Allies Set-up Spreadsheet for AE

[Aksully]

Hi Kull,
Working though the Dec 09 turn with your SS. I'm moving along quite nicely. I do have a question about air units training in the US. Is there an experience level that should be attained before transferring to a west coast port to be embarked? Specifically, the 54th PG units at Continents 212,52 that transferred to Ogden. Currently they are at Exp level in mid 40's. Thx!

[Schorsch]

get them to around 50. after that dont put them into the hottest areas right off the bat but somewhere where they got the possibility to grind some exp with missions. at 70+ i would consider them "frontline-ready"

[BBfanboy]

Fighters require higher experience and Air Skill/Defensive Skill levels than other aircraft if you want to avoid heavy losses to the experienced Japanese.
By all means move them out to someplace like Australia where they can be staged forward more quickly, but finish their training by flying CAP in areas outside the reach of enemy fighters (14 hexes for a Zero with drop tanks). Running a percentage training at the same time as a percentage CAP seems to help skill level gains.

Overall experience is hard to raise above 60 by just flying CAP or Escort missions because those only affect Air skill. If you also train some Strafe at 100 feet and some Low Naval or Low Ground at 1000 feet you can increase Experience more quickly and get the Defensive skill up very quickly. Defensive skill seems to help in dodging flak and balloons.

[Kull]

On December 9th, pretty much all the Allied pilots are terrible. I would agree with Schorsch that experience levels of 70+ are desirable, but you don't have many fighter pilots at that level, this early in the game, and it's gonna take a loooong time to get there. Accordingly I try for a 50 (Exp) - 60 (Air) - 60 (Defn)- mix before putting them into the meat grinder, but it's just gonna be ugly for a few months.

Best thing to do is to train them up as much as possible in the rear area units and then periodically pull the best guys into the front-line units. Fighter pilots with skills in the 50's and 40's are just meat, but in the early war, sometimes that's all you've got.

[Aksully]

Appreciate your comments Schorsch, BB, & Kull! Thx all.

[Professor Chaos]

Thank you for this Kull!

One question for you - could you outline the major on-map and off-map convoys contemplated? The shipping roundups seem to anticipate particular convoy routes in the future, but I wasn't quite sure what they were.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: Professor Chaos

Thank you for this Kull!

One question for you - could you outline the major on-map and off-map convoys contemplated? The shipping roundups seem to anticipate particular convoy routes in the future, but I wasn't quite sure what they were.

The idea is that it's easier to run convoys from fewer starting locations, preferably those with larger ports. In general you can get the gist of what's intended just by looking at the convoys created in the first few turns. Hauling fuel, supply, troops, and planes from the West Coast to Australia (and islands in between) is probably the biggest focus area, but there are many others!

A lot of it is pretty obvious when you think about it. Fuel can't leave Abadan unless it's shipped out, and the clear destination is India (at least initially). Similar thing with the planes and troops that begin to appear in Aden.

The important thing is to get used to the idea of assembling convoys and assigning proper escorts. Every player has different ideas on how best to prosecute the war, but that always entails building up forces and supply/fuel in particular locations. You will know that far better than I, and in that sense the spreadsheet is like a set of training wheels - it puts things in motion, but the long term plans are yours to make.

[Evoken]

[&o] Thank you so much for this Kull , before i'd seen this spreadsheet i was so lost on what to do. You saved me a lot of confused times.

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: Evoken

[&o] Thank you so much for this Kull , before i'd seen this spreadsheet i was so lost on what to do. You saved me a lot of confused times.

Happy to help, man! I can still remember my first "Turn 2 experience" - staring at the post Pearl Harbor situation and being literally overwhelmed. 1000's of things that needed doing and 100's of game skills necessary to pull them off and no idea where to begin with any of it.

Follow the steps and everything will start to fall into place. By Turn 5 or so, you'll actually have a pretty decent understanding of what's going on and all the basic skills will seem obvious. You'll get there!

[coachi]

great spreadsheet - especially for a noob question I can't figure out rows m through o. In noob language please?

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: coachi

great spreadsheet - especially for a noob question I can't figure out rows m through o. In noob language please?

"M" tells you what to do with the Industry/Base/LCU/Ship/Air element in that row

"N" through "AH" can be ignored. There are helpful aspects, but you could probably delete all those columns (as a noob) and never notice. Put another way, there isn't any "go do this" or "here be dragons" in those columns (probably a few "here be cockroaches", though).

[LGKMAS]

Just found this and it is brilliant. Just one question
When you say No Action, what does that mean? The screen shot for each unit has no button for no action. I am in Alaska at the moment as I work my way down the spreadsheet. I have done the patrol aircraft etc, I have set the Alaska Defence Cmd to head to Seward. but where do I set all the ground units (LCUs??) to no action. is this Reserve? but if I do that, I get nothing that tells me it will cost me PP?

