Matrix Games Forums

Oz (august 11th - 13th 1942)


The advance of the japanese continues. The allied troops moving towards south were forced to fight it out and we got short end of that stick...


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Ground combat at 77,130

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 15750 troops, 49 guns, 599 vehicles, Assault Value = 570

Defending force 13918 troops, 154 guns, 177 vehicles, Assault Value = 259

Japanese adjusted assault: 340

Allied adjusted defense: 82

Japanese assault odds: 4 to 1

Combat modifiers
Defender: disruption(-), experience(-), supply(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
515 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 22 disabled
Non Combat: 1 destroyed, 33 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 11 disabled
Vehicles lost 17 (0 destroyed, 17 disabled)


Allied ground losses:
4774 casualties reported
Squads: 63 destroyed, 31 disabled
Non Combat: 341 destroyed, 60 disabled
Engineers: 14 destroyed, 6 disabled
Guns lost 30 (17 destroyed, 13 disabled)
Vehicles lost 67 (50 destroyed, 17 disabled)
Units retreated 12


Defeated Allied Units Retreating!

Assaulting units:...
47th Infantry Regiment...
5th Engineer Regiment...
16th Recon Regiment...
48th Recon Regiment...
22nd Recon Regiment...
8th Tank Regiment...
2nd Recon Regiment...
56th Recon Regiment...
2nd Tank Regiment...
1st Tank Regiment...
7th Tank Regiment...
...
Defending units:...
Gull Battalion...
2/1 NAOU Det. ...
2nd Recce Battalion...
Sparrow Battalion...
2/4 MG Battalion...
2/8th Armoured Regiment...
19th Australian Battalion...
NW Australia Base Force...
Northern Territory ...
2nd RAN Base Force...
NW Aus Aviation Rgt ...
Katherine RAAF Base Force...


I was hoping for better results as said but it wasn't to be. Somewhat used to this at the moment.

We are still trying to move these units out but the situation doesn't look good at all.

Ugh I Hope they introduce some major fixes next patch. August 1942 and the results are still the same as 1941, totally unrealistic. The main thing is China, obviously. Some major historical accuracy changes need to be introduced in China, there's no way China would have fallen this quickly in the actual war, and it would have fallen ridiculously fast in this game had you guys not agreed to the ceise-fire (pretty dampering to the game when people are forced to manual measures like that in an attempt to retain some sense of historical accuracy). I mean I can understand proportionally higher losses for you in battles like the OZ one you posted above. But usually it's retardedly one-sided in such an unrealistic way. Not just China, but everywhere.

China is pretty frustrating though, think of all the ideas and thought people put into that front in your AAR and it was all for nothing, because there's clearly no way you can win there against a reasonably good human opponent.

aztez, keep your head up. You'll win the war with or without China.

From the maps you posted I didn't see any chinese units infiltrating the japanese hinterland. How about splitting some of the LCUs that have only x/30 of their AV? They are basically free to replace and they draw a lot of attention to them that will be away from more important spots. Ususally placing them next to a RR or road hex is enough to trigger a japanese clearout force.

But usually it's retardedly one-sided in such an unrealistic way. Not just China, but everywhere.

It does seem that once you force a stack to retreat then it is easy to follow up and quickly finish it off, if you are prepared in advance to do that. I have seen this happen in my PBEMs to all units although Chinese are the most vulnerable and the Japanese the least affected. I havent had a chance to see the degree that the Patch affects land combat.

Patch does affect land combat, but most PBEM-players have not patched to Beta, waiting for official patch.

I wasn't trying to be a downer. China is lost but that's minor in the big picture, it's just frustrating, you still have a good chance here, it all comes down to those carriers.

I'm wondering if you are getting your destroyed units back at Chungking?

If the lynchpin of the theatre is to simulate getting millions of chinese peasants as cannon fodder in an attempt to hold it and your not getting them there may be a problem.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2308506

Good that that seems to be getting fixes in the patch. I've only lost 2 corps so far, but if the game has gone on as long as this one, I wonder how many units have been lost to this bug.

Good news and bad news for Aztez then.

