Grudge Match

[John B.]

BBfanboy. It's actually a level 7 port, my mistake and I think that the necessary squads are there. Should be pulling into port tomorrow.

Capt. Harlock: The KB moved to due north of Suva 8-10 hexes. He might be taking up a central position. But, there are indications that he has taken a carrier out of the main task force. I have an invasion task force heading for Canton and he may have sent a carrier that way (not that he should know about the invasion but, you never know).

Hans: Is that what those ships are for! Honest to God there are so many ship types on here that it is a journey of discovery just to figure them out. I can just imagine Nimitz leaning out of his launch saying "Hey! You! Yeah, you on that YMS. What the hell do you do???"

Quick update. As noted the KB moved north of Suva. I bombed his troops at Suva and then launched a ground attack. He lost more squads than me but it was not a route. I have almost no disruption in my units so we're going in again tomorrow. Everything else is basically silent. I suspect he'll descend onto the coast of western australia to pick off some of the isolated ports there. Not much I can do about it. Perth is well garrisoned and easier to retake if he puts in a major effort, the remaining areas are too vulnerable to defend.

[HansBolter]

Yea, AEs and AKEs are ammunition ships that provide ammunition reload in ports incapable of providing it and supplementing ports capable of providing reload by allowing more ships to be reloaded in a given turn than the port has ops points for.

AS types provide reloads to subs, while ADs provide reloads to destroyers and AGs provide reloads to a plethora of small craft.

All important support ship types to be sure to distribute to necessary locales.

Load them with supply, set to Do Not Unload and disband them into the port. They reloads will eat the supply so you need to go into the "ships disbanded in port" interface and hit the "Reload Tenders" button occasionally.

Sometime in '45 the AEs become capable of underway replenishment at sea.

[John B.]

Hans, thanks for the tip. I had figured out the AS and the AEs but I did not know what the AKEs were for!

As for news from the front. I think Scott may have hit his high water mark. He continues to be stuck at Moresby and losing squads everyday to my bombardment. He won't be able to kick me out and I have the reinforcement edge since it's on the correct side of New Guinea as far as I'm concerned.

As for Suva, it seems that on my reinforcement convoy I had the 1st marine division (if only I kept a cargo manifest someplace). So, while he has a few SNLF units and part of the 53rd div. (but only part, the rest got lost at sea) I have Vandergrift and the boys sharpening their bayonets. [&o] Barring some catastrophe I should be able to push him off of Fiji in fairly short order. In other news, my invasion of Horn Island was a miserable failure. He was stronger there than I realized and the waves of IJA bombers was a sight to behold. I managed to pull my Marine Def. Battalion out but most of the construction unit was lost. But, I have a second attack nearly ready to go and this one will be much stronger. The invasion to retake Canton Island will take place in about two days. I may delay it as heavy radio signals from Truk indicate that the KB may be on the move again. No sense giving him a juicy target to go bash. If he heads down to Suva then I can go into Canton. Nothing in Burma, nothing in China.

[John B.]

Hello all,

A round up from the various fronts. Things look grim in China. Scott has just about broken through three hexes due east from Sian. He has attacked for several turns in a row and and most of my corps have retreated. The one bright spot is that as I fall back from the overall perimeter I'll free up lots of corps and I have five rested 400+ strength corps actually in Sian. The big question is do I fight for Sian or not?

My invasion of Canton Island took place and now I'm stuck there (man, I need to make stronger invasions!). But, there have been some terrific bombardments there and my carriers did a raid there today and another battleship is going in tonight. I hope that's enough for tomorrow's attack. We shall see. I also don't know where the KB is which is always scary!

Stalemate at Moresby. I think he's reinforcing which really is fine with me. The more troops he puts in the fewer I have to deal with elsewhere. Speaking of which, it's all over but the shouting at Suva. It turns out it was the 1st Marine division on my troop convoy. I've pushed him back from Suva and I'm fighting in Navi. He has some SNLF forces there, but they are battered and about to go down with no reinforcements on the way.

He appears to have sent some carriers to Johnston Island and then opted to not invade. I'm not sure what he was doing there.

Sub war continues to be infuriating. If I hit an SC the torpedo explodes. Torpedoes bounce off of every other ship. Even ducth ones. [:(]

One piece of advice, what are teh compass settings I need to search the 180 degree arc from due west to due east (as in the northern half). I keep trying to set this on the map or with the compass and when I look at the search arcs it just does not make sense! thanks.

