They can be useful for bait, for deception and for stoping the enemy raiding with SCTF.ORIGINAL: Cribtop
Open Questions
A few open questions to the readership:
1) nygiants59 - you recently indicated that the CVEs would be useful in future operations. Granted I'd love not to have lost them, but didn't make them part of MKB due to low speed. In your opinion, how are they useful?
2) To all - What, if anything, are the lessons of the failure of Operation Kraken (the CVE Raiders)? What have I missed? Should raiding be left to subs? To subs or LCTFs?
Raiding is really hit and miss. To optimise it you need:
Queing systems, long range patrol aircraft and Glen equiped subs are best, so you know where and generally what the targets are.
Flank protection, Subs, AMC and patrol aircraft.
A fuel reserve (this impacted on the raiders we lost, and on you).
Basically a raid shouldn't be a whim, it needs to be planned and co-ordinated. Only risk what you are prepared to loose.
3) To all - Is my optimism in China warranted or am I off base? It seems to me that Changsha, Kukong and eventually Nanning fall, opening the Singers to Port Arthur land route; and that the KMT starves. This allows me to shift divisions to the Pacific and DEI. What do you think?
Yup
Despite the JFB "thrill" of boasting about what you captured, it is what you have at the end of the game that really counts, not where you were. Clearing central China does this the best. It is tough on both sides to do that, but the Japanese have a couple of advantages that they can exploit easier than the Allies. On the other hand it does bring a little of the political will of the Allies (US in particular) to support the Chinese... as the Allied player abandon the Chinese to their fate at your peril...Apart from the DEI and Indo China the rest of the map is about taking good defensive terrain, or trying to "kill stuff" while you can to delay the Allies as long as you can.
[/center]
