Once Again into the Breach - Mike (J) vs. tc464 (A)

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

ORIGINAL: rustysi



I don't like to lower standards until absolutely necessary. To help get the defense up I've changed my training a bit. I now train 'Lowg' after 'air'. Once that's built up into the mid sixties I then switch to 'strafe'. Seems to speed defense up a bit. Or it could just be me.[:D] At any rate I like having the 'Lowg' higher in case there's the opportunity. Like you've been strafing in China. IIRC from 1k altitude you bomb then strafe.

I absolutely agree with you. The concern is waiting too long....

My preferred pilots are more like 65+ Exp, 70+ Air, and whatever level of Defense goes along with that. Higher is better. They're usually at least in the 60s.

The Exp is the hard part, not the rest.

When I say 50+ experience, that is rarely when they are pulled from training. Also, if their experience is low like that, they end up in one of the 100% CAP training units (I have some 5-6 of them with half in Japan) to build up the exp levels.

[Mike Solli]

22 Dec 43

Really short turn. Possibly the shortest yet.

Sub War

Nothing to report.

5 Fleet

It looks like Dutch Harbor has one small support unit there. (See screen shot below.) I have a Naval Guard at Adak that I started prepping for Dutch Harbor. It went immediately to 33%! Looks like he’s written the Aleutians off! [:D]

In addition, I see a small CVE TF with some 50 planes in it. Trying to vector some subs to check it out.

4 Fleet

Not much going on here.

KB and the Replenishment TF will come together tomorrow. They’ll refuel and form two Air TFs then disappear. Well, they’ve already disappeared because no one has spotted any of them. [;)]

SE Fleet

Hollandia received some 90 bomber sorties against the troops, with no real effect.

I’m pulling troops out of Truk in single ship TFs (as well as air transport) pretty successfully. I’m focusing mainly on the Guards Division, but am pulling slices out of as many as I can, prioritized by type and quality.

SRA

Nothing to report.

Burma

Six of 8 enemy fighters were shot down over Kalemyo for no Japanese loss.

China

Only 36 (of >160) 2E bombers (and 0 of 65 fighters flying ground attack) flew against Chungking today killing 4 infantry squads and disabling 11 more.

The artillery barrage killed 29 squads (28 infantry) and disabled another 30.

Rain over Chungking and in most of the airbases. The weather report for tomorrow shows clear weather in the region. I think I may go for another deliberate assault. The troops are far from ideal, but if the weather report is accurate, the bombers will all go in and do a number on the enemy before the assault.

Current status of the army:

Fatigue: 64.2 (-7.9)
Disruption: 21.5 (-4.4)
Disabled: 14.2 (-1.3)

Overall, raw AV changed as follows:

Chinese: 3874 (+102)
Japanese: 8320 (+303)

I currently have 7 of 26 divisions with >100 disabled infantry. The army isn’t in bad shape, but…

I feel that with good weather and full bomber participation, I may be able to achieve 2:1 odds tomorrow. It’s a risk though. Here’s the change in AV by day over the last week:

Day, Jp AV, Ch AV, Notes

12/16, 10138, 6972, barrage, no air (1.45:1 raw odds)
12/17, 10201, 6908, air, assault – 1:1 odds (1.48:1 raw odds, 1.91:1 adjusted odds)
12/18, 8814, 4957, air, barrage (1.78:1 raw odds)
12/19, 9348, 4965, air, barrage (1.88:1 raw odds)
12/20, 9412, 5055, no air, assault – 1:1 (1.86:1 raw odds, 1.79:1 adjusted odds), kept 3 divisions out of combat
12/21, 8017, 3772, air, barrage (2.12:1 raw odds)
12/22, 8320, 3874, 15% air, barrage (2.14:1 raw odds)
12/23, clear weather?????????

One infantry unit was resurrected, which probably accounts for a fair chunk of the Chinese AV increase this past turn.

Other Stuff

Reinforcement: MTB G-165

[Lowpe]

Short turn, eh? Check your sigint for the last couple of days and see if anything has been pinged at sea.

