Matrix Games Forums

It is late 1942 and although I have supplies at Alice Springs and less at Katherine I have no supplies at Darwin and my troops there are starving. It will be very difficult to hold if there is a Japanese invasion.
What can I do to get supplies to Darwin?

MB

Make sure that you have not set any of the cities between Sidney and darwin to "pull" supplies. It seems to me that will mess up the flow to Darwin. Then set Darwin to pull supplies. You should get some there. Bigger the base the better the pull so build it up if you can. Darwin can only support so much. So, if you got too much there it can be a problem as well. That is all I got.

Since the new patch, I've had to send convoys to Darwin to keep it supplied.

how do I set up a base to pull supplies?
I am ignorant on this point.

MB

On the LH side of the base screen there is an option to increase 'supplies requested' and an arrow - be worned though it tends to beef it up by a factor of '3' the amount of supplies the base is requesting, often pinching them from elsewhere.
Darwin is only connected to Katherine (I think) on the rail network & nowhere else which makes moving supplies in a lot harder (by road).
If you can, when you retreat from the DEI see if you can fill up a few small transport freighters with supply that you can unload at Darwin. Running small convoys around the NE of Australia can also be done, which is increasingly risky when the IJ come to stay in PNG and build up their LBA there.
A good alternative would be to base some precious transports or semi-obsolescent bombers at Alice Springs (one end of the railroad terminus linking the rest of Australia up) and then set them on constant supply north to Darwin & Katherine

My plan was to increase the flow thru supply rate at the intervining bases between Darwin and Alice Springs. this is done by increasing the fort and airfield values at each base by use of engineers. In my game it is late sept42. I detached two engineer units from SWPAC plus two australian eng units to "open the road".

I built up Normanton to it's highest level in late 42 and have been using it ever since for supplying Darwin. I've never had problems getting supplies there overland and once they arrive they get loaded onto convoys made up of all those xAKL's that clog up Australian ports. Invade Merauke (sp?) on PNG, built up Coen to it's highest level airbase and load them both up with fighters to provide CAP, (I used to get a lot of bombers flying out of Hollandia.) The other advantage is that it only takes about a couple of days for a convoy to cover the distance. You can build up stocks quite quickly.

This is by far the easiest way I've found for supplying Darwin. You will lose a few ships at first but eventually things should ease up, especially once you have a few p-38s operating.

Every month or so I send a huge convoy to Darwin from Townsville or Sydney escorted by a CV or a couple of CVEs.  Every now and then I lose an xAK, but generally they're unescorted and the fighters on the carriers have a turkey shoot.

Just ship the supplies in. Also you can defend forward of Darwin which means you can stockpile the supplies in isolated bases ( bases with no road connection to other bases ) in the southern DEI. That solves the supply draw problem entirely.

Right now, March 42, I have a bit more than 200,000 tons of supplies and about 200,000 tons of fuel in bases in the southern DEI ( Kendari to Darwin ) with only about 30,000 tons of supplies and 70,000 tons of fuel at Darwin.