Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Zorch

Warspite, are you using the xls that has every Jap ship/plane/unit and their Turn 1 location? I forget whose it is.
You don't have to make the same moves as given in the xls; I use it to make sure I didn't miss anybody.

warspite1

I don't know yet. First I need to get the first turn shenanigans written up, and then I will think about how I am going to attempt playing the Japanese.

Looking at the PH results, I think you might end up with up to three or four BB's down.

West Virginia is gone, of course.

Nevada is a strong possibility of burning up in port
California will sink
Arizona might go to fires

The other four will be out for a long time.

Are you thinking of sticking around for day 2?

Congratulations, you also sank 3 DDs and a DMS, plus more ships may sink if they can't get the fires out.

A suggestion for next time, don't have the Zeros strafe, just bomb the airfield at 10,000 feet or so to avoid the light flak. If they need to engage fighters, they will drop the bombs. If it not against the HRs, have the Zeros strafe/bomb the Lahaina port and even include one Val unit.

Fighters work great strafing against MTBs/PTs, don't waste any more torpedoes on them. In my current game as allies, the American/Filipino fleet of nine PT boats sank three ships and left one sinking. Later that night, the eight British MTBs sank SIX ships. All of those ships were heading for Luzon with troops onboard. So send in a surface task force or two before the invasion fleets. Of course, the little boats might evade them and then engage the invasions.

If you stay for a second turn, move away to avoid a night surface action and have naval strike first with a port attack second. Someone did stick around for a second day and lost some IJN carriers to a night surface action. [X(]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Congratulations, you also sank 3 DDs and a DMS, plus more ships may sink if they can't get the fires out.

A suggestion for next time, don't have the Zeros strafe, just bomb the airfield at 10,000 feet or so to avoid the light flak. If they need to engage fighters, they will drop the bombs. If it not against the HRs, have the Zeros strafe/bomb the Lahaina port and even include one Val unit.

Fighters work great strafing against MTBs/PTs, don't waste any more torpedoes on them. In my current game as allies, the American/Filipino fleet of nine PT boats sank three ships and left one sinking. Later that night, the eight British MTBs sank SIX ships. All of those ships were heading for Luzon with troops onboard. So send in a surface task force or two before the invasion fleets. Of course, the little boats might evade them and then engage the invasions.

If you stay for a second turn, move away to avoid a night surface action and have naval strike first with a port attack second. Someone did stick around for a second day and lost some IJN carriers to a night surface action. [X(]

If you look at post #12 you will see that this is a historical firs turn game.

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

If you stay for a second turn, move away to avoid a night surface action and have naval strike first with a port attack second. Someone did stick around for a second day and lost some IJN carriers to a night surface action. [X(]

That would be Obvert in his match against Canoerebel (initially against Historiker).

ORIGINAL: warspite1

7th December 1941

The Kido Butai are unleashed on the unsuspecting Americans on a sleepy Sunday morning just before Christmas.

Only the WeeVee appears to have sunk and the cream of the Japanese naval air arm don't appear to have destroyed too many American aircraft either. I am hoping the fog of war is at play here because otherwise that's potentially a bit disappointing. I do like the fact that I appear to have hit a few CA's though.

Sadly over a third of KB's fighters are destroyed or damaged, 10% of the torpedo bombers and 13% of the dive bombers. Nagumo is summoned for a de-brief.....

All told, Warspite1, this isn't a particularly bad strike. 1-2 BB sunk outright and a bunch of others banged up enough to be out of the fight for 1+ years. WRT the aircraft, you've done a number on the Allied 'cream of the crop' on the ground-such as it is. What is your 'aircraft destroyed' page telling you from the turn? In any case, I've seen a lot worse. Good job on the first turn.

Was there damage elsewhere in the (soon-to-be) Empire?

ORIGINAL: mind_messing
We'll agree to differ on this one Chickenboy

That's OK. I understand that there are those that *really* like Tracker. For me, it's not worth the effort. And I'll share that POV.

Good luck looks like you are off to a good start with your PH attack, 2 CLs, 2 CAs and 5 DDs all sunk or heavily damaged.

Two destroyers, Ushio and Sazanami were sent to bombard Midway Island. The results appear desultory, but then it was just two DD's.

Meanwhile 27 Nells attack Wake in preparation for an invasion of the island. I don't know if the runway and airbase hits (or the damage to the Wildcats) will stop them flying - we shall see.

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: mind_messing
We'll agree to differ on this one Chickenboy

That's OK. I understand that there are those that *really* like Tracker. For me, it's not worth the effort. And I'll share that POV.

If I were you, I'd expect the Spanish Inquisition.

ORIGINAL: Zorch

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: mind_messing
We'll agree to differ on this one Chickenboy

That's OK. I understand that there are those that *really* like Tracker. For me, it's not worth the effort. And I'll share that POV.

If I were you, I'd expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Smart move: expect the unexpected!

