Matrix Games Forums

I'm going to do another deliberate assault. I got another turn and the recovery dropped off dramatically.

Fatigue: 55% down 3.9%
Disruption: 18.6% down 1.7%
Disabled: 3.8% down 1.0%

There are 2 divisions with significant disabled squads. I'll keep them out of the fight.

I guess I must have been reading your earlier posts all wrong...

I almost never attack with fatigue over 30%...which is where it is usually at attacking an enemy base in a malaria zone.

You were a slave driver![:D]

My general rule of thumb is disruption under 20, pref under 10, less than 50% disabled, and fatigue 30 or less. Depends a bit with how aggressive the General is.

Over 50% disablements they rotate out to splinter and rest with a HQ. At Chungking I always only go one hex as it isn't malaria zone and the troops recover quite quickly if a HQ is present. I never take the extra time to go to Neikiang.

Lowpe, I was out of the house last night and didn't work the turn. I've been reconsidering the attack. 55% fatigue is just too high. I'm going to wait for the fatigue to drop some more. I'm hoping the last turn's low recovery rates were an anomaly. I understand it's not linear, but they dropped off dramatically this last turn.

By the way, on that last attack, fatigue was 0%, disruption ~3% and only 1 or 2 divisions had more than a few disabled squads. That army was as ready to go as possible.

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: rustysi

Fatigue: 67.1%, down 8.2%

It looks like fatigue is going to be the determining factor. At what point do I attack? Fatigue below 20%? That would be about 6 days from now. What do you guys think?

Fatigue may have been why your last adjusted AV was so low. Have no idea what it was at time of attack.

So I'd say yes.

You should then be in position for another attack by the end of the month, if needed. Looks to me like moving back and forth to 'recover', at least at this point, is adding nothing.

Reduction in Fatigue/Disruption is not linear. I would expect it to take more than 6 days for disruption to get down under 20%.

Also, in an enemy base, you are going to struggle to keep fatigue below 20.


Your units will have plenty of time to rest once the city is taken. The primary factors in your attacks should be:

1) How many disablements are there in the unit? If the majority of the Infantry squads in your divisions are disabled (or close to it), you probably do not want to attack with that unit (although there might be good reasons to do so anyway). The reason for this is that, in most cases, units seem to suffer hits in such a way that "line items" of devices are "hit", and when taking a hit a device is first disabled and then destroyed. Devices can obviously be destroyed outright but that is unlikely to happen to your units in this context. Personally, my threshold for including a unit in an attack at Chungking that is unlikely to be the final attack (i.e., it is just a reducing attack) is <100 squads disabled (and 200+ ready).

2) How much better are your units than the enemy's units? It's not always about the odds - sometimes it is just about the damage you inflict on the enemy. As long as you are causing more damage to them, while suffering acceptable losses to your forces, it doesn't matter what the odds are (until it comes time to actually take the base). To that end (effective combat results), fatigue and disruption are much less important. You can recover them acceptably quickly later on. You should focus on grinding his units down first, which you've begun to do. Do not rest too long now just because of fatigue and disruption. I would rest 3 or 4 days at the very most.

These are generally sound observations from Lokasenna.

A ready device can be destroyed outright in the fire phase of combat but more likely is that it will be disabled if hit. Most destroyed devices were already disabled devices which were hit again. The relevant firepower stats of the opposing devices plays a significant role. Over the course of the war, most Allied devices acquire an increased delta over their equivalent Japanese devices. Chinese devices do not generally gain this benefit. Which means that as the war progresses and upgrades are applied, Chinese LCUs find it harder to achieve outright kills in combat.

Ceteris paribus defending LCUs in their own base will achieve better recovery rates than enemy LCUs located at the unfriendly owned base. The one thing which Japan usually has in its favour when besieging Chungking is that its units are usually fully supplied whereas the Chinese LCUs are probably at less than 100% required supply. Having lengthy delays between Japanese attacks tends to aid the Chinese forces more than the Japanese forces. Everyday should witness Japanese land artillery bombardment and aerial ground attack to force Chinese consumption of supply and retard unit recovery. It isn't necessary for every Japanese LCU present to participate in these attacks.

My posts in this thread address recovery.

tm.asp?m=4376273&mpage=1&key=recovery&#4381076

Alfred

Thanks, everyone, for the input on assaults & recovery. At the last moment, I decided to attack even with an average fatigue of 55. I figure it can only go up to 99 and the assault on 12/12/43 pushed the fatigue from 0 to 84. So, it'll be high after the attack. It'll be interesting to see what happens. With all the input, you convinced me that attacking will hurt the Chinese far more than the Japanese.

