Where the eastern wind is blowing... AAR against Canoerebel

[CaptDave]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Is the Eastern Wind still blowing?

Per his esteemed opponent, PH was away for a week and is now away for another week on vacation at a remote spot with unreliable Internet. He did get one turn sent, but probably hasn't been able to update the AAR.

[witpqs]

Thanks! I only read one side of this contest so that I may comment freely.

[CaptDave]

And I say nothing because I do read both sides! Apparently he got a turn or two off this week, but no posts here.

[Galahad78]

First time I read both sides of an AAR and it is tremendously entertaining. In fact, I'm learning a lot with this side of the AAR. Keep it coming!

[Hortlund]

Hey guys. Sorry about the slow postings here. First I had a business trip, and after that 10 days with sporadic internet. Things should be back to normal now though.

Dont have too much to report, the game is right now in a shuffeling-around-forces-stage.

Another attack failed at Anchorage. The Gds Mixed Bde has been bled down to 20% troop strength, and will go back to Tokyo for R&R when the base falls. 4th Brigade is on the way from Korea (it is one of those 80 exp-units I love). 2nd Div will attack again tomorrow to wear down the defenders, and in about 4 days, the 4th will arrive.

6th Guards Division just formed at Cam Rahn Bay, and they will go to Johore Bahru to keep the Singapore-containment. This will enable me to move the 56th Div out from there, they will go to Java to kill off Soerebaja, in case the units there need help.

One of the divisions from Clark is heading to Timor to take out the Koepang defences.

Darwin is about to fall, my tank units have been roaming free in the fields south of Darwin, killing off most of the fleeing defenders.

China is China. Not much to report.

A CS raider is all the way on the map-edge south of San Diego, trying to hunt down convoys. Problem is that the Jakes on the CS cant seem to hit anything. I have a CV-unit in the area steaming south. These units are all part of the maskirovka to make Canoe think there is a real threat to the West Coast.

And I just did a sweep over Vancouver. Naturally, this is not something that I can sustain, since it means fighting at 12 hexes range, over a huge enemy base. But I want to keep Canoe on his toes. I will send the occasional sweep like this, and perhaps some bombers aswell in the near future.

[Hortlund]

Im not sure how to react to this. So any opinions are appreciated.

I had alot of high-value US ships cornered. Several APs, AOs, TKs, AEs, etc. I had a CS a couple of hexes away, and the enemy ships were without anywhere to run. From the north came 4 of my CVs, to the west, my CS with escorts, to the east, the map-edge. The only way was south, and I was "herding" the US ships with my CS while I was waiting for the CVs to arrive.

Then, the next turn, all the US ships were gone. Completely vanished from the face of the ocean. I spent another turn looking around, in case they had made an unexpected full-speed run, or broken up the convoy...nothing.

Then I spotted them in the Panama in-box. So, he saved his 10-15 high-value ships by moving them off the map, while I had ships not two hexes away.

Fair?

[Lecivius]

I see nothing gamey, but I am a n00b at such things.  You are conquering the northern area, and have a viable threat operating east of PH.  In the opening moves of a way, keeping high value equipment out of harm’s way until such time as there are sufficient resources available to defend them, and to use them properly, is only prudent.  In fact, there is an Alternate history fiction book (and of course, I forget the name & title) that describes just this happening when PH was taken by the Japanese..

[JohnDillworth]

Im not sure how to react to this. So any opinions are appreciated.

I had alot of high-value US ships cornered. Several APs, AOs, TKs, AEs, etc. I had a CS a couple of hexes away, and the enemy ships were without anywhere to run. From the north came 4 of my CVs, to the west, my CS with escorts, to the east, the map-edge. The only way was south, and I was "herding" the US ships with my CS while I was waiting for the CVs to arrive.

Then, the next turn, all the US ships were gone. Completely vanished from the face of the ocean. I spent another turn looking around, in case they had made an unexpected full-speed run, or broken up the convoy...nothing.

Then I spotted them in the Panama in-box. So, he saved his 10-15 high-value ships by moving them off the map, while I had ships not two hexes away.

Fair?

