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Not sure what to make of this. I am playing Scenario 17 as the US. Its late October 42. Anyhow, the daily or twice daily air raids against my bases as Gili Gili, Port Moresby and Guadalcanal/Tulagi have stopped. They have been replaced with recon missions. For 5 straight days, 1 or 2 recon planes fly over the base, takes a few photos, and fly away. My CAP intercepts, but air combat does not occur (not a concern).

Has anyone been through anything like this before? Their surface fleet has become scarce too. Is the beginning of an invasion somewhere? Perhaps they are looking for the weakest base to stirke against?

Have you beat them up good ? In my experience they come on strong for a while but then take a break after a good beating - but they may be back. Same for the surface forces in my games.

The AI tends to run out of gas as the Japanese at about this point because it doesn't do the little things (like rotating and resting squadrons) very well. If you were to look at the Japanese units you would probably find that either most of the bombers have morale sub 50 or they have been moved back to Truk to recuperate. The recon squdrons however will have accumulated way more pilots than they need (sometimes 5 to 10 times the number of planes) and as a result they are always well rested and have high morale. Since units have to pass morale checks to fly missions you end up getting lots of recon but no bombing raids.

The AI also becomes fixated on recon for obscure targets. I once flew a small (25 man) partial baseforce and a squadron of PBYs into a minor island near Gili Gili in an effort to get forward naval search and identify shipping lanes. The AI reconned this base every day for the next 2 months, but never attacked. Meanwhile I was invading nearby bases and the AI didn't bother to send planes for a look-see.

Thanks for the response DJ and Maine. I really didnt give them a beating so to speak. The air losses are about even..perhaps 1.25 of theirs to 1 of mine. Although I have a 2-1 ship sunk ratio, I would say about 80% of those are transports or auxillary ships. I only sunk 2 CVs 1 CVL 2 CAs 1 CL and maybe 8 DDs to date out of the 103 ships sunk, whereas my losses are probally 70% combat ships - 2 CVs 4 CA 4 CL 1 CLAA 21 DDs.out of 51 sunk. The only real beating I gave them was when they landed about 15k toops on Guadalcanal. Took me about a month to beat them down with round the clock bombing, as many bombardment missions as I could throw together, and moving in troops on APDs and DMs and by C-47. The final combat saw Japanese losses of 8k men. For about a week before the final ground assualt though there was an endless stream of AGs (maybe 10-12 ships each) from Shortland taking troops off the island. That probally helped me a bit. I did manage to sink 30 or so AGs, but there were too many.

Is the game pretty much over at this point? (the overall score is within 200 points in the Japanese favor) Or can I expect them to roll up their sleves and start brawling again?

I know they have a strong surface fleet. There has to be at least 2 CVs 4 BBs and many CA/CLs out there. I had a few small TFs gobbled up by a 3BB/6CA surface combat TF so far, but that IJN TF disappeared. My combat fleet is quite thin, and they could easily cause a mess if they sailed that BB TF down the Slot or towards Gili Gili. So my dilemma is, do I take advantage of this sudden IJN fascination of flying only recon all of a sudden and launch a few invasion TFs that I have staged at Moresby and Austraila (plannig on taking the rest of New Guniea - Lae the emphasis) or do I keep the invasion / escorts back waiting for their BB TF to show up again.

I love this game!