I Have Returned

[Taxcutter]

After being cast into outer darkness the day Windows 10 got run down my throat and destroyed my old WitP game, I finally noticed that Matrix improved the game to deal with Windows 10. so I coughed up a few bucks and got the newer version which seems to run A-OK.

I'm running a game against the AI as a training mission. The game now has a few different details that I need to get used to.

1. There are enough mines available to make mine warfare not such a joke as in the old game.
2. AI is waging war on my merchants, so I have to escort them.
3. I don't know if I can manage fighter pilots like in the old version. I may be too early in the war (mid-March 1942) but I haven't been able to manage my aircrew.
4. In first weeks the US West Coast ports are thin on supply/fuel so I used most of my merchants to run to the East Coast.



I may abort this training mission game after a while but this fall I'm gonna pull the pin on my J-O-B so I may have time for playing against you real cut-throats. But for now I'll report how it goes at least in general.

[RangerJoe]

The supplies and fuel will migrate to where it is needed. You can also go to the base and increase the amount of supplies requested.

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2260137

[BBfanboy]

The game state at start is not indicative of what it will be a few weeks later, especially re: supply, fuel and available shipping.
Within about five days SFO should have around 1 million supply and LA should have close to a million fuel.

It will take about a month to reorganize you shipping from their scattered starting positions. I send the British/Commonwealth flagged ships west to Colombo and the US flagged ships east to WC USA. Once there, I organize them by capacity, range and speed and assign them to home ports: Colombo, Cape Town, Madras, for the British; EC USA SFO, Seattle, Prince Rupert and LA for the US ships. Troop ships go to Aden and SFO mostly. If you send troops from EC USA to Cape Town by shipless Strat move, you will need some transports at CT to bring them on map.

Australian/Dutch/NZ/Free French shipping has to play the dance between supporting their forward units and fleeing the Japanese tide.

Managing individual pilots is feasible in this game, but it would take you so long that the game would take years longer than the real war. Just manage the air units and pilots within will train as you set the unit orders. You only need to hand-pick pilots when you start to get some really good aircraft and want to set up a hotshot air unit. That is done using the "Request Veteran" button.

Mines are not plentiful in the game on purpose. You need to be selective about where and when you will use them. Be aware that minefields are tracked by type of mine, location and date laid. Once the enemy discovers the minefield, in subsequent turns it will be much less effective and a new minefield might be better than creating a huge one from the get-go.

You only need to escort your ships in areas where there is a definite sub threat. When escorts are extremely thin, escort near your ports and at known choke points, then send the supply TF on its way without escort but using evasive routing with waypoints.
Troop and air unit convoys should always be well escorted and CVs should be used if possible to fend of raiding surface vessels.

[RangerJoe]

Use your APs and AKs to ferry supplies from the East Coast/UK to Cape Town until they can upgrade to APAs and AKAs. This keeps them safe and then they will be nice for invasions. You may also have extra xAKs for this as well. Don't forget to ship fuel for use at Cape Town.

Cape Town can then send convoys to Australia and India when it is safe to do so.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

Use your APs and AKs to ferry supplies from the East Coast/UK to Cape Town until they can upgrade to APAs and AKAs. This keeps them safe and then they will be nice for invasions. You may also have extra xAKs for this as well. Don't forget to ship fuel for use at Cape Town.

Cape Town can then send convoys to Australia and India when it is safe to do so.

+1

You may also find yourself with lots of 4000 NM range xAKLs that just can't get to the small islands that need supply without stopping for fuel somewhere along the way. Bullwinkle put me onto using these off-map where their short range isn't an issue. I make a few convoys of 15-20 ships each and haul from EC USA and Canada to CT. One small convoy will be needed to haul down to Pt. Stanley so it can continue building the base and not starve. I build the base for the VPs, not because I expect to use it.

You may not yet have figured out the CS (continuous supply) convoy system yet. It works very well for the off-map to off-map routes because fuel, system damage and interdiction are not an issue (but rarely, you may get a collision happening). Just put the TF at an originating base like EC USA, set them to load, set the destination (like CT), and then click the text that says "Human control" once to change it to "Computer Control", then a second click to change it to "Continuous Supply". The TF will do the mission, return and repeat continuously. You rarely have to monitor these convoys - I do at the beginning of each month in case there is an upgrade they can do.

[Taxcutter]

Most of the time supply and fuel migrate to where they are needed, but Sydney fuel is the exception.

I unloaded an 80,000 ton fuel convoy there and the fuel had gone somewhere within three days. Not an anecdote. Happens repeatedly.


New version of the game won't let me stop production at Sydney HI.

Fuel unloaded at Brisbane does not fritter away on its own. Most puzzling.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

I don't worry to much about reorganizing, at least not early during the war. There is a massive need to supply/ resupply places like Darwin or Rangoon (China)
you will have at most a few weeks before these are closed. Shipment tends to reorganize itself after return trips, in which I set them by range/ speed


And you can stop HI production; I am using the latest patch and I did 1st turn... that said, it took me ~10 days to notice that I forgot to stop repairs in China.. HUGE mistake [:(]

[Taxcutter]

I'm at late March 1942. As usual, Manila/Bataan, Singapore, Batavia and Soerabaya have fallen. The AI is mopping up in the DEI and Sumatra.
Therefore The Dutch and most of the British ships are f4ree of the conundrum.


I have established CT, SF, and LA as the hubs of my supply with Pearl, Sydney/Brisbane, Perth, Bombay as lower tier hubs.


I'll have to herd all those little 4000 range AKLs to where they can operate off map. May take a while. Right now I'm using big tonnage merchies as long haulers. Once you get past the secondary hubs my ports are still too small to handle the big boys quickly. So I have to use AKLs. The 6500 range US AKLs are useful for this. SeaBee production is kicking in, and quickly unloading may be less of a problem in a few months.


