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How many planes can Kaga actually put up? She looks shredded with only 13 Zero pilots and 8 flightworthy Kates. I really like tossing her into a task force with the CVLs so the CVLs can handle CAP and search while Kaga tosses huge strikes at things and doesn't slow down the KB.
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Dec 30, 2020 21:26
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uPen posted:How many planes can Kaga actually put up? She looks shredded with only 13 Zero pilots and 8 flightworthy Kates. I really like tossing her into a task force with the CVLs so the CVLs can handle CAP and search while Kaga tosses huge strikes at things and doesn't slow down the KB. Kaga was of course steaming to join the CVLs per original plan. Had Ark royal not popped up she would have gone north about the Celebes past Manado and then down to meet up near Bandjermasin. As for whether, in hindsight, it was worth diverting here, I'd say probably? Ise eating a torpedo is far from optimal and Kaga's flight groups desperately need a rest to recover, but actual losses are relatively light and we trashed Ark Royal's groups in return, taking her out the fight for a week at least. Plus a large portion of the Ambon convoy is now going to survive, without Kaga they would for sure have all been sunk baring maybe a destroyer or two good at dodging. Plus of course had I had Kaga on torpedoes Ark Royal could very well have been dead already.
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Dec 30, 2020 21:53
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I was reading about some of the Japanese Battleships historically. It seems the poor Mutsu was sabatoge by a suicidal seaman. At least that is what the Japanese concluded.
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Dec 30, 2020 22:01
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Pharnakes posted:
Uhh, I don't know if you were joking here, but that's obviously John Paul Jones, bassist/keyboardist for Led Zepplin.
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Dec 30, 2020 22:30
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So you have Liz, will you be getting Rita heavy bombers too? My impression from other AARs is that the engine massively overweighted heavy bombers because the percent to hit is calculated per bomb. While you probably won’t have good targets for them for industry they might be effective against allied troops from high altitude.
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Dec 30, 2020 23:36
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  The small stuff flirts in the night.  Jintsu finds two xAKLs at Brunei. These are probably the ships that brought in the PT boats we saw yesterday.  We bombard Makkasar on the way out because why not. We’ve bled hard enough for this opportunity.  Inaba & Harima manage to actually shoot military targets! Most of them are second line, but this is an improvement.  Their PT boats bump into a large convoy in the Gulf of Lingayen, but they break off either because they don’t like the daylight or maybe they shot all their torpedoes at the sub chasers?  The same thing happens outside Samarinda, which is a lucky break for me.  A dutch sub, probably hoping to be the hero that sank Kaga settles for a PB instead. The other escorts are of course incapable of making contact with her.  Jintsu finds the PTs again, but is unable to get a hit in before they escape.  An unauspicious start over Singapore.  The pounding of Clark continues to little real effect.  The Oscars rather neatly avenge the Zeros. There’s definitely going to be a punch up in a bar over this.  Some Seagulls try to bomb whatever it is we have here - probably the subchasers, but a flight of Nates chase them off.  The Dutch ineffectualy bomb Maya. That is not a problem. Maya being here however is a big problem.  Some of them go for Kaga instead, and in the storms slip past the CAP. No damage is done though.  There seems to be a hard coded rule that a maximum of one Scythe per day can die :angry:  No Swordfish, you are not covered under this rule.  Betties go after some minesweepers around Singapore, but unsurprisingly miss.  Escort penalties and they still trade 2:1!  The Liz arrive in the afternoon.  Planes from Kaga decide to get themselves butchered. I could have sworn I stood the strikes down but obviously not.  Something is wrong with our Zeros today.  The Betties come back in the afternoon and this time sink both minesweepers for the loss of a couple of escorts.  Some other Betties chose to bomb the airfield at Kuala Lumpur instead, getting much better results today.  Might as well just write torpedo magnet on the side of these DMSs   I appear to have forgotten to escort this convoy   We try a bombardment at Taiping. Yup, not going to be shifting this anytime soon.    Rather to my surprise we handily carry Wake. I should probably have done that days ago.  He tries a barrage at Clark and eats poo poo for it. Excellent news, but we probably don’t have enough guns yet to reply without the same thing happening to us.  In even better news, apparently hyped by his marginally successful bombardment yesterday he tries to chase us off Ambon, and, well, doesn’t. Like I said, be very cautious about your counter attacks in x4 modifier hexes. Sadly this is mostly disableds rather than destroyeds, but should persuade him to leave us alone for a while.   A nice jump in army loss points for them.      Much more even in the air today. Apparently we got five, 5! Scythes though. A major triumph.  Nothing much to see here. Definitely didn't lose a DMS. No Sir, our DMS captains are alert night and day, dodging torpedoes, sweeping mines, depth charging submarines…    Poor Kaga’s airgroups are severely depleted, but she should be out of the danger zone now.  This would be why Maya hasn’t moved very much. Well, there’s no coming back from that, we scuttle her and get moving.  I believe I may have mentioned this before, but Japanese damage control is so bad Tokiwa here is still smoldering after being strafed that one time, what, a week ago? I decide we will try an attack at Clark again. We now have nearly twice the AV here that we did last time, and judging by the results of the bombardment the tactical bombing might have actually been doing something.
