Empires Ablaze Mod

[Andy Mac]

OK I am going to hold off making any suggestions until I actually see the mod as its getting hard to visualise now I may have more after I have a closer look !!!

[Andy Mac]

My only issue Nemo is for folk like me used to Stock 60 Hurricanes in early 42 moving to 60 Hurricanes and 50 Spit VB's after june 42 this is going to be a hell of a culture shock !!!! Not tomention 40 Thuds and 40 Spitfire VIII's in mid/late 43

So by mid 43 190 fighters per month !!!

If I have understood you correctly the RAF gets 26 Hurricane I's upgrading to 26 Hurricane IIc's and 26 Spits so 52 fighters per month all the way through to mid 43. Even if you have given the IIc a replacement of 25 as well so its 77 total per month thats tight (if you havent expect a request form me when I see it !!!!)

[Mike Scholl]

One other weird thing... I just found Sid included a Japanese NUKE sub in RHS EOS . It is based on some plans he has from late-war Japan. I'm leaving it in as it only appears in late 45 and is just too plain weird and cool to leave out .


Let's hope Sid got the entire event right. The sub sails one hex out of port, sufferers a reactor failure, bar-b-que's the crew and some passing fish, and is never heard from again.....

[Nemo121]

Hehe, can you handle .rar extensions so I can zip the files into one package?
 
As to the plane numbers. Well, you are getting significantly more than in CHS or RHS PLUS you can smuggle a few US squadrons over there by ship... and if you plan it properly you can have them there by the end of December...
 
In my single RHS game as the Allies I had USN fighters, US Army fighters, bombers and divebombers all operating out of India by mid-January ( and this was after they had fought in DEI)... I would advise any Allied player to do the same since that's necessary to fight the Japanese off if they go that way. Again I believe the solution lies not in uebering out the British until they can survive whatever the Japanese throw at them but instead lies in the Allied player playing a good game and making sound strategic judgements from Day 1.

[Andy Mac]

I dont neccesarily disagree however the rates for fighters in India are based on a history where the Japanese did NOT attack India until 44 and the monsoon shut down operations for 4 months every year
 
Neither event will occur in this mod...
 
No Account is taken of the Sqns in the MEast that could have redeployed if required or more importantly of the Frames that were present Churchill in his memoirs said that the blackest day of the war was the attack on Ceylon had that materialised into something more serious you can be sure the allies would have reacted....giving the RN and USN more battleships while shorting aircraft just leads to an unbalanced game.
 
I dont play CHS or RHS I dont particularily like or agree with all the things they have done in GAME terms, I have less issue with what they have done from a historcal perspective because it is hard to argue they have got it wrong - and its to much grief to change them for a PBEM - which is why im letting you do all the work [:D][:D]
 
Yes I can handle RAR's

[Nemo121]

Cool.
 
And yeah I take your point... One nice thing about this mod is that if ANYONE argues that x or y wasn't historical I'm gonna do the following:
 
1. Point them to the nuclear submarine .
2. Point them to the changes to the British and US Navy.
3. Point them to the Samurai Class of DDs I put in following your suggestion. 14 DDs which will seem very "familiar" to forum dwellers... Basically I said "What would happen if Japan built DDs almost the size of their early war CLs but with the emphasis on air defence." This was my answer.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

One other weird thing... I just found Sid included a Japanese NUKE sub in RHS EOS . It is based on some plans he has from late-war Japan. I'm leaving it in as it only appears in late 45 and is just too plain weird and cool to leave out .

In that case for good measure have the USS Midway arrive 18 months early. [X(]

[Andy Mac]

[:D][:D] I dont mid playing a mod that totally ignores histroy in fact its refreshing that way you can do what you like as long as someone will play you !!!!

[Nemo121]

witpqs,
 
There are a few ship slots available. If you can give me the info for it I'll add it. It can hardly unbalance the mod since Midway wouldn't arrive until late 45 when Japan should be pretty much on the ropes anyway.

[1EyedJacks]

Hi Nemo121,

I'm just curious - could you make a variant of TP that is only armed with torpedoes? A few squadrons here or there would give more control over armament for strategic operations...

