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  No action today until a dawn non encounter between RO-34 and PT-43.  Bonk.  Rather than doing the obvious route of Kanko to Shimonoseki, I had put the Kanko convoy to unload at Maizuru instead. It seems he has worked that out though, or just had blind luck.  Going to be a big one over Soerabaja today it seems.  Brutal, but we come out ahead.  Sabang still has CAP, but no Scythes today.  Rangoon also has CAP, but the sturdy Warhawks are just too tough to be downed by the Oscars. On the other hand the nimble Oscars suffer no casualties either.  The CAP is not completely gone when the bombers arrive at Soerabaja, but they mostly get away with it.  Some stragglers again pay a price, but it is a price worth paying. The airfield at Soerabaja is packed with a huge assortment of planes.  The Liz fly again today, but it would seem maybe there really are no more Catalinas to kill here.  Apparently not! A second wave claims one.  A second wave of sweep mops up what is left of the CAP at Soerabaja. If only this second sweep had hit before the strikes today would have been perfect.  And a second wave hits Sabang for a single kill. I wonder if the bombers from Georgetown are going to fly against those spotted ships there.  A second wave at Rangoon goes less well.  But a third, fourth? Wave over Bataan score another Catalina. Why he has these here to be bombed I have no idea but I am very much not complaining. And the damaged ones will be sucking up a ton of supply to repair.  A raid of Sallies finds little CAP left at Rangoon but still one goes down in a fireball. The thunderstorms prevent them having their own revenge as the Betties & Nells did at Soerabaja.  The main wave arrives with heavy escort and evens things up despite the weather.  Drawing Singapore duty continues to be a death sentence, but this is the only way we have to degrade his supply situation here. Anywhere else and I would bring in battleships, but Singapore is perhaps the most heavily fortified (from the sea) base in the world. It has I think at least 4 15” guns and massive amounts of mines covered by a large selection of smaller calibres. People talk about Tokyo Bay fortress, but Singapore fortress ain’t nothing to gently caress with.  Judging by the fact that they bombed her, it would appear the Dutch are patrolling this area with search planes.  Yes please, this will do to even up the Soerabaja losses nicely.  Nagato is 300 miles away by now, but free kills are free kills.  It would appear he correctly intuited I would be going all offence at Bangkok. Fortunately there are some random Nates that are too short ranged for offence that apparently I had sufficient sense to put on CAP, although it must have been a while ago as I have no memory of that. They aren’t adequate to kill anything but they at least disrupt the raid enough to stop them from doing much damage. Our dispersal parks here are at least as crowded as theirs at Soerabaja.  They also hit Chiang Mai, flying from deeper in Burma. The AAA has not yet arrived it would seem.  He tries tactical bombing at Bandjermasin and is irritatingly successful.  The siege of Taiping drags on, but not for much longer.   Points.   A hot day in the air.  But very quiet at sea.  At Chiang Mai the damage is almost repaired even before the arrival of the construction battalions.  The KB will have to sit in port at Makassar for a couple days, until fuel can arrive from Balikpapan.  A giant convoy carrying a poo poo load of war material from Nagoya has nearly arrived at Rabaul. The other conoy you can see near Kavieng is carrying an AirHQ from Takao. Once they both arrive Rabaul will be ready to be a major base for an offensive here in ~4 weeks, after the Ceylon raid and after the KB has had a refit.  Nine days for Zuiho to repair. Not bad for a CVL hit by a torpedo. Slowed down by Kirishima, it took her longer than that to steam home.    Well this is pretty suspicious. I don’t actually have that much back home to deal with whatever this is. But I do what I can, a squadron of Vaals rebases to Hokkaido and the Betties at Yokosuka stop training ASW and load up torpedoes. I can’t move them any closer because there are no other airHQs for them to draw torpedoes from. Then I remember Hosho is still home so I move her Mabels up to Etorofu. They will do OK even without torpedoes.  At Koepang we load up the Yokosuka 2nd SNLF for Dili at the other end of the island. We know there can’t be too much opposition there because the Dili garrison was reported in the fighting at Koepang.
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Jan 26, 2021 20:21
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Are you gonna send the KB to hit Soerabaya? That seems like a shitload of planes there.
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Jan 26, 2021 22:52
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Yes it is, but they are mostly wargames so the zeros from Balikpapan will wear them down soon enough.
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Jan 27, 2021 01:17
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Pharnakes posted:The Americans have Enterprise, Lex, Yorktown, the Hamilton explodey boxes and the Constellation explodey boxes. Right, I had forgotten that we saw Australia and New Zealand earlier. Didn’t know the Allies would already have pulled the old BCs and the funny half-carrier out. Did those start on the West Coast somewhere or do they get transferred from the Atlantic (if you know)?
