General Patton vs. larryfulkerson Focus Pacific #75

[ny59giants]

Where are your 4 Air HQs that started in Formosa and 2 Air HQs in IndoChina? They should be used to form an outer ring in the DEI/SRA to keep the Allies out and prevent his escaping ships a free dash to freedom.

Capture Allies air factories become Vehicle factories for Japan.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: ny59giants
Where are your 4 Air HQs that started in Formosa and 2 Air HQs in IndoChina? They should be used to form an outer ring in the DEI/SRA to keep the Allies out and prevent his escaping ships a free dash to freedom.

Capture Allies air factories become Vehicle factories for Japan.

Yeah, I need to move an HQ to Singkawang to provide some TT's for my Betty's. I'm building up the airfield at Miri so as to provide
enough room for a bunch of aircraft. I'd like to make Miri one of my main terminals for shipping fuel and oil out of there. I'm moving
the fuel and oil to CRB first and thence to Hong Kong and thence to Kagoshima. I'm grabbing RES from Bangkok and Saigon and
I'm moving a convoy to Ocean island to grab what RES are laying around there. Ocean Island doesn't have a RES center but there
are plenty of RES there so I'm going to grab it. Tokyo is down to about 1/4 million RES but has plenty of supplies and fuel. I'm trying
to get the supplies to flow to Osaka so I can run some auto-convoys out of there but so far no go. Most of the nearby RES centers
around the home islands are busy and productive but I want more so I'm reaching out to Keijo and Port Arthur and places like that.

I've beaten down the CAP at Clark Field enough to fly daytime bombing missions and we're close to the same thing at Singapore.
I have a theory that daytime bombing missions are more productive in hits obtained than night missions so I'd like to switch the
bombers to day missions as soon as the CAP is almost gone. I think Singapore is down to like 27 Buffalo aircraft so we're close.

[larryfulkerson]

I got Brian's latest moves in the mail just now and I'm watching the combat replay and I've really lucked out big time when the sub
tracking my carrier has mechanical problems and can't launch it's TT's and my carrier is a sitting duck. That was close.

[larryfulkerson]

I put together a gaggle of carriers and some escorts and drove from Truk toward the east coast of Australia and I thought I might
threaten Brisbane and sink some of the smaller ships sweeping for mines and stuff like that and Brian just happened to have a
sub in the hex where my TF parked at the end of their turn and that sub got a lucky hit on one of my carriers. I'm going to make for
Rabaul and put together some kind of escort TF to get the carrier to Naha for repairs. The subs are really thick around the Celebes
also and I've had carriers, more than one, hit by TT's from Allied subs. So far I've lost only one CVE, the Iki, and two or three more
carriers are damaged leaving about four undamaged CV's for all my air cover needs. I may have to adjust my tactics a bit to adjust
to the loss of the services of three carriers. I may have to get all the undamaged ones together into a post-Pearl KB TF.

[Bif1961]

Rather light escort for 4 carriers, plus a TB normally have no ASW weapons. You might want to provide more ASW capable assets from your most prized ships.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Bif1961
Rather light escort for 4 carriers, plus a TB normally have no ASW weapons. You might want to provide more ASW capable assets from your most prized ships.

I hear you. The escort they have is all that was available at the time at Truk. Maybe I shouldn't have sailed with just the light escort.
They definately need more ships. Good catch.

[larryfulkerson]

After a series of stalking moves, no doubt, Brian has launched an aerial assault on my shipping at or near Nauru. Lots of AK's sinking
all over the place. At least two dozen of them from the looks of it. I think I've learned my lesson to not sail into areas that don't have
a lot of LBA and or some warships to provide support and top cover. I'm building the airfield at Nauru and Ocean island so as to be
able to park some planes there. I'm thinking it's going to be a month or more before I have some planes here and an AF team.

[larryfulkerson]

Hey you guys.........Tokyo and Harbin are failing according to the industry display dialog but I can't see a reason for it. They have
plenty of goodies and aren't occupied by an enemy unit. Anybody have a rough idea why they might be failing?

[BillBrown]

Do you have engines for them?

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: BillBrown
Do you have engines for them?

That's what it was alright. You've played this game before. Thanks for the insight.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the full report about the engines and the airplanes. It indicates several engines that production needs to be turned back on
for. I've already sent my moves to Brian so I'll have to wait until tomorrow morning most likely, for a chance to adjust the numbers.
I'm low on engines for the Nate and aren't building any and yet I'm still building Nates. I gotta fix things like that. This is what happens
when you don't watch your industry like you should.

EDIT: I noticed just now that I've recently become eligible to build the Ki-43-1d and it looks like I'm still building the older models and
I'm thinking I should shut down the older models and start building the newer model. You have until tomorrow morning to register a
complaint if you disagree. After that the next time I'll have a chance to change it back will be early afternoon tomorrow. Brian usually
let's me work on it overnight and present him with my moves in the early am. I think he lives in Ohio and I live in Tucson so he's up
and at 'em before I am usually. But then on the other hand, I run a 24-hour operation here. When I get tired I lay down and take a
nap and when I'm hungry I usually take the time away from the computer to eat something but so far the carpel tunnel isn't so bad if
I give my wrist a rest every couple of hours. I usually tie in my wrist rest sessions with my naps. Double duty you see.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what I'm planning to do. I'm thinking of stopping the building of the 1a and 1b and 1c models and concentrate on building the
Ki-43-1d model. Here's the differences between the 'a' model and the 'd' model. Instead of machine guns it's got cannons which
would make it a better ground supporter but not so much in the air. It's heavier and slower and is less maneuverable but if it ever does
get a hit with the cannon that hit would be a good one. I'm thinking of using it in the ground attack role, mostly. Or maybe deep in
China where the only opposition is the Soviet-built biplanes, the I-153's, and I-16's. I think they wouldn't fare all that well against the
British and or American fighters.

