General Patton vs. larryfulkerson Focus Pacific #75

[larryfulkerson]

A lot of those damaged ships are coming from the new landings at Kushing and Kuantan and a surface group that strayed too near
Singapore and got itself hurt. My Oscars and Zeros at Patani and Singora are set to sweeps and not escort. D'oh. I'll fix that. The
good news is that the airfield at Kota Bharu is repaired already and ready to receive all kinds of bombers and fighters up to about
400+ planes. I'm going to try to really stock that airfield because it's close to things I'm bombing and it's a great place for my fighters
to do LRCAP and ground strikes at the various targets in the backfield still. Allied units on the move to strike.

I'm going to have to subdue the Allied air power substantially before the Mersing area will be safe enough to invade without air cover.
Although, once Kota B. gets itself stocked with fighters that problem might just disappear. This is the 20th of Dec and I feel like I'm
falling behind in the schedule already. Maybe I'm trying to hard and expecting too much.

[larryfulkerson]

The image on the left is the resource history for Tokyo the city and the right image is for the home islands themselves I guess. You
can see the story from the numbers. The RES doesn't seem to be flowing from the outlaying cities to Tokyo where it's needed. I've
checked the stockpiling switches and we're all good on the home islands. I'm just not shipping enough in I guess. I'll look into the
shipping going on.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the shipping going on with the CS convoys. Most of the shipping of RES happens with a CS TF and you can see that not
enough transports are carrying RES to the home islands. I need to slow down the invasions and use those AK's to move more
RES.

[larryfulkerson]

I received an email from Brian......he says he's still on vacation and his moves will arrive in a "spotty"
manor. I have received one set of moves from him while he's been on his vacation and I really
expect another set of moves any minute now. I expect him to be back on-line sometime after the
18th of July which is this coming monday. So stay tuned.

Edit: I got some moves from Brian and watched the combat replay and now I'm checking out the situation
using Tracker and I see how Tokyo has received a large shipment of RES and now it's got over a Meg of
RES. We seem to have turned a corner and things are going to be okay hereafter I'm guessing.

[Yaab]

Those big pushes of resources/supplies should happen at least once a week.

[larryfulkerson]

Those big pushes of resources/supplies should happen at least once a week.

I hope so. I started out my logistical system running RES shipments to Tokyo and I have since
learned to let the supply system move the RES over to where it's needed on the home islands
and I'm having better results. I really appreciate all the help you guys are lending. And your
good advice, etc. I'm learning.

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

Those big pushes of resources/supplies should happen at least once a week.

I hope so. I started out my logistical system running RES shipments to Tokyo and I have since
learned to let the supply system move the RES over to where it's needed on the home islands
and I'm having better results. I really appreciate all the help you guys are lending. And your
good advice, etc. I'm learning.

Playing Japan as a relatively new player in a grand campaign PBEM game is not an easy feat. You're doing great!

[larryfulkerson]

Hong Kong fell and there's been more landings on the north coast of Borneo and I'm taking oil out of Miri and Brunei and I'm moving
RES from Truk to Tokyo and from Cam Ranh Bay to the Pescadores and thence to the home islands. All is going smoothly so far and
I've built up a reserve of 17 days worth of RES in the home islands. All the levels are falling of course but not all that fast. I think we've
got a "go" for another three weeks at least.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the victory point ratio. I'm thinking the trend is for Japan to gain points and for the US to gain
points more slowly than the Japs and so far so good.

[larryfulkerson]

I've been making amphibious landings like there's no tomorrow and it's starting to show up in the number of damaged ships. Lots of
sunk ones too. This is just some of the damaged ships. There's a lot in the ship yards already getting fixed. Probably a simular number
to the damaged ones showing in the image. So a significant portion of the fleet is down for maint.

[larryfulkerson]

I sailed into a warped reality distortion zone that had an operating Dutch sub and one of my carriers took a torpedo in it's side. I'm
afraid that the flooding damage has the decks awash already so it's probably going to go down and take some good planes with it.
I've turned on the use of the drop tanks for the Zero's just in case they get a chance to fly off the carrier at some point in the future,
I tried to fly the Zero's and Kates off but there's a fire going on and they won't launch.

[witpqs]

A single hit - that was one rockin' torpedo! Sorry to say it looks like major danger for Zuiho.

[larryfulkerson]

The Admiral Lutzow ran into an Allied TF passing through the narrows near Osthaven and got roughed up a bit. But it got some good
shots off and damaged some of the Allied ships pretty good. I'm thinking it's still going to be able to make it to Cam Ranh Bay
eventually.