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Jan 27, 2021 03:48
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Pharnakes posted:Of Force Z i'm only confident about Repulse. Hermes we know for sure got away, and therefore it seems only sensible to assume Ark Royal did too. Prince of Wales is probably very nearly done with her repairs by now I'd imagine. I still can't believe you picked off an unescorted Saratoga on the third day of the war. Even if you didn't manage to truly sink a single battleship (and I think the Nevada at minimum went down since it was listed with fire and heavy damage both days), you still came out ahead of Pearl's historic outcome. orangelex44 fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Jan 27, 2021 |
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Jan 27, 2021 06:58
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if I'm getting this right, Singapore is effectively isolated and cannot be resupplied, so you want to consume their supplies, and the only real way to do that is by bombing it from the air, since you can't shell it from the sea and even if they shoot-down all of your bombers that try to bomb Singapore, the mere act of firing AA and sending planes up to fly as CAP (and repairing those planes, etc.) consumes supplies, which is still what you want to happen anyway, so good enough?
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Jan 27, 2021 08:03
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So what would happen if you sent say 4-6 BBs to shoot up Singapore? Fixed emplacements or not you outgun them? Would it be worth losing a battleship or two if you could move up the timetable?
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Jan 27, 2021 12:11
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  Our Sub Chasers in the Gulf of Lingayen brush with their PT boats. Nothing happens, and even if it did it would be pretty inconsequential since we don’t really have any shipping in the vicinity anymore.  For just a second I thought we would do it again   Two loving torpedoes!!! Aaufhsahgshasdahsa *incoherent sounds of rage” At least we know where they are I suppose.  We have arrived at Sambas. The men are probably glad they only had to spend a few hours on the ships given how stuffed in they are.  Wait, there's 6” guns here too??? Or did they somehow manage to drag them through the jungle from Kuching??  It’s been a while since this happened, I suppose it was about time.  Wait, how the hell did we get away with that?  Well this is annoying, and with the airfield so smashed up we can’t put a CAP up, even if we did have something that can shoot Fortresses down.  The sweep comes in at Soerabaja and more than makes up for the Betties. I think what happened here is the CAP all came down to 10k feet to chase Betties, then when our sweep came in at 20k so they got insane dive bonuses.  No Catalinas yet at Bataan.  Maybe this time they really are all dead.  A Nell flight finds the CAP at Soerabaja much reduced.  But any CAP at all is enough to kill Nells, and their bombs mostly miss.  The easy kills crowd show up to claim the lone plane still aloft.  The more damaged a facility becomes the harder it is to hit it again, to represent the fact that putting bombs in craters is not particularly useful.  He hits Chiang Mai relatively hard. The AAA should be here this evening or tomorrow at the latest I think.  Only a light CAP at Rangoon today.  And the Oscars manage to push through for some kills through sheer numbers.  He’s all in at Sabang today apparently.  As per usual the mere presence of a Scythe is enough to prevent us from more than trading even, no matter how obsolete the rest of the opposition is.  By the time the Sallies arrive over Rangoon today there is no CAP left, and they take full advantage.  We continue to throw away Lillies at Singapore to prevent him from being able to build up the forts there any further. Although I’d be surprised if they aren’t at least 4 already.  It looks like Enterprise was leaving Sydney, not arriving. Where could she be off to    Pointsu~   An overall solid day in the air. We only lost 130% of our Zero replacement rate!  Why isn’t Enterprise here RO-63    A full readout of our current Aces. Maki Chūjirō now has a very promising rival for first to Double Ace!  Whatever it was up here isn’t anymore that we can see. Quite possibly it was just a lone destroyer testing our search as we were around Denpassar a couple days ago. Still, I leave the planes on strike orders for now.   We will need to step up our sub patrols in the Coral Sea if their carriers are headed this way, which seems very likely.  On the assumption that he is going to refuel at Townsville before commencing operation I have I-175 sprint to a potential intercept off Fraser Island.  We borrow the CAP from Balikpapan to fly over Bandjermasin for a day.  With plenty supplies ashore at Sabang I order the transports back to Kuching before the 6”s can do anymore damage, and we will attack tomorrow of course.  Now that we have engineers here and the runway is repaired I move in Oscars to Chiang Mai and establish a CAP. I dived the Oscars when they arrive into 3rds, then put two sub units at 9k feet where they should catch the bombers nicely and the remainder up at 20k to provide top cover in case he decides to start sweeping.
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Jan 27, 2021 19:55
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Oof, only firing two torps and missing the Enterprise is a hard blow.
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Jan 27, 2021 20:03
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That's a lot of Blenheims!
