General Patton v. Larry Fulkerson Scenario #76

[larryfulkerson]

So Brian and I started over and we've been playing for about three weeks now and we're up to January 19, 1942 and Clark Field has
just fallen so now it's just a couple of places left in the PI. Brian has lots of people in his defensive groups so I'm bombing night and day and his AV levels have fallen dramatically. I tried some DA's but had to stop that because I was losing more people than he was.

This scenario is the result of the way I was playing our Focus Pacific game. I was doing all kinds of things wrong and was obviously not
up to speed for such an advanced scenario so he took the stock #2 scenario and modified it so that the number of PP's is expanded
for both sides and he's calling it scenario #76. We're using the stock map with stacking limits and a modified pwhex.dat file. I'll send you the files if you want to play with it yourself.

Things are going better this time for me and the victory points are already down to 2.9 : 1 I've saved up about 4K PP's and I'm going
to use that to buy out some more troops from Mongolia to have enough on hand to fill the need for them all over the map.

I've got the RES runs humming but there's a tiny problem with the nearby sources drying up somewhat and I'm having to look around
for more sources.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what Malaya is looking like now. Mersing and Johore B. have just fallen and so all the Allied defenders are tucked into
Singapore and it's just a matter of me getting my people down there put the pieces of divisions back together and march into
the city like I own the place. Maybe they will just surrender when they see my close order drill team tossing their rifles back and
forth in the air like the Marines do it at public shows. I believe I have something like three full divisions in Malaya but I can't remember
the particulars about which ones. I'll have to look into that and get back to you.

Singkawang has come in handy already. I can pound both Singapore and Palembang from the air from there. I've driven most of the
Singapore fighters to Batavia so there's not much left at Singapore and I've been flying daytime ground attacks for a few days not and
the losses are acceptable. I may be ready for the Singapore assault in about a week or so.

[larryfulkerson]

I drove some tanks up to Moulmein and found it empty so now I own it and need to get a garrison out to it. I've got a group of LCU's
headed that way now with a bunch more troops in Bangkok that I'm sending that way. I don't intend to go much further than Rangoon
because I don't want to get bogged down in a land war in Asia. This part of the theater is relatively quiet. Not much going on than the
aircraft sweeping back and forth and some nighttime airfield attacks by Betty's. AVG planes are nearby and they have been shooting
my Zero's down so I've pulled the Zero's back for more escort training. I'm on the lookout for a more experienced squadron to replace
them.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's been going on in the Rabaul area. I've been grabbing the empty islands because they are easy but I'm thinking of
dropping some troops off at Rabaul and that's going to be a tougher nut to crack than Kavieng was. I'm not sure whether or not
to try for Port Moresby. I need the troops it would take to grab Rabaul at Palembang. P. is more important than PM and there's a
priority operating here. It's getting harder to find unemployed troops all over the map.

[larryfulkerson]

I started out with 20,000 Armament points in the pool and I thought that was a bit much so I turned off the Armaments production and
actually converted one of the ARM factories to Vehicles and it's been working out so far. Here's how the economy is rolling along now.
The levels for fuel, res, and oil is dropping slowly but supplies is rising a bit. I could be wrong but I think maybe the economy is humming
alone just fine. So far. I've got something like 55 days worth of RES on hand, and about 105 days of fuel. I'm going to see if I can't
stretch that out a bit by turning down some of the HI factories eventually because the global HI level has been rising.

I cancelled the production of some of the models of planes so that I could shut down the production of that engine entirely. I turned off
the Ida's and converted that factory into making Zero's. I bumped up the production of Betty's and Nells and turned down the
production of the Nate and the Claude. I need the last two for training only. They tend to get shot down in the field. Unless I use them
in deep China somewhere.

[larryfulkerson]

I just received Brian's moves about 15 minutes ago and he said that these moves were his last for the day so I get the rest of the
afternoon and tonight to work on my moves. I have enough time to check everything. Cool.

