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Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I cannot believe three waves of TBs against 0 cap only got 1 fish in.

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Akratic Method
Mar 9, 2013

It's going to pay off eventually--I'm sure of it.

Any day now.

What's the Japanese medal equivalent of


Because award that to every one of those pilots except the one that launched.

aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


Yikes those AC losses

Tiger Crazy
Sep 25, 2006

If you couldn't find any weirdness, maybe we'll just have to make some!
Why does he have the Enterprise on the port Moresby hex. :psyduck:

Zurai
Feb 13, 2012


Wait -- I haven't even voted in this game yet!

Yeah, Big E at Port Moresby with no CAP up is an, ah, interesting tactical decision.

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry
Fooled you all, therefore it was successful.

:smuggo:

SIGSEGV
Nov 4, 2010


I can only assume that the scouts found an oiler and a destroyer and reported a carrier and a battlecruiser, and the strike pilots were so hyped up they sank three fishing boats and reported a carrier kill.

orangelex44
Oct 11, 2012

Definition of orange:

Any of a group of colors that are between red and yellow in hue. Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Old Occitan, from Arabic, from Persian, from Sanskrit.

Definition of lex:

Law. Latin.
I see the Enterprise is as blessed in this universe as it was in reality. Should have been sunk twice already and we're only two months into the war!

sparkmaster
Apr 1, 2010

SIGSEGV posted:

I can only assume that the scouts found an oiler and a destroyer and reported a carrier and a battlecruiser, and the strike pilots were so hyped up they sank three fishing boats and reported a carrier kill.

Par for the course for the IJN.

Affi
Dec 18, 2005

Break bread wit the enemy

X GON GIVE IT TO YA
MY HEART!

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Tiger Crazy posted:

Why does he have the Enterprise on the port Moresby hex. :psyduck:

Alikchi's twitter thread does explain what's going on down there.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009
Speaking of which we agreed Alikchi would pause his twitter to not spoil the events of today, so from now on you should be able to read his twitter without fear of spoiling yourself on this thread by more than one day at most, depending on who posts first.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

If you are able to use Alikchi's twitter thread to spoil yourself then you have world class reading comprehension

Tiger Crazy
Sep 25, 2006

If you couldn't find any weirdness, maybe we'll just have to make some!

Alchenar posted:

If you are able to use Alikchi's twitter thread to spoil yourself then you have world class reading comprehension

This is the truth. It is fun to read but it is a mess figuring out the timeline.

SIGSEGV
Nov 4, 2010


sparkmaster posted:

Par for the course for the IJN.

(Indeed, it literally happened IRL.)

Broken Box
Jan 29, 2009

give the Enterprise a fish, and you'll grin for a turn

teach the pilots to drop fish in the Enterprise and you'll smile for the whole game

thatbastardken
Apr 23, 2010

A contract signed by a minor is not binding!
wow drat, those AA gunners on Constitution and Enterprise must be up for some medals

Pirate Radar
Apr 18, 2008

You're not my Ruthie!
You're not my Debbie!
You're not my Sherry!
Is it possible for you to tell the KB to turn around and haul rear end for Port Moresby now, or will the big targets have left by the time they’d get there?

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009

SerthVarnee posted:

So how is the war going in your own opinion?
Has it gone as well a expected?
Have their been any major disasters?
Any massive changes to the grand plan or are you going purely opportunistically from this point on?
At what point do you expect to be forced onto a defensive stance?
Do you get the feeling that Alikchi is feeling the pressure or is he starting to appear disconcertingly calm?

I've had no interactions with Alikchi and have seen nothing of his perspective, so I ask this in blind faith.


It's going... OK.

Progress isn't nearly as good as I'd like it to be, I'd put that down to two factors.

The main one is his choice of strategy in forward deploying, I should perhaps have been more aggressive in bypassing, however, I can't safely do that because factor two is the increased cost (particularly in time) of getting air superiority due to the buffed allied air force.

The only major disaster thus far is Yamashiro, but if we'd pushed harder there inevitably would have been other disasters.


