General Patton vs. larryfulkerson Focus Pacific #75

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the ship production page. I've halted the building of just about everything except for those ships due in a few days time. As the
ship graduates the cost to build it ceases and those points can then be put to a different ship. I can boost the shipyards if you think
it'll help.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the raw figures for ship production. Changing some of these values shouldn't prove to be hard at all.

[SqzMyLemon]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

For a while there Brian and I were doing about 3 turns per day and lately it's slipped to more like 2.5 or so because I've had to
micro-manage the path of my TF's around the Jap home islands because of the Allied subs. I'm using waypoints to stear around
the subs but they move every once in a while so my pathing has to change to compensate. I'm trying not to get the TF adjacent
to the sub because that's the reaction range of a sub. So far so good.

Why are you doing this? Do you realize how much fuel you are wasting to avoid one submarine? Drop your cargo off at Ominato, it will travel to where it is needed. I know you are learning Japan, but you need to maximize your efficiency. Routing your TF's like that is extremely wasteful.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon
Do you realize how much fuel you are wasting to avoid one submarine? Routing your TF's like that is extremely wasteful.

The only re-routing takes place toward the beginning and ending of the route and is a relatively small part of the total route.
I was thinking that avoiding known subs was a good idea. If I had a choice of driving over a known sub with my TF or going
around it, I'm thinking it's safer to go around it. I could be wrong.

ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon
Drop your cargo off at Ominato, it will travel to where it is needed.

I've got about 35 - 40 TF's stacked up at Ominato waiting to unload and I've started sending the larger TF's to different ports.
There are closer ports to Sapparo than Tokyo but at the instant I was making decisions about where to send this one I was
worried about Tokyo going below 100K RES and I thought maybe a small boost from a TF might be in order. So I re-routed about
a dozen TF's to Tokyo instead of Ominato. About 40K in RES total. It's a small thing and probably won't make a difference but
at least I feel like I'm doing something about a known problem. I get really antsy when the RES goes below 100K at Tokyo.

ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon
I know you are learning Japan, but you need to maximize your efficiency.

I thought I'd get the routes to work first and then concentrate on efficiency. This isn't my first time through a Jap side game but I'm
not completely sure I'm doing everything right and recently my trial and error approach seems to have needs here and there but
I'm watching everything important and so far it seems to have worked. Except for the Nav and Merch ship yards, I need to boost
them to avoid having to halt the building of ships. I don't have a good feel for how far the 1.4Meg HI in the pool will last.

[SqzMyLemon]

Last comment I'll make on your economy. You are far too worried about resources at Tokyo. Are you going to micromanage individual shipments all game if it drops a little? That's crazy.

All you need to do is get the resources to Japan, it doesn't matter where. Let the game engine move it where it needs to go.

Route your resource convoys how ever you want to. If you have "so many" taskforces waiting to unload at Ominato, then you are running an inefficient system.

Granted, I don't fully understand this mod and it seems like the Japanese economy has been beefed up to the point where keeping it running is tough, I don't know. All I know is that having a million little resource TF's sailing around isn't efficient.

Good luck Larry, but I'm done offering practical suggestions. Sail your TF's into deep water and out of search range and see what happens when your opponent patrols a little farther out. [:D]

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon
Last comment I'll make on your economy. You are far too worried about resources at Tokyo. Are you going to micromanage individual shipments all game if it drops a little? That's crazy.

I'm micro-worried about the RES at Tokyo because I've already once this game had to turn off the HI for lack of RES. The levels
recovered again, thank god, but I've had it on my list to watch ever since. You're right about it being crazy to micro-manage every
TF of shipments. I've grown tired of micro-managing their routes in and around the ports. You're idea about setting whatever
waypoints you want once and then forget that TF during their transit. Better use of gametime or playtime or whatever you're calling
your experience. I'm learning all kinds of things about this game so it's a good exercise. Brian really took me under his wing and
suggested this game to playtest his mod. I think we've found most of the major bugs so far but I'm uncomfortable about the economy
and what I've done to it;.

ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon
All you need to do is get the resources to Japan, it doesn't matter where. Let the game engine move it where it needs to go.

This part I understood. So I was aiming at the closest port-pair at first but then TF's started stacking up at Ominato and I had
to send the larger TF's to other ports and so my logistic chain isn't working at the moment but when I find the magic sweet spot
and by that I mean the port-pairs that work okie dokie then I'm left to just repair the ships when they dock.

ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon
Route your resource convoys how ever you want to. If you have "so many" taskforces waiting to unload at Ominato, then you are running an inefficient system.

