Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Smeulders

ORIGINAL: Cuttlefish

Under the Sea: the brave I-5 sank the fuel-laden AO Kanawha west of San Francisco on 1 June. I love those tanker/oiler sinkings! Meanwhile Q-Ball's cowardly undersea lurkers hit and damaged three xAKs in the last week; one near Cam Ranh Bay and two in the Pacific. All three are still afloat, which is unusual. And I-121, on a mission to lay mines at Auckland, hit an enemy mine there and was badly damaged.

What do you think is needed to sink a Japanese xAK ? I'm wondering because when my subs put a single torpedo in a freighter, it usually doesn't show up in the sunk list.

Usually one torpedo hit will do it. To have three in a row only damaged is rare good fortune on my part. Keep an eye on your operations report; there can be up to a six-month delay between the sinking and the confirmation. At least once a week I get a confirmation on an Allied ship sunk back in January or February.

Glad to hear about the patch! I guess my last excuse to start a game has been removed..

Be careful splitting up your carriers down there.. June 4th is Midway Day.

I hadn't realized you still had 4 divisions in Java! Any plans for them? Or are they going to be sucked into the new garrison requirements?

ORIGINAL: Smeulders

What do you think is needed to sink a Japanese xAK ? I'm wondering because when my subs put a single torpedo in a freighter, it usually doesn't show up in the sunk list.

In my experience, any torpedo or 500+ lb. bomb hit means almost certain doom to most Japanese xAKs outside of port and often in port too. "Japanese damage control" seems to be an oxymoron for xAKs. I've looked at Allied "Ships sunk" screen after finishing the Guadalcanal scenario as Japanese, and the vast majority of xAKs lost to fires and flooding caused by these single hits, are not detected as sunk.

Oh, and Cuttlefish, thanks for the great AAR!

If it takes up to 6 months before you get a confirmation of sinking, than the Guadalcanal scenario might be a bit to short for them to start showing up, so I hope that the sunk messages will start trickling in in the coming months. Thanks for the answers everyone.

ORIGINAL: BrucePowers

She probably did a Gibbs on him[:D]

That's a great show!

ORIGINAL: Alikchi

Glad to hear about the patch! I guess my last excuse to start a game has been removed..

Be careful splitting up your carriers down there.. June 4th is Midway Day.

I hadn't realized you still had 4 divisions in Java! Any plans for them? Or are they going to be sucked into the new garrison requirements?

Have no fear, I am keeping the two carrier groups either in the same hex or close together.

One of the divisions now on Java will be sent to Burma, the other three will be used in the attack on northwestern Australia. Full divisions are too valuable to use to fulfill garrison requirements, unless they were going to be stationed there anyway for operational reasons.

[font="Arial"]As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.[/font]
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

6/4/1942 – 6/6/1942

A happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate it, and a very good day to everyone else too. Replete with turkey and pumpkin pie I sit down to contemplate my war effort.

As Japanese units finally arrive at Noumea I at last have a complete Allied OOB for the place. Here is how the fight shapes up:

Allies:
41st Infantry Division
193rd Tank Battalion
Lark Battalion
New Caledonia Det
114th USAAF Base Force
148th Field Artillery Battalion

Japan:
4th Infantry Division
19th Infantry Division
53rd Infantry Division
2nd Independent Mortar Battalion
15th Independent Mortar Battalion
9th Independent Hvy Artillery Battalion

Elsewhere around the map things are progressing well everywhere except around Liuchow. At Medan (Sumatra) and Malang (Java) Japanese attacks are making good headway. The Chinese defenders at Loyang are taking a real beating and the forts there are down to level 2. At Liuchow, however, I have been compelled to withdraw my four attacking divisions in order to secure my supply lines, Q-Balls efforts in that regard having proved successful.

In fact Japanese supplies are low throughout China at the moment. Two big supply convoys have arrived at China recently and two more are on the way, so the situation is improving. I shudder to think what the situation is like for the Chinese.

