Lambs to the slaughter (Lowpe (J) vs Jocke; BillBrown (A)) Finished

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

NJP is correct in that you need numbers. As a very rough rule of thumb, it isn't worth defending if you can't really punish that first wave of Jugs sweepers, and to do that you need near 200 planes at the kind of settings I use.

If you try to fight them with equal planes you will never do well & create hideously good Allied pilots.

To fight with the low CAP idea I read theElf, Lobaron, Alfred and PaxMondo a lot! I experimented a lot. In this game I have given Jocke two very bloody noses when he has tried to use Lightning sweeps...I feel very confident that in this game I will be able to standup to Allied fighters thru 1944.

FYI, I just traded positive with 20ish A6M8 on 80% CAP at 18K and 20ish A6M5c on 80% CAP at 13K. 2x21 Jug sweeps came in. I shot down 11 in the air, lost 9 in the air. You don't need 200 fighters to do it [:'(]. Only March 14, 1944, for me though.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

NJP is correct in that you need numbers. As a very rough rule of thumb, it isn't worth defending if you can't really punish that first wave of Jugs sweepers, and to do that you need near 200 planes at the kind of settings I use.

If you try to fight them with equal planes you will never do well & create hideously good Allied pilots.

To fight with the low CAP idea I read theElf, Lobaron, Alfred and PaxMondo a lot! I experimented a lot. In this game I have given Jocke two very bloody noses when he has tried to use Lightning sweeps...I feel very confident that in this game I will be able to standup to Allied fighters thru 1944.

FYI, I just traded positive with 20ish A6M8 on 80% CAP at 18K and 20ish A6M5c on 80% CAP at 13K. 2x21 Jug sweeps came in. I shot down 11 in the air, lost 9 in the air. You don't need 200 fighters to do it [:'(]. Only March 14, 1944, for me though.

OK, this is just plain evil!

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

I lost an empty tanker, 8k size, here yesterday to a Dutch Sub. I moved the Lilly squadron from here to bolster ASW search in the Straits of Malacca.

Pete's don't have the range.

PDU off poses a challenge in countering Allied subs. Plus,I haven't put enough attention on it, too.

Still have bases I am cleaning up. Very tedious.

I train up a lot of IJA pilots and any 2E bomber works well. My go to being old Sallys, which I'm sure are plentiful for you. Or Helen I after the II arrives. Lily works fine too.

Petes are always restricted to night search/recon for me with occasional spot CAP duties in a real pinch. Alf daytime search/ASW. Jakes just about anything, including low naval strikes, but obviously day search being their primary function. Daves also night search/recon, but no CAP.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

FYI, I just traded positive with 20ish A6M8 on 80% CAP at 18K and 20ish A6M5c on 80% CAP at 13K. 2x21 Jug sweeps came in. I shot down 11 in the air, lost 9 in the air. You don't need 200 fighters to do it [:'(]. Only March 14, 1944, for me though.

That is great! What was the weather, warning time, and what altitude were your planes scrambled to, range the jugs had to fly, and their initial sweeping altitude?

You did outnumber the initial sweep by roughly 2 to 1 which is very important, and you do need 200 planes when you add in two more sweeps and then want to have fighters remaining for several bomber waves.[;)]

I like your altitudes you picked for your fighters. The 8 above the 5 and the 5 set for bombers. What was the distribution of your fighter losses?

If you have a better mousetrap, I will definitely adopt it![&o]

[Lowpe]

Mid September 1942

Jocke comes out of his shell and sweeps in the Pacific Northwest. He changes sweeping tactics, using a very large LRCAP. There are three or four waves of sweepers and Jocke does progressively worse as the LRCAP is worn down.

[Lowpe]

I had noticed the lack of fighters in the Seattle area...and decided to hit the huge resource stockpile at Tacoma. No opposition, I picked up over 300 VP I believe, in what was one of the best bombing runs of the war.

Intel shows 110 points damaged, but the victory screen tells of more.[:)] I think I lost 2 bombers.

[Lowpe]

The butchers bill in the air.

Allies lose more fighters than Japan. Banzai! Plus I am fighting over my territory.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: obvert

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

I lost an empty tanker, 8k size, here yesterday to a Dutch Sub. I moved the Lilly squadron from here to bolster ASW search in the Straits of Malacca.

Pete's don't have the range.

PDU off poses a challenge in countering Allied subs. Plus,I haven't put enough attention on it, too.

Still have bases I am cleaning up. Very tedious.

I train up a lot of IJA pilots and any 2E bomber works well. My go to being old Sallys, which I'm sure are plentiful for you. Or Helen I after the II arrives. Lily works fine too.

