The Good The Bad & The Indifferent

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: Alfred
Japan has not wiped out 50% of the base's supply in 2 days.
Alfred

I realize that 15% of a number and then 28% of the reduced number doesn't equal 50%, but the potential is there for Japan to wipe out supply in three or four or five days (if I correctly understand that one supply point = 1% of supply).

[Alfred]

No, a hit does not = 1% supply lost. It all depends on the size of the bomb plus randoms.

A hit is a hit. In itself it doesn't convey any other information.

Alfred

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

3/3/42 and 3/4/42
 
Email Security Lapse:  John emailed this a.m.:  "Pretty much done with anything associated with the land aspect of this war..."  Security breaches have been discussed ad nauseum in many threads, but here's another example of a major breach.  Does John not know how much help this gives me?  (I consider this to be a candid admission by John rather than "dissembling.")

I don't get this compulsion he has to go all Oprah on you in e-mail. He has his own AAR. Whine and kvetch there. Why give your opponent a free sandwich?

I agree with you about self-inflicted BTW. He needs to do less running aorund the world and more counting his device stats.

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

3/3/42 and 3/4/42
 
Email Security Lapse:  John emailed this a.m.:  "Pretty much done with anything associated with the land aspect of this war..."  Security breaches have been discussed ad nauseum in many threads, but here's another example of a major breach.  Does John not know how much help this gives me?  (I consider this to be a candid admission by John rather than "dissembling.")

I don't get this compulsion he has to go all Oprah on you in e-mail. He has his own AAR. Whine and kvetch there. Why give your opponent a free sandwich?

I agree with you about self-inflicted BTW. He needs to do less running aorund the world and more counting his device stats.

Why does anyone expect otherwise. You all give this opponent too high a standing when it comes to playing strength. Being bombastic does not equal playing strength. Proper planning is not one of his strengths. Making a large noise and attempting a showy action instead is much more typical.

Alfred

[Canoerebel]

I played my first WitP game against John perhaps seven years ago.  I was inexperienced.  He was very aggressive (as usual).  Given the disparity in experience, his aggression was enough to nearly overwhelm me.  I lost most of my carriers early.  I nearly lost all of Oz - I was down to Melbourne and Syndey.  IE, I was scared out of my wits.
 
I haven't played John since then, though I have kept up with him.  I know he is aggressive, but since I've only played him once long ago, I have no idea how good he is.  He's done some very good things in this game as I've noted (DEI early and a gritty effort in China thus far), but as I've also noticed he's left me scratching my head (seemingly uncoordinated use of infantry divisions and KB at New Zealand in particular).
 
John's a smart guy.  He's a very aggressive player.  But I get the feeling his heart is "all navy."  He wants to play this game so that he can use subs, combat ships and aircraft carriers - particularly the latter.  Since RA gives him many more ships to play with, I suspect I'll have a hard time dealing with him once the Allies transition to the offensive in the Pacific.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

No, a hit does not = 1% supply lost. It all depends on the size of the bomb plus randoms.

A hit is a hit. In itself it doesn't convey any other information.

Alfred

Yup. I don't recall when that was changed (maybe even first release of AE?), but Michael has been very clear about it not being the old "1% per hit".

[Canoerebel]

I am bad about not reading things and keeping up with changes.  There have been three patches in the past week.  I've installed them all, but I have no idea what they do.  I don't read the tech forum.  I don't read the rule book.  I don't say any of this with pride, but rather to explain the gaping holes in my knowledge about the game.

[CT Grognard]

As Alfred points out, you lose supply from supply base hits equal to a random factor of the (IIRC) Effect rating of the device hitting.

A 100kg Japanese bomb hitting your supply base can either cause you to lose 0 tons of supply (minimum) or 66 tons of supply (maximum).

This is obviously an abstraction for supplies damaged/outright destroyed/spoiled etc.

The larger the bomb, the bigger the chance of quickly reducing supply. A 250kg bomb can potentially take out 165 tons of supply. An 800kg bomb has a potential of 281 tons of supply with a single hit.

Here's where coastal bombardment can truly wreak havoc with a base's supply stockpile. A 36cm shell from a Japanese battleship scoring a direct hit on an Allied supply base will, on average, destroy over 500 points of supply.

If John 3rd is hitting your Chinese bases with Japanese 2E bombers, and hitting you with 250kg bombs, you can probably on average expect to lose about 80 points of supply per supply base hit.