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Jan 27, 2021 20:39
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Night10194 posted:Oof, only firing two torps and missing the Enterprise is a hard blow. I suppose offing one fleet carrier a month by submarine could be described as as unreasonable expectation but it was a nice dream 
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Jan 28, 2021 01:07
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There are still 4 more days.
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Jan 28, 2021 01:27
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  Tonight it is the DMSs turn to chase the PT boats off Batangas.  RO-64 tries her best but is unable to penetrate the escorts.  I-162 surfaces to attack a small freighter off the North Western corner of Australia.  RO-64 is persistent in trying to exonerate herself at least.  Very persistent.  CAP over Soerabaja is light today.  And will be lighter still tomorrow.  The lone Buffalo left is unable to down so much as a single Nell. But it looks like he has moved the bombers and transports away. The only surprising thing’s what took him so long.  There are apparently still Catalinas at Bataan.  A second wave claims one.  The CAP over Rangoon today is composed primarily of Hurricanes, distinctly superior to our Oscars.  But we don’t do terribly all the same.  There is still CAP up when the strike arrives though.  And the Oscars simply lack the firepower to stop the Hurricanes from ripping through the bombers.  Some unescorted stragglers ironically almost do better.  That's a lot of Blenhiems! Let’s see how many we can get.  Bearing in mind the Oscar’s firepower issues, a decent chunk. Hopefully some of those damaged won’t make it home either.  No direct losses over Singapore today!  Our other CAP trap has come through as well it seems.  But despite being perfectly placed 2000ft above the bombers they are unable to claim a single kill, or even significantly disrupt the bombing runs.   RO-64 makes one last attempt. This time she fire 6 torpedoes   Taiping carries on carrying on. The imperial guards should actually be here by now, or if not tomorrow, and then we can attack properly the day after.  gently caress you and gently caress your 6” guns. One of the (many) flaws in WitPs ground system is defeated units teleport to the next hex, sometimes carrying their heavy equipment through 80 miles of roadless jungle in the process.   Quiet day, but Taiping soon, which will be quite significant.  A neat one page of loses.  At least there is something to show here today.  The Imperial guards are not quite at Taiping, but they certainly will be tomorrow. But they will need one day to prepare for the attack.   I-175 made it in time but is thoroughly detected and unlikely to achieve much. Hunting carriers with submarines is hard, it basically requires the submarine to be out of search range during the day phase then make the encounter at night. So you can’t chase carriers very effectively, you need to come in from in front of their direction of travel, which is obviously immensely harder. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t chase carriers with submarines, just that it's unlikely to achieve anything.  So again, assuming that they are headed for Townsville (and nothing so far contradicts that) this is where we expect him to be for the day phase tomorrow. So any submarine wanting to get a decent shot off needs to be somewhere along this route, while being outside of search range from the day before’s noon position of Enterprise. We also have Radio Transmissions detected at Townsville today, for what that’s worth.  Rather conveniently we have Ii-172 here in nearly perfect position. If she does this she will be in range 6 of the carriers, which is a little close.  So we will instead have her stop short, then go full speed tomorrow. Also peep Commander Ohara’s aggression rating there  This probably seems like a ridiculous amount of work to route one single submarine that quite likely won’t even roll an attack opportunity at all, and it is. But one unspotted submarine coming in with an aggressive commander is worth 10 hanging around spotted close to the carriers. intel posted:Palmyra expands port to size 3  Palmyra has a natural port size of two, so the fact he is expending the effort to force it beyond that indicates he is using it for something fairly significant. We will send one of our mine laying subs to see what’s up. Also this turn Luganville on Espiritu Santo expanded the port to size two.  At Kuching we are loading up the troops who couldn’t fit onto the reduced transports. Once they are across to Samabs we will march down the road to Singkawang. Note Takoka Maru still cheerfully burning away there.  Since the Dutch airforce is no longer at Soerabaja but is still in the area, that pretty much means they have to be at Madioen, so we will sweep & bomb here tomorrow.  We have made contact again on Leyte and should be finishing resistance here tomorrow.  We are setting up another airfield at Pisanuloke. With a natural potential of six compared to Chaing Mai’s four this will be where the Liz and other heavy bombers live.  We are ready to load up at Iolio to take Cebu, the last major garrison in the central Philippines.  Remember that big tanker we hit a while back? Quite likely she is still holed up in port at Suva, so we are going to send a midget sub to investigate. Pharnakes fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Jan 28, 2021 |
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Jan 28, 2021 18:48
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Good luck, Commander Ohara.
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Jan 28, 2021 20:03
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Keep reading Hurricane II a as Hurricanella, which would be a sick Roller Derby name
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Jan 28, 2021 20:43
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Does the game model torpedo reloads? Does it track things like RO-64 having fired off 4 tubes and not had a chance to reload yet (or not having ammunition to reload with)? Wikipedia's description of the class is messed up and thinks it has 6 tubes, 8 reloads, but somehow only 12 total torpedoes.
