Anemic SBD Production

[eMonticello]

I'm not sure where you can squeeze another aircraft in the El Segundo plant. Unfortunately for us, the Tulsa plant that produced the SBD-5 wasn't active until August 15, 1942. I suspect that Douglas needed several months to set up SBD production in Oklahoma. Of course, if you are willing to produce the SBD-4 over a medium or heavy bomber, I guess you could use the Long Beach or Santa Monica plant.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Conversely, Forrest, do you think that the Navy Dept would allow the six extant CVs to be running around with half strength (or less) VB squadrons for any length of time?

No. I imagine they would have consolidated the SBD's at hand and equipped the Marines with other types...

As vast as US production was, it was not the boundless cornucopia that people would like it to be...

For as much whining and bitching about Japanese aircraft construction...why not simply use the editor provided with the game ---eliminate the Japanese aircraft factories...and give the Japanese their historical allotment of airframes ..."problem" solved....or simply enjoy the game as is.

Or use the editor and give the US a build rate of 10,000 of everything..."problem" solved.....or simply enjoy the game as is.

[bradfordkay]

I enjoy the game as it is, but your post just begged for a "devil's advocate" to tackle it... [;)]

I'm playing with PDU off, which means that right now (mid-March '42) one of my front line carriers is equipped with Curtuss SBC Helldivers... I have to be very careful with my use of my air assets with PDU off in this game.

[Misconduct]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

I enjoy the game as it is, but your post just begged for a "devil's advocate" to tackle it... [;)]

I'm playing with PDU off, which means that right now (mid-March '42) one of my front line carriers is equipped with Curtuss SBC Helldivers... I have to be very careful with my use of my air assets with PDU off in this game.

Hornet comes with SBC Helldivers.

[bradfordkay]

ORIGINAL: Misconduct

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

I enjoy the game as it is, but your post just begged for a "devil's advocate" to tackle it... [;)]

I'm playing with PDU off, which means that right now (mid-March '42) one of my front line carriers is equipped with Curtuss SBC Helldivers... I have to be very careful with my use of my air assets with PDU off in this game.

Hornet comes with SBC Helldivers.

Shhhh..... loose lips sink ships.... [:-]

[showboat1]

In my first game I've been keeping my carriers pretty close to Hawaii and avoiding any real engagements (though I did bomb the Mutsu pretty heavily while escorting a convoy to Canton Island) so I haven't run into SBD shortages, yet. I have noticed that my few VMSB squadrons are taking a long time to get up to full strength so I have started keepinf them in SB2U's. The number of F4F's and SBD's have been keeping me on a pretty historical strategy so far.

[JohnDillworth]

I suspect after June 6th 1942 the Allies would have figured out that the SBD was the single most important weapon in their arsenal and would have canceled any other plane to produce it to fill out their available carriers. If it was 6 carriers or 60, they would have filled them out

[Misconduct]

One thing I just noticed, I have been dive bombing at 11,000ft and seem to be getting higher losses, I recently switched to 17,000ft and instead of attacking with 4 dive bombers, im getting 8-9 and less losses and higher hits.

I ran into the Musashi Battleship attempting to bombard Pearl at 12/25/42 and Had scored 12 hits from 36 dive bombers at 17,000 ft. Second test I ran again from 17,000ft I scored 15 of 36 hits. First 3 attempts I ran at 11,000ft and scored 2 total in 3 attempts at 11,000ft.
Biggest difference is instead of attacking with 4, im attacking with 8-9 now, with usually 1 or 2 stragglers.
Also the Loses were incredibly different, 1 loss in 3 attempts at 17,000 ft and 8 losses at 11,000ft.

Take this with a grain of salt cause I really have no clue what the hell im doing lol.

[Nikademus]

ahem....THIS was the most important weapon in America's arsenal.

[Nomad]

And I found the distributer:

[treespider]

Hmmm...After reaching sales of $75 million in 1941, Hormel's production increased to aid in World War II and 65% of its products were purchased by the U.S. Government by 1945.

I bet if the government hadn't purchased so much damn SPAM they could have built more SBD-3's and SBD-4's ...[:D]

[xj900uk]

Hmmm...After reaching sales of $75 million in 1941, Hormel's production increased to aid in World War II and 65% of its products were purchased by the U.S. Government by 1945

The remaining 35% was purchased by Walmart. After they purchased the Asda's superstore chain in the UK in the early noughties, said 1940's vintage Spam started showing up on its shelves PDQ...

[minnowguy]

Back to the original topic ... 

I'm in mid-August 42 versus the AI (scen 9,  iirc) and am seeing much the same thing.  All of my USN CVs are still afloat, but three are in the body-and-fender shop for a good bit so their air groups are hanging around various bases in Australia and SoPac.  (BTW, always remember to transfer your air groups before you put the CV into the shipyard).

