Two questions about a West Coast invasion

[AcePylut]

The Japs invaded Portland. I guess that means we can't build B29's anywhere else in the US. Ever. [8|]

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Silly that taking out Portland for one day, in Jan '42, somehow "kills" all the CVE's and tankers for the rest of the war.

As if the US couldn't build these ships elsewhere, as if they were planned to be built on Jan 1 '42. Like we'd be building liberty ships at 1x per hour (or whatever) in the Gulf coast.

Or "omg, Portland got invaded in Jan 1942, I guess that means we can't build a B17s in, idk, Omaha, or anywhere else. Them damn sneaky Japs ruining our unbuilt airplane factories!!!"

It's just a silly design decision. I'd say at best, give all those ships and planes a 1 month delay and have them come in on the East Coast.

Going for the West Coast on a "raid and destroy" mission is akin to loading up all the troops and making a beeline for Nomuea in the first week of game of UV.

Well, Michael M and Alfred made it clear that the design was for a GAME, not a historical simulator. Once that decision was made, and the one that says Japan needs some help to stay in the game until 1944 or later, it was logical to say that failure to defend the WCUSA should be punished severely. As it is, the Allies can still win the game, just as they could with loss of all their carriers in 1942. It just gets slower and demands more creative thinking about vectors for the pushback.
Having said that, I do not fault a new player for conceding and restarting because the handicap is just too great for an inexperienced player.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Silly that taking out Portland for one day, in Jan '42, somehow "kills" all the CVE's and tankers for the rest of the war.

As if the US couldn't build these ships elsewhere, as if they were planned to be built on Jan 1 '42. Like we'd be building liberty ships at 1x per hour (or whatever) in the Gulf coast.

Or "omg, Portland got invaded in Jan 1942, I guess that means we can't build a B17s in, idk, Omaha, or anywhere else. Them damn sneaky Japs ruining our unbuilt airplane factories!!!"

It's just a silly design decision. I'd say at best, give all those ships and planes a 1 month delay and have them come in on the East Coast.



Going for the West Coast on a "raid and destroy" mission is akin to loading up all the troops and making a beeline for Nomuea in the first week of game of UV.

Thank you. It refreshing to get a corroborating opinion on juts how much of a weasel tactic this is.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Silly that taking out Portland for one day, in Jan '42, somehow "kills" all the CVE's and tankers for the rest of the war.

As if the US couldn't build these ships elsewhere, as if they were planned to be built on Jan 1 '42. Like we'd be building liberty ships at 1x per hour (or whatever) in the Gulf coast.

Or "omg, Portland got invaded in Jan 1942, I guess that means we can't build a B17s in, idk, Omaha, or anywhere else. Them damn sneaky Japs ruining our unbuilt airplane factories!!!"

It's just a silly design decision. I'd say at best, give all those ships and planes a 1 month delay and have them come in on the East Coast.



Going for the West Coast on a "raid and destroy" mission is akin to loading up all the troops and making a beeline for Nomuea in the first week of game of UV.

Thank you. It refreshing to get a corroborating opinion on juts how much of a weasel tactic this is.

[8|]

This isn't a historical simulation. It's a game, and game designs that are based on history require abstractions.

Funny how you don't see many people calling "Sir Robin" a "weasel tactic", or Fortress Palembang a "weasel tactic", isn't it? The Allies would never have done either of those in the real world, yet there's barely anything but crickets on the forum when these things occur.

[8|]

If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories.

On a related note, funny how neglecting any/much rear area security tactics (such as pickets and coastal defense patrols) is never seen as a "weasel tactic", eh? But when the Japanese player exploits such weaknesses, it is of course unfair advantages just baked into the game, or some such.

Such entitlement.

[DRF99]

I see this as an oversight or at least something that didn't make the cut in the design of the game, fair enough.

Using picket ships, "Sir Robin", Fortress Palembang, though they may not have been done in real life, could have been done given the political and military will. I see these as abstractions. Universal supply, off map movement file consumption, and aircraft replacements I see as a similar abstractions.

However, the capture of a port destroying ships that won't be built for years I see as an oversight. It's not something that would or could happen in real life.