Petes are always restricted to night search/recon for me with occasional spot CAP duties in a real pinch. Alf daytime search/ASW. Jakes just about anything, including low naval strikes, but obviously day search being their primary function. Daves also night search/recon, but no CAP.

Obvert, the problem is I need them bombing currently. PDU off. I have three active bombing fronts: PacNW, China, Burma. That is a lot!

I do have lots of Sonia's but I am using them bombing too! Most are hitting Sian with very good effect currently.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

FYI, I just traded positive with 20ish A6M8 on 80% CAP at 18K and 20ish A6M5c on 80% CAP at 13K. 2x21 Jug sweeps came in. I shot down 11 in the air, lost 9 in the air. You don't need 200 fighters to do it [:'(]. Only March 14, 1944, for me though.

That is great! What was the weather, warning time, and what altitude were your planes scrambled to, range the jugs had to fly, and their initial sweeping altitude?

You did outnumber the initial sweep by roughly 2 to 1 which is very important, and you do need 200 planes when you add in two more sweeps and then want to have fighters remaining for several bomber waves.[;)]

I like your altitudes you picked for your fighters. The 8 above the 5 and the 5 set for bombers. What was the distribution of your fighter losses?

If you have a better mousetrap, I will definitely adopt it![&o]

I'll check and get back to you. The Jugs were flying from Rabaul to Manus, which is well within their normal range (especially with DTs). They were at 42000, of course.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

FYI, I just traded positive with 20ish A6M8 on 80% CAP at 18K and 20ish A6M5c on 80% CAP at 13K. 2x21 Jug sweeps came in. I shot down 11 in the air, lost 9 in the air. You don't need 200 fighters to do it [:'(]. Only March 14, 1944, for me though.

That is great! What was the weather, warning time, and what altitude were your planes scrambled to, range the jugs had to fly, and their initial sweeping altitude?

You did outnumber the initial sweep by roughly 2 to 1 which is very important, and you do need 200 planes when you add in two more sweeps and then want to have fighters remaining for several bomber waves.[;)]

I like your altitudes you picked for your fighters. The 8 above the 5 and the 5 set for bombers. What was the distribution of your fighter losses?

If you have a better mousetrap, I will definitely adopt it![&o]

I'll check and get back to you. The Jugs were flying from Rabaul to Manus, which is well within their normal range (especially with DTs). They were at 42000, of course.

Found the settings. I set my CAP more to protect against raids than against sweeps, most of the time, but it all depends on what my opponents are doing and what their patterns are, plus if I have a hunch if they'll change something up due to challenges encountered.

63 Air skill for each leader. The groups are actually a split group that happen to be flying different models. A6M5c average XP was 74, and for the A6M8 it was 76.

16x A6M5c at 70% CAP at 6000 [:'(]

23x A6M8 at 70% CAP at 18000

According to Tracker, losses were 9+3 P-47s (A2A+Ops), while mine were 5+0 A6M8 and 3+1 A6M5c. I don't know his pilot quality. Our game is actually on the quiet side in the air, at least on my side, with only 10.6K IJA losses and almost 9.8K Allied losses (compared to my high air tempo game which is ~23K IJA to ~11K Allies only 3 months beyond this date).

[Lowpe]

Jocke gave me one of his 10 minute turns...ouch. Nothing happened.

I am stressing Japan to the limit here. I have almost every cargo ship over 3000 tons or bigger working!!!! Not to mention I have continued to build merchant ships since day 1 of my takeover. I have tried to offset the fuel drain by having almost all warships in port.

All this in preparation of the west coast invasion.

Over 150 xaks have been converted to carry troops.

A huge slug of warships are in port getting upgrades. Some carriers at Tokyo; Kobe, Singers, Hiroshima have cruisers and destroyers.

[Lowpe]

Once again, my plans don't quite come to fruition, but a nice day with promise for tomorrow. The area is amazingly devoid of Allied submarines.[:)]

TF Chikuma (Chikuma, Maya, 3 Yugumo class DD) raid south to foil the Allied shipping in the area. Worried about air strikes, they are covered by Rufes flying from Aoba and Zeroes from the Junyo and Shoho TF.

TF Junyo (Junyo, Shoho, CS, BB, DDs) will stay to the north and primarily provide air protection but also 7 hex strike capability if Allies react to TF Chikuma.


Racing in overnight the TF Chikuma misses, but during the morning we are rewarded with this strike on APDs...not great, but there is always the afternoon.

[Lowpe]

A little better raid during the afternoon scores a much bigger ship...

[Lowpe]

A very nice ship indeed!