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Dec 31, 2020 15:10
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Pharnakes posted:
There's bad at damage control and just punishing mechanics
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Dec 31, 2020 15:54
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Jobbo_Fett posted:There's bad at damage control and just punishing mechanics I was researching something the other day and I found out that the reason they removed the "Japanese subs follow Japanese doctrine? Y/N" toggle when transitioning from the original WITP to the Admiral's Edition, was that the devs realized that when the toggle was OFF in the original game, Japanese subs still couldn't score merchant shipping kills that were congruent with historical results (when it was, presumably, set to ON). so in AE the toggle is always effectively set to OFF, and if the Japanese player doesn't want their subs to hit merchant shipping, then just don't patrol shipping routes.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:13
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gradenko_2000 posted:I was researching something the other day and I found out that the reason they removed the "Japanese subs follow Japanese doctrine? Y/N" toggle when transitioning from the original WITP to the Admiral's Edition, was that the devs realized that when the toggle was OFF in the original game, Japanese subs still couldn't score merchant shipping kills that were congruent with historical results (when it was, presumably, set to ON). So the Japanese AI always sucks at using its subs against Merchant shipping?
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Dec 31, 2020 16:20
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How AE should be played
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Dec 31, 2020 16:29
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Jobbo_Fett posted:So the Japanese AI always sucks at using its subs against Merchant shipping? Japanese subs are always going to attack merchant shipping when given the opportunity, but I guess the Japanese AI isn't programmed to place its subs appropriately.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:35
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Jobbo_Fett posted:There's bad at damage control and just punishing mechanics It can be pretty frustrating at times, but I'm a real goon, I play games on hard mode 
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Dec 31, 2020 23:11
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  Our destroyers do a good job of screening the PT boats out of Lingayen bay, even managing to sink one.  Jintus and Asashio have their nightly brush with the PT boats operating out of Brunei. Even a PT boat takes more than a 25mm hit to sink though.  I-153 finds a small tanker outside Palembang.  I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’m not sure all of that was really necessary.  We trade obsolete planes over Singapore.  Betties from Kuantan can apparently find no worthier targets for their torpedoes than some PT boats at Singkawang, which they unsurprisingly miss. At least the Zeros get a kill.  Relatively high casualties from our bombing at Clark. Let’s hope this heralds good things for the scheduled push on the ground.  The Liz fail to outright destroy any aircraft today but at least score a hit on a supply dump.  A small flight of Oscars sneak in to claim a couple kills, but leave one of theirs behind.  The Zeros don’t do great but at least claim a Scythe.  The KB finds a random tramp coaster, and sinks her.  The Dutch try to bomb Fuso as she departs the area, but have no luck.  