Lambs to the slaughter (Lowpe (J) vs Jocke; BillBrown (A)) Finished

[Lowpe]

And yet another round.

[Lowpe]

And the Allies are thru...lousy Boise![:(]

[Lowpe]

In the jungle, and around at sea, the Nicks sortie for a low level strafing anti-ship run and they cannot find the targets due to weather.

The Allies land more tanks. Tanks in the jungle. No thanks. This is a job for Aussies or Yanks on foot with grenades and rifles. Mortars, small artillery pieces.

Can't fault landing the Combat Engineers though, I bet they have a nasty TOE. At least we got a few of them as they stormed the beach.

[Lowpe]

The butchers bill...

[Lowpe]

Big picture...

[Lowpe]

I was quite taken by surprise to see the Boise and Mobile escorting the invasion ships...really surprised. This might be a very good development.

[Lowpe]

Here is the progress on the rotating assaults to close the pocket. Tomorrow the tanks will attack, probably only a 3 or 4 to 1, and then the next day the infantry -- I will keep it up until they are all dead.

[Alfred]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

ORIGINAL: Alfred

Always wise to assume an opponent is undertaking a good plan even if they are not.

As to reducing the Allied pocket, too many players are unnecessarily concerned about their own fatigue levels.  Pockets must be attacked every day, not every 2-3 days as that allows time for the defence to recover.  Artillery should bombard every day without any consideration for the fatigue level.  Infantry should attack whenever disabled devices (primarily the AV contributing) are fewer than the ready devices.

Alfred

Thanks Alfred[&o], that confirms my thinking here on having daily attacks over assaults every few days now that the Allies are fairly toothless. I like the greater than 50% guideline for attacks, I worry about disruption more than fatigue.

I really want to close this pocket, and get my artillery out of the jungle.

Flew some fighters back into Magwe today, nothing huge, about 120 low, layered CAP.

I am also sending in multiple small task forces into Madang on the New Guinea coast. I certainly hope he is not invading Manus with everything but rescuing the New Zealanders. I figure the first few will tangle with a Brooklyn/Fletcher SAG or two but the others might hit the transports. Threat level is set to Low to minimize combat time hopefully with the Fletchers.

I also put a squadron of Nicks (70 low naval, 70 strafe) on 1000 foot naval attack. I would be very curious to see if they can damage Fletchers after the Fletchers have used a lot of ammo fighting the IJN.

Countering Fletchers is one of the greatest challenges facing Japan. My normal strategy is Divebombers, but the Nicks properly trained might do ok especially combined with a hopefully ammo deficient task force. I also did fairly well using Light Cruisers and the low threat setting in my game versus Tiemanj.

Lowpe,

You will know this but some of your readers might not.

1. A ready land device which is "targeted" in combat can be killed outright but more often it is only disabled. OTOH a disabled land device "targeted" in combat is prone to be killed outright. Combat targeting is all "under the hood" and therefore outside of player control. What is under player control is the decision to undertake an attack and the type of attack. It therefore makes sense to attack when the odds favour casualties to be mainly in the form of disabled rather than outright kills.

2. When combat involves "fresh" forces on both sides, then the level of disruption and fatigue is a relevant consideration. The side with the higher levels will fight at a disadvantage. However when the combat occurs in a pocket, the pocketed units are almost always in a worse position in terms of disruption, fatigue, supply availability, ratio of disabled:ready devices than the attacker. Under these circumstances, where the attacker is consistently obtaining a positive adjusted AV odds ratio the sensible plan is to maintain the pressure.

3. Strafing ships can be a very effective tactic. Attack bombers are best because the code factors in their ability to use their forward firing guns to suppress enemy flak but Japan has none. In their absence fighter bombers or even fighters can be successful. Best results are obtained when:

• the pilot is well trained in both Low Naval and Strafe skills
• the airframe deployed has guns (and bombs) which can penetrate the ship's armour rating
• the altitude is set to 100' in order to get both the strafing and low bombing run ins

Alfred

[Lowpe]

Thanks Alfred, as always that was very informative. Quick question: Does the code distinguish between a 100 foot attack and a 1000 foot attack with respect to fighter bombers? I can't see any difference. In the replay they both strafe, in the report they both drop 2 bombs per plane. Is there a subtle difference I am missing? Perhaps strafing is more effective or more numerous at 100'?

[Lowpe]

Got my turn done, and it will be another important day...we shall see what happens. Jocke is busy and might be slow at flipping thru the rest of the week. He told me he would try to get a turn done tomorrow, but Thursday was no chance, and Friday might be hectic too.

We shall see.

[Lowpe]

Did a little testing some recent assertions on the forum and other points of interest & found:

1. AMc, disbanded in port, sweeping mines automatically. Couldn't get this to work ever. I detected the minefields by blundering ships into them, and the AMc sat in port. I had 4 AMc in port and ran 30 turns, and replenished the mines twice. Swept all the mines with an active minesweeping TF at the end of the test and they were all). Next I will dock a TF and see if it will destroy the mines.

2. ASW ships reacting to close subs. I ran n=30; with 3 different task forces (patrol 1 hex, range 3; patrol 2 hexes range 3; move from point to point remain in station not in place). I got DL 10 on the subs and had the highest aggression skippers I could find. No reaction. I used Es with radar, DDs, and even had a fourth destroyer squadron set on Surface combat -- I was testing how it reacted to surface fleets.