If the game is ever updated, I would like to see construction shipyards. Capture would cause any ships under construction to be delayed by some amount for each day the city was captured and the construction shipyard could be damaged. At the same time, I can see political points being subtracted each day for certain events such as a Japanese invasion of the continental US, an allied invasion of Hokkaido, and similar events that would have been catastrophic politically in real life.

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: DRF99

I see this as an oversight or at least something that didn't make the cut in the design of the game, fair enough.

Using picket ships, "Sir Robin", Fortress Palembang, though they may not have been done in real life, could have been done given the political and military will. I see these as abstractions. Universal supply, off map movement file consumption, and aircraft replacements I see as a similar abstractions.

However, the capture of a port destroying ships that won't be built for years I see as an oversight. It's not something that would or could happen in real life.

If the game is ever updated, I would like to see construction shipyards. Capture would cause any ships under construction to be delayed by some amount for each day the city was captured and the construction shipyard could be damaged. At the same time, I can see political points being subtracted each day for certain events such as a Japanese invasion of the continental US, an allied invasion of Hokkaido, and similar events that would have been catastrophic politically in real life.

It was not an oversight. It is a very deliberate design feature whose rationale has been clearly explained in the past. Plus it is based on real world considerations of how economies operate, and how ships are actually built.

Alfred

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


...If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories...

You are greatly underplaying the dramatic real world economic disruption which would have occurred. There was no industrial slack elsewhere in the USA to simply allow relocation of this ship production easily with only a relatively small delay in production.

1. There was a reason why only 6 new automobiles were built during the war in the USA. The steel, aluminium, labour etc was needed for war production. Civilian demand for automobiles was still present. So what other suitable civilian or wartime production could be further curtailed to provide the resources to fully accommodate the loss of Portland.

2. Yes, even the USA economy was limited as to the number of suitable sites for construction of capital class ships. If there were so many virgin green sites available for plonking down these shipyards, why were they not built at the time? Why wait until well into 1943 and later to lay down these keels when these virgin sites apparently could have been built starting on 8 December 1941. Why build ships sequentially in a shipyard if they could all be built simultaneously; 1 capital ship per shipyard would have seen all Essex class carriers operational in April 1943, all Iowa class battleships operational in late 1943, all the Montana class battleships completed and operational in 1944. Then of course why wait for all the smaller fry such as the Fletchers, the landing ships, the Gato and Balao class subs to come in dribs, when with all this implied virgin green sites available for building shipyards they could have come in all at once the lead vessel of the class had been completed.

3. Labour is a critical input into the construction of ships. Forget for a moment the immense difficulties which surround constructing the construction facilities elsewhere, obtaining the necessary skilled labour would be a huge obstacles. Japan capturing Portland not only entails the destruction of the shipyards but also the loss of all the skilled workers employed in the shipyards. Unless someone is going to put forward the fantasy argument that any American territory which was captured had the entire population evacuated simultaneously as the territory was lost thereby maintaining full industrial production literally up to the last minute and making the skilled labour immediately available to work elsewhere.

Alfred

[spence]

Roosevelt could NEVER have sold "Europe First" to anyone if the United States actually had enemy troops on its soil. As it stands the Allied Player has this "Europe First" political decision as a given. With enemy troops on US soil the flow of reinforcements would have been 90% against Japan as would all the upgrades to modern aircraft (even the remaining 10% might be in dispute).

The United States reached some 90+% mobilization sometime in 1944 and then stopped converting industries to war production. The Japanese were at 100% on day 1. The idea that the US would be publishing recipes for grass in one of its major newspapers (such as the Tokyo Times) at any point prior to the fall of England and Russia to the Germans is absurd. So the idea that, armed with the foreknowledge that a bunch of US reinforcements will appear in a certain place and will be wiped out permanently by some sacrificial invasion of the US right after the declaration of war is beyond the pale.

[PaxMondo]

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


...If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories...

You are greatly underplaying the dramatic real world economic disruption which would have occurred. There was no industrial slack elsewhere in the USA to simply allow relocation of this ship production easily with only a relatively small delay in production.

1. There was a reason why only 6 new automobiles were built during the war in the USA. The steel, aluminium, labour etc was needed for war production. Civilian demand for automobiles was still present. So what other suitable civilian or wartime production could be further curtailed to provide the resources to fully accommodate the loss of Portland.