I try to avoid having hard plans during the first three months, because there is no need for a plan, we can pivot to advance opportunistically wherever he leaves weaknesses.


As for when we will be forced to go defensive, well if we continue to miss shots like this, then APril 1st really. I have to admit I am rather salty about how lucky he is getting when it really counts, with the exception of Saratoga which wasn't even really bad luck on his behalf since he didn't escort her. Every time we have a major throw down the dice go his way. e.g Yamashiro took all the torpedoes at Ambon, Ark Royal and Hermes both made it out from under the KBs nose because the KB rolled poorly on strike numbers, and he let slip in discord that actually Yorktown was there are Port Morseby too.

Eventually his luck will turn of course but at the moment it feels like I have to fight for every inch, and he is playing sloppily as hell but getting away with it every time.


As for pressure it's hard to say. I am surprised that this is the first we've seen of the American carriers for sure, which possibly indicates he is feeling frightened to deploy them anywhere, or possibly he feels he has no need to risk them because everything is going according to plan.

I am certainly starting to feel the pressure of our landing bonus slipping away, and we are not significantly if at all ahead of the IRL schedule yet.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009



As per usual our sub chasers fail to make contact.




At least their destroyers don’t do any better. That is the mini sub you can see at Suva.




Tonight is good weather at Sabang and a small flight of Nells who’s orders I had forgotten to update actually pretty drat well. Now I wish I hadn’t updated any of the orders :v:




Actually maybe it was the Betties I switched back to day and all the Nells are on night orders. Let’s hope for some more waves and a dead Scythe or two!




Lol nope, but at least we are landing at Cebu this time!




First action in the air is again a sweep of Port Blair.




Today we lose an Oscar but on the other hand we kill one of the far superior Hurricanes instead of a Warhawk.




Singapore is clear for our Sallies. Well clear of planes anyway, flak is liable to be another issue entirely.





Unsurprisingly there is CAP over Port Moresby today. Including loving Sky Rockets :gonk:





But they are high, and our bombers have come in low. Juicy transports at least!




I know I topped up the torpedoes at Rabaul yesterday, but still half our idiots decided to bring bombs instead. And the half with torpedos mostly attacked destroyers or from ahead/astern :ugh:

Still we get a couple of decent hits at least, and that is presumably the carriers south of Port Moresby.




Today bombing from high altitude produces very mediocre results for us over Singapore, despite bringing 40 Sallys.




Definitely something has changed at Bataan, and it can only really be supply issues. Maybe we will try direct ground attack with the heavier bombers again.





It looks like today he put the bombers at Singapore on naval strike, whereas we of course put all our CAP up over Johore Bahru. This might not go so well :negative:





He’s back at bashing Koepang again, but it’s too late for him to keep the airfield fully suppressed - it’s now repaired enough I can bring fighters in today.

Also I’d far rather he was hitting Koepang airfield than the Lautem oilfield. We are probably going to have to take Darwin to protect Lautem in the long term though.





Thankfully the Yankees bomb aiming skills leave much to be desired. Well, from their perspective anyway, I think they are doing just fine.




They can’t even hit an airfield when there is literally no opposition whatsoever. They could land here, unload the bombs and set delay fuses on them if they wanted to improve their accuracy :v:





What?? Banshees aren’t supposed to be able to hit ships, let alone small nimble ones!




25 Betties manage to land one more torpedo. And only half of them died in the process!





In the afternoon we get a little escort at least.




And what a difference that makes!





PT boats :qq:





A large wave hits our transports at Kuantan but achieves little.





For some reason our destroyers out hunting the PT boat do have CAP over them, but of course this just results in the Scythes swatting one down, escort penalties be damned.





This is a bit more interesting at Port Blair.





Pansy is some ancient WW1 Q ship I think, but gently caress, I’ll take what I can get.




What is it with Betties that makes them totally unable to hit anything when I play the Japanese side? :smith:





Supply(-) for the Dutch here, so another day or two tops.








Another day, another bunch of dead bombers.




Honestly, do I even care if betties die anymore? They seem to be completly loving useless.





