I sent the turn after 3.5 hours of trying to sort out the aerial dispositions. In the end I just gave up after getting most of it done and will tackle the rest over the weekend.
Yeah I was surprised the Allies would have had quite so many nukes. Good thing the invasion never happened or they'd have turned the beaches into glass first and then had thousands of their own men dying of radiation sickness.
Nukes - Not sure... It looks like they destroy manpower and other means of production. I don't think they have any impact on military units but they do seem to destroy the HI etc etc etc... Since I have far too little manpower ( it'll take 200 days just to fill out my units without any upgrades or losses ) and too little HI ( 8,000 HI points per day ) even a couple of sizeable hits will be enough to cripple Japan. Accordingly I'm trying to guard against this by creating an HI surplus from the first moments so that I'll be better able to survive with too little later. I'm also trying to use single-engined planes for tasks twin-engines might have taken on at other times so as to, again, save HI.
As to what he'll hit with atomic bombs... I have one city which has half of my TOTAL HI and another 3 cities which have most of the remaining. So, with 4 nukes he can reduce my HI hugely. If I were him I'd just rotate the 12 nukes through those 4 cities. Hit the largest city twice first, then each of the others once and then rotate through them again. At the end of that 9 nukes would be used it'd be September 1946 and if he had invaded in July/August he would be forcing such losses that my remaining HI could never keep up and I'd collapse.
12 nukes is just overwhelming to Japan in this scenario as Japan doesn't have sufficiently dispersed production. With that said the aim isn't to win, it is just to do as well as possible.
As to Allied experience. Their basic ground units have about 50 Exp ( mine have 25 to 35 ) while their USMC, Australian and British units have about 70 to 75 Exp, Certain special units like the airborne divisions have 80 to 90 Exp. Overall though with a 4 month delay my basic units can be up to the experience level of the basic Allied units. So I am trying to find the few Bdes and Divisions I have which have high experience ( anything above 50 Exp ) and send them to the front to hold the line while the other units train up and filter into the line as reinforcements.
I'm deciding to try to hit a small ( about 8 ship ) TF he has operating in Okinawa's waters. I'm hoping he hasn't LRCapped it and am testing out a few different heights and attack patterns. I'm committing some 50 kamis also to try to get a sense of how effective 70 Exp kamis are vs 40 Exp kamis. Hopefully the 40 Exp guys go a good enough job that I can use them routinely... I'm also playing with multiple heights for the kamis, ordinary bombers and escorts in order to see what might work. Right now my concept is 2 high flights of experienced planes ( in the Japanese air force of 1945 this means a squadron with pilots with an average A2A skill greater than 50 ) with a low flight of inexperienced pilots ( 20 to 30 Exp ).
In 6 weeks I'll be able to field a respectable number of 70 Exp pilots for defensive missions and in 3/12 I'll have a reserve of 70 Exp pilots and Ki-94s and J7Ws galore. For now on the other hand I have Oscar IVs, A6M7s and 40 to 50 Exp pilots on average. So, hopefully I'll be able to finish off the low-hanging fruit.
'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Moderators: wdolson, MOD_War-in-the-Pacific-Admirals-Edition
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Well, too me it sounds like 12 nukes would make it a very simple numbers game, that would need neither much skill, nor be played out. You could play this scenario with only 1-2 nukes, and by the end date in 1946 still assume that the war would (fictionally) continue past the game end if Japan didn't collapse, but with US consequently using dozens of nukes. No way to justify a Japanese victory anyway. But at least less nukes == more interesting game. After all, it is not only about winning, right?
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Aye janh but there are two extra-game issues:
1. PH wants extra nukes.
2. If I don't give them I am quite certain I'll have to hear whining about me skewing the game so as to keep Japan competitive. That sort of accusatory whining has caused me to leave WiTP for almost a year in the past so to head it off now it is easier to just give an excess of Atomic Bombs and just deal with the consequences. Players following on can always House Rule the nukes to a more manageable level ( I would suggest no more than 4 nukes as that means the US can nuke enough targets to make a real difference but still can't just nuke everything of value ).
I don't mind being nuked in-game and having to come up ways to do more with less nearly as much as I get annoyed at the sort of whining which inevitably happened from forumites whenever I made a change to the Allied side and was then accused of being a JFB who only weakened the Allies so he could win games ( which happened to a great extent when EA first came out ). I then went on to play several games of EA roughly 50/50 split between Allies and Japan but I've found that these sorts of people are never the sort to let facts get in the way of an ill-informed opinion. I'm depressingly sure that already there have been several posts pointing out things I've done to strengthen Japan and implying I'm stacking the deck "behind the scenes". That's about the most annoying thing I can imagine.... Certainly many times more annoying than getting nuked 12 times [:D]
So, my solution is to give him 12 nukes, innumerable CVBs and a host of additional armoured divisions ( with Pershings instead of Shermans so no-one can say I'm shorting him in terms of quality of tanks ). To be fair Japan also gets the option of building some "armoured divisions" made up of historical tanks and tank units - the way I'm adding them is to either allow them to be created from new production OR to have them appear as shells in Tokyo and allow the disbanding of minor IJA Tank units ( all those independent tank Companies/Bns etc ) in order to create a sufficiently large pool to give the tank division its TO&E numbers... SOOOOO Japan isn't getting anything for nothing, before anyone complains. It is just getting the option of deploying what it has differently - which is the sort of choice an EA mod is all about.
This game is already helping EA hugely as by actually being IN the late-45 situation I am being confronted with an inappropriate force mix which isn't optimised for this situation at all. By seeing what I'd like to do and what the possible pitfalls are I am already making changes to the IJA upgrade paths in EA proper and, of course, am adding in significant numbers of pitfalls and "traps" and snags along the way.
I'm also tinkering with a land-based Ohka launching unit which will be an IJN LCU with Ohka bombs as main loadout. These Ohkas have a new device added which is a CD gun type device and will have a low rate of fire but they'll be uninterceptable and respond to bombardment TFs. This will give the Japanese player some options in terms of coastal defence - particularly as it will mean there will be no safe range for Allied bombardment TFs but will be balanced by a lack of these CD Ohka units ( I am thinking 6 would be a good number ) and a very low rate of fire. They will, however, be air-transportable as the Ohka could have been transported handily enough by air and the launch rails etc were all also air-transportable. That makes them very valuable to late-45 Japan where anything which has to be sent by ship is almost guaranteed never to arrive.
Already I am considering a desperate IJN OIL-grab in which I commit the IJN CVs complete with a "nothing but fighters loadout" and coastal hex-hop along the Chinese coast while escorting a major TK and AK convoy. The AKs will load engineers and artillery units etc from the Pescadores ( which are too heavy to be airlifted out. Anything else which can be airlifted WILL be airlifted.) from where they can make their way to Shanghai etc for transport to Japan proper. In the meantime the TKs and KB will replenish and move along the coast via Hainan to the southern coast of Vietnam before sprinting across to Palembang. If I could do this with a large number of tankers I could, possibly, collect hundreds of thousands of tons of oil - which could keep my economy going for a long time. Even a single run collecting 600,000 tons of OIL would keep the Japanese economy going for an additional 60+ days.
Right now I only have enough for 300 days of functioning. The scenario is 500 days long. In a weird way the nukes will help as once they nuke the HI centres I'll burn through less OIL per day and probably 300 days or so will end up lasting almost 500 days.
Overall after doing the math and assuming a need for 2,000 engines per month ( split between some 1200 or so airframes ) and some 180 vehicle factories ( doubled from 88 at present ) and some 460 HI ( no change from present ) I will have a basic need for 3,120 HI centres. I currently have 4,488 ( lets say 4,500 ). That means I can lose about 1400 HI centres and still maintain a credible defence. I won't be able to build any ships at all if I have 3,120 HI Centres but we will just have to make do with what we have.
As you can see once I got comfortable with the production factors ( thanks to Tracker ) I immediately began identifying my bottom line. The keys are the IJA and air force. Shipping is not essential and so that'll be the first thing cut. Why isn't shipping production essential? Simple, if there's no air force then any shipping I produce can be destroyed at will. If I ever have so many fighters and bombers that I can guarantee the survival of shipping from enemy air attack then I can always switch off some fighter production and invest that into ships. I don't expect that to be the case though. The Allies have three times my number of fighters so even sheer numbers will always let them through - they also have better planes and better experience so, overall, the air war is going to be purely defensive except for a couple of major strikes against invasion fleets - whenever they come.
1. PH wants extra nukes.
2. If I don't give them I am quite certain I'll have to hear whining about me skewing the game so as to keep Japan competitive. That sort of accusatory whining has caused me to leave WiTP for almost a year in the past so to head it off now it is easier to just give an excess of Atomic Bombs and just deal with the consequences. Players following on can always House Rule the nukes to a more manageable level ( I would suggest no more than 4 nukes as that means the US can nuke enough targets to make a real difference but still can't just nuke everything of value ).
I don't mind being nuked in-game and having to come up ways to do more with less nearly as much as I get annoyed at the sort of whining which inevitably happened from forumites whenever I made a change to the Allied side and was then accused of being a JFB who only weakened the Allies so he could win games ( which happened to a great extent when EA first came out ). I then went on to play several games of EA roughly 50/50 split between Allies and Japan but I've found that these sorts of people are never the sort to let facts get in the way of an ill-informed opinion. I'm depressingly sure that already there have been several posts pointing out things I've done to strengthen Japan and implying I'm stacking the deck "behind the scenes". That's about the most annoying thing I can imagine.... Certainly many times more annoying than getting nuked 12 times [:D]
So, my solution is to give him 12 nukes, innumerable CVBs and a host of additional armoured divisions ( with Pershings instead of Shermans so no-one can say I'm shorting him in terms of quality of tanks ). To be fair Japan also gets the option of building some "armoured divisions" made up of historical tanks and tank units - the way I'm adding them is to either allow them to be created from new production OR to have them appear as shells in Tokyo and allow the disbanding of minor IJA Tank units ( all those independent tank Companies/Bns etc ) in order to create a sufficiently large pool to give the tank division its TO&E numbers... SOOOOO Japan isn't getting anything for nothing, before anyone complains. It is just getting the option of deploying what it has differently - which is the sort of choice an EA mod is all about.
This game is already helping EA hugely as by actually being IN the late-45 situation I am being confronted with an inappropriate force mix which isn't optimised for this situation at all. By seeing what I'd like to do and what the possible pitfalls are I am already making changes to the IJA upgrade paths in EA proper and, of course, am adding in significant numbers of pitfalls and "traps" and snags along the way.
I'm also tinkering with a land-based Ohka launching unit which will be an IJN LCU with Ohka bombs as main loadout. These Ohkas have a new device added which is a CD gun type device and will have a low rate of fire but they'll be uninterceptable and respond to bombardment TFs. This will give the Japanese player some options in terms of coastal defence - particularly as it will mean there will be no safe range for Allied bombardment TFs but will be balanced by a lack of these CD Ohka units ( I am thinking 6 would be a good number ) and a very low rate of fire. They will, however, be air-transportable as the Ohka could have been transported handily enough by air and the launch rails etc were all also air-transportable. That makes them very valuable to late-45 Japan where anything which has to be sent by ship is almost guaranteed never to arrive.