[Bif1961]

Since you have no fires listed for the CB Lutzow, chances are they are not the type which would cause her loss. Good thing there were no torpedo hits. Now about your carrier, 98% flood means she is a goner because Japanese damage control is not very capable. For fly off any aircraft once you get over 30% in most cases the list is too much to allow flight operations.

[paradigmblue]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

I sailed into a warped reality distortion zone that had an operating Dutch sub and one of my carriers took a torpedo in it's side. I'm
afraid that the flooding damage has the decks awash already so it's probably going to go down and take some good planes with it.
I've turned on the use of the drop tanks for the Zero's just in case they get a chance to fly off the carrier at some point in the future,
I tried to fly the Zero's and Kates off but there's a fire going on and they won't launch.

Transfer those crack pilots out of those squadrons before the carrier goes down in case the fire is still going and the whole squadron is lost.

[larryfulkerson]

Transfer those crack pilots out of those squadrons before the carrier goes down in case the fire is still going and the whole squadron is lost.

I think that's a great idea. I hadn't thought of that. That's why I lose at this game.

[larryfulkerson]

I've built up a reserve of 17 days worth of RES in the home islands. All the levels are falling of course but not all that fast. I think we've got a "go" for another three weeks at least.

Brian read Peever's report of the Jap economy and has decided that the Japs need more RES from the start of the scenario so
he's going to make some changes and we're going to do a restart. I'll just continue this thread with the new game. Stay tuned.

[larryfulkerson]

I just sent my first turn moves as the Japs to Brian and since it's HIS first turn as well I don't expect a quick turnaround this time. Here's
a list of the scheduled invasions and a list of the places where troops are being loaded on ships for a turn 2 launch. I've got a lot of
night missions doing airfield attacks on the east coast of Malaya and especially on Singapore and the same treatment for Hong Kong.
Several of the invasion landing sites were not nominal so I re-routed them to better sites. Some of the TF's scheduled to land at
Lengayen I routed to Vigan instead. Why break in a new landing site when you have a perfectly good one next door? Some of the
Hong Kong attackers are still low on supplies so only a few of them were ready to move into the Hong Kong hex. I hope the Allies don't
attack them just because they can. I debated whether or not to land some troops at Mersing to catch a lot of Allied troops too far north
to help Singapore very much. But this mod has a lot of Allied fighters and bombers at Singapore and I've seen firsthand how easily
ships can be sunk by anti-ship bombing. I think I need to neutralize the airfield at Singapore before I can land anybody at Mersing.

EDIT: I guess I should explain that *THIS* game is Brian's mod of FP that he's calling scenario #75 with the Soviets active from the
start.

[larryfulkerson]

I noticed that I'm starting the game with no shipbuilding points in the pools so I was going to go to the shipbuilding dialog and turn off
a lot of the ships in the pipeline and I found no button available to get me to that dialog. I guess it's only available turn two and
subsequent. Which is a tiny irritation and not a full-fledged crisis. It's important to check out ALL the airplane missions assigned
because I found two separate missions that were flying Naval missions at the highest altitude they were capable of flying; some 23K
feet up there. I fixed it of course. Oh. I just now remembered I was supposed to check all the subs to make sure none were computer
controlled. House rule against computer controlled subs you see. I'll check 'em next turn for sure.

I didn't want to start a shooting war in Russia just yet, prefering to tackle the Chinese and Russians by turns. Therefore being able to
use almost all my mainland troops on one enemy at a time. I'm deciding ahead of time that China is a tiny bit more important to grab
than Russia is in the early game period so I'm going to grapple with China first. So I had about a dozen missions scheduled for Soviet
targets that I had to cancel and / or modify. I think I left the fighters on Escort and the Bombers on Training. I'm hoping that Brian
doesn't start up a hot war on his own initiative so I'm not going to move EVERYBODY to the west. Just maybe the strategic reserve
troops.

[larryfulkerson]

I find it easier to survey the fighters separately from the bombers so I called up a list of the fighters and found that I have some
'b' model Oscars in the pool but I'm not making any anymore and wondered why not and I found out that it's probably because
I'm already building a 'c' model that's a better plane. I need to convert the 'b' model factories to some other model
of plane, probably Zero's. I'm going to concentrate on Zero's and Betty's for this game. With maybe some Nell's in the mix.