[PaxMondo]

Wow.  So many turns!!!
 
[&o][&o][&o]

[BrucePowers]

After turn 1 Mike and his opponent do turns fairly quickly.