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uPen posted:That game exists, war plan orange and it's terrible. is it terrible because of the era or because it's like proto WitP without various AE updates and upgrades? i always thought it was the latter but never played it.
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Feb 24, 2021 22:45
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Having played it for like an hour or two it's both. Witp without ae sucks. Witp with lovely short ranged planes and lovely old short ranged ships also sucks. If you want to play an interwar battleship combat game there are better engines to do it in than witp.
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Feb 24, 2021 22:54
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Yeah that makes sense. I just wanted to post that pic tbh.
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Feb 24, 2021 23:38
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:is it terrible because of the era or because it's like proto WitP without various AE updates and upgrades? i always thought it was the latter but never played it. It's missing some of the critical AE updates that even allow the game to function, like surface task forces making intercepts. Since there aren't any planes that can fly over the huge expanses of ocean, the chance that you will actually engage enemy vessels is reliant on both being in the same place at the same turn, which happens exceedingly infrequently. Seriously, a War plan orange game usually starts with 3 days of serious fighting around Manila and then months on end of all quiet on the Pacific front. Triggerhappypilot fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Feb 25, 2021 |
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Feb 25, 2021 01:37
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  The destroyers have found some motor launches.  Motor launches aren’t very fast, so this was only going to go one way. For some reason though the TF commander orders them to disengage before sinking the final one.  The Liz arrive over Batavia.  Despite decent weather it’s a bit of a flop.  At Palembang however the weather is terrible.  The bombers have become highly fragmented, but they trickle in. Most miss everything though.  Apparently the destroyers didn’t go back to Singapore for ammo. At least they bait the PT boats into launching their torpedoes, so they are neutralised for this turn.  The sweep is again late at Darwin, but we only lose two Betties over it.  The Nells manage without a loss.  And then the sweep arrives. But with only one Airacobra left it dives for safety before they can catch it.  The KB manages to destroy a plane on the ground today!  He bombs Lae again. No sign of sweep, maybe I will try LRCAP.  The sweep at Batavia produces no results.  At Soerabaja there is nothing to produce results from.  We continue strafing the PT boats for now, I’m not sure how else to get rid of these loving things.  Today we disable two squads at Ambon!   A quiet turn again. The calm before the storm.  We tend to win large set air battles through superior tactics and concentration of force but day to day attrition definitely favours him.  Is Sailfish plausible? We really have no way to judge since there are no animations for planes attacking submarines.  It’s certainly a target rich environment for the Mabels.  And another Yoshino joins the fleet from Nagasaki.   There are bombers reported based at Kalidjati now, so we will try there with the Liz in daylight tomorrow, and the Zeros from Banjermasin are changed to sweep here instead.  And give the Batavia sweep to some Oscars from Bandjermasin.  With nothing to sweep at Soerabaja I send the Zeros from Balikpapan to do LRCAP over our convoy heading for Singapore.  Darwin is a waste of time or rather Betties now, so we will pound dirt at Ambon instead. Maybe it will actually do some good now we have beaten the forts down to level one.  And we are going to try a day of LRCAP at Lae.  Losing four Kates to OPs loses from the flak at Sabang is not cool. Let’s try using the KB to sink these PT boats instead. Lmao, the whole Kido Butai to deal with a few PT boats. That they will probably all miss anyway.  And another possible idea to deal with these loving PT boats. We could use out PT boats! Obviously we aren’t going to hit them with torpedoes, but our MTBs have 25mm cannons compared to theirs with .50cal MGs. Let’s try it anyway.  We are embarking from Singapore to take Tandeoengbalai, which is hopefully undefended and from where we can take Medan in a pincer movement.  We are desperately short on sea lift to continue our offensive from Singapore. I panic order every AK that can be converted in 5 days to be adapted into troop transports. I should have done this weeks ago, and it could cost us Ceylon, which ain’t great. But realistically it’s going to be five days or more before we can sail from Singapore anyway.  Kuruho’s air groups are filled out and she is heading straight out to join the fun at Midway.
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Feb 25, 2021 20:41
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Is invading India by ground feasible with all those Army units not tied up in China or did those formations get sent to the cornfield in this mod
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Feb 25, 2021 21:48
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Is including the G5Ns paying off, so far? Will there come a time when they can’t operate over Allied bases for fear of interception?
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Feb 26, 2021 03:13
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They already can't operate over Allied bases for fear of interception  They are only useful where we know we have absolute air superiority.