One day a mini sub will manage to do something other than die. I have faith :unsmith:





Another small Val Sentai arrives at Takao today.







I stand the bombers at Rabaul down. This is just unsustainable, and there is no prize here now worth the price.





And I switch the Zeros to offensive sweeps over Port Moresby.





We will attack, and hopefully take, Cebu tomorrow.




I send Ryujo out from Balikpapan to cover the Bandjermasin convoy, and I also restart sweeps of Soerabaja.




About half the troops have arrived at Bataan, and the rest will be here tomorrow. We will try a maximum effort ground attack with all the heavy bombers from Clark one more time to see if it will do any good.





It’s time we got this party started at Singapore, it would be nice to be able to take Singapore ahead of the historical schedule. Not every unit is here in Johore Bahru yet, and even when they do arrive they will need a few days to unpack.

However, to cross the “river” into Singapore we will be forced to make a shock attack, and will need a few days to recover after doing so. So we might as well get started now, by the time the initial wave has recovered from securing the beachhead the rest will be ready.

I send all the infantry, but keep all the armour, artillery and specialist troops back. Send in the cannon fodder for this.




The mainland, including Malaya, is actually starting to get a little light on supply, so we will take a giant convoy from Nagasaki to Bangkok, from where it can be railed down to Singapore or up country into Northern Thailand.

As a rule the mainland is pretty self-sufficient in supply, but that isn’t the same as producing sufficient surplus to support this level of operations.

Fuligin
Oct 27, 2010

wait what the fuck??

my vague impression from years of various goon LPs is that witp is perhaps a bit weighted against the IJN*? But i haven't even played the game so I dunno :v:


*in terms of strike force and bomb mechanics

Fuligin fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Feb 4, 2021

Jobbo_Fett
Mar 7, 2014

Slava Ukrayini

Clapping Larry

Fuligin posted:

my vague impression from years of various goon LPs is that witp is perhaps a bit weighted against the IJN*? But i haven't even played the game so I dunno :v:


*in terms of strike force and bomb mechanics

US bombers are more accurate because they have more bombs, so they roll more for hits. While this sorta makes sense, its dumb because of the way that level bombing works in real life.

aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


Yikes, your poor planes

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009



Oh look, a DMS gets torpedoed. How novel.




The moon is already fading, and it doesn’t look like night strikes are going to achieve much anymore.




Apparently we get a few hits in against a submarine at Kendari.




And they score 3 hits on I-155 off Ceylon. I doubt any of these did anything significant.




Urk, me no likey this.




But they choose not to fight. This must be those British PT boats (called MTB in British parlance) that were being annoying around Butuan a couple days ago. I don’t know how they had enough field to get all this way though.





K XII comes back, gets a dud on Mito Maru and then takes three hits herself.




The sweep has arrived over Port Moresby. We suck at killing Scythes, let’s see how we fare against the Skyrocket. Probably poorly.




This is unexpected but very welcome. Does he have really poo poo pilots here? Or maybe he put them all down low to catch torpedo bombers?





He has withdrawn or stood down the fighters at Port Blair again. Sadly those ships there are too far from Georgetown for even the Betties to reach I think.




The Singapore raid goes pretty well really. And no CAP, which is good, since there’s no sign of the sweep yet.





I’d more than half expected him to switch targets back to Johore Bahru, but it seems he’s coming on at Kuantan, and we have a strong CAP up.




Ok what the gently caress. Zeros are still broken it seems. The Scythes just casually obliterate Zero after Zero and the raid sails merrily through.




Will we do any better against Fortresses?





Unsurprisingly we don’t manage any outright kills, but we do damage most of the D models at least, and throw their aim off.




The Banshee’s ignore Ryujo and beeline straight for the transports at Bandjermasin again. This is just bad luck I suppose, normally a spotted carrier sucks all enemy planes onto herself pretty reliably.




At least the Skyrocket sucks even more than the Zero does :(





In the afternoon a few Liz bomb Bataan, and prove that yes the ground troops are now vulnerable. A promising sign for our ground push tomorrow.





In the afternoon we manage to down a Scythe at least.




