OK, I think I'm ready to start turn one. No house rules except, if you want to call them that, restricted units will not cross national borders (without being bought out, if allowed). That means the Kwangtung Army units stay in Manchukuo. Some Indian units cannot leave India. Some Chinese units may freely enter Burma, but not most. Thai troops stay in Thailand. Unless Steve tells me otherwise, the options shown below will be used. From experience it takes a week for the Japanese turn one, but as rusty as I am it may take two. I'll e-mail Steve to get clearance to begin. As I have always done I wish him to access this AAR and contribute whatever he wishes to it. That means I'll be keeping secrets from you as well as him but will discuss those details as soon as it is safe to do so.
Steve advises Advanced Weather off and Combat Summaries on. That's fine with me. As I recall preferences are accessible by both players and can be different for each, and are not set in stone and can be changed in the course of the game. Looks like I have a go sign.
Also will start with TF Radii on and Hexside Detail on.
Here's where it stands. I don't remember what the Combat Reports switch does but I turned it on. He'll have time to have me turn it off if it's inappropriate. The "Accept Air and Ground Replacements" switch I think I'd want to turn off, then turn on unit by unit as desired. For instance, I don't want the Kwangtung Army taking them along with a lot of other units and it would be easier to turn on some front line units and let everyone else wait. I'll check with Steve before changing that.
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Combat Reports switch pauses the turn resolution to show you the combat results. You have to close that report to get the game turn to continue running. Some people like to see the combat results like this, others prefer to read them later and let the turn run.
DO turn off the auto-replacements.
The Japanese player settings are crucial for things you can't change after the first turn. Make sure you both agree and use the same settings.
I would send your switch picture to the opponent.
No matter how bad a situation is, you can always make it worse. - Chris Hadfield : An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth
Show clouds is on but I don't see any anywhere. Maybe that's a turn one thing that changes for the second or third turn. I never liked having them so if they show up I might turn them off (for my side).
As I recall, someone suggested doubling device production, armaments and vehicles, then forget about it. Worked fine for me before. I also tend to ratchet up LI a little bit in high resource areas like Manchukuo and Sakhalin. And Vancouver Island when I get it.
This is down time, where I'm not in condition to make major decisions. MakeeLearn was interested in my plans for production. That's mostly about airframes and engines but that's pretty complicated and I haven't immersed myself in it yet, though I have a pretty good idea what I'm going to do. I'm not ready to talk about it just yet, but don't think it'll make a dime's worth of difference if Steve knows about it so I'll discuss that as soon as I can. I can start talking about ships and again, I don't think he'll gain much by knowing, so I'll proceed with that now and as things proceed. The biggies include letting Yamato be completed as it has advanced very far already. Musashi will likely be put on hold, but reactivation of her construction may begin any time after the completion of Yamato. Resources are the issue, these ships are very expensive to finish and I can't afford to have both going at the same time. As for Shinano, she likely will never be completed as either a CV or a BB. Way too costly and her efficacy is dubious by the time she could be completed.
Now the CS ships. I can't emphasize how important I view the proper planning for them to be. If they can be preserved all four of them will make very fine CVLs. They are wonderful ships the way they are but not in comparison to what they could be. They will be skedaddling to the Home Islands to hide until conversion can be begun. I am taking them out of service immediately, I just can't take the risk of a sub attack or any other mishap.
Now to ship conversions of freighters. Much of what I will do I learned from others and take no credit for it. I'm just going to cover a few classes for now. The majority of the Kiso-Es will be converted to PBs with a handful converted to AMcs. Ansyu-Cs will be converted in whole to PBs. A good number of To'sus will be converted to ACMs with a lesser number to PBs.
Submarines. Production of submarines will likely cease with the following exceptions: Subs capable of deploying float planes will be built as I value that recon capacity too highly to stop. The rest are dead meat.
A hugely important area in this game is air crew training. I will try to comment as things move along as to what I'm doing, how I'm doing it and why. Some of this info may benefit Steve to some extent as he will have a better idea of how many air units and of what type are wholly consumed in training. I'm not going to worry about that and I can tell you up front that a minimum of 50% of the air units, both IJA and IJN will be tied up with training.