In the afternoon the Betties instead find a large cargo ship in Singapore Harbour. Heroic Zero action sees them through and scoring a hit. Unfortunately she is a big girl and a single hit is not going to sink her before she can be bought into the yards unless we are very lucky.  While the Vals from the KB find 8 bogans in a leaky rowing boat, but sink it anyway.  Sometimes having crazy range has its downsides. Going to have to reduce Betty range to match the 14hex max escort of the Zeros.  Pompano tries to torpedo the minelayers on their way to Wake.  Hmm, well this is interesting. I think what is happening here probably is a resupply attempt for the troops on Wake that he forgot to cancel. So they are shooting at us whilst throwing boxes of canned food ashore for us.    Now this is more like it. In my excitement I escd out of the report too quick, so here is the combat reporter summary. Bloody but any attack into a fortified mountainous jungle is going to be bloody, and we definitely come out ahead proportionally. Also remember in VP terms their casualties are worth twice as much as ours - we lose one VP per six items destroyed, he loses one per three. Our engineers in particular got shot to hell, but they did their job and we no longer need them here. Losing your engineers like this without taking out the forts is very painful and usually results in an enforced stalemate while you wait for them to recover.  The defenders at Clark try a bombardment of our new positions, but it fails to achieve anything. Not the difference in AV value for them now compared to when we launched our attack.   The daily bombardment at Ambon also produces no results.   A very good day on the ground for us. We have been bogged down for the last week everywhere, but now we are moving again, while his counterattacks are getting nowhere.      Not so much in the air though. Alas poor Betty, and all we got in exchange was a bunch of lovely Buffaloes.  Lingering damage only. The DD we scuttled and the freighter was torpedoed yesterday but didn’t settle in Kuantan harbour until today.   We have 1530 AV active in Clark Field now, compared to 1877 when launched our assault. They on the other hand have lost nearly half their AV, and their forts. We will press the attack, with only the 55th being withdrawn from the frontline. Now that we have shown our hand here we need to press and win before he realises his mistake and move the troops in Manila up to Clark. Needless to say the entire airforce from Formosa will be flying over Clark tomorrow.  In the not inconceivable event of things going horribly wrong we have a reserve of around 600AV plus more arty. Flush with victory at Hong Kong the 38th division is now mostly ashore, but the heaviest artillery is posing a challenge to unload over the beach.  The 33rd is now at sea and currently directed to Lingayen. Hopefully by the time they get here they will no longer be needed and can be used elsewhere, perhaps Palembang.  The inhabitants of Darwin should be making GBS threads bricks about now. I don’t really suppose we’ll find Ark Royal in harbour at Darwin but just in case the KB is set up for port strike as a secondary mission if they can’t find anything at sea.  I realise rather late that if I use the transport ships that were hiding in Miri from the PT boats, I can load up the Marines and take Brunei, denying him a base within PT range of Miri. So I do that.  I give orders for the now empty base of Samah to be wound down. 2nd fleet HQ will now base out of Hong Kong, where they can support the repair of ships.  Tomorrow or at most the day after our troops will cross the river Mahakaam and attack the coastal gun batteries defending Balikpapan from behind. The guns and the minefields they cover are the only significant defences at Balikpapan, the garrison itself is small.
