Pacific At War Karl Japs Larry Allies

[larryfulkerson]

T123, Takao, Formosa
I finally pushed my way toward the northern end of the island. A few more remnants to clean up and the island is mine. I'm going to see if I can't get the B-29's based there so I can bomb the Jap home islands or maybe soften up Okinawa for a couple of months or so to make the takedown easier. Okinawa is a fortress as you can imagine. I'll have to see what condition Tokyo is in to see which automatic victory hex is easier to capture. There's only 71 turns left to play so there's still a non-zero chance that Karl can win this game.

[larryfulkerson]

T123, Ktarakja, Sumatra
I'm in the process of clearing the island of Sumatra whilc everything else is going on elsewhere and there's must two more hot spots and I've got some attacks scheduled. Also I'm using 2 British Regiments to do an amphibious assault on Blair Port to try to clear that island next. I can base some planes there to protect the east coast of India from invasion. I'm thinking that Karl has troops to spare and he's so sneaky that he might just try to invade somewhere on the east coast, mainly because I'm not guarding it very well yet.

[larryfulkerson]

T123, Tokyo
I made my first B-29 strike on the industry at Yokohoma and got some hits but it was very very expensive. He's turned Tokyo into a fortress and I had no idea and I lost half a squadron of my best bombers. D'oh. It's mistakes like this that's going to hand the game to Karl.

[larryfulkerson]

T124, Losses so far
I saw Thomas Harvey logged on yesterday and I thought I might ought to post some statistics because he's the designer and might want to know that kind of stuff. Here's the Allied losses so far:

[larryfulkerson]

T124, Some Ships Status
I started making a list of what carriers still exist in the game and then thought I ought to explore how many have been sunk as well. Here's what still exists and what's been sunk. Also, some stats of the late model B-25's.

[larryfulkerson]

T124, Some Ships Status
I captured another port and airfield so that there's only the northern end of the island left to fight over. And then the assault on Okinawa can begin.

[Cfant]

Hm, in Third Reich and in Into Darkness (its successor) I found, that CVs are very easily sunk. Problem seems to be, that in TOAW you can mass up hundreds of naval bombers. Attached is a picture of massed naval bombers. It is quite unhistorical that so many naval bombers attack at the same time. But even with fewer numbers: CVs are sinking in roaring numbers. Have you noticed that here too?

In Third Reich I intercepted Unternehmen Weserübung. About 70-80 naval bombers sank 6 destroyers, 2 light cruisers, 2 heavy cruisers and 1 battleship as well as 3 troop transports, at times the enemy had about 300 fighters in the air. In short: I find it too easy to sink ships from the air, especially since you have several combat rounds.

[larryfulkerson]

I have noticed the same thing in PAW. Ships are way more vulnerable than they should be. I've learned to workaround it somewhat but it IS agravating. I've learned to stock the terrain along my ship's path with fighters to CAP the ships as they pass. Keep moving the fighters to cover the transit.

[Cfant]

Maybe marine bombers should only attack once in a turn. I somehow think a fleet would move, if attacked bei a hundred marine bombers. At least I would, if I was an admiral

[thomasharvey]

Carriers in the actual war were quite fragile with wooden decks. Some were destroyed with a single bomb or Kamikaze hit. Three Japanese carriers at Midway were set on fire to sink in only five minutes of attack. Ships in general were very vulnerable to torpedoes from any source and dive bombers could sink or heavily damage ships during only minutes of an attack.

In PAW and other scenarios it is the CAP that is lacking. During the war a CAP of 300 aircraft would be considered a very strong defense but in PAW you need over 1000 CAP. For the US fleet to repeat history in combat you must do what they did. All the carriers must go forward together close enough to support each other. One must group the carrier groups in maximum stacking of flak ships but only one or two carriers in a single hex. The carriers need more fighters on them than bombers. In the actual war the Navy made sure they had at least 50 percent of the aircraft aboard as fighters. In the early days the bombers outnumbered the fighters. All ships must be used in many groups and then repaired in between large invasions. Penny packets of ships and aircraft is a prescription for disaster.

In PAW land based aircraft is also quite useful and must be used to the maximum extent possible. Late in the war the US should be able to put up over 2000 aircraft on CAP from all sources over a single grouping of ships. Hitting Japanese airfields to reduce the potential attacks is also necessary which is what the US Navy was very good at. Nimitz even wanted B29 strikes redirected to hit airfields during the Kamikaze battles at Okinawa but I don't think that was done.

The naval attrition divider could be increased to make ships in general harder to sink from all sources but then no Midway victory would be possible. I set PAW to enable a Midway style victory if carriers are not heavily protected. In the early days the side that struck first would win. Later the US put up enough defense to make it difficult for Japanese bombers to get through.

[Cfant]

ORIGINAL: thomasharvey

Carriers in the actual war were quite fragile with wooden decks. Some were destroyed with a single bomb or Kamikaze hit. Three Japanese carriers at Midway were set on fire to sink in only five minutes of attack. Ships in general were very vulnerable to torpedoes from any source and dive bombers could sink or heavily damage ships during only minutes of an attack.

You speak for the Americans. The Brits hat armored decks, as far as I know. Didn't even the Americans ask for british carriers in the late war, because they were better protected against Kamikaze-fighters?

However, capital ships are too easy to destroy by air in TOAW. It may be possible to find a workaround with the naval attrition divider, but while this may improve one situation, it may also be worse in an other fight...

@Larry: How do amphibious invasions work in the scenario? They are a pest in TOAW. When failing, the wait a week to be sunk transports should at least be able to retreat after an attack. Like every other unit can.

[larryfulkerson]

@Larry: How do amphibious invasions work in the scenario? They are a pest in TOAW. When failing, the wait a week to be sunk transports should at least be able to retreat after an attack. Like every other unit can.

Yeah, those attacking units that fail to get ashore have to sit in their hex until next turn which may be an entire week ( or more ) and are very vulnerable to enemy attacks which a lot of the time results in them getting destroyed. That is terribly unrealistic. There must be changes to TOAW to fix this but I fear that the priority for a change to this situation might be incredably low right now.

[Cfant]

Yeah, I suggested that during the development process of TOAW IV. Also on my wishlist then: more then 2 sides, so you can set different shock boni/mali. In WW1-scenarios Austrians also profit form German shock, which is... strange

[larryfulkerson]

T130, Taihoku
I finally cleared the island of Formosa....now to tackle Okinawa.

[larryfulkerson]

T133, Expected Reinforcements
I'm scheduled to receive a lot of units and equipment in T134 which includes a lot of aircraft. I was hoping for another CV in the mix but it looks like I'm going to have to wait a little while longer for that kind of thing. During Karl's last turn he sank another of my CV's with his LBA because I didn't have enough fighters flying CAP at the time. D'oh.

[Sarsfield]

This game has now ended in a Stalemate

Playing as the Japs I had decided from early on to not to try and grab too much and defend the early gains better by not overextending my conquests.

The Victory conditions are set in stone in this scenario - the US must take Tokyo or Okinawa to win

I decided to fortify Okinawa to the maximum and put the Emperor's finest troops to hold it.

Eventually Larry was in a position to assault by TBH and IMO it was virtually impregnable at that stage.

Also due to the game mechanics of TOAW anti ship attacks can be devastating and this hit the US Carriers hard so I think that Larry was a few cans short of them by the time he reached Okinawa.

It was a good game and I enjoyed it but the Japanese get so many reinforcements as the game develops that it becomes very very hard for the US to win with conventional weapons.