[BBfanboy]

To do the 180º arc, you can go either clockwise or counterclockwise between due east (90º) and due west (270º).
If, for example, you wanted to search a northern half circle, you could put in the start point at 270º and clockwise to get a search that starts in the west to north in the morning
and finishes in the afternoon with a north to east set of arcs. You can do the same northern semi-circle in reverse by starting at 90º and setting counterclockwise to finish at 270º,
which has the morning search east to north and the afternoon search north to west.

For such a large arc, use a unit of at least 12 planes. Many players find search to be nearly ineffective beyond 12 hex range, so it seems better to limit the search and do a more
thorough job within the 12 hexes. The FAC in the War Room part of the forum says 6000 feet is the ideal search altitude to locate most TFs, but for smaller ships (e.g. 2 DDs or some APDs)
I would go down to 4000 feet and for subs I search at 2000 feet, no more than 5 hexes.

[John B.]

BBfanboy,

See this is what is driving me nuts about search vectors. I put in 270 and 90 respectively and then the graphic shows me some odd search arc just off to the West. If I fiddle with the numbers the arc won't change at all until it will shift violently in some other direction. What am I missing? And, of course, thanks for your help!

No real news from the front. I'm trying this turn to overload the bombers escorts near Sian with about 80 LCAP overhead. I need to whittle his bombers down a bit. I'm also sending 5 BBs to bombard Port Baker. Otherwise, just winding up Nadi and preparing to reinvade Horn Island. My CVs are all heading into the yards for upgrades so Scott will have free reign for awhile!

[Mike McCreery]

ORIGINAL: John B.

BBfanboy,

See this is what is driving me nuts about search vectors. I put in 270 and 90 respectively and then the graphic shows me some odd search arc just off to the West. If I fiddle with the numbers the arc won't change at all until it will shift violently in some other direction. What am I missing? And, of course, thanks for your help!

No real news from the front. I'm trying this turn to overload the bombers escorts near Sian with about 80 LCAP overhead. I need to whittle his bombers down a bit. I'm also sending 5 BBs to bombard Port Baker. Otherwise, just winding up Nadi and preparing to reinvade Horn Island. My CVs are all heading into the yards for upgrades so Scott will have free reign for awhile!

What you have there is a search arc starting at 270 and heading clockwise toward 90. If you do not have enough planes it will not cover the whole arc. Also check to be sure you are not using only 20% of the planes because that can cause the arc to be short as well.

One of the other things that can throw me off is if you transfer the planes to somewhere else it stays on the planes but relocates back to the planes origin so you are not looking at the same area of the map you are setting the arc for. You just have to re-target the proper plane at the new location to set the arc.

[BBfanboy]

What Wargmr said about making sure enough aircraft are used. The graphic you posted shows about 80º of arc for whatever number of planes you
have employed, range 12 hexes. If you have a full squadron doing that, you will need more squadrons to cover the full arc. Of course you should
divide the arc into three 60º sections for the three squadrons you likely need, with some overlap between squadrons.

The only way I know of to cover with one squadron is to change the arcs each turn so the arc gets covered over three days. That leaves dangerous
gaps. Some players swear that just leaving the search set on "random arcs" produces better results than setting the vector. I can't say one way
or another on the two approaches to the problem.

[Mike McCreery]

One of the other wacky things I run into is the 0 on the arc. If you leave the 2nd arc coordinate at zero it can screw up the search arc as well.

So if you want them to go from 330 to 90 degrees clockwise and do not set the 2nd arc command it will go from 330 to 0 and you will only get part of your arc.

Remember to check both arc numbers, the % of planes committed to search or ASW and make sure the arc direction is correct and you should be all set.

Dont feel bad, they are confusing. What I have found out is that when I have a problem it is my error every time.

[John B.]

Thanks for all the advice! I decided it was just easier to go with random search arcs since it has worked pretty well for the last game and this one. Hard to imagine a limit to the micromanaging available in this game! [:)]

A quick update. Scott has really busted through in China and now is at the gates of Sian. I finally got some corps out but they are very weak and demoralized. I did wipe out an armored car company that pursued into Sian, but that was a small comfort to the damage he has done. Still not sure about trying to hold Sian. It has level 4 forts. Does that help against his air bombardment? I have a number of strong corps there and not sure about trying to make a stand or not.