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Jan 1, 2021 00:29
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  A Dutch submarine misses for a change. Really need some mines here, mines are the only good ASW I get at this point.  A lot of Dutch sub activity tonight. Thus far they have all been spotted and forced under before they can shoot at least. But no escort has managed a depth charge run either.  Thankfully the USN is little better at ASW than we are.  The destroyers escorting the KB actually get to the point of throwing some depth charges around, but probably more to look like they are doing something useful than anything.  The air phase starts with the typical Oscars for Buffaloes exchange over Singapore.  We trade a Betty for a Fokker trying to sink PT boats at Singkawang. Not such a good trade.  The hammering of Clark continues. We can’t let up now!  And the Liz raid on Manila. The objective here is now to keep as many B-17s and Catalinas as possible pinned in perpetual damaged state until we can overrun the airfield.  The Army has a go too. Remember this is more about causing disruption than outright casualties, so these waves are contributing. Judging just how much they are contributing is pretty much impossible, but I doubt yesterday would have gone so well on the ground without a solid week of tactical bombing first.  We net a free Buffalo.  The Dutch sneak into Samarinda while the Zeros are all busy on LRCAP. On the whole it’s probably good they decided to bomb the port rather than the oil. Poor DMSs though   Perhaps inspired by our success at Clark he has taken to bombing the SNLF at Cagayan. This isn’t going to be anything like enough support to let him launch a counter attack though.  And a free Scythe!   These PTs are proving irritaingly useful bait, and I’m not sure what to do about it. Maybe I will sweep SIngkawang a bit, I don't want to stand down or further reduce the range on the Betties for obvious reasons.  This is a much more constructive use of the Betties’ time.  The KB has found troop transports at Darwin. No aerial opposition either, which is good because the sweep hasn’t arrived yet :shakefist:   Not quite as dramatic as Pearl Harbour, but much cheaper for us.  If you don’t see at least heavy damage, it basically means it did nothing.   Horribly bloody again but progress. Look at what that Terrain(+) does to the AVs though  I’m not quite sure why we were so badly disrupted here but we are over the river now so it should only get easier.   Our Army losses are starting to mount at last. His are shooting up though.      Even in the air today. But he lost two Scythes and we only lost one Zero, so that means we win.  Please let this be true. Somehow I doubt it is though.  The Oscars flying out of Kuantan have generated our first Army Ace, and our second overall. Maki Chūjirō retains a comfortable lead though, being on 7 kills now.  Good news! Tokiwa has finally put the fires out. She was hit by 5 100lb bombs and a few .50cal rounds and has burnt for 4 days straight. God drat Japanese damage control.  In other damaged ship news Mogami & Kumano have made it safely to Hong Kong and are making full use of the excellent facilities the British have been kind enough to gift us. Meanwhile Fuso and Ise are both out of range of Allied air attack, so are safe baring the ever present danger of submarines. Fuso is heading for the yards at Sasebo and Ise for Kure. We shall have to wait until they arrive to see how long they will be there for but it is likely to be at least three months. Takao is ever so slowly pumping water at Miri, but there is no sign that Alikchi suspects she survived, or if he does, that he knows where she is.  An AP is reported in Harbour at Oosthaven. This could be a totally false report or it could indicate he is going for a Fortress Palembang attempt, which I would much prefer he didn’t. At the moment though I am stretched too thin to do anything about it other than hope that he has already committed most of his reserves elsewhere.   After Darwin the KB will sweep north to Ambon. We are told there are ships in the harbour there, so I set the secondary mission to port strike. Primary remains anti naval of course, in case there are any ships around, although there really shouldn’t be, he has had plenty of warning of our intentions.  The 104th is loaded up and on it’s way to Mersing. Currently they are ordered to head for Kuantan in the hope of fooling Alikchi in the event he gets a sig int decrypt on them. At this rate they will beat the Imperial Guards to Mersing, who are currently still loving around at Singora trying to load. And that’s it for today really. The current big focus of Clark doesn’t really need any changes to orders, it’s just grinding them down. If tomorrow's attack doesn’t push them out then the 38th should arrive as a fresh wave, along with a lot more artillery from Hong Kong.
