Islands of Destiny: RA 5.0 Japanese Side

[crsutton]

I thought this game was over....[&o]

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
In this game, I gave alot of attention to pilot training, though trainers was lowest priority.

What does this mean?

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

I thought this game was over....[&o]

We're just getting started on the 'lessons learned', bro.

[Canoerebel]

Priorities, man, priorities. Pilot training for fighter and bomber pilots got frequent attention; next came ASW and search; then recon; last came transport.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel
In this game, I gave alot of attention to pilot training, though trainers was lowest priority.

What does this mean?

Ah. So, you meant "transports" where you said "trainers".

[Canoerebel]

Oops, yes.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Oops, yes.

John, since this is your AAR, can we call others 'knuckleheads' in here? Just wondering.

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Oops, yes.

John, since this is your AAR, can we call others 'knuckleheads' in here? Just wondering.

Absolutely. Bring them in.

Spent five days being depressed at my Mom's place and got back late-Monday/Early-Tuesday.

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
Here are the top aircraft losses for the war. I will do two posts on this:

Interesting tidbits here:

John: About half of your E13A1 losses were due to OPS losses. What was your perspective about range settings for your float scouts? Did you run them at Max range or limit them most of the time to 'normal' range? Also, what were your typical % settings for NavSearch?

Why do I ask? These numbers for OPS losses look high to me. I generally run my float fighters at 60%; normal range settings.

CR: 2091 C-47 losses is (almost all OPS) high by my book. What were your typical range settings? Did you toggle a squadron 'off' in the event of regional weather problems or heavy OPS losses? Did you have a transport pilot training regimen or did you just let 'em take their knocks from the get go?

In all honesty I never thought about limiting their range to cut down on the Ops Losses. Will consider that for future games. I trained the heck out of my Search Plane pilots when they were not at sea. Generally, their experience stayed decent enough to be useful until the end of the war. When I headed into battle they were run at 100% Search. When not expecting battle or at bases (searching for SS usually) I ran them at about 60% with then the remainder set on rest.

The range comment is an excellent tidbit. Will remember that!

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Oops, yes.

Dan: Did we have the permanent West Coast Training Squadrons established in this version of RA? Did you use them for training and were they useful?

[AcePylut]

Question for the masses... So we know that setting a group to "extended" range increases Ops losses over "normal" range... but...

Does the actual "range" matter? Say I have a group, normal range is 10, extended range is 15. If I set the unit to range 2, will it suffer the same ops losses as if I set it to range 10?

[John 3rd]

I am OFFICIALLY shifting this to a Match Debrief at this point. We have already started but want to make it official.

Decorum shall follow for anyone entering this discussion. Feel like I have to say that due to things said on Dan's AAR that others took great exception to.

Let the discussion really get rocking and rolling with a thrust towards whys? Hows? What have we learned? The goal will be to better understand the match and how it can be used to better players who may have never gone so deep within a campaign.

Hope to apply some of this towards improving Michael and I's work within the whole arc of the Mods: Treaty, Reluctant Admiral, Between the Storms, and Between the Storms Lite.

[AcePylut]

Ok first question: Why didn't you challenge the Death Star with the KB when he invaded the DEI, Phillipines, China, or Korea? What was your thought process during the time (of course hindsight is 50/50 fwiw)

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
...
Dan: Did we have the permanent West Coast Training Squadrons established in this version of RA? Did you use them for training and were they useful?

I think so, but I'm not positive, because I don't remember what squadrons did or didn't appear in earlier games that I played. IE, if a squadron appeared in this game, I have no idea whether it did or didn't appearin in games I played in 2012 or earlier.

That's a lot of equivocating, but I do think there were specialized training squadrons. In fact, I somehow managed to load a fighter training squadron aboard a fleet carrier (Lexington or Enterprise) in San Fran early in the game and couldn't manage to offload it. It remained aboard that ship for the rest of the game, but fortunately that ship wasn't sunk.

