General Patton vs. larryfulkerson Focus Pacific #75

[larryfulkerson]

Brian has produced a modification of the Focus Pacific scenario #71 that he's calling scenario #75 and we need to playtest it to
see what kind of bugs are in it yet, if any. Brian wants me to be the Japs again for this game and he has some specific house
rules he wants us to use. These are they:

[larryfulkerson]

It's been my experience with this scenario that the points for Armaments is perfectly fine if you turn off the production of the
Armaments for a while and let the pools drain a bit. Plus, the Vehicle points take a nose-dive right after turn 1. So I've
converted the two largest Armaments factories into Vehicles to help take up the slack in vehicles production.

[larryfulkerson]

In previous games the RES level at Tokyo dropped fairly fast and I had to turn off the HI at Tokyo for lack of RES
and I'm anticipating that happening again but it's still T1 and there's a 10-day supply of RES there right now so
I've decided to watch it and adjust if necessary later.

[larryfulkerson]

I saw in the previous image that the NAV and MER shipping points are zero and I went to turn off the shipbuilding and
I see that there's no button on the dialog to get to the ships yet. I'll have to remember to do that in some future turn.
It's either turn up the production of those two categories or cut back on the shipbuilding and I don't think I can afford
the RES right now to continue the shipbuilding for a while.

[BillBrown]

Don't worry about your starting pools for Naval Ship Building and Merchant ship building being at 0. That is normal.

[larryfulkerson]

Don't worry about your starting pools for Naval Ship Building and Merchant ship building being at 0. That is normal.

Just a quirk of the game engine?

I'm going through the cities turning on the autoconvoy and stockpiling and adjusting the requested supplies and I've found
Sadogashima that has natural resources on the island but there's no garrison. I feel funny about there being a naked hex
so close to the enemy. They are Soviets and they are active and I'm thinking it wouldn't take much effort to stage an invasion
across the channel. I've got to place some mines there at the very least but I'd rather move an infantry unit in there and maybe
some engineers to expand the port. I'm finding all kinds of places that have their own story like this. Special situations galore.

[BillBrown]

Why are you turning stockpiling on? That is a sure path to destruction and disaster. You do need to increase the supply requirements on those bases that need factory repairs, but just a little bit to get over 10K at the base. That is all you need to do.

[Peever]

I'm not sure what Russia has to gain by capturing Sadogashima so early in the war. You can attack their ships going to the island easily and constantly bombard from air and sea it even if they did take it. It's not like they're going to use it as a springboard onto Honshu in December of 1941.

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: Peever

I'm not sure what Russia has to gain by capturing Sadogashima so early in the war. You can attack their ships going to the island easily and constantly bombard from air and sea it even if they did take it. It's not like they're going to use it as a springboard onto Honshu in December of 1941.

This. The Soviet Union's amphibious capabilities might as well be non-existent until 1943, and they have no ability to provide air cover that far out in the Sea of Japan. Your Betties/Nells/Vals/Kates would sink the amphib TF and that would be that.

[larryfulkerson]

Why are you turning stockpiling on? That is a sure path to destruction and disaster. You do need to increase the supply requirements on those bases that need factory repairs, but just a little bit to get over 10K at the base. That is all you need to do.

I'm in a hurry to get the supply levels up over double the need and I realize that turning on stockpiling means I'll have to watch it to
turn it off when appropriate. Leaving it on will surely lead to death, destruction, and disaster.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm not sure what Russia has to gain by capturing Sadogashima so early in the war. You can attack their ships going to the island easily and constantly bombard from air and sea it even if they did take it. It's not like they're going to use it as a springboard onto Honshu in December of 1941.

Thanks for your insight and everything but I wasn't planning on doing anything major to
Sadogashima, I just feel "funny" about having a naked base with resources and factories so close to an active enemy. That's all.

[BillBrown]

I'm curious, why do you think you need to turn on stockpiling to get supply to where you need it?
Setting the supply demand to 4,000 will move 12,000 supply to that base.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: BillBrown
I'm curious, why do you think you need to turn on stockpiling to get supply to where you need it?
Setting the supply demand to 4,000 will move 12,000 supply to that base.

