Once Again into the Breach - Mike (J) vs. tc464 (A)

[obvert]

I did build the xAKs and next time I would close down even those that can convert. I have a bunch just sitting around doing nothing. I didn't use many of the 14 knot ships at all as it's more efficient to use the bigger faster classes.

I would agree with Pax, just build a few of the better AO/TK to close to completion and even forget about the STD xAK classes.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: obvert

I have a bunch just sitting around doing nothing.

+1

That has always been my problem ... I get to '45 and end up with ~100 xAK's just sitting in ports waiting for the allied bombers to sink. [:@]

[Mike Solli]

Ok, if you don't build most of the xAKs, what do you do with all of the excess merchant points? Do you shut some off?

[Mike Solli]

Well, Ted finally surfaced and there's a turn in my inbox. [:D] Been thinking about some odds and ends. Any comments are welcome.

1. I have 120 factories that are eligible to be upgraded to the A6M5. I'm considering leaving 30 at the A6M3a and upgrading the other 90 to the A6M5. Thoughts?

2. I just had a 12 plane Oscar unit increase it's max size to 30 in China. I'm thinking of training it's pilots for strafing for a month or so and having them hit a base where Ted is keeping his Chinese air force. It's the base NNW of Chunking. Can't remember the name offhand. I'd upgrade the unit to the Oscar IIa. What do you think?

3. The J1N1-C Irving recon plane is now available. Do I keep the C5M2 Babs or upgrade. The Irving is twice the cost of the Babs. I don't have the stats in front of me. I'll need to check that out. What's the consensus?

I'll run the turn tonight. I'm going through withdrawals here. [:D]

[Spidery]

3. The J1N1-C Irving recon plane is now available. Do I keep the C5M2 Babs or upgrade. The Irving is twice the cost of the Babs. I don't have the stats in front of me. I'll need to check that out. What's the consensus?

The J1N1-C has an advantage in range, particularly with drop tanks. However, the IJA get the Ki-46-III in a couple of months and that has the same range without needing drop tanks. Have you considered the D4Y1-C? It has shorter normal range but a range with drop tanks only 1 less than the J1N1-C, is a 1E, with similar survivability and has the option for use on carriers if you need some recon for a raid.

[Lokasenna]

I like what Spidery has suggested with the Judy-C and the Dinah-III. I think the J1N1-C is probably an inefficient use of resources. "Make do" with the Judy-C and Dinah-III until you get the Myrt?

[Mike Solli]

Guys, that's a great idea. In addition, the Judy-C uses the Aichi Ha-60 engine and I have a pool full of them. There won't be any additional drain on the Ha-35. Thanks!

[Mike Solli]

2 Nov 42

Burma: I landed ~10k supply at Rangoon. That's not enough to really do much other than get Rangoon above 20k supply, so I was able to replenish the air units there. My army NE of Akyab is supplied finally. I'm trying a deliberate attack tomorrow to see what happens. Ted attacked me 5 days ago. I'm hoping he's low on supply because I have Akyab cut off and Cox's Bazaar has only a jungle hex to get supply in. No convoys are moving there. I have a couple of subs sitting along his SLOC to those bases. I get messages that I'm shooting down transports daily so he's flying in some supply that way, but he's losing several transports a day doing it, and has been for months. I'm hoping for the best with this attack, because it'll burn up my supply doing it.

By the way, he's still not opposing me in the air.

SE Fleet: Ted sent the whole shebang at Salamaua's defenses, 76x 2E sorties and 71x 4E sorties. I didn't have much in the way of defenses there, just a handful of squads in an AS battalion. His divisional attack pushed me out easily. Now he has a very beat up base.

Ted sent a flight of P38s over Shortland Island. He lost 2 to my Oscar sentai there, while I lost 1 plane but the pilot bailed out safely.

5 Fleet: KB1 is one day's sail from it's destination: 10 hexes west of Adak. There it will sit, waiting for the inevitable assault against Adak. Ted has two tiny SCs there, and one is out of ASW ammo. I have half a dozen subs around Adak and another half a dozen around Dutch Harbor. He keeps sneaking merchant convoys to Dutch Harbor. I keep missing connecting with them with my subs by a hex or two. Rotten luck.