Hmmmmm, probably deserves an email. If they were headed to the worm hole anyway, not so gamy, if they came out, saw you and ducked back in perhaps a little gamy. Probably a little FOW as there are no AE's that arrive on the east coast, and there would little reason to send one through. I believe you guys are playing with no house rules and this is the first time I ever heard of the Canal Zone wormhole being an issue. I'd drop CR a note.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

Then I spotted them in the Panama in-box. So, he saved his 10-15 high-value ships by moving them off the map, while I had ships not two hexes away.

Fair?

It's a limitation of the game. I've had ships cornered against the southern map edge where IRL ships would have lots of ocean to flee into (and IJN CVs would not have enough fuel to catch them).

I don't know exactly where the ships were when they were ordered to Panama, maybe a better course of action (from a friendly competition standpoint) would have been to have them go full-speed to San Diego or LA and seek shelter under land based AA. You might be the first guy with IJN carriers cruising around that area!

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Im not sure how to react to this. So any opinions are appreciated.

I had alot of high-value US ships cornered. Several APs, AOs, TKs, AEs, etc. I had a CS a couple of hexes away, and the enemy ships were without anywhere to run. From the north came 4 of my CVs, to the west, my CS with escorts, to the east, the map-edge. The only way was south, and I was "herding" the US ships with my CS while I was waiting for the CVs to arrive.

Then, the next turn, all the US ships were gone. Completely vanished from the face of the ocean. I spent another turn looking around, in case they had made an unexpected full-speed run, or broken up the convoy...nothing.

Then I spotted them in the Panama in-box. So, he saved his 10-15 high-value ships by moving them off the map, while I had ships not two hexes away.

Fair?

Hmmmmm, probably deserves an email. If they were headed to the worm hole anyway, not so gamy, if they came out, saw you and ducked back in perhaps a little gamy. Probably a little FOW as there are no AE's that arrive on the east coast, and there would little reason to send one through. I believe you guys are playing with no house rules and this is the first time I ever heard of the Canal Zone wormhole being an issue. I'd drop CR a note.

IMO a test could/should be if he tries to turn them around and comes back out in less than the time it should take to get them to the Canal Zone and flip them. The devs have long said the code is not designed to turn ships around in off-map areas, and can cause bugs and other DB horribles. CR has turned ships around in off-map areas in other games, I believe with no visible ill effects. But the off-map shouldn't be a get out of jail free card when being chased unless the Alied player is prepared to incur the time cost of a round trip.

[Hortlund]

They were not heading to the canal, if they were, they would have gone right at the off-map-box just off San Diego. They went south for 20-something hexes from San Diego, and then went into the box...

[Hortlund]

The brits have gotten themselves into a mess at Port Blair. For some reason, he is reinforcing here. Including with aircraft...precious, rare, RAF fighters.

An airfield attack damaged a couple of Hurricane IIb:s on the ground. The next turn I stood down the bombers and swept with several Oscars and Zeros, meeting two RAF fighter units on CAP. Hurricane IIa:s and IIb:s, about two fighter wings it seems.

Problem for Canoe is that there is nowhere to run now. Im alternating between sweeps and airfield attacks, and by now I estimate the fighter units to be down to 30% strenght. I'll continue to bomb the base until I torch them all on the ground. Silly misstake really. He made the same error with a part of the AVG in China. Using them in a base without railroads...once they are grounded due to fighter sweeps, there is no saving them from the bombers....

[Hortlund]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

They were not heading to the canal, if they were, they would have gone right at the off-map-box just off San Diego. They went south for 20-something hexes from San Diego, and then went into the box...

The gut feeling I get is that they were going south along the map-edge, that is a pretty common convoy route for the allies, and when the CVs came closing in, he just warped away into the canal zone...

Odd thing is that the APs were empty. I wonder where they were heading and why.

[Walloc]

Im also on the this is not gamey in an unfair sense at all band wagon. Its a result of a map edge. Opposite opinion would have the effect that, it would be fair to trap ships vs a map edge, just cuz there is an arbitrary map edge. This is a known feature. So i see no problem what so ever.

Kind regards,

Rasmus

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

They were not heading to the canal, if they were, they would have gone right at the off-map-box just off San Diego. They went south for 20-something hexes from San Diego, and then went into the box...