[jdsrae]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

One last thing. Here's what I did for that 20k supply per day at the beginning of the war. There is a lot of stuff that needs to be increased. I made sure that I never spent more than 10k a day on the infrastructure. That's 10 things increasing at any one time. If you try to do everything at once, you'll bankrupt yourself. I never had an issue doing that. I would recalculate every time I had a new conquest. Half of that conquest was available for infrastructure increases. That took bookkeeping, but it works. The only supply I ship out of Japan is ~150k for Miri. I want that oil building as soon as possible. It'll take 5 months to repair it all, assuming no damage when it's taken.

+1

Looking forward to your 1943 industry update.
You guys are the Jedi masters at this, but those are the sort of numbers I’m crunching at the moment.
Only using 10k/day supply for industry expansion sounds like a good target for long term average, but for the first six months of the war too?
Keeping about 1M supply as the minimum to avoid industry hiccups, I’m thinking you can be a bit more aggressive with factory changes during the early war but definitely need to be careful not to crash it.
Especially setting up some late war fighters, as once initially setup they take so long for research factories to repair/use supply.
With the large surplus of supplies you have now, next time would you expand a few more factories earlier?

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: jdsrae

Looking forward to your 1943 industry update.
You guys are the Jedi masters at this, but those are the sort of numbers I’m crunching at the moment.
Only using 10k/day supply for industry expansion sounds like a good target for long term average, but for the first six months of the war too?
Keeping about 1M supply as the minimum to avoid industry hiccups, I’m thinking you can be a bit more aggressive with factory changes during the early war but definitely need to be careful not to crash it.
Especially setting up some late war fighters, as once initially setup they take so long for research factories to repair/use supply.
With the large surplus of supplies you have now, next time would you expand a few more factories earlier?

Pax and I are both minimalists. Speaking for myself, I try to produce only what I need, with a small buffer. I HATE having huge numbers of early war aircraft sitting around doing nothing. Think about it. What do you do with a 500 Ki-43-Ic aircraft sitting in the pool when you're using the Ki-43-IIIa? Yeah, some can be used as trainers, but that is primarily a Nate function. I'm currently using all my Nates as trainers and a small number of the Ic, but if I had 500 sitting in the pool, I'd be smacking myself silly.

Late war aircraft are potentially different, but I'll build up numbers of aircraft I intend to use either in normal operations or as Kamikazes. I still try to produce what I need with a buffer.

Here's my method for planning. Let's use the A6M2 as an example. (I'm a logistician for DoD and manage equipment repair parts, and this is one method we use to manage them.) I use a minimum and maximum stock on hand method (minSOH, max SOH). My goal was to have enough airframes on hand so that if KB's fighters got mauled, I could replace them. (Unlikely that would happen and I'd still have all the decks, but that's another discussion.) So, I set the min/max levels to 80/100. If I had at least 100 in the pool, my factories would be off. Once the pool dropped to 80, the factories came back on, until they reached 100. I rarely hit 100, however. There was another important draw on that pool, namely upgrading the front-line Claude units (carrier and land-based) that needed to be upgraded to the Zero. So, the pool was usually low, which was fine with me. (I believe I had 90 factories producing the A6M2.) When the next model was a couple of months from becoming operational (A6M3a), I stopped production on the M2 to draw the pool to as close to 0 as I could. As the A6M3a was built and assigned to KB/MKB, those A6M2s replenished the pool for all the units still using that model. So, in the end, there were probably a couple hundred A6M2 left, but that's inevitable. I just didn't want 500 or 1000 sitting there.

Yeah, using more than 10k a day might be possible, but once the economy starts spiraling downward, it's very difficult and takes a long time to fix. So, I stick with 10k for as long as I must.

Think about it. What do you REALLY need at the start of the war? Oscars and Zeros and some Vals and Kates for KB/MKB. Certain engines that you need more of now. That's about it. Do it in stages. List everything you need/want then prioritize it and do a little at a time. Take our A6M2 again, currently producing 56. I want 90, but increase it by 4 to 60. That uses 1k supply a day for 4 days. And so on.