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Feb 26, 2021 10:00
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  Thank god this is an ML and not a PT. At least I think it is.  That would have been a very embarrassing way to lose a transport.  The Destroyers bump into the PTs on their way back to Singapore.  Being low on ammo our girls don’t push the engagement and for theri part they are happy to slip away in the night I’m sure. I wish they’d shot their torpedoes at the Destroyers again though, that would be very handy.  The escorts on this convoy are vigilant enough to prevent an attack.  “Both task forces evade combat” Hopefully this means the PT boats didn’t rearm overnight and are still out of torpedoes from yesterday. The empty transports coming back from Langsa are moving through here any time now, and they only have PBs to guard them.  I-164 is caught by an RN escort.  She takes a hammering in the shallow water. It’s disgusting how much more effective their ASW is than ours, and it’s only going to get worse as the USN pulls its finger out.  Our PTs bump into the Motor Launch.  But we disengage safely. MGBs and MLs are a pretty effective counter to PT boats, but sadly we don’t get any, only the RN and subordinate navies do.  The sky is clear over Palembang, which is good because the bombers are back on day duty.  The Liz are a bit ahead of schedule and arrive at Kalidjati before the sweep, but fortunately there is no CAP flying and they do good work.  The Zeros go for the ML rather than the PTs today and the much slower boat catches a bomb.  The raid on Palembang goes very well too, catching the bombers on the ground this time. I don’t know what an FK-51 is but I’m sure I won’t like it.  He sweeps Chiang Mai, but we have no CAP to be caught.  We are still sweeping Darwin though.  Quite successfully today.  The CAP trap works. Shame he bought much less planes than yesterday but oh well.  Well I say “works”, without even a ground crew let alone radar there is insufficient coordination for the Zeros to engage before the bombers are out again.  A late sweep arrives at Kalidjati.  Nothing in the air at Batavia either. I suspect he realises the Java invasion is imminent and is trying to preserve his airforce for the big showdown. Well if that’s the case we will simply bomb all his airfields.  I-164 is found again by Romney, and this time forced to the surface and sunk, although she gets a couple of hits off from her deck gun first. This is why you don’t put your submarines in shallow water   The usual at Ambon.   The war drags on.  I had hopped for more but this is decent. The FK 51 is just some reconnaissance biplane thing, nothing to worry about.  By no means our most modern or impressive submarine but it still stings.   The troops at Wake begin loading. Coordinating all this to ensure surprise plus two unloading cycles before the forced shock attack is going to be both tricky and vital.  The Kalidjati invasion is leaving tonight. The other two are still loading the last of the heavy equipment and will leave tomorrow.  The other Liz group moves up to Balikpapan and we point them at Batavia. This is the final run, and we want as many of their planes grounded as we can.  The supply situation at Singapore is so dire and the situation so urgent we are going to have to move 30k supplies from Balikpapan to Soerabaja.  We start loading the troops at Bandjermasin backup, we will use them as extras for Kalidjati.
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Feb 26, 2021 19:31
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British Aviator will burn out, this is my headcanon and I'm sticking to it.
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Feb 26, 2021 19:58
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  What is it with our submarines and not paying attention? Fortunately they miss.  Grayling is harassing our convoys in the Sea of Japan again.  Just how many Submarines does he have here? Well nevermind, Fusan should hit level eight port any day then everything can come across the Tsushima straits in safety.  I-9 does her best against a troop convoy near the New Hebrides.  The sweeps of Chiang Mai continue, this time from Magwe.  Curses, the Liz came in again before the sweep and this time there is CAP. What time do the Bandjermasin pilots crawl out of bed??  We only lose one, but the panicked bombers are unable to hit much.  And the same is going to happen at Batavia. Argh.  We lose three, including one to flak. But at least we destroyed some tiny transports!  Despite flying from the same base of Singapore the strike still arrives at Palembang before the sweep, but there is still no CAP here.  Having destroyed what there is of the airfield they are now trying to destroy the “port” at Lae. This is just a couple of wooden piers so I’m not too concerned.  And the Batavia sweep arrives.  But does piss poorly.  At Kalidjati we should do better against only Warhawks.  Well, a kill is a kill.  Will the Oscars do better at Batavia?  Apparently so!  A convoy of transports for Singapore is outside of LRCAP range from anywhere for today, but the bombs miss.  I-159 chooses not to shoot at an AMc instead of shooting at a xAK.  We are ashore at Tandeoenbalai. Due to recon pilots being bitches I don’t know what is here, but the lack of any kind of defence fire is promising.  Nothing happens at Ambon today.   Still the calm.  We come out looking better in the air than I thought we would.  Not much to say about that.  Nisshin is ready at Nagasaki today.  And we get a nice big search Sentai at Osaka.  And at Nagoya the prototypes for the Hellen.  Umikaze is almost back at Koepang, and has got the flooding under control. The highest I saw her at was 98.   Now where could his bombers be… As I’m sure you noticed the bombers attacking our transports did so with a half load. What does that tell us? It tells us they are flying from a level three or lower base, since as medium bombers they need a minimum of four to fly their full load.  And look at that, Bandoeng is inline with Kalidjati and our transports, and has a level three airfield.  I send the Liz to hit Bandoeng tonight. With no pre reconnaissance they quite likely won’t hit poo poo, but it will keep them safe from sweep errors at least.  The Zeros from Bandjermasin will provide LRCAP over the Kalidjati convoy, whilst the Oscars will takeover the sweeping duties.  How the gently caress did the loving airhq end up here??? At least we can see there is no opposition so we will take Tandjoengbalai tomorrow.  The Tjepoe and Semarang flotilas haven’t loaded absolutely everything, but gently caress it, we can’t wait any longer.  We stand the whole KB down at Singapore. Obviously we can’t leave them to fully repair, but they will get a day or two of stood down repair bonus.