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: LGKMAS

Just found this and it is brilliant. Just one question
When you say No Action, what does that mean? The screen shot for each unit has no button for no action. I am in Alaska at the moment as I work my way down the spreadsheet. I have done the patrol aircraft etc, I have set the Alaska Defence Cmd to head to Seward. but where do I set all the ground units (LCUs??) to no action. is this Reserve? but if I do that, I get nothing that tells me it will cost me PP?

No Action just means you don't have to give any orders to the unit - it is already in an appropriate mode (usually Combat Mode). You do not pay PP to give orders to a unit. You pay PP to change their HQ or their leader. And if a unit/ship is due to withdraw and you do not have it in an appropriate base to do so, you pay PP every turn as a penalty. Big ships cost beaucoup PP!

[LGKMAS]

Still not certain about this. yes, I understand that you use PP to change HQs etc, but the spreadsheet reads eg Anchorage - LCU- 1/250th Coastal Artillery - 2- no action (costs 68 PP).
If it costs no PP to do nothing, what does the" (costs 68PP)" mean?

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: LGKMAS

Still not certain about this. yes, I understand that you use PP to change HQs etc, but the spreadsheet reads eg Anchorage - LCU- 1/250th Coastal Artillery - 2- no action (costs 68 PP).
If it costs no PP to do nothing, what does the" (costs 68PP)" mean?

That's just a helpful comment (or at least it was supposed to be, LOL!) The unit belongs to a "restricted" HQ, and that means (among other things) that you can't load it on ships. It would cost 68 political points to move it to a non-restricted HQ, should you desire to ship it off to some non-Alaskan mainland location.

In general, if the first comment is "no action", it means you can ignore everything about that unit, at least until/unless you decide to do something with it.

[LGKMAS]

Ahh, gottit! Thanks.
I am working off scenario based on 8 Dec start. Hopefully I should have the rest of the day entered by the end of the weekend. Something to look forward to.
regards

[KJ]

Great work, Krull! Been playing this game for many years from as far back as the original PacWar in the 80's. I just have a question as I only play the AI: I have always stuck to a strict formula for aircraft altitudes, i.e. 6000' for searches and "as low as you can go" for ASW. I notice working your spreadsheet for the first time that you do not follow these guidelines and vary quite a bit including dual training and other missions of air units. What are your thoughts on these altitudes (without getting deep into dive/level/strafe/etc bombing altitudes)towards how you dual mission a unit with training/search/etc.?

On another subject; I too, used to always save the Ausie units for building the 8th. I will try out your tactic of saving III Indian for this one. Cheers and thank you for the hard work in something we love to play!

[Kull]

Hi KJ - glad you're enjoying the game! As for aircraft altitudes, well that's a huge subject all by itself! First and foremost, there are definitely forumites who have honed those numbers down to some level of perfection after years of PBEM trial-and-error, and you'll undoubtedly learn more by reading through AARs or doing a forum search. I've played enough opening campaigns (3-6 months) to know that my advice works against the early war AI opponent, but it's far from optimal, I'm sure. That said:

Training: If there's a hard and fast rule, it would this one. Train at 100% at Zero range, in every skill you are training for. Altitude levels can affect which skills are gained, so be careful with those.
CAP: Where possible, I try to use bands of altitude, especially for the fighters defending carrier TFs. For example, sticking all your fighters at higher altitudes might be helpful against escorts, but is an invitation to "death by torpedo" from Betty and her ilk.
ASW: Lower is better, but we're also talking about the AI. So I put them at 4-5K, simply to give the AI subs a better chance.
Naval Search: I use altitudes that vary from 6K to 9K, but there's no real science behind it.

Most of the other air missions really depend on the target and it's defenses. And many of the things which work in the early war (which is the time frame of the spreadsheet) become ineffective (or dangerous) as the months and years go by. But that's part of the beauty of this game - the more you play, the more you realize there's a counter for almost every strategy. It's a fun journey though!

[LGKMAS]

Just finally got to enter the Continental USA and a few questions. You mention in both San Diego and Seattle units called Det C and Det B of USN Port Services. They don't show up on my list of LCUs in either port and I can't locate them when I look at the total list of LCUs. I note you have Det A and Det D appearing later in Dec actually out on the islands Has there been an upgrade to get rid of these or did they get a name change?
I have found some items that I need to go back and read the manual, especially regarding adding pilots and airframes to units.
This is a great learning tool and I need to go back and mark follow-on activities you have indicated to make sure I remember to do them. Hopefully, once all the small items are lumped into big ones, (ie 6 ships make up a convoy so you only have to worry about one entry rather than six from now on,) the orders phase will shorten.

[GetAssista]

I'm here just to commend Kull on creating this extremely useful instrument. Kudos! [&o]

I mean, look how this thread gets bumped up almost continuously with the recent influx of new players.