Just a thought.

[Nemo121]

Tp ??? I believe there are still a few slots available so, sure, if you tell me which plane we're talking about and any squadrons ( and their slot numbers if possible) that you have in mind I'll make the change.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

P-51... Ok how about switching the arrival date of the P-51 B from September 1st 43 to 1st March 43? That is 6 months earlier. I'll also accelerate the P-51D about 3 months as I'm sure it would have been accelerated a bit given experience with the P-51B.

The USN shouldn't have any problems in this game with pilots as it gets 200 per month.

Actually it is also possible that the the P-38 would also be available much sooner if the prototype had not crashed during its long discatnce publicity stunt. This could have made the P-38 available in a combat ready model (P38-G) but the end of 1940, instead of 1942.

[1EyedJacks]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Tp ??? I believe there are still a few slots available so, sure, if you tell me which plane we're talking about and any squadrons ( and their slot numbers if possible) that you have in mind I'll make the change.

Oops - I was referring to Torpedo Bombers (TB) - I must have been typing w/o engaging the brain again... lol. I was thinking that if a squadron of Kates were selected and for the Allies a Squadron of SBDs as only being armed with torpedos the player would KNOW that at least that squadron would perform torpedo attacks instead of arming itself with bombs...

[Nemo121]

Unfortunately that's a hard-coded thing. I can give the plane torpedoes BUT once it flies beyond normal range ( or attacks a port) a hard-coded crapshoot comes into effect.

On the plus side I managed to free up a few aircraft slots by getting rid of most of the Japanese night fighters and replacing them with the Ki-219 Uhu  ( a Henschel design which the Japanese could have had in 43 if they had funded it.... The Nazis hated Henschel and so he tried to sell a lot of his designs to Japan in order to stay afloat. He even spent a fair bit of time in Japan pre-war trying to get them to licence some of his stuff.

I've also managed to find a slot for the Ki-115 Tsurugi ( sword ) with Nakajima engines, a purpose-designed kamikaze plane. I chose Nakaijimas since Japan should have a lot of them to spare in 1945 and thus should be able to produce a lot of Ki-115 Tsurugis. They are pretty crap planes BUT almost limitless monthly production runs combined with hordes of throw-away pilots should create a threat the Allies have to honour. They also only have a range of 3 hexes ( 4 extended) so they are very short-range defensive weapons. If they had longer range I wouldn't have put them in as they could have been unbalancing. This way they only hurt the Allies if the Allies are mounting an amphibious invasion.

I've removed most auto-upgrades except if they are variants of the same basic plane ( so the Ki-45 I auto-upgrades to Ki-45 II but the Ki-43 I no longer upgrades to a Jack or Ki-44). Since the Tsurugi was designed to be able to be built in cottage industry ( and has a durability and performance to match[X(] ) I've added it as the auto-upgrade to all of the planes which are obsolescent by 1945.

So when Japan hits 1945 suddenly all of these factories which have been lying idle for many years will spring to life producing Tsurugis. There will be more of them than pilots ( but this should give some redundancy in the face of Allied bombing) and they won't achieve much but, at least, they use less useful engines than other possible kamikaze planes and so should have some utility.

[Sneer]

you need to give more industry slots
to allow having 3-4 factories of one plane - otherwise retooling can take too much time -3- 4 months
and it will be more painfull than supply cost

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

witpqs,

There are a few ship slots available. If you can give me the info for it I'll add it. It can hardly unbalance the mod since Midway wouldn't arrive until late 45 when Japan should be pretty much on the ropes anyway.

First, it was a joke. Sorry for that being unclear - did not mean to waste your time. Second, I thought it was in already? Maybe Sid pulled it out (it was in CHS). Third, if you did include it 18 months early, that would bring it in during 1st quarter '44!!!

[Nemo121]

Ah ok I think Sid pulled it. I certainly can't find it, I'm game for adding it though.

