Islands of Destiny: RA 5.0 Japanese Side

[John 3rd]

Keep it coming boys. I am taking notes!

[DanSez]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

I think you should plan your defence, builds, r&d, shipping, based on the supposition that the Allies will most likely be in position to bomb the HI in 1st Qtr 44. Considering the B29 shows up for action in 3/44 this is solid thinking for every JFB, but especially for a JFB without a full KB.

If the Allies go for the throat, you can win the air war (at least until 1945) by planning now. If they do a broad advance you can do even better I think.

500 Franks a month is not too much and might be too low; look at the Navy fighters you have and see what you can have by 3/44. Which model Jack or George? Get the engines cranking out! 3x as much Army fighter production than Navy.

Double check your fighter production at Harbin....it will keep cranking out the planes deep into 45 most likely.

Attack the Allied plane pools at every chance, with every tactic.

No Jacks in this mod. At least not the latest versions.
Just learning this mod in a new PBEM but from what I see in the mid/late war unless you go all in on exotic models:
For the Army there is the Ki-100 Tony and the Franks with Oscars and Tojos adding assist.
For the Navy it is George and Sam with what's left of the Zeros adding numbers.

[pws1225]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

I think you should plan your defence, builds, r&d, shipping, based on the supposition that the Allies will most likely be in position to bomb the HI in 1st Qtr 44. Considering the B29 shows up for action in 3/44 this is solid thinking for every JFB, but especially for a JFB without a full KB.

If the Allies go for the throat, you can win the air war (at least until 1945) by planning now. If they do a broad advance you can do even better I think.

500 Franks a month is not too much and might be too low; look at the Navy fighters you have and see what you can have by 3/44. Which model Jack or George? Get the engines cranking out! 3x as much Army fighter production than Navy.

Double check your fighter production at Harbin....it will keep cranking out the planes deep into 45 most likely.

Attack the Allied plane pools at every chance, with every tactic.

+1 to this!

I am late '44 with tocaff (Todd) and fort building in the Mariannas and other strategic points is paying off against the onslaught. And remember to haul as much fuel as you can from the DEI now before the Allies cut your LOC. I would be tempted to even use KBs AOs for this to make sure your industry keeps humming along.

[SqzMyLemon]

Glad to see you're not going to throw in the towel prematurely and just taking some time to regroup and shake it off.

I'm looking forward to seeing how you play this moving forward.

[Capt. Harlock]

They then turn and are full of fight. From the decks of 4 CV and 3 CVLs fighters, DB, and Torpedo planes lift off and attack. They are low in numbers but accomplish a lot. By the end of the day, they hit several American cruisers, BB Idaho and SINK the USS Nevada.

Hmm. The WWI-era gun barges would not have been my first choice for pursuit. Nice to see you still have claws!

[Lowpe]

Very nice counter punch....keep it up.[:)]

[obvert]

Yep. All good ideas.

Plan to play small ball. Think about moving runners. What are the little things you can do to score runs. Sacrifice? Great, if it opens up something else unexpected.

I think the Japanese can still cause some chaos by striking the Allies with all available disruption possibilities. Against invasions send sub swarms, mine key bases just before landings, get those many CD guns back in force to the inner circle, plan to infiltrate invasions with MTBs and smaller surface vessels that are expendable, but come in quantity (think Es). Get the midgets swarming too.

FP for harassing attacks from passed by dots hexes by flying in some support. Anything that will make the Allies take more time. Hit un-CAPed rear bases for port strikes or field raids. The G3M3 is perfect for this.

If you haven't yet invest in the Ki-83. At 13/16 range and 430+mph it's a beast and has CL 20mm cannons. It can fight anything and keep some semblance of an offensive possibility for you late. At least to sweep away CAP so your desperation kami and naval strikes have a shot. The Ki-84r is awesome too, and the Sam and George combo will be fine for the IJN. Make a ton of everything and invest in engines now before the factories get bombed out later.

Whatever you do plan to conserve supply, get fuel and oil maximized early so all of it is moving to the HI and very little sits in the DEI preparing for the eventual cutoff. Bank some HI and Arm/Vehicle point as you can.

There is a lot of fun to the endgame as others have pointed out. You just can't swing for the fences anymore. Steroids have been banned and you have to use every tool in the box now. [;)]

[John 3rd]

The more I look at things the more I see that there shall still be a good-sized striking force available. Junyo just finished with repairs at Manila. CV Renkaku is about a week from being done at Yokohoma. CVL Zuiho is present there as well.

Need to seriously go through things but there are still plenty of flight-decks available. The thing that gets me is that pilot losses don't look very bad at all. It is going to take FOREVER to get the fragments together! Have already bought out all the air groups to bring them back. Had over 2,000 PP stored up and was about to buy out an ID. Not doing that now. Looks like air groups for the moment.

Will closely examine the airframe discussion and post industrial screenshots in a few days. I know that I am presently geared up for about 250 Franks a month presently...

[ny59giants]

Make plans to call your Economics Minister, me, to get Tracker up and running this weekend. [;)]

[Mike Dubost]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

Not much has gone right with this dismal performance. We need some self-examination and specific work on correcting problems.

Identified Issues:
1. There are a lot of questions I have regarding the fight and, particularly, the horrific raid coordination. I wonder if having so many CVs in each TF was the real culprit? I've never worked on this scale before. My creation of the CV TF was predicated on roughly 400 planes as Kido Butai was at the start of the war. Perhaps that is a total error.