I have been busy the last few turns re-routing my resource convoys as a result of the recent patch. The results have been instructive: even this brief interruption has wiped out my resource reserves on Honshu and created shortfalls. I think that the situation should improve quickly, though, because in general resources are now pooling in more convenient locations (Hakodate instead of Kushiro, for instance; Hong Kong instead of Haiphong).

Report Card: we are now at the six-month point of the war. I am going to give myself a grade of only fair. I have achieved all of Japan’s basic objectives at a fairly small cost, which is good. But I have moved too slowly in several areas, which is not so good. But this game has been an excellent learning experience and I can already see a number of things I can do better the next time around. In the meantime I think we have a good game going here and I am looking forward to a sharp fight at Noumea and to the upcoming invasion of northwestern Australia.

New Caledonia and the current victory point screen:

[font="Arial"]The whole principle of naval fighting is to be free to go anywhere with every damned thing the Navy possesses.[/font]
- Sir John Fisher: Memories, 1919

6/7/1942 – 6/13/1942

Cruising sedately off Noumea at the moment are eight Japanese aircraft carriers, nine battleships, and more cruisers and destroyers than you can shake a stick at. They move around enough to keep their exact location uncertain but not too much – fuel in the South Pacific is a precious commodity.

Zeros flying out of Luganville swept Noumea again and shot down about 15 Warhawks, losing only one fighter (which crashed on landing). This result is much better than I expected, based on earlier clashes. Q-Ball has mentioned that his pilots are fairly green and I know their morale is poor, so perhaps that explains it.

On the ground all the Japanese units are up now except the 19th Division, which is at La Foa. Preliminary shelling has not gone well; his shelling isn’t hurting me but my own shelling is. It will be interesting to see how the first deliberate attack goes.

DEI: the DEI has pretty much become the SRA. Malang and Medan both fell and the last defenders of both Java and Sumatra are now being herded into the tips of the respective islands, Sabang on Sumatra and Banjoewangi on Java. All the rest is Japanese now.

There are still a bunch of small islands to occupy between Java and Timor and there are three bases on southern Borneo still to capture. That’s about it.

The Philippines are also just about wrapped up. Panay has been overrun, leaving only one occupied enemy base (Bacolod) in the entire archipelago.

China: the Japanese force formerly investing Liuchow has pulled back and re-established its supply lines. More forces are moving up and I will have to wait until they are in position before I resume the attack, otherwise he will just ooze back and cut me off again.

Meanwhile, far to the northwest, Q-Ball has pulled his forces out of Loyang and Chengchow. This is an intelligent move. If he had waited for me to take Loyang a lot of his units would have been thrashed, and once Loyang fell Chengchow would be doomed. This way he keeps a large portion of his army intact for battles on better terrain further in the interior.

Pakhoi, along the coast, was also captured.

Under the Sea: it has been quiet lately, with few submarine attacks on either side. An S-boat sank a Japanese PB near Koumac on 10 June. I hate losing PBs; there never seem to be enough of them as it is.

Day of Infamy: with Pearl Harbor now more than 6 months behind us I can finally put together an accurate reckoning of American ships lost in the attack. Sunk were battleships Oklahoma, Arizona, and California, DD Dewey, PG Sacramento, and AG Aries.

Your air losses seems quite low for this point at the game, Cuttlefish. Any pro tips on minimizing flak and, particularly, ops losses (beyond keeping fatigue low and limiting routine missions to normal range)?

CF, can we see industry screen?How much stuff have you pilled up in bunkers?

Also, how many forces have you designated for Australia?

ORIGINAL: FatR

Your air losses seems quite low for this point at the game, Cuttlefish. Any pro tips on minimizing flak and, particularly, ops losses (beyond keeping fatigue low and limiting routine missions to normal range)?

Frankly I baby my air groups. If fatigue for a group reaches 15 or higher they get a rest or I tweak their settings to bring fatigue down. Bombers flying regular bombing runs are stood down at least one day in three or four even if pilot fatigue is low, because even if your pilots are rested the aircraft themselves are accumulating damage and need maintenance.