I'm keeping one division out that has 150 disabled infantry squads. A few others have ~80 and the rest have minimal disabled infantry squads. So, the turn is off. Lets see what happens!

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

I'm keeping one division out that has 150 disabled infantry squads. A few others have ~80 and the rest have minimal disabled infantry squads. So, the turn is off. Lets see what happens!

That is roughly what I would have done.

55 Fatigue is kind of high, but if the previous attack also had high Fatigue in units and achieved a good return, then his units are in even worse shape relative to yours than before.

150+ disabled infantry is high enough that I'd be moving that unit to Neikiang, with a waiting HQ. It takes 6 days to move there IIRC. If you're OK with it, move in Reserve mode.

And remember that regardless of where you're recovering the unit, split it into 3.

That's the thing, Loka. The last attack had 0 fatigue in all the units. One attack and they went from 0 to 85-90 fatigue in that one attack. That's why I'm really nervous about this one...

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

That's the thing, Loka. The last attack had 0 fatigue in all the units. One attack and they went from 0 to 85-90 fatigue in that one attack. That's why I'm really nervous about this one...

Fatigue isn't really what hurts your units, though. You might get lower odds, but the opposing firepower should be less than it was in the previous attack, if anything. If you really beat up his units, you might not get very good odds but you shouldn't suffer high losses.

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

That's the thing, Loka. The last attack had 0 fatigue in all the units. One attack and they went from 0 to 85-90 fatigue in that one attack. That's why I'm really nervous about this one...

Fatigue isn't really what hurts your units, though. You might get lower odds, but the opposing firepower should be less than it was in the previous attack, if anything. If you really beat up his units, you might not get very good odds but you shouldn't suffer high losses.

Very interesting. I guess I don't know that much about land combat. I'm hopeful because the Chinese raw AV decreased almost a third from the battle, 9687 on 12/12 to 6745 on 12/13. By 12/16 (haven't posted that turn yet) it's creeped up to 6927. Probably a good chunk of it came from at least 4 rebuilt units.

12/16/43

Sub War

The I-7 caught a Liberty ship off Pago Pago and put a torpedo into her. Later in the day, two more torpedo hits put her down for good.

The TK Manei Maru, which took a torpedo yesterday, went down as expected.

5 Fleet

Nothing to report.

4 Fleet

Akagi and Soryu safely eluded the Muskallunge (by heading west around the waters where she's hunting) and is headed south toward Saipan, about 5 days out. When they arrive, KB will be reconstituted there (7 CV, 2 CVL). They will most likely wait for an opportunity.

Otherwise, nothing to report in this AO.

SE Fleet

Rabaul and Hollandia received small numbers of Allied bombers to no great effect. Truk received another 182 sorties, all against the port, which is fine by me. There are no ships there. Truk's damage is 52-93-87. The airfield is repairing slowly, 11 points today.

There was an airborne assault on Tabiteuea, a small slice of the Fiji Commando Battalion! I don't have much there, just an AS unit with a company of Marines. The 1:6 attack (level 3 forts) wiped them out! [:D]

SRA

Nothing to report. My subs are on the lookout for the 3 US CVLs, which haven't been spotted in awhile.

Burma

Pretty quiet here today. I put 93 bomber sorties against Kalemyo again officially putting the airfield damage in the moderate range.

Ledo has no fighters defending it, but all those flak guns are still there.

China

A total of 246x 2E bomber sorties hit Chungking today killing 21 squads (only 1 infantry) and disabling another 113. The artillery then killed 33 squads (31 infantry) and disabled 22 more. Raw Japanese AV is up to 10,138 and Chinese is at 6927. As discussed above, I'm trying a deliberate assault with about 10k AV. I'm anxious to see the result.

Infantry squads killed this month: 1019.

Other Stuff

The Ki-67-Ia Peggy R&D advanced to 2/44. I had only one factory on this airframe. It won't advance any further so I switched it to the J7W1 (2 factories on this model now). This is actually perfect timing. My primary IJA bomber is the Helen. If you don't recall, I converted the Ha-34 factory to the Ha-45 so my remaining engine pool is it. I'm using it for the Helen bomber and transport and have 538 engines remaining. I have 3x30 bomber factories and 1x60 transport factory churning them out, so I use 10 engines a day. I'll produce both until I have ~200 engines left, then use the remaining Ha-34 engines on the Helen transport. There will be a gap in there of about a month with no IJA bomber production, but I should be ok with the pool. I'm doing well with the Ha-45 engine production (used by Peggy) with a surplus of at least a dozen a day. There are 1385 in the pool so I will have plenty for the lean days of late war. I'm also converting the Ha-34 factory to the Ha-45 (at 16(344)).