I-15 hunting in the Indian Ocean west of Perth finds an unescorted freighter and attacks on the surface.




six torpedo hits? That’s perhaps a little excessive, but I’d far rather that than fire two torpedoes against Enterprise and dive.

Yes I am still salty about that and will likely remain so for the next few years. Or possibly my whole life, I can still recall incidents from every WitP game I’ve ever player :shepface:




We open the ground phase by easily taking Bandjermasin, despite the disruption carried over from yesterday. We catch a medium bomber and a portion of the enemy surrender, mostly the men who retreated from Balikpapan & Samarinda, and apparently weren’t up for squatting in a jungle again.

The rest retreat across the river, where they will quickly learn just how much squatting in a jungle sucks and wish they’d surrendered instead.




Normally the Philippine Army’s lovely morale leads to them surrendering without much fuss when US units aren’t present to support them, but apparently Cebu is going to be a tougher nut to crack. A few bombardments should settle the issue though.








We did not have a good day in the air it appears.




Ok what the ever living gently caress, 19 Zeros that is just ridiculous. I’m going to have to speak with Alikchi and get this changed.


Not feeling good about this really, at the moment it feels like Alikchi is just making mistake after mistake and getting away with all of them while when I set what I know is the best possible setup or very close to it and either the dice fall such that nothing much happens or a Scythe wanders on screen and obliterates everything.




How I wish that was true.




At least Zuiho returns to us today.







We will try the Liz from Clark to crack Cebu while the Sallies continue to hit Bataan.




Speaking of Bataan everyone has arrived and we have 2400 assault available. This shouldn’t take more than a few days. Although I doubt they will break on the first attack.




I-155 is feeling a little under the weather after last night, and will have to return to Saigon.



We will send some TBs from Balikpapan to try and catch these MTBs. TB is the games designation for what the Japanese called Type D destroyers, which were usually something between a DD and a DE, except without depth charges and more torpedoes. Except sometimes they did have depth charges too, although only rarely depth charges and torpedoes. Except when they did.

It’s all a bit confusing. Notably prone to capsizing in real life, although thankfully that isn’t modeled so they are decent second line escorts and patrol for stuff like this.










aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


Yeah this is tough to watch. What is up with those Scythes that the combat model loves so much? Heavy fighters didn't do great in irl WW2.

Affi
Dec 18, 2005

Break bread wit the enemy

X GON GIVE IT TO YA
Yeah that was painful. You're getting chewed up there.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22
The combat engine loves twin engine fighters for some reason.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009
Well, think about how the air model resolves fights.

The factors are: Pilot skill, Altitude, Airframe Stats.

Anecdotally I would rank in descending priority as follows:

Altitude
>
>
>
>
Pilot Skill
>
>
Maximum Speed
>
Firepower
Airframe Amour
Pilot Fatigue
Airframe durability
>
>
>
Airframe manoeuvrability


So if you think about what heavy fighters are good at, going fast in a straight line, being high, having lots of guns, it becomes obvious why they are so good in WitP. There is probably some deliberate bias with this model because the Lightning performed so well in the Pacific.


Now the Scythe specifically is a problem, because it has loving 12 .303s, which WitP evaluates to be the the same as 8 .50s or the armament of a Thunderbolt. However, in order to facilitate rapid reloading, these guns where to be mounted in bolt off panels in the wings outboard of the engines, not centre line as you would expect.


Now all of us who have played a flight simulator now how horrible convergence issues are on British single engined fighters like the Hurricane. Now Imagine what it must be like to try and shoot a Zero down when your guns are further apart than the wingspan of a Zero.


I had actually raised this point with Alikchi back when we were deigning the scenario, but no changes were made and I forgot about it until we started playing. I have no complained bitterly to him and the Scythe has had it's guns nerfed in accuracy by around 40%, so we will see how that shakes out.


Of course, none of this is going to save us from the Skyrocket and it's centerline twin .50s and twin Hispanos :gonk:

Pirate Radar
Apr 18, 2008

You're not my Ruthie!
You're not my Debbie!
You're not my Sherry!
Well, but at least the Skyrocket seems to be going down hard.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009
It has been, but I'm almost certain that is because they have been down low to catch Betties so the sweep is coming in on top of them.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009



We get an intercept on that PT boat hanging off Mersing again.