I thought turning on stockpiling for supplies prevents supplies from leaving the hex. Therefore it will probably
tend to grow in supply level a tiny bit faster. And setting the supply need to exactly 4,000 is over my head.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's something strange I've found just now. There's two Nell squadron's at Saigon that were set to night Naval missions at 23K+
feet in altitude. That's a bit high for a naval mission and I question the advisability of flying them at night. So I changed them to
day missions at 5K feet instead. I'm obviously hoping for some fighter protection around the Singapore area so I've turned on the
drop tanks for the Zero's in the AO. I'm only halfway through the list of squadrons and I've been working on it about two hours now.
Many things have to be changed and it's more tedious than tricky to practice my unit management skills.

[larryfulkerson]

I found a training squadron that didn't have enough students in it. There's about two dozen TRACOM pilots and so I really wanted to
stuff it with enough students to reach about 4 students per plane but the most I can draw into the group is 144 pilots. That's good
enough for about 3 pilots per plane. I'm thinking that's about right given the number of instructors of high quality. I've used the same
strategy on the other two training squadrons. I'm trying to accellerate the training taking place.

[larryfulkerson]

I've been working all day almost, on my first turn moves for Brian and I've only just now gotten around to doing something with
the ships. From my prior experience with this scenario there's a decided lack of certain types of ships so I thought I'd do a
save game to update the file and then use the file with Tracker to find the conversions from type to type and changed a few
ships. Some PB's and some AS's and some AKE's to bolster the fleet. As I recall the scenario only came with one AS ship
in the entire fleet at start and very few AKE's and not enough PB's to suit me. I want a PB at every port if possible. At least
the important ones.

[larryfulkerson]

I was interested to find a lot of the scheduled invasions were the same ones as found in stock. I had to adjust about 4 of them. One
was a TF headed from Cam Rahn Bay to Manado and I don't want to do that yet. So I directed it to Jolo instead. Another one at
CRB was a TF to go to Ternate and I don't want to do that one yet either so I sent it to Kushing on the north coast of Borneo. The other
two of them were airfield troops headed for Truk and I think Truk is just fine the way it is and redirected them both to Kavieng.

EDIT: I just now noticed that nobody is going to Davao and it would be nice if somebody did. And soon.

[larryfulkerson]

I found three divisions ready for transport at Osaka including the 98th division that I have loading on
ships now for the trip to Miri. I hope to have in Miri my hands before this TF will arrive but if not
this is reinforcements. If Miri does fall before this TF gets there I'll go to Kuantan or Mersing with it
instead. Unless something spectacular happens between now and then. Maybe it should go to
Lingayen instead. Or Singkawang. Oooooouuu I like the sound of that one. Singkawang, right across
the bay from Singapore. If I could get a hold of that airfield and stock it up with some Nells and some
fighters, maybe a Betty or two and an HQ for torpedoes I could almost put a stop to Allied naval traffic
through that area.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm still in the process of doing my first turn moves and right now I'm assigning singleton ships to TF's and giving them a mission,
something to do, somewhere to go etc. I've run into an APD that I want to use it's guns on Guam, said guns being able to
reach out 18K yards and now I'm wondering what the range of the guns at Guam are. I'm thinking it's gamey to start up a test
game where I can check out the range of the guns now that FP has changed things so the next best thing is the range of the
guns in the stock version. I'm thinking it's possible that it might be the same and I just happen to have an anti-AI game already
in progress and in that stock version of the game there's no guns at Guam. None. Just an engineer unit. But my FOW intell
officer says there's 5 guns there now and I don't know if he's guessing or maybe there really is some guns there now.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm still getting my TF's together and getting troops loaded on ships and I've found myself tinkering just now. I thought I'd take a
look at the pilot replacements in the pools and I found something I don't remember seeing in the stock version. There's a lot of
TRACOM-qualified bomber pilots in the reserve. I've already stripped about half a dozen squadrons for their TRACOM qualified
pilots ( as you can see they are in the reserve ) and I have sent 397 of the pilots to TRACOM, I think maybe that's enough.