Pacific War 3.0 (No Encircled please!)

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: rader

ORIGINAL: castor troy





not sure how you would ever take this base against 14k enemy av. If you want to look at my AAR, I took Chungking and the rest of China and had massive probs to take the base with my 10k Army vs just something like 2-2,5k of Chinese in total over the course of the battle there. And yes, I was using 500 IJA medium bombers for a year in China and the Chinese were out of supply everywhere. No idea how you would take the base against this stack. I would just place 2500 av there and block the base forever, the enemy can't force you to retreat but you also won't be able to take the base IMO.

Hmm, is this true? I figured the first few assaults are purely to drop forts at extremely heavy cost. Once the forts are below 3, artillery and air will start to grind him down so he will no longer have such a devastatingly strong stack.

Yes.

Against the AI, I have had much more than 10K AV in CK that I have had to reduce. Bombing, ARTY, and Armor are your friends. Yes, the first few attacks are horrible as in Ironman CK has Level 9 forts. The key is to be sure your units have no (zero) disablements so that all of your casualties are disablements and not losses. The point units will go from 400AV to 3AV, literally. But, move them out to Neikiang to recover; in a couple of weeks they will be ready to return to the fray. Well maybe a few weeks time. [;)]

[8D][8D][8D]

Recovering all disablements is just not accomplishable in a contested hex, so Pax's advice is very sound.
Keeping a solid enough force in the hex to maintain the contention is also desirable.
If possible to accomplish this, use that force for daily bombardments to force supply usage through counter bombardment, keep morale suppressed, and fatigue, disruption and disablements from recovering.
Try to keep the target softened up for the return of the rested and recovered assault force.

[rader]

In Burma news, recon has detected hundreds of AFVs moving in along the coast (this is just one example near Chittagong). How likely is it that the Allies will attempt a thrust into Central Burma in mid-1942?

I've got the equivalent of several divisions in the area with a few more ready to respond to threats wherever they emerge but I'm not sure how much to commit to this theater.

[rader]

In terms of Allied tactics, Encircled is a top notch player. One devious tactic he uses is to sweep bases or hexes 2 hexes away from my airfields with P-38s so that he can entice small groups of CAP to their death in a fight at highly uneven odds. I know I can set my cap to maximum 1-hex (or even 0 hexes which I assume means only over the airfield?) but sometimes I need to run LRCAP or need to stay flexible to respond to more than one hex.

Is there any good way to respond to this tactic, other than doing it back to him?

[GetAssista]

ORIGINAL: rader
In Burma news, recon has detected hundreds of AFVs moving in along the coast (this is just one example near Chittagong). How likely is it that the Allies will attempt a thrust into Central Burma in mid-1942?

Maybe he's lulled by your inactivity in the region and is making a mistake? In mid 42 Japan is still perfectly capable of landing in Calcutta (or even Chittagong) to cut off those forward forces and eventually destroy them. Allied offensives do not have enough punch w/o 43 squads and a slew of aviation and tanks that come later

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: rader

In terms of Allied tactics, Encircled is a top notch player. One devious tactic he uses is to sweep bases or hexes 2 hexes away from my airfields with P-38s so that he can entice small groups of CAP to their death in a fight at highly uneven odds. I know I can set my cap to maximum 1-hex (or even 0 hexes which I assume means only over the airfield?) but sometimes I need to run LRCAP or need to stay flexible to respond to more than one hex.

Is there any good way to respond to this tactic, other than doing it back to him?

You have to restrict your cap to 0 hexes to prevent this. Sweepers are at a huge advantage against lrcap. Especially set your lrcap to 0 hexes so it doesn't stray from the target hex.

About the only time I set it to greater than 1 hex, is in rear area bomber only defense, and even then pretty rarely as it greatly reduces effectiveness. I will do it over sea areas where naval battles are expected to cover any damaged ships retreating...but you can't sweep sea hexes. Oh, night fighters usually get a 0 or 1 or 2 depending upon the area.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: rader
How likely is it that the Allies will attempt a thrust into Central Burma in mid-1942?

Usually pretty likely, as the Allies want to hit back and Burma area is the easiest and perceived low risk.

[RangerJoe]

Monsoons are great for defense as it restricts the supply flow to bases. You can have nice bombing targets. If there is Allied LRCAP, bring out the brooms and randomly sweep potential target hexes. If they are moving along the coastal road, some naval bombardments might be in order. But the naval bombardments will only encourage the retreat unless he is willing to push on with fatigued, disrupted units that may be low on supply.

[rader]

Looking at long-term R&D. Are those upward pointing guns any good? What are the relative merits of the A7M3-J vs. the Shinden? I know the M3 can't go on CVs, just looking at them as land-based fighters.