But despite pretty optimal conditions we don’t get any hits.




Speaking of optimal conditions, the thunderstorms over Sabang definitely aren’t. But despite that and a pair of heavy fighters flying CAP the Nells score quite well.





K VII shows up again at Kendari, and gets pummeled again. This might actually be adding up to something significant after tonight though.





Today it is Ryujo that bumps into the MTBs. How much loving fuel do these things carry? A PT boat would be out several times over by now.





S-36 is forced to dive before she can attack the convoy moving troops from Mindanao to form up at Kendari for reinforcing Ambon.




K XIII is still active at Makassar despite yesterday's drubbing, but since she isn’t firing at a DMS she misses.





And our PBs are unable to make contact.




CAP is back over Soerabaja.




Whatever Malaise has been affecting our Zero pilots the last few days seems to be over here at least.





The Rangoon CAP today is large.





But the Oscars do well for themselves despite that.





Not much CAP left at Port Moresby, we trade evenly with what there is.





A second sweep at Ragonn also does well, despite the lesser armament of the Ib Oscar.




The Liz put a decent dent in them at Cebu. Hopefully this is enough to swing things our way.




Apparently when giving orders yesterday I pressed the all bombers, rather than all Liz button. Oh well, proportionally the bombers are going to have a much bigger effect here than they would at Bataan.




Some Anns and Marys, lacking the range to reach Cebu do hit Bataan, but don’t hit anything.




The Dutch try for Ryujo.



The escorts get butchered (see this is what is supposed to happen to escorts), but two bombers make it through anyway. Thankfully they then tried a head on run on Ryujo.





Next wave is Banshees, but only lightly escorted.




Half get through but they all miss, and one eats flak. Ryujo is really earning her keep today, I can’t have them hitting those other convoys between Makassar & Balikpapan. Why it didn’t work yesterday I have no idea, yesterday was just generally cursed.




The weather intervenes to neutralise our efforts to kill each other around Koepang today. Maybe one of them will get struck by lightning.





Whenever our paratroopers turn up to plant our flag at Lae the locals must be so angry.




A second wave at Koepang finds all our planes on the ground, and scores a couple hits on the runway. Flak batteries claim some near hits though.





Clear over Singapore again this afternoon.





I would really very much have preferred that it was a destroyed Scythe, but OK.





In a shocking twist, he bombs the airfield at Bandjermasin.





We are making the beachhead at Singapore. I had hoped the troops would coordinate better than this, but somehow three units have forged ahead of the rest.





Ouch, but only kind of. 13 destroyed is a good result, the rest can be fixed up with some supplies, and only level three forts is good news, I was expecting at least four if not five or more.

Plus somehow we managed to destroy 34 squads, probably Malaysians who dissolved on contact. Notice he only has 600 raw AV here, and yes it gets doubled thanks to the forts and terrain, but we will soon have nearly 3k. Singapore won’t last long, the delay of having to wait for the supply convoy from Nagasaki and then for it to be railed down from Bangkok is likely going to push us past the historical date though.





Bataan is a somewhat bloodier affair, but sorry dead guys your lives are a price I am very happy to pay.




Looks like the air support did the trick, we win very convincingly at Cebu.

The only organised resistance left in the Philippines now is next door at Bacolod.





We plant the flag at Salamua. I’m sure tomorrow he will start bombing it.








More army points. The only easy ones left though are Singapore & Java, after that we will have to earn them in blood probably.






This is no way makes up for the last few days, but it’s a start.

And the Scythe has been bonked with a nerf bat, having it’s accuracy reduced from 34 to 20 to better represent the horrible convergence issues the thing would surely have had.

So I’m not feeling too bad this turn.




Nothing to see here but at least none of our freighters burnt out.





The advanced elements of the 143rd brigade in particular got handled roughly at Singapore, but it will all be ok soon enough. Please god let him try a counter attack here. But I’m sure he won’t be that stupid.