I lost a number of ships on a supply run into Rangoon which was another bummer and, in a trifecta of bad news, I had a nice little surface action group consisting of the two Dutch CLs and some DDs that had picked off a number of Japanese small convoys. I sent them into the oil fields of New Guinea and they did sink two small TKs and a PB, but they they ran out of fuel and drifted around getting picked off (they were not highlighted in red when I sent them in). I did get an AKL in to refuel and got out a CL and a DD but I lost three DDs and a CL in the process. In the meantime, I have a reinforcement convoy at Moresby that is just starting to unload including three more FA units. He continues to take 4-6 actual losses each turn from my bombardment so I figure I'll keep that up as long as I can. I'm also sending in a small landing party to retake Efate. Recon over the past two weeks show no troops so I think he evacuated it when he saw that his Suva mission would fail.

Oh, I downloaded the patch. Does anyone know the right keys to use to get the full screen again? I use Microsoft 7 professional. Thanks!

[HansBolter]

Go to your shortcut. Open the properties. On the command line delete the -w switch the patch added and you will get full screen again.

The patches automatically delete all present switches and add the -w switch.

I use several switches and have to remember to copy them to clipboard before executing the patch so I can paste them back in afterward.

I really wish they would let the patches install without deleting existing switches and adding the -w switch.

[John B.]

Hans, you're a genius! [&o] Thanks, it worked like a charm.

[John B.]

Time for a quick update. It's the end of July 1942 and I'm still basically in a holding pattern. I got a new reinforcement convoy though to Moresby adding in the 121st independent regiment and three more artillery units. There was a huge air battle in which enough of my CAP survived his sweep that I chopped up his bombers. At the end of the day it showed 86 Japanese planes down for 25 american. I'm sure the flyboys bragged a bit but he did take heavy losses. He lost those planes and my only damage was a torpedo in a BB which did a minor amount of flotation hits (about 11 or so). Since intelligence reports show Scott taking losses from bombardment each turn I figure I might as well keep hammering away. In the Jungles around Moresby Australian companies and Japanese SNLF units are playing hide and seek while I try to cut his overland supply routes (which can't be that good anyway since it's through mountain jungle.

The convoy news was not so good off of Rangoon. There, I thought I'd take advantage of the BBs bombarding Port Blair to run in a quick convoy only to be reminded yet again that merchant ships vs. Bettys and Nells means that the merchants ships lose. I lost 6 AKs and he lost 5-7 planes. Not a good trade off at all. Supplies did make it into Rangoon and I don't see any serious threat right now. Unless Scott has sent the KB towards India. I have not seen them for a long time and it would fit with the push Scott is making in China.

There he is at the gates of Sian. I basically destroyed six corps and pursued them all the way to Sian. He has some killer stacks built up and it now looks to be tough going there for me. I did get some measure of revenge. I have 9 well rested corps in Sian proper at level 3 fort. An armored car company came across the river and got wiped out. Two turns later he sent across three tank regiments and another armored car company. They got whacked in their mandatory attack and the next turn I basically destroyed them in a shock counter attack. The reports were over 500 vehicles destroyed in the two days worth of battles. But, the 25 unit stack o' death is right behind and will likely fare much better. I did jump on a IJA division in the south and rough it up a little, but he really has huge forces converging on the Sian area.

My KB continues to refit in Pearl and the sub torpedoes continue to go "boink."

[Capt. Harlock]

Time for a quick update. It's the end of July 1942 and I'm still basically in a holding pattern.

It sounds like you've brought the Japanese expansion to a halt. What's the victory point status?

[John B.]

Capt. Harlock,

He's currently at 20,049 and I'm at 16,567 (it's August 1, 1942). But, I'm not sure his expansion plans are all over. He is making a major push in China. He's built up his armor and is on the gates of Sian. In the meantime, he's attacking and bombarding around the perimeter form Kukong to the wastelands out west and he's pressing his attacks. His strategy could be to hold the americans while pressing the Chinese who really can't get too much relief from the allies. I still have Rangoon so the Chinese are getting 500 supply that way and I've got an air bridge sending about 25 supply points per turn to Chengtu. The Tenth Airforce is also there but there is not much else I can do.

[John B.]