[Lowpe]

Hopes for tomorrow...

[Lowpe]

Another Chinese rout.[:)]

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Lowpe




That is great! What was the weather, warning time, and what altitude were your planes scrambled to, range the jugs had to fly, and their initial sweeping altitude?

You did outnumber the initial sweep by roughly 2 to 1 which is very important, and you do need 200 planes when you add in two more sweeps and then want to have fighters remaining for several bomber waves.[;)]

I like your altitudes you picked for your fighters. The 8 above the 5 and the 5 set for bombers. What was the distribution of your fighter losses?

If you have a better mousetrap, I will definitely adopt it![&o]

I'll check and get back to you. The Jugs were flying from Rabaul to Manus, which is well within their normal range (especially with DTs). They were at 42000, of course.

Found the settings. I set my CAP more to protect against raids than against sweeps, most of the time, but it all depends on what my opponents are doing and what their patterns are, plus if I have a hunch if they'll change something up due to challenges encountered.

63 Air skill for each leader. The groups are actually a split group that happen to be flying different models. A6M5c average XP was 74, and for the A6M8 it was 76.

16x A6M5c at 70% CAP at 6000 [:'(]

23x A6M8 at 70% CAP at 18000

According to Tracker, losses were 9+3 P-47s (A2A+Ops), while mine were 5+0 A6M8 and 3+1 A6M5c. I don't know his pilot quality. Our game is actually on the quiet side in the air, at least on my side, with only 10.6K IJA losses and almost 9.8K Allied losses (compared to my high air tempo game which is ~23K IJA to ~11K Allies only 3 months beyond this date).

Very interesting, & I will say no more![:D]

[Lowpe]

Another r&d milestone today...moved all factories to the Tojo IIc; IIb starts production on 10/1/42 in time to upgrade all squadrons to IIb for the west coast invasion.

Once the IIc comes it will stay in production for the entire game and will make a wonderful defensive fighter thru 44. However, any IIc squadron that can upgrade to the Frank will do so![;)]

When the IIc arrives, those r&d facilities are set to change tooling for the Sam most likely.

[tiemanjw]

A quick note about sweeps from an AFB perspective (sorry, I know I'm a bit late - just getting caught up).
If you are referring to our game at all, most of my sweeps are between 15k-25k. Strato sweeps may require different settings.
And the reason I do this is because it seemed like my strato sweeps were getting beat up. I tried lower sweeps and seemed to have more success. I ran some tests that strongly suggest this isn't a fluke or imagination. I can post the details if anyone is interested.
Now I'll go work on my turn [:)]

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: tiemanj

A quick note about sweeps from an AFB perspective (sorry, I know I'm a bit late - just getting caught up).
If you are referring to our game at all, most of my sweeps are between 15k-25k. Strato sweeps may require different settings.
And the reason I do this is because it seemed like my strato sweeps were getting beat up. I tried lower sweeps and seemed to have more success. I ran some tests that strongly suggest this isn't a fluke or imagination. I can post the details if anyone is interested.
Now I'll go work on my turn [:)]

I'm doing some tests in a late war situation, where speed differentials are greater. I'll post these soon too.

One factor in all of this has nothing to do with the planes or altitudes, and that is radar/detection. If raids are detected earlier, planes will not be in the band you set them in, but they'll be adjusting to the incoming strikes. Japanese planes tend to have a better climb rate, on average, than Allied. So setting low doesn't men they stay low, and testing strato sweeps with and without decent radar at the base could provide very different results.

Just so I base my tests on useful situations, here is a list of factors I think I'd want to be aware of, and please let me know if I'm neglecting something;

[font="Trebuchet MS"]altitude settings (putting airframes within their better maneuver bands for CAP, sweepers higher than CAP to get dive)
%CAP setting (at zero hex distance, noticing how many actually take part in combat vs those set to active CAP)
layering of CAP (or not)(keeping 3-5k between layers of CAP)
radar (for Japanese make sure to have multiple sets per base)

weather (noticing what effect weather has on tests)
distance to target (keeping in normal range for tests)

airframe(s) sweeping (choose fast with good armament for high sweeps, maneuverable and durable for lower sweeps)
airframe(s) defending (choose fast with good armament for high CAP, maneuverable and durable for lower CAP)

airframe fatigue (make sure it's consistently low)
numbers of planes for each side (how much numbers matter)

pilot fatigue/morale (low and consistent between tests)
pilot quality (aiming for equal between sides and consistent between tests of different airframes/situations)

air group leaders (high leadership, inspiration, air, aggressiveness)

HQ present in defending base with good leader (high air)
[/font]