I had to stay up to run the turn. Almost did it. Just 400 AV shy of 2:1. Losses were minimal. Fatigue back up in upper 80s low 90s again but it really didn't matter. Disruption and disablements not bad. I'll run the numbers tomorrow.

Ground combat at Chungking (76,45)

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 294834 troops, 3085 guns, 1880 vehicles, Assault Value = 10201

Defending force 305427 troops, 515 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 6908

Japanese adjusted assault: 7645

Allied adjusted defense: 4013

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 1 (fort level 0)

Japanese Assault reduces fortifications to 0

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), leaders(+), supply(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
10417 casualties reported
Squads: 65 destroyed, 1705 disabled
Non Combat: 5 destroyed, 87 disabled
Engineers: 9 destroyed, 229 disabled
Guns lost 154 (2 destroyed, 152 disabled)
Vehicles lost 44 (1 destroyed, 43 disabled)

Allied ground losses:
29974 casualties reported
Squads: 428 destroyed, 1963 disabled
Non Combat: 854 destroyed, 1062 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 11 disabled
Guns lost 108 (57 destroyed, 51 disabled)
Units destroyed 30

Ok, a little bit of reviewing over coffee this morning. Of the 30 units that were destroyed, 21 were HQs (19 Group Armies and 2 War Areas). I'm aware of 1 infantry corps that was destroyed. I saw them all disappear from the combat screen. So, there were 8 other units among infantry, base forces, artillery, AA and construction (both AT are already gone). At first I was bummed, but then realized that the destruction of the HQs will significantly decrease the actual AV in the next attack.

Of the remaining HQs, there are:

10x Group Armies
7x War Areas
CAF HQ
Central Reserve
China Command
NCAC
Red Chinese Army
Y Force

I'm particularly pleased with the destruction of so many Group Armies. They can potentially increase the AV of their infantry units by 90%.

I'm going to attack in a few days, but I need to look at the status of my divisions first.

Custer's Last Stand must have been something like this. [:D]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

... I'm particularly pleased with the destruction of so many Group Armies. They can potentially increase the AV of their infantry units by 90%...

Not so.

A Corps HQ can provide a combat bonus of up to 10%. A Command HQ can provide a combat bonus of up to 90%. The combat bonus is fed into the firepower phase of the combat algorithm, it has nothing to do with the adjusted AV which is determined after combat and which counts who is "left standing" for further combat.

Read this thread for how the land combat bonus operates.

tm.asp?m=3545042&mpage=1&key=bonus&#3548125

Alfred

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli
... I'm particularly pleased with the destruction of so many Group Armies. They can potentially increase the AV of their infantry units by 90%...

Not so.

A Corps HQ can provide a combat bonus of up to 10%. A Command HQ can provide a combat bonus of up to 90%. The combat bonus is fed into the firepower phase of the combat algorithm, it has nothing to do with the adjusted AV which is determined after combat and which counts who is "left standing" for further combat.

Read this thread for how the land combat bonus operates.
tm.asp?m=3545042&mpage=1&key=bonus&#65533;
Alfred

And then also take a peek on how HQc AV bonus measures up in the actual game tm.asp?m=4211316&mpage=1&key=# post #25

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

... I'm particularly pleased with the destruction of so many Group Armies. They can potentially increase the AV of their infantry units by 90%...

Not so.

A Corps HQ can provide a combat bonus of up to 10%. A Command HQ can provide a combat bonus of up to 90%. The combat bonus is fed into the firepower phase of the combat algorithm, it has nothing to do with the adjusted AV which is determined after combat and which counts who is "left standing" for further combat.

Read this thread for how the land combat bonus operates.

tm.asp?m=3545042&mpage=1&key=bonus&#65533;

Alfred

Thanks, Alfred. I knew that but got the numbers mixed. Not as good, but I'll take it. I just can't seem to kill off those command HQs.

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

ORIGINAL: Alfred

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli
... I'm particularly pleased with the destruction of so many Group Armies. They can potentially increase the AV of their infantry units by 90%...

Not so.

A Corps HQ can provide a combat bonus of up to 10%. A Command HQ can provide a combat bonus of up to 90%. The combat bonus is fed into the firepower phase of the combat algorithm, it has nothing to do with the adjusted AV which is determined after combat and which counts who is "left standing" for further combat.