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Feb 27, 2021 20:16
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Pharnakes posted:
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Feb 27, 2021 21:05
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right? Makes me wish there was a medal-awarding thing in the game (or is there?)
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Feb 27, 2021 21:22
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Imagining the entire crew furiously bailing a destroyer as it sits so low in the water it's almost a submarine.
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Feb 28, 2021 04:26
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  The LIz are bombing Bandoeng as planned.  I wasn’t expecting a miracle here, but I was hoping for a bit more than that.  I-169 flubs an attack on a convoy of transports. I think these are probably empties returning from Espirtu Santo.  Wait, 10k feet? Good job there was no opposition  At Batavia there are only a couple of planes.  As it turns out we should have bombed here in daylight. Oh well.  The CAP at Kalidjati is slightly more numerous.  Minimal results.  At Darwin though CAP numbers are growing, probably as they repair the airfield services now that we aren’t bombing.  Even so far in every engagement.  The Betties decide to fly at Ambon for the first time in a while.  Some of them even do something.  There is no CAP at Bandoeng as it turns out.  The first bombers to try and hit the convoy are Falcons. This is annoying as they will run the CAP out of ammo.  Most of them die, but I doubt there’s much CAP left for the next wave.  Next they try for one of the other convoys. Looks like these guys came from Madioen, and they had an escort. Rather hilariously the lone Fokker ate a flak burst before anything else happened, and the Zeros did a good job on the bombers.  These guys probably still had torpedoes so it is very good there was still enough CAP to see them off.  I thought these ships would be safe by now, but although two Zeros try to intercept they are unable to stop Teikyo Maru eating a bomb, so that’s probably her hosed.  Now it’s the Hudsons turn at Kalidjati.  The CAP is running out of ammo and only managed to down one. Please don’t let there be more torpedo bombers to come.  He is coming in hard at Pisanuloke, but not sweeping.  They break through at a heavy cost, but we have no AAA here and quite a few planes on the ground.  The thoroughly panicked pilots miss everything though, and on the way back out most of them are picked off by the CAP.  Wave two arrives, still with heavy escort. Looks like he put all the fighters on escort I’d say.  They fare much better this time, but fall short of actually hitting anything.  Next is Banshees over the main fleet, and there’s only one Zero left. Hopefully the battleships will make good bomb sponges.  It would seem they rolled lucky enough to go after the TF that doesn’t have the battleships in it. And that they have learnt to bomb ships since we last saw them.  The lone Zero managed to down two of them before running out of ammo, but, ouch  Torpedo bombers make it through to Harima, but miss.  In the afternoon the Zeros again prove unable to intervene to protect the convoy outside Singapore, but the bombers miss at least.  Now some of the Banshees go for the Kalidjati convoy, but being PM the CAP is renewed.  And they make short work of all three.  They aren’t going to be able to deal with this though. Only carriers are supposed to be able to fly AM & PM strikes, and then only at range 3, but Banshees seem to have a bug where they will almost always fly both phases at any range when put on naval strike. I’ve noticed it before, playing as both sides.  They get very lucky with their target selection rolls, with only two planes going to bomb Inaba, but much less lucky on the actual attack rolls so that is ok.  We have arrived to retake Oroquieta.  Ambon. And on, and on and on.   Looks like we did quite nicely in the air.        To celebrate let’s have a complete dump. Seven pages and it’s not even February ‘42 yet. By the end of the war it’s going to take like 30 screenshots to show the whole list.  I think if I ever play as Japan again I would insist on Allied DC advantage being off. It’s a shame because I want Japanese carriers to be tinderboxes compared to Allied ones, but I’m not aware of any evidence that suggests the Japanese merchant ships were so very, extremely delicate compared to allied merchant marine.  Intel reports that Midway’s port has been expanded to size two today, so he is obviously active here. So far we are unspotted, but the troops at Wake are taking far longer to load than I had anticipated, so coordinating the landings is going to be impossible. We are going to go in with 120 AV and pray.  