A whole new division pops out the ether for us at Cam Ranh today.





The supply convoy is loaded at Nagasaki and on it’s way, but won’t get to Bangkok for ten days. And then it will be three to unload, plus at least another two for the supplies to flow down the railway. I’m kicking myself for not getting ahead of this problem, but it’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking the mainland has infinite supply :(







Sneaky bugger, he put the convoy onto full speed to get them away from I-15. And even if she goes full speed herself I don't think she can catch up, but we will try.




Apologies for how WitP offsets the troop readouts up so much for some reason. Anyway, as you can see here he has stacked the Dutch to defend the oil at Medan, and brought in a British expeditionary force to Sabang at the northern tip of Sumatra. However, he has neglected to do anything at Langsa in between other than send some minor unit to plant the flag there after our paratroopers left.

So we are going to take this shiny new division of ours and land at Langsa, thereby cutting them in half and denying the british troops the opportunity to fight where it really matters (the oil).




Carrier cover will not be needed since they can be under the land based umbrella the whole way.





Work on clearing Manila bay to be safe for us begins.





With the depletion of the CAP at Port Moresby, the Betties are reactivated in the hopes of catching whatever this is tomorrow.





Since the airfield at Bangkok expanded to size five today, I bring in a few Nells to try for the convoys I can see coming and going. They are down low to hopefully get under any CAP there is. I then decide the Betties at Georgetown are a waste of time and they should operate out of Bangkok too.




It’s time to hit Ambon again.





Second line troops are loaded for Bandjermasin.





And more AAA for Koepang - it’s likely to be a hotspot for a while I think. Maybe we should bombard Darwin once we are done with Ambon.

Or maybe we should just flat out invade once we are done with Ambon. :getin:

Triggerhappypilot
Nov 8, 2009

SVMS-01 UNION FLAG GREATEST MOBILE SUIT

ENACT = CHEAP EUROTRASH COPY




All this talk about the Scythes and Skyrockets makes me wonder if anyone has done an alt-history mod to put Akron and Macon as special air groups in the game. I think you could do a pretty good job of it with some assumptions:

- Each Zeppelin gets its own air group with a max size of 1, a couple of replacement air frames to represent doing repairs after heavy damage
- Treated as a heavy bomber so you can't base it out of a tiny airfield without penalties
- Gets special F9C-5 "Sparrowhawk" turrets with small damage but extremely long range and high accuracy, since air groups can't carry other airgroups
- High maintenance rating for increased chance of op. losses
- Lowest maneuver rating possible
- Chance to upgrade each to a cargo-carrying variant with increased if the air group isn't completely destroyed

Would make a useful tool for early war PR stunts but would probably die pretty quickly. Only downside of being treated as an airgroup is that they'd either have a 50% chance of dying from an op. loss before anything useful or they'd get artificial extra lives from replacement airframes.

Tiger Crazy
Sep 25, 2006

If you couldn't find any weirdness, maybe we'll just have to make some!
Do the twin engine planes have a lot of the same properties as the P-38. I know P-38 was a badass from fighter in the pacific. If the modded planes were based on that it might change contributed to a maybe overpowered plane no idea.

I know Pharnakes had said they nerfed scythes. Maybe most of the twin engines needs to be done as well.

SerthVarnee
Mar 13, 2011

It has been two zero days since last incident.
Big Super Slapstick Hunk
Remind me, does he get huge amounts of reinforcements if you take New Zealand?

steinrokkan
Apr 2, 2011



Soiled Meat
Yes, but also what would be the purpose of taking New Zealand?

OTOH against AI it's plausible to occupy Western Australia and the only railroad leading there, which is actually a strategically important asset. though it probably wouldn't work against a human player.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009

SerthVarnee posted:

Remind me, does he get huge amounts of reinforcements if you take New Zealand?


The purpose of taking New Zealand is to entirely sever the transpacific route. If you can take New Zealand AND Ceylon AND Perth you've basically won. But by that point you've probably won anyway :V


Taking New Zealand without the other two is just a pointless over extension that gives him a ton of reinforcements and gets you no where really.