Read this thread for how the land combat bonus operates.
tm.asp?m=3545042&mpage=1&key=bonus&#65533;
Alfred

And then also take a peek on how HQc AV bonus measures up in the actual game tm.asp?m=4211316&mpage=1&key=# post #25

If you read GA thread, you will see why I never go the extra distance to Neikiang to recover.

Ok, so based upon the reading suggested above, killing all those HQs really did nothing other than dispose of support squads, right? The critical HQ to kill is the last one of the type (corps or command). Apparently, the HQ a unit is assigned to makes no difference concerning the combat bonus. Or anything else I can see, for that matter...

Is it safe to assume an air or naval HQ has no impact on the land combat bonus?

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli
Is it safe to assume an air or naval HQ has no impact on the land combat bonus?

Some of the Japanese Fleets are actually classified as Command HQs in stock scenario despite being a bunch of naval support squads. So they would have bonuses on land combat all right (although their selection of commanders is poor). Other than those it is safe to assume no bonuses

17 Dec 43

Sub War

Brutal today. It did start off "well" (if you call killing one of a billion xAKs doing well). The I-7 caught and sank another Liberty ship near Pago Pago.

Then it all turned south. South of Truk I spotted what I thought was the BB TF (probably minus 1 BB badly damaged). It appeared to be headed toward Truk. What I didn't see behind it was an ASW TF. That TF caught and sank the RO-114. The BB TF is 6 hexes to the SW of Truk. I have plans. More on that later.

Just NE of Saipan, the Flasher torpedoed an xAK carrying half an independent mixed brigade. I goofed here. It left Japan and I had set it for coastal, which is a pretty safe bet there. What I didn't realize was that instead of heading straight for Peleliu, it took the grand tour going through Saipan (coastal waters). [8|] That's where it got torpedoed. It made for Saipan where it's dropping off the troops. I think she'll survive, at least long enough to deposit her troops on the wrong island. The other transport and the escort made a bee line for Tokyo. I turned off coastal and sent them to their destination. Amazingly, only a few squads were lost.

No, it's not over. A Std-B tanker took a torpedo from Steelhead just off Cam Ranh Bay, rolled over, and went down. Fortunately, she was unloaded.

Finally, an xAP 7 hexes NW of Truk took a torpedo from Redfin. She was on her way to sneak in to Truk to sneak out some troops. She's still afloat, but has 21 fires, which means she's probably doomed.

5 Fleet

Interesting things going on up here, but I'm not exactly sure what. I see two Allied TFs up there, one of a single ship and one of 4 ships. The single ship is headed toward Etorofu and about 15 or so hexes to the SE. I moved some Nells that are training in the area to see if they can get some torpedoes in the water. This unit is actually almost ready to graduate its pilots. Good training exercise. [:D] That little Allied ship came within a day of running into 4 BBs, including Yamato and Musashi. Darn! They're past and I'm not turning them around.

The other TF is (I think) 4 ships and they're headed toward Umnak and about a dozen hexes south. I have MKB there totalling about 130 or so planes that have been hiding to the SW of Umnak. I'm moving them in to engage. The Jills are loading torpedoes. Let's see what happens!

4 Fleet

I'm curious to see what the (alleged) BB TF does tomorrow. If they attempt to bombard Truk, they'll run into ~140 CD guns and >500 mines. Oh yeah, and KB. I'm sortieing KB from Saipan, 5 CVs and 2 CVLs, totalling 210 Zeros, 81 Judies and 102 Jills. This could be fun too. KB won't stick around though. Not worth the risk of subs.

SE Fleet

Ted hit Truk with 188 bombers today, all against troops. Level 7 forts really help, because they were useless. Flak got 4.

SRA

Nothing to report.

Burma

My Helens hit Kalemyo again adding a bit to the damage at the airfield.

China

You already saw the results above. The only thing to add is the status of my army:

Fatigue: 83.5%
Disruption: 50.8%
Disabled: 11.9% - There are 4 (of 25) divisions with >100 disabled infantry squads. I'm getting a fresh division tomorrow to add to the mix. I'll rest them and attack in a few days, at most.

Oh yeah, total infantry squad losses to the Chinese were 433 bring the infantry squad losses to 1452 this month.

Other Stuff

Reinforcements:

901 Ku T-1, 13 Air Flotilla, 18 Betties, training
901 Ku T-2, 13 Air Flotilla, 12 Mavis, training, it's nice getting another flying boat unit. We just don't have enough of them. They'll eventually patrol from the Home Islands.
SS I-45, Glen sub
SS I-52, fleet sub