Already I am considering a desperate IJN OIL-grab in which I commit the IJN CVs complete with a "nothing but fighters loadout" and coastal hex-hop along the Chinese coast while escorting a major TK and AK convoy. The AKs will load engineers and artillery units etc from the Pescadores ( which are too heavy to be airlifted out. Anything else which can be airlifted WILL be airlifted.) from where they can make their way to Shanghai etc for transport to Japan proper. In the meantime the TKs and KB will replenish and move along the coast via Hainan to the southern coast of Vietnam before sprinting across to Palembang. If I could do this with a large number of tankers I could, possibly, collect hundreds of thousands of tons of oil - which could keep my economy going for a long time. Even a single run collecting 600,000 tons of OIL would keep the Japanese economy going for an additional 60+ days.
Right now I only have enough for 300 days of functioning. The scenario is 500 days long. In a weird way the nukes will help as once they nuke the HI centres I'll burn through less OIL per day and probably 300 days or so will end up lasting almost 500 days.
Overall after doing the math and assuming a need for 2,000 engines per month ( split between some 1200 or so airframes ) and some 180 vehicle factories ( doubled from 88 at present ) and some 460 HI ( no change from present ) I will have a basic need for 3,120 HI centres. I currently have 4,488 ( lets say 4,500 ). That means I can lose about 1400 HI centres and still maintain a credible defence. I won't be able to build any ships at all if I have 3,120 HI Centres but we will just have to make do with what we have.
As you can see once I got comfortable with the production factors ( thanks to Tracker ) I immediately began identifying my bottom line. The keys are the IJA and air force. Shipping is not essential and so that'll be the first thing cut. Why isn't shipping production essential? Simple, if there's no air force then any shipping I produce can be destroyed at will. If I ever have so many fighters and bombers that I can guarantee the survival of shipping from enemy air attack then I can always switch off some fighter production and invest that into ships. I don't expect that to be the case though. The Allies have three times my number of fighters so even sheer numbers will always let them through - they also have better planes and better experience so, overall, the air war is going to be purely defensive except for a couple of major strikes against invasion fleets - whenever they come.
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Update on the Ohkas....
I managed to figure out such a simple way to get land-based Ohkas in that I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it before.
I just made the Ohkas into a plane with no engine carrying Ohkas as a centreline weapons system. I'll House Rule myself to only issue these Ohkas to kamikaze units obviously as otherwise they could be used as normal Ohka carrying planes like the G4M2e ( which wouldn't be fair ).
Anyways, ferry range is 20 hexes ( to account for them being flown to their new base under a Betty and then unloaded there ) while combat range is 1 hex ( since they could only fly 40 miles or so )... In the kamikaze role they function exactly like you'd expect an Ohka launched from a land base to function. They cost HI to produce ( although there's a monthyl production of 120 which is HI free to account for their ease of manufacture so the Allies can't just shut it entirely down ). They are classed as light level bombers which are floatplane capable ( so they can operate from 0 airfield hexes - just as land-based Ohkas could have.
Since their range is 1 they are only useful as coastal defence weapons really - just as would have happened in real-life with the land-based Ohkas. So, all in all, I think this is a nice solution to the land-based Ohka problem. It also allows Japan to invest in order to increase production if they want but just get a basic number per month "free" if they don't choose to invest ( since these are diverted from the normal free plane-borne production.
I managed to figure out such a simple way to get land-based Ohkas in that I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it before.
I just made the Ohkas into a plane with no engine carrying Ohkas as a centreline weapons system. I'll House Rule myself to only issue these Ohkas to kamikaze units obviously as otherwise they could be used as normal Ohka carrying planes like the G4M2e ( which wouldn't be fair ).
Anyways, ferry range is 20 hexes ( to account for them being flown to their new base under a Betty and then unloaded there ) while combat range is 1 hex ( since they could only fly 40 miles or so )... In the kamikaze role they function exactly like you'd expect an Ohka launched from a land base to function. They cost HI to produce ( although there's a monthyl production of 120 which is HI free to account for their ease of manufacture so the Allies can't just shut it entirely down ). They are classed as light level bombers which are floatplane capable ( so they can operate from 0 airfield hexes - just as land-based Ohkas could have.
Since their range is 1 they are only useful as coastal defence weapons really - just as would have happened in real-life with the land-based Ohkas. So, all in all, I think this is a nice solution to the land-based Ohka problem. It also allows Japan to invest in order to increase production if they want but just get a basic number per month "free" if they don't choose to invest ( since these are diverted from the normal free plane-borne production.
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
I designed the base scenario on the presumption that Nuke programmme had failed and that the Soviets had stopped at Korea
Thats the basis for the scne so not sure why more nukes would be wanted as japan historically surrendered when 2 were dropped.
Thats the basis for the scne so not sure why more nukes would be wanted as japan historically surrendered when 2 were dropped.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Nemo,
well, I am not familiar with the limits of what can be done within the framework AE allows for modding. That being said, I'd tend to say your solution simply isn't fair.
It deprives your opponent of the fun of decision-making and the possibility to show his skill and gain fame and reputation. And it is very un-EA-like.
In contrast to this, your solution below
is very EA-like. We talk about options, which may be valuable or not.
So my question is: why not giving more options rather than more tools ? My approach (the general concept is shamelessly copied from your Allied-aircraft production idea) here would be e.g. to provide all these and more fancy armored divisions but with largely disabled TOEs at locations that are short of supply, so they won't recover quickly. Now, you can move some of your supplies there and maybe a HQ or so to help with recovery if you decide you want to use that decisison. OTOH, that supply may be important for staging a strategic bombing campaign... or maybe to keep an A-bomb factory in running shape ? Same thing with CVBs - just make 20 CVBs available, but keeping 20CVBs in action difficult. You may turn them into fuel guzzlers, making their operations sustainable but expensive (maybe I sould use the fuel for the AKs to ship the supplies to the places my armored divisions are starving instead ?) or place them on the map instantaneously in partly damaged state, so yards are blocked for eventual repairs of anything else that gets damaged, or make keeping them supplied with airgroups expensive (again supply-eating factories that use the supply he wanted for his A-bomb factories, the strategic bombing campaign, to get his elite-superdivisions into working shape, and btw - do running ops need supplies too ?) or...
In short, I'm all for offering your opponent as many A-bombs, divisions, CVBs (btw: does he get just the carriers, or the corresponding suite of auxiliary ships as well ?) as he wants, maybe even some tie fighters or a death star, but as an option, not as a free gift. Make him (and future EA players) work for what they want. But then again, maybe the logistics are already set in such a way that operating the tools you kindly provide is difficult already. Depends probably on how supply and fuel levels were toned.
As always, just my 2cts.
Hartwig
well, I am not familiar with the limits of what can be done within the framework AE allows for modding. That being said, I'd tend to say your solution simply isn't fair.
ORIGINAL: Nemo121
So, my solution is to give him 12 nukes, innumerable CVBs and a host of additional armoured divisions ( with Pershings instead of Shermans so no-one can say I'm shorting him in terms of quality of tanks ).
It deprives your opponent of the fun of decision-making and the possibility to show his skill and gain fame and reputation. And it is very un-EA-like.
In contrast to this, your solution below
To be fair Japan also gets the option of building some "armoured divisions" made up of historical tanks and tank units - the way I'm adding them is to either allow them to be created from new production OR to have them appear as shells in Tokyo and allow the disbanding of minor IJA Tank units ( all those independent tank Companies/Bns etc ) in order to create a sufficiently large pool to give the tank division its TO&E numbers... SOOOOO Japan isn't getting anything for nothing, before anyone complains. It is just getting the option of deploying what it has differently - which is the sort of choice an EA mod is all about.
is very EA-like. We talk about options, which may be valuable or not.
So my question is: why not giving more options rather than more tools ? My approach (the general concept is shamelessly copied from your Allied-aircraft production idea) here would be e.g. to provide all these and more fancy armored divisions but with largely disabled TOEs at locations that are short of supply, so they won't recover quickly. Now, you can move some of your supplies there and maybe a HQ or so to help with recovery if you decide you want to use that decisison. OTOH, that supply may be important for staging a strategic bombing campaign... or maybe to keep an A-bomb factory in running shape ? Same thing with CVBs - just make 20 CVBs available, but keeping 20CVBs in action difficult. You may turn them into fuel guzzlers, making their operations sustainable but expensive (maybe I sould use the fuel for the AKs to ship the supplies to the places my armored divisions are starving instead ?) or place them on the map instantaneously in partly damaged state, so yards are blocked for eventual repairs of anything else that gets damaged, or make keeping them supplied with airgroups expensive (again supply-eating factories that use the supply he wanted for his A-bomb factories, the strategic bombing campaign, to get his elite-superdivisions into working shape, and btw - do running ops need supplies too ?) or...
In short, I'm all for offering your opponent as many A-bombs, divisions, CVBs (btw: does he get just the carriers, or the corresponding suite of auxiliary ships as well ?) as he wants, maybe even some tie fighters or a death star, but as an option, not as a free gift. Make him (and future EA players) work for what they want. But then again, maybe the logistics are already set in such a way that operating the tools you kindly provide is difficult already. Depends probably on how supply and fuel levels were toned.
As always, just my 2cts.
Hartwig
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Hartwig,
Giving him 12 nukes IS an option. He can use all 12 and win his victory because of them or he can eschew them and use none or a minimum number. Using 12 will gain a win with ease. Using only 4 or less will require he display more skill in other areas in order to win. It is his choice which of those options he takes. The vast majority of people will take the first option and just scattergun with 12 nukes. That's fine... It isn't necessarily what you or I might espouse but it is an option.
BY doing so they'll push themselves less far, face less opposition and hone their skills less. In the long run, IMO, they'll learn less and improve less. It all depends on how much he wants a scalp and how much he wants to improve. Either option is fine by me as 12 nukes will push me to the limit and make me play better.
For EA itself when it comes out though I may not choose this option. I have to give PH some leeway though as this is a mini-mod which is evolving and he probably just wants some extra insurance... I have to say he's been polite and constructive in my conversations with him.
I will say though that mentally I'm a bit freer with Japanese options knowing that they'll be facing 12 nukes so I don't want it to appear that I'm the "battered wife" in this pairing. All those extra nukes and CVBs mean that any cap I was going to have on Shinyo boats is now gone and while they're pretty crappy they'll have the benefit of numbers now ( about 50 per week ). I'm trying to see how I can compensate for the cost... I can't just give infusions of HI mid-game so they'll have to be produced and that means they'll cost 30 HI each - which is manageable but that's still 210 per day when the Japanese are getting only 8,000 HI per day... That's a not insignificant investment. I think the solution might just be a little diseminated HI in the scenario for others but that won't carry through to my game. Ah well, I may just cut some Ki-264s to make room for the Shinyos.
Giving him 12 nukes IS an option. He can use all 12 and win his victory because of them or he can eschew them and use none or a minimum number. Using 12 will gain a win with ease. Using only 4 or less will require he display more skill in other areas in order to win. It is his choice which of those options he takes. The vast majority of people will take the first option and just scattergun with 12 nukes. That's fine... It isn't necessarily what you or I might espouse but it is an option.
BY doing so they'll push themselves less far, face less opposition and hone their skills less. In the long run, IMO, they'll learn less and improve less. It all depends on how much he wants a scalp and how much he wants to improve. Either option is fine by me as 12 nukes will push me to the limit and make me play better.
