Thanks Cribtop, a cracking suggestion, I tried it against the AI, starting from 5 hexes out, and those APDs went in and out in one night just like they're supposed to. Now I'll try it in the real thing and those guys will probably sail in great big circles and get smashed to pieces.
I see from your AAR that you're an ex-Combat Mission player. I loved that game, played it from the initial Beta all the way through to the release of CM:Shock Force, which kind of killed the love for me.
Back to the game. The exciting news this time is the arrival of Combined Fleet. Oh, to see that list of ship arrivals scrolling past, the excitement, the drum rolls. No longer will we be the whipping boys of the Allied Fleet, oh no, now we're going to give some out.
With that in mind, I have decided on the cunning plan of using the painfully slow Mutsu as bait to see if can draw some DBs out of Lunga to the sort of range they won't be escorted, and then smacking them with plenty Zeros. This happened to me against Mike and it hurt.
If there isn't a strong reaction, the real force of 2BBs and about 5 CAs, with escorts, will go down and give Lunga a good old fashioned HE pasting. Covered all the time by carriers at a sensible range, and some fighters flying out of my newly established air base on Buka.
Man, I wish I had some more land-based air.
Speaking of which, Mike was wasting time with his wife instead of doing his logistics job, and I've cocked things up horribly in the interim, dropping Rabaul below 20,000 supply so the fighters won't draw new aircraft. See what happens when you put a strategy man in charge of logistics.
