General Patton vs. larryfulkerson Focus Pacific #75

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the Singapore area now. I've bombarded Singapore by air for a couple of weeks now and all the Allied aircraft are gone and
now I'm softening up the Allied ground staff. I'm dreading moving my troops across the river into the city hex. It's going to cause my
troops to do a shock attack upon entering the hex and that usually ends badly for my troops. I'm thinking of gathering up everybody
and moving them all at once. Maybe that's what will help.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the Rangoon area now. I've made some progress toward Calcutta and now the Allies and I are arguing over Magwe. I think
I need it and Brian thinks he needs it more and we're in serious negotiations. I need to bring up some more AF people closer to
Magwe and move some planes in there. A squadron of Zero's for top cover and some Betty's to pound the bases and Allied troops
in that area. I don't have a ground plan at the moment. I was thinking of just heading toward Calcutta and see what happens.

[ny59giants]

Singapore - You should both the 25th Army and Southern Command HQs both near 100% prepped for here by now. I would have them at Johore Bahru. Have you recombined all your divisions - 5th, 18th, (maybe 55th and 56th)? Order the 25th Army HQ to march across and have everybody else (ID, artillery, engineers) ordered to follow her. No non-divisions in initial crossing as they tend to get beaten up badly. [:-]

Pairing - In RA, BTS, and BTS Lite I made more Command HQs mobile (hopefully you have similar set up in FP). I would pair one of them with an Corp or Army HQ and prep them for your major bases to be assaulted. You should have another pair for Bataan or Manila. "IF" both HQs pass their die rolls, you get the addition 90% adjusted AV prep bonus from the Command HQ. Very nice!! [&o]

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the China theater now. I've stripped a bunch of troops from this area to invade the PI, etc. and there's not a lot left over to
garrison the bases and do some overrunning of Allied troops. There's about three or four spots where there's fighting going on
but except for some early-er successes for Brian, the front lines are relatively stable. I'm aiming for Changsha as my next goal
because I think maybe I can stop up the Allied flow of supply a little by grabbing that objective. Plus it will put me in a good
position to take further objectives. I don't really have a ground plan and I'm really just grabbing RES centers and OIL centers.
I invaded K-town from the NW land side and after a short fight the base was mine. That got rid of the pesky Allied fighters that
would sortie from there.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Singapore - You should both the 25th Army and Southern Command HQs both near 100% prepped for here by now. I would have them at Johore Bahru. Have you recombined all your divisions - 5th, 18th, (maybe 55th and 56th)? Order the 25th Army HQ to march across and have everybody else (ID, artillery, engineers) ordered to follow her. No non-divisions in initial crossing as they tend to get beaten up badly.

I've gathered a lot of troops at Johore Bahru and I'm combining the divisions back together as we speak. I don't know where the
HQ's are that you mentioned but I'll get right on it and move them both into the area.

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Pairing - In RA, BTS, and BTS Lite I made more Command HQs mobile (hopefully you have similar set up in FP). I would pair one of them with an Corp or Army HQ and prep them for your major bases to be assaulted. You should have another pair for Bataan or Manila. "IF" both HQs pass their die rolls, you get the addition 90% adjusted AV prep bonus from the Command HQ. Very nice!!

Thanks for the heads up.......I'll see if I can't put that procedure in motion. You old hands know all the tricks and traps.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on with the Armaments and Vehicles categories. I haven't stabilized the production rate of those two guys yet and
I need to so I can quit monitoring it all the time. I'm aiming for about 1K in each pool. Maybe I should hold 'em at 5K instead. Anybody
got an opinion?

[larryfulkerson]

I've got only 4 Betty's in the pools so I need to bump up production of those bad boys so the squadrons don't
start decreasing in the number of planes ready to fly. I'm using my Betty's all over the map and there's been
a few losses for that model. I've ended production of the Sonia and Ann and Helen and I'm going to
concentrate on Nell's and Betty's. I've turned down the production of Claudes and Nates and boosted the
production of the Zero to about twice what it was before. And the Ha-35 has plenty of engines in the pool
so I'm not anticipating any production problems. I had to turn on the stockpiling of supplies in several cities
in the home islands to get the supply level to extend past the required 10K of supplies for the repairs to
happen on the factories.

Brian has been getting in some good hits with his carriers and I'm losing warships way faster than I wanted
to. I guess nobody wants to lose ships but I'm not sure I can afford to even trade ships with Brian. I'm not
building all that many of any type and I was hoping to concentrate on building the AK's.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's all the ships that have been sunk in February and keep in mind that the month isn't over yet. I sent a bunch of AK's to
Nauru without cover and without substantial escorts and they were ambushed by Brian's carriers. That taught me to put some
forces out there for protection. I'm learning.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the state of my LCU's squad pool count. They are remarkably low in my estimation. And there's no way to turn the
production up on these bad boys. I guess I need to start losing less on the ground. I've been driving my troops pretty
hard and they haven't had any rest for quite a while. Except for those troops just north of Singapore. They have been
waiting for about a week now for the rest of the troops to show up so the assaults can begin.