Good news in that (from what i saw when he sent me a turn) he'd split up a lot of chinese corps for whatever reason, so killing off all 3 sub units would be nigh well impossible (as they weren't usually stacked together), so he wont have many if any destroyed units to be affected by the bug.

Bad news for exactly the same splitting reason. This also impacts on any chinese player splitting broken corps for guerilla duty (they wont die together).

ofc this is all with 100% hindsight and not meant as a critisism at all. Actually it gives pro's and con's to dividing units and therefore more tactical and strategic decisions for the rest of us noobs to choke on [:D]

If you break the troops up it still doesn't mean they are immune to the respawn bug. For instance two of my divided units respawned some haven't.
Here's the two that did, the other destroyed units aren't on the replacement que .
 

 
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Yamato_Blitzer: Yes, I do agree 100%. The ceasefire in china had to be done otherwise this would be all over by now which is very unrealistic.

We haven't upgraded into beta patch due to obvious reason. We are too far ahead to risk this progress. I haven't found much on what the effects are but I sincerely hope they have tweaked a lot. Rob stated that the supply situation is at least somewhat better.

The forums are not buzzing with activity either in my opinion.

The carriers are the key and we need knock out KB once that is done than we can push ahead. Unfortunately we did lose those 2 US ones early on due to bad luck and maneuvering.

Mistmatz: Appreciated! That is the plan anyway. There are still japanese offensive movement ongoing both at India/Burma and Oz. That is not good since it is already august 1942.

This mainly due to attirition of airforces. Eventhough he has lost 3500 aircraft he still can outproduce my replacements. Thus can maintain offensive actions.

No. There is really none at the moment. I did that and we lost a lot of troops by doing guerilla warfare. There is also an "bug" that seems to hinder respawn of units when divided. Thus these troops are gone for good.

I will look into this soon again though.

khyberbill: The retreat is absolutely devastating you can lose 70% or more total strenght. I did knock out few japanese troops and the losses were maybe around 30-40% of av lost.

I haven't had chance to check out the beta patch either and did not found many threads detailing the ground combat diffrencies.

Sardaukar: Most likely why there is not many threads. There are a lot at stake when toying around beta patches.

SuluSea: No, These troops don't seem to respawn. I have had maybe couple of them comeback. Most of them are gone for good.

I would not recommend splitting up corpses since with the game model you can lose 33% of the strenght without any chance of getting it back.

I have seen the same as you described with your pic.

Smeulders: The answer is a lot of units! I cannot combine corpses since 1 fragment is gone etc. This has affected the gameplay.

I don't know whether they will re-appear with new patch. Splitting units in china is not an good idea at all.

Rob: The "splitting up" wasn't a problem earlier but we have lost quite a few after that so it is hard to say how much this has actually eaten up. As stated above it also affects the recombining units etc.

China (august 14th - 20th 1942)


The "ceasefire" is in effect and we are waiting for the official patch.

Japanese have now seized Changhteh and are fortifying the base as we speak. The ground battles resulted to around 5000 chinese and 3000 japanese lost. The good thing was that we managed to repulse the assault and by the time next assault came the base was "empty".

That withdrawal propably saved around 700av worth of infantry since we were not forced to retreat.

Dave has some 4000av worth of infantry near Changhteh so he is most likely pushing forward once the ceasefire lifts.

Japanese airforce is very active though and has bombed heavily our troops around Chihkiang.

In the north japanese continue to mop up our troops. Last turn Sining was seized by the enemy forces.

India (august 14th - 20th 1942)


The imperial navy is still very active around Chittadong.

Last turn BB Yamato, BB Haruna and BB Kongo bombarded the base here. The results were quite effective.

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Naval bombardment of Chittagong at 55,41

Allied aircraft
no flights

Allied aircraft losses
Hurricane IIa Trop: 1 destroyed on ground
P-40E Warhawk: 3 destroyed on ground
Hudson IIIa: 1 destroyed on ground
Hurricane IIc Trop: 2 destroyed on ground

Japanese Ships
BB Yamato
BB Haruna
BB Kongo


Allied ground losses:
68 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 2 destroyed, 8 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 4 (1 destroyed, 3 disabled)
Vehicles lost 5 (0 destroyed, 5 disabled)


Airbase hits 10
Airbase supply hits 3
Runway hits 53
Port hits 1

BB Yamato firing at Chittagong ...
BB Haruna firing at Chittagong Fortress...
BB Kongo firing at 2/11th Field Regiment...