Yeah, my comment above touched on this a little. I'm finding that some of the larger TF's are having to go to ports not traditionally
"closest" to get themselves unloaded. I can't just pull into the nearest level 1 port and see what happens. I'm dedicating ports for
"hub" purposes and I'm rounding up engineers, especially shipping engineers, to those ports to help speed up the load/unload
process. I just need to find those kind of engineers and move them there. That's not an easy task either. I'd have to dedicate
a TF to just that move alone. I don't have a lot of unemployed TF's at the moment.

ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon
Granted, I don't fully understand this mod and it seems like the Japanese economy has been beefed up to the point where keeping it running is tough, I don't know. All I know is that having a million little resource TF's sailing around isn't efficient.

I'm not sure about this mod's treatment of the economy either. There's been so many changes to the mod that the economy isn't
so very much like the stock economy for the same period of time. So all my past experience ( stock games ) is of limited help. I have
to go back to the basics and figure out what's the best course of action for THIS economy right now in this game. I'm starting to hit
my self-imposed limit for the number of Nate's in it's pool and I need to turn off production of the Nates until it gets down to about
500 or so and then start it up again. That kind of thing. If I could adjust the factory to the appropriate size easily this process would
be so much easier on the player.

And I get your point about lot's of little TF's moving less than 20K of stuff isn't efficient. Mostly a waste of fuel. I can see that. I was
just desperate for hulls. Giving them a task besides moving goodies right now would require me to find and re-route the larger,
faster AK's etc. and pair them with DD's which are faster than PB's and put them on the long-range port-pair like those to
Shikura or Toyohama. I'm probably pronouncing those wrong.

ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon
Good luck Larry, but I'm done offering practical suggestions. Sail your TF's into deep water and out of search range and see what happens when your opponent patrols a little farther out. [:D]

Oh no. Say it's not so. People like me need your advice. I'm studying what you've given already.

And that idea about sailing the TF's in deeper water........that's a good idea. I'll keep you guys in the loop as to what happens.

[larryfulkerson]

I got the moves back from Brian about 1/2 hour ago and I watched the combat replay and nothing exciting happened. Just the
ordinary night raids and the daytime bombing raids and some sub confrontations and that's about it. I started up Tracker to get
the stats and noticed right away that there's over 2Meg Supply in the home islands most of it at Tokyo and I'm ready to start the
boosting of the Nav and Merch ship yards. In the image below you can see where I've boosted several shipyards to the next
nearest 10's number to each category. I'm changing slowly to allow the economy to adjust itself to my change just in case something
else unforseen changes as well. I've learned to change things slowly by wrecking my economy in prior games. If this works and
nothing blows up the boosting process will continue until I don't have to halt all the ship building any more.

[larryfulkerson]

I couldn't figure out a way for Tracker to give me a list of the ports and their size right now. I'll find out how to do that eventually. But
for right now I've done a cut and paste of the automatic convoy dialog ( sortted on port ) to see for myself what the problem is. I've
found lots of ports I need to expand right away. Hakkodate is too small for all the traffic going through there. Ominato as well. I've
noticed that Tokyo isn't on the auto-convoy list of ports. Curious that.

[larryfulkerson]

This image will lend the impression that Ominato is a busy port. Actually it's a trainwreck. Not very many of the TF's in port can dock
and those that aren't docked are unloading presumably, just slower. I've seen the same TF's in port for a week now and I'm thinking
that this isn't working. I'm going to have to find a better port for most of those ships. I've got about a dozen headed for Tokyo but
that's not a good idea for all of them. I'm thinking of maybe another large-ish port close to Ominato. Hirosaki-Amori may fill the bill.

EDIT: I got to looking at the picture again after posting it and it leaped out at me that I've got way too many small-TF's. Less than
5 ships or so. Not efficient. I need to re-arrange things on all the routes.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's another view of Ominato, the overhead / dashboard look. I've got some engineers accumulated there and luckily some
shipping engineers, those are rare. And I've turned on the stockpilling of supplies to get the supply level up to the magic level
10K so the expanding can proceed without hinderance. And this view shows nothing of the stress of the port. I'd like to see
something in red letters in this view that would tell the player that he's got ships awaiting unloading or something like that.
Ships that aren't docked in port. Something to tell me that something is not quite right yet in the port.

[larryfulkerson]

I was doing some exploring through the information in Tracker just now and found out that the ships that have the most
experience is the AMC group. I wonder what caused that? I haven't been doing anything with the AMC's at all, maybe
moving them between ports. No extended shake-down cruises or anything. Is this a Focus Pacific mod? Or part of the
mod that made scenario #75? It's not this way in stock. Or is it? I don't honestly remember now.

