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Pharnakes posted:
Why can't he send up subs from Perth or some other base in Western Australia? While Malaca strait itself is shallow, there are a number of nice grid spots he could put as his patrol zone that are deep water? Regardless, he's gonna have to do something to interdict your supplies to India and he's gonna have to do it drat fast before you are sitting in Kabul. quote:Mistake. Bypassing is not an option for Alikchi, a basic prerequisite of such a strategy is having absolute sea dominance to prevent resupply, otherwise your shiny new base you just conquered is just as cut off and isolated as the base you bypassed to get there, more so really. Alikchi is not even vaguely close to that, and I'm not sure he'll ever get there, to be honest. It's going to be a long hard slog for him, island by island with no shortcuts. Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what he's trying to do here. He needs to bash down the front door, and going for Milne Bay isn't really going to get him much more than what he has already. It can fit what, a few fighters and maybe some medium bombers when upgraded? Oh, question. Why do you guys sweep so much bases you are going to bomb later rather than sending coordinated raids with bombers and fighter escorts?
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Dec 29, 2023 01:27
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I forget if this has come up already but does the mod add very much ahistorical stuff on land like it does in the air and on the sea? Or did you not emphasize that as much because you originally figured land combat wouldn’t be a big deal? Just wondering if we’re going to see something silly by 44 or 45 like tank battles in India between Black Prince heavy tanks and O-I super heavies.
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Dec 29, 2023 06:17
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Cimber posted:
Think of it as the difference between using a dagger or a shield. Both have their purpose, but the shield is quite awkward to wield on the offense, so you won't be doing much damage while you will be taking a lot of damage so the bombers get through. The dagger is awesome at taking a stab at the enemy fighters, but using it as your only means of protecting the bombers is not going to go well for you.
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Dec 29, 2023 07:47
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SerthVarnee posted:Think of it as the difference between using a dagger or a shield. Ahhh, interesting. I was reading about flight options and why we see so many 'battles' of 3-4 planes when we know one of them sent 12 or 24 planes in to attack. Those three or four planes are meant to represent a minor segment of the main attack. So a formation of b-17s that got lost in a cloud bank on the way to the target and arrived ten minutes later than the earlier b-17s, and meet the cap might be one battle, while planes that didn't get mixed up in clouds and met up with their escorts might be another report. Apparently the game is smart enough to realize that if you set a group of fighters to escort a target at a specific altitude, and set bombers from another airfield to bomb the target at the same target, the fighters will meet up with the bombers to escort them in. And apparently if you set a third group of fighters to sweep at a very low altitude they will strafe the field or shoot down cap trying to land after the main bombing. I'll have to screw around with that to see how effective that is against the ai.
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Dec 29, 2023 15:47
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  Unloading continues.  He seems to have done full prep, judging by the low casualties.  Hake is seen off by Yamanagiri.  He’s going for Nauru too?  It’s true I haven’t defended Nauru very much, but that’s mostly because it’s a fairly irrelevant base, imho.  That’s either a ridiculously large commitment, or a rush job.  We’re resisting at Milne Bay, probably mostly the AA guns I’d imagine.  Hake, again.  Our first sweep for a few days.  Not much CAP here at all, then.  We’re not the only ones sweeping.    And Lucknow.  Warhawks we can mostly hold our own against, provided we outnumber them enough.  A couple of straggling Zeros hit Bareilly.  Safety in numbers.  He wasn’t only sweeping!  Unsurprisingly they get through.  At least our Zero escaped.  Their tactical coming in at Milne Bay.  We need every advantage we can get, so even this hurts.  Unescorted bombers at the crossroads.  Minor damage only.  Spitfires. ‘Ate Spitfires.  Not racest, just don’t loik em.  Our independent tank regiments are getting most of it today.  With some extra sweep.  I don’t anticipate them having to fight in the next little while, so hopefully they can recover after this.  Mili.  The Liberators aren’t going to join the excitement elsewhere, then.  Well, apart from Maloelap, apparently.  They’re sweeping Gasmata. I think we are ready.  We were.  No sweep at Milne Bay, of course.  Eight through!  And they hold their nerve.  Some sweep would be appreciated, but an OK start.  The next wave gets through unmolested, somehow.  And they go to work.  Unfortunately it looks like the frontline squads are ashore already. Still, that’s a decent chunk of shark bait.  Wave three is not so lucky.  Those who do make it through panic and go for destroyers.  More sweep at Lucknow.  Still about evens.  It must be afternoon!  Bit of a rough one today.  All the same, it’s going to take him a long loving time to render us combat ineffective at this rate.  But then, he does have plenty of time to play with, I suppose.  Bombers at Gasmata!    A few Mitchells late to Milne Bay.  Half loads, and they miss them.  Look at that loving LRCAP, though.  Still some Nells willing to commit suicide.  And this time they hit an APA     An APA sunk and another hit is worth your sacrifice.  Still coming. If we’d rolled better on raid coordination we could have really done some damage.  Only three through in this wave.   Surely by now the LRCAP must be running dry.  Somewhat, but no hits.  A last wave ashore, and then the loving around is done, it’ll be time to find out.  We punt these guys around again.  Jubbulpore goes well.  Damnit, I’m sure I told them to stop doing that.  Bhopal not so well.  Seriously, stop blowing yourselves up! It can’t possibly be the defenders doing it.  We can attack here I think, provided we have air superiority.  Not enough here, Alikchi.   That is a lot of angry Americans.  Too many.  I really thought we’d be able to hold for one day at least, but it seems not. Well, Milne Bay was never a secure possession, I think we actually operated it as an airfield for maybe a month in the last year.  Well, speaking of unsecure possessions.  I’m sorry, you what?   We are so bad at ground combat.  Here at least we are going to spank them.  I was really hoping for an assault collapses, but we’re secure at least.  If you don’t win, or at least make substantial progress, on the first day of an island assault you aren’t going to win. Or not without landing a second attack, which he hopefully doesn’t have prepped.   Ok, well, they could do it at Milne Bay, as it turns out. The question now is how do we turn it into a Pyrrhic victory for him.  Absolutely brutal in the air, of course.  But even with that we’ve nearly made the points back on the Nells. And Nells are replaceable, APAs are not.  I don’t know exactly how many APAs he gets, but it’s not such a massive amount. 100, maybe.  Kinkasan & Fukoku Maru enter the yards at Nagasaki. They'll be back in service in no time.  As Meisan Maru is launched.  Hayanami is laid down at Yokohama, estimated for the 10th of August.  It’s annoying that I was seduced into thinking the sweeps would work because they took Milne Bay as a target, although I *knew* sweeps of your own base are impossible. Well, nevermind, I would have done it anyway, and even if I had been doing LRCAP as I should have done it probably wouldn’t have made much difference.  Insert already replaced meme of choice. We can’t afford losses like that very often, but it’s not going to exhaust us in one day, either. It will take some time to assemble the replacements, though.  The “survivors”. They’re not going to survive Nothing special here, the AA guns are a the only significant loss, and they’re only 75mm guns which even our industry will replace pretty soon.  That’s a lot of points still on the table here, the question now is how do we go about harvesting them.   The CV’s are coming in to join the party.  I’m not quite sure how Tenryu & Tatsuta ended up burning so much more fuel than everybody else, but they did, and will need to go straight to Rabaul for refueling.  I think the likeliest place he will try to retreat to CAP is Milne Bay. I think it’s actually more likely he’ll head straight back to Australia, but if so the convoys will be out in the open, and sweep won’t come into play.  We’ll allow him to bomb our advancing tanks, it won’t really make that much difference. Instead we’ll put LRCAP over the 4th Guards at the crossroads, if he isn’t sweeping there.  As ridiculous as it sounds, we are going to have to back off and bombard for a few days while we recover. The army was never that good, but against the Allies we’re starting to look like a bad joke.