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Jan 1, 2021 12:07
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  I-168 spots a large troop convoy in the night, but sadly is herself spotted before she can line up an attack.  The destroyers again catch his PT boats at Lingayen before they can get up to mischief, but in a point blank engagement a quick thinking commander manages to get a lucky torpedo off. The damage however looks like it might actually be survivable.  At Brunei the escorts catch the allied PT boats by surprise, sinking one and crippling another before she drifts off in the darkness.  The destroyers again catch the PT boats, this time managing to surprise them, but they cannot close the range enough to score hits before the PT boats zoom off. Shirayuki is still here in formation and apparently functioning as normal, much to my surprise. God only knows where the torpedo hit her.  I-162 takes a cautious punt at a Dutch CL, and unsurprisingly misses. This is why you fire all six tubes every time!  No opposition over Singapore!!!!  We sweep over Singkawang and net a couple of kills.  Pilots from the KB do not mess around  Scythes. He sets a CAP trap for us over Kuala Lumpur, but we blow through it easily enough. He has also moved the bombers away it seems so the Betties don’t hit too much.  Overkill? No such thing. Quite how Zeeman got away with only one bomb hit though I don’t know.  This is rather rude but probably won’t change much.  I don’t know if he’s bought up more troops here or if we have just run out of steam, but this isn’t great!   Despite Celebe’s intervention we overrun Balikpapan rather easily. A good amount of Allied planes are forced to be burnt before we can capture them. A large portion of the garrison outright surrenders, with only a few diehards opting to try and march south to Bandjermasin. They are forced to abandon all their heavy equipment though.   Apart from getting our asses handed to us at Clark not a whole lot happened to day. Prisoners taken at Balikpapan even up the VP though at least.      A good day in the air, or rather a good day of overrunning airfields - it looks like we caught an entire squadron of P40s brought in to help defend Balikpapan, and before they could fly a single mission. And we nail 4 Scythes. Only 9 losses is very nice, but of course half of them are Zeros.  Very quiet.  We get a juicy tidbit in intel today: “Christmas Island expands airfield to size 2”. This means he is choosing Christmas island as a base. I will retask submarines as appropriate. I can’t quite get Pearl & Christmas Is. in the same shot, Christmas is just out of screen to the south here.  Here is Shirayuki. A week in Hong Kong will see her just fine. One very lucky destroyer!  These are our troops at Clark, sorted by disruption. Definitely going to need to break off the attack today.   The CVLs have finished refueling at Tarakan, and we sail to Babeldaob to rearm. Kaga will wait for them there.  Now that the KB has chased any of his heavy poo poo away for the moment, we need to consider how to crack Ambon. We flat out do not have the reserves for a head on assault, so we are going to bypass and help ourselves to the level four airfield at Koepang. In order to make this a meaningful attack we will need an Air HQ so we can have torpedoes. We are cripplingly short of Air HQs in theatre at the moment so I purchase the 2nd AIr Division from the Kwantung Army. This is overkill for Koepang, but will be sent to Takao to replace the Air flotilla I am taking from there to Babeldaob to join the invasion of Koepang.  In the end I decide to assemble a large convoy with several regiments worth of support troops. These will not all go to Koepang of course, from Babeldaob they will be distributed around our new conquests in the SRA.  With yesterday’s failure and the arrival of the big guns overnight I decide to go for a bombardment at Clark. Normally this tends to go badly for Japan with the absurd number of 155mm howitzers they have, but we’ve knocked out a chunk of their guns and have some very large penis compensators ourselves here, so let’s try it.  I send some subs back out with more midgets to try again at Pearl. I don’t really expect them to achieve anything, but if he has all his escorts out escorting now then there is a possibility of some hilarity here. Wish Has 5, 7, 8, 15 and 24 luck! They will assuredly need it where they are going.  Since the fun seems to be over at Kuala Lumpur and the Singapore airforce at least temporarily destroyed, I set the secondary mission of the Betties to port attack Singapore. There has consistently been an AP reported in harbour as well as the HDMLs, so maybe there actually is something there that has been forgotten. Or maybe it will turn out to be a 1VP ferry and a bunch of dead Betties, we shall see.  The KB continues on their luxury cruise of the spice islands. I take away their specific orders, maybe the raid controllers can find a juicy target I can’t see on the map now.  I’m fed up with this Cagayan bullshit. A regiment each of tanks and artillery will crack it.
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Jan 1, 2021 22:50
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Daily pvp witp updates make me so happy, cheers for putting these together. I've never played through to end game, do jets come into play at some point?
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Jan 2, 2021 06:10
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Abongination posted:Daily pvp witp updates make me so happy, cheers for putting these together. These guys are playing a mod so it might be different, but in the base game the Allied player can eventually get P-80 Shooting Stars if the war goes past August 1945. I'm not sure if the Japanese player can get any jets other than the Ohka suicide plane, which is pretty much just a human-guided missile.
