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Fresh build - starting fresh.

One of my minis penetrated and reported a hit on Nevada before it got sunk. Pearl raid was better than last time:

Allied Ships
CM Oglala
BB Tennessee, Bomb hits 11, Torpedo hits 4, heavy fires
BB Arizona, Bomb hits 5, Torpedo hits 5, on fire, heavy damage
BB Pennsylvania, Bomb hits 5, Torpedo hits 5, on fire, heavy damage
BB West Virginia, Bomb hits 4, Torpedo hits 5, heavy damage
BB California, Bomb hits 8, Torpedo hits 5, heavy fires, heavy damage
BB Oklahoma, Bomb hits 9, Torpedo hits 3, heavy fires, heavy damage
CL St. Louis, Bomb hits 3, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
BB Maryland, Bomb hits 9, Torpedo hits 3, heavy fires, heavy damage
BB Nevada, Bomb hits 8, Torpedo hits 4, on fire, heavy damage
xAKL Hirondelle
DD Helm, Torpedo hits 1, heavy damage
DM Pruitt, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
CL Helena, Bomb hits 4, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
CL Honolulu, Bomb hits 1, Torpedo hits 2, on fire, heavy damage
DD Blue, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires
xAKL Manini, Torpedo hits 1, heavy damage
CL Phoenix, Bomb hits 4, Torpedo hits 2, on fire, heavy damage
CA San Francisco, Bomb hits 1, Torpedo hits 3, on fire, heavy damage
xAK Laida, Bomb hits 1, on fire
AVP Swan, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires
AM Rail, Bomb hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
DD Hull, Bomb hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
DM Gamble, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage
ACM Buttress, Bomb hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
PG Sacramento, Bomb hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
CA New Orleans, Bomb hits 3, Torpedo hits 2, heavy fires, heavy damage
AE Pyro, Bomb hits 1
AK Alchiba, Bomb hits 1, Torpedo hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage
AV Tangier, Bomb hits 1, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
CL Detroit, Bomb hits 1, Torpedo hits 1
DD Chew, Bomb hits 1, heavy damage
AVD Hulbert, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage
DD Selfridge, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
AO Ramapo, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
DM Montgomery, Torpedo hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
AV Wright, Bomb hits 1, on fire
DD Cummings, Bomb hits 1, on fire
DD Schley, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage
CL Raleigh, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires
SS Dolphin, Bomb hits 1, on fire
DMS Perry, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires, heavy damage
DD Reid, Torpedo hits 1, heavy damage
DD Case, Bomb hits 1, on fire, heavy damage
DM Breese, Bomb hits 1, heavy fires

3 BBs reported sunk including Warspite! 2 DDs also reported sunk. Force Z was never even sighted much less attacked. I dont expect him to come north this time. I figure he will lie in wait for an invasion of NW Borneo. 324 allied a/c destroyed for 19 of the Imperial forces and 4 minis. Something new on the combat report:

Ground combat at Batan Island (85,70)

Japanese Shock attack

Attacking force 1593 troops, 18 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 61

Defending force 0 troops, 0 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 0

Japanese max assault: 126 - adjusted assault: 29

Allied max defense: 0 - adjusted defense: 1

Japanese assault odds: 29 to 1 (fort level 0)

Japanese forces CAPTURE Batan Island !!!

Combat modifiers
Attacker: shock(+)



Assaulting units:
Sasebo 1st SNLF
24th JAAF AF Bn

For those of us that like to play with animations off, now we at least have an idea what we are up against.

Force deployments have changed slightly, but not enough to change the basic plan. However, the manner in which I am going to do it will. Instead of using my bombers for naval attack I am going to concentrate on naval search to spot his ships. He has no effective anti-naval bombers in the area so in order to avoid losses to his CAP fighters, I will just spot him so I can gun them down ship to ship. I have the early war advantage in experience. Initial targets on the PI invasion will be a few undefended airfields and ports that I can base my search planes at in the middle and lower PI. These will be taken by fast transport groups and para assault. Cayagan will still be a major target of course. KB will not loiter this time. One of the bugs in the last version was ship based seaplanes that canceled because of weather showed up on the map, so he had a pretty good idea where all my capital ships were. 16 division will hit the north side with 48th.

With carriers carrying a finite amount of torpedoes, has the die roll been almost been eliminated when it come to Kates launching torpedoes at Pearl with the initial attacks?? It seems that most AARs in AE have a significant amount of torpedoes being launched vs original WitP when the whole attack could go off without a single torpedo hit. 

That attack on PH looks like it probably used almost all (if not all) torpedoes on the KB. Also, Tenn. gets whacked with 4 torpedoes and doesn't have heavy damage? I assume FoW helped pad that number a tad.