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Dec 29, 2023 18:56
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Hopefully after you finish off India, the most important job the army will have is to be left to starve on random atolls!
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Dec 30, 2023 01:15
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  Unloading continues at Nauru.  Why the hell is he bombing Gove at night??  It’s not like we can oppose a day raid.  Derby is becoming a habit.  Although of course we’ve withdrawn the CAP from here to more critical areas anyway.  Cruisers at Nauru. Is this a bombardment in support or a whole new invasion?  The latter. Well, that settles it I suppose.  Wait, Seabees? That isn’t going to help him!   ????  Pretty light CAP at Port Moresby.  Most of his effort is presumably over Milne Bay.  Let’s hope this sweep goes as well.  Not quite.  And Bareilly.  At least we win this one.  Here come the Hellcats.    A second sweep of Cawnpore.  Spitfires  Oops, somehow a TF has been spotted at Karachi, despite my best efforts to prevent that.  It’s just HDMLs   Well, we hit one.  And got under the CAP. Let’s hope there’s no more waves, though.  This time we’ll shoot down a Spitfire!  Curse you R. J. Mitchell!  We might need to rethink this strategy.  Oops?  By some kind of miracle they only get one!  Please no more bombers coming, please no more bombers coming   We got away with it again???  If only this sweep was landing next door   I don’t understand why our losses are so light.  OK, now it’s starting to hurt. Still surely there can’t be many more Hellens still to come.  A couple of late Hellcats at Lunga.  And these two have their act together.  Continuing to bomb our manoeuvres.  No actual damage yet today.  Apparently they’re still going for us outside Milne Bay.  This is actually good for us, since the quicker these guys get wiped out the quicker we can reconstitute the units and get them back in the fight. Also, look at those cheeky little carriers just hanging out just off the tip   If I’d have known he was going to do this I’d have LRCAPed it.  Hahaha. We’ve still got some fight in us, fuckers.  Come on, let’s get onto the good stuff.  He is also very interested in bombing this hex.  Ouch, that’s not very nice at all.  I take come consolation in that he’s using the ASV III equipped Wellington GR. VIII as a line bomber in India, when it’s by far and away the best submarine hunter he has. Or maybe that’s just a reflection of how ineffectual our submarines have been.  Well, this sets back any plans for an attack by several days, at least.  If he still has the ability to throw around this kind of number of planes, why the hell didn’t he use them at Lucknow?  Now I’m feeling that we should be the ones worried about being attacked on the ground here.  Jesus Christ.  So many planes!  Not only bombing Gove at night!  It may be day time, but they still hit gently caress all.  Here we go!  100% penetration, and medium weather, let’s do this!  The big stuff is still here!  The Jills are underperforming, a little.  But the Judys are having a good old time.  APAs just, here for the taking   If the Jill pilots could just pull their heads out their asses.  Not bad! Now to scroll down.  They’re loving loaded still!!! If we can just get a nice afternoon strike, maybe with the Kates joining in, we’ll be in business.  A few more Hellens get chewed up.  Apparently we completely obliterated the CAP over Port Moresby.  And now it’s afternoon.  The usual.  Balls, the carriers are going off target for the afternoon strike.  Or else they’ve found something even better???  Apparently the CO has delivered them a stern talking to about missing torpedoes.  Please be loaded, please be loaded  This is really not going well for him.    They haven’t finished unloading at Nauru yet.  Average at Jubbulpore.  Not good at Bhopal.  This is just ridiculous.  Day two at Nauru.  Oh wait, that was us, not them.   Whoops! We’re going to lose it anyway, but my god have we made them bleed for it.   Well then. That is a series of events that happened. There is no  big enough to describe my feelings adequately.  Dead Hellens, you say? Pffft, whatever.  My only regret is standing down the Nells for “rest” and “recovery”. If I’d thought, we could have unleashed them again today and really gone to town.  Hermitage was really quite a chonky lass. No Queen Elizabeth, but she’ll be missed all the same.  An AP is of course not as exciting as an APA.  What the gently caress she was doing by herself half way between Hawai and the Line Islands is anyones guess.  Oh! Useful idiots/free cannon fodder, sure, why not?  Work on Hida starts at Osaka, due on the 27th of February.  The 21st Division is once again heavily disrupted, but they ought to be used to it by now.  Mornington Island has been chosen as the initial target for Carpenter, but we won’t start loading for a few days.  Now, what do we do? Do we charge off and save Nauru, forcing him to restart that process, or do we go after the laden troops ships we know are in the Coral Sea? If only he could have waited another week for doing this, and we’d have had three more carriers available…  No air cover! And they’re within Nell range of Lunga!!!!! We can have our cake and eat it.  Yeah, they’re going to take Nauru tomorrow. Nevermind, let’s hope we can make him bleed for it. If anything this just confirms that sending the carriers over would be a waste of time.   The carriers will stand on into the Coral Sea. Fuel is a little tight, but I’ve managed to juggle it around without wasting too much time.  The Kongos are going to pop in to say hello at Milne Bay, then rejoin the carriers for air cover. To be honest, I expect him to disband the convoy into Milne Bay, but it’s fine if he does, we’ve got him trapped then. Of course, he can only disband ships that don’t have any troops loaded, and even a little bit of damage makes it take forever. Also, let us not forget, he bombed the port into the dust over the last few weeks. A shame, that.  Sweep is adjusted to Milne Bay.  And in anticipation of him disbanding either the whole lot or at least cripples into Milne Bay, the army arrives at Gasmata. Losing 30 Hellens a day in India isn’t enough, they can’t have the navy outshining them!  We’re going to take advantage of the confusion to do another supply run to Gasmata.  Hiei is heading for home.  The 4th mixed regiment will secure Umboi Island, now that Milne Bay is over.  The Nells are set up at Lunga. Of course, they might not even go for Nauru, but generally amphibious TFs have very high targeting priority, so they probably will.  We don’t need to be in any great rush to launch Carpenter. We’ll start with a bombardment of Mornington Island. Getting into position will take two days, and then three days to get back. That should line up fairly nicely with Donryu & Tairyu finishing their business, refuelling at Rabaul and being available for support, being replaced in the Truk standby readiness role with Shokaku, Zuikaku and Taiho.  I’m adjusting some LRCAP to hopefully catch his harassment bombing.  And a rather speculative sweep of the crossroads.  We are going to rest the Hellens now. We can’t sustain those kinds of losses in two theatres simultaneously.  Over the top again at Bellary.
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Dec 30, 2023 17:08
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Holy poo poo, what a brutal day that was for him. Losing those APs with those troops really hurts. I've found playing the game makes me understand what you folks are doing a hell of a lot better. Funny that. But it seems like to me that port strikes and airbase strikes with heavy bombers really isn't that effective, at least against the AI. I'm running the campaign right now that takes place in Alaska, and I've been bombing and surface bombardment almost nightly of an enemy held island, yet every day the AI is able to get aircraft up and running. Perhaps because they are floatplane fighters? Anyways, what is your tips for hitting airfields and ports? What's the optimal altitude for my medium and heavy bombers to hit at? Oh, I also started a December 8th campaign as the allies. Holy poo poo, that first turn is taking forever for me to get through, I've spent a few hours on it already and only have managed to start setting up stuff on the west coast of the US and around Pearl Harbor. Not looking forward to setting up orders for PI, Oz and China.
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Dec 30, 2023 19:07
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Cimber posted:Holy poo poo, what a brutal day that was for him. Losing those APs with those troops really hurts. I don't know what the current patch is like, but the Guadalcanal campaign is a good one in between the massive full-war scenarios and the ones that are really small. Big enough that you have to do some medium-term logistics and etc but small enough to be focused on just the area with the fiercest combat.