For EA itself when it comes out though I may not choose this option. I have to give PH some leeway though as this is a mini-mod which is evolving and he probably just wants some extra insurance... I have to say he's been polite and constructive in my conversations with him.
I will say though that mentally I'm a bit freer with Japanese options knowing that they'll be facing 12 nukes so I don't want it to appear that I'm the "battered wife" in this pairing. All those extra nukes and CVBs mean that any cap I was going to have on Shinyo boats is now gone and while they're pretty crappy they'll have the benefit of numbers now ( about 50 per week ). I'm trying to see how I can compensate for the cost... I can't just give infusions of HI mid-game so they'll have to be produced and that means they'll cost 30 HI each - which is manageable but that's still 210 per day when the Japanese are getting only 8,000 HI per day... That's a not insignificant investment. I think the solution might just be a little diseminated HI in the scenario for others but that won't carry through to my game. Ah well, I may just cut some Ki-264s to make room for the Shinyos.
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Subscribed , best of luck Nemo!
"There’s no such thing as a bitter person who keeps the bitterness to himself.” ~ Erwin Lutzer
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Can you upload the scen, please ? [8D]
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
I'll email you the scenario as it currently stands...
This is fairly different than the version PH and I are playing in that in this Japan gets Ohka units ( which I'm pretty damned proud of ). They get about 10 of them. They get a "free" monthly production of 120 Ohkas ( as aeroplanes ) and these Ohkas are modelled with a 20 hex transfer range ( to simulate being shipped into their bases overnight by Bettys etc ) but only a 1 hex strike range - to simulate firing from shore-based launch rails/ caves etc.
They have high speed but no armour and reasonably high durability ( I found that the AAA didn't really account for speed as a factor in determining its effectiveness vs the Ohkas. With that said they do pretty damned well once they get through the CAP... I'm a bit suspicious about the CAP though as it seems to have no problems catching them even though they are 100mph faster than CAP fighters and I know of no recorded cases of CAP shooting down Ohkas in reality. So I'm playing around with speed settings to give the Ohkas a bit more of an advantage in terms of winning a stern chase. I think most of the issue arises from CAP pre-positioning and benefitting from the dive on the Ohkas in terms of modelled built up speed. With that said since Ohkas were being sent in at 100 feet ( and have a ceiling of 6,000 feet ) the prepositioning factor shouldn't IMO, have been as large.
With that said they do pretty well and are an interesting wrinkle for the Allies to have to face when they invade Japanese islands.
The Shin'yo boats also work well. They survive the deployment of their weapons ( which is probably unrealistic ) but since so few will ever make it into the range they need to get to in order to deploy their weapons ( 1, the lowest range possible ) I think that's an acceptable issue. I've found half year production rates of 5,000 boats so I'm creating a slowly ramping production throughout 1945 which peaks at about 100 motorboats per week after 1st January 1946 with these being divided between Shinyos and MTBs in the ratio of 4:1
What this means is that Japan, effectively, will have an almost limitless flow of Shinyos with which to try to swamp USN naval TFs defending the transports during the night. Individually each Shinyo sucks but together they just need one really, really bad night in terms of weather and lack of moonlight and they could, if they get through the escorts, create a lot of trouble for US shipping.
One thing that screams out at me from my testing is that high-latitude kamis are the way to go ( in the main ). With 70 Exp pilots getting about 65% hits once they are through the CAP and the CAP likely to have great difficulty reaching high altitude kamis quickly enough to give them the time necessary to really attrit it significantly you find that while some high altitude kami raids get butchered as they get properly intercepted about 1 in 4 gets through almost entirely untouched and then gets 2/3rds hits. So, for a committment of 120 A6M7/8s on high altitude kami runs I'd expect about 90 to be downed by CAP, 30 to get through pretty much unscathed and then get about 20 hits. A 1 in 6 hit rate isn't bad and better than the conventional forces can do at this stage in the war.
Lower experience kamis appear to be much less able to hit nimble warships although they are still getting about 50% hits when they aim at transports. Vs warhips the 30 Exp kamis which I'll mostly be falling back on are lucky to get 25% hits.
The other thing that leaps out from the data is that kamikaze hits very rarely lead to outright sinkings. They cause damage, fires and flooding and occasionally that fire and flooding accumulates to cause a loss a couple of days later but most of the time it just results in moderate damage ( sys and fire damage into the 60s or so + flood and engine damage in addition ) which would send the ship back to port. My current concept is that in terms of defending the 3 island chains leading to Japan I'm going to:
a) establish "strongpoint" islands which have the other islands in the chain of stepping stones within sweep range. These strongpoint islands should have fuel stockpiles ( not much as I'm low on fuel but enough to refuel the wave of Shinyos and midget subs that will be entering the area ) and a large number of defending fighters. Ideally I'd like to aim for 200 fighters per strongpoint island. This would allow me to base "reaction force" Shinyos and midget subs in the strongpoint islands with a high degree of security vs Allied long-range bombing or carrier raids and will serve me in attritting the Allied fighter groups on their carriers.
b) strong minefields backed by an ACM at each of the islands on the island chain. Obviously where enemy bombing raids are common I'll have to forego the ACMs and just replenish the minefields with subs ( I have the ability to deliver about 160 mines in a single four-sub strong I-120 class sub TF ). Functionally this means the mining around the Okinawa to Japan axis will be carried out by subs while the mining on the Iwo to Tokyo axis will be carried out by fast minelayers and the mining in the Kuriles will be carried out by my more numerous slower minelayers. I'm going to have to be careful not to allow the larger number of minelayers in the Kuriles to result in a disproportionate number of mines there. With that said I think the Kuriles should probably get 50%, overall, of the mines as there are more islands to mine on that axis than along the Iwo and Okinawa axis combined.
c) One of the maskirovkas will be NOT building up the airfields and ports on the non-strongpoint islands very much. Basically I'll be focussing on building forts and landing troops by barges, SSTs and DDs/DMSs in order to disguise any buildups whilst just pre-positioning a lot of float-borne strike groups ( M6A1s, Ohkas, Ki-115s etc ) within easy ferry range. Once I have forts and troop concentrations to a good level I'll probably just build Level 2 airfields for pure fighter defence as a rotating CAP of 100 fighters would, over the course of 3 or 4 days, greatly help to weaken the Allied CV-based CAP
d) Shinyos and Midgets from the local nodal force based at the strongpoint island(s) will sortie immediately while more Shinyos and Midgets are sent from Japan. I do NOT plan to expend midgets, coastal submarines or the Ro and I class boats I have ( the few Ro and I class boats I have ) in normal submarine warfare. I plan to save them to counter invasions and to seed the enemy SLOCs from their invasion targets to the staging bases (Phillipines, Guam, PH etc ). The reasoning behind this is two-fold. Firstly I want to kill cripples. Secondly I want to give my radar-equipped torpedo-carriers the opportunity to trigger night-time torpedo attacks. Those won't be very effective but if they cause him to divert 100 fighters to night-time CAP from daytime CAP those fighters are as removed from daytime CAP as if they had all been shot down. My bombers will just die in the air if they run into Allied daytime CAP anyway so I might as well get a small return from them rather than just seeing them blown apart mid-air.
e) As the invasion continues the main forces will begin arriving from Japan with the aim of flooding the invasion hex and surrounding hexes with Shinyo TFs and midget submarines. The idea will be that flooding the invasion hex with sufficient Shinyo TFs will mean that at least some get through and can make ramming attacks vs transports. Seemingly Japan committed 400 Shinyos to the Okinawa campaign so if the war had continued I think we'd have seen thousands. With the length of this scenario a total build of some 4,000+ Shinyos is pretty possible. They SUCK hugely on an individual basis but they are cheap ( 30 HI - 10 days of building costs x 3 naval points per day as each Shinyo is worth only 1 point ). In comparison a good IJN DD now costs ( 3000 HI - 100 days of building ( 10 durability x 10 days per durability point ) x 30 naval points per day ). So, would you rather have 100 Shinyos/or MTB variants or would you rather have 1 IJN DD. I think that a Japan pushed to the wall would think they'd inflict more US casualties with 100 Shinyos - and I think they'd be right. The IJN DD is likely to be sunk by US airpower without doing much while if even one Shinyo hits an APA then several hundred American soldiers and sailors will die. That math makes it a bit of a no-brainer really IMO.
My testing with kamis shows that they aren't decisive at all BUT they can be attritional. If I can keep an Allied invasion TF stuck in an invasion hex for several days then I can flood that hex and surrounding hexes with enough MTBs and Shinyos and midgets that sheer weight of numbers will get me ship kills. Combine that with a rotating CAP swapping fighters 1:1 with the Allies and slowly but surely weakening the Allied LRCAP and an increasing number of Ohkas getting through to hit the amphibious shipping due to the weaker CAP, a large number of escort TFs bringing damaged shipping home through sub-infested waters and facing multiple night-time torpedo-bomber strikes and I think that each invasion could really cost PH.
The key though is making him stick around for a minimum of 4 or 5 days in order to let the CAP or sweeps over the island attrit his fighter groups such that large-scale kami attacks can succeed. The bigger the kami attack the more likely you'll end up getting a second hit on the same ship and while 1 hit pretty much guarantees sending the ship to the repair yards 2 hits pretty much guarantees sinking anything smaller than a CL.
f) Aerial in-depth attacks. I still intend to commit the Oscar IIIas and other high-altitude kamis to the nodal bases ( or Japan proper if he lands close enough to be engaged by multiple airfields ) and use their range to rain down several hundred high-altitude kamis per day flying at altitudes where only his Corsairs can get at me. From farther behind the front I will be committing the Ki-74s ( 2 x 250kg bombs - range 29 hexes) as well as possibly Ki-93B fighter-bombers ( 2 x 500 Kg bombs - range 11 hexes). Ki-93 Ibs will go after the front-line enemy forces while I would hope the Ki-74s would go after stragglers and damaged ships along their SLOCs.
I don't expect to be able to stop any invasion or even greatly hurt him while he sticks to invading the peripheries. BUT if he ventures in too far too quickly or towards Formosa proper he might find that I'll be willing to test my new doctrine - at least in part... It'd be important not to show him everything so he can't prepare for everything. I might be willing to show him a couple of massed Ohka strikes after CAP has weakened his CVs though as well as some Shinyo raids.
I've been thinking about this for the past couple of days as:
a) PH is down with the flu and
b) When I added the Ohka in as a flyable kami-only plane I had to test it and took the opportunity to test other kamis ( It seems to me that twin-engined torpedo bombers don't fly with their torpedoes when in the kami role.... Strange...
Overall I was underwhelmed by kami's ability to really concentrate their fire and achieve anything decisive on a given day. They rarely went after a single target but just spread their fire over the whole TF. With some of the huge USN TFs this will almost totally preclude getting multiple hits and single phase sinkings. On the other hand the attritional effect was marked
As for the scenario. I'm currently adding in the Shinyos etc.... Doing it by hand takes a while but once that's done and I can add in some extra starting manpower I think we'll be reasonably good to go and will email it to you.
This is fairly different than the version PH and I are playing in that in this Japan gets Ohka units ( which I'm pretty damned proud of ). They get about 10 of them. They get a "free" monthly production of 120 Ohkas ( as aeroplanes ) and these Ohkas are modelled with a 20 hex transfer range ( to simulate being shipped into their bases overnight by Bettys etc ) but only a 1 hex strike range - to simulate firing from shore-based launch rails/ caves etc.