Also reported that they are building an airfield at Ndeni. Not very surprising at all, but if we can’t take it in the next month then we will have to plan for three months before being able to launch an attack on it.  The Mavis have arrived at Tulagi. Now we will be able to see what is happening at Ndeni and all the way down to Noumea.  That is very heavy detection for a sub out in the middle of nowhere. Could there be a carrier nearby?  There was an unexpected mine detonation at Fusan today apparently.  Our newest ace, PO1 Masuyama N, and our second ace in a day.   There’s no point doing further sweeps, it’s all about LRCAP over the convoys now.  Our troops have recovered well at Ambon, and the Betties seem willing to do stuff, maybe, so we will attack again at Ambon.  We will try the Liz at Soerabaja tonight. We can’t spare anything to sweep for them, and besides if we go at night we might manage to damage or destroy some bombers before they can take off to attack our convoys tomorrow.  And we will try the Zeros to sweep again at Darwin, now there don’t seem to be any Scythes there.  After the massacre at Pisanuloke today I don’t anticipate any bombing here tomorrow, but I do expect him to sweep. We will counter by sending all our bombers to night bomb at Rangoon, then putting all our fighters on sweep, so when he comes into sweep there will be no targets.  It turns out they have already left at Oroquieta. This is actually a good thing, because when we catch them we will push them towards us, not back into the jungle.  I-169 took a clobbering from that one hit it turns out, and needs to return to Truk for repairs.  We are going to land paratroopers at Tjepoe in advance of the invasion. This will save us a day of having to formally plant the flag at the base, and also give our troops unloading better rules for the friendly rather than hostile hex. Pharnakes fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Feb 28, 2021 |
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Feb 28, 2021 20:46
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Holy poo poo those Blenheims hosed up. Guess in those numbers even the Oscar can be a bomber-killer.
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Feb 28, 2021 21:09
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That's a lot of dead Allied planes. Still 1500 men drowned is a full brigade.
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Mar 1, 2021 05:12
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Pharnakes posted:
Wait wait wait wait WHAT? I've played through this game like 3 times as the allies now (okay one two games until i saw the victory screen and 3 times where i got to may/june of 1942 and the enemy was dead in the water) and I had no loving idea about this. I always thought that naval strikes went out twice but land strikes (airport, city, port, ground) and transports would only go out once. Well that explains why the carriers are so bloody important. Aside from the larger number of planes taking off in each coordinated strike, I'd always been confused as to why i shouldn't just put the carrier squadrons on a nearby airbase instead of sailing around hoping not to get sunk for the same strike capabilities as the land base would offer.
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Mar 1, 2021 09:02
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Pharnakes, question for you: Alikchi has provided a major update on his side, substantial enough so that for the first time it's possible for us observers to see what each of you are up to and make bets as to how it is all going to pan out. How would you feel about me setting up a discord channel for neutral spoilers chat? I want your permission in particular before doing anything because in lots of peoples experience including my own, the existence of a discord tends to suck oxygen away from an LP thread and I don't want to do that to you.
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Mar 1, 2021 17:21
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Go ahead, it's not like my emotional well being is dependent on the number of replies to this thread or anything. Just tel me where you are putting it so I don't blunder into it if it's on one of the grog discords.
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Mar 1, 2021 17:58
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Pharnakes posted:Go ahead, it's not like my emotional well being is dependent on the number of replies to this thread or anything. This is your hard work, I don't want to accidentally turn this thread into a ghost town piggybacking off the content you are making for us! Right, for everyone who wants to engage in a bit of both-sides spoiler discussion please follow this link: https://discord.gg/JkezW6bE7M.