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Dec 30, 2023 20:01
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Yeah, the one I'm running now in Alaska is pretty simple , called the 1000 mile war. Each side has one main base, and the allies have to take over two of the Japanese held islands. It's pretty simple with little logistics to worry about, but there is some as the allies have another island about 150 miles from the first Japanese target island. I'm running a cargo ship over there to give it some supply to support the kittyhawks and light RCAF bomber (Ventrue?) I'm sending in daily sweeps at the enemy island. I'm learning to manage fatigue, pilot skill and am doing a bunch of training on Dutch Island of my Liberator bombers. Every two days I get a night bombardment off with two TFs made up of CAs and CLs, and they usually get anywhere between 10-20 airfield hits, port hits and supply hits. However, he's still able to operate aircraft for some reason. Maybe the AI gets bonuses because its AI and is stupid?
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Dec 30, 2023 20:11
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Cimber posted:Holy poo poo, what a brutal day that was for him. Losing those APs with those troops really hurts. Some things you'll want to get used to right away: Do NOT change the planning target of any land unit unless you plan to use it for an amphibious assault. Having low planning is a combat penalty. It won't affect your combat potential to have it set to a nearby location unless you are actively assaulting from the ocean into that base. As long as your planning isn't high, your unit will not generate xp passively. It takes forever to change the planning target of every new unit you get and the result is a miserable amount of clicking around just to nerf yourself. First turn of the main campaign does take forever yes. Second and third will take a good while too. After that it get much more manageable. If you want to suppress a base, you need to hit it hard initially and then you need to keep smacking it around every day with a more limited force, just to keep the enemy repair crews from doing more than just keeping the status quo. The enemy AI gets massive cheat bonuses. It will teleport transport ships around if they aren't being threatened by anything and a base needs supplies. It will also completely forget about those ships it now has piling up in a godforsaken corner of New Guinea so you can sit there and snipe them away. It will always have more planes. Doesn't matter what it is actually producing. It will simply have planes all over the place until it actually runs out of pilots. Keep in mind that you cannot transport a unit which is attached to a reserve command (Marked with an [R] in it's name). This includes air transporting and sea transport. You can however send them around by train and they can cross borders into areas that shouldn't be within the domain of said command. So you can't ship reserve units from India to Burma, but you can just pack them into a train, dump them off at the tiny train stop near the border and just have them start strolling through the jungle until they reach the next railroad. Aircraft squads have the same issue, they can redeploy to other airbases yes. But if they are in a reserve command, they can only deploy to bases of their own faction (or maybe even just to bases under the same command). This gets annoying when trying to get aircrafts out of the Philippines, Dutch East Indies, India or even just shipping squadrons from the US west coast.
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Dec 30, 2023 20:14
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I just learned the hard way that using APs to transport troops to unfriendly shores isn't the way to do it. LOL, whoops. I guess I should have waited a few more days for my APA to arrive in Dutch Harbor and _then_ launch my amphib assault. Also for some reason my bombardment TF didn't bombard when it got to the hex, presumably because I had it following the amphib TF. Also troops don't really like doing shock attacks when they have low supplies because there are not enough of them from their AP, and unloading my AKs are taking forever on this unfriendly island. Who woulda thunk. Well, lessons learned I guess. Better to learn now than later.
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Dec 30, 2023 22:52
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That’s a big reason Japan struggles so much to take any initiative after the first year of the war - they get an artificial planning and unloading rate bonus for their generally mediocre landing craft, which expires in March or April of ‘42. After that they have to deal with the unloading mechanics without much in the way of dedicated landing craft and assault transports. It’s more or less impossible against any reasonably defended positions. I guess we’ll see if Pharnakes can pull it off!
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Dec 30, 2023 22:57
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Velius posted:That’s a big reason Japan struggles so much to take any initiative after the first year of the war - they get an artificial planning and unloading rate bonus for their generally mediocre landing craft, which expires in March or April of ‘42. After that they have to deal with the unloading mechanics without much in the way of dedicated landing craft and assault transports. It’s more or less impossible against any reasonably defended positions. I guess we’ll see if Pharnakes can pull it off! Oh yeah, yeah I see that. Found some interesting info on page 128 that says Japan gets an early war bonus of 1200 unloading points a turn, which makes a standard xAP go from 250 points a turn to almost 1500. Alikchi lost an APA, which gives him 3000 unloading points a turn. That's a _huge_ amount of unloading a turn and is a huge loss for him.
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Dec 30, 2023 23:16
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  Hoping for some night action soon, but first unloading.  We’re still shooting back.  Another landing at Nauru?  No, it’s a bombardment. Which I think means…  Yes. Kongo has failed to engage the retreating convoy. But maybe Alikchi disbanded all of them?  I-173 has a minor brush with a destroyer.  And we see O-21 again.  I-39 misses a yard sweeper.  Well that was a waste of two torpedoes.  This is far from a waste.  She’s loaded, excellent. The ability for Liberty Cargos to carry a couple hundred tons of fuel is a bit of a double edged sword, the quantity of fuel moved does add up over time, and it’s particularly useful if, for example, you threw tankers away like confetti in the first six months of the war. On the other hand, well, one torpedo hit is an all but guaranteed kill on a loaded ship.  No escorts, either.  No day engagement either!  Welp.  Maybe Belliary will be better?  That is, a lot better.  Stragglers at Cawnpore are going to have a hard time I’d imagine.  Well, apparently we survive the Spitfire challenge.  No sign of opposition at Milne Bay.  No sign of Allied ships, either.  How the hell did he get them all out? I don’t understand, there were several heavily hit but not sunk. Unless he just scuttled everything that couldn’t make full speed, I guess.  Whoops  If they get a hit on one of our transports that would be nasty.  Thankfully they don’t, I could do with these guys not drowning, even if we don’t need them at Milne Bay anymore.  We got the LRCAP in the right place today.  No Mitchells shot down, though.  Well, nevermind, we’re definitely ahead from that fight.  And there’s more coming.  Not so good.  Our tanks are going to have another rough day of it.  They’re spreading the damage around.  Gove gets its daily.  Unremarkable.  Oh god that is a lot of CAP.  Welp.  I’m astonished our pilots manage any hits in the circumstances.  That’s it then, we’ve got no striking power left.  Well, some others have flown next door.  And they get through easily enough.  Not all of them had the speed to make Port Moresby, then.  I wish the main strike had gone here. Not only would we have lost no planes, we might not have even sealed the deal on these two, with them so close to Port Moresby.  No LRCAP over Milne Bay, unsurprisingly.  He’s noticed us building an airfield here, I suppose.  Tarawa.  Light damage from this wave.  drat it, I really need him to not bomb the port. If he does that we can’t build forts.  Yes, that’s it.  Haha, some Beauforts from Australia want to try the carriers.  Better luck next time, losers.   Umboi Island.  If he’s back to bombing here, I suppose he thinks he’s won.  Which he has, pretty much.  Ohh, the Nells are going to do something!  But they aren’t going to do anything useful.  Well, there should be more where they came from.     Not going as hoped.  Finally we get a hit.  That 4 ship flight is the only one to have attacked on a beam so far.  The carriers are trying something of a PM flight.  What’s it going to be?  Nothing much.  Meh.  I-20 is having a good day, though.  I wonder how many unescorted ships there are in this convoy.  Still another fleet unloading at Nauru.  Jubbulpore.  Uhh, what?  He’s retreated!?!  A good banging at Bangalore.  We aren’t holding here, I feel.  But we go down hard.  The 46th Naval Guard fought well, much better than he had anticipated I think.  Today, maybe?  Denied.   Overall, rather disappointing.   This was never going to be good, but I did think we’d maybe done a little better in India than this.  He’s actually managed to save most of his fleet   The construction companies at Nauru were wiped out already, so we can rebuy them straight away.  As you would expect, high churn today.  I’m doing my best to not spot these guys, but somehow they still are. At least they aren't drawing in the Nells today.  I was in a rush immediately before leaving for Christmas when I did this turn, and I made a few mistakes. One of which was not setting any reaction range for the battleships, with it they almost certainly would have engaged. Really annoying, especially since Alikchi then didn’t even send me the turn back until yesterday  Tairyu’s strike has almost ceased to exist.  On a bright note, there’s still no search in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and I think we can make him regret the absence.   This is a horrible plan relying on a whole load of half understood WitP jank to come off, but I badly want to bombard these fighters. Even just grounding a couple dozen for a week or so would be hugely advantageous for us right now.  The jank part is I don’t really know exactly where they are going to end up, so it’s hard to position the carriers to cover them. I think it’s going to be here, though  To the west the main group of battlewagons will bombard Mornington Island. I’m hoping that he will regard this as part of the setup to attack Groote Eylandt, which technically it is. Just not immediately.  This impression, I’m hoping, will be reinforced by an attack on the airfield at Normanton. If I can make it appear like I’m just swatting at targets of opportunity in the area to weaken his second line airfields, that might ally suspicions. Basically just what he was doing with his heavies for the last few weeks.  Umboi Island is still non functional, so we will have to provide LRCAP of the troop convoy from Gasmata.  Guess which airfield is no longer non functional though! That’s right, he’s neglected Gove enough for the engineers to have the runway back up and the hangars mostly repaired. The timing couldn’t be better for us.  The auxiliaries will leave straight away.  And the invasion flotilla as soon as they are loaded.  Let’s see if we can just brute force Bellary.  I don’t suppose we will ever launch this attack, because Bhopal will auto flip in the night, but just in case it doesn’t, somehow.