2. Yes, even the USA economy was limited as to the number of suitable sites for construction of capital class ships. If there were so many virgin green sites available for plonking down these shipyards, why were they not built at the time? Why wait until well into 1943 and later to lay down these keels when these virgin sites apparently could have been built starting on 8 December 1941. Why build ships sequentially in a shipyard if they could all be built simultaneously; 1 capital ship per shipyard would have seen all Essex class carriers operational in April 1943, all Iowa class battleships operational in late 1943, all the Montana class battleships completed and operational in 1944. Then of course why wait for all the smaller fry such as the Fletchers, the landing ships, the Gato and Balao class subs to come in dribs, when with all this implied virgin green sites available for building shipyards they could have come in all at once the lead vessel of the class had been completed.

3. Labour is a critical input into the construction of ships. Forget for a moment the immense difficulties which surround constructing the construction facilities elsewhere, obtaining the necessary skilled labour would be a huge obstacles. Japan capturing Portland not only entails the destruction of the shipyards but also the loss of all the skilled workers employed in the shipyards. Unless someone is going to put forward the fantasy argument that any American territory which was captured had the entire population evacuated simultaneously as the territory was lost thereby maintaining full industrial production literally up to the last minute and making the skilled labour immediately available to work elsewhere.

Alfred

I was indeed, because abstractions and because estimating the impact on all of the things you mention gets really hard and into unknown territory.

I think the gain of the VPs by Japan of all the ships that would be destroyed in the queue is a "good enough" estimate of what the real-world impact of a "smash and grab" invasion would have done.

And the same glaring weaknesses of the Japanese move would have been present in the real world, just as they are in the game with such a move. Diverting forces to invade CONUS in January 1942 has lots of consequences.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: spence


Roosevelt could NEVER have sold "Europe First" to anyone if the United States actually had enemy troops on its soil. As it stands the Allied Player has this "Europe First" political decision as a given. With enemy troops on US soil the flow of reinforcements would have been 90% against Japan as would all the upgrades to modern aircraft (even the remaining 10% might be in dispute).

The United States reached some 90+% mobilization sometime in 1944 and then stopped converting industries to war production. The Japanese were at 100% on day 1. The idea that the US would be publishing recipes for grass in one of its major newspapers (such as the Tokyo Times) at any point prior to the fall of England and Russia to the Germans is absurd. So the idea that, armed with the foreknowledge that a bunch of US reinforcements will appear in a certain place and will be wiped out permanently by some sacrificial invasion of the US right after the declaration of war is beyond the pale.

This is what the emergency reinforcements package is supposed to represent, to a degree if not in full.

Many of the LCUs that show up are those initial units that were sent to "Europe" (in actuality Africa) instead of the Pacific. I don't know about the planes.

[tarkalak]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

+1

[Bearcat2]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


...If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories...

You are greatly underplaying the dramatic real world economic disruption which would have occurred. There was no industrial slack elsewhere in the USA to simply allow relocation of this ship production easily with only a relatively small delay in production.

1. There was a reason why only 6 new automobiles were built during the war in the USA. The steel, aluminium, labour etc was needed for war production. Civilian demand for automobiles was still present. So what other suitable civilian or wartime production could be further curtailed to provide the resources to fully accommodate the loss of Portland.

2. Yes, even the USA economy was limited as to the number of suitable sites for construction of capital class ships. If there were so many virgin green sites available for plonking down these shipyards, why were they not built at the time? Why wait until well into 1943 and later to lay down these keels when these virgin sites apparently could have been built starting on 8 December 1941. Why build ships sequentially in a shipyard if they could all be built simultaneously; 1 capital ship per shipyard would have seen all Essex class carriers operational in April 1943, all Iowa class battleships operational in late 1943, all the Montana class battleships completed and operational in 1944. Then of course why wait for all the smaller fry such as the Fletchers, the landing ships, the Gato and Balao class subs to come in dribs, when with all this implied virgin green sites available for building shipyards they could have come in all at once the lead vessel of the class had been completed.