3. SAG reacting from a patrol: very, very hard to get them to react. Out of n=30, with 4 different targets within reaction range (3 DE TF, 1 cargo TF) I could only get one reaction and they reacted twice sinking one TF of DEs. The targets had 10 DL, both night and day DL, the SAG had super high aggression (80+) skippers and commander. I played with threat settings. I moved the ships from point to point within 1 hex of the targets, I patrolled within 1 hex of the targets.

4. I tested aerial Naval Search. Naval search set to a 10 degreee arc, would search out to range 3 in a 360 degree circle if there are enough planes searching. I never detected anything at 4 hexes. With very few planes searching they still did search but was very unreliable.

5. Naval Search will detect submarines; Altitude doesn't seem to matter.

6. ASW search really is very poor at detecting surface ships.

7. Radar plays a very big impact on detecting ships and subs. Didn't test the impact of MAD only planes.

8. When set to short ranges (ASW 4), roughly equally trained pilots, twin engine planes were superior to single engine TB. Is this a factor of endurance?

9. When ASW is set for an odd numbered range (i.e. 5) I was never able to detect anything in the fractional hex.

10. The reported number of hits was higher when the searching planes was set to an altitude greater than 1000 feet. That is not to say that there was a hit...just the message.

11. I couldn't get MTB disbanded in port to sallie forth and protect the port from a bombardment.

12. I did get the elusive double shore bombardment. A bombarding destroyer task force, 1 hex away from target with remain on station set, bombarded at night and then in the morning.

Bear in mind these are just my very limited findings and in no way can you draw hard and fast rules, but you can grab some insight perhaps.

Experience of the crew needs to be tested next to see how large of an impact it will have on reactions.

Your comments and experiences are definitely most welcome.

[Lokasenna]

Your game is borked, because your experiences with #2 and #3 in particular are directly opposite of mine. I even video'd the ASW TF reaction specifically for you and Alfred! The SCTF reaction on a patrol is something I do routinely and can't imagine playing if it didn't work.

#5 - I suspect altitude still matters, as in higher = better chance of spotting (and possibly lower DL but I'm not sure on that)

#8 I don't know what you mean here. Superior in what way?

#9 pretty sure we (or I, at least) always knew that it rounded down, but confirmation is nice

#10 this amuses me if true

#12 interesting. Do it some more...

[Canoerebel]

Pardon me for chiming in briefly, but I've had ASW TFs react many times to subs - they don't always do it, but often enough that I think it works and is probably mostly dependent on TF commander aggression rating and a role of the dice.

One time not too long ago, I had all my carriers set to follow an ASW TF that had an aggressive commander. The dang ASW TF reacted to enemy subs and all my other TFs followed merrily along! It was a crazy departure that could've gotten me into a lot of trouble.

[Lowpe]

Here is the combat report for the double bombardment.

On Your question about #8 I was getting higher dls

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Pardon me for chiming in briefly, but I've had ASW TFs react many times to subs - they don't always do it, but often enough that I think it works and is probably mostly dependent on TF commander aggression rating and a role of the dice.

One time not too long ago, I had all my carriers set to follow an ASW TF that had an aggressive commander. The dang ASW TF reacted to enemy subs and all my other TFs followed merrily along! It was a crazy departure that could've gotten me into a lot of trouble.

Lots of people have, I am just having problem recreating it. Sigh. I am wondering if experience of the crew isn't a very important consideration.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Pardon me for chiming in briefly, but I've had ASW TFs react many times to subs - they don't always do it, but often enough that I think it works and is probably mostly dependent on TF commander aggression rating and a role of the dice.

One time not too long ago, I had all my carriers set to follow an ASW TF that had an aggressive commander. The dang ASW TF reacted to enemy subs and all my other TFs followed merrily along! It was a crazy departure that could've gotten me into a lot of trouble.

The clarity provided in a thread on the matter recently is that they do react but will never actually attack as part of that reaction. The game engine made it difficult to implement, and programmer time ran out.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Here is the combat report for the double bombardment.

On Your question about #8 I was getting higher dls

Dang good for two destroyers!

[jwolf]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Pardon me for chiming in briefly, but I've had ASW TFs react many times to subs - they don't always do it, but often enough that I think it works and is probably mostly dependent on TF commander aggression rating and a role of the dice.

One time not too long ago, I had all my carriers set to follow an ASW TF that had an aggressive commander. The dang ASW TF reacted to enemy subs and all my other TFs followed merrily along! It was a crazy departure that could've gotten me into a lot of trouble.

The clarity provided in a thread on the matter recently is that they do react but will never actually attack as part of that reaction. The game engine made it difficult to implement, and programmer time ran out.

Well that certainly explains what I've seen, anecdotally, in my game. Frequent reactions, but nothing (or hardly anything?) ever happens as a result.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Dang good for two destroyers!

Late war American Destroyers are simply beasts at shore bombardments. Don't tell anyone.[;)]

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

The clarity provided in a thread on the matter recently is that they do react but will never actually attack as part of that reaction. The game engine made it difficult to implement, and programmer time ran out.

So the TF might react in one phase, and attack in another phase or even the next day -- that is if they stay in the proper hex?