[Canoerebel]

Ouch!  Some of these are bases behind Changsha that are always in the red with very low supply.  Thus, 15 + 28 supply hits @ 80/hit might equal 3200+ supply (far, far more than exist in that base).  Isn't that kind of tough on the Chinese?  John is committing hundreds of Sally, Lily, and Mary in China.  The Allies have enough bases and supply to try to defend, but you know how that will end - 50 P-40E of the AVG put up a good fight on day one, but 25% of the aircraft are damaged and repairs take forever (if ever) due to air service damage and lack of supply.  It's nearly impossible to defend China against massive Japanese air raids.  Or am I wrong?

[CT Grognard]

He must really be massing those raids if he is achieving that number of supply hits.

I don't know Reluctant Admiral at all, but in DaBigBabes the Japanese in China really have a dearth of aviation support so it's hard to sustain these sorts of bomber offensives.

One way around this dilemma is to have a house rule in place stating the Japanese player is not allowed to perform airfield attacks on Chinese bases unless there are actually aircraft present. This is, however, probably not ideal.

It brings into question other tactics such as starting to bomb Singapore's airfield very early to keep it in a damaged state and prevent fort building.

For all of these things, however, as Nemo would say, there are workarounds...

[CT Grognard]

The issue of supply hits raises another interesting strategy for Japanese players.

Normal Allied strategy is to withdraw all units in Luzon to Bataan and dig in, trying to pull as much supply as possible there for a protracted siege, often much to the frustration of Japanese players.

The coastal defense guns at Bataan have a maximum range IIRC of 26,000 feet. Naturally, Bataan also starts out with a lot of mines.

In my tests, however, bombarding Bataan with a force consisting of only BBs with a minimum firing distance of 30,000 feet (allowing the main and secondary armament to engage) set does not hit mines as often as one would think. With high detection levels, they also cause a lot of damage.

A Japanese player could therefore, once having secured a big enough port to rearm and repair in Hong Kong, simply send bombardment runs in on Bataan, eat the occasional mine (which won't sink a BB outright) in return for hopefully destroying thousands and thousands of Allied supply points at Bataan (aside from the damage inflicted on the units there).

[Alfred]

This is the supply hit calculation.

[center]The amount of supply destroyed is a random amount based on the device's effect and anti-soft ratings.

This could be anything from 1 to the device effect*anti-soft/100. [/center]

It used to be be based on the impact of a 250kg (or was it 250lb?) bomb. Now it varies on the actual ordnance dropped.

Many of the bombers deployed to China used by Japanese players carry smaller bombs. The change, on average, therefore has affected Japanese players more than Allied players who generally drop 500lb bombs.

Alfred

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Ouch!  Some of these are bases behind Changsha that are always in the red with very low supply.  Thus, 15 + 28 supply hits @ 80/hit might equal 3200+ supply (far, far more than exist in that base).  Isn't that kind of tough on the Chinese?  John is committing hundreds of Sally, Lily, and Mary in China.  The Allies have enough bases and supply to try to defend, but you know how that will end - 50 P-40E of the AVG put up a good fight on day one, but 25% of the aircraft are damaged and repairs take forever (if ever) due to air service damage and lack of supply.  It's nearly impossible to defend China against massive Japanese air raids.  Or am I wrong?

Get out of the cities. You know how to use terrain. Out of the city an LCU will draw supply form every base it has "numbers" to--everything where the distance loss is greater than zero., In a base it only draws from the base.

Give up ground. Make him garrison. (This is one place where "playing for VPs" comes into play.) Make him ship supply half way across Asia, not you.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I am bad about not reading things and keeping up with changes.  There have been three patches in the past week.  I've installed them all, but I have no idea what they do.  I don't read the tech forum.  I don't read the rule book.  I don't say any of this with pride, but rather to explain the gaping holes in my knowledge about the game.

Knowing how you are about tech, I assume you did the patches in concert with John, at the correct place in the cycles. Don't want a synch bug.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: CT Grognard

The coastal defense guns at Bataan have a maximum range IIRC of 26,000 feet. Naturally, Bataan also starts out with a lot of mines.

It's apples to apples, but naval ranges, at least in the USN, are always in yards. And distances are always in NMs, never kilometers.

[Canoerebel]

No, we did the patching willy niilly because we weren't aware that three patches came out in short order.  So, I upgraded A, told John to upgrade, but when he did he got B, so when I went to get B I instead got C, and so forth.  It was Keystone Kops and the Three Stooges.  We probably have a sync problem and all kinds of viruses.
 
As for China, I have a very solid MLR right now mixed in with good terrain. I don't want to withdraw and I think I'm better off keeping what I have.  Right now, John doesn't even have a unit in Changsha, which means that good city is producing supply, etc.  I have to minimally garrison my interior bases to protect against para assault that would result in getting cut off. 
 