3. Labour is a critical input into the construction of ships. Forget for a moment the immense difficulties which surround constructing the construction facilities elsewhere, obtaining the necessary skilled labour would be a huge obstacles. Japan capturing Portland not only entails the destruction of the shipyards but also the loss of all the skilled workers employed in the shipyards. Unless someone is going to put forward the fantasy argument that any American territory which was captured had the entire population evacuated simultaneously as the territory was lost thereby maintaining full industrial production literally up to the last minute and making the skilled labour immediately available to work elsewhere.

Alfred

You are being a tad disingenuous, Kaiser's shipyards were not like the shipyards for building the capital ships. Other shipyards built ships, Kaiser assembled ships. When Kaiser couldn't get steel , he built the largest steel mill in the western US in 9 months during the war. When he told the Navy that he could build 50 CVE's, the Navy told him no; he went to Roosevelt and got the ok, so the resources and labor were there. His shipyards were built in 5 to 9 months, most built during the war. He built a city[ complete with schools, hospitals and a college-now Portland State] of 10,000 in months to house workers imported from across the country, utilized women and African -Americans for labor, he was not dependent upon local labor. Kaiser was a industrial genius, when the WPB during the war asked him to oversee the Brewster Aircraft facilities, with the same plant and workforce; they went from 12 planes a month to over a 120 a month.
IMHO A Ballpark figure for the disruption to production would be 9-12 months.


IMHO a fantasy is moving a 100 miles up the Columbia River to invade Portland

[mind_messing]

Considering the hysteria present in the US immediately following Pearl Harbor, I wonder if the VP reflections for a CONUS invasion are too low...




/s

[spence]

You are being a tad disingenuous, Kaiser's shipyards were not like the shipyards for building the capital ships. Other shipyards built ships, Kaiser assembled ships. When Kaiser couldn't get steel , he built the largest steel mill in the western US in 9 months during the war. When he told the Navy that he could build 50 CVE's, the Navy told him no; he went to Roosevelt and got the ok, so the resources and labor were there. His shipyards were built in 5 to 9 months, most built during the war. He built a city[ complete with schools, hospitals and a college-now Portland State] of 10,000 in months to house workers imported from across the country, utilized women and African -Americans for labor, he was not dependent upon local labor. Kaiser was a industrial genius, when the WPB during the war asked him to oversee the Brewster Aircraft facilities, with the same plant and workforce; they went from 12 planes a month to over a 120 a month.
IMHO A Ballpark figure for the disruption to production would be 9-12 months.

Thus it is likely that the same shipyard/city may well have appeared in some other place in roughly the same time period and produced all of those ships elsewhere.

Considering the hysteria present in the US immediately following Pearl Harbor, I wonder if the VP reflections for a CONUS invasion are too low...

However my point was that once committed to repelling an actual Japanese invasion of the homeland there is little likelihood that Roosevelt was going to turn the entire US around to take on the Germans. Lend Lease would have probably continued and the Atlantic Fleet would have fought the U-boats but no great increase in force allocation to a European War could have occurred. Quite likely the exact outcome of the war in Europe would have changed but that is not the concern of this forum.

BTW - How would the Japanese supply an invasion of CONUS?
How fit would two divisions of IJA troops be after sailing 8000 miles across a stormy North Pacific?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Bearcat2

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna


...If Japan had landed in force in the PNW on sabotage missions and managed to "capture" what is the Portland hex in the game, even if only for a day... fine, I'll grant that the steel and other materials used to build those CVEs (and other ships) would have been diverted to other shipyards and the CVEs (and other ships) probably still would have been produced. But such an action would have had a lasting impact on the war, which is precisely what VPs are supposed to be an abstraction of. The psychological effect of a successful (even if only momentarily) hit-and-run mission by the Japanese in the war would have been immense. If the shipyards at Portland had been sabotaged, regardless of whether they'd been repaired, who knows what resources would have been devoted to protected CONUS deep into the war against any more end-run sabotage missions by Japan? Or the aircraft factories in Seattle? And the destruction of industrial assets is not an inconsequential matter, in any case - it would take months to retool or build additional factories to replace those lost, particularly aircraft factories...

You are greatly underplaying the dramatic real world economic disruption which would have occurred. There was no industrial slack elsewhere in the USA to simply allow relocation of this ship production easily with only a relatively small delay in production.

1. There was a reason why only 6 new automobiles were built during the war in the USA. The steel, aluminium, labour etc was needed for war production. Civilian demand for automobiles was still present. So what other suitable civilian or wartime production could be further curtailed to provide the resources to fully accommodate the loss of Portland.