EDIT: I changed my mind. I changed all the factories to build the 1c model. I'm almost forced to use the Oscar as a training plane.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's all the engines I'm building. I've got a sneaky suspession that I'm building some engines that I don't need. So I'm guessing
I should review what I'm building and match that against this list of engines factories and switch those factories that are building
something I don't need. I should have done this on turn 2 but I didn't think of it then.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's an image that has the aircraft being built and the aircraft in the pools. I'm using this image as the cross reference of plane
using what engine and a rough guess of what the production rate needs to be for what plane. I'm aiming at 500+ planes for the
fighters and bombers and maybe 100 or so for the recon and transports. I'm wondering how important the aircraft R&D is in the
long run. I mean should I switch them to building available aircraft? Anybody got an opinion?

So I've got to look up the airplane I'm building and see what engine it uses and see if I'm already building that engine ( I should be ).
If I'm not building it I need to start building it. If I'm already building it I need to see how many I already have and adjust the production
( on or off ) as necessary. This sounds like a procedure I may need to do from time to time to keep everything on track.

[larryfulkerson]

So here's an updated image showing that I've found some engines that I don't need anymore and plan to flip them to other engines
as necessary. I want to keep at least one factory of what I used to need, even if its' not in production, for now, just to have the ability
to quickly start building that engine again for any reason. I'm planning on the possibility that a future plane will need that engine maybe.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm posting this here because I want to be able to refer to it at some future date. Tracker has a non-obvious way of hiding the way to
get the increasing and decreasing arrows on the amount of points in the Vehicle pool, say. I don't have a history of how fast it's
increasing or decreasing so I'm going to have to eyeball it by comparing this set of values with those I get in some future turn. I was
thinking of checking the values again NEXT turn for the direction it's heading and then subsequent turns to get some idea of how
fast the trend is. I suspect that in order to try to maintain about 1K points in the pool for vehicles and armaments I'm going to have
to watch them closely. I don't want to have to micromanage it though so as soon as I find the sweet spot in the number of factories
and their output I'm pretty much going to leave it there. Barring any relevant changes, contingent changes.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what Tracker says the Home islands are doing economically. The RES level is dropping by about 180K tons per day
so I need to pick up the pace in the RES shipping if I want to keep up with demand. And right now I do. Brian has sunk over
three dozen of my prize AK's and lots of smaller transports and I'm running short of ships at various ports. I find I have to
shuttle some AK's at Takao over to Hong Kong to try to keep up with the RES flowing out of there, which is a lot. I find that
my NavShipyard points are shrinking in the pool so I need to shut off the building of something pretty soon. The Merch
Shipyard points are about stable for now. Bumping up either of the shipyards would just eat through the RES faster so I'm
leaving them where they are for now. Did I mention that I changed some of the engine factories to the more demanded types
and boosting them slightly. The number of engines in the pools is low except for the Ha-35 which is what I'm putting on my
Zero's.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's happening at Manila now. I've been pounding Clark Field night and day for about a month now and I'm obviously not
through yet. There's still Allied aircraft there and lots of troops that need to be softened before I can assault them properly. I'm still
sailing divisions into Lingayen and putting the pieces back together and feeding them into the meat grinder. I've almost got enough
troops to start some deliberate attacks. Part of the problem is that of the supply level in the Clark Field hex. It's not the best from all
the bombarding I've been doing. I may have to curtail my RES runs to spare enough ships to bring some more supply to the PI.

[larryfulkerson]

I have no idea why Brian decided to do a deliberate attack at Clark Field but he did and lost about 14K people from that gaggle
of people he has in the hex. I've decided to do a DA myself next turn just to see what happens. The supply in the hex is low so
I may have to back off attacking and bombarding for a while to save up some supply. I have no hope that Brian will be forced from
the hex or that anything significant might happen to give me the hex all of a sudden.......I'm thinking it's going to take a while yet
to get anything really significant to happen. Maybe I can cause him to lose more people by attacking. I know that's how *I* lose
people.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the Rabaul area now. I've run out of fuel at Rabaul and I've got a lot of warships headed that way. I may have to dispatch
a TF from Bubble Drop to bring some fuel to Rabaul. I'll need to do it soon because some of the warships are already there.
I've been bombing Port Moresby's airfield and every once in a while, about every other day, I'll run a sweep on the base and
destroy some of the P-40's there. Brian has about a dozen P-40's left and my squadron is at least twice as big as that so I'm
optimistic. I'm loading a division at Tokyo to land at Port Moresby but I'm thinking I'm going to need more than that to actually
invade there. I have only a rough idea what's there. I need more recon of the base.