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Mar 1, 2021 19:58
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  The LIz do not do well at Soerabaja, but then it is a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Let’s hope for horrible weather over the invasion beaches.  Despite perfect conditions (for night bombing), the opening wave at Rangoon is no better.  A second wave at least damages a Hurricane.  Harima opens fire to cover the landing at Kalidjati.  A solid result. He has moved a lot of troops here over the last couple of days, he obviously knew we were coming. But I regard it as a good thing, this is a clear hex and we have heavy naval support, conditions couldn’t be better for an attack.  I-171 snags a nice kill at dawn. It would be tempting to think that he is resorting to carrying fuel in barrels in xAKs, however what is actually happening here is the largest AKs have a small liquid cargo capacity. This is usually actually a bad thing, since the fuel carried is negligible for most purposes other than ensuring certain doom if it gets set on fire.  A text book kill. Note he still isn’t escorting all his convoys.  But in the same hex there were two corvettes assigned to escort an xAKL instead? That is just weird.  The Zeros roar in at Darwin. WIthout Scythes to worry about they should do well here.  Or not.  We launch a strong raid on Ambon, but the damage is less than I’d like.  There is a random Buffalo in the sky over Palembang, however the bombers easily evade him. I’d be inclined to put the lack of results down to the damaged bombers being moved out by rail.  A pair of Zeros arrive to tidy the place up.  I think the Oscars did in fact shoot down the last Airacobra here.  Apparently the Zeros didn’t get that Bufalo at Palembang though.  The first wave comes in at Tjepoe, and we have no CAP. I wasn’t expecting much at such extreme ranges, but I was hoping for something. Please not too many torpedo bombers.  Hudsons we can deal with.  How does he get them to target the transports rather than the Battleships so effectively?  In a major gently caress up for him though, he has set them to bomb at 5000ft. This prevents them from dive bombing and makes them little if at all more accurate than any other bomber. That could have been a whole lot worse, thank you set all bombers button.  They hit Lae again.  CAP at Rangoon is rather light, our sweep should have a nice advantage.  Or maybe not that light.  A second wave does very much better for some reason, even though using half older planes and with no proportional change in numbers.  And the third wave comes in the middle.  We have a vigorous CAP up over Kalidjati, which is good because these are torpedo bombers.    Next up is some Wirraways.  Then some Hudsons trying for the Semarang convoy.  Being as how they are Hudsons, they don’t hit poo poo.  The Banshees pull their usual twice a day trick. Notice how the planes are described as attacking from a direction, rather than as diving.  And they score no hits in the afternoon.  I-9 has a go at some minesweepers off Noumea.  We land at Tjepoe, and it turns out that as per usual the recon pilots are actively trying to sabotage us, and Tjepo is defended. The Nagatos thunder away and do considerable disruption, but the paratroopers could be in for a bad time, or maybe this will be enough to soften them up.  We formally take Tandjoengbalai, because I forgot to tell them to attack yesterday.  Unfortunately Ambon is unlikely to be that easy.  That could have been much worse, and knocking the forts down to nothing will help. We aren’t going to be done here anytime soon though.  And the Nagatos did hit hard enough for the SNLF to carry Tjepoe.  Finally at Tandjoengpinang another group of SNLF paratroopers seize the day despite the fact I apparently forgot to take them out of strategic move mode    Nothing much to show here but boots on Java is a major milestone, and only a day behind reality   A bloody day in the air over Rangoon.  For the record there are no mines or anything else at Ulleungdo, so who knows what tree intel are barking up now. 10 points seems a little light for a cargo ship large enough to have liquid storage though. Normally they should be 14+  And indeed she doesn’t. That means he is using xAKs to transport fuel, a sure sign of desperation if we see him doing that often.  Here is Enju Maru who ate the 1000ber. What a shame, it looks like it failed to detonate.  And here is Sangetsu Maru who wandered into our minefield at Shimonoseki. It happens, but I’d really appreciate it if she didn’t burn out from this. I mean, she is docked at one of the largest naval bases in the world, surely they can save her?   The troops at Ambon are a little banged up. For now we have enough supplies to recover them, and we are just going to have to wear them down on this cycle of bombard > attack > bombard while recovering > attack, ect. Eventually they will run out of supplies, but who knows when.  We are almost at Midway, and still unspotted. The amphibious TF moves at four hexes a phase, so we will stop four short of Midway, to ensure when we give the order tomorrow they will get all the unloading time they can before the obligatory shock attack.  And I discover the carrier groups are still on training orders. Whoo boy that would have been an embarrassing loss. sigint posted:Radio transmissions detected at Sitka (193,39).  Something is definitely brewing down here, but what? At least we have a decent chance of seeing it coming now, whatever it is.   We have finished unloading supplies at Tandjoengbalai, so we can take the AirHQ back to Singapore.  And begin the pincer movement on Medan.  We are facing heavy opposition at Kalidjati. We will try the LIz in direct support, on a clear hex with a target rich environment they might do quite well.  Palembang has indeed been evacuated it would seem, so we will send the Sallies to start softening Medan, another clear hex.  We move up a Sentai of Zeros to Tjepoe, but there are no aviation engineers here.  So I move in every transport plane we can fit in Balikpapan without oversacking and have them start airlifting engineers to Tjepoe.  I-121 is no longer detected, eliminating the possibility she was spotted by Catalinas basing out of Carnarvon. For detection to spike so dramatically like that then drop straight off again pretty much has to mean a carrier in the area. For now we can’t see anything, but I take the Betties at Koepang off ground attack and onto naval at 1000ft. Our search should prevent us getting any horrible surprises at Java, but we will want to draw the convoys back tomorrow to be sure.  Today we can start production of the float Zero, the Rufe. As you can see it pays quite a price to be operable without a runway, but there are occasions when you really just need some fighters somewhere without a runway and anything is better than nothing. We will produce 16 a month to start with, so we aren’t going to have a sentai operational until mid April at the earliest.