...our artillery did not fire back at all.

This operation still has the full attention of "mini KB". RAF launched we strikes againts it and we were unable to breakthrough the CAP. Dave has put up around 100 aircraft here and it seems suicide even attempting to breakthrough.

The carriers involved are: CV Junyo, CVL Ryujo, CVL Shoho, CVL Zuiho, CS Mizuho, CS Chitose and CS Nisshin.

I did not attempt to intervene againts these ships since this seems very good way to attrite the low allied replacement pools. None of these ships were hit in earlier attempts though.

I'am increasing the recon flights around Chittadong and Akyab when next turn arrives.

Northern Oz (august 14th - 20th 1942)


The japanese assaults continue in northern oz. The battles have now moved into wastelands and it seems that our troops are likely to get themselves destroyed.

The enemy push is covered by large scale aerial bombings.

Hi guys,

Just wanted to thank all the contributors and readers in this thread.

All the comments have been very helpful and has ease the burden of the losses suffered in this campaign.

We are still far from the grand allied assaults in this PBEM but I do hope the tide is turning.

Today is the 92nd independence day back here. We have had some rough ordeals vs USSR in 1940's. If you want to read about these than:

Winter War (november 30th 1939 - march 14th 1940)

http://www.mil.fi/perustietoa/talvisota_eng/

http://www.winterwar.com/mainpage.htm

and

Continuation War (25 June 1941–19 September 1944)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation_War

Aztez thank you for links ! Definitly tragic event in history of our people.

Thanks for the links, very interesting details!

Btw. if you don´t know that site already:
http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/finland.htm

http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/ in general is a great collection of biographies or combat reports of exceptional WWII pilots from most countries.

I was always amazed by the resistance Finland was able to muster against the Soviet attack.

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Thanks for the links, very interesting details!

Btw. if you don´t know that site already:
http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/finland.htm

http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/ in general is a great collection of biographies or combat reports of exceptional WWII pilots from most countries.

I was always amazed by the resistance Finland was able to muster against the Soviet attack.

Hm...lets think in AE terms

fins had + terraine bonus, + wheater bonus, + winter trained and equiped army bonus, + higher morale bonus, + better commanders bonus, + 5-6 fort bonus.

Try to bit such army

almost same situation as we had against Germany in autumn and winter of 1941 exept better commanders:)

Swenslim: That was tragic indeed. My grandfather took part in some fierce fighting.

He never talked about those days in detail but after the war he never left home without an pistol. I guess that speaks more than 1000 words.

Unfortunately he died when I was very young so never really had an chance to talk him about it. I doubt he would have done it either though.

I might look his service records up one of these days since they might be intresting.

That is one calculation that builds up! [:)]

LoBaron: Thanks! Those familiar names and quite a few aces there. Actually there was an documentary few week back where veterans talked about those days.

I wish my Brewster pilots would be equally efficient with this game.

There are intresting personalities that did unbelievable things.

Maybe one of the odd stories must be the one of Simo Häyhä! He was an finnish sniper that has been reported to have done +500 kills during his service in winter war.

He is kind of winter war legend. There are plenty of others too. Not known to huge audience. ie Lauri Törni etc, etc.

Lets just hope we are done with this kind of business nowdays and can get along with each other. Overall the veterans are ranked in very high standard in modern Finland. I guess small country needs to keep together.

I will check those links you posted. I like to read when I have spare time in my hand.


Pacific (august 21st - 24th 1942)


The offensive period is temporarily halted and not much action is seen anywhere.

There tensions mounting in India and Australia with japanese army movement reported.

I'am in no position yet to launch grandscale offensives but I have some troops available and my strenght will start build up.

Actually things are going like they did in the classic witp where this was the time when both sides reconed and prepared for upcoming battles ahead.

Here is the map detailing most important developments lately.

Great AAR. I'm another inspired to start PBEM game by this thread more than any other. Will raise a glass to you when I am in Helsinki this weekend