I also try to make use of engines that already exist. Example: The B5N1 is not very different from the B5N2, especially early war. The N1 uses the Nakajima Hikari engine, which has 99 in the pool. The only other planes that use that engine are the Jean and Susie, neither of which will ever be produced. So, I convert a small factory, say the size 10 Nate factory, to the N1. I'll build out all 99 N1s, saving 1782 HI (99*18). Half price planes! MKB gets the N1 and KB gets the N2 supplemented by the N1 if needed. That will use 1k supply for ~6-7 days.

That's how I do it. The hard part is prioritizing, with so many needs for now and the future. I'll leave the Val as is for now. 24 in the pool with 12 production is sufficient. I want to get the Oscar Ic up to ~90 eventually, in stages, but it is pretty high along with the Zero.

And then there's engines. The Ha-35 needs to have >500 in the pool as soon as possible to accelerate the Zero and Oscar R&D lines. That turns out to be a lot of extra engines needed. At the start of the war, the surplus is 20 engines per month, and that starts dwindling on Day 1. So, that is a very high priority too. The Ha-35 factory is one of the few that I will keep increasing constantly, using 1k supply every day until it is where I want it.

It's a big juggling act. I love it!

One last comment. This is my main reason to take the SRA as soon as possible. As I capture HI/LI and refineries, that increases my supply production. That allows me to increase the speed of my infrastructure growth more quickly.

My motto: "We are not here to battle the Allies. We are here to loot South East Asia!" [:D]

[Lowpe]

There is a lot more to supply consumption than factory and plane building.

I don't think it is that hard to repair a Japanese economy if the early war is going well as you can turn almost everything off or on.

You absolutely cannot recover from holes in your r&d production, fort building, or ship production. Your best chance of having a strong economy for the end game is by having the absolute best fighters and night fighters and balloons for that period.

At some point in 1944 Honshu will be bombed most likely. I agree that having 500 Oscar Ic is silly, but having the ability to produce 150 Oscar IV at the end game isn't all that silly. Or is having a deep pool of engines.

Producing a scant 56 A6M2 expanding to 90 absolutely won't win the early war resources against an Allied opponent that fights forward.

Now the A6M8 and Oscar IV are by no means great fighters, but they serve useful roles for the entire end game.

During the end game, those 500 Oscar Ic might be useless, but they look intimidating to the Allies when your pools are gone and they are guarding rear areas. It would be better if they had a cannon...but heck, I used Nates and was glad to have them against bombers in the end game (I think I even used them as CAP traps too)...after loosing something like 35,000 planes thru the game, Honshu invaded, all plane factories and engine factories reduced to 1.

It definitely is a juggling act though...you don't want to run out of supplies, but you absolutely don't want to run out of fighters, night fighters, FB, dive and torpedo bombers. Level bombers pretty much become ASW as Allied flak is impenetrable.

[Mike Solli]

I totally agree with you, Lowpe. I'm just talking the first 4-6 months of the war. I'm very frugal at that stage, but definitely produce what I need to have. I didn't talk R&D because supply usage is different. You don't use supply to repair R&D factories, only to expand them. I set aside a certain amount of supply for R&D expansion.

Basically, much of your early actions depend on your opponent. Totally agree here too.

[Mike Solli]

I just sent off the turn. I debated long and hard about the deliberate assault at Chungking. In the end, I decided to go ahead and do it, mainly because of the clear weather forecast for tomorrow. If all the bombers fly, I'm confident Chungking will be mine, with a 2000 point VP harvest. Usually, victories like that don't amount to much in the way of attacker losses. If all doesn't go well, the Chinese will still suffer more than the Japanese. They're just about gone. Either way, the end is near (or at hand).