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Dec 31, 2023 17:10
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We are seeing all the sexy events, but you are probably doing a lot more 'unsexy' things every turn such as managing logistics, convoys and that sort of thing. How long does each turn take to plan? I've started the grand campaign myself against the AI, and I'm forcing myself to write down a lot of things that I need to keep track of. I'm segregating theaters on a document and coming up with short and long term plans. If I don't do this my strategy will be a mess because I'll forget what I planned for that TF of three CLs and 3 DDs for example. Do you do that sort of thing? The fact that Alikchi is sending out convoys without escorts is giving me hives. Unless he's blown through all of them he should have _tons _ of them sitting around in San Fran. How much recon do you do on a given turn, and how much sea search? Any tips how to effectively search? I've learned that each airplane assigned to search will fly twice a day and cover a ten degree arc. So if I only have 6 planes able to search I'll either do a 60 or 120 degree pattern and reduce my max range to less than 300 miles from the base. Would you agree/disagree with that strategy?
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Dec 31, 2023 20:00
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Cimber posted:Why can't he send up subs from Perth or some other base in Western Australia? While Malaca strait itself is shallow, there are a number of nice grid spots he could put as his patrol zone that are deep water? Perth isn't much closer either, maybe 3500 miles at best. The endurance of a fleet boat is 10k miles, so if your crusing ground is 4k miles from your bases that means each submarine can only spend 20% of it's time hunting and the rest transiting, which is very inefficient. India is already over baring the kicking and screaming anyway, I overacted rather dramtically to the supply shortage a month ago and we're now sitting on well over quarter million supplies. He might well be sitting on literally millions, of course, we just don't know. Good one to ask him though! The other thing to bear in mind is while you are right that all of our traffic to India must funnel through the Malaca Strait, all of our traffic to everywhere moves through SW Japan and the East China Sea, which is also closer to bases he has. It really doesn't make much sense for him to deploy submarines to Malaca. Milne Bay irronically is actualy one of the bases he could perfectly well by pass if he wanted, since its been fully supressed from Port Moresby for 90% of our occupation of it. Clearly he disagrees, however. Pirate Radar posted:I forget if this has come up already but does the mod add very much ahistorical stuff on land like it does in the air and on the sea? Or did you not emphasize that as much because you originally figured land combat wouldn’t be a big deal? Just wondering if we’re going to see something silly by 44 or 45 like tank battles in India between Black Prince heavy tanks and O-I super heavies. There is some stuff, but to be perfectly honest I've forgoten what it is, so we'll find out when we get there I suppose  Cimber posted:Ahhh, interesting. I was reading about flight options and why we see so many 'battles' of 3-4 planes when we know one of them sent 12 or 24 planes in to attack. Those three or four planes are meant to represent a minor segment of the main attack. So a formation of b-17s that got lost in a cloud bank on the way to the target and arrived ten minutes later than the earlier b-17s, and meet the cap might be one battle, while planes that didn't get mixed up in clouds and met up with their escorts might be another report. I've never tried doing that myself, it mostly sounds like a great way to get all your sweepers shot down by AA mgs that can finally have a target. wedgekree posted:Hopefully after you finish off India, the most important job the army will have is to be left to starve on random atolls! Well, yes, exactly. My plans in India have very rapily evolved from "wouldn't it be funny if we did this" to "poo poo, If we don't take all of India in 6 months we'll have lost all of it in a year". Cimber posted:Holy poo poo, what a brutal day that was for him. Losing those APs with those troops really hurts. Suppressing float planes and flying boats is almost impossible, as you are discovering. Fortunately the Rufe isn't all that much so you don't really need to. At 1k bombers are more accurate (but use a seperate, trainable low bombing skill), but unless dedicated attack bombers use a half load, 2k is the best accuracy for a full load using the normal bombing skills. This of course doesn't account for flak or CAP, I typically bomb at 6k for accuracy becuase that's above light flak, or, increasingly, 10k to be above the Bofors. Flying above heavy guns is of course not possible, except maybe for late war allied heavy stuff. And they probably won't hit much from up there anyway. Cimber posted:Yeah, the one I'm running now in Alaska is pretty simple , called the 1000 mile war. Each side has one main base, and the allies have to take over two of the Japanese held islands. It's pretty simple with little logistics to worry about, but there is some as the allies have another island about 150 miles from the first Japanese target island. I'm running a cargo ship over there to give it some supply to support the kittyhawks and light RCAF bomber (Ventrue?) I'm sending in daily sweeps at the enemy island. I'm learning to manage fatigue, pilot skill and am doing a bunch of training on Dutch Island of my Liberator bombers. You could suppress player CAP there by burning out all the supplies (could take a very long time, though) but as others have said, by the time you combine the persistence of float planes with the AIs cheated supply it's probably impossible. Cimber posted:I just learned the hard way that using APs to transport troops to unfriendly shores isn't the way to do it. LOL, whoops. I guess I should have waited a few more days for my APA to arrive in Dutch Harbor and _then_ launch my amphib assault. You can use ships other than APAs for amphibious landings, you just need a ton of them. You can fit one regiment into an xAP, but if you spread it out across ten you'll unload almost as fast as if you put them in an APA. Velius posted:That’s a big reason Japan struggles so much to take any initiative after the first year of the war - they get an artificial planning and unloading rate bonus for their generally mediocre landing craft, which expires in March or April of ‘42. After that they have to deal with the unloading mechanics without much in the way of dedicated landing craft and assault transports. It’s more or less impossible against any reasonably defended positions. I guess we’ll see if Pharnakes can pull it off! We do have 4 ahistorical LSDs, in additons to the 2 historical ships, so we can make one decent amphibious task force. If we lose it that's definetly the end of any kind of counter attack, though. Cimber posted:Oh yeah, yeah I see that. Found some interesting info on page 128 that says Japan gets an early war bonus of 1200 unloading points a turn, which makes a standard xAP go from 250 points a turn to almost 1500. I haven't looked it up, but he does get a pretty big chunk of APAs, maybe even a hundred. It's not a kockout blow, sadly. Cimber posted:We are seeing all the sexy events, but you are probably doing a lot more 'unsexy' things every turn such as managing logistics, convoys and that sort of thing. How long does each turn take to plan? If I wasn't LPing a normal turn would probably take me around half an hour to 40 minutes, or if I had to do pilot training, add another hour on every few turns. They ussually take me around ~4 hours all up. Notes are absolutely essential, unless you have some kind of perfect recal super power. My notes document on google drive hit page 100 this turn. Alikchi was being very effective at routing his convoys ??? before the intermission, to the point that submarine atacks basically just weren't happening. I suppose at that point he stopped sending escorts so much, but since resuming he's gone back to more obvious paths, but hasn't added the escorts back in yet. So we're having a bit of a happy time, I don't suppose it will last. I do as much recon as I have groups available to do it (don't forget to divide them for 3x coverage). Effective search is a tricky one to sum up, it's about knowing where you need to see enemy ships, and covering there appropriately whilst also not completly neglecting the rest of the map. One good tip is make sure all your air groups are stuffed full of pilots, this will mean you can run them at 100% search without having too many Ops losses due to pilots fatigue. I don't think there's any point in reducing range, like you said each plane covers a 10 degree arc and that's it. I think maybe it doubles if you half their range, but that's never really going to be worth it. Also don't forget they will auto search a circle of radius 4 from their base, even in areas outside of the set arcs (but at a penalty).