Opinions on this? What do JFB's have to say from their experiences?

2. Air Search seems to be taken care of but it certainly wasn't. Someone mentioned having night searching going on as well. I've never done that--excepting bombardments--is this something useful as well?

3. We've already settled the CVE reaction issue. THANKS!

I can do nothing for how Dan likes to throw of TFs to soak up and pulverize strikes at non-important shipping. The key here is the learn from the fight so that myself and others can benefit.

Even though we're still trying to get away let us look to a post-battle briefing and discussion.

I have turns saved for the three previous days so we can look at just about anything.

Apologies for the slightly late response. I have been closely following your opponent's AAR and dipping into yours from time to time for the "view from the other side of the hill". I am surprised that no one else responded to your point 1. I feel a bit odd about giving advice to veterans since I'm about as green as my favorite St. Patrick's Day shirt when it comes to this game, but I recently saw the following thread in the main forum:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4082899

In this thread it quotes the manual section 7.2.1.11 to say that the chance of uncoordinated strikes doubles when a random number between 200 and 400 is less than the number of planes in your TF. Now, it does not say that what the baseline is. This makes it hard to judge how significant the doubling is, but it is apparent that you are loading the dice against yourself with a 400 plane TF.

Before closing, I do want to make sure to thank you for a very interesting AAR. I am learning a lot about the game from reading all the AARs, yours most definitely included.

Thanks!

NOTE: Edited to fix typo.

[John 3rd]

As I said above, this COULD be far worse then it looked. Here is the carrier inventory presently:

CVs
Akagi (damaged)
Hiryu
Soryu
Shokaku
Junyo
Taikaku
Renkaku
Ryukaku

CVLs
Ryuyo
Shoho
Ryujo
Zuiho

Have got Daitai fragments EVERYWHERE. Am working on getting everyone together then I shall know where things are at presently. Have already bought back ALL the lost Daitai using PP.

[bmonty101]

So basically after combat losses, you are left with a more modernized Scenario 1 KB [:D]

[John 3rd]

Funny when you think about it...

[desicat]

Apologies for the slightly late response. I have been closely following your opponent's AAR and dipping into yours from time to time for the "view from the other side of the hill". I am surprised that no one else responded to your point 1. I feel a bit odd about giving advice to veterans since I'm about as green as my favorite St. Patrick's Day shirt when it comes to this game, but I recently saw the following thread in the main forum:

tm.asp?m=4082899

In this thread it quotes the manual section 7.2.1.11 to say that the chance of uncoordinated strikes doubles when a random number between 200 and 400 is less than the number of planes in your TF. Now, it does not say that what the baseline is. This makes it hard to judge how significant the doubling is, but it is apparent that you are loading the dice against yourself with a 400 plane TF.

Before closing, I do want to make sure to thank you for a very interesting AAR. I am learning a lot about the game from reading all the AARs, yours most definitely included.

Thanks!

NOTE: Edited to fix typo.

< Message edited by Mike Dubost -- 5/20/2016 4:29:49 AM >

This is a great point. The manuals' verbiage is clunky but very important in this case.

[John 3rd]

OK. Lesson learned for all Carrier Men. I will reform my TF so that they average about 300 planes. Great Note from the handbook.

[John 3rd]

Lookee Lookee--MISTER FRANK just advanced to October 1943.

I need some thoughts here. Have a batch of small factories (9-12) that have been doing the research. Should I take those small ones and aim from alter model NOW before we start production? What works best? I'll Post a screenshot soon.

[John 3rd]

Here is the factory screenshot:

[Lowpe]

Roughly 190 points of advancement per month, x2 as much with engine bonus. If my rough math is on.[;)]

You need to think long and hard about how much to put into the Frank R...you will most likely need 18 months of advancement, 1800 points which would be 5 solid months of research without having the factories damaged at all (swag). Can you generate that many engines? Can you protect the HI for that long?

But that would also mean starting Frank A factories from scratch, so thirty days for a factory to be cranking out 1 plane a day and my guess is you need Frank A production around 500 a month now.

I don't think you can really overproduce the Frank A...if you do get to the R the A becomes the best fighter kamikaze around. I think you are still on the C Tony...so for the Army it will be pretty much Frank.

The Harbin factory should start production and be enlarged since it is the least likely factory to be bombed. Alternatively, you could advance it to the R because it is most likely to keep researching without being damaged. Depends upon how badly you want R.

Tough calls.[:)]

Basically I like your high SR fighters to defend and attack where there are rails: Luzon, SRA, Burma, Honshu, China. Your low SR fighters are good where there is no rails and as filler for the SR3 fighters.

You should also look at the chance of getting Sam's. If it looks unlikely then you probably can boost George/A6M8 and whatever other Navy fighters you have in this mod.

[John 3rd]

I've invested a good amount of research already for Mister Sam. We'll keep that going.

Just added two old Tojo Factory to Frank production and added more engines. I think I'll take 50% (100 points) of my present repaired factories and convert to the R. It is now September 26th with production starting on Oct 1st. When would be best to advance those research factories?

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd

It is now September 26th with production starting on Oct 1st. When would be best to advance those research factories?

Yep, they are not doing anything now for you.[:)]

Always save the game prior to doing any r&d changes, but these are pretty straight forward -- advance the Frank A to Frank R in one click and they will be researching the Frank R fully repaired.

But you might want to check the Frank A upgrade path first, since I am not 100% sure given the Mod what the upgrade path is.