[Nemo121]

[left]Andy and I have been looking into this and making such changes as are requested by either side... What we've ended up with can be seen below ( Nb I typed this as a sort of intro to the mod for Alaskan Warrior's Alternate History site). Comments welcome.[/left][left] [/left][left] [/left][center]Report of the Senate Commission for the Investigation of [/center][center]Japan's Conduct of the Great Pacific War.[/center][center]Reporting to the Armed Services Committee, 1947.[/center] 
In June of 1939 a round of assasinations swept the political and military doyens of Japanese strategy. The most visible proponents of each faction's ideologies were removed in a brutal and efficient series of assasinations and by the time the parties involved realised that their old enemies are not guilty of ordering these assasinations it is too late and they are involved in a silent, deadly war of assasination and counter-assasination. What emerged in the winter of 1939 was a cadre of middle-ranking officers who have tired of the in-fighting, factionalism and ideology which has riven the national political level of decision-making and have decided, with Emperor Hirohito's implicit consent, that for Japan to succeed on the international stage pragmatism and not ideology must guide its actions.
With most ideologues either dead or in hiding Emperor Hirohito asste increased control over his much-diminished privy council and the replacement of the dead and cowering by those of a more pragmatic bent began. They immediately went to work and the results of their deliberations would rock the world back on its heels in the first three years of the Great Pacific War.
The first conclusion of the new Grand Commanders of the Army and Navy, General Yamashita and Admiral Yamamoto respectively, was that war with the west was inevitable and with the growing importance of airpower it was vital to push the boundaries of the empire out as far as possible so as to protect it from the sort of unstoppable air raids the Italian theorist Douhet predicted would be a staple of future wars.

The second conclusion was tied to the acceptance of Admiral Yamamoto's view that America was an industrial powerhouse the Japanese could simply not hope to defeat in a war of attrition. Thus the army and navy agreed that they would subjugate military needs to economic reality and strive, at all times, to maximise the effective military force they could create from their limite pools of manpower and materiel.
The third conclusion was that the Imperial Japanese Navy had been equipping itself to fight "the last war" and not the war that was coming. The underpinning of naval strategy for the past decades had been the belief that the Imperial Japanese Navy would meet the American Navy in a decisive High Seas engagement near the Phillipines after weakening the American navy with concentrated destroyer and submarine attacks on the way. This doctrine was now abandoned and replaced with one focusing much more on the airplane, naval carriers and power projection from captured airbases.
 
What did this specifically result in?
1. Cancellation of Nate production and concentration of all efforts into producing the A6M2 and A6M-N2.
2. Increased efforts to gain technological insight from the Germans including the purchase of three Ju-88s, three Me-264s, several Me-109s and, later, several Uhu prototypes during the period in which interest in the design in Germany was low.
3. The conversion of the Yamato and Musashi into armoured carriers with deck armour proof against the largest bombs known to be carried by Allied naval divebombers.
4. A recognition that the Navy Task Forces were weak in terms of air defence and the conversion of one of the CAs in production to a "Designer Class" heavy cruiser foregoing all heavy anti-ship armament and focussing instead on packing as many 3.9 inch, 40mm Bofors and 25mm AAA weapons as possible onto a heavily-armoured CA hull as well as the laying down of a series of anti-aircraft destroyers of the Samurai class. With the Designer Class CAs to anchor the CV TF defence and draw enemy attackers onto themselves as flames to a moth and the Samurai class to provide additional firepower it was envisioned that the strength of anti-aircraft defensive fire protectin Japan's precious carriers would increase logarithmically.
5. A clear division between navy torpedo-armed twin-engined bombers designed for naval strikes and army bombers designed for the ground attack role. No longer would army bombers carry a paltry number of 250 Kg bombs in order to maximise their effectiveness against naval targets. No, army bombers would now carry a greater number of smaller, 100Kg and 50 Kg bombs, to increase their effectiveness against enemy ground targets while the role of attacking enemy surface fleets would devolve onto the torpedo-attack arm.
6. The laying down of a small number ultra-light, ultra-long range CVLs mounting no armour but capable of dashes at 30 knots as well as a series of four oilers capable of keeping pace with them.
7. The conversion of many merchant shipyards to naval needs in order to provide the number of ultra-light Kaitana class raiding CVLs and small escorts envisioned in the plan.
8. The addition of two more infantry divisions to the Southern Area Army and a greater emphasis on armoured warfare than had been present heretofore. All Independent Tank Companies in the Army and Navy were consolidated into two understrength brigades and 3 Tank Divisions, Hirohito, Imperial and Kamikaze, were due to be raised in the latter portion of 1942.
 