Some of the things I've tried:

• deployed multiple half-strength VS/VB units on my healthy carriers to fill out the air group (be careful about allowing auto-replace if you do this)
• deployed extra VF and VMF squadrons where I had space; for a while the Wasp became a CAP-specialist carrier with 3 VF and 1 VMF squadrons
• shuffled planes and pilots around so my most depleted VB squadrons and most of my VTs became temporary training squadrons (BTW, it would be REALLY nice if you could transfer planes BACK to the pool [or directly to other squadrons] without disbanding or withdrawing the whole squadron -- lots and lots of examples of RL units doing this in _The First Team_)
• pulled the air groups off some of the RN CVs and replaced them with full strength VF units; the Brit CVs then become escort carriers to provide CAP for invasion and resupply TFs and the RN VT squadrons deploy to USN CVs to replace depleted (and useless) TBD squadrons

Apparently the shortage of carrier airframes was a serious RL issue in the Pacific and it would have been worse if the USN hadn't lost the carriers it did.  I'm pretty sure that reallocating airframe production -- especially in 1942 -- required many months of lead time.  Factories had to retool, workers had to be trained to assemble particular airframes and then there is the whole issue of manufacturing sub-components and getting them to the right place. 

It is sort of scary to think of the paperwork involved when the best paperwork technology available was the fountain pen and carbon paper.

[Rainer]

BTW, always remember to transfer your air groups before you put the CV into the shipyard

Why?

[minnowguy]

ORIGINAL: Rainer

BTW, always remember to transfer your air groups before you put the CV into the shipyard

Why?

You can only transfer air groups if the ship is active. Once it goes into repair, you have to change its state to 'Readiness' and wait until it becomes active again ...

[Rainer]

I see.
Thanks, that's valuable advice [:)]

[Kadrin]

ORIGINAL: treespider
For as much whining and bitching about Japanese aircraft construction...why not simply use the editor provided with the game ---eliminate the Japanese aircraft factories...and give the Japanese their historical allotment of airframes ..."problem" solved....or simply enjoy the game as is.

Any game that restricts one opponent to historical production rates, while allowing the adversary the option of producing at whim - is inherently going to have problems the minute the game produces results that are not on the historical track.
THAT is unavoidable so long as both sides are not allowed the same options to adjust for the game situation.

The real question is, why wasn't this done in the first place? The Japanese should be restricted to their historical allotment of everything just like the Allies, and their ships should be commissioned when they were historically - OR - both sides need the option of production by player choice.

[Misconduct]

ORIGINAL: Kadrin

ORIGINAL: treespider
For as much whining and bitching about Japanese aircraft construction...why not simply use the editor provided with the game ---eliminate the Japanese aircraft factories...and give the Japanese their historical allotment of airframes ..."problem" solved....or simply enjoy the game as is.

Any game that restricts one opponent to historical production rates, while allowing the adversary the option of producing at whim - is inherently going to have problems the minute the game produces results that are not on the historical track.
THAT is unavoidable so long as both sides are not allowed the same options to adjust for the game situation.

The real question is, why wasn't this done in the first place? The Japanese should be restricted to their historical allotment of everything just like the Allies, and their ships should be commissioned when they were historically - OR - both sides need the option of production by player choice.

Biggest problem is matrix needs to sell the game, so putting Japan to a restriction that garentees them to automatically lose every game without a fight, would leave half the playing population to quit.

Granted you have to go back and look at older games to understand this, war games have always had a tough time with balancing play with realism and most people won't understand this.

Now for AE, only thing that quarks me is the fact Hellcats and Corsairs arn't exactly as dominate as they should have been, gievn the greater flexability of the Japanese, I do believe allies do deserve a historical attribute, I mean frankly allies won the war not japan. I am not taking sides, I do believe Japanese in this game should deserve some sort of help to win the war, however downgrading certain things to make "playability" even is just how games sell these days, if you want realism, then simply make a mod is what I believe in.

However in all honesty, if AE was 100% realistic, nobody would dare play Japan.

[Kadrin]

ORIGINAL: Misconduct
Biggest problem is matrix needs to sell the game, so putting Japan to a restriction that garentees them to automatically lose every game without a fight, would leave half the playing population to quit.

However in all honesty, if AE was 100% realistic, nobody would dare play Japan.

Japan IS going to lose every single game. There is no other outcome that could possibly happen. It's just a complete mismatch of power, the US is just far more powerful.

The fun is SUPPOSED to be doing better than the Japanese actually did, with full knowledge that in the end you're still going to lose, but you're making them pay a steeper price.

If this game was 100% realistic, I would love to play Japan, to try and do better than they did knowing I am winning because I was BETTER not because I had a crutch with all the silly bonus' they get, and that my opponent was handicapped into historical choices and production.

[Misconduct]

Thats just how the game goes for now, and I side with the developers on adding the arcade value where "allies are handicapped into historic choices". Problem is if the developers know they made a historical game and it couldn't sell, there's no way they'd make it. AE is a pretty good balance of Arcade and realism that feeds the hunger, honestly I rather have the game sell enough copies maybe in the feature its possible for a AE 3. In the mean time if realism is such an option, there is always mods and thats what makes games on the computer so awesome.