Axis Aflame: America Stands Alone

[Captain Cruft]

Just a note to say I am working on this right now. I might even have something ready for play-testing in the New Year.

I will play the Evil Empire, so I need a volunteer to be the good guys for about a month of game time.

[Mac Linehan]

Captain Cruft -

Am very pleased that you are still hard at it, cause it will be worth while.

Merry Christmas to you, Sir!

Mac

[Captain Cruft]

Well I did a lot of donkey work over Christmas/New Year. That's good, but now I am into the fun but very time consuming part of putting the airgroups and LCUs on the map. This will take a while.

Technology transfer - This is a generic Japanese version of the FW-190. Obviously I need to change the graphics, but I think it ought to be a very useful addition to the IJAAF arsenal. I have added this but removed the Tony (all variants) to compensate. Credit to Dali and WitW for the stats and graphics.

[Captain Cruft]

Snowed off work today, which gives an opportunity to progress this thing.

The 3 Yamatos are all available at game start, and have been completed as "invinci-carriers" with slightly heavier 1,000lb bomb-proof deck armour and a 1945-equivalent AA complement.

[Captain Cruft]

Apart from the Ki-64 (FW-190) the only other plane I have added is a jet-powered Shinden.

[Captain Cruft]

The Ki-74 Patsy is now much more useful as it can carry a whole ton of bombs out to 30 hexes, and transfer across the map in a single turn.

[Captain Cruft]

The Ki-95 is now a genuine long-range recon plane. In the default data it's actually worse than the Ki-46 III Dinah so there was no point in building it.

[Captain Cruft]

I have also ubered-up the Ki-83 a bit, particularly in the range department.

[Captain Cruft]

The Frank has been developed as much more of a pure interceptor. We have Ki-64s to drop bombs and fight at low altitude ...

[Captain Cruft]

Japanese planes which I have removed:-

All the kami variants with the 800kg bomb. These are very open to abuse, and I don't really believe in compulsory kamikaze missions anyway. Let individual pilots decide whether they want to die for the Emperor.

The ugly George.

The Tony.

The Ki-201.

The Me-163 equivalents.

[Captain Cruft]

Tentative starting dispositions at Guam. The fighters are all early Corsairs and the dive bombers are all SBD-5s.

I have done some limited testing, and while Japan can suppress the airfield (at a cost), actually invading the place might be quite tricky.

[Captain Cruft]

One thing I really wanted to incorporate into this scenario was the use of captured equipment. So far I have succeeded with fortress units, an example of which is below. This is a reduced version of the original Soviet unit, there will be no replacements for any of the devices and as you can see the unit lacks Support. So you have to stack Japanese units with it to get best results.

All the Soviet and British fortresses (Hong Kong, Singapore and Georgetown) get the same treatment.

I also intend to include some Japanese airgroups which use Soviet planes, again with no replacements, and some ships too. Plus of course some "Hiwi" analog militia type LCUs.

As a sort of corollary, the Aussies get to use some British stuff (ships) which while not exactly being captured just happened to be in the vicinity when the British Empire collapsed.

[Captain Cruft]

For the Allies, the goal is to get to here ...

[Captain Cruft]

So, as the Allies you are going to need a large port attached to the Trans-Siberian railroad. Which is it to be?

Vladivostok, Kanko, Fusan, Port Arthur, Tientsin, Tsingtao or Shanghai are the choices [8D]

[Captain Cruft]

Just fooling around with the FW-190 derivatives ...

In the picture below some FW-190 G8 equivalents (the Ki-65-1b "Kurt") escort torpedo carrying Peggies on a naval strike against a USN Air Combat TF forming up at Manila.

The basic idea is that both the IJN and IJA adopt long-range FW-190 derivatives as their "high-tech" fighter, while retaining the low-tech Oscars, Tojos and Zeroes in a complementary role. This is the basic radial engined FW-190 A/F/G, not the Dora or Ta-152. I can't see any real reason why Japan could not have done this in reality. The planes will all have a service rating of 2, and will be land-based only.

As a corollary, I think that I will likely remove the Jack, George, Sam, Shinden and Frank completely. The Ki-83 will be there though. I think I already said that no jet or rocket powered aircraft will feature for Japan.

To balance this potentially game changing aircraft, Allied airgroups will generally arrive much earlier so as to have numerical superiority from the start.

[Captain Cruft]

The IJA favours an ordnance delivery capacity and is prepared to sacrifice some air fighting capability to achieve it.

[Captain Cruft]

Whereas the IJN prefers a pure fighter.

[Saros]

Those Fw-190's are going to beat the snot out of everything US until the P-47/P-50/Corsair are available in numbers.

[Captain Cruft]

Those two later variants are not available at game start. The earlier ones are less uber and there will be very few of them on the map at the beginning. Production will have to be ramped up pretty much from nothing.

Also consider that, Ki-83 excepted, these are the best fighters that Japan will be flying in 1946.

[traskott]

I've tested Fw-190s and the more gamebreaker are their 4 20mm cannons. They kill 2E and 1E bombers by droves.