Other Stuff

Reinforcements:
DD Tamanami (Yugumo class) - is joining KB1 off Adak.
SC CHa-45 - ASW

Well, all of my A6M3a and A6M2-N factories upgraded to the A6M5, so that question is moot. Everything that uses the Ha-35 engine is off (A6M5, Ki-43-IIa, Ki-45 & C5M2 - upgraded to the Judy-C). My 3x30 Oscar R&D factories gave me 6% and my 6x30 Zero factories gave me 12%. Banzai! I currently am up to 511 Ha-35 engines in the pool, so I'll keep the aircraft factories off for a few more days. I don't have enough Ha-35 engine factories producing to keep the Oscars and Zeros producing 100% of the time so I'll have to keep an eye on the engine pool level to maximize R&D. I'm ok with Oscars and Nicks right now, but I don't have a lot of Zeros in the pools so I'll have to turn some of them on to get the M5 going soon.

I turned off a bunch of tiny xAK/xAKLs in the production schedule. It won't do much now but I'm going to start turning off merchant yards, a little at a time to keep my pool rising but slowly. Right now it increasing ~170 a turn. I'd like to increase my HI savings. Right now my HI savings are ~4800 a day. Turning off 70 merchant ship yards will bring it over 5k a day. I'll start there.

I started the conversion of the Chitose to a CVL today. I'll start the Chiyoda tomorrow. 300 days...... That gives me 4 trained FP daitai of 24 planes each. They are either trained in NavS or ASW. I have them training the one they aren't good at. I'm going to let them train for the rest of the year. Then, I'll set them in strategic locations along my SLOC from Singapore on ASW missions. They'll be set at 40% ASW, 40% NavS and 20% rest. I still haven't decided where to place them. In addition to those units, I have several other units from a couple of AVs I lost early on. They're also at 24 planes and will be trained in a similar fashion. This has pretty much cleaned out my FP pool, but I rarely lose FPs anyway. They will all be at full strength in planes in a couple of weeks. When it's all done, I'll have 10-12 of these units along my SLOC, along with ASW TFs. I'm hoping to keep Ted's subs sighted and harassed so he can't attack effectively. Another nice thing about having 24 plane units is that each can have 1 AS battalion to keep it flying.

[Lokasenna]

Don't the Chitose/Chiyoda FP units convert to Zeroes/Kates when you convert them? So long as they are onboard, anyway...

[Mike Solli]

Oops. Didn't know that. I thought the Zero & Kate units magically appeared. Oh well. By the time they are converted, I'll have groups to spare. Next year, a nice variety of IJNAF units appear.

[SqzMyLemon]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

A few more numbers for you....

I did a quick count of the oil and resources in the Home Islands:

2.3 million oil - if no more comes into the Home Islands, the refineries would be able to run at 100% for 9.6 months.

2.3 million in the home Islands [X(]? Are you shipping primarily oil rather than fuel to Japan? I'm Oct. 42 and can barely stay above 1 million oil in the Home Islands. I do already have 1.2 HI banked though.

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: SqzMyLemon

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

A few more numbers for you....

I did a quick count of the oil and resources in the Home Islands:

2.3 million oil - if no more comes into the Home Islands, the refineries would be able to run at 100% for 9.6 months.

2.3 million in the home Islands [X(]? Are you shipping primarily oil rather than fuel to Japan? I'm Oct. 42 and can barely stay above 1 million oil in the Home Islands. I do already have 1.2 HI banked though.

1.2 million. Go ahead, rub it in. [:D] I ship oil and fuel, whatever will fit in the TF at the time. Let me do a quick count of fuel in the Home Islands.

[Mike Solli]

Just over 2 million fuel in the Home Islands.

Edit: My goal is to drain everything I can by the end of 1942. Those sub torpedoes really scare me. I get hit by a lot of duds. The honeymoon is almost over. [:(]

[obvert]

How are your convoys made up in terms of ships?

You can avoid a lot of subs by having the AVs embedded, with Jakes flying night search. Also I used a 1:1 split escorts to tankers for the big boys. I make up to 15 ship TFs, but I think GJ goes even farther and sends several of these together in one massed 50-70 ship mega-convoy (5-6 TFs with independent ASW TFs as well).