Here's what's happening in the Celebes Sea. The Allies have evacuated what ships they had in Manila and the smaller islands
just south of the PI and around the Celebes generally so I've swept the waters with a SCTF and found it clear so I've loosed the
transports to run some goodies out to the bases. I've set up the conditions whereby I can now assault Tarakan properly and
run some people into Balikpapan. I've got some people at Tarakan already but they are so few that they don't have the strength
to push over the Dutch defenders. I'm going to have to run some more naval bombardments into there and pound them from the
air for a while. Or ship more people in there.

Balikpapan is probably going to be a tough nut to crack.

[larryfulkerson]

Monday night, 14Nov2016, new moves from Brian: Manila fell and now all the troops there are moving to Bataan to lend a hand.
All the ground attack missions that were going to Manila are now re-directed to Bataan and I expect that hex to fall soon as well.
I'm planning on using Manila as a hub for the movement of goodies and that means I'll have to clear out the mines in the harbors
of Bataan and Manila and I've got some DMS ships standing by at Hong Kong after they cleared the mines from the HK harbor.
Manila has lots of RES if I can just get it moved sometime soon. Every little bit helps.

[Andav]

Just make sure you clear Bataan before you send anything to Manila. The CD guns at Bataan will cause you lots of problems as you go through the straights.

Looks like you are making good progress in this game on all fronts. You should have the first 90 days of the war down pat now!

Wa

[larryfulkerson]

You should have the first 90 days of the war down pat now!

What you aren't aware of is that Brian and I were playtesting his scenario before our AAR game and we had at least two restarts
during that process and I had to do the turn 1 stuff all over again for every restart. I'm learning how to do the turn 1 stuff really
well. I'm playing an anti-AI game as well and I'm thinking of restarting just so I can do the turn 1 stuff again.

[larryfulkerson]

Tuesday 15Nov early afternoon expecting some moves from Brian any minute now. I thought I'd fire up the game and study the map
some more and I thought I'd look into the AKE situation again. I didn't like having just a few AKE's in the fleet and having to move
them to a new spot to support an operation because there aren't enough of them to go around. So I built about 2 dozen more of
them and I've been moving them to some of the hot spots on the map and I'm not at all sure I have enough of them yet. I thought
I'd let what I've built settle into the fleet for a couple of weeks and see how much better the situations are.

EDIT: Yeah, there's three of them at Singkawang.

[larryfulkerson]

The above image is the active AKE's and here's the list of AKE's being built and one that's being repaired. I was moving it from
Hiroshima to Yokohoma to pair it up with an escort and it took an unlucky torpedo but managed to survive and make it to a port
where it's being repaired. I have since learned to move the escort to the escortee.

[larryfulkerson]

There was only one AS in the entire fleet when the war started so I decided to build some more for those out-of-pocket places
where I might want to run a small group of subs. For those bases closer to the front lines where a broken sub might limp into
to get repaired more quickly than having to move all the way to it's base of origination again for those services. I've been running
subs out of Kwajalein and it's working out okay but the front lines are moving further away and I'm thinking of moving one sub
base to Rabaul and another smaller one at Tarawa and another one out of Wake etc.

[larryfulkerson]

I've got some broken ships that managed to limp into an out-of-the-way port and now can't be repaired all the way at that port and
I'm wondering if it would help anything to move some support ships to those ports to help the ships to heal somehow. Say, moving
an AR to Tarawa just to repair the ships that can't move yet. Anybody have any experience with using support ships?

