your bag of dirty tricks.....

[BraveHome]

To paraphrase Molière,

"The secret to success in WitP consists in two things: to give and to not receive."

[Oleg Mastruko]

I don't think any of the tricks described here is gamey or unethical or sindrome of "must win at any price". They seem to me like fine small tricks to make the game more interesting. And they are all easily countered.

Lets just remember similar "tricks" were used in real war, with various degree of success (or rather failure): Makin raid, Oregon forest bombings, Doolittle raid, night bombing of PH using sub-refuelled Emilys etc etc.

To Murrin: how did you manage to get 23 enemy ships with this simple tactic? Impressive.

O.

[tsimmonds]

Replace the Glens on the B1 subs with Alfs from the CLs.[8D]

[denisonh]

What a tease.

ORIGINAL: Feinder

Knavey and I have what I am quite sure, is the single most dirty trick available in game. I can in good conscience say that it is neither an exploit or gamey. It doesn't even have anything with loading units one way, or bait-n-swich, or even standing down spotters (which I thot I was very clever for doing that). It has been very tempting these past months to share it as a "strategy suggestion". However, seeing as we have several games going on at the moment (and other due to start with v1.5), it would be very unwise to share it with the masses.

And boy it's a doosey, and I have never seen any reference on these boards of any other players having discovered this dark secret. But if share even the slightest inkling of what it does for us, Knavey would probably release a trio of rabies infected rotweilers on me (and to give credit where it's due, Knavey was the one who made the initial observation).

And so, I maintain my silence, and cast all of my PBEM opponents a smug grin.

-F-

[Feinder]

Some that I will share (but -not- the mother of all dirty tricks). Not that not that significant, but it is useful:

Of course, you should always watch the replays

1. Ground to Ground (most people are on to this one), will tell you actual assault strenghts of the attacks, after adjustments. Very rarely do you actually attack at your given assault strenght. Watch the replay to the very end (if it matters), and it tells you the adjusted strengths of you and your opponent.

2. Air combat replays will tell you the squadrons involved. You can match the sqdns to the CVs. This is more useful the the Allied player, since the variety of IJN CVs can vary considerably in force projection (whereas, most Allied CVs walk around with 90 planes regardless of the class). ID'ing a TF with "CV CV" makes a major difference if it's (Hiryu, Soryu) as opposed to (Shokaku, Zuikaku).
A1 - Akagi
A2 - Kaga
B1 - Hiryu
B2 - Soryu
D1 - Ryujo
E1 - Shok
E2 - Zui

I forget the others. Naturally, IJN can swap around their squadrons to confuse the matter, but most players won't bother with that.

3. What else?
a. You can put the VMF-211/1 (from Wake) onto one of your early-war USN CVs. They're not running at full capacity (75 of 90 used). You can put the 12 plane flight of VMF-211 onto a CV to augment the fighters. I don't put them on CAP, because they'll burn up with Ops losses. But I use them for "dedicated escort" on a strike (with 0% CAP, so they're standing down the rest of the time). Having 12 more USMC Wilcats with your strike, means you can keep back 12 more USN Wildcats for self defense (if you so choose).
b. You can also put on the USMC SBD sqdns onto your CVs without affecting flight ops (they have 18 planes). Again, I don't use them with a search percentage, let the USN DBs to that, since they're better at actually landing. So your USMC SBDs can be set to AFAtk or NavAtk with search = 0, and that way, you boost your strike package by 50% only when there actually -is- a strike.

-F-

[von Murrin]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: von Murrin

[:D]

Speaking of my avatar, drunken kitty should be coming off vacation sometime over the next few weeks.[:'(]

Yay! I see drunken kitty is back!!!

Reminds me of the sights on (or maybe just off) Bourbon Street![:D]

Drunken Kitty and Kung Fu Kitty will be doing rotating tours.[:D]

[von Murrin]

ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

To Murrin: how did you manage to get 23 enemy ships with this simple tactic? Impressive.

It seems to work equally well with both Japanese and US search aircraft. I usually dedicate 2-4 subs to the job with half running base force fragments and the other running supplies. The supplies go in first followed by the fragments. Once the fragments are ashore, I fly in two patrol squadrons. One does search and the other night naval attack. I generally get one attack per two basing attempts, so it's not a guaranteed thing, and the 23 ships have been scored over the entire course of my WITP playing time.

The idea really is nuisance raiding and hopefully forcing the opponent fly night CAP in his rear areas. If you get a ship, all the better.[:'(]

Note that you can't actually stick around for more than two days, three if you're feeling lucky. After day two there should be a FT TF heading your way, so you need to pull everybody out. I only use high experience squadrons (75+ exp.) for this.

[blam0]

I was once able to trick my allied opponent into chasing a surface TF with his CV TFs into an area where I had stationed several CVs and lots of LBA. Sadly, it rained quite heavily over Rabaul and Lae depriving me of my CAP and LBA support, and I lost 2 CVs.[X(] Perfect operational execution...abysmal tactial execution.

[The Dude]

Sometimes I'll Build up a base and then withdraw all my planes from it. The AI (very rarely) will fall for it and move against the base. When in range I'll will fly in all my air assets and start bombing. When it works the slaughter is amazing but other times the AI doesnt go for it and it turns into an inconvieniece for me.