Assuming almost all torpedoes hit that's about say 80 loaded on Kates and launched. How many per CV in the KB?

Thanks for putting up the next PBEM AAR Yammy.
 
Any and all screenshoting, especially showing new features - such as the new loading routines, are most appreciated by all of us!

Tennessee and Maryland were both reported sunk. No points for it yet, meaning unconfirmed.

As far as torps: Akagi, Hiryu, and Soryu each have 18 remaining out of 45, 36, and 36 respectively. Kaga must have used 800kg because she still has a full load of 45. Shokaku and Zuikaku attacked the airfield so they both have full loads of 45 as well.

New load isnt a whole lot different except there are 2 screens:

The first is pretty much the same except the bottom row of buttons. These are pretty self-explanatory. I always hit the "verify load" button when I am done. This takes you to the second screen (shown below the first).

This screen you see the unit, the ships it is loading into, and the percentage loaded. If it isnt 100% loaded you have 3 basic options.

1) you can hit back, and go back and manually modify the TF (use different ships add ships of your own choosing ect).

2) You can hit "add a ship" to add a single ship to the TF (you dont get to pick the ship added if you use this method and they dont always make the best choice - I had one at Shanghai last game that added an AK that had damage on it when there were 11 other ships there that didnt. Speed may also be an issue).

3) You can hit "use minimum ships" that basically does #2 as many times as it takes to get the unit fully loaded.

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

Tennessee and Maryland were both reported sunk. No points for it yet, meaning unconfirmed.

As far as torps: Akagi, Hiryu, and Soryu each have 18 remaining out of 45, 36, and 36 respectively. Kaga must have used 800kg because she still has a full load of 45. Shokaku and Zuikaku attacked the airfield so they both have full loads of 45 as well.

And how many of those torpedoes existed in history??????

TF125 is bringing reinforcements to Singora. They are currently off the Vietnam coast just north of Cam Rahn Bay. I know he will have subs patrolling the south coast, so I am going to use waypoints to "drive around" them. In the old TF screen where you would select a waypoint its now called TF routing, and you get this screen when you hit it. All the options on this screen pretty simple to figure out. The "set patrol zone" is very handy for subs. I will show this later.

Thanks for posting that Yammy. Your narrative and screens help explain it very well.

Let me ask a specific loading question:

Lets say its late war and I am putting together a large Marine invasion fleet. In vanilla WitP, I would first create small, calculated transport TF's and custom load each unit for the invasion. Then once I have all the troops loaded that I need (each in its own TF), I would combine them into 100 ship TF's with all the supporting craft and so on. As you can imagine, this process took a lot of time and a lot of planning to get it to work right.

With these improvements in AE, will I be able to *FIRST* create my 100 ship TF and then cherry-pick the troops that I want loaded and what ships *within* that 100 ship TF will load each individual unit? From what I can tell, that will be the case. Needless to say that would save a huge amount of time for those big invasions!, not to mention just routine troop loading also.

Thanks in advance.

Chad

Well first off, you can fit a marine division into 6 APs, so frankly you wont need these 100 ship TFs. And to answer the specific question, no. Unless you build it one at a time, you cant control what ship gets what unit.

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

Well first off, you can fit a marine division into 6 APs, so frankly you wont need these 100 ship TFs. And to answer the specific question, no. Unless you build it one at a time, you cant control what ship gets what unit.

Thanks for the reply. So it works the same as in vanilla WitP: if I have 30 AP's in a TF and select them to load the 2nd Marine Division, the division will get chopped up into 30 pieces denying me the ability to load any other troops into that TF.

This is never a problem with normal transport activities, but when you need 30-40 LST's for a full strength division, more for those couple of tank BN's and that HQ also, not to mention more for supplies, plus minesweeping, ASW, and DD/CL/CA combinations for coastal suppression in the actual TF, its hard for me to stay away from the 100 ship max on big assault.

Thats not a big deal, I was just curious how that would work.

Thanks again for the reply and more importantly, the AAR!

Chad

Chad, actually I'm not sure combining your TFs into one big one is the best plan. In stock as well as AE I usually use specific TFs for specific purposes and use them TOGETHER to perform the invasion, but not necessarily as one TF. Here is the TF organization I used for the invasion of Tarawa in my recent PBEM test game with jrcar.

Carrier Force
4xCV TFs each with:
CV, BB, 5 CA/CL, 8 DD
We had a total of 108 Wildcats, 140 SBD and 60 TBD going in.