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Mar 1, 2021 22:42
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Those Banshees are shockingly effective.
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Mar 1, 2021 23:23
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I forget, what's the assault strength going to be at Midway?
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Mar 1, 2021 23:43
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The carrier can't possibly be the Ark Royal or the Hermes? What other British carriers have arrived by now?
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Mar 1, 2021 23:49
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orangelex44 posted:I forget, what's the assault strength going to be at Midway? According to yesterday: Pharnakes posted:Intel reports that Midway’s port has been expanded to size two today, so he is obviously active here.
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Mar 1, 2021 23:58
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Tiger Crazy posted:The carrier can't possibly be the Ark Royal or the Hermes? What other British carriers have arrived by now? Indomitable and maybe Formidable will be around. He could also haven sent USN carriers south around Australia in an attempt to surprise us here.
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Mar 2, 2021 09:32
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  Our invasion fleet is interrupted from making landfall at Semarang by PT boats. Blind PT boats who somehow don’t notice the 30 ships invasion flotilla heading their way.  The night bombing at Rangoon continues.  I-171 has a brush with King near Pago Pago.  On the second try the Semarang TF storms ashore under a hail of gunfire in both directions. The PT boats still don’t notice, although I’m sure we’ll see something of them sooner or later. Hopefully later in the daylight.  Yup, here they come.  In daylight they are spotted from way out though, and a lucky hit before they can close to torpedo range persuades them to gently caress off.  This would appear to be an active ASW TF rather than an escorted convoy.  RO-34 bringing home the bacon.  Let’s hope she is bringing something critical into Port Moresby, not a returning empty.  The Scythes are back at Darwin. Or maybe they never left and it took them this long to get one airworthy again.  An average result.  The LIz arrive over Kalidjati to find a small CAP, however we have our own CAP in the area.  I was hoping for more dramatic results than that really, but it’s a start.  Clear sky over Soerabaja today, not very surprisingly.  Bombing at Medan yields a decent result.  Let’s see if the Oscars can nail this loving Scythe.  Nope.  Bombing at Medan continues throughout the day.  Here comes the first wave at Kalidjati.  Only one makes it through, but the fact any do in the first wave is ominous. Let’s hope most of their ire is focused on Tjepoe where we should have a good CAP up.  A second wave goes for Kalidjati again, but none penetrate this time.  Next up is Semarang, which is partially covered by the CAP from Tjepoe.  One does get through, but we aren’t too scared of Hudsons even if our ships are apparently carved out of paraffin wax. At least it gives them good buoyancy.  Harima is attacked by three Hudsons and what’s left of the CAP is unable to intervene. She swats two of them down herself though. The way his raids are divided up into a mess of small attacks all over the place indicates his squadrons are low on planes, morale or both. Each of these attacks is probably the full strength of an individual squadron, or at least the full strength they can pass the morale check to fly.  Another squadron has the sense to ignore the main fleets and goes for what must be the reinforcements for Tjepoe. Or maybe it’s the cargo convoy taking supplies to Singapore.  You know they are desperate when they are throwing Wirraways at you.  They get no hits but it does provide confirmation the Palembang planes were rebased to Oosthaven. Not that there was really a whole lot of choice for him, but now we know where to bomb next.  Bastard, the Banshees have decided to fly all the way to Kalidjati rather than attacking at Tjepoe. At least they might not be able to bring 1000lbers this far, but let’s hope Inaba & Harima are looking super tempting.  That’s it, look as slutty as you know how. Also, it seems he hasn’t noticed or forgot to tell them to dive bomb again, so that’s nice.  It turns out they can bring 100lbers this far.   It seems they feel Lae is adequately flat now, so it’s Salamua’s turn.  Can they get the Palembang Buffalo today?  Yes they can! If only they’d managed to get the Darwin Scythe.  More Hudsons come to Semarang, but turn back when they see the CAP.  For once the Banshees don’t fly a PM strike, so we are into the ground phase.  How the gently caress did this get reported for several days as being 10k men??  Astonishingly we win here, and collect a nice few planes as a bonus.  