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F6F-3    4,402  First production variant.  Subvariants
   included:

                    - 18 conversions to F6F-3E evaluation night fighters.
    - 149 (some sources say 205) F6F-3N night fighters.
    - Unknown number of F6F-3P reconnaissance conversions.
                    - 1 temporarily converted to XF6F-2 with turbocharged
      R-2800-21.  Some sources give 4,403 F6F-3s,
      apparently due to "double counting" this machine.

   252 fighters were provided to the British FAA as the
   Hellcat I.
  
   F6F-5    7,870  Second production variant (some sources give 7,868). 
                   Subvariants included:

    - 1,434 (some sources say 1,529) F6F-5N night fighters.
    - Several hundred F6F-5P reconnaissance conversions.
    - Several hundred F6F-5K drone conversions.
    - A number of F6F-5D drone controller conversions.
    - Two converted to XF6F-6 with R-2800-18W and  
      four-bladed propeller.

                    930 of total F6F-5 production was supplied to the
    British FAA as the "Hellcat II".  Most were
    "Hellcat F.II" fighters but 70 (some sources give 80
    or 85 or 95) were F6F-5N night fighters and designated
    "Hellcat NF.II".  Some were converted to a
    reconnaissance configuration and designated "Hellcat
    PR.II" (unarmed) or "Hellcat FR.II" (armed).

but hey, you do have a Corsairs![:D]

Agreed with Andy, but let's tweak uber Corsairs...

Pauk your missing the point unless I am able to use Corsairs on Carriers (which I dont do except naval ones so in mid 44 I have 2 36 plane sqns thats it) then I physically wont have the pool to do anything out of LBA range.
 
The Hellcat reinforcemnt rate is 1/3 of what it should be.
 
PZB will be producing 700+ ish Zekes at least a month not to mention Georges, Oscars. Jacks etc where I am producing 144 Hellcats and 100 FM-2's that we all know cannot go toe to toe with Japanese Fighters.
 
But the allies only have 2 naval fighters the Wildcat and the Hellcat. There is no way with the games reinforcemtn rate that I would commit to an invasion without LBA support. So basically Centpac for the allies is a waste of time. I will certainly never commit the time or effort to an offensive that way again.
 
In a PDU environment it would be suicide for an allied player to try and take a seriously defended objective without LBA support.
 
In future I will just grind my way through the PI/SRA under clouds of unstoppable LBA taking no risks because the mightiest production system in the world will get out produced by the Japanese Empire.
 
Basically against a good player who will swamp you with untrained pilots you will lose 50 - 100 a day (you may shoot down 500 as I did several times) but 100 a day when the replacement rate is 144 a month is impossible to sustain.
 
Anyway Jacks,and Georges do ok against F4U's not 1 to 1 but reasonably close you just need to pick your battles.
 
Re Corsairs they are not unbeatable in escort they are vulnerable, when on ground attack they are vulnerable. They are th ebest air superiority fighter in game but they can be defeated as PZB has proved.
 

Andy, I agree with you, but please consider that PzB is not the "average" Japanese player. He conquered the whole India, so he has no worries about Burma carpet bombing by the Allies and he has plenty of resources and oil avaliable to sustain his huge production number of A/Cs. Not every japanese player goes for India...
I think that the real problem is the A2A model and devs should focus on it.
Less blody air battles means less A/C concentration on Airfield, no need for "extreme" production numbers by Japanese and lot less complains by both sides.

Bye

OK My point is less to do with japanese production I really dont care about it to be honest I just want historical Hellcat production please not 1/3

I would like friendly TF's to have a description "spotted" or "not spotted"
on thero display according to their best guess. It would allow monitoring
fast carrier raids for the weaker side.

What are the chances of getting the ship repair routine looked at?  It kills me that my carrier sets in a lvl 10 port with 5 ARs with only 5 sys dam and takes weeks to repair.  If you can't give control over to the player, can you build in a priority routine? If there are enough points to repair a CV and it’s in a big enough port, it should get repaired.

Ran into a few things,
 1. Japanese Base Forces with zero everything but a broken sound device and a leader, nothing else, no troops or supplies but the units( 18 of them) are still on the map and allied air attacks are targeting them.
 2. Planes bombing ground units that do not exist. Allied planes are bombing the 50th Construction Battalion and there is not one there, turn after turn.
 3. Set a TF to Bombard, auto chosen and handpicked and they go one hex to the target,do nothing and return, sometimes with bombard still active but most times change to surface combat. I always seem to have trouble getting them to bombard. (would like to have been  a fly on the wall listening to the reason why they didn't complete the mission to there superiors). Thank you

A possible improvement to prevent the Karachi capture issue

1. Rename Karachi Persia and Iraq

Create new forces as garrison for that hex in its wider role as being Paiforce.

10th Army (Command HQ range 1)
Br 3rd Corps HQ (range 1)
Indian 21st Corps HQ (Range 1)
31st Indian Armoured Div
2nd, 6th and 12th Indian Divs
3rd and 5th Polish Divs (use Russian Squads)

Make the Indian Divs normal ORBAT but decrease combat squads and arty by 50% and give them 200% extra support squads to reflect these formations being LOC Admin units.

Make sure each of these units has the immovable fortification squad so the allied players cannot abuse them

With that lot in the hex NO ONE is going to try and take Karachi !!!!!