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Jan 1, 2024 14:14
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Oh thank god the threads are finally turn synchronised.
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Jan 1, 2024 14:18
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  PT boats at Port Moresby.  A little nerve wracking, of course, but we’re bowling along at 30kts in combat conditions, he’d have to get obscenely lucky.  Instead PT-179 gets very unlucky.  To be honest I’d have probably preferred Kongo saved her ammo for the airfield, but whatever.  It’s not only PT boats here!!  I’m sorry, what!? You haven’t even got your engines running and someone loving 360 no scoped a snap shot at Kirishima. This is outrageous! Do DE’s even have torpedoes???  Look, this whole David v Goliath shtick isn’t going to work for you in the long run.  Kirishima gets her revenge.  At least Kota Agoeng was loaded.  Haha, we have RADAR too motherfuckers! On two ships in our entire navy  I’d rather save the ammo anyway.  That’s a lot of guns we are pointing at Mornington Island.  Blah blah more PT boats run away.  That’s it for the night encounters.  The Allies have invented all weather PGMs  Gove.  Not even trying for the runway? A little complacent there I feel, Alikchi.  Not done with the night encounters?  Stationary freighters are easy targets.  Kongo isn’t risking a repeat of the last time.  Gilmer’s trying though!  Not loaded, sadly.  There’s something at Mornington too.  I suppose an Alabaman ought to feel pretty at home in Northern Queensland.  Well, Kirishima’s got the fire out, that’s a good sign.  Boom.  Kongo went off target, but Kirishima did a good job for one battleship.  As the senior ship present, Settsu leads the display at Mornington Island.  Yes, I think that should get the point across.  That’s a good start to a landing.  PT boats again!  It turns out when we can see what we are shooting at, we do much better.  Well, by the time it’s all added up we’ll probably have sunk a couple destroyer’s worth of PT boats. Which one was Kennedy on again?  On the way back to Gove, the fleet encounters whatever these are, and rather ignominiously, run for their lives.    I-8 surfaces to attack an LCI, but then decides to use torpedoes anyway for some reason.  I hope the sharks like their food mushy.  O25 is lucky the ocean shelves so quickly here.  Beaufighters for sweep?  Ineffectual sweep, I like it.  Spits though can gently caress right off.   There’s some CAP at Normanton, then.  But not much. Decent weather.  And a lot of flak.  Let’s see how it goes at Bellary.    I think part of the problem is there simply isn’t enough opposition to make a decent target.  We’ve got two regiments bogged down calling for air support and unable to provide any more intel than “there’s some British over there somewhere and they’re shooting at us  ” The CVEs have come out to play!  And we all know how that goes. Today our strike is stood down so they’ll get away with just having their Avengers slaughtered.  Bombers arriving in India.  Excuse me?  The sky knights apparently decided it would be bad form to shoot at each other. I assume our troops feel a bit differently.  At least they’re engaging this time.  And we even shot a couple.  As semi expected, he’s bombing Ahmedabad.  I was actually expecting him to sweep at least one more day before doing this.  He must feel relatively good about his supply stockpiles if he’s still bombing this hard.  Even better when they miss.  He hasn’t been this way for a few days.  But minimal damage with this weather.  Sky knights  Mitchells do remarkably little damage today.  The Liberators achieve far less than the Wellingtons did.  The Nells are flying, but the conditions are not favourable.  Well, that’s fair enough.  gently caress, where did you idiots come from?   Not great.  And here comes the afternoon.  Light so far.  No! Bad USMC! Don’t make me bring the carriers over there.  PM suicide squad.  They don’t even live to see a target.  Yeah, no.  Three more points for us, I guess.  We have CAP now at Gove.  Liberators give no fucks.  Not ideal.  The weather has cleared over Nauru.    The one Nell that could attack a fat target on the beam forgot to load a torpedo, of course.  I am not amused.  The lord give me patience.  Why were any of them going for destroyers if those thicc girls were around??  Only one into the wood chipper here.  That’s because the rest have gone all the way to the Australian Coast.  After all this, I’ll take it.  If we didn’t even set her on fire, I doubt she’s going to sink.  Jubbulpore.  Bangalore goes well.  Yes?  No Not even any disruption at all.   Well, that was a confusing mess of a day, but I think we came out ahead?   10 Judys for what we achieved is particularly nasty, but we did kill a whole lot more of them today.  A full page of kills for us! Nothing very exciting, though.  A pretty mid Dutch troop transport is the most valuable.  DE’s and their still present torpedo armament  We raise another regiment of volunteers.  Bhopal going down without a fight means we have captured the forts intact. Don’t mind if I do!  Unfortunately he’s beaten us to the final hex side here, denying us the opportunity for an encirclement.  Kirishima will be fine, baring unexpected submarines or something on the way home.  It feels kind of crazy to just leave his carriers there, but both sides have exhausted their strike groups, and anyway we need to focus on ensuring Kirishima’s safety.   The battleships will head for Gove, where Kirishima will go home, being replaced in the carrier escort role by Haruna. We’re two Kongos down now, which isn’t ideal, but I’ll take that over losing one permanently.  The carriers will follow them in.  We’ll send the slow girls that direction too.  The destroyers didn’t participate in the bombardments, so even though they can’t rearm at Gove they still have most of their ammo. I’m going to send them out to clear away the PT boats and other assorted annoyances at Groote Eylandt before we bombard it, which will take another two or three days to sort out.  It’s very hard to judge just how much damage we did at Port Moresby. Still, I think we have something of an opportunity here.  So we’ll try bombing Port Moresby. It might well be a terrible idea, but if all we achieve is convincing him that we care more about Port Moresby than further west it’s well worth it.  He hasn’t had any planes based at Jubbulpore for quite a while now, so we’ll attack it. The objective being supply hits, rather than damaging planes.  Just in case he feels like getting cute with a CAP trap at Bellary.  They didn’t actually manage to damage Ahmedabad more than we could repair it, but all the same I’m keen to see progress on the expansion, so we’ll bring in the bomber killers.  We’ve got him fairly well tangled up here at the moment I think, so our next major target will be Cawnpore, where we hopefully have at least a chance of attacking in the open ground.
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Jan 1, 2024 19:17
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Guess you'll be standing down the Nells and HElens for a bit so they can draw replacements?