The Bettys and Nells of the 22nd Air Flotilla appear to have made short work of HM Ships Prince of Wales and Repulse. However the follow up attacks against the destroyers proved to be a mistake as the fighters took a heavy toll.

ORIGINAL: warspite1

The Bettys and Nells of the 22nd Air Flotilla appear to have made short work of HM Ships Prince of Wales and Repulse. However the follow up attacks against the destroyers proved to be a mistake as the fighters took a heavy toll.

"No Allied Air Losses"? That wins the 'How did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?' award. [:D]

This stupid game is borked. Apparently a couple of Stringbags have badly damaged (or possibly sunk) one of my transports.... Fortunately an earlier strike by 6 Blenheim/Hudson against Nanko Maru and Gosei Maru failed to have any effect. So where's my bloody air force? They had one job....one job..

My forces appear to be attempting a landing at Kota Bharu. There are seven phases. Firstly an air battle that was much ado about very little...

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 22

Allied aircraft
Blenheim IV x 6

No Japanese losses

Allied aircraft losses
Blenheim IV: 1 destroyed

I send some bombers to attack the airfield there

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 29

Allied aircraft
Buffalo I x 1

No Japanese losses

Allied aircraft losses
Hudson I: 1 destroyed on ground

Airbase hits 11
Airbase supply hits 1
Runway hits 41

A second airfield attack was less successful

Japanese aircraft
Ki-21-IIa Sally x 22

Allied aircraft
Buffalo I x 4

Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-21-IIa Sally: 1 destroyed

No Allied losses

Airbase hits 1
Runway hits 10

There were two air battles in the afternoon but only 1 Blenheim was destroyed between both forces.

This was followed by some naval bombardment/coastal defence action in which my forces appear to have had slightly the better of the exchanges.

25 Coastal gun shots fired in defense.

Japanese Ships
CL Sendai
DD Uranami
PB Tatsumiya Maru
SC Ch 9
SC Ch 7
AK Sasako Maru
DD Ayanami

Japanese ground losses:
31 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

Allied ground losses:
225 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 14 disabled
Non Combat: 1 destroyed, 19 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 7 disabled

This was followed by an amphibious assault. I don't know what happened at this stage, other than I lost almost three dozen troops. Not sure why the casualties are reported as 26 - but 31 lower down.

Amphibious Assault at Kota Bharu

TF 85 troops unloading

Japanese ground losses:
26 casualties reported
Squads: 1 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 1 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

19 troops of a IJA Infantry Squad lost overboard during unload of 56th Infantry Rgt /2
12 Aviation Support troops lost from landing craft during unload of 5th JAAF AF Coy

Two airfield attacks against Alor Star which appear to go well

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

We'll agree to differ on this one Chickenboy, but failing to use tracker is putting yourself at a serious disadvantage.

A) Found on other screens
B) Summarized / extrapolated / surmised sufficiently elsewhere. Say you want to know how much supply there is on Honshu-in a general way. Is there a single base that serves as an 'acid test' to underscore production / supply shortfalls? [spoiler alert: There is]
C) Replicated manually or dispensed with altogether

A - Tracker lets you navigate extremely easily between widely different topics without much clicking. Say you get a new radar set. Tracker concentrates all the information on the build rate, availability dates and the specific stats for that radar. All that information in-game is separate.
B - Yeah, the key there is "general way". Tracker gives you the exact number, broken down by base, without excessive manual addition.
C - Sure, you can do the sums yourself, or you can let Tracker do it and save the time for plotting the turn. Tracker also won't make mistakes, as humans are prone to do when adding airframe production before their morning coffee.

A) Notoriously user unfriendly to get started. Not for technophobes that don't enjoy fiddling with programs ad nauseum that make their life "easier".
B) Increased potential for 'paralysis by analysis'-may vary user by user. More detailed information about minutiae may not be meaningful for the big strategic picture.

A - We're agreed here. I've had some trouble with Tracker in the past, but nothing that wasn't solved with a search on the forum.
B - Ah, but Tracker even gives you the option to filter by the important stuff. That Port Arthur is out of resources is critical information, that the umpteenth regiment arrived at some hex is not.

Probably unhelpful (my opinion) for a first time PBEM player playing Japanese for the first time trying to grapple with 'big picture' items instead of minutiae.

I disagree completely. Tracker is very helpful for playing Japan, point blank, irrespective of skill level.

The screenshot posted by Zorch is the best example for the present case - a general overview of IJ industry. Here we can see that green info = good, and red info = bad, as well as daily production and global totals. Gathering that info from the game alone is an exceptionally tedious process.

I've only played a couple of games, and both as the Allies so I can't speak to Tracker's usefulness for JFB's. But I find it most helpful in keeping track of my units. I export the reports as CSV files, and then use Excel to manipulate the data in the reports. I find that the sorting function in Excel is invaluable to me in organizing my units, and my thoughts.

One attack against the airfield at Georgetown was sub-optimal....

Ouch [X(]

There was action off Patani, with minimal damage to both sides, but more importantly, the British aircraft were not able to get through to one of my ships.