They have high speed but no armour and reasonably high durability ( I found that the AAA didn't really account for speed as a factor in determining its effectiveness vs the Ohkas. With that said they do pretty damned well once they get through the CAP... I'm a bit suspicious about the CAP though as it seems to have no problems catching them even though they are 100mph faster than CAP fighters and I know of no recorded cases of CAP shooting down Ohkas in reality. So I'm playing around with speed settings to give the Ohkas a bit more of an advantage in terms of winning a stern chase. I think most of the issue arises from CAP pre-positioning and benefitting from the dive on the Ohkas in terms of modelled built up speed. With that said since Ohkas were being sent in at 100 feet ( and have a ceiling of 6,000 feet ) the prepositioning factor shouldn't IMO, have been as large.
With that said they do pretty well and are an interesting wrinkle for the Allies to have to face when they invade Japanese islands.
The Shin'yo boats also work well. They survive the deployment of their weapons ( which is probably unrealistic ) but since so few will ever make it into the range they need to get to in order to deploy their weapons ( 1, the lowest range possible ) I think that's an acceptable issue. I've found half year production rates of 5,000 boats so I'm creating a slowly ramping production throughout 1945 which peaks at about 100 motorboats per week after 1st January 1946 with these being divided between Shinyos and MTBs in the ratio of 4:1
What this means is that Japan, effectively, will have an almost limitless flow of Shinyos with which to try to swamp USN naval TFs defending the transports during the night. Individually each Shinyo sucks but together they just need one really, really bad night in terms of weather and lack of moonlight and they could, if they get through the escorts, create a lot of trouble for US shipping.
One thing that screams out at me from my testing is that high-latitude kamis are the way to go ( in the main ). With 70 Exp pilots getting about 65% hits once they are through the CAP and the CAP likely to have great difficulty reaching high altitude kamis quickly enough to give them the time necessary to really attrit it significantly you find that while some high altitude kami raids get butchered as they get properly intercepted about 1 in 4 gets through almost entirely untouched and then gets 2/3rds hits. So, for a committment of 120 A6M7/8s on high altitude kami runs I'd expect about 90 to be downed by CAP, 30 to get through pretty much unscathed and then get about 20 hits. A 1 in 6 hit rate isn't bad and better than the conventional forces can do at this stage in the war.
Lower experience kamis appear to be much less able to hit nimble warships although they are still getting about 50% hits when they aim at transports. Vs warhips the 30 Exp kamis which I'll mostly be falling back on are lucky to get 25% hits.
The other thing that leaps out from the data is that kamikaze hits very rarely lead to outright sinkings. They cause damage, fires and flooding and occasionally that fire and flooding accumulates to cause a loss a couple of days later but most of the time it just results in moderate damage ( sys and fire damage into the 60s or so + flood and engine damage in addition ) which would send the ship back to port. My current concept is that in terms of defending the 3 island chains leading to Japan I'm going to:
a) establish "strongpoint" islands which have the other islands in the chain of stepping stones within sweep range. These strongpoint islands should have fuel stockpiles ( not much as I'm low on fuel but enough to refuel the wave of Shinyos and midget subs that will be entering the area ) and a large number of defending fighters. Ideally I'd like to aim for 200 fighters per strongpoint island. This would allow me to base "reaction force" Shinyos and midget subs in the strongpoint islands with a high degree of security vs Allied long-range bombing or carrier raids and will serve me in attritting the Allied fighter groups on their carriers.
b) strong minefields backed by an ACM at each of the islands on the island chain. Obviously where enemy bombing raids are common I'll have to forego the ACMs and just replenish the minefields with subs ( I have the ability to deliver about 160 mines in a single four-sub strong I-120 class sub TF ). Functionally this means the mining around the Okinawa to Japan axis will be carried out by subs while the mining on the Iwo to Tokyo axis will be carried out by fast minelayers and the mining in the Kuriles will be carried out by my more numerous slower minelayers. I'm going to have to be careful not to allow the larger number of minelayers in the Kuriles to result in a disproportionate number of mines there. With that said I think the Kuriles should probably get 50%, overall, of the mines as there are more islands to mine on that axis than along the Iwo and Okinawa axis combined.
c) One of the maskirovkas will be NOT building up the airfields and ports on the non-strongpoint islands very much. Basically I'll be focussing on building forts and landing troops by barges, SSTs and DDs/DMSs in order to disguise any buildups whilst just pre-positioning a lot of float-borne strike groups ( M6A1s, Ohkas, Ki-115s etc ) within easy ferry range. Once I have forts and troop concentrations to a good level I'll probably just build Level 2 airfields for pure fighter defence as a rotating CAP of 100 fighters would, over the course of 3 or 4 days, greatly help to weaken the Allied CV-based CAP
d) Shinyos and Midgets from the local nodal force based at the strongpoint island(s) will sortie immediately while more Shinyos and Midgets are sent from Japan. I do NOT plan to expend midgets, coastal submarines or the Ro and I class boats I have ( the few Ro and I class boats I have ) in normal submarine warfare. I plan to save them to counter invasions and to seed the enemy SLOCs from their invasion targets to the staging bases (Phillipines, Guam, PH etc ). The reasoning behind this is two-fold. Firstly I want to kill cripples. Secondly I want to give my radar-equipped torpedo-carriers the opportunity to trigger night-time torpedo attacks. Those won't be very effective but if they cause him to divert 100 fighters to night-time CAP from daytime CAP those fighters are as removed from daytime CAP as if they had all been shot down. My bombers will just die in the air if they run into Allied daytime CAP anyway so I might as well get a small return from them rather than just seeing them blown apart mid-air.
e) As the invasion continues the main forces will begin arriving from Japan with the aim of flooding the invasion hex and surrounding hexes with Shinyo TFs and midget submarines. The idea will be that flooding the invasion hex with sufficient Shinyo TFs will mean that at least some get through and can make ramming attacks vs transports. Seemingly Japan committed 400 Shinyos to the Okinawa campaign so if the war had continued I think we'd have seen thousands. With the length of this scenario a total build of some 4,000+ Shinyos is pretty possible. They SUCK hugely on an individual basis but they are cheap ( 30 HI - 10 days of building costs x 3 naval points per day as each Shinyo is worth only 1 point ). In comparison a good IJN DD now costs ( 3000 HI - 100 days of building ( 10 durability x 10 days per durability point ) x 30 naval points per day ). So, would you rather have 100 Shinyos/or MTB variants or would you rather have 1 IJN DD. I think that a Japan pushed to the wall would think they'd inflict more US casualties with 100 Shinyos - and I think they'd be right. The IJN DD is likely to be sunk by US airpower without doing much while if even one Shinyo hits an APA then several hundred American soldiers and sailors will die. That math makes it a bit of a no-brainer really IMO.
My testing with kamis shows that they aren't decisive at all BUT they can be attritional. If I can keep an Allied invasion TF stuck in an invasion hex for several days then I can flood that hex and surrounding hexes with enough MTBs and Shinyos and midgets that sheer weight of numbers will get me ship kills. Combine that with a rotating CAP swapping fighters 1:1 with the Allies and slowly but surely weakening the Allied LRCAP and an increasing number of Ohkas getting through to hit the amphibious shipping due to the weaker CAP, a large number of escort TFs bringing damaged shipping home through sub-infested waters and facing multiple night-time torpedo-bomber strikes and I think that each invasion could really cost PH.
The key though is making him stick around for a minimum of 4 or 5 days in order to let the CAP or sweeps over the island attrit his fighter groups such that large-scale kami attacks can succeed. The bigger the kami attack the more likely you'll end up getting a second hit on the same ship and while 1 hit pretty much guarantees sending the ship to the repair yards 2 hits pretty much guarantees sinking anything smaller than a CL.
f) Aerial in-depth attacks. I still intend to commit the Oscar IIIas and other high-altitude kamis to the nodal bases ( or Japan proper if he lands close enough to be engaged by multiple airfields ) and use their range to rain down several hundred high-altitude kamis per day flying at altitudes where only his Corsairs can get at me. From farther behind the front I will be committing the Ki-74s ( 2 x 250kg bombs - range 29 hexes) as well as possibly Ki-93B fighter-bombers ( 2 x 500 Kg bombs - range 11 hexes). Ki-93 Ibs will go after the front-line enemy forces while I would hope the Ki-74s would go after stragglers and damaged ships along their SLOCs.
I don't expect to be able to stop any invasion or even greatly hurt him while he sticks to invading the peripheries. BUT if he ventures in too far too quickly or towards Formosa proper he might find that I'll be willing to test my new doctrine - at least in part... It'd be important not to show him everything so he can't prepare for everything. I might be willing to show him a couple of massed Ohka strikes after CAP has weakened his CVs though as well as some Shinyo raids.
I've been thinking about this for the past couple of days as:
a) PH is down with the flu and
b) When I added the Ohka in as a flyable kami-only plane I had to test it and took the opportunity to test other kamis ( It seems to me that twin-engined torpedo bombers don't fly with their torpedoes when in the kami role.... Strange...
Overall I was underwhelmed by kami's ability to really concentrate their fire and achieve anything decisive on a given day. They rarely went after a single target but just spread their fire over the whole TF. With some of the huge USN TFs this will almost totally preclude getting multiple hits and single phase sinkings. On the other hand the attritional effect was marked
As for the scenario. I'm currently adding in the Shinyos etc.... Doing it by hand takes a while but once that's done and I can add in some extra starting manpower I think we'll be reasonably good to go and will email it to you.
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
We ran into a technical SNAFU today with the 3rd turn... The combat replay was interesting with an IJN sub putting 4 torpedoes into a Royal Navy CVL and about 100 kamis being wasted against CAP--- but they proved the relative uselessness of the kami tactic without overwhelming numbers and in-hex CAP, which was an important thing to test.
The problem was that when I went to update the file to include the latest Shinyo/MTB/PT upgrade paths and inclusions the file would crash the programme. It also does appear that some upgrade paths were rather messed up also. It definitely effected IJNAF and IJAAF upgrades as well as IJA upgrades. I'm presuming it must have messed with the Allies too.
In any case I suggested that we restart with a "no updates" policy so as to avoid messing things up in future. PH agreed, which was nice of him. I gave him an additional two Airborne Divisions ( unasked for ) as a thank you for the restart. So now he has about 9 airborne divisions.
So I redid the first turn and we'll restart. The only significant difference is that I put a few kamis out by Okinawa in order to give him a taster of the Ohka ( and some other kami types - the ki-115, B5N Kamis etc ) and I've airlifted units into some of the empty bases which Japan had, unaccountably, not garrisoned. If he concentrates on taking one or two of them he'll take them but if he scatterguns his forces among 6 or 7 he'll fail in them all.
What are the changes in this version vs the others... Well this version has about 2,000 Shinyo suicide boats ( 30 knot PTs with a single, large charge which detonates when in close proximity with an enemy vessel.... The best way to mod it in was the way AndyMac had as a torpedo which can be launched only from a range of 1 ( 1,000 yards ) but which is devastating if it hits. In testing I've once managed to sink a half-division's worth of troops in a single night with a devastating Shinyo attack at night in bad weather. The combat began at 1,000 yards and immediately the Japanese launched their "torps" and got about 40% hits ( out of 16 boats ). The end result was 6 US APAs/AKAs were massively damaged or sunk. In all other tests the Shinyos have been spotted too far out and the escorts destroyed them easily ---- the Shinyos only carry the suicide charge, no AAA or DP weapons of any sort. ).
