PAW 1941-45 me (Axis) vs warspite1 (Allies)

[larryfulkerson]

EDIT: I've reviewed page 7 and I think it's safe for Rob to see it now.

I dropped some paratroopers last turn and this turn one of them is being chased by an element of the Indian Army. I don't see the other one but I see it's handiwork....the bridge is down further to the east and IIRC the paratroopers dropped the bridge and then got killed almost immediately afterwards. I could be wrong as I really don't remember that far back. The idea with the bridges was to stop or stiffle the flow of supply coming from India. One broken bridge is all it would take so I consider the mission a success. Now to save my paratroopers somehow. I'll have to move into Burma with a couple of divisions at least. The mission's callsign was Alpha Two Three and the paratroopers that got killed were the second stick out of the plane.

[devoncop]

Hi Larry

Having read a number of WITP AAR's it seems visibility of enemy fleets and movements is much more realistic than here (ie much more restricted) ...would that be a fair comment?

It seems unlikely Japan would have such good intel on the movement of US ships towards the west coast or indeed here where the Enterprise Class Carrier has been spotted .....or has one of your ships come across it by accident?

Loving the AAR as always...

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: devoncop
Hi Larry

Hey there Ian dude. I feel like there's something missing now that we're not sending files back and forth. I'm on T45 on my D21 game. It's looking like I'm not going to make the deadline of 04Dec41 for the sacking of Sevastopol and thusly I'm probably not going to get the Bulgarians. I'll probably have to restart if that happens. I can't see fighting on the east front without the Bulgarians.

ORIGINAL: devoncop
Having read a number of WITP AAR's it seems visibility of enemy fleets and movements is much more realistic than here (ie much more restricted) ...would that be a fair comment?

I agree my friend. Part of the problem is that the scenario has weekly turns and it gets a whole weeks worth of travel range. So you could sail from Ceylon over to Australia in one trip without stopping and the Allied ships can sail from Pearl to Ellis Island and back. WITP-AE has daily turns so the travel range is much smaller. Thomas Harvey tried to make a one day turn version of the scenario but it was deadly boring. Not much happens from one day to the next it turns out. And units seem to take an extraordinary amount of time repairing damage and regaining it's supply from one turn to the next.

ORIGINAL: devoncop
It seems unlikely Japan would have such good intel on the movement of US ships towards the west coast or indeed here where the Enterprise Class Carrier has been spotted .....or has one of your ships come across it by accident?

I've got four of those long-range recon units that have a range of 93 and can reach from Midway to a little past Pearl. And I've got one of those things at Midway, Wake, Kwajalene, and New Caledonia so I'm pretty sure it was perhaps intercepted as it traveled to where it is now. That's a clue that you're being tracked and spotted etc.

ORIGINAL: devoncop
Loving the AAR as always...

Thanks. I'm always looking for ways to make it better. Your advice is valuable.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's me going after Rob's CV Enterprise. I'm staying on the SW side of everything at the extreme range of my planes so that I won't get hit by so much Allied LBA. He's got MAG 20 in the frey and that's one of the better squadrons as I recall. At any rate I drove my ships within range and scheduled the attack. Half of the turn is left and I've got other units to move yet. I'll keep you in the loop about what happens in the attack.

[larryfulkerson]

And for those of you who can't stand the blinking here's a view of the still life.

EDIT: And while I'm here, I wanted to say something about the DD group in the red star symbol....it got hit by an interception from the Enterprise and lost two of it's DD's and it's got only three left in the entire group. I'm going to stop moving it where it is until the Allied bombers are neutralized. Either shot down or in reorg, whichever occurs first.
As soon as the Allied Air threat dies down a bit I'm leaving that remnant DD group right there.

There were four interceptions total getting the carriers in their positions and the losses were to the aircraft involved in the strike, his for the attack and mine for intercepting his planes. None of the Allied planes has gotten through the CAP to the carriers yet. That DD group that got hit had 5 DD's in it originally and it's now left with two. D'oh. I'll park it at Yokohoma and let it refit.

[devoncop]

Oh ....the tension.....you are doing a great job of building up the suspense[:)]

If you take down the Entrprise Rob may well spontaneously combust[:D]

[larryfulkerson]

There's 22 battles planned and some of them are just light bombers in China doing infantry plinking to gain some proficiency before they are released to the rough and tumble combat world. I like to find a quiet spot for the fledgling fighter pilots to get their first five or so missions under their belts before I deploy them against the best the Allies have. And as I recall from earlier games most of the Allied air units have a proficiency in the 50's and 60's except for the AVG which has a proficiency close to 80 I think. As the war progresses the air units tend to increase in proficiency depending on how many missions the unit has flown and how successful they are with their missions.

[larryfulkerson]

I found some Allied light bombers on an airfield by themselves, no CAP and no AA and they were begging me to strike them so I did and got some hits. I should have included some bombers to multiply the losses. As it was only fighters flew and this is an airfield near Rangoon and he's got fighters parked near Rangoon and what happened to them....they didn't fly an intercept mission to Prome to protect the Allied bombers there. Is weather a problem in Rangoon? Or Prome? No, it can't be Prome that has a problem because I just successfully flew a mission there. I'll have to check when the attacks are resolved.

[larryfulkerson]

I think I sank the CV Enterprise and the BB Mississippi, and some assorted DD's. But I lost about half of my planes and pilots. D'oh. They are going to need some time on rest and recreation and refit near Tokyo to replace all the losses. I think I have replacement air groups to replace them however so we might still be in business.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: devoncop
Oh ....the tension.....you are doing a great job of building up the suspense[:)]

If you take down the Entrprise Rob may well spontaneously combust[:D]

I hope not, he's a good opponent. I'm thinking he may retreat everybody to the west coast and camp out there until he gets some more hardware. That would make for a boring game. I might have to invade India to spice up the game. Or the northern coast of Australia. China isn't getting cleared very fast....the supply levels are too low for continuous operations. They are having to save up for attacks or movement. I'll soon have the rail repaired and supply will be better near Hong Kong especially since that's a supply point.

