The principle reason why Port Morosby is such a tough nut to crack is because the first thing players do on Turn 1 is stuff every available FG and BG sitting in Australia over to PM, along with a healthy serving of LCU's, limited only by the availability of air support points contained in ENG units.
Though a perfectly legal action within the game, this has always left me with a bit of sense of disatisfaction. The first question that comes to my mind is...."why didn't the Allies do this historically?"
I know that a large part of the answer involves Hindsight. The Allied player is far more in the know about IJN strength levels at that time, the historical objectives and the limitations in troop and shipping levels that they had Another part of the puzzle was the logistics situation which was far graver 'at that time' than UV stipulates (which also contributed to the early B-17 rampage issue) Before the arrival of Gen Kenny i believe, the air support infrastruture in the SWPAC was a mess, with critical shortages of spare parts, and mercurial morale and organizational issues that kept more planes on the ground than OOB's would indicate. Lastly...in a 'real world situation' where politics, and lack of forknowledge abound....you would not see commanders leaving Austrailian bases completely denuded of airpower due to the risk of potential attack, however remote.
Still.....that situation was soon resolved, and now i'm in more developed territory time-wise...(late 42, approaching 43) and just as described in the thread....i have nearly 400 aircraft......all at PM which has been developed into a size 8 airbase, slowly overbuilding to size 9 courtasy of plenty of engineers .
Realistic? Perhaps......except that i feel that this intones two problems, one i have brought up in a seperate thread
1) There seems to be not enough penalty for such concentration on the logistics side, not just the supply issue either......This "may" be solved in WitP via the modified supply rules that will be in place. Currently in UV, Truk, Brisbane and Normura enjoy unlimited supply....a situation that was not the case historically but for game purposes was necessary given the limited scope of the game. With WitP, i assume the only points of "uber" supply will orig in Japan, and the US coast.....this alone may address the issue as the players will have to more carefully ration out their supplies to forward bases....especially bases that support such huge #'s of aircraft.
Another possible cure might be to eliminate the 250 air support point cap. According the rulebook, you need 1 air support point per aircraft (roughly) up to 250 at which point you can support infinate #'s. Eliminating this cap might address the issue. Also, making twin engined bombers require more air support points per plane (four engined even more) might also address (an exception should prob be patrol planes since they often had to operate from primitive facilities and such a rule might hamstring this ability)
Finally there is the engineer problem. I have suggested in another thread that players should not be able to simply stack engineer units in (at times) ridiculous amounts at one base in order to super-develop a base in only a couple weeks time (building fortifcations, expanding ports and of course, expanding airfields) A similar system like the AA stack limit in TF's (decreasing returns as more resources are committed aka "conjestion") would solve this issue and slow base development prematurely. Also perhaps the supply cost of such works should be increased to force players to plan better when and where to commit his resources.
2) Air Retaliation.
I have grave concerns over the airfield attack rules....rules similar to those in place since PacWar, and even before that. Simply put, airfield attack rarely does any serious damage to grounded air assets...even when such assets are fielded in numbers such as those I currently have at Port Morsoby. I submitted to Matrix a proposal that this be looked at seriously...esp as "Plane raids" were such a vital component of future US carrier/amphibious strategy to cut off targeted bases. Coupled with weekly turns this was impossible in PacWar......Under the current air rules, even with preferable daily turns.....i dont see this happening in UV or WitP. The rule book says that the bigger the airbase, the harder to damage. That sounds logical, however i've seen little difference between an air attack against a size 1 base and a size 8. Occasionally one can score a half dozen planes damaged or destroyed....but its rare. It does not appear that the # of planes present effects this calculation much. There also appears to be little to no difference in damage tallies for an airbase that has radar and one that does not.
I have often mussed on the real world possibilities if say "Rabaul" which is still very strong in fighters in my current game, were to stage a few well placed raids on my huge collection of Allied air power. Radar of course and revernets would help reduce the damage but still....such a concentration of airpower makes for an inviting and potentially vulnerable target, but under the current air rules....I'm not worried enough to disperse my forces. Only shore bombardments make me pay for such potentially dangerous overconcentrations of aircraft, esp bombers....i got spanked by the AI for prematurely moving four B-17 squadrons to Lunga (yep....B-17's because once again, i was able to quickly turn it into a size 5+ base via stacked engineer units in zero time flat) Before i could even stage my first raid on the tempting assets concentrated at the Shortlands, a CA group bombarded and put 75% of the aircraft out of action. (EEK) It would be nice if a well staged and numerically sufficient air attack could do the same thing more often than once in a blue moon, especially given that airfields are almost impossible to knock out solely from the air alone.
So i guess my standpoint is that "yes" its possible and legal to stuff a base developed with aircraft should the player choose but just as with the low altitude attack strategy (before the patch) there seems to be not enough of a balance/risk factor to make a player "not" do so.
The only game-situation that might stay my hand from continuing this strategy would be against a human player in a PBEM who might punish me for my overconcentration by staging a few well chosen raids on the mainland of Australia.....which is stripped of airpower to make Port Morsoby an early powerhouse. Same for the Normura, Luganville, Lunga pipeline. The AI actually did this to me a couple of times, but not with carriers but with long ranged bombers......had a couple AK's damaged by torp wielding G3M's because i had zero fighters at the Aussie base. (they were all at Port Morosby
)
On a tongue in cheek note.....I just remembered that players massively complained about not having enough transports and merchants to conduct their ops. Matrix gave in on this, and whereas before i was dubious about the increase....now i'm thinking it was definately not a good move, since coupled with unlimited supply, players can more easily keep double-stuffed airbases in supply with massive relief convoys. The new auto supply via paved roads in Austrailia (and now Normura) further esasberated this as now the Allied player doesn't have to worry about replenishing any Aussie cities/airbases and can send all Merchants to New Guneau. (I suggested this should be reduced from a massive 5000 points per day down to say more like 500! via ground transport)
some of which I remember (I think) seeing in either this forum or the UV forum.
Maybe not a good ideal seeing as how it would complicate logistics even more.