Matrix Games Forums

So about 1 week in and I need fighters everywhere.
I am trying to hold on in Rangoon but the dam Sallys are not making life easy. To mame it worse there are 0 yep 0 fighters in all of India.
Trying to get some ak to east cost to grab some fighters but that is a month away.

I am playing quite China but I have a feeling that the computer is not doing anything with the China forces but letting them die. But not a problem for now!

What is a decent strat for India?

Defend India, train your units. Send the air units in the East Coast to India if you need to. The US 10th Air Force was the first one to operate in that theater then, I think, the 14th Air Force joined it. Buy out any Chinese units as cheaply as you can and send them to India to train and equip. Get as many supplies to China that you can. If it is quiet China, back away from the Japanese and garrison your forward cities that you need.

Can Rangoon be held?
What do you mean buy out China?

ORIGINAL: jagsdomain

Can Rangoon be held?
What do you mean buy out China?

Very unlikely to be able to hold Rangoon, IMHO, even against the AI. Try to manage a fighting retreat into India and save the bulk of your army.

Chinese units can march, in theory, all the way from southern China to India, there to rest and rebuild with better equipment and supply. Many players restrict this so that only the units in an unrestricted command can move out of China. If you follow this model, only a small number of Chinese units can be bought out (that is, pay points to change their command to ABDA, SE Asia, or some other unrestricted command). Buy those and march and/or airlift them to eastern India to help defend India, while at the same time the Chinese units will (slowly) get bigger and better.

What aboht that small island just off the coast with the airfield and navy yard?

Which island? Ceylon? Defend it but not too strongly because the Japanese can bring lots of firepower if they want. The important city to defend is Karachi, make sure that all bases along the coast have some defense and protect the interior bases against paratroopers. Small armor units work well as well as decently trained and equipped battalions.

Will do!

In general about cargo ships.
I have a feeling I am adding alot of work for myself.
I am sending cargo ships to South Africa empty and basong them there. Then will send them back with fuel supplies etc. Same thing with Oz ships. I am setting home port at Jave cities then send them back to Oz.
Is there a way of senting a ship to a port loading then comeing back home?

AVG isn't around? Been a while since I played against the AI but they used to do a good job of carving up attacks and gaining exp.

The game was to big for me so I atarted quite China.

Take your cargo ships in Cape Town and send most of them to the East Coast and some the England. Then have them return with supplies until you build up a large stockpile. Group the ships by type, using both speed and cargo capacity. You can use the supplies later. Have some ships at Aden waiting for units to bring to Karachi.

I have not even looked at speed. I will have to do that.
I have only been doing it by how far they can travel.

This is what I advise.

At the beginning turns you can buy out (10th Air Force, AHQ Bengal, ABDA, or whatever) the two groups of P-40E's that start in Manila, Philippines, with drop tanks they can reach friendly bases in China. Use them in China against probably lesser/dated airframes then move them to Burma then into India.

I send all the engineers I can in India to build up Dacca as a 4 engine bomber base and also buy out the USAAF B-17s in the Philippines and base them there and use against marching Japanese through Burma.

It doesn't hurt to evacuate the Air HQs from Singapore at the opportune time.

ORIGINAL: jagsdomain

I have not even looked at speed. I will have to do that.
I have only been doing it by how far they can travel.

It may help you to get some tips from this thread '.

IMO it's a good baseline to help you get your shipping organized after the initial tasks then alter to suit your own ideas.

Allied Logistics for Dummies
Allied Logistics for Dummies

It will also help if you can evacuate any units that you don't need in Malaya/Singapore. Against the computer, I put the two divisions that form up into Palembang. [:D]

ORIGINAL: jagsdomain

Can Rangoon be held?
What do you mean buy out China?

Against the AI? Of course Rangoon can be held. So can Singapore, Manila, Clark, Batavia, Soerbaja and Palembang. If you really want to gut the AI and tilt the game absurdly in your favor you can hold all these areas.

If you want to be realistic in China, you can 'buy out' those units that can have their HQ switched. Move them over the mountains into Burma and then India for rebuilding and training. Of course, against the AI, there is no rule saying that you can't march out all of the Chinese units that you want to. It depends (like the observations about other key Japanese goals) on how much you want to mimic history versus 'beat the AI'.