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Jan 1, 2024 22:31
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I posted in his thread but I wanted to post here too Pharnakes so its fair. I was reading on the official forums that navy search is bugged to gently caress. Don't use search arcs, set everything to 360 degrees and 12 hexes. [edit] Just as an aside, I really really wish my submarines would shoot their torpedoes at AKs and not the escorting DMSs.... Cimber fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Jan 4, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 20:07
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  RO-107 flubs on a LCT, somehow.    RIght in the Torres strait is maybe not the best place for a submarine to operate.  gently caress her up!  That’s a good paddling. We lose contact abruptly, which can suggest it’s a kill, maybe. I’m not convinced.  We’ve found the PT boats.  Uzuki gets straight to work.  That’s it, waste your torpedoes on destroyers.  I wasn’t really expecting to sink any of them until the day phase, so I’m happy with that.  A second encounter goes more typically.  But then we hit a mine.  RO-107 is done messing about trying to set up fancy torpedo angles.  This is clearly an act of desperation to reach Mornington. The question is, with what? Reinforcements, supplies, even an evacuation?  Our cripples somehow manage to evade the PT boats.  Not sure how, when we’re still right on top of Groote Eylandt.  Frustrated observers on the island try to talk the PT boats in the right direction, but the PT boat’s crew are too high on go fast to register the existence of any object moving less than 20 knots.  All of this smol stuff is at least worth a point each.  Which, given a cruiser is only worth 30, is probably a massive overvaluation.  Sweep time! That’s a lot of Spitfires  We did well against Kittyhawks, but, uhhh.  Belliary.  I thought we’d lose at least one.  A determined strike on our remaining transports at Umboi Island.  That’s a start to making up for Port Moresby.  The Hellens hit Jubbulpore.  Only one supply hit??  The problem is there’s still Hellens to come at Port Moresby  Yes! Our bombers almost never do that.  Maybe there’s some hope they ran out of ammo shooting all those Zeros down?  No  The problem is it takes gently caress all ammo to shoot one of our planes down  Some Avengers bring us the chance for revenge!  We chew them up nicely, but three make it through.   No survivors!  It’ll take a lot to make up for those Hellens, but Avengers are dangerous. Mulching them is always a good thing.  More to come.  And the bombers are through!  Welp.  gently caress. That hurts. At least we seem to have completed unloading.  He’s throwing the kitchen sink at our probe to Cawnpore.  I’ve got a good feeling about this.  Yes please. The decision yesterday to widen the CAP at Lucknow from zero to one was solid.  A couple thousand miles away Mitchells are being used as naval bombers.  They are not having a good time.  You know I like me a dead Mitchell!  Vengeances are much more of a concern, if they can penetrate.  Well, one probably isn’t much threat  Of course, we don’t know if these pilots have been trained in naval bombing at all. If they haven’t been, even the dive bombers are very unlikely to hit much of anything.  More at Cawnpore.  I wonder if he's planning to attack on the ground as well?  Liberators over the KB??  They, of course, get through the CAP.  These pilots, at least, I’m sure can’t be trained in naval bombing.  More Mitchells.  I have a vague idea that this is against our house rules.  But I don’t really care that much.  No CAP up at Bellary.  Our CAP is looking a little light now.  But this doesn’t really matter, as long as there aren’t any proper naval bombers inbound.  It does occur to me now, that he can quite effectively use the heavies to sweep our CAP away over the carriers, and there’s really nothing I can do to counter that other than hope the dice send the real threats in first.  And that’s it, our CAP is gone  Proper sweep over Belliary.  Not great.  Phew, it’s the afternoon.  CAPs will have reset.  Like so.  No bleed through this time.  The KB is ready again, too.  And thankfully the CAP prioritised the Beauforts.  But they have bombs anyway.  He must have lost quite a lot of planes, total.  Some Wellingtons waiting until the last minute in India.  BX? That’s new.  More meat for the Cawnpore grinder. This should really settle him down a bit for a while.  Still coming!  Three Wellingtons is nice.  It seems the main effort here is in the afternoon, not the morning.  Lame.  Heavies over the Kido Butai again.  Well, I’m not sure two carriers really counts.  I’m anticipating a nice string of Ops losses from all these damaged Liberators.  We’re tagging most of them that come over.  CAP is depleted again, but hopefully those Beauforts earlier were all the torpedo bombers he had in the area.  Their utility (intentional or not) as air superiority fighters aside, I’m really not worried about them hitting anything.  A flight of Avengers now would really suck…  But maybe it’s time for our torpedo bombers to shine?  A good start!  That we rapidly abandon.  Well, one plane out of nineteen making a sensible attack run isn’t too bad, right?  Stop it!  Why?  Persistence eventually pays off, I suppose.  I’d have massively preferred a few dead freighters. Just saying.  More Mitchells.  Jubbulpore.  Bangalore.  I don’t know why he didn’t just finish it here.  I think our guys here might be a little fucky wuckyed.   gently caress me, what an absolute blood bath. Definitely had me on the edge of my seat the whole turn through.   This was exactly what we needed. It’s a shame about the disaster at Milne Bay, without that we’d have lost 50 less planes, but whatever. I’m particularly pleased that he sallied all those heavy bombers at us - he somehow only lost two, but we must have damaged just about every single one that flew, and those things aren’t quick to repair.  I’m salty about how lucky he got with two flights of Beauforts getting through the LRCAP, and both attacking perfectly and hitting. Even when we did attack properly and hit something, it doesn’t sink! Alikchi doesn’t even have to bother with CAP over his fleets  Drum roll please. Welcome Taiho to the Combined Fleet!  Rather overshadowed by Taiho’s arrival.  Unfortunately the schedule on the Shokakus has slipped slightly, so it’ll be another few days before Taiho can leave the Home Islands.  One dead and three missing, a good day for the Ace farm.  11 killed, 2 wounded and 9 missing, down to 3 flyable airframes from I think 30. What a day.  We’ve seen far worse from mine hits.  The battleships have been unable to fully rearm, so we’ll have to wait another day before launching the next bombardment. Reports posted:TF 353 observes PBY-5A Catalina at 87,127 near Merauke  We didn’t lose any significant amount of troops drowned at Umboi, at least.   I really want these PT boats out the way, or at least to have all their torpedoes expended by the time we are landing. Well, let’s see just exactly what we are up against here.  We’re going to throw everything we have here, to try and save our tank regiments.  We’re going to have to bring in an entire new division to finish off these mechanics and second line troops at Bareilly. It’s ridiculous, but if we don’t do that our 37th division will remain stuck there indefinitely.
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Jan 5, 2024 00:17
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So I guess technically you came out ahead there? How are your poor plane pools doing?
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Jan 5, 2024 00:37
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Calling bs on the Spitfire Vc, of all planes, to do well.
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Jan 5, 2024 01:28
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wedgekree posted:Guess you'll be standing down the Nells and HElens for a bit so they can draw replacements? Not really, we're commited now and we just have to deal with waht's available. Cimber posted:I posted in his thread but I wanted to post here too Pharnakes so its fair. I was reading on the official forums that navy search is bugged to gently caress. Don't use search arcs, set everything to 360 degrees and 12 hexes. It wouldn't suprise me, but got a source on that? Apart from some understandable weirdness along the edges of perfect arcs drawn onto a hex grid, I've never felt like search was bugged. Certinaly we spot things well beyond 12 hexes. It canbe very fustrating, but think of it like the submarine can't manage an attack on the juicy stuff so settles for launching at an escort (it's not that at all, its all just dice) wedgekree posted:So I guess technically you came out ahead there? How are your poor plane pools doing? We're absolutely ahead. If I hadn't had a moment of insane over opttimism around Port Moresby, we'd have curshed him at 30-110 or so. As it is it's a very solid victory in India. Jobbo_Fett posted:Calling bs on the Spitfire Vc, of all planes, to do well. The Vc we can more or less handle, its the IIX in India that eats us for breakfast. Thankfully I think he only gets 72 in the reinforcement wave, so we're nearly there.