My wish list (only for Japan, sorry but I have never played the Allies seriously yet):

• Japanese auto upgrade factory on/off switch. I DO not want to upgrade all my aircraft to new models.
• Some rationalization in Japanese a/c models. I would like to se Tojo improvements like in RL, Oscar II with better stats, Oscar III etc. Some of these feature are in mods like CHS.
• More useful AA units. Now in stock scenario they are quite useless.
• Level bomber less precise against naval target.
• Dramaticaly increase penalities for overstocking A/C on airfields.
• Introduce a max number of shot per a/c in A2A combat, simulating ammo.

i would like to see a campaign created starting at Nov 26th, 1941 with the KB in the Kuriles departing to attack PH. Of course there would be no 1st turn move...but that would be the point

The ability to sort the "sunk ship list" by date would be nice, so that one can easily check for new entries.

Be able to define the ordnance loads for a/c ,such as at normal, extended range , cap , LR cap , ground attack and naval attack via the editor . note- I don't want to be able to choose load outs in game, quite happy for the AI to do that.

also define the normal,extented and ferry ranges via the editor

Increase slots in all areas of the database

ORIGINAL: Iron Duke

Be able to define the ordnance loads for a/c ,such as at normal, extended range , cap , LR cap , ground attack and naval attack via the editor . note- I don't want to be able to choose load outs in game, quite happy for the AI to do that.

also define the normal,extented and ferry ranges via the editor

Increase slots in all areas of the database

Or have a more open kind of database without slots.

As the Jap player, I would like a specific list of all bases where HI and Manpower
are inoperative due to shortage of resource/Oil and the amount needed to get them on line.

Till now, when starting a PBEM game, one should wait for another to finish his order-given phase and get back it's saved file. Sine the order phase can only take effect in the operation phase, why not let each side give it's order at the same. Then each side send his movement to the oppenoent and execute in both side.
I would like to play WITP with my friends through instant message software like MSN and iCQ, so modification like that will fasten the progress greatly , I hope the suggestion can be accepted, thanks.

A Switch to be able to turn off the hard coded "Torp" atack for planes so equiped this would in therory look something like this:
 
 
Airbase Atack
City Atack
Port Atack
Naval Atack
 Torp Atack
Night Naval Atack
Night Torp Atack
Exc...
 
 The idea is that you can elect not use the Torps and not wast the crews on low value targets, the default Bombload could be used, and or a mexensim to alow for the Larger Bomb loads per the existing rules.
 
............
 
 Alow The Japanese to use the 500KG bomb Type from all revelent aircraft (prety much all twin engine bombers for the Navy and the Army), and Most Naval CV capable atack Aircraft, Notable exception the Val. A compleat list would be easy to make up, if neaded.
 
 
 
 
 
 

ORIGINAL: samthesham

As the Jap player, I would like a specific list of all bases where HI and Manpower
are inoperative due to shortage of resource/Oil and the amount needed to get them on line.

Even better, put the whole mess on a single spreadsheet so it can be dealt with in one action (as opposed to hunting all over the map and keeping pencil & paper notes.....

I posted this as a separate thread, but I see this is supposed to go in this thread...

I've been reading some old threads on this forum and I came across the discussion about the new ability in v1.801 to disband or withdraw a group in the National Main Base and have those pilots and planes available in the pool. I also see Don Bowen said that it will be removed from v1.802 since some players have been exploiting it.

I have two suggestions for saving the feature. The first should be easy to do, and is not as good, the second would probably involve a fair bit of coding and probably isn't feasible.

Solution 1. Simply make the feature Withdraw only. This allows a player to put some much needed planes back into combat units without bringing into play the problems of Disbanding a floatplane or bomber unit with experienced pilots and then feeding those experienced pilots into fighter units.

It isn't an elegant solution, but it is better than getting stuck with the problem I had in the game I'm playing before I discovered this feature. I had a bunch of units with the West Coast headquarters that upgraded to P-40Es leaving a bunch of obsolete fighters out in combat units and I couldn't get enough planes in the pool to do any downgrading of the West Coast fighter units so I could upgrade my combat units.

In that case, I didn't care about the pilot quality because the ones being fed into the pool when I Disbanded were about the same quality as the generic replacement pool anyway.

Solution 2. This one would probably take more effort than you were willing to make, but as I understand it, the generic pilots in the pilot pool don't really exist until assigned to a unit. Then they get a name and some characteristics. What if you added a field to the characteristics for the pilot as to what type of pilot. You could limit it to 3 categories: fighter, bomber, and other. Named pilots who are not assigned (in the pool) can be set to an undefined state and can go into any unit without penalty.

If the program is drawing a named pilot from the pool, it will 1st choose one with the same type as the unit its going to. Second choice would be a named pilot without a plane type designation. Third choice would be a pilot from one of the other plane types, but he takes a hit in experience for transitioning to another plane type.

It would require some changes to the data files and saved game files, but I can also envision a tool that would run at install time of the update that would add this field to the existing files. All the named pilots in the scenario files can be set to the undefined state and then they will be set automatically to the right plane type when they are assigned to a unit.

I may have missed a thread where this was hashed out. I hope I'm not coming across as too pushy or something. The software designer in me is coming out. I don't want to see this feature eliminated entirely since it really helped me out in the game I'm playing when I used it as it was intended.

Bill

Aircraft Database
 
I would like to have the ability to see the stats for 2, 3, even 4 different planes at once in the database screen. With PDU on it is nice to choose upgrades based on stats (obviously!!), but having to either write down or memorise all the details for each different choice is a PAIN. Let me see the stats for the F4F, F6F, F4U, etc all at once so i can compare. Sure, i would only have used this feature the first few times i played, but then when i upgraded to CHS i would have used it again, and then to RHS again, etc.