ORIGINAL: jagsdomain

So about 1 week in and I need fighters everywhere.
I am trying to hold on in Rangoon but the dam Sallys are not making life easy. To mame it worse there are 0 yep 0 fighters in all of India.
Trying to get some ak to east cost to grab some fighters but that is a month away.

I am playing quite China but I have a feeling that the computer is not doing anything with the China forces but letting them die. But not a problem for now!

What is a decent strat for India?

There are a LOT of aircraft squadrons that arrive at Aden. Go to the Intel report and look at your Air Unit Arrivals. Use any available AKVs to haul fighters to Karachi. From there they go by rail overland to Calcutta or even Chittagong if you have lots of air support there. Get them repaired and check the quality of the leaders.

If AKVs are not available, use xAKs in an Air Transport TF to move the aircraft.

Also consider upgrading the aircraft before you send it away from Aden.

And make sure you can provide air support wherever you are sending aircraft. Check the Land Unit Arrivals queue to see all the BFs, Air HQs and Air Support squadrons arriving. Aden also gets a lot of these.

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Take your cargo ships in Cape Town and send most of them to the East Coast and some the England. Then have them return with supplies until you build up a large stockpile. Group the ships by type, using both speed and cargo capacity. You can use the supplies later. Have some ships at Aden waiting for units to bring to Karachi.

You can also haul from Canada which is closer than England. Just crank the Canada supply draw up to full draw (+25) to ensure there will be supply there for the ships.

You will also need fuel for all the ships going back and forth from CT to on-map locations, so send some tankers to EC USA to haul fuel to CT. I use the shorter ranged big tankers here, saving the long-ranged ones for WC-USA to Oz or NZ and smaller tankers for the small ports on map.

Set up your cargo and tanker TFs as CS TFs to haul continuously to CT, unload and return automatically so you do not have to monitor them constantly. To do this send them to their base they will load at and make that their home port. Order them to start loading and set destination CT. Then click on Human Control to change it to CS Convoy and you are done. Off-map to off-map travel uses no fuel and causes no system damage so you only need to consider upgrades and whether it is time to bring any of the ships back on-map.

Set a target supply and fuel level that you want for CT so you will know when to start pulling stuff on-map from there. Note that Mombasa will also slowly accumulate supply and fuel that you can use.

East Coast is closer to Cape Town than Canada is. England gets so much supply every turn so you might as well grab it.

If you rail air units, no need to send them on an AKV since sending them by rail damages them. Actually, things like wings are taken off before loading on railcars or they might even be crated. Use the AKVs to load air units where you are going to be needing them to fly right away. Also, break the air units into thirds and remove the pilots any time that you ship them in case a ship is lost you won't lose the entire air unit. Any non-carrier capable aircraft on an aircraft carrier counts as 4 aircraft for load purposes. They can only fly off to a land base and are not usable for air missions on the aircraft carrier.

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

East Coast is closer to Cape Town than Canada is. England gets so much supply every turn so you might as well grab it.

If you rail air units, no need to send them on an AKV since sending them by rail damages them. Actually, things like wings are taken off before loading on railcars or they might even be crated. Use the AKVs to load air units where you are going to be needing them to fly right away. Also, break the air units into thirds and remove the pilots any time that you ship them in case a ship is lost you won't lose the entire air unit. Any non-carrier capable aircraft on an aircraft carrier counts as 4 aircraft for load purposes. They can only fly off to a land base and are not usable for air missions on the aircraft carrier.

I suggested the AKVs because they are faster than most xAKs. It is also possible to take the newly unloaded aircraft and fly them from AF to AF until you get where you want, but I find the risk of ops losses too high using this method, and the aircraft arrive with lots of wear and tear to be fixed.

The Brits don't have enough engineers and they can't replace their aircrews. Don't use them. Train the crap out of the crews you have for later use. Move air HQs from the US plus a good deal of construction engineers and base forces. I'd strip any British carriers of their squadrons and move US Navy squadrons to man them. The US planes are much better and you can sustain a lot of losses with them that the Brits cannot. Also move a good strong US Army corps there to shore them up, maybe more later. The troops you send there would just be sitting on their hands with nothing to do, as you will not have the amphibious capacity for a long while to move more than a couple of divisions to the Coral Sea area. I wouldn't send any Marines (including air squadrons) to the Indian Ocean theatre, just Navy and Army.