2. Yes, even the USA economy was limited as to the number of suitable sites for construction of capital class ships. If there were so many virgin green sites available for plonking down these shipyards, why were they not built at the time? Why wait until well into 1943 and later to lay down these keels when these virgin sites apparently could have been built starting on 8 December 1941. Why build ships sequentially in a shipyard if they could all be built simultaneously; 1 capital ship per shipyard would have seen all Essex class carriers operational in April 1943, all Iowa class battleships operational in late 1943, all the Montana class battleships completed and operational in 1944. Then of course why wait for all the smaller fry such as the Fletchers, the landing ships, the Gato and Balao class subs to come in dribs, when with all this implied virgin green sites available for building shipyards they could have come in all at once the lead vessel of the class had been completed.

3. Labour is a critical input into the construction of ships. Forget for a moment the immense difficulties which surround constructing the construction facilities elsewhere, obtaining the necessary skilled labour would be a huge obstacles. Japan capturing Portland not only entails the destruction of the shipyards but also the loss of all the skilled workers employed in the shipyards. Unless someone is going to put forward the fantasy argument that any American territory which was captured had the entire population evacuated simultaneously as the territory was lost thereby maintaining full industrial production literally up to the last minute and making the skilled labour immediately available to work elsewhere.

Alfred

You are being a tad disingenuous, Kaiser's shipyards were not like the shipyards for building the capital ships. Other shipyards built ships, Kaiser assembled ships. When Kaiser couldn't get steel , he built the largest steel mill in the western US in 9 months during the war. When he told the Navy that he could build 50 CVE's, the Navy told him no; he went to Roosevelt and got the ok, so the resources and labor were there. His shipyards were built in 5 to 9 months, most built during the war. He built a city[ complete with schools, hospitals and a college-now Portland State] of 10,000 in months to house workers imported from across the country, utilized women and African -Americans for labor, he was not dependent upon local labor. Kaiser was a industrial genius, when the WPB during the war asked him to oversee the Brewster Aircraft facilities, with the same plant and workforce; they went from 12 planes a month to over a 120 a month.
IMHO A Ballpark figure for the disruption to production would be 9-12 months.


IMHO a fantasy is moving a 100 miles up the Columbia River to invade Portland

"disingenuous" is uncalled for. You might well correct what Alfred said if he is mistaken, but dishonest he is not.

[Canoerebel]

Yeah, this is one of the few times I've seen some Forumites fail to act with civility. I hope it's the exception and we'll soon revert to normal.

[Bearcat2]

?? Dishonest ?? That was not my intent; as used in the context of the paragraph, I was trying to say that his comparison of shipyards was not "apples to apples", or "apples to oranges" it is something in between.

I humbly apologize if I gave the impression that I was accusing anyone of being dishonest.

[PaxMondo]

Wow.

[AcePylut]

And if Japan had done a smash and grab in Jan '42, the US production would have ramped up even more than before.


As far as defending the WC against Japanese invasion if an invasion happened... well I think that if the invasion does happen, tons and tons of permanently restricted, static "Militia" units should be created... to represent the "old cowboy with a hunting rifle" that would defend his home, that Japan was "so scared of" when the idea of a WC invasion was floated around the IJN/IJA.

Also, again, as far as defending the WC against the Japanese, or Germans for that matter, we did that anyway. My grandfather spent most of 1942 tearing up golf courses and installing AA units.... in Chicago, Illinois. (later he got shipped and fought in Germany). Needless to say, my grandfather (much like myself) did not have any patience for stupidity (he refers to Roosevelt as the "king idiot surrounded by a cabal of idiots"... and calls Poland the "pariah of nations, that will sell themselves to whoever gives them a better deal").... railed time and time again about the idiocy of "digging up golf courses to defend against aircraft that don't exist, and would never be able to reach Chicago by flying over the north pole. Yet another example of the clueless idiots in Washington"...

So we were defending the US, all of it, against threats, both real and imagined. And if Portland's shipyard was "destroyed", it would be rebuilt. Quickly. At best I think the Japanese could hope for small delays in the ships coming "online".... but for all those ships to magically go "poof"? I don't buy it.