Kris has been on vacation and won’t be back until this weekend so I have had the turn for several days and I have been doing a lot of the time consuming things that have fallen by the wayside a bit. I’ve culled pilots, looked over various economic areas, and done in depth looks at each theater, area by area. It’s always nice to be able to do this every now and then.
There isn’t much to update since the last time. The current date is January 10th. As was expected Tarakan has fallen. It’s been a few days since I ran the turn file so that’s really the only important thing I remember happening.
I don’t want to say nothing is new! Great update! So, let’s go over some of the ship production because I feel like talking about it. I know I went over it in a general sense earlier but let’s post some details. I’ll focus on the naval yards this time. If I’m not too tired or under the influence I’ll cover merchant yard details too.
Earlier I remember saying that I was going to accelerate all CV’s as much as possible. I’ll take all the flight decks I can get. The picture shows tracker details for all the capital ships in production. As you can see we should have the last of our carriers completed by middle of 1943. What you don’t see in the picture is the CVE conversions that are available. In this mod there are 5 xAP’s that can convert to CVE’s in June 1942. All 5 are sitting in port waiting on June. The conversion takes a minimum of 240 days. Assuming no losses, which might actually occur with the very bloodless campaign so far, Japan will have a total of 13 CV’s, 12 CVL’s, and 9 CVE’s by middle of 1943. And that’s it for the rest of the war. We’ll have to be very careful with these precious ships. Once our expansion phase is done and we transition to defense it'll be much easier to care for them.
You can see the one BC that is available for construction is halted. I’ll likely never build it. I’d rather accelerate CV’s and build airplanes. Maybe it’s because I’m in the Air Force but I’d rather have the airpower.
For now the building CA/CL’s are halted. We will build them eventually. They’re on hold so the carriers can accelerate. In the beginning of March we’ll have Junyo and Hiyo (within 2 days of each other!) so we will be able to accelerate the remaining carriers and probably restart construction on a CL. I’m not sure because I haven’t done the math.
DD’s aren’t in the picture because there are so many of them and I don’t plan on halting or accelerating any of them. I’ll build them as they come.
Ok, so let’s go ahead and discuss merchant builds. I’m shutting down almost everything. I only plan to build the auxiliary types (AS, AV, AKE, etc), the TK/AO of course, patrol ships, and xAP’s. Where I’m really cutting back is the xAK types which makes sense because they are the majority of my production. I want to maximize heavy industry savings and versatility in my merchant fleet. To suit those ends we are sticking with what is already built and only building the Std-A, B, C, and D ships. As I decide is needed I will convert the Std series to TK’s. Ideally I'd like to have no ships sitting idle. If they’re sitting idle they’re a waste that could be airplanes (in the case of the BC over 2,000) on a kamikaze trip to an Allied fleet.
I suppose that will do for now. As always, thanks for reading and feel free to ask questions or comment. The best part of AAR’s is the discussion and learning that goes on. It only makes us all better players.
Joe