They bombard at Semarang, and probably wish they hadn’t.   No disasters, and that’s the landings more or less complete.  The Dutch airforce is definitely buckling under the strain now.  A decent claim at Port Moresby.  Horai Maru is technically still with us, but I don’t suppose she is going to pull through this.  At least we have managed to save Sangetsu Maru.  This smells like a carrier to me. Our Tulagi sea planes are yielding results already.   We have 48 air support at Tjepoe now. Plenty to operate some CAP.  Now that the transports are free, we will drop paratroopers on the critical rail junction at Soerakarta. All east west traffic must now pass through here since we have the north coastal railway under our control already.  This troop concentration is probably just the ramblings of more insane recon pilots, but we don’t have anything else for the LIz to hit so let’s try it.  The fleet has almost unloaded all the supplies, so I cancel the remainder and send them off to Singapore. This will ensure they get full movement and put them out of reach of anything really nasty by the airphase tomorrow.  And that means we can transfer the LRCAP to Semarang.  We point the Sallies from Singapore at Oosthaven. This is their extreme range so they will only be able to bring a half load, but Oosthaven is only a level two airfield so won't have adequate dispersion parking for the amount of bombers that we think are there.  Sendai and the destroyers are separated out from the flotilla to their own TF at Semarang. Hopefully this will give them the freedom of maneuver to intercept the PT boats before they can bother the transports.  I am quite sure we have fire supremacy at Semarang, so we will do a shock attack and set the armour to pursuit.  The armour from Tjepoe is racing ahead, I turn one unit south to cut the main rail line into Soerabaja.  The Midway invasion is in position and still totally unspotted. Perhaps this might just work afterall!  The CVs though are getting dangerously low on fuel.  Fortunately thanks to my genius foresight, I keep the oilers at Truk sitting ready and loaded at all times. Two of the Nippon class will leave tonight to cruise between Wake and Midway.
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Mar 2, 2021 19:35
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How fast could a response to Midway be mustered, assuming surprise has been achieved?
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Mar 2, 2021 20:26
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Grammarchist posted:How fast could a response to Midway be mustered, assuming surprise has been achieved? Pearl Harbor is about 2 days away at flank speed, so if there are carriers sitting in the harbor at Pearl that are not stood down for repairs, they could be in range in a day and a half.
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Mar 2, 2021 23:20
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Grammarchist posted:How fast could a response to Midway be mustered, assuming surprise has been achieved? That depends entirely on where their big assets are.
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Mar 2, 2021 23:29
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He has.. What, 3 CV's (Enterprise, Yorktown, Lexington) at this point for the USN, one CVE/CVL (Hermes I think)? At least historically.
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Mar 3, 2021 01:10
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wedgekree posted:He has.. What, 3 CV's (Enterprise, Yorktown, Lexington) at this point for the USN, one CVE/CVL (Hermes I think)? At least historically. Historically yes, but this scenario adds in at least one more British carrier (Arc Royal) along with a couple not-yet-seen weird American toys in "a pair of 16”-gunned hybrid battlecarriers, Hamilton and Scourge, that quickly become the USN’s great white elephants". Indominable should also be around somewhere too IIRC. Possibly other surprises too, I don't think we really know if or how the Allied reinforcement pipeline has been adjusted.
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Mar 3, 2021 06:06
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a USS Hamilton??? We need to sink that poo poo
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Mar 3, 2021 06:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:a USS Hamilton??? The IRL Hamilton and Scourge were a pair (both merchant ships with guns added on when the war of 1812 started) that sank together in a storm on Lake Ontario so we are not talking about a really strong record of good luck and successful service. I'm not sure where the inspiration for naming a pair of battlecruiser/carriers after them came from. gohuskies fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Mar 3, 2021 |
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Mar 3, 2021 06:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:a USS Hamilton??? You are probably thinking of the wrong Hamilton.