Bombardment and Surface forces
2xBombardment groups each with:
2 BB, 2 DD, 2 DMS
1 Surface Guard Force with:
2 BB, 5 DD
1 Minesweeping advance force with:
2 DMS

Landing Forces:
3 Landing Groups (2nd Marines, 8th Marines, I Amphib Corps HQ), each with:
1 CL, 4 DD, 2 DMS, 1 AP, 3 xAP

Replenishment Force:
10 AO, 4 DD, 1 AE

Follow on forces:
Base Force (101st USN) 4 DD, 2 DMS, 3 xAP
Fighter Squadron (VMF121) 1 DD, 1 DMS, 1 AK
Supply Force: 4 AK

Seaplane Force (Baker)
VP-91 (10 PBY)
Tender: 1 AVD, 1 DM
Oiler: 1 AO, 1 DD

Submarines:
8 Fleet boats in the Marshalls and Gilberts
6 Pig Boats, in the Gilberts


==

So 15 "Task Forces" (in game terms) (not counting the submarines) and this was a fairly small (2 regiment) invasion.

Joe, the common theory in WITP has been to use a lot of transports so that the units can unload in one or two days. Does this setup you have allow for the troops to all get the men ashore within a couple of days? 

I know, it has been mentioned a lot of times before. But I need to state again, that I will love the TF naming thing.
As I am a "micromanagment-fanboy" (in my opinion, you should transport torpedos to destination, not generate them[:D]), it will help a lot.

But that's only one point on the very long list of improvement, I am looking forward too.[&o]

Kind regards

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Joe, the common theory in WITP has been to use a lot of transports so that the units can unload in one or two days. Does this setup you have allow for the troops to all get the men ashore within a couple of days? 

Loading/unloading rates are more realistic in AE.
[:)]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Joe, the common theory in WITP has been to use a lot of transports so that the units can unload in one or two days. Does this setup you have allow for the troops to all get the men ashore within a couple of days? 

Loading/unloading rates are more realistic in AE.
[:)]

Number of transports is important only until port capacity is reached. Small ports have very small capacities - send a lot of transports and they wait in line.

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

. . .

Landing Forces:
3 Landing Groups (2nd Marines, 8th Marines, I Amphib Corps HQ), each with:
1 CL, 4 DD, 2 DMS, 1 AP, 3 xAP

. . .

The whole 100 ship thing was something I have played around with in my PBEM (now over), and it was evolved too, not started with. Mines were a big problem in my games as the Allies, so I wanted to get the most out of my available minesweepers. My early war invasions had big problems with losses to mines, and every once and awhile an amphib TF would lag behind and miss D-Day.

The biggest reason though was my opponent had not brought his Combined Fleet out to play in over 2 years. I can only imagine what would happen if the Combined Fleet pounced on a troop laden 100 ship TF [:D]

Joe, how did that invasion go in AE? Was there enough supply on D-Day for the shock assault? With only 4 AP's (and 3 of them civilian), and the new unloading rules, I would curious how much supply was ashore on D+1.

Also, its fun to see someone else actually plan out specific TF's ahead of time before an invasion. For my PBEM Saipan/Tinian/Guam landings, I had that stuff figured out and written down way in advance.

Adds to the immersion!

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

Number of transports is important only until port capacity is reached. Small ports have very small capacities - send a lot of transports and they wait in line.

Is this the tonnage limit or a number of ships limit?

Also, how will this work for invasions? Will the same port (or beach?) limit apply, or will you essentially have 'unlimited' beach space for unloading?

To use Joe's Tarawa example above, since they unloading and assaulted on the Lagoon side, there was very, very limited space for unloading. All the ships in the world could not have gotten more supplies ashore that Northern beach just from a congestion point of view.

In other words, if Joe had brought along a TF of just xAK's, and had 40 of them, would they all be able to unload on D-day?

Thanks in advance!

Chad

ORIGINAL: Don Bowen

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Joe, the common theory in WITP has been to use a lot of transports so that the units can unload in one or two days. Does this setup you have allow for the troops to all get the men ashore within a couple of days? 

Loading/unloading rates are more realistic in AE.
[:)]

Number of transports is important only until port capacity is reached. Small ports have very small capacities - send a lot of transports and they wait in line.

I don't believe that you get to use the port facilities while invading an atoll such as Tarawa, thus my question. I'm talking about over the beach invasions, where we have been using huge numbers of ships in order to get the troops unloaded quickly.

So, again, the question is: does using such small numbers of transports allow an invading force to unload quickly enough to make an invasion viable?

I just threw this together quick to show an example of a "patrol". You can see that you set up to 3 waypoints, and your TF will patrol between these 3. Also you can see that your loiter time at each hex is independently settable. The green hexes in the path at bottom in this case are the patrol hexes (and no, this isnt really where I am going to have this TF patrol, I just tossed it together to show you).