For some reason it took a while to build up SF supply but LA and Abadan were veritable oceans of fuel a week after the outset.


I'll simply put Sydney on short fuel rations and use Auckland as my fuel depot.

[RangerJoe]

Set Sydney to stockpile fuel.

[Taxcutter]

Mine.

My old version had literally only the mines on the minelayers and never resupplied them. Not much of a factor.

Newer version (I got it through Steam) does provide a limited production of mines. Almost no British mines beyond the original ship loadout. Dutch are out of the business since Soerabaya fell, but the US doe produce about 50 per month IIRC.


I'm trying to use mines along with coastal defense guns and PT boats (numbers limited at this time) to make it difficult for the AI to make cheap and dirty grabs of nearly undefended islands.

[Taxcutter]

So far, I have not seen the "Request Veteran" button on the air groups and the "Reserve Pool" sheet (accessed through the "intelligence" button is just information.

My old version had this and a means to move pilots in and out of pools and groups. I could build up all-star fighter squadrons. that's how I dealt with the IJAAF's endless Oscar pools. My P40Ks manned by 85+ EXP pilots shot down Oscars by the score.


I always wondered if that was not a little gamey.


I used the standard install. Is there a patch?

[Taxcutter]

I'll give that a try.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Taxcutter

So far, I have not seen the "Request Veteran" button on the air groups and the "Reserve Pool" sheet (accessed through the "intelligence" button is just information.

My old version had this and a means to move pilots in and out of pools and groups. I could build up all-star fighter squadrons. that's how I dealt with the IJAAF's endless Oscar pools. My P40Ks manned by 85+ EXP pilots shot down Oscars by the score.


I always wondered if that was not a little gamey.


I used the standard install. Is there a patch?

If you did not patch the game after the install of the 2009 base version you are playing a different version of the game. There have been tremendous improvements in player interface and database data and game engine calculations of results. You should immediately patch to version 1126a or 1126B (the Beta available on this forum).

Here is the Air Unit screen. The "Request Veteran" text is on the left, greyed out because the unit has a full slate of pilots. I would have to release pilots to the general pool (as opposed to the unit pool) to create space for the "Request Veteran" option to activate.

[Capt. Harlock]

Here is the Air Unit screen. The "Request Veteran" text is on the left, greyed out because the unit has a full slate of pilots. I would have to release pilots to the general pool (as opposed to the unit pool) to create space for the "Request Veteran" option to activate.

I don't think you want to assign your veterans to a squadron of P-39s!

[Jorge_Stanbury]

never allow pilot replacements on automatic; because if it run out of fighter pilots and there are bomber pilots available, it will pick from that pool

you really don't want to have your bomber trained pilots get into fighters or vice versa

[Taxcutter]

OK. I found v1.01.26a and will download in a few hours. Thzt explains why I can't find features a know should be there.

[Taxcutter]

Fun early battle.

From experience with AI I know it has the hots for Canton Island. Why not? It is akin to the middle of a chessboard.

So on Dec 8, I loaded up the 56th Coastal Defense Rgt and sent them to Canton just in time along with a Marine DB. All those 6 inch guns mauled an invasion TF Imagine your light invasion TF mugged by a couple of Brooklyn CLs. But the 56th was withdrawn and the AI came back and now I'm in a dogfight.

I was, repeat WAS, trying to reinforce Canton with a regiment of US army infantry, but AI had sent a CL-based raiding force out and they caught my TF and sank all my transports. Four days later I was transitting three Brooklyns and a gaggle of four-pipers to the West Coast for 4/42 ASW/flak/radar and bumbled into his CL raiding force. The Brooklyns massacred them. Five CLs including both Oi and Kitakami and six DDs - now an artificial reef in deep water near Christmas Island (the one south of Hawaii). Little damage to my force.

[RangerJoe]

You can also reinforce by using PBYs.

Good work with your light cruisers and 4 pipers. I like to convert the 4 pipers to APDs to escort invasions, better ASW and they can haul a few supplies as well.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Taxcutter

Fun early battle.

From experience with AI I know it has the hots for Canton Island. Why not? It is akin to the middle of a chessboard.

So on Dec 8, I loaded up the 56th Coastal Defense Rgt and sent them to Canton just in time along with a Marine DB. All those 6 inch guns mauled an invasion TF Imagine your light invasion TF mugged by a couple of Brooklyn CLs. But the 56th was withdrawn and the AI came back and now I'm in a dogfight.

I was, repeat WAS, trying to reinforce Canton with a regiment of US army infantry, but AI had sent a CL-based raiding force out and they caught my TF and sank all my transports. Four days later I was transitting three Brooklyns and a gaggle of four-pipers to the West Coast for 4/42 ASW/flak/radar and bumbled into his CL raiding force. The Brooklyns massacred them. Five CLs including both Oi and Kitakami and six DDs - now an artificial reef in deep water near Christmas Island (the one south of Hawaii). Little damage to my force.

There are 13 scripts in Stock that the AI chooses from when the first turn is run. That script is kept for the remainder of the game.

The scripts set targets for the AI to capture and start/end dates for the effort. If it does not succeed the first time it will gather up some more forces and try again until the end date for that script target.

What the AI is not good at is composing appropriate forces for the opposition encountered. You can expect some strange TF compositions and LCUs landed without appropriate support units. That raiding CL/DD force that you massacred is a good example - would have been far better to break it up into about three raiding TFs and scatter them around to find undefended merchants. If one raiding force gets caught, the others can slink away - but the AI does not have human ability to assess risk.

[Taxcutter]

Thanks for the help folks.

I downloaded and installed the patch and Viola! Best WitP ever.

It did result in a seven hour orders phase addressing everything posted here.