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Jan 28, 2021 23:13
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oh man hunting the Enterprise is so exciting!  real Balance of Terror hours
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Jan 29, 2021 04:18
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This is the most exciting game of WiTP I've seen played despite very little happening since the major opening moves. Sink that tub!
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Jan 29, 2021 09:53
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Foxfire_ posted:Does the game model torpedo reloads? Does it track things like RO-64 having fired off 4 tubes and not had a chance to reload yet (or not having ammunition to reload with)? Wikipedia's description of the class is messed up and thinks it has 6 tubes, 8 reloads, but somehow only 12 total torpedoes. Reloading is modelled for surface fights of course, and is *kind of* but not really for submarines. TLDR is that a submarine can fire every torpedo she has in an engagement on the surface (because the surface fight lasts multiple rounds), if she fires once then dives she can only fire one from each tube from either her forward or aft tubes. RO-64 had plenty of torpedoes, as demonstrated by her firing six at that destroyer, so it's purely a bad die roll that the game decided to only use two on Enterprise.
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Jan 29, 2021 14:59
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  This is a disappointing miss. No one has enough oilers.  The DMSs returning to Hong Kong for ammo after their skirmish with the PT boats yesterday encounter a submarine and for a wonder don’t get torpedoed.  Very glad the captain of O-21 decided to go for a destroyer and not a tanker here.  Sabang continues to be vigorously defended.  And horribly successfully too.  The CAP at Rangoon is lacking in quantity.  But certainly not in quality Today is not a good day so far.  A bad day in fact.  This is something at least.  But it’s still a horrible bad no good day.  This will easily be our worst day ever in the air I should think.  Over Singapore we do rather better than usual at least.  At Madioen we brush aside a tiny CAP.  But somehow still don’t manage to completely clean the skies.  A second wave destroys another Martin.  And some Nells damage a P-40 on the ground.  Soerabaja is clear today.  Can the Oscars manage to shoot some unescorted bombers today?  Nope!  At least everyone has arrived at Taiping and we can attack tomorrow.   Well, we knew that was going to be painful.  So what exactly went so badly wrong here? Well a couple turns ago we discussed a better rule for setting max altitudes than just max maneuver band +5k. At my suggestion (  ) we settled for a tiered system, which, coincidentally, didn't actually result in any changes in accessible altitudes for our planes.The Hurricane however, under this system would be allowed up to 30k feet. And you can see in today's dramatic reversal of the trend just how powerful the dive bonus in WitP is. After discussing we decide to go back to max +5k if and until we can think of something better that isn't lopsided to one side or the other. So today should just be a blip spoken of in hushed tones in pilot bars for a while but otherwise forgotten about. Thank god.  Could have really done with a nice big oiler here to take the sting out of that.  In good news we get our first new (non transport) air group today. Arriving for some reason in Manila, I fill them out with pilots, put replacements on and set them to training until I think of what to do with them.   Here is the situation off Eastern Australia. Enterprise has disappeared from our view, as we expected her too. But the fact that Ro-64 is still 10/10 detection indicates she must be somewhere nearby, hopefully just where we want her to be. We have three submarines that have managed to make it close enough to dash inside the barrier reef tonight, and thus far none of them have been spotted. The allied TF there is reported to be minesweepers and shows no signs of being aware of our submarines presence.  Inaba & Harima will hit Ambon tonight. I set up Inaba’s floatplanes to provide shot spotting.  We will attack at Taiping tomorrow. I don’t really know what to expect, there could be significant forts here, but their supply situation can’t be great, and we surely outnumber them by at least 2:1.  The engineer units rested after Manila are unloaded at Bangkok, where they will take the rail down to Johore Bahru to help crack the anticipated forts at Singapore.  Let’s bring some Anns up to Balikpapan to bomb at Bandjermasin. And other than that there isn’t much to talk about this turn. Our air offensive over Sumatra and Burma is halted until the groups can fill out again.
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Jan 29, 2021 19:48
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Holy crap, are your pilots exhausted? Do they get scattered due to the long distance flown to the target?
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Jan 29, 2021 19:53
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steinrokkan posted:Holy crap, are your pilots exhausted? Do they get scattered due to the long distance flown to the target? Nah. I mean no one is anymore exhausted than they were yesterday, we are into a sustained offensive now so fatigue has plateaued. This is purely the effect of the diving bonus, maybe combined with a little bad luck. The units sweeping in as frags is purely because the squadrons are getting run down and small from attrition - each squadron always sweeps by itself, which is both a blessing and a curse. More sweeps means you will remove more of the CAP, but large sweeps will trade at a better ratio.