Pharnakes
Aug 14, 2009



Somehow our destroyers have taken the PT boat near Mersing by surprise - they really must be quite stupid not to expect us here.

No hits are scored however.




Our destroyers sent to hunt the submarines clustering around Makassar aren’t exactly doing a fantastic job, but at least these are torpedoes not fired at expensive merchant shipping.




Tonights raid at Sabang is rather a flop, and we are losing the moonlight fast. Next month we will have forward airfields prepared to take full advantage though!




A second wave fares no better but a third trades a loss to flak for a Catalina - a trade I am very happy to take. We should really be using army bombers for this kind of thing anyway.





Looks like our sweep got a little fragmented on the way to Rangoon today. Let’s hope they haven't recovered much from yesterday.




I’ll take it.




They’ve found some more Skyrockets at Port Moresby. Let’s hope they are still set to protect against low bombing, if these things dive on us from 30k it’s going to be painful I’m sure.




As I feared, they were high today. At least the Betties should do ok if they fly though.





At Koepang they have pulled up above the flak, but it turns out that is also above effective bombing altitude, at least in a thunderstorm.

Notice also they are only using a half bomb load, probably because there is no AIrHQ at Darwin.




The Marauders concentrate on Lae, rather than switching to Salamua.





Even at 15k feet there is still enough flak over Singapore to significantly disrupt our bombing runs.




He has worked out we are hiding the remains on the Bandjermasin invasion flotilla in port it seems.




For form’s sake we “attack” at Dili even though there are no defenders.




He bombards at Singapore but comes out the worse for it - a very promising sign.








Hmm.




Any kind of air offensive where Skyrockets or Scythes are present just isn’t going to work it seems. I am going to have to wind my neck in at Rabaul and we will have to deal with Port Moresby strategically rather than tactically.





Yup. That’s a blank screen alright.





For a wonder both Ashio & Aoi look like they are going to make it, as long as we can shut these bombing raids down.








Ryujo is going to head for Manila for a quick session in drydock to fix some stubborn engine problems. At 10600 tons she is just too large to fit in Saigon’s 10000 max drydock, and at Manila we will need to repair one point of drydock to be able to fit her. Normally I regard repairing drydocks prohibitively expensive at 1000 supply per point, but we will make an exception this once.

Let’s hope the mines are cleared or at least charted by the time she gets here!



If we aren’t going to be sweeping Port Moresby we might as well set a CAP trap at Lae.





The airfield at Pisanuloke in Central Thailand has now expanded to size two. This was going to be the cue to move the Oscars up to sweep Rangoon with reduced OP losses, but there is a convoy in port at Port Blair so the priority for today at least is to sweep there.




I cancel or at least delay I-17s cruise in the Arabian sea. She will patrol off Ceylon for a couple days then launch a recon flight of Colombo two days before the KB arrives.




The aviation engineers should arrive at Bandjermasin tomorrow so I send some Oscars there to establish a cap.



We have a lot of transports sitting at Shanghai. We will send them down to Manila in anticipation of the invasion of Java.

Night10194
Feb 13, 2012

We'll start,
like many good things,
with a bear.

I admit there's something bizarre about Zeroes running in terror from twin engine heavy fighters.

SIGSEGV
Nov 4, 2010


Imagine if the game had to model doctrine changes like weaving and training energy versus turn fighting.

Modifying artillery modifiers according to air pressure, now that's easier, let's do that.

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Rogue0071
Dec 8, 2009

Grey Hunter's next target.

The Thatch Weave was new but the idea of energy fighting wasn't really a doctrine change. It was already a doctrine of both the US and Japan going in to the war. Under the pressures and circumstances of combat dogfighting would occur but the narrative that Japanese doctrine was to dogfight and this was eventually overcome by new energy fighting techniques is not really true. In fact, one major weakness in Japanese fighter attack patterns was that, when performing diving attacks from higher altitude, they had a tendency to pull up and climb away to reset for another dive attack too soon, before gaining enough distance and giving allied fighters a shot as they climbed.

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