It also has the Ohka Model 11 which upgrades to the Model 22 in December 45. The Model 11 has a 1 hex range while the Model 22 has double the range but half the warhead. The warhead is still enough to penetrate even BB armour but I think the extra range is gained at too great a reduction in speed ( from about 600 mph to about 300mph ) and that just hurts survivability so much the extra range isn't really worth it for the ground-launched versions. The extra range would be worth it for the air-launched versions but I have a suspicion that the air-launched Ohkas aren't working in Andy's Downfall scenario - and thus in this mod... I've tried to mod them to work but for some reason they never, ever, ever launch..
Apart from this the IJA has developed 1 proper tank division with medium tanks which should do reasonably well vs a US Armoured division. it is still weaker but not nearly as weak as the normal IJA tank units. It also has 2 Tank Divisions which begin the scenario in Tokyo with 2 tanks, 1 SP gun, 1 engineer and about 6 support squads. They can flesh out to have about 300 tanks ( all T95 and T97 light and medium tanks ). The idea is to give Japan the possibility of disbanding some of the many Tank Companys and Tank Bns it has and concentrate their tanks in these tank divisions by means of disbanding the small units to return the tanks to the pool and then drawing the tanks from the pool into the tank divisions. So, Japan isn't getting anything for free. It just has the option to use what it has more sensibly.
The turn has gone to PH and I'll probably get it back tomorrow.
The problem was that when I went to update the file to include the latest Shinyo/MTB/PT upgrade paths and inclusions the file would crash the programme. It also does appear that some upgrade paths were rather messed up also. It definitely effected IJNAF and IJAAF upgrades as well as IJA upgrades. I'm presuming it must have messed with the Allies too.
In any case I suggested that we restart with a "no updates" policy so as to avoid messing things up in future. PH agreed, which was nice of him. I gave him an additional two Airborne Divisions ( unasked for ) as a thank you for the restart. So now he has about 9 airborne divisions.
So I redid the first turn and we'll restart. The only significant difference is that I put a few kamis out by Okinawa in order to give him a taster of the Ohka ( and some other kami types - the ki-115, B5N Kamis etc ) and I've airlifted units into some of the empty bases which Japan had, unaccountably, not garrisoned. If he concentrates on taking one or two of them he'll take them but if he scatterguns his forces among 6 or 7 he'll fail in them all.
What are the changes in this version vs the others... Well this version has about 2,000 Shinyo suicide boats ( 30 knot PTs with a single, large charge which detonates when in close proximity with an enemy vessel.... The best way to mod it in was the way AndyMac had as a torpedo which can be launched only from a range of 1 ( 1,000 yards ) but which is devastating if it hits. In testing I've once managed to sink a half-division's worth of troops in a single night with a devastating Shinyo attack at night in bad weather. The combat began at 1,000 yards and immediately the Japanese launched their "torps" and got about 40% hits ( out of 16 boats ). The end result was 6 US APAs/AKAs were massively damaged or sunk. In all other tests the Shinyos have been spotted too far out and the escorts destroyed them easily ---- the Shinyos only carry the suicide charge, no AAA or DP weapons of any sort. ).
It also has the Ohka Model 11 which upgrades to the Model 22 in December 45. The Model 11 has a 1 hex range while the Model 22 has double the range but half the warhead. The warhead is still enough to penetrate even BB armour but I think the extra range is gained at too great a reduction in speed ( from about 600 mph to about 300mph ) and that just hurts survivability so much the extra range isn't really worth it for the ground-launched versions. The extra range would be worth it for the air-launched versions but I have a suspicion that the air-launched Ohkas aren't working in Andy's Downfall scenario - and thus in this mod... I've tried to mod them to work but for some reason they never, ever, ever launch..
Apart from this the IJA has developed 1 proper tank division with medium tanks which should do reasonably well vs a US Armoured division. it is still weaker but not nearly as weak as the normal IJA tank units. It also has 2 Tank Divisions which begin the scenario in Tokyo with 2 tanks, 1 SP gun, 1 engineer and about 6 support squads. They can flesh out to have about 300 tanks ( all T95 and T97 light and medium tanks ). The idea is to give Japan the possibility of disbanding some of the many Tank Companys and Tank Bns it has and concentrate their tanks in these tank divisions by means of disbanding the small units to return the tanks to the pool and then drawing the tanks from the pool into the tank divisions. So, Japan isn't getting anything for free. It just has the option to use what it has more sensibly.
The turn has gone to PH and I'll probably get it back tomorrow.
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
ORIGINAL: Nemo121
I gave him an additional two Airborne Divisions ( unasked for ) as a thank you for the restart. So now he has about 9 airborne divisions.
So I redid the first turn and we'll restart.
The turn has gone to PH and I'll probably get it back tomorrow.
Hey, I give you FIVE restarts for 4 Airborne Divs, two armoured divs (one Uk, one USA ) and 5 Wasp-type carriers. Deal ? [:D][:D]
[:'(]
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
A VERY interesting post by Alfred over in the Cap Mandrake AAR about forced shock attacks... Basic upshot is shock attacks are forced under either of two conditions:
1. The island is an atoll OR
2. The island has a 6,000 or 30,000 troop limit ( level 1 or 2 ).
As a SWAT kind of guy ( or as the Soviets would have it an EWAT type of guy ) I'd say that the strategic impact of this is major. It certainly is going to significantly change how I choose defensive strongpoints from now on...
Basically the impact is that:
1. On a level 1 island (6,000 troops ) the enemy will have to shock attack. A level 1 island can hold 1 Bde and some CD units. Overall though 100 AV isn't going to be enough to utterly destroy an enemy force.
2. On a Level 2 Island ( 30,000 troops ) you, as Japan, can stack 2 x full Infantry Divisions complete with organic artillery and AAA. That comes to a total of about 920 AV. 920 AV will do a very good job of wrecking enemy troops coming ashore and will absolutely require a minimum of a x2 US overstack - which will cause them to HAVE to remain close to the island to continue dropping supplies in day after day ---- PRECISELY the situation I want to create in order to exploit it with Shinyos and Ohkas.
Sure, you can stack more on a Level 3 island ( 60,000 troops ) but even 4 IJA Infantry divisions can be overcome by the Allies who can land a eight divisions safe in the knowledge they won't be ruined piecemeal by shock attacks and still have 50 more available for immediate use elsewhere. Sure 12 divisions will eat supplies like there is no tomorrow but America can afford to waste 300,000 tons of supplies to take an island it REALLY wants.
No, Japan wants to deal with stalled invasions and the best way to stall an invasion is to force a Shock Attack which fails. It also means that the Allies can only achieve a binary outcome - big win and capture the island or big loss and a need to evacuate, unless they wish to throw good troops after bad.
Level 4 islands ( unlimited ) allow Japan to send enough troops to be virtually unassailable but they can be easily bypassed so a Level 4 island is, essentially, a trap for Japan. Send 10 divisions and they'll get bypassed, send 3 or 4 and the Allies can still easily land 20 divisions and just grind your forces into dust with time. The Allies will recover the losses more quickly and overall Japan will lose out.
No, the best cost/benefit ratio comes out of defending Level 2 islands ( 30,000 troops maximum stack ), letting the Allies invade - which will necessitate them loading 4+ divisions onto APAs and AKAs in order to unload in a single phase and will allow Japan's kamis to get easy access to those hugely important APAs and AKAs and to the less-important xAKs which will have to sit off the invasion beaches unloading supplies for many days until the island falls.
Unfortunately the Aleutians strategic direction doesn't contain any Level 2 islands- DAMN!!!! The others contain a number but only the ones along the Iwo/Tokyo axis will be of any real use as the ones along the Okinawa/Kyushu axis are too close to Japan to be really useful in luring the Allies into a major committment without LBA cover. Ah well, it is still a useful piece of information for my next game... and for readers.
1. The island is an atoll OR
2. The island has a 6,000 or 30,000 troop limit ( level 1 or 2 ).
As a SWAT kind of guy ( or as the Soviets would have it an EWAT type of guy ) I'd say that the strategic impact of this is major. It certainly is going to significantly change how I choose defensive strongpoints from now on...
Basically the impact is that:
1. On a level 1 island (6,000 troops ) the enemy will have to shock attack. A level 1 island can hold 1 Bde and some CD units. Overall though 100 AV isn't going to be enough to utterly destroy an enemy force.
2. On a Level 2 Island ( 30,000 troops ) you, as Japan, can stack 2 x full Infantry Divisions complete with organic artillery and AAA. That comes to a total of about 920 AV. 920 AV will do a very good job of wrecking enemy troops coming ashore and will absolutely require a minimum of a x2 US overstack - which will cause them to HAVE to remain close to the island to continue dropping supplies in day after day ---- PRECISELY the situation I want to create in order to exploit it with Shinyos and Ohkas.
Sure, you can stack more on a Level 3 island ( 60,000 troops ) but even 4 IJA Infantry divisions can be overcome by the Allies who can land a eight divisions safe in the knowledge they won't be ruined piecemeal by shock attacks and still have 50 more available for immediate use elsewhere. Sure 12 divisions will eat supplies like there is no tomorrow but America can afford to waste 300,000 tons of supplies to take an island it REALLY wants.
No, Japan wants to deal with stalled invasions and the best way to stall an invasion is to force a Shock Attack which fails. It also means that the Allies can only achieve a binary outcome - big win and capture the island or big loss and a need to evacuate, unless they wish to throw good troops after bad.
Level 4 islands ( unlimited ) allow Japan to send enough troops to be virtually unassailable but they can be easily bypassed so a Level 4 island is, essentially, a trap for Japan. Send 10 divisions and they'll get bypassed, send 3 or 4 and the Allies can still easily land 20 divisions and just grind your forces into dust with time. The Allies will recover the losses more quickly and overall Japan will lose out.
No, the best cost/benefit ratio comes out of defending Level 2 islands ( 30,000 troops maximum stack ), letting the Allies invade - which will necessitate them loading 4+ divisions onto APAs and AKAs in order to unload in a single phase and will allow Japan's kamis to get easy access to those hugely important APAs and AKAs and to the less-important xAKs which will have to sit off the invasion beaches unloading supplies for many days until the island falls.
Unfortunately the Aleutians strategic direction doesn't contain any Level 2 islands- DAMN!!!! The others contain a number but only the ones along the Iwo/Tokyo axis will be of any real use as the ones along the Okinawa/Kyushu axis are too close to Japan to be really useful in luring the Allies into a major committment without LBA cover. Ah well, it is still a useful piece of information for my next game... and for readers.
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Traskott, nice try but I don't think I could face redoing Turn 1 again. *shudder* That's a tough, tough turn.
With that said, for a suitable trade-off, sure I'd let you have those extra CVs etc. After all, that's just more ships for Japan to sink plus after a certain point with paratroops you just don't have the airlift to drop them all at once ( which is the point ). So, once you exceed your airlift capacity the number of divisions doesn't really matter. If you can only lift two a day then 20 divisions doesn't really help much. They would be useful as low load cost shock divisions for leading amphibious assaults though.
With that said, for a suitable trade-off, sure I'd let you have those extra CVs etc. After all, that's just more ships for Japan to sink plus after a certain point with paratroops you just don't have the airlift to drop them all at once ( which is the point ). So, once you exceed your airlift capacity the number of divisions doesn't really matter. If you can only lift two a day then 20 divisions doesn't really help much. They would be useful as low load cost shock divisions for leading amphibious assaults though.