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Jan 30, 2021 01:13
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When the combat report says a plane is damaged, is that at least a damaged plane that makes it back, or does the game model that damaged planes might not make it back to base? Is that counted as an ops loss? Really rough times in the air above SEA for you right now. I looked up those Ib Oscars to see what the issue was and dang, they are criminally undergunned for a 41/42 warbird.
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Jan 30, 2021 05:45
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Pirate Radar posted:When the combat report says a plane is damaged, is that at least a damaged plane that makes it back, or does the game model that damaged planes might not make it back to base? Is that counted as an ops loss? Damaged planes can crash on the way back or landing and become ops losses. I believe, although I don't remember this for certain, that planes can also be written off as too damaged to repair even if they do successfully land. The combat report numbers are also not very reliable, to find out what actually happened you need to watch the replay or check the aircraft losses page. Rogue0071 fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Jan 30, 2021 |
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Jan 30, 2021 14:57
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  Ro-64 tries yet again.  No wait, Enterprise isn’t supposed to be here. She should be 300 miles north of here by now! Let’s hope this is an independent group of destroyers left to try and hunt Ro-64.  Get a room you two.  S-39 hits one of our sub chasers but suffers a dud despite not using mk 14s.  A busy day for submarines. I-17 surfaces to shell an xAKL.  That should account for her well enough.  Singapore remains uncontested.  There can’t be much of a runway left at Bataan by now.  The Dutch are trying to hit our convoy at Sambas.  The Zeros perform disgustingly poorly.  The Inabas for whatever reason have decided to hang around at Ambon until daylight. Thankfully it’s only Banshees here and not torpedo bombers.  We continue to take horrific losses over Singapore/  The strike arrives at Madioen before the sweep, but for once the Zeros don’t suck too much.  The sweep arrives but fails to claim a single kill??  The Banshees are back in the afternoon and for the first time they score a hit on a ship. Fortunately it’s not going to bother Inaba very much.  They finally decide it’s time to get this party started. Except now of course they have no spotter plane since I set it to night   Meh. At least they managed to get a Banshee.  And we have arrived at Lautem. I went for here instead of Dili because there were reports of Allied planes being based here.  After well over a month of glaring at each other at Taiping, it’s suddenly all over in a day. That will be a nice chunk of VP with all these British squads surrendering.   3000 army loss points for them, we have less than 200. Not bad.  In the air however we do almost as bad as yesterday despite reverting the rule change. What the hell is suddenly wrong with our Zeros?!?  At least we have something to show here.  We get our first double ace today! Who then promptly gets shot down and killed because our Zeros are broken   Looking at the detection patterns here it seems the likeliest explanation is Enterprise actually turned back for Sydney? Very weird and I’m certainly not counting on it, but I am sure she hasn’t gone for Townsville anyway.  The latest of the Agano class joins our Navy today at Kure.  The tankers have arrived at Makassar and the KB is refueled, rearmed and ready to go. Except not quite because refueling took most of the day so they will leave tomorrow instead.  Also this large convoy returning from Koepang has no detection - a very promising sign.   He has stopped moving at Bataan. Maybe it was a missclik, maybe he was deliberately loving with me. Ether way we are going to have to go in and dig him out the hard way it seems. I also stand down the bombers because they are burning a ridiculous amount of supply to achieve not very much, exacerbated by the fact we have nearly twice as many men here as the stacking limit.  With Taiping over I set the units to strategic move down to Johore Bahru. This will take them 1-3 days to pack, probably 2 to move and another 1-3 days depending on unit type to unpack. So it’s at least another week before anything will happen at Singapore. We have nearly 1200 assault here and another 1800 at Johore Bahru, plus a few hundred more on the rail already from Bangkok, so we should be able to overwhelm SIngapore pretty quickly and hopefully with minimal casualties for us.  Well this explains why the bombardment at Ambon was so lacklustre, they only used half their ammo! Rather than hitting Ambon again I decide to go to Kendari instead, where there are now 15 fighters reported - presumably an attempt to CAP trap my previous tactical bombing here. I decide if we are hitting Kendari with the Inabas we might as well send the Nagatos in too, and try to win here. And I send the Betties back for tactical bombing too, since I’m not sure where the Dutch airforce is now. They should be safe enough with four battleships bombarding over night and then sweep.  Lautem is not reported to have a large garrison and shouldn’t give us problems. Let’s hope we can catch some nice planes here too.
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Jan 30, 2021 18:42
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Could the Enterprise gone out to Fiji or Samoa?
