Matrix Games Forums

At what odds would you risk losing ship to recover fuel or supply? Base it on allies in 1941 and Japs in 1944/1945.

First, let me caveat this saying I have never played the Allies (nor will I play them in the forseeable future).

With the preponderance of Allied shipping and the huge shortage of Japanese resources, I'd risk Allied shipping to attempt to pull resources (oil, resource, fuel and supply) out of a base that will be overrun by the Japanese. If the ship is sunk after loading, you still win. You've prevented the Japanese player from gaining some much needed resources.

If you are playing me, I recommend you sail your AKs and TKs empty. They go faster that way. [:D]

I think I am in the minority of Allied players, but I -hate- losing ships. Any ship. Even the little 2vp PGs are important as far as I'm concerned. I do -not- like suiciding AKs into Port Moresby to drop supplies (even before they burned up in v1.5). Granted it depends on the severity of the situation. But for the most part, I won't suicide ships. I think a lot of folks forget about the alternatives to suiciding AKs. FastTran convoys are great (esp as Allies, you can affort to "burn out" DDs and CLs in FastTran convoys). Or hauling supplies in by airlift. Or subs can too I suppose (altho the amount they carry is marginal).

So no. I don't tend to suicide ships.

Now, if the ship is already a gonner, I -will- suicide her in that I'll use her to draw attacks from other vessals.

Or in one interesting case, I had a TK that was loading oil at Palembang in a convoy. It got hit pretty bad, but rest of convoy got away. It had something like 90 sys damage with fires, but little float dmg. "Hm. This is burning off the oil...", but it's not really in danger of SINKING. So I let the dock-rats toss on all the oil they could, onto my burning TK. Japan would bomb thing thing, spreading fires, destroying the oil. Then I'd port the thing to put the fires out. Form it back into TF, load more oil. Japan bombs it again. More fires. Destroys more oil. Port it to put fires out again. Lather, rinse, repeat. It acted as my own "oil incenderator" at Palembang (since there's no other way to burn off the oil, and the Dutch just stack it neatly until the Japanese invade). Worked out fairly well, until my poor TK got -really- clobbered, and went down. Still, I think that thing ended up burning off 50k oil. Not major considering that Palembang manufactures a -LOT- of oil. But still. I hate risking TKs into Palembang (esp now that enemy LBA is too hot), so it burned off 50k oil that I wouldn't have been able to haul out otherwise.

Besides, in PBEM games, I don't know what some of the situations are, but suiciding ships seems stupid, since the general consensus it that Allies should have a REAL fear of the 4x auto-victory in 1943. Losing ships in normal combat is hard enough, let alone giving points to Japan just to haul out a couple thousand oil/resources. Frankly, if I can make it into 1943, I'm pretty sure I'll beat Japan, even if he captures all everything intact. But very few (PBEM) Japanese players complain about oil or resouces, which means they've got enough of them, whether you suicide a ship or not. So why waste the points. So if I feel that I -won't- lose the ship, I might haul out oil/resources if it's convient (no sense running around empty). But I'm not going to risk a 9k TK or an 4.5k AK just to haul out oil/resources/supplies/fuel if there it means likely losing my ship.

-F-

I will hold a few ships back in dangerous areas like Batavia to get oil out later. But Not too many, and I will not send ships into harms way to pull stuff out.

ORIGINAL: Feinder

It acted as my own "oil incenderator" at Palembang (since there's no other way to burn off the oil, and the Dutch just stack it neatly until the Japanese invade). Worked out fairly well, until my poor TK got -really- clobbered, and went down. Still, I think that thing ended up burning off 50k oil. Not major considering that Palembang manufactures a -LOT- of oil.

That's roughly a week's production of HI at the Home Islands....

By the way, that's a pretty sneaky tactic.[:-]