[jdsrae]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

My motto: "We are not here to battle the Allies. We are here to loot South East Asia!" [:D]

All good until someone like obvert makes you have to do both

[rustysi]

The 2 AKEs and HQ were enough to do the Yamatos and everything else except Nagato & Mutsu's main gun ammo before running out of OP points. More on all that in the replay below.

Not paying enough attention, you had a larger fleet than I realized. Still OK though if you can break it into two groups, one behind the other.

Their short range isn't difficult to deal with. Use drop tanks and set their range to 10, along with the Jills. No problem and no fatigue unless they fly. Some of the fighter units are set to no drop tanks and 100% CAP, range 0. That way, no real fatigue from CAP trying to fly out 10 hexes. Keep rotating units each day or two and everything is good.

Interesting, very interesting. I could go on with the reference to 'Laugh In', but I don't want to date myself.[:D]

[rustysi]

I'm going to do an in depth analysis at the end of 43. State of the Empire, so to speak.

[:D]

[Mike Solli]

Ok, some time to kill and I was curious. I totaled the fuel, oil, resources and supply just in the Home Islands. Nothing on ships counted, but there's still a lot coming in. Interesting numbers with one eye opening stat:

Fuel: 2,478,046 - 17.7 months worth. Now, I don't know how much of that will be used for ships and lost in wastage. I'm sure it's significant, but probably(?) no more than half. *Shrug*
Oil: 1,825,528 - 7.2 months worth.
Resources: Sit down for this one. 20,165,127, [X(] yep 20 million - 76 months worth. I think it's time to ignore resources.
Supply: 2,388,888 - not sure if that is good or bad.

Pax?

[rustysi]

(1.86:1 raw odds, 1.79:1 adjusted odds), kept 3 divisions out of combat

Wonder if those three divisions would have tipped the odds up to 2:1. Even if at 2/3 strength that's about 300 raw AV each. With the die rolls and such who knows, but it would've been interesting to find out.

[Mike Solli]

ORIGINAL: rustysi

(1.86:1 raw odds, 1.79:1 adjusted odds), kept 3 divisions out of combat

Wonder if those three divisions would have tipped the odds up to 2:1. Even if at 2/3 strength that's about 300 raw AV each. With the die rolls and such who knows, but it would've been interesting to find out.

Yeah, right? I'm still kicking myself.

[rustysi]

Keeping about 1M supply as the minimum to avoid industry hiccups, I’m thinking you can be a bit more aggressive with factory changes during the early war but definitely need to be careful not to crash it.

Its my experience that when I drop supplies to under about 1.7M I find it hard to conduct offensive ops, because there just doesn't seem to be enough throughout the 'Empire' to get to the front.

My motto: "We are not here to battle the Allies. We are here to loot South East Asia!"

I love it.

Now there's a logistics guy talking.[:D]

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

There is a lot more to supply consumption than factory and plane building.

I don't think it is that hard to repair a Japanese economy if the early war is going well as you can turn almost everything off or on.

You absolutely cannot recover from holes in your r&d production, fort building, or ship production. Your best chance of having a strong economy for the end game is by having the absolute best fighters and night fighters and balloons for that period.

At some point in 1944 Honshu will be bombed most likely. I agree that having 500 Oscar Ic is silly, but having the ability to produce 150 Oscar IV at the end game isn't all that silly. Or is having a deep pool of engines.

Producing a scant 56 A6M2 expanding to 90 absolutely won't win the early war resources against an Allied opponent that fights forward.

Now the A6M8 and Oscar IV are by no means great fighters, but they serve useful roles for the entire end game.

During the end game, those 500 Oscar Ic might be useless, but they look intimidating to the Allies when your pools are gone and they are guarding rear areas. It would be better if they had a cannon...but heck, I used Nates and was glad to have them against bombers in the end game (I think I even used them as CAP traps too)...after loosing something like 35,000 planes thru the game, Honshu invaded, all plane factories and engine factories reduced to 1.

It definitely is a juggling act though...you don't want to run out of supplies, but you absolutely don't want to run out of fighters, night fighters, FB, dive and torpedo bombers. Level bombers pretty much become ASW as Allied flak is impenetrable.