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Jan 30, 2021 19:44
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Pirate Radar posted:When the combat report says a plane is damaged, is that at least a damaged plane that makes it back, or does the game model that damaged planes might not make it back to base? Is that counted as an ops loss? Rogue0071 posted:Damaged planes can crash on the way back or landing and become ops losses. I believe, although I don't remember this for certain, that planes can also be written off as too damaged to repair even if they do successfully land. There are two related concepts, op losses and write-offs. Op losses were in the previous version of the game, write-offs are new to the Admiral's Edition. Op losses model things like getting lost on the way home, or having an accident on takeoff or landing. The manual explicitly lists the following factors impacting the chance of an op loss occurring: -- Range of the mission -- Experience of the pilot -- Whether the plane is based on a carrier It also vaguely implies mission type might factor. You would think pilot fatigue and airframe damage would increase the chance of an op loss, but if they do the manual doesn't state it. The result of an op loss is either damage to or loss of the airframe, in addition to a chance of the pilot getting killed, wounded, or captured. Write-offs, on the other hand, have their chance based on damage, as Rogue0071 indicated. Every plane landing with damage taken during the mission has a chance of being listed as a write-off, which results in complete loss of the airframe, but less chance of pilot injury/death. In my favorite pointless but awesome little rule they put in the game, after every 5 write-offs a squadron gets a new airframe out of thin air, to account for the cannibalization of parts from the wrecks.
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Jan 30, 2021 23:11
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Achernar posted:Could the Enterprise gone out to Fiji or Samoa? She certainly could have done, but she came a little farther north first than we would expect her to on that course. She might also be going to raid us at Tulagi (not that we have anything there), or she is where we though she should be but somehow slipped through and none of her planes are flying today to get spotted/spot our submarines, or she might be going to Townsville but Alikchi specifically routed her outside the barrier reef so we can't ambush her there or or or v0v.
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Jan 31, 2021 13:00
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  Ro-24 has harmless brush with Townsville.  The Inabas start unloading on Kendari - this time with a spotter.  This should keep the Warhawks grounded nicely. Of course, I’m pretty sure I forgot to tell the troops to attack at Kendari so we can’t capitalise today anyway  I’m not sure why he hasn’t challenged us at Singapore with Scythes before really.  The Oscars actually often seem to do better against Scythes than Zeros do. I’ll take this trade anyway.  Some Nells chose today for who knows what reason to try and bomb the motor launches at Singapore. Being set to 2k feet they come in and out under the CAP at least.  The bombing at Kendari proceeds, as planned, without opposition.  Zeros however appear to still be broken.  Our retaliatory strikes at Bandjermasin produce OK results.  The remaining Scythes shoot down a couple Sallies, but the Sallies hit a couple bombers on the ground at least. Not sure why he’s decided now of all times to put an airforce in Singapore. He must see the writing on the wall now we have all the rest of Malaya.  The Blenheims are back at Chiang Mai, and we have AAA here now too.  It looks like the Blenhiem IV has the speed to be very hard for the Oscars to catch, but the earlier model gets chewed up.  A second wave tries high altitude bombing and successfully evades both fighters and flak, but doesn't hit much despite that. The fact they are carrying only a half load doesn’t help them in that regard. The base they are flying from - Magwe in central Burma is only level three, and all medium bombers require a level four airfield minimum.  A belated Sweep arrives.  But eats poo poo despite me setting most of the CAP lowish to catch bombers. Seriously what it up with the Oscar out performing the Zero of a sudden?? In this particular case the fact that high bombing raid came in might well have helped draw the CAP up high before the sweep arrived.  We take Lautem without significant opposition. The planes we catch aren’t very exciting but whatever, I’ll take it. I had been hoping we would find some Do-24s.   No disasters today.  I’ll take 2:1 anyday. Remember when the Zeros used to trade 3:1 or better ?  Nothing today.  Still no trace of Enterprise. Our search is a little lighter than I’d like, but CVs are easy to spot. We do get reports of heavy radio traffic at Brisbane though, further reinforcing the idea they turned back.   Kuantan is nearly level six, but doesn’t have enough air support to operate Liz. I find two spear airfield units in Bangkok and order them down to Temuloh, but by the time they are loaded on transports, bought down and unloaded it will be nearly a week probably. At least the field should be finished by the time they arrive.  The runway at Koepang is almost repaired, and then the engineers can start on fixing, well rebuilding, the hangars. Soon we will be able to base planes here! Which is good because it turns out Lautem has oil in the mod, which I’m sure he will very shortly start bombing.  I decide to restart the paradrops over New Guinea. Not because I have any definitive plan to do anything with the fields but just to annoy him and maybe add to the idea I’m building up forces here.  