ORIGINAL: bklooste
Castor I wouldnt crit skill levels- sure in Nemos game that is the case but Joe and Cuttlefish are not beginners i think your one of the few ( only) 43 game where its even and you have had some unlucky engadgements.
Japan has a limited capacity due to onboard resources ( eg x * 4 years - shipping losses ) . The thing is Japan can prob ramp up to her end 42- mid 43 level in 6 months with the starting supply & oil pool which makes it difficult for the allies in 41 but those resources spent do not show till late 43 . Look at Cuttlefish after the resources were cut of he had no stockpile and was down to 3 planes a day in mid 43 , part of the reason for this is burning through the stockpile in 41-42.
I really liked how in some AARs ( Mike and Seydliz) they kept building Nates, Sallies etc due to engines in the pool and supply costs or turn of light industry these players will be better of in 43-44.
I used to think the best option for Japan was to really force the allied air to battle so the veterans at start exact a maximum toll , force the allies to commit badly trained troops and replacements have the most time to train. However this helps the late 42 -early 43 situation it creates huge issues in 44 due to extra supplies used in building new factories and air. So i think it is a fine balance with little experience in 44 most players have gone with the have lots of planes in 41 strategy which means the allies with a Europe first policy wont have enough to challenge Japan in 42.
IMHO your really need to play Japan against a competent allied player.
hmm, I wonder what unlucky engagements I had because I neither have empty carriers or lost a single carrier nor anything else of importance. 2 BBs lost on my side, 1 on the other with me not losing any cruisers (except the Dutch crappy ones) and perhaps a good dozen DDs lost on my side but already 4-6 CAs and numerous DDs lost on the other. Speaking about 1/43, numbers out of my head as I´m at work now. My opponent has done a good conquest of more or less the historical areas, also took out PM and Northern Australia though but surely not one of those "I go for the map things". And I would definetely rate him as a competent player. I´ve played thousands of WITP PBEM turns but it´s my first AE PBEM, I wouldn´t call me inexperienced though. I sure am a ranting bitch but going after the results of my PBEMs I´m probably not a walkover.
Like I´ve said, I´m going forward pretty conservative, trying to minimize losses as much as possible (every single freighter lost is one too much) but I´ve also not done something freaky (like you see often enough) when people do a 1000 mile leap with an armada to land "somewhere" on the map and "somewhere" is as far from the front as Washington DC. Just like taking Berlin in 43 with two airborne divisions.
We´re playing scen 2 and it was started under patch 2 so no idea if that makes any difference. IMO Cuttlefish didn´t lose because he ran out of fuel/rescources, he lost because he lost his carriers. As soon as you run out of carriers, the Allied can advance up the route Q-Ball took far easier in early 43 than in mid/late 43 due to the difference in available Japanese aircraft. Close down the SRA and that´s it, no matter what year we´re talking about. But that was true for WITP also. Why Joe and Nik lost, I´m not really sure about it, I felt it was kind of a really freaky game. [:D] But I wouldn´t take two on two campaigns as a really good example anyway because it seems that most often screws up more things than the IJA and IJN did in real life.
In WITP Allied players won the game with an "going around Australia to do a 500 ship invasion of Java" many times but that always felt like an airborne invasion of Berlin to me. I don´t want to critisize neither of those players in the AARs we´ve mentioned but if you lose your carriers or most of your fleet in 42 then you either did something wrong or your opponent(s) did something really right IMO. And then it´s just game over. It´s pretty much as in WITP, people always said you´re a sitting duck as the Japanese at some point of the game and still have I had many occasions in WITP where I´ve sunk a dozen Allied carriers in the later stages of the game with concentrated attacks of LBA and the massed KB a day or two later. Did it cost me a couple of hundred aircraft? Yes it did. Did I care about those aircraft after the first halve dozen CVs were sunk? Sure not. With the new air routines I expect the same in AE and with the average aircraft output of the Japanese in the game (going with the reports of Japanese players) you definetely do have a chance IMO.
It´s 1/43 in my game, I haven´t really been beaten anywhere (neither did I lose important ground units, nor any important shipping or had ongoing airbattles totally depleting my pools, I´ve also got something like 2000 skill 70 pilots of all types in the pool - but no aircraft to put them in) and the game is going a more or less historic pace at the moment. But as mentioned, I´ve got perhaps a good dozen bombers for my frontline squadrons and it would take you a while when going through my AAR to find any real slaughters of my airforce in the last 6-10 months (I´m leading with Allied 3000 vs Japanese 4000 aircraft in the loss list). It´s the first PBEM for me in AE but I realized quickly to keep my airforce from the enemy if I can´t be sure to overwhelm him. Of course, now that we´re in 43 with the very important month 2/43 around the corner and me not having suffered real losses I expect it to become more one sided and a faster pace of my operations.