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
My strategical opinion about use of paradrops is use them 'ala' russian. Drop two here, one week later, two near the first two, and so....to help my breakthroughts and create new threats to support my offensives.
**********************
Ok, so, is there a war or just bla bla bla ?
**********************
Ok, so, is there a war or just bla bla bla ?
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Ah there's a war. PH is just taking his time to do his first turn. It might still arrive tonight but if not, then tomorrow, I forward-based about 36 Ohkas and about 60 other kamis around Okinawa backed by about 80 fighters on CAP ( which will act as escorts without the escort penalty for airstrikes within the island hex and ) so if he hits one of the islands I think he might he is going to find some kamis coming in. Since he can see the airfield icons I'm sure he'll put a lot of LRCAP up. I think that, overall, we'll see about 120 Japanese planes lost around Okinawa with about 30 of them being fighters, 90 kamis and I'm hoping for about 3 ships hits.
There's no rush on the turn though, I told him to take his time as it is more important for him to be happy with the turn than it is for it to be quick. Hell, I'm pulling an all-nighter tonight entering research data into a statistics package and doing some logistic regressions on it - hoping to avoid multiple regressions if I can - so research-wise it'd be better not to receive a turn.
Patience. Some opponents will use the time it takes to send a turn as a psychological ploy. It is important to cultivate a state of not caring about the length of time a turn takes so as not to allow that to become a weapon which can be used against you. It is a bit akin to the various warrior cults throughout the ages who used to have funeral masses for their warriors before they went off to war. The idea was that once you were "dead" you could let go of the concern about returning home and fight more effectively through caring a bit less about your survival and thus being a more effective warrior ( ideally with a greater chance of thereby winning and actually surviving - the dichotomy of the bareserker ( not a typo ) through the ages ). When those who survived returned home they had another ritual in which they were "welcomed back" from the dead... As well as, usually, rituals of cleansing etc which probably served very useful functions in terms of socially sanctioning their killing while at war and drawing a clear delineation between war and home society as well as providing ritual absolution and an explicit re-acceptance into society. This is the sort of thing which was carried over into home-coming celebrations over the past few decades but has fallen a bit by the wayside after Vietnam - with, arguably, significant impacts on the risk of developing PTSD and maladjustment disorders/behaviours post-return.
Anyways, patience and acceptance of death/defeat are the ways to forward. The turn will arrive when it arrives or it won't. Any of the outcomes ( non-arrival, early arrival and late arrival ) is acceptable. Sure, as a game, sometimes one awaits a turn of particular importance with anticipation but, overall, it is best to cultivate a certain equaninimous langour regarding the arrival of turns. Just my two cents of course. Now back to recoding medication usage into binomial form fit for logistic regression [>:][>:][>:]
There's no rush on the turn though, I told him to take his time as it is more important for him to be happy with the turn than it is for it to be quick. Hell, I'm pulling an all-nighter tonight entering research data into a statistics package and doing some logistic regressions on it - hoping to avoid multiple regressions if I can - so research-wise it'd be better not to receive a turn.
Patience. Some opponents will use the time it takes to send a turn as a psychological ploy. It is important to cultivate a state of not caring about the length of time a turn takes so as not to allow that to become a weapon which can be used against you. It is a bit akin to the various warrior cults throughout the ages who used to have funeral masses for their warriors before they went off to war. The idea was that once you were "dead" you could let go of the concern about returning home and fight more effectively through caring a bit less about your survival and thus being a more effective warrior ( ideally with a greater chance of thereby winning and actually surviving - the dichotomy of the bareserker ( not a typo ) through the ages ). When those who survived returned home they had another ritual in which they were "welcomed back" from the dead... As well as, usually, rituals of cleansing etc which probably served very useful functions in terms of socially sanctioning their killing while at war and drawing a clear delineation between war and home society as well as providing ritual absolution and an explicit re-acceptance into society. This is the sort of thing which was carried over into home-coming celebrations over the past few decades but has fallen a bit by the wayside after Vietnam - with, arguably, significant impacts on the risk of developing PTSD and maladjustment disorders/behaviours post-return.
Anyways, patience and acceptance of death/defeat are the ways to forward. The turn will arrive when it arrives or it won't. Any of the outcomes ( non-arrival, early arrival and late arrival ) is acceptable. Sure, as a game, sometimes one awaits a turn of particular importance with anticipation but, overall, it is best to cultivate a certain equaninimous langour regarding the arrival of turns. Just my two cents of course. Now back to recoding medication usage into binomial form fit for logistic regression [>:][>:][>:]
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
A turn is never late, Nemo Baggins, nor it's never soon, too. It's always on its time. [;)]
Well, question: xDDD if u don't have the turn? why don't send me a copy of the scen ? [8|][8|][8|][8|] I'm currently scratching my head with a PBEM ( 4/44 no less !! ) with Manila at hand, but I would glad to take a look of your scenario.
Well, question: xDDD if u don't have the turn? why don't send me a copy of the scen ? [8|][8|][8|][8|] I'm currently scratching my head with a PBEM ( 4/44 no less !! ) with Manila at hand, but I would glad to take a look of your scenario.
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
Well it isn't done yet... For any release version I want IJA garrisons in rational places e.g. the outlying islands between Okinawa and Japan...
I didn't put them in the game I'm playing with PH since he has planned without those garrisons so it'd be unfair to add them now for my game vs him.
Anyways, I've sent you what I have. If anyone else is interested PM me and I'll email it out.
I didn't put them in the game I'm playing with PH since he has planned without those garrisons so it'd be unfair to add them now for my game vs him.
Anyways, I've sent you what I have. If anyone else is interested PM me and I'll email it out.
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.
-
1EyedJacks
- Posts: 2304
- Joined: Sun Mar 12, 2006 6:26 am
- Location: Reno, NV
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
ORIGINAL: Nemo121
4. Atomic Bombs: For some reason the Allies only get them from June 1946... This is the way it was in Andy's scenario and I didn't spot it until I was looking at just what PH could throw at me. I've emailed him offering to make nukes available from January 1946. I think that's only fair.
I think you should allow as many nukes as desired on each side but limit them to air ASW missions... [8D]
It'd be fun to clear your ring of subs that are circling about Truk... <grin>
TTFN,
Mike
Mike
RE: 'Tis light as a feather... No Panzerjaeger Hortlund
What subs? I fear your men are jumping at shadows. No need for escorts, there's nothing there. Nah, seriously, there's only about 14 subs there but they're doing a good job in spotting and making attacks as well as surviving the counterattacks. I'm pleased with their survivability.
In terms of Armaggedon things have certainly hotted up a bit.
1. The Allies sent numerous sweeps over Formosa and Okinawa. All in all about 600 Allied fighters swept these two bases.... Even after I brought in all of my best IJNAF fighter pilots into a few elite squadrons ( elite being any squadron with an average experience greater than 65 ) the entire IJNAF can only muster 200 front-line fighters crewed by reasonable pilots. So 600 fighters sweeping in a single day is just utterly unopposable by me right now. Training has been organised and in 2 months time once new fighter types ( J7W and Ki-94 ) come online I'll be able to stand and fight with a large pool of qualified ( 70 A2A skill ) pilots to back me up. So, how much can a resistanceless resistance slow an enemy over the next two months? We're about to find out.
2. Huge Allied bomber raids hit Formosa. About 400 B-29s and B-32s bombed airbases there and utterly destroyed them. That's fine though, I've been pretty much evacuating troops from there since Day 1 anyways. With Okinawa taken holding the airbases in Formosa isn't quite as crucial. It'd be nice but not essential. So my current plan is to pull lots of units out but keep enough there to maul a small Allied landing - I think PH might commit a 6 division landing using troops at PH and from Singers to try to make me think he is serious about the Okinawa axis. Actually if he IS serious about it he MUST take Formosa and so his deception plan must also take it. So, even if I'm wrong and he is serious he will land there. If I'm wrong he'll also land there. Either way Formosa will be an opportunity to surprise him with a rapid reaction force of kamis, fighters, midget subs and PT boats. All I need is for him to be delayed a month in this foray and I should be able to re-organise my ground forces enough to make Formosa a tough nut to crack. Right now the IJA just doesn't have enough combat troops in the right places in Formosa. They have lots of AAA and arty etc but they just don't have enough infantry combat squads. Of course, that's why god invented barges. I'll write a piece about barge relays as a means of using ONLY barges to bridge distances of up to 1,200 miles along island chains ( when none of these barges have a range of more than 140 miles ). It minimises cost, observability and is actually a very rapid way of moving troops and supplies once you get it right. Of course it is slow to get troops to the tip of the spear but vs the host of planes and subs Japan is facing it is preferable to sending lots of sinkable merchants. Transports will still be necessary for guns which are too large for barges but pretty much everything should get there on barges.
3. I wanted to test 2nd-line fighters vs P-51s/P-47s so set 36 Ki-43 IVs and about 40 A6M8 to CAP a base in Formosa. The end result was that these two units lost just over 60 planes between them and MAY have destroyed about 6 or 7 P-51s. Soooo, no use for the Ki-43 IVs or A6M8s within sweep range of P-51s... On the plus side they'll make useful kamis so it isn't all bad. It is a pity though cause I can build 140 A6M8s per month. If they'd performed reasonably well 140 of them could have helped me a lot. As it is I'm making 150 Ki-84rs and 70 A7M2s a month. Next month I'll begin making about 70 N1K5s a month. Only in two months will I begin making J7Ws and, hopefully, Ki-94s. Until then the ALlies get more and better fighters and can wipe the floor with me, if they press and guess right. I'm going to have to tread a fine line between fighting enough to impress him with strength and not fighting so much that I destroy my air force ( which I'm acutely aware is outnumbered by more than 3:1 ) ) before I can begin benefitting from the new generation of fighters due to appear in 2 to 3 months.
4. The Allies CAPed their fleets well - up to 100 fighters on LRCAP or CAP over each of the bases around Okinawa. I committed 100 fighters to the Okinawa theatre and backed them with about 70 kamis. My kamis were designed to test effectiveness of various approaches:
a) unescorted twin-engined strike at low level ( the 1,000 foot approach under radar ) - Unsuccessful, all but one of the 24 Bettys which pressed the attack home in the face of fighters was downed. The one which got through missed its target and hit the ocean instead.
b) Unescorted high-altitude kamis - A6M7s at 38,500 feet. Since the USAAF planes can all easily reach 38,500 feet this just resulted in the entire raid dying under USAAF guns. I still think that it would be worthwhile when facing only USN CAP - in which only Corsairs can reach that high, splitting the CAP is always good. I'll try it again when not facing USAAF CAP. Mark this one as useful outside of USAAF LRCAP.
c) Escorted high-altitude kamis. A6M7s with moderate escort. The escort kept the CAP busy long enough for the high-speed high-altitude kamis to get through unmolested. High altitude on its own isn't enough, you need speed and a little ( although not a lot) of interference. Unfortunately the 9 x A6M7s which got through all went after a PT TF and the PTs easily avoided them. This won't be a problem vs an amphibious invasion TF though. So, mark this up as viable even vs USAAF LRCAP.
d) Ohkas at low altitude with escorts. A very successful strike. The speed of the Ohkas combined with escorts running interference ( at the cost of their lives - perhaps a good role for Ki-43 IVs. They're useless for anything else after all. ) allowed them to penetrate the CAP and make it into their attack runs without loss. 9 Ohkas achieved 4 hits ( 1 DD twice, one DD once and one PF once ). The two DDs were lost immediately and I'm hopeful the PF will succumb soon also. So, that's 3 small ships sunk for a net outlay of 9 kamis and about 6 escorts. That's a very good return on investment.