You see that tiny little green dot in the top left of Kwajalein? That indicates he has placed mines here, presumably by submarine. I form up a couple of local minesweepers to deal with it. No I don’t get any other kind of indication that a critical base of ours has been mined, why do you ask?  With full moonlight I decide to try night bombing at Sabang. There are still a lot of fighters reported at the ari strip here. I wish we could use the Liz too but no airfield in range is big enough.  The KB is formed up again - all of our available carriers with the exception of Ryujo, who is staying back for reasons. All six of our available fast battleships are also going. We really don’t know what we are going to find here, it could be PoW, we could bump into three (maybe even four by now?) Revenge class in the night, we might find tow or more RN carriers, who knows. If we don’t need them for anything else they can always bombard Coloumbo. This route is I reckon their best bet for breaking out unseen, if they do get spotted plan B is to keep going, then swing south and hit Perth instead. As per before, radio silence from here on out until they are in reach of Colombo.  Now what are these reasons for Ryujo to stay behind? Well the obvious one is she doesn’t contribute much strike, and we aren’t anticipating anything that our fleet carrier’s Zeros can’t just blow through. Another is that having her in would push us over the aircraft stacking limit, resulting in our groups having to pass more die rolls to fly missions. But the most important one is to try and convince him the KB hasn’t left at all. Now note TF 132 here with its 4/7 detection. These are the tankers that brought fuel in for the KB yesterday, and today they were spotted, but not with a high degree of accuracy. In addition to the tankers this TF had already had one CS in it, and I have added another plus Ryujo. Tankers, oilers, CVs and CSs all tend to get pretty muddled up in sighting reports, especially at low accuracy, so this will be a pretty convincing fake KB I hope.  We will start recon over Port Moresby. I’m sure he’s up to something here and I would like to know what.
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Jan 31, 2021 21:27
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So that's how you generate fake reports, shame there aren't inflatable tanks and you can't order people to build a fake wooden flight deck over some old but large Ak that's lying about. (Mind you IIRC, your real flight decks are also partially wooden.)
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Jan 31, 2021 22:08
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 That battleship bombardment seems shockingly effective, hits to absolutely everything. The tiny rear end dot symbols scattered around the borders of all the hexes are absolutely amazing, someone send that to a UI design engineer and watch them combust. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Jan 31, 2021 |
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Jan 31, 2021 23:38
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  How does he still have the supplies to pull this poo poo in the Philippines?  Only 1 hit, it could be worse. And without fires she *might* even survive.  Corvettes (KV) are no joke to our submarines, but I-155 avoids any damage this time.  Harima expends the last of her ammo at Kendari.  As Harima & Inaba leave Kendari they pass Nagato & Mutsu inbound. Not a bad result.  Perkins could reasonably be expected to be operating with the carriers…  For the first time in well, forever really I think direct ground bombing at Bataan produces reports of casualties. This could just be us getting very lucky or it could indicate a lack of supply for him.  The flak over Singapore is especially unpleasant today. Thankfully the Scythes seem to have moved because there’s no sign of the sweep.  He restarts the bombing of Ambon. On the one hand this is bad because it indicates he is confident of his supply situation here, on the other it at least means he is burning through it that much faster.  And we are on to the ground phase already, a quiet turn. We take Kendari without much fuss, but most of the enemy retreat rather than surrendering. Still, that's a nice grab of planes on the ground.  And we take Lae, again.   Looks like we caught quite a few at Kendari.  An entire Warhawk squadron? Just for me? Too kind!  Myoko Maru hasn’t sunk yet then!  And here she is. She’s going to be just fine, provided they don’t come back of course!  Perfect To him this is going to look just like the KB returning to Balikpapan. Now we just need to sit patiently for I think it's nice or maybe eight days for the KB to get in position.   We really need that PT boat off Mersing to gently caress off if we are going to bring in another convoy to Kuantan. Let’s hope these destroyers have a better time of it than two weeks ago.  We can see a convoy going in for Port Moresby. I start sweep over Port Moresby from Rabaul and move i Betties and Nells. We have a level four airfield here, an Air HQ, plenty of supplies and torpedoes, everything we need.  And of course this shows up at Port Blair the one loving day I didnt have the Betties on naval strike. And they didn’t even feel bothered to fly the night strike on Sabang I set the Betties back to day naval, but leave the Nells on night airfield bombing, since Port Blair is one hex too many for them to carry torpedoes anyway.  Now we have Kendari we might as well move our auxiliaries up and save the battlewagons some time (and fuel!) as they burn Ambon down. The oilers are returning today to Balikpapan for more fuel, and in the mean time we will load the ammunition tenders here.
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Feb 1, 2021 19:01
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I'm really involved in how your subs are chasing carriers and how you're planning on sneaking the KB past his detection. What are you hoping to nab as you bomb Darwin? Carriers or just loads of shipping?