Here is the latest from the front. As you can see, big doings in China as Scott continues to press his offensive against Sian. I got lucky in a retreat on the road to sian so a lone tiny Chinese corps sits isloated, but isolated on a supply road! I'm using my interior lines and superior road net to try to pull off a counteroffensive in the hex just south of Sian. Scott attacked there two days ago and got a bad result so I'm hoping he's still a little woozy from that. I've move the bulk of my Sian reserves into the hex as he only has about 4 divisions there. His main army is across the river and trying to cross but I don't think he'll arrive in time. And, I don't think he's moving any troops into Sian as he lost a large number of armored units in an earlier failed attempt to get directly into the city. It's a maximum Chinese effort. I'm coming with about 20 corps (at least 5 of which have an AV of 400+) and every plane that can fly is either on LRCAP over the hex or bombing it.

Near Changsha I have another counteroffensive brewing trying to get to Hankow. I dont' think I'll get there but I should be able to beat up 1-2 units and maybe get Scott to ease up on Sian if only for a little while. In the meantime, not much else to report. I keep getting reports of large radio signals from singapore and now heading up the Straits of Malacca. So, since I don't know where the KB is, I figured now was as good a time as any to send every British ship in Colombo north just in case Scott is looking for a new Pearl. Moresby is still a siege and I have an new invasion task force just a few days out of Horn Island.

[John B.]

All hail the captain and crew S-34! Four torpedoes fired in broad daylight at the Hiyo, three on target, three penetrate the belt armor and one triggers a fuel storage explosion.[&o] I don't think it's dead as there were no sinking sounds and no dead aircraft in the ops lost poor (or any other pool for that matter) but I'm sure it's hanging on by its fingernails and there are other subs now scouring the area. Since the S-34 detection level moved up to 10 I've moved it to safety.

In other good Moresby front news, my assault captured the Horn Island facilities even though only a few squads made it ashore. He may do a carrier strike on my invasion task for at a range of 9 but I think that means his Vals are out of range and the Kates will be using bombs. I do have some fighter protection over the task force, but no high value ships (small xAPs and xAKLs).

Another big assault set for china as we continue to battle on the Sian river line. Stay tuned!

[Capt. Harlock]

All hail the captain and crew S-34! Four torpedoes fired in broad daylight at the Hiyo, three on target, three penetrate the belt armor and one triggers a fuel storage explosion. I don't think it's dead as there were no sinking sounds and no dead aircraft in the ops lost poor (or any other pool for that matter) but I'm sure it's hanging on by its fingernails

And since it's on fire there's always hope. Well done S-34!

[John B.]

It's a team effort. S-47 caught Hiyo on her way home and got another fish into her. This time with an ammo explosion.[&o] Still no sinking sounds and no dead aircraft, but she's got to be bailing fast. More subs are scouring for her.

Short note, Chinese counter offensive not going as well as I would have hoped. Killing more of him than I'm losing but his troops bounced back fast and reinforcements are on the way.

[John B.]

Hello all,

sorry for the delay in updates but we were have beta issues. But, all is well, or not, depending on what side of the bayonet on is one. As you can see in the post, Scott is making a major push up and down the line in China and really putting the pressure on. In A he has 54! units about to attack Sian. I have 15 corps or so at a level 4 fort. My hope is to hold out there for a little while and then withdraw. I have about 10 Corps at C which just manhandled a division this turn. that division and a tank regiment are in the clear hex north of the battle area trying to get back across the river. I'm going on a major road so I should make it first and then I may get a good bash in on him and free up troops to get back down to Sian.

Area B near changsha is a mess. I moved a major army into Wuchang. I have no hope of taking it, but it has done a yoman service by absorbing constant air strikes over the past week of game time or so. It has also managed to shoot down about 20 IJA bombers with AA. I did have an air disaster when the 10th airforce squadrons lost almost 40 p-40Es for no loss of IJA fighters. I'm still trying to figure that out since my pilots were pretty good. Be that as it may, I'm trying to pull out of Wuchang before Scott can come north out of the woods and cut me off. Fortunately, in the woods hex is another large Chinese army so he can't pull too much strength out of there. So long as he does not cut me off, it's a nice diversion from the Sian frong.

The KB has disappeared for quite some time. I can only assume that it is upgrading. At Morseby he now has five divisions and I have two. I also have 800 artillery tubes that are taking a steady toll on him.

Man, the IJA seems to have endless divisions. I'm not sure how he supports it all but he does. So, any tips on China would be most welcome! He does have side offensives taking place in the far north and down near Vietnam. I've even using bombers to ferry supplies to China from India (since they're doing anything else). I'm glad I still have the Burma road!