[larryfulkerson]

So far the Rangoon oil refinery is the only facility failing right now. Everybody else is humming right along. There's no way to funnel
more oil toward the Rangoon refinery so the only thing I can do is turn on the stockpilling of oil and hope for the best.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's all my night missions. As you can see I'm concentrating on defeating the enemy airfields as a first step. Clark Field is relatively
clear of Allied planes but Bataan has about 80 Allied fighters still and I need to clear them out so the ground pounding can begin.
Those troops need to be softened up before some serious assaults can be launched. Else we'll have high losses.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what my Zero's are doing right now. Lots of training going on. I have several squadrons that have some of the more
experienced pilots in them. I'm trying to get all the squadrons trained and ready and I think maybe I'm doing okie dokie.
I've moved a lot of the TRACOM-qualified pilots into TRACOM and I'm looking for an accelleration of the training classes. I've
got a squadron or two that have only a few planes in them so I've been moving them to the home islands and turning them
into a training squadron. Some training is better than none at all.

One of the problems I'm running into is that the devestated squadrons aren't filling back up with planes very fast. I'm moving
them to large well-supplied airfields and still the planes are arriving in dribs and drabs. Maybe there's no more planes in the
pool. I'll have to look into that.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what my daytime Betty's are doing right now. I'm trying to train up the relative newcomers and move them out into the field
to fight. Most of the Betty's are on night missions I'm guessing. I don't think I have enough Betty squadrons. I'll have to change the
upgrade path of some of the squadrons so as to make more. Also, I'm trying to move the more experienced pilots into the service
planes that are combat active and the others into training squadrons. I'm concentrating on land combat missions but there is an
occasional naval mission or two in the mix. I'd like to train up at least one squadron that's deadly for enemy ships. Maybe several
would be better. I need some of those deadly anti-naval planes out near Kwajilene and Tarawa.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the planes I'm building right now. I switched a Nate Squadron to Zero's and an Ann squadron to Betty's and bumped up the
production of each by enough to make a round number of factories, the next nearest round number. I like round numbers because
they are easier to estimate than other numbers. I'm debating with myself as to whether or not to turn off the production of Nate's and
the Thalia's. I'm going to need SOME transports I guess so I'll take a look for a good model and concentrate on that type. I favor the
longer range transports especially.

EDIT: I changed the production of Thalia's to the MC-21 Sally and bumped it up to 10 planes a day.

[larryfulkerson]

I've built a todo list using HTML and I'm using it to remind me what I need to do yet and what I've done already. Keeps me on
track and focused. Pictures explain a lot that words won't so I use them too.

[larryfulkerson]

I made a mistake and let a daytime bombing mission go to Palembang and it got slaughtered as the escort couldn't fly that far.
Night missions to reduce the airfield are indicated.

[larryfulkerson]

I tried an attack at Clark Field and I must say I'm almost happy about it. I lost more troops than he did but I did cut down on the
number of Allied guns and AFV's. I think I'll do it again.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Singapore - You should both the 25th Army and Southern Command HQs both near 100% prepped for here by now. I would have them at Johore Bahru.

I've got the 25th Army HQ headed for Johore Bahru and it's arriving there soon and the Southern Command HQ was moved to
Cam Ranh Bay and is ready for loading and transit to Mersing. Probably take a week to it to Johore Bahru. I forgot to start them
prepping for Singapore.

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Have you recombined all your divisions - 5th, 18th, (maybe 55th and 56th)?

Thanks for the heads up on this topic. I've been investigating most of my larger stacks and have found at least two divisions that
could be rebuilt without any effort on my part. Several others have pieces of them scattered on other bases and need to be moved
in order to rebuild the division and it's going to take time and some effort to rebuild them but it's doable. I've got high hopes that
what is at Clark Field already can handle that mission because I'm running into troops needs elsewhere and can't spare any more
divisions there. There's about a dozen divisions or division equivalents there already and I've been doing direct assaults for the
last few days now and he's losing people almost as fast as I am. But Clark Field is down to it's last fort and once that's gone I think
progress will accellerate.

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Order the 25th Army HQ to march across and have everybody else (ID, artillery, engineers) ordered to follow her. No non-divisions in initial crossing as they tend to get beaten up badly. [:-]

Thanks for spelling out for me what the procedure is about crossing the river into the Singapore hex. I dread doing that because of
the obligatory shock attack on the far side of the crossing. Most of the time I don't send enough people and those that DO cross the
river are decimated in the shock attack.

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Pairing - In RA, BTS, and BTS Lite I made more Command HQs mobile (hopefully you have similar set up in FP). I would pair one of them with an Corp or Army HQ and prep them for your major bases to be assaulted. You should have another pair for Bataan or Manila. "IF" both HQs pass their die rolls, you get the addition 90% adjusted AV prep bonus from the Command HQ. Very nice!!

I have a LOT of mobile command HQ's. This is a really good idea. Thanks.

[larryfulkerson]

I think I may have found the sweet spot in my logistics chain. The level of RES is finally increasing in the home islands and the amount
of RES arriving in the home islands is finally enough and then some. This means that I can spare a couple of AK's for moving troops.
Or supplies to the field. Or fuel for Truk. The problem is that this is only temporary because Brian has been sinking several of my AK's
per day and I'm rapidly running low on AK's. I have the Merch shipyards cranking out AK's but they aren't arriving fast enough to
replace the losses. I've got one division prepping for Palembang and I'm debating how many DMS's to put in the invasion TF because
I'm pretty sure Brian has been laying mines either in Palembang itself or in the river entrance hex. I'm certainly going to lose some
ships to mines in the invasion I'm thinking. But there's no easy way around it. I suppose I could sweep the river entrance first to make
sure it's clean but I hesitate to drive them into the Palembang hex because of the potential presence of Allied ships and or CD guns.
There's a lot more bombardment needed yet and some better recon.

[BillBrown]

Tracker would be more helpful if you would import a good region file.