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Feb 1, 2021 20:39
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Did I say Darwin? I'm sure I said Colombo, I certainly meant Colombo. As for what we might find, well, a ton of shipping evaced from the SRA, ideally Ark Royal in the drydock, maybe some more RN carriers that have arrived.
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Feb 2, 2021 00:44
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I'm surprised he wouldn't evacuate that P-40 squadron to Java, even if he intended to burn through all of them to slow you down.
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Feb 2, 2021 01:04
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A bunch of them were probably immobile while repairing damage from the battleship bombardments.
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Feb 2, 2021 06:06
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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.
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Feb 2, 2021 09:12
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Pharnakes posted:You see that tiny little green dot in the top left of Kwajalein? That indicates he has placed mines here, presumably by submarine. I form up a couple of local minesweepers to deal with it. this loving game, man
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Feb 2, 2021 10:01
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  Sometimes even when you launch six torpedoes it’s not enough. Full points for trying though.  Looks like we interrupted the PT boats rearming at Cebu, so they won’t be able to slaughter us here.  Which is a very good thing, because I really don’t want to lose these LSDs.  Even better the PT boats then bump into our destroyers sent to hunt them.  Only one, but one is a lot better than none.  Tonight we are going to hit Sabang apparently.  The results are not very spectacular despite the good moonlight. Bombing at night in a storm is not easy.  The reinforcements have arrived at Bandjermasin. This includes tanks so should prove decisive.  The air phase opens with a sweep at Port Blair.  As usual the Oscars struggle to get kills against modern planes, but prove too nimble for the enemy to claim any either.  Oh my god oh my god oh my ghod, NO CQAP!!! AJAHAHAAHAHHAHA!!!!!! (preserved as written with my hands shaking from the adrenaline rush)  But the flak proves too much for them and they fail to score a single hit  The Anns continue at Bandjermasin.  He bombs the Johore Bahru runway from Singapore. Not quite sure why, maybe he is trying to get me to put up CAP so he can sweep with the Scythes from Singapore?  No, the Scythes are on escort apparently. Weird.  He still loves bombing empty bases it would seem.  A couple of Banshees from Soerabaja miss an APD off Bandjermasin.  Some Betties try again but they just can’t do it. This is super frustrating. As an aside there seems to me to be a thing with the WitP RNG, where sometimes the “seed” for the turn is massively baised one way or another. Now said seed is there to prevent me from repeatedly re running this turn until I get the result I wanted, which is obviously a good thing. But 90% of the time both Enterprise and Constitution would have taken multiple hits by now, the weather is good and the flak is not tht strong by any means. For example I once saw a CVL dodge I think 50+ torpedoes dropped by Kates, not Bettys. Sometimes the RNG just says gently caress you . We discover at least why there is no cap - the fighters are set to training. Occasionally this will result in them intercepting anyway, as with this wave, although they didn’t until the Betties had already missed all their torpedoes. I’m never going to get another chance like this and they’re just wasting it   I decided to try higher altitude bombing at Singapore. Much less Sallys get hit and the amount of on target bombs is about the same it seems so that’s probably what we will go with from now on.  Looks like we are trying in the afternoon as well at least.  And loving finally we get a hit!  It’s going to take a lot more than one hit of course.  The Betties that had been providing tactical support at Kendari and whose orders must still be on ground attack @ 2k decide to go after Batavia and get slaughtered   Some Betties from Georgetown decide their best target is the PT boats at Palembang. I hate PT boats!  The Dutch at Bandjermasin try a bombardment. Yeah you’re going to have to try a lot harder than that butter boys.   Why the gently caress didnt the ground attack orders automaticaly update this time Actually, I bet I know, there was one unit at Kendari that surrendered, and I bet that’s the one the Betties had decided they were targeting.  There are turns when WitP really just goes gently caress you. Nothing to do about it but roll with the punches.  If there was any justice, Enterprise & Constitution would be here   So what can we do about Enterprise? Not much really apart from bringing in more Betties and making sure the search is set up properly. The submarines need to hold their distance until we have some idea which way he is going with her.  We will try again to land at Cebu. Hopefully the destroyers being here this time will chase the PTs off before they can disrupt us again.  Myoko Maru is unloading at Butuan so she can be hauled down for temporary repairs. I send another cargo ship with a couple escort from Balikpapan to pick up the artillery.  Kuantan might not be ready for Liz yet but that doesn’t mean I can’t bring in some Sallies, so I do so. There are a lot of planes reported at Singapore now. I also put up LRCAP over Johore Bahru.  And we are shock attacking at Bandjermasin.
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Feb 2, 2021 18:55
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| # ? May 31, 2024 10:35 |
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so you DID torpedo the Enterprise, we just guessed the weapons delivery system wrong
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Feb 2, 2021 19:08
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