[larryfulkerson]

I had hoped to be done with Bataan by now but they just won't give up. So serious negotiations are still underway. I'm giving the boys
a day off however, this turn, because they seem tired. They had higher DIS values yesterday but one day of rest made that go away.
Now to get the FAT down. Supply is good, the bombing raids sometimes hit something and I found some more arty that's just now
leaving Appari headed for Bataan. I've moved all the non-division pieces of LCU's to Aparri to get them to the biggest port I have to
get them loaded for movement to Singapore. I'm hoping to be able to get more divisions assembled when they arrive there. I haven't
found any AP's or AK's handy to move them yet but it's on my list.

I'm thinking with the aerial bombardment and the direct assaults on the ground we may have done with this in a couple of weeks. Maybe.

[BillBrown]

Bataan is a Malaria hex. You will not see your Fat drop below 25 until after you take the base and build it up.

[larryfulkerson]

Bataan is a Malaria hex. You will not see your Fat drop below 25 until after you take the base and build it up.

Oh. I did not know that. Thanks for the heads up. I'll rest them until they reach about 40 or so and then thrust them back
into the maw. I tried bombardment and that didn't work so terribly well but direct assaults seem to do the job even though I
usually lose more troops than he does. Plus, I'm in a big hurry to take down Bataan.

[larryfulkerson]

TF 178 spawned in the lower left corner of the map, a most unhandy place I must say. It's bound for Truk but it's got to go around a
lot of Allied stuff to get there. Australia for one thing. I'm not sure it'll survive the trip. It's going to prove to be exciting probably.
I'll keep you in the loop as to it's adventures. I've been trolling my carriers down the east coast of Australlia and most of the Allied
ships are tucked away in a port somewhere and maybe if I can loiter that long it'll stay that way while TF 178 passes through there.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the configuration of Jap TF's around the east coast of Australia. I'm getting successful sorties every other day on average. Bad
weather is a culprit. I'm guessing I'll get more sorties if I sail closer to the coast. I'm guessing the proposed patrol spot in the image
is way too close. But I could be wrong. Maybe a close patrol is what's needed for boosting the sortie rate. Maybe not so close though.

[larryfulkerson]

I've gotten into the habit of parking some of my subs on the likely spots that Brian will try to develop. I've already gotten a good hit
on several AK's doing this. Traffic is slow on most of them and I'm wondering about the efficacy of this tactic. Maybe more hits would
be obtained on dedicated shipping routes. I've got subs around Pearl and Pago Pago and Sydney but nowhere else so far. A lot of
my subs are damaged and in repair yards at Kwajalein and several will be ready for service in a couple of days. About 80% of them
though, are on the job and about 15% of them are damaged repairing, and the rest are in transit to their duty station.

I'm playing the stock game as the Allied against the AI and I've gotten a good idea where the shipping lanes are......maybe I should give
up on the least visited places in the entire game and start tracking the ships that pass in the night. Anybody have an opinion?

[larryfulkerson]

I've gathered together the pieces of the 44th Division at Truk and I'm thinking about maybe landing that division at Port Moresby, but
then I took a look at the mouseover of the Allied troops there and it seems that they have about two division equivalents there
already. I'm thinking depleted, tired, low experience Australian troops there. Still, it might take more than just one division to take the
place. I really need that port and the victory points ( 600 for the Jap ). I think I may have beat down the aircraft based there, they don't
fly during the daytime anymore. I've been hitting the airfield as insurance and giving the port some attention. At least one whole
squadron has been tasked to take out the port with night bombing missions until the Allied fighters are gone and then switch to
daytime missions for better hits. It'll take at least another two weeks before I can dare consider assaulting the PM port hex.

EDIT: I've had another hard look at the picture and I detect the presence of arty and AFV's at PM as well as the ground troops. I
might want to consider sending some armour unit and a bunch of arty or some ships or something to back up the troops. I'll have
to take a look around and see what's available. Somewhere in China is an arty unit that's sitting unused and I need it at Truk. It's
on my list.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's happening in Burma: The unfortunate Jap troops that have made it all the way north to Taung Cyi are being
bombed daily by Allied planes and my Zero's and Oscar's near Rangoon can't quite get the hang of long rang CAP over them.
I've moved my troops too far north for the available air cover and now they are paying for it. I've got some AF guys headed
north for an airfield closer to the fighting but they are getting bombed too. I may have to withdraw all the Japs back to Rangoon.

[larryfulkerson]

I've been looking around for something else to adjust and I've discovered that I've let the Pearl patrol get depleated on the NE side.
I need more subs in that direction to intercept inbound ships buldging with cargo. And for those ships headed SW to Pago Pago and
places in that direction we have another small group patrolling. There's a similar setup around Pago Pago and I'm planning on this
scheme around his primary hubs. Palmyra already has some Allied mines. Other ports, like Christmas island, I can park one or more
subs in the hex with the port and cross my fingers. Lots of subs have been damaged badly by doing this but I do sink a ship ever
once in a while. The problem is that traffic is slow. I would probably have more luck patrolling the shipping lanes.