This.

I prefer to be aggressive in my early plans. If I start getting supply warning messages in Japan, I'll curtail repairs a little bit. It's important to check to be sure your industry repairs (i.e., expansions) are happening as you intend them to.

It's equally important to set your forces up for future success. Japan will run a supply surplus for day after day, month after month, for at least 2 years, assuming you keep the resources coming in. Which you will be doing.

You can spend down early or ship it out to the front (or intermediate hubs) and you'll be in a better position than someone who was too tight-fisted from the get-go. And if you do screw it up and send too much out, the aforementioned surplus potential in Japan can be utilized to right the ship in a matter of days or maybe 2 weeks. The only thing you can do to truly trash the economy is to spend too much supply on expanding industry you are just going to turn off because you overexpanded. By this I mean things like expanding HI in Japan at all, let alone by say maybe 1000.

[rustysi]

Pax and I are both minimalists. Speaking for myself, I try to produce only what I need, with a small buffer. I HATE having huge numbers of early war aircraft sitting around doing nothing. Think about it. What do you do with a 500 Ki-43-Ic aircraft sitting in the pool when you're using the Ki-43-IIIa? Yeah, some can be used as trainers, but that is primarily a Nate function. I'm currently using all my Nates as trainers and a small number of the Ic, but if I had 500 sitting in the pool, I'd be smacking myself silly.

Late war aircraft are potentially different, but I'll build up numbers of aircraft I intend to use either in normal operations or as Kamikazes. I still try to produce what I need with a buffer.

Here's my method for planning. Let's use the A6M2 as an example. (I'm a logistician for DoD and manage equipment repair parts, and this is one method we use to manage them.) I use a minimum and maximum stock on hand method (minSOH, max SOH). My goal was to have enough airframes on hand so that if KB's fighters got mauled, I could replace them. (Unlikely that would happen and I'd still have all the decks, but that's another discussion.) So, I set the min/max levels to 80/100. If I had at least 100 in the pool, my factories would be off. Once the pool dropped to 80, the factories came back on, until they reached 100. I rarely hit 100, however. There was another important draw on that pool, namely upgrading the front-line Claude units (carrier and land-based) that needed to be upgraded to the Zero. So, the pool was usually low, which was fine with me. (I believe I had 90 factories producing the A6M2.) When the next model was a couple of months from becoming operational (A6M3a), I stopped production on the M2 to draw the pool to as close to 0 as I could. As the A6M3a was built and assigned to KB/MKB, those A6M2s replenished the pool for all the units still using that model. So, in the end, there were probably a couple hundred A6M2 left, but that's inevitable. I just didn't want 500 or 1000 sitting there.

Yeah, using more than 10k a day might be possible, but once the economy starts spiraling downward, it's very difficult and takes a long time to fix. So, I stick with 10k for as long as I must.

Think about it. What do you REALLY need at the start of the war? Oscars and Zeros and some Vals and Kates for KB/MKB. Certain engines that you need more of now. That's about it. Do it in stages. List everything you need/want then prioritize it and do a little at a time. Take our A6M2 again, currently producing 56. I want 90, but increase it by 4 to 60. That uses 1k supply a day for 4 days. And so on.

I also try to make use of engines that already exist. Example: The B5N1 is not very different from the B5N2, especially early war. The N1 uses the Nakajima Hikari engine, which has 99 in the pool. The only other planes that use that engine are the Jean and Susie, neither of which will ever be produced. So, I convert a small factory, say the size 10 Nate factory, to the N1. I'll build out all 99 N1s, saving 1782 HI (99*18). Half price planes! MKB gets the N1 and KB gets the N2 supplemented by the N1 if needed. That will use 1k supply for ~6-7 days.

That's how I do it. The hard part is prioritizing, with so many needs for now and the future. I'll leave the Val as is for now. 24 in the pool with 12 production is sufficient. I want to get the Oscar Ic up to ~90 eventually, in stages, but it is pretty high along with the Zero.