Unfortunately the above planning was all focussed on the assumption that the war would not begin until late 1942. With the American strangulation of Japan's economic lifeblood beginning with the imposition of sanctions in early 1941 Japan's leaders decided to go to war in late 1941 to try to carve out as much of an empire as they could with the forces at their disposal at that time. Their hope was that the arrival of the new fleet and new airplanes during the course of 1942 and 1943 would allow them to so strongly fortify their holdings that any American counter-offensive would be crushed and the Americans forced to sue for peace.
 
OOC: One other change which has been made to the mod but which no-one would be able to place into a historical context is the removal of all transport and non-combat submarines and their replacement with submarines with torpedo tubes.
 
 
Errata:
Due to the nature of hard-coded upgrade paths if he player wants to upgrade to the G7M or G9M from an army bomber squadron it is first necessary to downgrade this army squadron to G3Ms so don't run out of G3Ms or you'll have to build more until such time as you have enough to downgrade.
Floatplane and floatfighter squadrons can upgrade to the Ki-115. This represents Japan pressing pilots in the floatplane training units into action as extempore kamikazes.
One cannot upgrade from the B5N, B6N or B7A to Tsuguri.
The Ki-115 Tsuguri is modelled without an engine. It can still fly and attack targets. This reduces its HI cost to Japan from 36 HI to just 18 HI and means that we assume Tsuguris are fitted with whatever engines are lying around spare ( just as was intended in real life ). This accounts for the Tsuguris terrible performance.
Allied forces have also been significantly strengthened. The British receive 1 extra division in 1942, another in 44, a wing of 48 Spitfires ready to reinforce India should it be threatened with invasion, an additional 2 BBs, 4 CLs and 12 Tribal class DDs in early 42 with 3 of their carriers appearing 18 months to 1 year prior to the historical date and another entirely new carrier. In addition the replacement and production rates for several significant aircraft have been increased. One special attack Lancaster squadron has also been added. This Lancaster squadron mounts 4000lb bombs and is capable of devastating pinpoint raids ( all pilots have more than 90 Exp) and was added at AndyMac's request.
American forces receive carrier-borne Corsairs a full year earlier than in stock or RHS/CHS, receive an additional 4 Essex class CVs, 2 CVEs with Corsair Replacement squadrons and 6 more BBs. In addition they also receive P-51Bs a year before they actually historically arrived and get 1 USMC, 1 amoured and 1 parachute division to aid their counter-offensives in 43 and 44.
.

[Andy Mac]

OK 1st warning dont play this mod if you want History as History it aint this is hell on earth....
 
Despite all the toys the allies get in 44 and 45 42 is going to HURT a LOT and 43 will only begin to see the turn of the tide very late in the day - its basically 2 years of getting kicked around before you give out payback
 
We are still negotiating/discussing exact final changes and testing the ones made - so far there hasnt been a lot from my wish list that has been turned down - My only complaint is that Nemo has let the allies have to many Battleships and Carriers but hey I dont know how devastating the IJN will be.
 
Andy

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Ah ok I think Sid pulled it. I certainly can't find it, I'm game for adding it though.

Midway was pulled in EOS at the request of the Allied team - in favor of more Essex class ships. I attempted to convert all three Midways - although only one was in RHS - but the third one arrives too late. Still - they picked up two Essex class ships for one Midway - and somewhat sooner. I had to fudge an air group for the second one - but the first one kept the Midway group.

IF you put the Midways back in (AND IF you care about things like steel, shipyard capacity, etc)
THEN you need to take those Essex class ships back out. You will find the alternate list in RHSCVO and RHSRAO, which used to have the same ships as RHSEOS for the Allies.