Global War : a Japanese AAR

[yvesp]

And Kawalein should not be too difficult, even though a loss is certainly expected.
The weather is also expected to worsen in the next turns. Better hurry!

[yvesp]

The complex naval ballet has been done.

In addition to the planed invasions, the allies take the opportunity offered by the bad weather to try and corner the Japanese fleet: it is unsupplied n Ominato which is too far from a Japenese city, and it cannot act offensively this impulse.
A strong carrier task force coming from Brisbane has moved into the Japasese coast sea area, while the exit into the Japanese sea has been closed by another carrier task force coming from Port Arthur.

As a result, either the Japanese fleet sits low, hoping for the upcoming port attack to fail.
Or it sails to rebase in another port (but which one, in order to avoid said port attack ?), risking interception in the 0 box...

In the Marianna, the two US subs fail to intercept the Japanese convoy.
But in the China sea, the Japanese are not so lucky; and that sea area is the cornerstone: with the convoy gone, all the Japanese units outside Japan go OoS. Worse, due to the unsupplied state of the Japanese fleet (including all convoys), supply won't be reopened on the next impulse. This is a very bad event.

Note: the destruction took one minute to complete while the game was recomputing the supply status. This is much too long.

[yvesp]

The allies don't use their air units in such a bad weather and wait for a better opportunity.
The Russians are willing to attack in snow, to use their superiority in such weather.

However, they now sorely lack any fighter cover: they have but three fighters remaining on the west front, all of them poorly positionned. As a result, they lose a rather good bomber, but the Germans also lose a fighter.

[yvesp]

The remaining bomber does its job.

[yvesp]

Which opens the way to a fully successful attack south of Berlin.
As a result, the German army is cut in two, the southern army (~10 corps) being out of supply.
It is still a strength to recon with, but as long as it is not attacked it is harmless: it has no chance to reconnect to a supply source! It will surrender when Germany surrenders.

As important, Berlin is now almost fully surrounded, and with three adjacent hexes, the Russians are now in a good position to try and capture it. However, as it is a three stack factory city, the penalties are still heavy.

[yvesp]

In the pacific, Truk falls, but not without putting a serious fight with costs a marine div to the USA.
Kawalein will be harder, with twice as much defense!

And the allies must hurry up before the moonsoon settles in.

[yvesp]

The three next combats are unopposed; they are meant to pave the way for reinforcements in the Philippines, while the landing in Vietnam is of course focused on capturing Saigon.

[yvesp]

Phillipines

[yvesp]

And again Philippines

[yvesp]

Of course, coming back after more than 9 months, I have made some mistakes. One of these is that the Japanese, taking a naval move, could put their fleet again in supply before moving...

So the Japanese decide to break the siege around Omonato, going with all their carriers against the secondary US fleet made of support carriers.

Luck is with them! with 4 points of suprise, things could hardly be better!

[yvesp]

The air to air combat seems already finished: the Japanese advantage is huge.
More and better fighters, more and better bombers...

[yvesp]

However, things never go as expected!
The first two air rounds are dramatic for the Japanese, who lose their best fighter.

As a result, the air to air combat ends up with 4 US planes shot down and 3 Japanese planes shot down.

[yvesp]

The US AA is pathetic, and most bombers get through.

[yvesp]

However, the Japanese do hardly better. However, only two US bombers find their targets. The Japanese do a lot better!

[yvesp]

The US lose two carriers and a cruiser. But is that sufficient ?

[yvesp]

And when we see that the Japanese lose one of their own carrier, and not the worst, one has really to wonder if that really is a victory. Well, yes, it is. But how will that change the course of events ? The US are not even bleeding for the loss of two escort carriers!

[yvesp]

Ah!!!

New bug... It has been a long time...

The game just cannot find a US port to return to base.
That's so difficult! There is Port Arthur, one sea zone away...
And this locks me in an infinite loop. I'm supposed to be able to cancel the move by using Esc, or destroying the units by using Back; none works!

Ugh... tired with hitting bug after bug 2 years after the game release.

And because there is no automatic save from the naval combat beginning, I have to redo the whole thing!
After I finish this game, I think I'll wait another year before playing again...

[yvesp]

Going from bad to worse.

Replaying the naval combat, the game got stuck somewhere.

Due to the inappropriate choice of too many modal windows which impose their presence in front of any other window, I could not even reach the task explorer to kill the game: I had to reboot my computer. It is a problem that I had met before, but at that time I had more space and two screens, and could run around the stucking windows.

I'll do on more try, then if it fails, I'll just skip the whole combat as if it never had existed.

[yvesp]

Passed all the time since last post to replay the naval combat.
Had to finally kill the game again: I fell into the same infinite loop.

I have now understood why the game doesn't find any place to retreat: I erroneously selected the short range subs, and the whole cannot abort in the same port. Anyway, the interface should come back to the retreat panel (with an option to destroy some ships) rather than loop endlessly!

A lot of time is also lost for no reason: for exemple, when a carrier plane aborts, it takes more than 30s for it to land on its ship! This has no explanations whatsoever: there is not even any supply to check!

[yvesp]

[:D]

I thought there were subs.
But no.

Quitting on this naval combat!
I've spent more than 4h trying to do it, to no avail. [:-] The result is always the same.
And having nothing better to do, I counted the time pass: 140s just to pick up the naval units to return to base; 40s just to place the units in the chosen port. [>:][>:][>:][>:] All this while:
1) there are still units in the sea area (so no need to check supply)
2) there are units in the chosen port (again no need to check supply)

So, is that the time needed to compute the ports within return range ? [X(][X(] That would be even more ludicrous!
I just cannot fathom why on earth these simple moves take so long!


Anyway, giving up on that combat is likely more in favor of the Japanese than of the US. The planes loss is more significant than the carrier loss: for exemple, both the Japanese and the US have carriers waiting for a plane squadron (the US have at least 4 of them in St Francisco, each with rating 5...), and the Japanese lost almost as many planes as the US. Since they have less planes, the balance would tip in favor of the US. All hat for what ? The Japanese Coast holds no strategic value. The real Sea area to control is the North China Sea, but the Japanese naval forces cannot seriously reach it. It will have to rebase to Tokyo before. With again the strong risk of port attack.

I realize that saving the Japanese fleet by moving it to Ominato was a poor move; it placed it in a safer place than Tokyo, but also made it irrelevant to the real combat. The fact that both the USA and Commonwealth use supercombined and that they both can keep naval reserves prevents any serious Japanese interference. The invasions are done before they can react. All they could do is try and intercept the participating ships. The military result in such a case would be small, especially when the invasion are carried out by divs transported by one of the numerous cruiser. This is especially frustrating, having a still rather large navy and not beeing able to use it with effect!

As for cutting the allies supply, it would require a lot of luck, would put many ships in jeopardy, ready to be destroyed by the allies reactive forces, and in effect should not even be that effective: even if MWif doesn't implement it, supply should flow freely to Port Arthur by land! Cutting supply is the job of subs, but the whole Japanese sub fleet has been destroyed long ago...