I'll think things over to figure out if I'm better staying in place or retiring, but I'm almost certainly going with the former.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

No, we did the patching willy niilly because we weren't aware that three patches came out in short order.  So, I upgraded A, told John to upgrade, but when he did he got B, so when I went to get B I instead got C, and so forth.  It was Keystone Kops and the Three Stooges.  We probably have a sync problem and all kinds of viruses.

This the order you must do the patches in if you want to avoid synch bugs.

Mike sent me this before our first patch cycle else I woudl have messed up. I have this stowed away and consult it before every patch.

- Japan enters orders turn A with old software.
- Allies enter orders turn A with old software.
- Japan runs turn resolution turn A with old software.
- Allies run combat replay turn A with old software.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <----- Upgrade software here.
- Japan enters orders turn B with new software.
- Allies enter orders turn B with new software.
- Japan runs turn resolution turn B with new software.
- Allies run combat replay turn B with new software.

Notice that the deal is that everything for a specific turn gets done with the same software.

[CT Grognard]

Thank you for clarifying this, Alfred.

In the interests of accuracy, let me then rectify the potential supply interdiction potential of some common Japanese air-dropped ordnance:

30 kg GP bomb: 1 - 5
60 kg GP bomb: 1 - 13
100 kg SAP bomb: 1 - 15
250 kg SAP bomb: 1 - 59
800 kg AP bomb: 1 - 166

So please revise your expectation of average supply loss due to 250 kg bombs to, say, 30, not 80.

Just for interest sake - an Atomic Bomb has a supply damage potential of 1.024 million. [:D]

[Andav]

Regarding upgrades, as a Janaese player, I always include a screen shot of the version (found in the upper right hand corner of the main window) in the email to my opponent when upgrading. I think it helps insure there is no confusion about what version was installed.

Wa

[Canoerebel]

Me and my two teenaged sons were in a building hit by a strong tornado this morning.  This is not a common occurrence - I've never before seen a tornado - so I thought I'd write a brief description.  

Me and the boys were at Owens BBQ in Adairsville, Georgia, late this morning when a strong tornado hit. We didn’t have any warning. We didn’t even know we were under a tornado warning (when I had left my office an hour earlier, we were under a watch and radar showed a squall line still in Alabama, so nothing seemed imminent).

We had just finished our meal and were prepaing to walk out the door when heavy rains and high winds hit. I'm used to that since bad thunderstorms are common here and since I experienced several weak hurricanes while growing up in Miami.  The two employees began screaming that it was a tornado.  One lady couldn't get the door, which had been propped open, closed.  My 18-year-old son went to help her.  I walked to the window to see what was going on.

At that moment the tornado hit and the building began coming apart. The boys and two employees went into the bathroom. I was at the other side of the room and dove under a heavy duty table. All of this happened in a matter of a second or two.  As the building was coming apart – windows blowing in and out, doors blown off hinges and into the room, trees crashing down, the roof coming off, etc. – I momentarily thought, "This building is about to come apart and we may not live through this."  Just as I finished that thought the intensity of the storm began to abate just a bit so that it seemed like, "Well, we might make it after all."  Then it became clear that the tornado had passed. Things began to settle down. I found the boys and the two employees and all were fine (John had one small cut, I have three – all of them so small not even a band aid is needed).  The two employees (ladies) were hysterical.

Me and my boys walked outside to find utter and complete devastation. A house to one side of Owens is completely gone. Nothing left. A brick store on the other side completely gone. Nothing left. A huge, modern industrial building out the front door (on the other side of the highway) had one end completely demolished.  A water main had broken and a geyser was shooting 50 fit high. Dozens of cars and a number of semis were upside down in the highway and in adjacent parking lots. The employee'ss car was blow away – she don’t know where it is. One side of my truck is damaged, but only cosmetically - not bad enough to justify repairs given its age. Owens probably won’t be rebuilt – the damage is pretty extensive, but nothing compared to all the buildings on every side.

Owens sits on top of a small hill and still stands despite extensive damage.  All around though is complete devastation. Trees and power lines and wood and debris all over the place. We searched through the demolished house, but learned that those people were fine – they had gone to their storm cellar just before the storm hit.

It took us two hours to get home (our community, twenty miles west, was untouched). All the highways were closed because of trees and other stuff blocking the lanes. Emergency vehicles were everywhere.

Given the extent of the damage, I think this was an F3 or F4 tornado. We were in the heart of it. As I looked out the window, just before it hit, the rain was blowing sideways; then I noticed it was blowing circularly; then I saw trees and parts of houses and other stuff circling in the wind. It was crazy.

Edited to add: After reading the Fujita scale, I would say this was an F2 or possibly F3 tornado.