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Question for the masses... So we know that setting a group to "extended" range increases Ops losses over "normal" range... but...

Does the actual "range" matter? Say I have a group, normal range is 10, extended range is 15. If I set the unit to range 2, will it suffer the same ops losses as if I set it to range 10?

Where is a good zone to be in? I concur with this question. My OPs losses were quite high early in the war but then I watched Dan's climb as time passed. What have players found that works best?

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

ORIGINAL: John 3rd
...
Dan: Did we have the permanent West Coast Training Squadrons established in this version of RA? Did you use them for training and were they useful?

I think so, but I'm not positive, because I don't remember what squadrons did or didn't appear in earlier games that I played. IE, if a squadron appeared in this game, I have no idea whether it did or didn't appearin in games I played in 2012 or earlier.

That's a lot of equivocating, but I do think there were specialized training squadrons. In fact, I somehow managed to load a fighter training squadron aboard a fleet carrier (Lexington or Enterprise) in San Fran early in the game and couldn't manage to offload it. It remained aboard that ship for the rest of the game, but fortunately that ship wasn't sunk.

That is FUNNY! Your answer jogs my memory and I KNOW you had the Training Squadrons but I had not made them permanent static at that point. Fixed that issue immediately!

[John 3rd]

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

Ok first question: Why didn't you challenge the Death Star with the KB when he invaded the DEI, Phillipines, China, or Korea? What was your thought process during the time (of course hindsight is 50/50 fwiw)

The best chance to hit his Death Star was in the SE DEI when he started the move north. I seem to remember that my CVs had just entered into an upgrade cycle at that point so I was out of position for any sort of meaningful early attack.

Once I saw the sheer number of Fighters carried on the carriers, I saw absolutely no benefit to attacking the Main Fleet. At that point I shifted to trying hit his massed reinforcement TFs. Never could quite pull it off. Rarely could get close enough to initiate a full speed jump to attack the next day.

Dan did fantastically well covering those forces. Highly frustrating!

[BillBrown]

A question for Dan. After you got your fighters and bombers close to the Japanese home islands, did you consider sweeping and bombing the airfields to lessen the number of bases he could use his fighters? That would be before you started the city bombing.

[Canoerebel]

My 4EB were within range long before I got within fighter range, so of course the early bombing campaign didn't involve fighters.

As I drew within fighter range, I elected to (mostly) focus on industrial targets. I focused on the direct rather than the indirect. I knew that bombing industry directly yield points, whereas interdiction (destroying fighters, damaging airfields, etc.), offered only an indirect return. Eventually this doctrine changed, once I finally got a feel that John was starting to run short on fighters and quality pilots. Then 4EB (and 2EB) also began targeting airfields, and fighters began sweeping.

Up until then it seemed to me that the quantity of Japanese fighters and the number of interlocking major airfields made a suppression campaign inefficient. In part, this was due to my bomber pools. They were low enough that I didn't want to lose any on indirect missions when direct missions were available.

[Lecivius]

I have a question, for anyone to answer. I tried to ask in Dan's AAR, without going into any strategy, since I was reading both AAR's. It is my understanding that firebombing Manpower causes fires. These fires then spread to and damage other industries. This 'snowball' effect of causing huge fires by repeated Manpower bombing therefore also generates a 'Snowball' of VP's for permanently destroyed industry. Dan was looking to get serious VP's from bombing. He got enough VP's to win, but was missing on the harvest of VP's that he was hoping for. I know you tried to answer, Dan, but I could not ask pointed questions as OpSec is a priority.

So, my question is, does large scale Manpower bombing over a period of days (or some such) cause huge fires that cause widespread damage to industry that would dramatically increase the daily VP total for the allied player? Or am I, as seems typical anymore, confused? I know firestorms are out, I'm curious about the residual effects of fires in the 10, 20, 50k range etc.