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the current situation to the west of Babeldoab. I'm trying to grab all the empty ports as they are the easiest and then
take the important ones.....Tarakan and Balilkpapan. I've invaded at Tarakan and found the defenders were a bit more sturdy
than I had anticipated and I haven't been able to push over the Dutch defenders yet. I'm pretty sure the facilities are being
trashed by all the combat going on. I haven't been bombing from the air and bombarding by the sea because I've got a plan to
install some more troops yet and overpower the Dutch to spare the facilities any more damage than necessary.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's what's going on near Rabaul. I flew an airstrike yesterday and got quite a few Allied ships parked at Port Moresby. I was on my
way to the east coast of Australia when the idea to strike PM came up. Why not, I thought. Good thing I did too......he had lots of ships
parked there. I need to hang around for a couple of days launching followup strikes to finish off the rest of the ships. I'm wondering if
the tour down the east coast is even needed now that I've found most of the available ships he has in the area. Probably. I should do
the east coast tour just to scare Brian.

[Andav]

Probably. I should do the east coast tour just to scare Brian.

It depends on where you think his carriers might be located. If you are pretty sure they are far away, then it might be worth it. If not, 3 US CVs could cause your 3 CVs trouble. He would be fighting under his own LBA and you would potentially be far from home. You also used torpedoes on the port strike at PM so at the most you have only one strike left with torpedoes. You do not really want to face US CVs without torpedoes. Flak at the Oz bases might be much nastier as well if you are thinking of port strikes there.

I know this is a lot of doom and gloom but ... well ... It could happen! [:D]

Wa

[larryfulkerson]

I grabbed Tarawa and Makin some time ago but now I'm investing Nauru and Ocean island. I want the RES they have. I've got some
SCTF nearby this time so if Brian comes nosing around I'm ready. I need to push a carrier group out here too for the air cover. I don't
have any operating air fields here yet so the area is still vulnerable to raids and such.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: Andav

Probably. I should do the east coast tour just to scare Brian.

It depends on where you think his carriers might be located. If you are pretty sure they are far away, then it might be worth it. If not, 3 US CVs could cause your 3 CVs trouble. He would be fighting under his own LBA and you would potentially be far from home. You also used torpedoes on the port strike at PM so at the most you have only one strike left with torpedoes. You do not really want to face US CVs without torpedoes. Flak at the Oz bases might be much nastier as well if you are thinking of port strikes there.

I know this is a lot of doom and gloom but ... well ... It could happen! [:D]

Wa

Hey Wa dude, thanks for your input. I had discounted his capabilities again. Your insights are valid and accurate and I'd best pay some
heed. I'm in no hurry to fight this war. No more risks than necessary is good enough. Rather than do an east coast sweep maybe it
would be best if I extend my front lines all the way down to Tahati. Brian would then be facing a much longer way.

[larryfulkerson]

SS I-3 finally reached it's duty station and I've set up a pattern for it to sail back and forth across what I hope is his shipping lanes to
reach Pearl from SFO. This one is all by it's lonesome but more subs are on the way. I need lots of patterns along the path of his
ships.

I'm running a midget sub operation out of Truk and I've discovered that the midget subs don't travel very well. They tend to flounder a
lot. So I've started moving the carrier into the hex where the midget is to be deposited before I let go of it. The problem is being
detected doing it that way. I've lost two midgets trying to get them into ports so far so maybe the midget sub operation isn't such a good
idea after all. Or maybe I'm just not using them right. What would happen if I laid about four of them along the path of an Allied
shipping lane........would they sink in the high seas or linger for a while?

[larryfulkerson]

Evidently I have sent two subs to Pago Pago to prove there's no Allied mines there yet and then finding out that the way is clear I sent
a midget sub carrier with it's midget to place the midget in Pago Pago's harbor but it got detected and may not make it all the way
into the harbor. I expect some ASW attacks tomorrow before I can deposit the midget.....and the midget will probably be detected.
I really needed to visit the harbor when there weren't any Allied ships there. But Pago Pago is a busy harbor and there's traffic through
there almost constantly either coming or going. I'm playing an anti-AI game of scenario #2 as the Allies and I'm seeing a lot of traffic
headed for Pearl and lots of ships from Pearl headed for Sydney so there's a big gulp of ships headed northeast and a constant trickle
of ships headed for Australia's east coast. It's worth trying to put a midget sub there. Maybe some mines too.