And then there's engines. The Ha-35 needs to have >500 in the pool as soon as possible to accelerate the Zero and Oscar R&D lines. That turns out to be a lot of extra engines needed. At the start of the war, the surplus is 20 engines per month, and that starts dwindling on Day 1. So, that is a very high priority too. The Ha-35 factory is one of the few that I will keep increasing constantly, using 1k supply every day until it is where I want it.

It's a big juggling act. I love it!

One last comment. This is my main reason to take the SRA as soon as possible. As I capture HI/LI and refineries, that increases my supply production. That allows me to increase the speed of my infrastructure growth more quickly.

My motto: "We are not here to battle the Allies. We are here to loot South East Asia!"

Nice discussion Mike. All nubbies to the 'Dark Side' should see this.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Ok, some time to kill and I was curious. I totaled the fuel, oil, resources and supply just in the Home Islands. Nothing on ships counted, but there's still a lot coming in. Interesting numbers with one eye opening stat:

Fuel: 2,478,046 - 17.7 months worth. Now, I don't know how much of that will be used for ships and lost in wastage. I'm sure it's significant, but probably(?) no more than half. *Shrug*
Oil: 1,825,528 - 7.2 months worth.
Resources: Sit down for this one. 20,165,127, [X(] yep 20 million - 76 months worth. I think it's time to ignore resources.
Supply: 2,388,888 - not sure if that is good or bad.

Pax?

From 1/18/1944 in my Japan game that is currently at 1/13/1945:

Total Supply - 6.5M (3.2M in Japan)
Total Fuel - 5.8M (3.6M in Japan)
Total Oil - 1.4M (0.8M in Japan)
Total Resources - 16.8M (9.1M in Japan)

Japan is defined by Tracker as the major islands, not including Hokkaido, and some minor tiny islands just offshore. Does not include Okinawa.

That is Scenario 2, so a slightly more robust industrial base and IIRC about 1M more supply to start with + about 2M more total Fuel/Oil to start with. Or something like that. Bullwinkle looked at it once upon a time and shared with me by email, I think.

I never had more than about 3.5 months of Resources in Japan (IIRC it was typically low-100s in number of days) but the totals were slowly going up the whole time. In January 1945, I have 1.1M Resources there and am using them at an even slower rate. The corresponding Oil and Fuel timelines were always around 30-40 days and around 365 days, respectively. For the entirety of my game, not just in January 1944.

You have a ton of stuff in Japan, you're fine.

[rustysi]

Resources: Sit down for this one. 20,165,127, yep 20 million - 76 months worth.

Yeah, that's a hellofa number. I just broke 7.8M in my game on 10Apr43.

My numbers (as of above date):

Fuel: 4.9M
Oil:1.5M
Supply:3.6M

We've had some discussion here about this before. It got me to thinking about it a bit. I believe you can't just look at these numbers in isolation. Not that there's a whole lot more, but you need to consider them. So how much HI have you banked? If its a lot then fuel or lack thereof has less dread. If you have tons of HI then you could turn some of the factories off to conserve 'fleet juice'. That is if you're not lacking supply. Not only that but your 'veh' and 'arm' numbers matter too. If these are good, again less HI is needed at the end. Although I'm beginning to think you can't have too much 'arm'. Less important, but still there, are your naval and merchie numbers.

So all this has a bearing on the 'State of the Empire', so to speak.[:D]

Edit: I don't have the numbers of what exactly is in Japan, but I do haul everything I possibly can. I just tend to leave the minimums in the field, because well it'll always produce more. As an example, my oil numbers are really about 1.65M as I have at least 150k on the 'water' right now.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

Supply: 2,388,888 - not sure if that is good or bad.

Pax?

Poor, to very bad. The saving grace is you have lots of oil left (excellent), and I believe this game generates supply refining it. Also your perimeter is still big...generating lots of oil...get it back, which I think you have done.

Start pulling fuel from your bunker (i.e. all the idle ships you have).