5. I also sank a sub using Escorts. To be fair though it had been spotted by all my floatplanes I have ringing Japan.
Overall I lose something like 180 planes in the air to 19 Allied planes. They'll have lost a few more than that to ops but, really, the 50 unescorted kamis and 70 or so A6M8s/Ki-43s account for a lot of those losses. About 1/3rd of the rest were kamis which made attacks and so weren't wasted. So discounting kamis and the Okinawan ne'er hopers I lost about 40 planes to 20 Allied fighters. Not great but not too bad considering I was testing N1K5s, J2M5s, Ki-44IIcs and Ki-84rs over Okinawa. The J2Ms did terribly and lost half their number without getting a single kill. They are now restricted to anti-bomber duty in the Home Islands out of sweep range of the Allies. The Ki-44 IIcs weren't too bad. They got kills but lost at a rate of about 4 to 1 which even over their own bases means the Americans won the pilot exchange there. The Ki-84rs didn't quite get 1:1 but did probably get 2 kills for every 1 they lost. The N1K5s got a 1:1 exchange rate.
One even more important thing is that I managed to implement a tactic to draw the Americans down to the best manoeuvre bands of the Japanese planes without costing huge Japanese casualties in the dive phase. I can't use it all the time or PH will get wise but from time to time I'll pull it out when I plan a big ambush.
So, what's the plan after this turn:
1. Run away and hide but look threatening while doing so.
2. Guerilla strikes using aerial forces, submarines triggering night-time aerial attacks, expenditure of large number of PT boats and lots of recon flights to create a sensation of resistance, all the while trying to avoid the question of WHY i'm resisting in ways which don't rely on my ground forces or air force or regular naval combatants.
3. Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild. I spent 7 hours just setting up the IJNAF training programme. I'm now training fighter pilots, recon pilots, naval attack pilots and specialised kamikaze pilots.
4. Given the inadvertent removal of the Ohka as a usable device all Ohka-equipped bombers are going to be expended as twin-engined kamis while torpedo bombers with radar will be reserved for night-time strikes. I've tested this and good naval attack skill pilots ( approx 70 torpedo skill ) were, at night, managing to get 1 hit per 15 sorties. So, for 100 bombers sortieing I was getting 6 torpedo hits. I was also only losing about 5 to 10% of the bombers sortied so, overall, night-time raids were superior to daytime raids attritionally speaking as while daytime raids might score more torpedo hits losses would be so severe that on Day 2 of the raids perhaps only 20 bombers would sortie and they'd all be shot down. Night-time raids, on the other hand, might result in 90 bombers sortieing on Day 2, 80 on Day 3 etc and so over the course of a prolonged engagement - which is precisely the sort I plan to engineer along the Okinawa/Kyushu, Iwo Jima/Tokyo and Kuriles axes - night-time raids actually are more effective. I also estimate they'll be more psychologically distressing and that helps too as it might provoke errors by the Allies which I can exploit with other forces.
With that said I've decided, after some testing, that I'm going to build a solid core of G9M torpedo bombers. They have the same range as the Betty but require 4 engines and have Level 2 armour. They also carry 4 torpedoes. Basically they are a Ki-264 carrying torps instead of torpedoes with the range more than halved in order to accomodate extra armour. They can't penetrate CAP all by themselves but if escorted they can get in amongst the shipping and with 4 torps each they can do a lot of damage, even during daytime attacks. Once the Allies are disordered I am considering committing Ki-264s as kamis. Each Ki-264 uses 6 engines ( so 216 HI each ) but with 20 x 250Kg bombs if they do hit a CV then that CV can expect to be totally out of action. One consideration is using them is their ability to fight through slightly attrited CAP and, more importantly, survive Allied shipboard FlAK. When something bigger than a B-17 comes roaring in at your ship 20mm and 40mm guns just don't hack it. Unless you blow a wing off with a 5 inch round that heavy bomber IS going to hit your ship.
5. I've run two Fast Transport TFs to within 2 hexes of Okinawa without loss and delivered about half a combat Brigade to one of the islands and a JAAF unit to another. Major airlift and sealift efforts are going on around the clock and by the end of Day 4 every island off the coast of Japan will have the first elements of its personal combat Brigade or Division ashore and building defences.
So, all in all, a bad day for Japan but it proved which planes can survive in the front line and which can't. It also proved the viability of two extraordinary ( in the Soviet military sense of the word ) attack strategies and one ordinary attack strategy. I've figured out three different methods for reinforcing island bases and I'm implementing a mix of them as dictated by enemy air and naval forces in the area and once the first Bdes and Divisions are completely on the islands I'll begin moving engineers and artillery. I've also sorted out the defensive dispositions for the Korean peninsula in terms of concentrating AAA around 3 cities, artillery around possible landing sites and moving a division to each possible amphibious zone right now. Later, once I see what's available I'll begin moving a 2nd division to each site while Bdes guard against paraborne landings in the interior or rear. The IJNAF has been re-organised with most airgroups being upgraded or downgraded as fits their new role in front-line, secondline or training cohorts. I have 200 fighters in the front-line cohort right now which will rise to about 350 by week's end. I have about 300 more fighters in the second cohort ( these can go up against US bombers but not against US fighters ). I have maintained an IJNAF strike force of 200 torpedo bombers and 100 kamikazes. Everything else ( some 2,000 planes ) is committed to the training cohort. So, roughly a 1:4 mix between combat and training. As I graduate pilots I'd like to move that to my more usual 2:1 ( 2 combat planes for every training plane ) but, for now, pilot quality is so low I just cannot afford to put many units into the front lines.
What have I prioritised in terms of assigning the few trained pilots I have? Fighters, night-fighters, fighter-bombers. By the time I reached fighter-bombers I was out of semi-trained pilots and just began filling to airgroups with 10 to 40 Exp pilots. Many of my airgroups have an average Exp of 8 to 9, yes, you read that right, 8 or 9
. It'll take them "some time" to become combat aces methinks. I didn't upgrade the fighters on KB ( who are all 40 to 50 Exp and A2A skill ) because, right now, I need to protect my 3 or 4 main factory cities more than I need CVs. I'm sending the CVs on a cruise to keep them away from ports the Allies might bomb and I'll rely on subterfuge to keep me safe more than fighter pilot skill. Hell the pilots are flying A6M8s anyways so skill won't save them. It looks like the A6M8s lost 28 planes in return for 3 P-51s *sigh* [8D]
Tomorrow I organise the IJAAF and then, if I can get tracker working, I'll fix the economy after that.
Overall though the situation is even worse than I initially thought. Those additional nukes are utter overkill. On the plus side the challenge is huge and so I'm looking forward to seeing this develop. Time to put on my big scary face while I curl up in the corner and hope the bully doesn't hit me [:D]
Oh, I should mention my airforce dispositions:
Basically they are as follows:
1. 1/4th IJNAF to Kyushu, Okinawa, China ( this 1/4 includes training groups ).
2. Hokkaido - 3/4ers of IJNAF.
3. Kyushu to Hokkaido - IJAAF ( fighters will defend the factory cities while kamis and bombers will concentrate in the portion of Japan close to Hokkaido ).
I think he's coming for Hokkaido so I'm trying to concentrate 3/4 of my airforce there. If 1/4 can't hold him then either I'm wrong and will have to re-evaluate or I'm right and may just have to cede the fight over the western part of Japan. Fingerspitzengefuehl says the Kuriles and then Hokkaido. In about 5 days I'll have the first of 3 shuttle convoys ready at Hokkaido to bring troops out to the island bases. I'm also creating a smallish convoy system to shuttle troops into Hokkaido from where I can feed them into the Eastern Hokkaidan ports for barge/small cargo transport out to the necessary islands.
As a test I'm also letting him see Fast Transport TFs into the Okinawan islands and some slower barge TFs a bit farther back. IF he wants to pursue the Okinawan axis he should:
a) try to bomb my FT TFs and
b) use DDs to disrupt my barge TFs.
If he doesn't do these things then, IMO, he won't be showing sufficient desire to stop me making the 2nd line of defences strong and that'll be a pointer to the fact the he isn't intending to push through that 2nd line. So, if I don't see these two things I'll start shifting more and more PT boats and more of the IJN eastward. For now though the IJN ( 2 CAs, 2 CL and about 30 DDs ) is making FT TF runs to reinforce the islands along the Okinawa to Tokyo axis - this is also a central position from which I can react towards either Okinawa or the Kuriles. If he is serious about Okinawa by doing the above they'll drift into that area. If not they'll drift eastwards to the Kuriles ( bringing PTs with them ).
In terms of Armaggedon things have certainly hotted up a bit.
1. The Allies sent numerous sweeps over Formosa and Okinawa. All in all about 600 Allied fighters swept these two bases.... Even after I brought in all of my best IJNAF fighter pilots into a few elite squadrons ( elite being any squadron with an average experience greater than 65 ) the entire IJNAF can only muster 200 front-line fighters crewed by reasonable pilots. So 600 fighters sweeping in a single day is just utterly unopposable by me right now. Training has been organised and in 2 months time once new fighter types ( J7W and Ki-94 ) come online I'll be able to stand and fight with a large pool of qualified ( 70 A2A skill ) pilots to back me up. So, how much can a resistanceless resistance slow an enemy over the next two months? We're about to find out.
2. Huge Allied bomber raids hit Formosa. About 400 B-29s and B-32s bombed airbases there and utterly destroyed them. That's fine though, I've been pretty much evacuating troops from there since Day 1 anyways. With Okinawa taken holding the airbases in Formosa isn't quite as crucial. It'd be nice but not essential. So my current plan is to pull lots of units out but keep enough there to maul a small Allied landing - I think PH might commit a 6 division landing using troops at PH and from Singers to try to make me think he is serious about the Okinawa axis. Actually if he IS serious about it he MUST take Formosa and so his deception plan must also take it. So, even if I'm wrong and he is serious he will land there. If I'm wrong he'll also land there. Either way Formosa will be an opportunity to surprise him with a rapid reaction force of kamis, fighters, midget subs and PT boats. All I need is for him to be delayed a month in this foray and I should be able to re-organise my ground forces enough to make Formosa a tough nut to crack. Right now the IJA just doesn't have enough combat troops in the right places in Formosa. They have lots of AAA and arty etc but they just don't have enough infantry combat squads. Of course, that's why god invented barges. I'll write a piece about barge relays as a means of using ONLY barges to bridge distances of up to 1,200 miles along island chains ( when none of these barges have a range of more than 140 miles ). It minimises cost, observability and is actually a very rapid way of moving troops and supplies once you get it right. Of course it is slow to get troops to the tip of the spear but vs the host of planes and subs Japan is facing it is preferable to sending lots of sinkable merchants. Transports will still be necessary for guns which are too large for barges but pretty much everything should get there on barges.