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Jan 5, 2024 13:01
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Pharnakes posted:
Source seems to be this: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10683&t=400722&start=20 It's not that search arcs are bugged, but it's possible that the 360-degree search is, so that it gives slightly better results than arcs. If so that would mean arcs are pointless for anything other than avoiding searching specific hexes, like ports with heavy CAP. Seems like the detection malus for 360 degree search is too small, or the automatic 4-hex search is used for all hexes in plane range or something. Or the malus is just applied to detection level, meaning you get more hits, but lower DLs on the hits, we can't be sure when the test criteria was "The detected TF reported seeing a plane" and not the actual DLs the spotting side got. If the "better" search just results in a lot of detection level 1 hits, they will be reset to DL 0 on the next 12-hour pulse, so effectively not very useful and may not even be visible (I'm not sure if the order phase takes place within a 12-hour pulse or between them, that is if the reduction of DLs happen between last turns day pulse and the orders phase or during turn resolution just before the night pulse.). "Interesting, but needs more testing" would be my verdict.
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Jan 7, 2024 02:51
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  You’ve solved this, just shoot them with your gun!  Well, it’s been a while.  Your sacrifice was appreciated.  Better.  It doesn’t take much to sink these things.  Yes!  Well, Kongo did dodge six yesterday, so fair enough I suppose.  RO-67 is in deep water though, so escapes with a light rattling.  The DDs have found an entire flotilla of landing craft.  I was kind of hoping they’d be loaded, but that should put a dent in whatever his plan is here, all the same. And then, of course, we hit a mine.  And now we’re getting bombed.  I assume the Avengers will be taking credit for that anyway.  How does he still have this much strike capacity left??  Welp.  No fires though!  A heavy raid on Bhopal.  I’m not quite sure why, Bhopal isn’t very important at the moment. Or maybe that is why, he’s bored of the meatgrinders.  More Liberators.  And Mitchells bombing in the south east.  Quite effectively.  Half the world away.  I really should CAP trap these guys, it just, isn’t a priority right now.  Eventually I’m going to have to do something about it, though.  No CAP over Jubbulpore.  Still trying for Umboi Island.  I’ll take it.  A relatively quiet day, if we’re at Tarawa now.  Quietish for Tarawa, too.  A bit more in India.  I thought he’d be going for our tanks, not the infantry.  Apparently everyone in India was just having a lie in this morning.  This is what we need.  Another wave.  If he keeps this up we really will be able to take air superiority.  Oh, he’s still going for our tanks.  And quite a lot of bombers are through.  Look at those dead Spitfires!!!!!!!!!!!  Gove. Is he going for the fleets or the airfield?  The fleet.   I like that ratio.  Next wave.  Same story.  Take a rest.  Escorts? Where we’re going we don’t need escorts!  A little over enthusiastic there, I-31.  We can definitively state she’s sunk.  There’s more here than I thought there would be, which is actually good because it must mean Alikchi still has replacements turned on, which in turn means they are going to eat lots of supply.  Bangalore.  333. Well, extrapolating off our performance at Lucknow, we need approximately, uhh, 6.5k AV   We spit in their face one last time at Nauru, taking one squad with us.   Oh. Not great, of course.  But could have been a whole lot worse.   Slightly red faced at being so careless with those tin cans.   Balanced out by not doing anything stupid with the air forces today. That’s a good amount of kills, and his actions are feeling a little desperate in India. Shame out bombers didn’t fly, but oh well.  Landing craft don’t even show up on the kill list, but I think they’re still a point apiece.  Ikazuchi is probably fine, as long as she doesn’t get hit again tomorrow. I’m not quite sure why she made no progress at all in retreating, I think maybe the captain freaked out about being surrounded by enemy air bases and didn’t move at all.  He’s evacuated all aeroplanes from Groote Eylandt again. We might still bombard it, but probably not.  I’d definitely say he’s anticipating us landing at Mornington Island. This does raise the interesting possibility of turning around and reloading the troops for Groote Eylandt instead, but I think we’ll stick with the plan.  These mass heavy bomber raids might not “work” as such, but there’s no denying they take a heavy toll on the mechanics. I just hope he feels sufficiently bruised he won’t try it again tomorrow.  What’s this? Chinese troops in Delhi? Alikchi you filthy little cheat! (It’s probably just the Chinese ground troops for the Flying Tigers that start in Burma)  Hurry up and build that airfield, he’s really looking quite exposed there.   Two DMS are heading out to join the invasion flotilla.  If he’s going to try and pummel us with heavies at Gove, we’ll drat well send the Nicks in.  And I think we will go ahead with the bombardment of Groote. There might not be any planes there now, but once we have Mornington Island, it would obviously be very desirable for him to have planes here, which he can’t do if we’ve turned the runway into a swamp.  We’re going to trial the new, heavily armed, Tojo variant. I’ve no idea if it’s actually good or not, but two 40 mms sounds promising.  The tanks will retreat north, and join the fight again at Cawnpore.  I’m not sure what he’s going to do with his fighters now, so we’ll play it safe and bomb Bhaunagar. Our preliminary bombardment suggests we’ll need the help anyway.
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Jan 7, 2024 17:55
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Pharn, what is your long term goal with Australia? Do you plan on moving towards Brisbane by landing at Normanton? Also, anyone here interested in doing a PBEM game? Doesn't have to be a full campaign, we could do something smaller.
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Jan 7, 2024 19:41
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  RO-107 misses a minelayer in the Gulf of Carpentaria.  I think we can guess what she was up to!  Bombardment time!  Hahaha, he loving moved planes back in the night!!!!  That is a major triumph for us.  Hello hello!   Coastal guns do their job perfectly.  We open the day with a small wave hitting Bhaunagar.  A good start, though.  And we’re continuing as we started.  The disruption from this must be pretty significant.  His bombers though are going for our fleeing tanks.  I really thought he’d bomb our advancing infantry.  Well, if he doesn’t send anything over our advance, that’s probably actually a win for us. There guys are combat ineffective already, and our movement is doubled if we don’t get bombed.  Sweep, too.  Testing the new Tojos.  Got one!  Give we only had two or three planes make the intercept, that’s pretty impressive.  I’m always going to be willing to trade a single engine fighter for a heavy, but with only seven airframes here total the CAP is already exhausted.  This is definitely his main effort for today.  He appears to have bored of feeding planes into the chipper at Cawnpore.  Speaking of, we’re getting swept instead.  Losses are inevitable when we have anti bomber CAP up. We can and do send up top cover, but there’s no guarantee they engage before the sweep can dive on the low cover.  More sweep to the south west.  Still no CAP over Jubbulpore.  I really need to find an angle again where we can be sweeping with a positive ratio.  A little extra curb stomping.  Alikchi might not believe in naval escorts, but he’s trying it at Gove.  Not that the heavies need it to get through.  No amount of escort can help them against 12.7/40 T89 though.  Welp. Those Lightnings did a number on us, escort penalties be damned.  Uhh, are you lost?  That’s a decent reduction from yesterday.  Bangalore continues to go up. We aren’t taking this anytime soon.  Cawnpore either, for that matter.   A bit of a lull today, but it has been quite intense the last week.   Well, except Mornington Island, where I’d imagine they’re very engaged. Those that aren’t dead.  I’m sure Maloelap fortress would love this to be true, but I‘m not convinced.  Minase commissions at Sasebo arsenal. We’re more than half way through the Yoshinos now.  This is what CD guns really do. The claims of sinking Dewey are ridiculous, but the USN was so busy shooting at the gun forts they forgot to shoot at anything else, such as the airfield.  We seem to have done Mornington Island over nicely.   I don't know how accurate this report of a troop convoy is, but clearly things are happening in the Arabian Sea, and I am desirous that they should not happen. I was going to wait for Ahmedabad to be built up, but I think instead we are going to go and make our presence felt.  Close escort will be provided by the Nagatos.  The Yamatos are judged too fuel hungry for sprinting, so they will follow on.  I think the best thing to do with our bombers is hit him here.  With sweep.  The carriers have taken replacement airframes, and they have, uhh, enough fuel by draining the tanks of Kongo & Kirishima.  Kongo then spends the rest of the night sucking Darwin dry, so will follow on.  And we’re on. The slower battleships join the flotilla to provide direct cover. I don’t suppose it’s going to fool him, but we’ll go and sit just off Groote Eylandt, maybe he will think the blow will fall there. We’re actually setting ourselves up to be range five from Mornington, which is the maximum range we can cover at the top speed of our slowest ship in one phase, thereby making sure we can unload as many men as possible before he can respond.  The fast battleships will bombard Groote again, to reinforce this impression, and to ensure he really can’t use it as a base to support Mornington.  The carriers of course will be escorting the amphibious task force.  One more thing we can do to push the illusion I suppose, have the army bomb Groote but aim for the troops, not the runway. The runway is going to be trashed anyway, of course.  Just incase it somehow isn’t, and now that our ships will be safely at sea, the Zeros can do a little sweep.  Taiho embarks on her maiden voyage. At full speed, I’m not taking chances with submarines, thank you.