Hard to comment intelligently without seeing the map. I just did test to verify, ordering five different at-sea TFs to change homeport to Balboa and head there. All were SW of San Diego, some a little, some a lot.

TFs at SD itself will enter at the extreme northern end of the shaded portion of the transit route at 226, 83. Anything south of that and they shift to a course of 090 true and head along the X-axis for the shaded portion in a straight line. If his were 20-hexes south of SD they would have headed due east from that hex. Depending how far west they were they might make it in a turn, or not.

Given FOW, how do you know that whatever you're seeing in the transit route is what you were chasing?

Regardless of whether they were headed to the Zone before being chased or after, I think in a game with no HRs that using off-map mechanics is valid. But as I said, what is not valid per game design parameters often stated by the dev team coders is turning around in the off-map transit routes. This was never intended to be done, it may break the game, and is risky at best to stability. michaelm has had to repair multiple saved games over the past years for people who did this type of move. It isn't a matter of being "gamey" but rather a matter of taking advantage of clicks which don't have error trapping to prevent them being recorded. The off-map math is not like on-map hex counting math. It has been described as a series of tables with pre-calculated quantities in the cells. Turning a TF around might work, it might break the save file, or it might do something else which isn't visible at the time. It's a match near gasoline.

That said, CR has done it in the past and reported it in AARs. At least once I pointed out to him that the devs say not to do it, but his comment, from memory, was it all looked fine and he wasn't worried. From memory this was concerning the Aden-to-IO wormhole.

[Hortlund]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
Given FOW, how do you know that whatever you're seeing in the transit route is what you were chasing?

Cannot be 100% of cource. But I see alot of APs in the box, and the big convoy consisting of APs and other ships vanished somehow from right under our noses...

[Hortlund]

So, the basic situation is this.

Im waiting for two CVs to return to Tokyo, right now they are ferrying some units of Zeros and Kates to the northern front. When they have dropped those units off, they will return to Tokyo and form up a 4 CV detachment of the KB. This unit will escort the Chittagong invasion together with the mini KB and most of my battleship line.

By that time, Im expecting to have 4 divisions from Clark in operational order. This force will sail the long way around, from Batavia on the outside of Sumatra, nort of Port Blair and then to Chittagong. Hopefully, this should take Canoe completely by surprise.

Meanwhile, I am moving in a menacing way with 3 CVs in the West Coast/North Pac-area. I will step up the fighter sweeps over WC-targets, and Im planning an industry attack in the Los Angeles-region in a couple of days.
I am also moving units towards Australia and Port Moresby. 38th Div will land on Timor in a couple of days, and the 56th Division will take Soerebaja in about two weeks.

My goal is to land at Chittagong around mid-March which is about one month from now.

[Historiker]

ORIGINAL: Panzerjaeger Hortlund

Im not sure how to react to this. So any opinions are appreciated.

I had alot of high-value US ships cornered. Several APs, AOs, TKs, AEs, etc. I had a CS a couple of hexes away, and the enemy ships were without anywhere to run. From the north came 4 of my CVs, to the west, my CS with escorts, to the east, the map-edge. The only way was south, and I was "herding" the US ships with my CS while I was waiting for the CVs to arrive.

Then, the next turn, all the US ships were gone. Completely vanished from the face of the ocean. I spent another turn looking around, in case they had made an unexpected full-speed run, or broken up the convoy...nothing.

Then I spotted them in the Panama in-box. So, he saved his 10-15 high-value ships by moving them off the map, while I had ships not two hexes away.

Fair?

It is the same with your second attack on PH in our game.

You can't expect your opponent to walk to the slaughterhouse. You exploited the fact that the map ends where there would be huge areas of oceans. He exploited the fact that there's the worm hole.

Bad luck, not enough conversation between the opponents to clarify the intended style of the game. But IMO: absolutly kosher! I would've done the same, as I see the only turn where I can expect anyone to deliberatly let himself get slaughtered is turn 1.

But once again: This different understanding ended our game, so I'd propose you chat with Canoe about how you want to play the game.

[Hortlund]

Well, Im not surprised you think its a good idea.

[Historiker]

well, let's not start this over again...