mdiehl I believe that everything is unrealistic to you within this game unless it involves the Allies steamrolling the Axis at virtually every turn.
You believe incorrectly. I completely support all manner of Axis game successes provided that the underlying framework for these successes are within the bounds of plausibility. Coordinating LR CAP from airbases over a distant target is not within the plausible bounds of WW2 Japanese capability.
There are four different fighter bases involved here.
That's three too many, by real world examples.
Pardon me for not consulting a realism coach in deciding where or how to base my fighters.
I'm not knocking your strategy. I'm knocking the design that permits it.
As Tom himself said regarding his deployment of hundreds of 4E bombers to Cooktown, I am 'God' in my game and can deploy my fighters as I wish.
Quite so. I wonder why the consim thinks the Allied player is going to have hundreds of 4Es at Cooktown when they'd only be concentrated to that extent for important strategic targets, most of which were presumed to be in Europe (although I could see an argument for the Allied player attempting to build up good enough logistics such that by mid-1943 he might hammer Tarakan, Balikpapan, or some of the other Indonesia-SRA barrier resources --- in effect the low hanging fruit from Australia.
But in your game, given that you have concentrations of laughably unrealistic masses of laughably overrated Japanese fighters, I don't have a problem with your opponent massing 4EBs for night bombing raids. I think he was a bit of a sucker to agree to your demand that he only use them in daylight ops mode, precisely because I know that the Japanese has the unrealistic capability of making a wholesale hash of daylight 4EBs.
There is plenty of unrealism here in this game. It is unrealistic that Tom has parked every allied CV until he has hellcats and avengers on all of them. But that is his preroggative.
Agreed. But parking every Allied CV until the Hellcats arrive is a realistic solution to an unrealistic problem regarding exaggerated IJN fighter capabilities. "Sir Robin" is a choice that the real world USN did not embrace because the real world USN expected (and achieved) far better results than the virtual USN represented in the game -- wherein the Allies 1942 choice it to play "Sir Robin" or else play the "Invincible" Black Knight as his limbs are predictably shorn away.
Show me a fellow who rejects statistical analysis a priori and I'll show you a fellow who has no knowledge of statistics.
Didn't we have this conversation already?