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Jan 8, 2024 19:22
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Holy crap, those bombardment actions today were nuts. Victory for you, that's for sure. Lots of expensive airframes destroyed or damaged (which then can't get evacuated), and lots of pretty ships that are going to be sitting in shipyards and port for a few months. Don't blame you for sending your new CV out at full speed to clear subs. I did that in my game....... ....and then forgot to turn it off the next turn. I realized my mistake when I saw the ship sitting three hexes outside Pearl with no fuel. Whoops. Not a great place to run out of gas, what with all the IJN subs lurking around.
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Jan 8, 2024 20:33
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Well, good day! How long it gonna take you to reinforce your depleted squadrons from the slaughterfest of the last couple weeks?
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Jan 9, 2024 00:35
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Caconym posted:Source seems to be this: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10683&t=400722&start=20 I'll post this in the other thread too, but wow... I ran some tests and I'll never set another search arc again. I modded the Coral Sea scenario to test, for manageability. (tested in beta 1123) I tested with three japanese TFs stationary in different hexes, but all at range 9 from Port Moresby. The TFs ranged from 6 ships at 25k tons, 16 ships at 61k tons and a carrier TF at 10 ships and 91k tons. (TFs 4, 7 and 1 in the scenario) All three were within a 60 degree arc.  The search squadron was VP-11 out of Port Moresby, flying PBY-4s, with 55-70 NavS-skill and ~70 exp.  I ran the test for a total of 40 turns, so 120 potential detections (3 TFs x 40 turns). 10 turns each at 30% search with arc (single pass) and 60% search with arc (double pass), and then 10 turns each at 30% and 60% search and no arc. Range 10 for every test.  Detections and spottings were pretty much equal between arc and no arc, going up with the number of planes flown. At 30% search I spotted the TFs about 60% of the time, at 60% search about 80% of the time. But! The no arc planes got double(!) the detection levels. 10/10 detections were common in the no arc group, and 5/5 more common in the arc group (I never got more than 9/9 in the arc group, and that only once). From 0/0 unspotted to DL 12/10 on the first day of 60% search, no arc...   Weather didn't seem to matter much if at all for search, I got 10/10s in thunderstorms and 1/4s and total misses in clear sky. So setting search arcs seems to be actively harmful even if you KNOW the enemy is at that bearing, to say nothing of the chance of the enemy being outside the arc. It's of course possible the effect changes with increasing range, I think I'll run some more tests at max betty range just in case. Other trivia: - If a TF reported being seen in the OPS log, is was always visible to the enemy on the map next turn. The flavor text (snooped, followed, shadowed, sighted, detected etc.) did not seem to matter. - If a TF reported being seen by a specific plane model (PBY-4 Catalina) it was always the correct plane, but when they reported generics like Float Plane, Patrol, Recon or LevelBomber, it was almost never correct (but they at least never mistook the Catalinas for carrier planes).  - The "TF Spotted" mouseover text the japanese got was NOT always correct, that is, they were commonly spotted even when "TF Spotted" was missing, but never unspotted if it was present. - The OPS log of the observing (allied) side was garbage, and never generated a message for actually observed TFs. This has to be another bug. The only exception was when they reported seeing a specific ship or ship class, the positions of those were correct. But that happened once in those 40 turns and 85 observations. None of the other 84 were visible in the Allied OPS log, ONLY on-screen during the turn resolution and on the map in the next orders phase. Every single "PBY-4 from VP-11 reports X japanese ships at Y, Z heading foo, speed bar" was random bullshit like you get even when no enemy is present.  When I think of the collective player-hours spent painstakingly setting search arcs through the years... 
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Jan 9, 2024 01:33
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Yeah, that just has to suck. Good job testing and confirming what I saw in that other thread. I think, like was written there, that the malus for no search arcs is either way too small, or they did a boneheaded thing like give a negative value to a malus and instead turning it into a bonus.
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Jan 9, 2024 01:40
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Wouldn't be a gary grigsby game if 20 years after release people didn't notice a fundamentally broken core mechanic.
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Jan 9, 2024 09:27
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Cimber posted:Pharn, what is your long term goal with Australia? Do you plan on moving towards Brisbane by landing at Normanton? lmao, no. You've seen how we're performing in India now, we need something on the order of 20:1 advantage to carry out a sucesful attack. There is absolutely no way we can take Normanton, let alone push further. We can take Morington and Groote (I hope) because it'll be navy 3YT rifles doing the shooting, not army T99s. THe army is just there to occupt the sea of craters we make of the island, not to actually fight. Because if they fight they'll lose. Cimber posted:Holy crap, those bombardment actions today were nuts. Victory for you, that's for sure. Lots of expensive airframes destroyed or damaged (which then can't get evacuated), and lots of pretty ships that are going to be sitting in shipyards and port for a few months. No, it'll be a couple weeks in port for Dewey, and probably more like a couple days for the rest. Coastal guns very rarely sink anything, they're exclusive job is to draw fire. wedgekree posted:Well, good day! How long it gonna take you to reinforce your depleted squadrons from the slaughterfest of the last couple weeks? Well that depends how many more we lose Caconym posted:I'll post this in the other thread too, but wow... I ran some tests and I'll never set another search arc again. Jesus wept
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Jan 9, 2024 13:40
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I... ah, found something else... Naval search (and ASW) range is bugged. It stops at range - 1. Search at range 9 will never find a TF at range 9, only at 8 or closer. Same for ASW, if you want to search to range 2 you need to set range 6, not 4. (ASW ranges are halved, rounded down). I tested with odd ranges like 3 and 5 as well, in case the subtraction happened before the halving but to no effect (so the actual range is range - 1 for NavS and (range/2)-1 for ASW). Naval strikes themselves will fly to the full range set. This has rather serious implications for naval strike squadrons set to some percentage search, you have to set them to 1 range more than you want to strike at, with the implication that if something else spots an enemy at that range your strike will fly there, maybe with extended loadouts or without escorts...
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Jan 10, 2024 12:20
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Caconym posted:I... ah, found something else... Oh for Christ sakes. That would explain a lot for me. So my Cats flying ASW missions at range thirteen are only going out to range six?
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Jan 10, 2024 14:51
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Cimber posted:Oh for Christ sakes. That would explain a lot for me. So my Cats flying ASW missions at range thirteen are only going out to range six? Nono. They should only go to 6, the halved ASW range (rounded down) is in the manual and everything. But they only go to range 5.
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Jan 10, 2024 15:00
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Caconym posted:Nono. Gah, that's annoying. I wonder if I set my cats to Max range (20) and they search out to 9 hexes from the start position if thats going to cause a lot of fatigue and ops issues. I also wonder if they are counting the home base as a hex to search, which is why they going down 1 from the assigned number?
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Jan 10, 2024 15:24
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Love however long after release /still/ major bugs are being found in this game.
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Jan 10, 2024 18:37
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