Japanese bombers are fragile. If I don't know what kind of flak I am facing I keep my bombers high to begin with, then lower the altitude in stages until I find the happy medium between effectiveness and losses. And I rarely commit bombers until my fighters have already established control of the air.

That's pretty much it. I guess the only other thing is that if I don't really need my planes I don't use them. The pilots can drink sake and play cards and do a bit of training until called upon, that's fine with me.

ORIGINAL: BigBadWolf

CF, can we see industry screen?How much stuff have you pilled up in bunkers?

Also, how many forces have you designated for Australia?

I'll post an industry screen for you next time I update the AAR. As for Australia, right now I have four divisions earmarked for the job; the 2nd, 21st, 38th, and 48th, plus engineers, artillery, and a couple of tank regiments.

Those are good thoughts on air groups. I need to keep them in mind.

Darling,

I know you are trying to conquer the Pacific and all, but do you remember that I asked you to chop some more firewood?

Mrs. Cuttlefish

Amen, Brudda'. Mrs. Mandrake is always asking me to bring da' wood too.

This morning when I was scrolling the map around Suva while she was cooking up the breakfast taters, she detoured to the office and asked, "doesn't everybody already know how this came out?" [:D]

Nothing to see here... really... but if you want to go to the Aussies v Amis thread

Cheers

Rob

That reminds me of the time my first wife came into my hospital room after I had my appendix out and announced to the world that she hoped I didn't have to go through that again[&:]. I assured her it was a one time event.

Wait, what? [&:]

jrcar, mate, you missed the thread [:D]

How the hell did that Happen!

Was in here reading and saw it to... sorry 'bout that!

Cheers

Rob

ORIGINAL: BigBadWolf

Wait, what? [&:]

jrcar, mate, you missed the thread [:D]

[font="Arial"]Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.[/font]
- CEO Nwabudike Morgan: The Ethics of Greed

---

6/14/42 – 6/16/42

Battle rages at the southern tip of New Caledonia as Japanese forces try to overrun the Australian and American defenders of Noumea. So far the Japanese are only getting 1 to 2 odds and the worst of the casualties but they have knocked the forts down to level 2. Q-Ball seems to be gloomy about the ultimate outcome of the battle.

So, I find myself thinking, if you’re Q-Ball what do you do? Give up 30,000 troops, including an entire US Division? Not willingly. To save them he needs to reinforce or evacuate them. But Kido Butai and almost the entire Combined Fleet are in his way.

To get them to move he needs to strike at something vital, something I can’t ignore. Looking at his choices I think I can rule out Burma or the DEI. Targets in the southern half of the Pacific seem unlikely because my forces are close enough to interfere quickly. But attacking somewhere from, say, Kwajalein on north…ah, that makes sense.

In that case I ought to be on guard for an attack at someplace like Wake Island or the Kuriles. The thing is, I’ve already made what defensive arrangements I can in those places. I am going to deploy more air units and submarines and send more aviation support to Hokkaido but that’s about all I can do.

Supply and Demand: resource convoys are just beginning to arrive from their new ports of call so the shortage in resources (and resulting drop in HI levels) should soon be a thing of the past. It really takes a lot of hulls to keep those resources coming in. I mostly use the 10 and 12-knot freighters for this, reserving the faster ships for long-haul work.

Supply levels took a big hit in the patch. Almost a million supply at Osaka vanished overnight and other cities lost large reserves as well. The graphic below, from WITP Staff, shows the drop, as well as my current stockpiles of everything else. Fortunately this really has little practical effect, as the 999,000 supply at Tokyo is sufficient reserve. I am sending out lots and lots of supplies at the moment, though, especially to China. Shipments totaling about 125,000 supply have recently reached or are en route to Shanghai, Tientsin, and Tsingtow.

Oil, fuel, HI, and etc. seem to have been unaffected by the patch. Mind you, I am not complaining, just commenting. Overall the patch gets a big thumbs up here at Cuttlefish HQ.

It is possible to evacuate the troops by catalinas from suva. I did this in my game. I flew out two us divs, the theater hq, 2 base forces and the combat engeneers before my opponent realised it.

Why did the patch drop supply levels?