I generally know where high concentrations of subs are and can often steer around as they're spotted as well. It's a fun part of the game.

[Mike Solli]

My TK convoys are usually 8 TKs with ~6 escorts. I usually send them out as they fill from Singapore and they hug the coast as much as possible. I haven't grouped the convoys together but now they are usually 1-2 days apart. So far, Ted hasn't found the route. The one time he caught one of those convoys was when I forgot to use waypoints and my Tonan convoy sailed north of Naha. He torpedoed one of them a couple of months ago. She's still at Naha repairing. She'll have all but the major damage repaired in about a week. Then she'll sail to Hong Kong for final repairs.

[Mike Solli]

I think it's getting about time where I start getting serious about protecting my TK convoys. So far I've pretty much had no opposition to them. AVs with Jakes on night searches sounds good. I need to get that worked out soon. I have several AVs just sitting around rusting. I'd probably only need 4 of them.

[Mike Solli]

3 Nov 42

Not much to talk about other than a couple squadrons of Vengeance Is bombing Myitkina's airfield. I couldn't do anything useful there if I wanted to. I can't get any supply there to save my life. [8|] I have a sentai of Tojos at Lashio with an LRCAP mission to ambush them, but they won't fly because a lack of supply. *Sigh* There is a convoy of some 30k supply that will hit Rangoon in a few days. Maybe that will help. [8|]

I have an average of 75-80 2E bomber sorties against the Allied army between Akyab and Cox's Bazaar but it isn't doing much. Hopefully it's burning some of their supply.

Ted is using ~200 sorties of 2E and 4E bombers against PNG. He's trashing already destroyed airfields.

The only excitement today was my attack in China of a surrounded HQ, Corps and construction regiment. I killed 50 squads for no loss. Another attack tomorrow....

Other Stuff

Reinforcement: 59 JNAF AF Unit

[Mike Solli]

4 Nov 42

Read the 3 Nov entry. Exactly the same until you get to the Chinese attack. This time I killed 48 squads. No dead Chinese unit yet.

There was some action under the sea today. The I-17, off the US west coast, sank an xAK.

A few hexes east of Dutch Harbor, the DE Kane was missed by torpedoes from the I-164 and in return hit her with a depth charge. She's limping back to Etorofu with damage at 30-60(44)-2(2)-0. Keeping fingers crossed.

KB1 is still hanging around 11 hexes west of Adak. Two Allied TFs are in the hex. One is a DD TF and the other appears to have PT boats. Not worth revealing KB over that. They aren't doing anything there. I suspect they want to keep the base clear of Japanese subs for the expected invasion fleet. Tomorrow, I'm going to send KB2 up there. They are at Davao, so it's a long voyage to get there. We'll see. The same Allied bombers hit the port again. Apparently, Ted doesn't want me to build up the fort any more. It's currently at 5.50.

Other Stuff

You guys were right (of course). With the Ha-35 pool consistently over 500, the Oscar and Zero R&D is always twice the # of size 30 factories. Very nice! I'm building more factories, but still have all my planes off that use those engines. With the lack of air combat, I'm ok.

[Yaab]

China: I have decided to turn on the 90 refineries at Lanchow. That will give me 210 (120 at Pt. Arthur) to fuel the ~900 HI in China/Manchuoko/Korea. There is 170 oil in that region. There is 170k oil sitting in Pt. Arthur. 210 refineries sucking from 170 oil give a net loss of 12k oil a month. The surplus oil there will last 14 months. I'll ship some the oil from Brunei/Miri to Hong Kong on occasion to make sure the surplus doesn't drop too low. I have heard that if the surplus oil in Pt. Arthur drops below 100k, bad things happen there (stuff doesn't move around as it should). Not sure if that's true, but I don't want to take a chance. I don't like the idea of fuel being produced at Lanchow then flowing all over the place over bad roads. Lots of fuel lost, but the other option is to ship fuel to China. I'd rather ship it all to the Home Islands.

I thought that its is only supply that suffers losses during overland movement, and fuel/oil/resources traveling overland are immune from any losses. Can anyone confrim?

[Mike Solli]

Yaab, I couldn't find anything about it in the rule book. I thought one of the developers said that supply and fuel suffered wastage but oil and resources didn't. I guess we'll have to wait until someone else chimes in.