-Same service rating (3)

Shinden pros:
-Faster (466 mph vs 403 mph)
-CL 30 mm guns (better accuracy)

A7M3-J pros:
-Same 30 mm guns but wing mounted, and in addition has 2x UP mounted guns. Are these any good?
-Slightly better rate of climb and durability
-Better endurance/range

[RangerJoe]

UP guns, the fighter gets under the bomber and fires into the belly of the bomber. How effective do you think that would be?

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: rader

Looking at long-term R&D. Are those upward pointing guns any good? What are the relative merits of the A7M3-J vs. the Shinden? I know the M3 can't go on CVs, just looking at them as land-based fighters.

-Same service rating (3)

Shinden pros:
-Faster (466 mph vs 403 mph)
-CL 30 mm guns (better accuracy)

A7M3-J pros:
-Same 30 mm guns but wing mounted, and in addition has 2x UP mounted guns. Are these any good?
-Slightly better rate of climb and durability
-Better endurance/range

Shinden, you need to counter Jugs sweeps and have something left for the bombers. You still need to be able to sweep Allied bases and bleeding CAP and quite frankly the George is very adequate till the end. The army KI83 is another great endgame sweeper, albeit two engines.

UP guns are good, especially on NF and rear area anti bomber squadrons.

[rader]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

UP guns, the fighter gets under the bomber and fires into the belly of the bomber. How effective do you think that would be?

Well, it depends on what guns the bombers have underneath. As I recall, the Lancasters and other night bombers didn't originally have underside guns, hence the effectiveness of schräge musik. But against a B-29? Not necessarily more effective than a side pass aiming at engines.

[RangerJoe]

More effective if you match speeds and then fire a sustained burst into the belly. But the game might not model this, nor the cannon fire going into the bomb bay . . .

[rader]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

More effective if you match speeds and then fire a sustained burst into the belly. But the game might not model this, nor the cannon fire going into the bomb bay . . .

Ah, that does sound deadly... but I doubt that's modeled. Did Allied bombers add armor plate to their bomb bays to mitigate against this?

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: rader

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

More effective if you match speeds and then fire a sustained burst into the belly. But the game might not model this, nor the cannon fire going into the bomb bay . . .

Ah, that does sound deadly... but I doubt that's modeled. Did Allied bombers add armor plate to their bomb bays to mitigate against this?

Not that I know of. I think that they armored parts of the crew compartment, fuel cells, engines, but not the bomb bay. The Sturmovic actually had something like an armoured bathtub for the crew, the aircraft was built around that.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: rader

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

More effective if you match speeds and then fire a sustained burst into the belly. But the game might not model this, nor the cannon fire going into the bomb bay . . .

Ah, that does sound deadly... but I doubt that's modeled. Did Allied bombers add armor plate to their bomb bays to mitigate against this?

I would think that at engagement range at night, getting the bombs to explode would be fatal to the engaging fighter as well.

The fighters had to locate the bomber by the occasional flame from the engine exhaust. I suspect they tried to shoot off the control surfaces on the tail rather than hit the bomb bay. Without rudder or elevators the bomber would tumble around like a powered leaf.

[GetAssista]

ORIGINAL: rader

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe
More effective if you match speeds and then fire a sustained burst into the belly. But the game might not model this, nor the cannon fire going into the bomb bay . . .

Ah, that does sound deadly... but I doubt that's modeled. Did Allied bombers add armor plate to their bomb bays to mitigate against this?

I don't know for sure but there is little reason to model those particular guns differently compared to all other guns, that is not through effect and accuracy numbers. Those numbers are visible and should give full info on how deadly the airframe armament is.

Anyway, hardly anyone researches A7M3-J because you need other much more crucial planes to arrive earlier

[rader]

Question about pilot experience. I never usually worry about experience when I train pilots. Common wisdom is that skill in their task (air-to-air, ground attack, naval attack, naval search) is what matters for the primary mission and experience merely affects chance of ops losses and fatigue reduction etc.

Thus, I figure skill is much more important. But anecdotally, my higher experience pilots do seem to do better at their primary mission too, so I wonder if experience is factored into success in the primary mission. Does anyone know?

Also, side question: what the heck would experience in air transport do? I mean, it seems obvious that it should increase success at transporting things by air, but since planes transport stuff using the load factor of the aircraft and ops losses etc is accounted for by experience, it doesn't seem like transport skill should do anything...

[RangerJoe]

Skills are what counts for most individual actions, including training.

Experience, in general, counts in non-combat areas.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2260137

Note that pilots can also lose experience.

[rader]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Skills are what counts for most individual actions, including training.

Experience, in general, counts in non-combat areas.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2260137

Note that pilots can also lose experience.

If that's true than it does indeed seem a lot less important to train for experience and the air transport skill should indeed do nothing at all (since the activity is fundamentally non-combat and mostly relies on not accidentally crashing).

[RangerJoe]

True, but they should be trained anyway. If nothing else, highly skilled for troop movement.