3. I wanted to test 2nd-line fighters vs P-51s/P-47s so set 36 Ki-43 IVs and about 40 A6M8 to CAP a base in Formosa. The end result was that these two units lost just over 60 planes between them and MAY have destroyed about 6 or 7 P-51s. Soooo, no use for the Ki-43 IVs or A6M8s within sweep range of P-51s... On the plus side they'll make useful kamis so it isn't all bad. It is a pity though cause I can build 140 A6M8s per month. If they'd performed reasonably well 140 of them could have helped me a lot. As it is I'm making 150 Ki-84rs and 70 A7M2s a month. Next month I'll begin making about 70 N1K5s a month. Only in two months will I begin making J7Ws and, hopefully, Ki-94s. Until then the ALlies get more and better fighters and can wipe the floor with me, if they press and guess right. I'm going to have to tread a fine line between fighting enough to impress him with strength and not fighting so much that I destroy my air force ( which I'm acutely aware is outnumbered by more than 3:1 ) ) before I can begin benefitting from the new generation of fighters due to appear in 2 to 3 months.
4. The Allies CAPed their fleets well - up to 100 fighters on LRCAP or CAP over each of the bases around Okinawa. I committed 100 fighters to the Okinawa theatre and backed them with about 70 kamis. My kamis were designed to test effectiveness of various approaches:
a) unescorted twin-engined strike at low level ( the 1,000 foot approach under radar ) - Unsuccessful, all but one of the 24 Bettys which pressed the attack home in the face of fighters was downed. The one which got through missed its target and hit the ocean instead.
b) Unescorted high-altitude kamis - A6M7s at 38,500 feet. Since the USAAF planes can all easily reach 38,500 feet this just resulted in the entire raid dying under USAAF guns. I still think that it would be worthwhile when facing only USN CAP - in which only Corsairs can reach that high, splitting the CAP is always good. I'll try it again when not facing USAAF CAP. Mark this one as useful outside of USAAF LRCAP.
c) Escorted high-altitude kamis. A6M7s with moderate escort. The escort kept the CAP busy long enough for the high-speed high-altitude kamis to get through unmolested. High altitude on its own isn't enough, you need speed and a little ( although not a lot) of interference. Unfortunately the 9 x A6M7s which got through all went after a PT TF and the PTs easily avoided them. This won't be a problem vs an amphibious invasion TF though. So, mark this up as viable even vs USAAF LRCAP.
d) Ohkas at low altitude with escorts. A very successful strike. The speed of the Ohkas combined with escorts running interference ( at the cost of their lives - perhaps a good role for Ki-43 IVs. They're useless for anything else after all. ) allowed them to penetrate the CAP and make it into their attack runs without loss. 9 Ohkas achieved 4 hits ( 1 DD twice, one DD once and one PF once ). The two DDs were lost immediately and I'm hopeful the PF will succumb soon also. So, that's 3 small ships sunk for a net outlay of 9 kamis and about 6 escorts. That's a very good return on investment.
5. I also sank a sub using Escorts. To be fair though it had been spotted by all my floatplanes I have ringing Japan.
Overall I lose something like 180 planes in the air to 19 Allied planes. They'll have lost a few more than that to ops but, really, the 50 unescorted kamis and 70 or so A6M8s/Ki-43s account for a lot of those losses. About 1/3rd of the rest were kamis which made attacks and so weren't wasted. So discounting kamis and the Okinawan ne'er hopers I lost about 40 planes to 20 Allied fighters. Not great but not too bad considering I was testing N1K5s, J2M5s, Ki-44IIcs and Ki-84rs over Okinawa. The J2Ms did terribly and lost half their number without getting a single kill. They are now restricted to anti-bomber duty in the Home Islands out of sweep range of the Allies. The Ki-44 IIcs weren't too bad. They got kills but lost at a rate of about 4 to 1 which even over their own bases means the Americans won the pilot exchange there. The Ki-84rs didn't quite get 1:1 but did probably get 2 kills for every 1 they lost. The N1K5s got a 1:1 exchange rate.
One even more important thing is that I managed to implement a tactic to draw the Americans down to the best manoeuvre bands of the Japanese planes without costing huge Japanese casualties in the dive phase. I can't use it all the time or PH will get wise but from time to time I'll pull it out when I plan a big ambush.
So, what's the plan after this turn:
1. Run away and hide but look threatening while doing so.
2. Guerilla strikes using aerial forces, submarines triggering night-time aerial attacks, expenditure of large number of PT boats and lots of recon flights to create a sensation of resistance, all the while trying to avoid the question of WHY i'm resisting in ways which don't rely on my ground forces or air force or regular naval combatants.
3. Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild. I spent 7 hours just setting up the IJNAF training programme. I'm now training fighter pilots, recon pilots, naval attack pilots and specialised kamikaze pilots.
4. Given the inadvertent removal of the Ohka as a usable device all Ohka-equipped bombers are going to be expended as twin-engined kamis while torpedo bombers with radar will be reserved for night-time strikes. I've tested this and good naval attack skill pilots ( approx 70 torpedo skill ) were, at night, managing to get 1 hit per 15 sorties. So, for 100 bombers sortieing I was getting 6 torpedo hits. I was also only losing about 5 to 10% of the bombers sortied so, overall, night-time raids were superior to daytime raids attritionally speaking as while daytime raids might score more torpedo hits losses would be so severe that on Day 2 of the raids perhaps only 20 bombers would sortie and they'd all be shot down. Night-time raids, on the other hand, might result in 90 bombers sortieing on Day 2, 80 on Day 3 etc and so over the course of a prolonged engagement - which is precisely the sort I plan to engineer along the Okinawa/Kyushu, Iwo Jima/Tokyo and Kuriles axes - night-time raids actually are more effective. I also estimate they'll be more psychologically distressing and that helps too as it might provoke errors by the Allies which I can exploit with other forces.
With that said I've decided, after some testing, that I'm going to build a solid core of G9M torpedo bombers. They have the same range as the Betty but require 4 engines and have Level 2 armour. They also carry 4 torpedoes. Basically they are a Ki-264 carrying torps instead of torpedoes with the range more than halved in order to accomodate extra armour. They can't penetrate CAP all by themselves but if escorted they can get in amongst the shipping and with 4 torps each they can do a lot of damage, even during daytime attacks. Once the Allies are disordered I am considering committing Ki-264s as kamis. Each Ki-264 uses 6 engines ( so 216 HI each ) but with 20 x 250Kg bombs if they do hit a CV then that CV can expect to be totally out of action. One consideration is using them is their ability to fight through slightly attrited CAP and, more importantly, survive Allied shipboard FlAK. When something bigger than a B-17 comes roaring in at your ship 20mm and 40mm guns just don't hack it. Unless you blow a wing off with a 5 inch round that heavy bomber IS going to hit your ship.
5. I've run two Fast Transport TFs to within 2 hexes of Okinawa without loss and delivered about half a combat Brigade to one of the islands and a JAAF unit to another. Major airlift and sealift efforts are going on around the clock and by the end of Day 4 every island off the coast of Japan will have the first elements of its personal combat Brigade or Division ashore and building defences.
So, all in all, a bad day for Japan but it proved which planes can survive in the front line and which can't. It also proved the viability of two extraordinary ( in the Soviet military sense of the word ) attack strategies and one ordinary attack strategy. I've figured out three different methods for reinforcing island bases and I'm implementing a mix of them as dictated by enemy air and naval forces in the area and once the first Bdes and Divisions are completely on the islands I'll begin moving engineers and artillery. I've also sorted out the defensive dispositions for the Korean peninsula in terms of concentrating AAA around 3 cities, artillery around possible landing sites and moving a division to each possible amphibious zone right now. Later, once I see what's available I'll begin moving a 2nd division to each site while Bdes guard against paraborne landings in the interior or rear. The IJNAF has been re-organised with most airgroups being upgraded or downgraded as fits their new role in front-line, secondline or training cohorts. I have 200 fighters in the front-line cohort right now which will rise to about 350 by week's end. I have about 300 more fighters in the second cohort ( these can go up against US bombers but not against US fighters ). I have maintained an IJNAF strike force of 200 torpedo bombers and 100 kamikazes. Everything else ( some 2,000 planes ) is committed to the training cohort. So, roughly a 1:4 mix between combat and training. As I graduate pilots I'd like to move that to my more usual 2:1 ( 2 combat planes for every training plane ) but, for now, pilot quality is so low I just cannot afford to put many units into the front lines.
What have I prioritised in terms of assigning the few trained pilots I have? Fighters, night-fighters, fighter-bombers. By the time I reached fighter-bombers I was out of semi-trained pilots and just began filling to airgroups with 10 to 40 Exp pilots. Many of my airgroups have an average Exp of 8 to 9, yes, you read that right, 8 or 9
. It'll take them "some time" to become combat aces methinks. I didn't upgrade the fighters on KB ( who are all 40 to 50 Exp and A2A skill ) because, right now, I need to protect my 3 or 4 main factory cities more than I need CVs. I'm sending the CVs on a cruise to keep them away from ports the Allies might bomb and I'll rely on subterfuge to keep me safe more than fighter pilot skill. Hell the pilots are flying A6M8s anyways so skill won't save them. It looks like the A6M8s lost 28 planes in return for 3 P-51s *sigh* [8D]Tomorrow I organise the IJAAF and then, if I can get tracker working, I'll fix the economy after that.
Overall though the situation is even worse than I initially thought. Those additional nukes are utter overkill. On the plus side the challenge is huge and so I'm looking forward to seeing this develop. Time to put on my big scary face while I curl up in the corner and hope the bully doesn't hit me [:D]
Oh, I should mention my airforce dispositions:
Basically they are as follows:
1. 1/4th IJNAF to Kyushu, Okinawa, China ( this 1/4 includes training groups ).
2. Hokkaido - 3/4ers of IJNAF.
3. Kyushu to Hokkaido - IJAAF ( fighters will defend the factory cities while kamis and bombers will concentrate in the portion of Japan close to Hokkaido ).
I think he's coming for Hokkaido so I'm trying to concentrate 3/4 of my airforce there. If 1/4 can't hold him then either I'm wrong and will have to re-evaluate or I'm right and may just have to cede the fight over the western part of Japan. Fingerspitzengefuehl says the Kuriles and then Hokkaido. In about 5 days I'll have the first of 3 shuttle convoys ready at Hokkaido to bring troops out to the island bases. I'm also creating a smallish convoy system to shuttle troops into Hokkaido from where I can feed them into the Eastern Hokkaidan ports for barge/small cargo transport out to the necessary islands.
As a test I'm also letting him see Fast Transport TFs into the Okinawan islands and some slower barge TFs a bit farther back. IF he wants to pursue the Okinawan axis he should:
a) try to bomb my FT TFs and
b) use DDs to disrupt my barge TFs.
If he doesn't do these things then, IMO, he won't be showing sufficient desire to stop me making the 2nd line of defences strong and that'll be a pointer to the fact the he isn't intending to push through that 2nd line. So, if I don't see these two things I'll start shifting more and more PT boats and more of the IJN eastward. For now though the IJN ( 2 CAs, 2 CL and about 30 DDs ) is making FT TF runs to reinforce the islands along the Okinawa to Tokyo axis - this is also a central position from which I can react towards either Okinawa or the Kuriles. If he is serious about Okinawa by doing the above they'll drift into that area. If not they'll drift eastwards to the Kuriles ( bringing PTs with them ).
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
Well, that's that settled then.