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Mar 3, 2021 06:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:a USS Hamilton??? It'll probably be tough, because when we finally meet it, I can assure that it's not gonna miss its shot
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Mar 3, 2021 13:28
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  The PT boats are back, and it looks like our cunning plan to keep them away from the transports has worked. Only our ships are low on ammo after the bombardment and they chose to run away, the cowards. Let’s hope this is enough to satisfy the PT boats also.   We are off to a good start at Midway.  The Sallies at Rangoon continue to do not much.  Although a few hits are scored.  Hitting this convoy would have been really nice by the looks of it, but oh well, at least you tried.  The PT boats turn up once more, but now it’s daylight.  After yesterday they have no appetite for a daytime engagement it would seem.  The weather has cleared enough over Rangoon for sweeps to resume.  A solid performance.  The second wave continues the good work, but not at such a great ratio.  Medan continues to be clear.  A wave of Liz finds that there are troops here outside Batavia. Are there as many as recon claimed? Who knows.  By the time the second wave arrives the CAP has sorted itself out though and we lose a couple.  The third sweep at Rangoon finds a much depleted CAP.  But doesn’t manage to claim a kill for all of that.  The Lillies, lacking the range to hit Oosthaven continue bombing Medan.  The Semarang tax  Today they are back at Lae.  The first wave of the sweep comes in at Darwin.  Despite the presence of two Scythes, the Zeros manage to devastate the Airacobras without loss.  Can the Oscars now claim a Scythe?  Still nope, but they do knock the last Airacobra down.  In a blatant violation of the supposed rules the T.IVas from Sinkawanag fly again in the afternoon, but at least they miss.  *throws keyboard across room*  This looks more like it though.  Now this really shows what the Betties can be capable of, I’m sure he wasn’t expecting this. Of course, because it’s us, more than half of them choose to attack from ahead or behind, there by guaranteeing misses, and we get the dud too. Still not bad, and maybe we could bring some Zeros into Chiang Mai to let us sweep here tomorrow. I’m sure the CAP will be down on the floor in anticipation of us striking again.  Ambon is equal today.  And we are taking Semarang.  We take it rather easily, and the pursuing tanks make it all the way to Djokarta. Excellent, that gives us another way to cut the rail lines in case something goes wrong with the paratroopers at Soerakarta.  As it happens though despite being a critical chokepoint Soerakarta is undefended.   Quite a jump in army points there.  Our sweeps did well enough, but that is wiped out by the two point Liz getting caught out.  This is nice though, I like this.  Not even the Allies can afford to treat ladies like this disposably.  So I’m sure you are wondering why nothing happened at Midway beyond the mine incidents   On the other hand this is the only TF he has any spotting on, so he might not really understand what is happening.  Huh, apparently sometimes we do get lucky. This is the lass who ate a 250kg sap from those loving floatplanes from Singkawang.   Speaking of which, it's high time we took this place. Recon reports that actually there aren’t many planes at Oosthaven, so I take all the level bombers at Singapore and have them hit Singkawang tomorrow in conjunction with a ground attack.  Thankfully the destroyers didn’t actually retreat to Balikpapan after brushing with the PT boats. Now we have Semarang and it’s level five port, the destroyers can be rearmed here and resume anti PT boat patrols. I move Sendai back over to the the main convoy because here 140mm guns can’t be rearmed here.  The rail to Chiang Mai is now open again, so we can move a group of Zeros up and have them sweep Akyab, just incase he doesn’t move the transports back.  We’ve found the Dutch Airforce again, so we will hit Madioen this turn with the Liz. Our hasty conversions at Singapore have finished today, so it is time to start loading. First let us talk about our plans in this area.  We have 2.5k assault ready at Singapore, with ~1k currently engaged in northern Sumatra. We are going to take as much of that 2.5 as we can and go and invade Ceylon, landing at Jaffna. There were nearly four divisions worth of troops reported at Colombo when we were failing to raid it, so this may or may not be enough to win us the island in the short term, but it will surely get us a decent beachhead, and I sincerely hope, control of Trincomalee. Once we have taken Sabang those troops will be used to take Port Blair, but I have no plans currently to stick our collective dick into Burma. We have seen plenty of activity in the Indian Ocean, he has heavily invested in the air defence of Burma and this convoy at Akyab is either an attempt to march yet more troops in without getting Bettied (heh) or else securing the western flank against us potentially landing there. So we simply aren’t going to bother. Burma is only worth a total of 500 oil points anyway. Instead, once we have Colombo we will land at Vizagapatnam and explain to him why going all in on Burma is a bad idea by marching north to take Calcutta from the west and isolate Burma entirely. The problem with Burma is it’s a pain in the rear end to get to, but this means if the Allies overinvest there he will have a hell of a time getting his men out and back into Bengal before we can rush up the developed infrastructure of India and cut off Calcutta.  What a mess at Midway. I split the damaged Itsukushima away from the main invasion because she would slow them enough they wouldn't get two phases of unloading.  At least we now have all three light carriers together and given proper orders. The Zeros are set at 100% cap at range 1, because the carriers will be standing back a hex to not bump into mines, hopefully. Fuel is a critical issue but the oilers are well on their way. The Kates are all set to attack at 1000feet. Like this I would bet on these three against a single US fleet carrier, and even against two they would be in for a fighting chance, albeit we would be nigh guaranteed to lose at least one. Three and we would be proper hosed, but I’m at least 90% sure he can’t bring three here in time.
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Mar 3, 2021 18:34
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Holy poo poo at going for Calcutta  But as you explain it it makes sense.How does reinforcing air squadrons work, do they automagically get new planes from the ongoing production every now and then or do you have to explicitly put a Liz on a boat at the Liz factory?
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Mar 3, 2021 19:01
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Eating those mines on a fleet that's set to not unload sucks. lovely interface strikes again.
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Mar 3, 2021 19:02
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