I'm going to have to fly some bombers into the PI to help the bombardment effort because the LCU's there are just about ready to attack the Allies again. Maybe one more turn. I'm waiting for all the adjacent units to turn green so I can attack with them. There's only about four of them that are still yellow and I think it's going to take all of them for the effort because the Allied stacks are enormous.

I've thought about bombing Singapore but it's got some good fighters there as I recall and I don't want to do airfield strikes against them because of the horrific losses that would result. If this were WITP-AE I would be bombing the airfield with night missions but TOAW doesn't have night missions and I don't dare attack in the daylight so there's not much striking at Singapore going on.

[devoncop]

That is one dramatic sea strike Larry....evidently desperate attempts by the Allies fighters to protect the Enterprise from waves of Japanese dive and torpedo bombers are in vain and two major capital ships sunk....

These are moments in the game that are almost cinematic.

Great stuff.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: devoncop
That is one dramatic sea strike Larry....evidently desperate attempts by the Allies fighters to protect the Enterprise from waves of Japanese dive and torpedo bombers are in vain and two major capital ships sunk....

These are moments in the game that are almost cinematic.

Great stuff.

Rob is going to watch this on the playback and swallow his tongue. I think it might not be a surprise however because he made great pains to park close to some LBA, not that it did any good. I didn't see them ( LBA planes ) listed in the losses list. Maybe they didn't fly. Maybe the weather was poor over the base and they couldn't launch. I'll have to look into that.

80% of my turn remains.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what the weather was like for the carrier strike that killed the Enterprise. Clear weather over the Enterprise stack and light cloud cover on two of my carrier stacks but they launched anyway. I don't remember Rob launching any strikes with HIS carrier come to think of it. I think maybe he's going to be really frustrated, especially if I get all my ships away to safety. Now that the Allied air power has been attenuated I'll now move that DD group that's down to 3 DD's because I think they can make the journey now.

[devoncop]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

Here's what the weather was like for the carrier strike that killed the Enterprise. Clear weather over the Enterprise stack and light cloud cover on two of my carrier stacks but they launched anyway. I don't remember Rob launching any strikes with HIS carrier come to think of it. I think maybe he's going to be really frustrated, especially if I get all my ships away to safety. Now that the Allied air power has been attenuated I'll now move that DD group that's down to 3 DD's because I think they can make the journey now.

That is one of life's great understatements Larry

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on in Malaya right now. I'm moving south on both coasts and in the middle to flush all the Allied troops down to Singapore where I can take care of all of them all at once. By bombarding them with my BB's. I tangled with the CD guns at Singapore with my BB-heavy group and even though there was superficial damage to my bots the CD guns disappeared. Now I can stand off right off the coast and bombard Singapore with my ships. Take some weight off the aircraft. I can move those to the fringes to get some CAP and CS done.

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: devoncop

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

Here's what the weather was like for the carrier strike that killed the Enterprise. Clear weather over the Enterprise stack and light cloud cover on two of my carrier stacks but they launched anyway. I don't remember Rob launching any strikes with HIS carrier come to think of it. I think maybe he's going to be really frustrated, especially if I get all my ships away to safety. Now that the Allied air power has been attenuated I'll now move that DD group that's down to 3 DD's because I think they can make the journey now.

That is one of life's great understatements Larry

Sudden Carrier Loss Syndrome in WitP:AE.

[Szilard]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson


I agree my friend. Part of the problem is that the scenario has weekly turns and it gets a whole weeks worth of travel range. So you could sail from Ceylon over to Australia in one trip without stopping and the Allied ships can sail from Pearl to Ellis Island and back. WITP-AE has daily turns so the travel range is much smaller. Thomas Harvey tried to make a one day turn version of the scenario but it was deadly boring. Not much happens from one day to the next it turns out. And units seem to take an extraordinary amount of time repairing damage and regaining it's supply.

I think one issue is that ships seem to cruise at their maximum speeds, not their actual cruising speeds, which aren't modelled. So ranges are inflated. Plus it costs no supply for a ship to move (right?).

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Szilard

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson
I agree my friend. Part of the problem is that the scenario has weekly turns and it gets a whole weeks worth of travel range. So you could sail from Ceylon over to Australia in one trip without stopping and the Allied ships can sail from Pearl to Ellis Island and back. WITP-AE has daily turns so the travel range is much smaller. Thomas Harvey tried to make a one day turn version of the scenario but it was deadly boring. Not much happens from one day to the next it turns out. And units seem to take an extraordinary amount of time repairing damage and regaining it's supply.

I think one issue is that ships seem to cruise at their maximum speeds, not their actual cruising speeds, which aren't modelled. So ranges are inflated. Plus it costs no supply for a ship to move (right?).

Hey there Szilard dude....thanks for posting your question....I can answer any question you may have. Sometimes I have to answer "I don't know" though. Does it cost supply to move a ship...I don't think so but I haven't really been paying any attention to that little detail, that little aspect of the game. I'll wake up and take a look but I'm guessing that the answer is no it doesn't cost any supply to move a naval boat. I think it DOES cost when they shoot. And yeah, they have only the one speed so far.

[MikeJ19]

Larry,

Great stuff. I find this very interesting - and overwhelming.

Have a good evening,

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a black and white grainy picture taken from yesterday's fighting around the Manila surburbs. The Americans aren't trying to break out but instead are hunkering down and digging in and making do. They must be hurting for supplies by now. There must be some way to make them surrender instead of drawing it out and making the Japs pay for every inch.