Gamey Tactic?

[RUPD3658]

The additional advantage to a first strike at Manilla is that your carriers are in position to interdict shipping coming into the PI. Also you will take far less air losses that with a strike at PH.

Having aircover around also helps keep those pesky Dutch aircraft from sending your APs to the bottom.

I used this as my turn 1 plan and am now in May of 42. I hold all of India except Karachi and Bombay and all of China except Yunan, Chegtu, Kweiling, and one of those bases in the south. I have sunk 2 US and 1 Brit CV as well as 7BBs (Several in port at Karachi) as well as close to 100 AK/TK (Mostly in port at Columbo). Norhern OZ should be taken by Mid summer and I plan as strike towards Fiji.

My only problem now is that the game will end due to auto victory at the end of the year. Maybe I will attack Russia for the fun of it.

The only real headache caused by being over agressive is that I am short on fuel and supplies and that most of my warships are at 10+ sys damage since I have not really given anyone a rest yet.

[BartM]

isn't the purpose of these games is to "re-work" the failures ? of the real thing ?

otherwise, for those historical people, do you, on june 4th, move the four Ijn carriers off Midway, stand down your A/c and let the US kill them ? (as was historical)

*shrugs*

too many rules restricts the whole purpose of playing to win, might as well read a book or watch the history channel [:D]

[UncleBuck]

Yes Yamamoto thought eh Carriers were Queens of the sea, but the NAVY did not. He was Commander of the COmbined fleet so he got what he wanted, however many of his senior Admirals did not share his view, they still wanted more Super Battleships. Same was true for teh United states. The U.S. had a few that thought teh Carrier was teh way of the future but most still clung to the idea of Big Guns. The U.S. was forced into using hte Carriers as teh striking force because of Pearl Harbor. The general idea of Peral Harbor was to Cripple or outright destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet. They still beleived they had a great victory after they sunk so much shipping at Pearl but missed the carriers. Even afer Pearl Harbor, the theory was that BB's and CA's were needed to fend off the other guys Surface forces and to conduct teh real fighting. the Carriers were to provide cover for the surface ships and prevent the enemy form getting free attacks on teh Big Boys.

UB

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR

Just want to know where alot of you stand on this tactic.

Manila instead of PH on turn 1.

Most of the "house rules" I have seen limit the number of port attacks to one only.
I have done alot of turn 1 starts attacking PH with low results.
With PH being a size 10 port with a repair facility it is dang near impossible to sink alot.
You can damage (heavily) most of the BB's. But sinking them is hard.

Now sending KB to Manila instead you devestate the forces there. In multiple starts I have sunk 20+ subs and the AS ships. We all know that the subs are mainly what the IJN player fears for the 1st year and half. We all know we play and plan with hindsight as our weapon.

I feel this is a valid tactic. If the allied player wants to send all them BB's to the PI (ala Plan Orange) I have no problem with that. It keeps KB within the main area of operations
for the 1st year or so. Speeds up the conquest of the DEI, Malaya, PI. The IJN player can always sink those BB's later when they appear away from PH. But we all know that the IJN player is shackled with POOR anti sub ratings and POOR ASW ships.

Looking for opinions here.

In a related note, in my last run through the early part of scenario 15 as the Jap vs Allied AI, I got one of those puzzling PH raids of only 8 Zeros on a fighter sweep instead of the attack. Disgusted I returned to Tokyo, refueled and headed south to Sorebaja to sink Allied ships fleeing the PI and elsewhere. I had a Mogami like turn one where I took almost every minor PI base on turn one and a few Borneo one's, too. That resulted in a LOT of ships fleeing the area.

Well the KB arrived 2 hexes off Sorebaja but I forgot to change the missions of the B5N and D3Y's from port attack to Naval attack withe a secondary Airfield attack. I was wondering why my guys were not flying to sink fleeing ships during the transit??? I found out why when the KB launched a massive Port attack on Sorebaja. Apparently the Allies were sending almost every last ship there to consolidate them. Carnage to make Pearl Harbor look like some side skirmish! I flat out sank 4 heavy cruisers, 3 light cruisers, a half dozen destroyers, over a dozen AK's, and when I saved the game, and openned it on the Allied side I discovered I had damaged over 60, SIXTY ships! Granted a lot of PG's PC, MSW's ML's and AK/AP/TK types but I no longer felt so bad having encountered the fighter sweep anomoly at PH on turn 1.

[DougCA]

I finally got into the scenario 15 this last week. I like the idea of using KB at Manila. However reading back thru the thread I noticed that most of you were complaining about not sinking many ships with the PH strike. I have started the game 4 times (learning how to handle the supply and production) and have always set the KB to patrol and not retire. Usually get 3 major strikes on PH. The fewest BB that I have got is 4 with all others (best was sinking 6 BB plus 6 other ships of varying classes) receiving heavy damage, also normally sink 3 to 4 other types of ships plus destroy over 100 allied air plus hits on airfields, ports and etc. Granted I have taken some fairly heavy losses to my carrier wings but have mitigated that by assigning higher altitudes on the approach flight and putting all my dive and torpedo bombers on port attack and using most of my Zeros on sweeps. Just curious but would think that the damage done there would have more long term effects than the loss of the subs. Course wouldnt be first time I was wrong.