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Jan 2, 2021 11:52
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  I-157 takes a shot at a heavily damaged destroyer, but misses.  CAP is back over Singapore, but we power through.  The pounding of Clark continues. Now that the forts are down the bombing might achieve a bit more too.  The Liz have a good day at Manila.  They try low level bombing at Cagayan, and we down a B-10 with MG fire.  He still has the CAP over Singkawang, and the Zeros really excel themselves today.  The KB goes after Kendari but doesn't find much of interest.  Nor at Ambon.  I think it is safe to say we do not have firepower superiority at Clark.  We take Brunei without loss at least.  He bombards everywhere that we are stalled, to no great effect.   Apart from the mess at Clark, a quiet day.      Slightly busier in the air. No scythes   Very quiet at sea.  Wait a second. Is he withdrawing from Clark field??? Please, dear Neptune please let him be withdrawing here. I will sink two Yorktowns in your name if he does! For those among you not familiar with the intricacies of the WitP UI, that tiny little tack in the corner of his unit stack indicates it is moving - in this case SE towards Manila.  Not to be outdone by the army the IJN marine pilots have produced an Ace at Kuantan too. Of course, he got his kills by shooting up a bunch of Dutch crap, not taking on Scythes.   This looks potentially juicy, and is probably headed to or from Colombo. I move my subs out of the straits of Malacca to hunt this route, there isn’t likely to be anything moving through there now anyway. I also rebase them all out of Georgetown, which will save them a ton of time, fuel and danger instead of having to get past Singapore and back to Saigon.  Now the KB has essentially run out of targets in this area. We have a few options, we could double back to Darwin, where I suspect there are still kills to be had, we could push onto Soerabaja, or we could raid Ambon/Kendari one last time & head for home. Of these the best choice I think is hitting Soerbaja, however it is two days cruise to get there, so he will see us coming. I have a better plan, the KB will move north into the Ceram Sea, just as we would if we were leaving the area. I have also ordered a refuel today, with the big girls pumping fuel over to the escorts. This sets us up for tomorrow to sprint over to Soerabaja and hopefully catch him with his pants down.  With this in mind I move a few recon planes up to Balikpapan, where they will today photograph the docks and airfield at Soerabaja. This should give us a good idea if the plan is worth the fuel, and if so the higher the recon you have in a hex the better the strike results tend to be.  With the KB about to be operating out of Babeldaob I send our lone, precious AKE (auxiliary for reamaring ships) to Babeldaob from Truk. With its size 3 port Babeldaob would be unable to resupply torpedoes to carriers. This will also enable torpedo rearming for submarines and surface ships, which will also come in very handy.  The Imperial Guards have finally managed to load up. Looks like in the end they will arrive at Mersing pretty much simultaneously with the 104th. If you did not have the inside scoop this could give the erroneous impression I planned it as such. I also load up another infantry regiment with some AT guns and engineers at Hong Kong. Thus far recon continues to report a few hundred men at most guarding the beach at Mersing. Around 50k men are reported in the north, 30k in Singapore itself. So we could hopefully cut off the bulk of his forces. Overall a very quiet Christmas.
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Jan 2, 2021 13:07
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Are you going to keep attacking at Clark and get the bonus, or lay off and hope he moves all the way out?
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Jan 2, 2021 18:50
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Even if he is stupid enough to put them into move mode, our planes hitting them immediately put them back into combat mode prior to the land phase anyway. So no I'm going to sit tight, rest the men and hope he actually does leave.
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Jan 2, 2021 19:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:sorry if this is off-topic, but what exactly does one do to a Hurricane (or Spitfire) to make it "tropical"?
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Jan 2, 2021 23:08
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Abongination posted:Daily pvp witp updates make me so happy, cheers for putting these together. I'm glad people are enjoying it, I've wanted to do a witp LP for years but never quite managed it until now. Jets wise, well let's just say you will see in 3.5 years ish, if the game lasts that long.
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Jan 2, 2021 23:29
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Pharnakes posted:I'm glad people are enjoying it, I've wanted to do a witp LP for years but never quite managed it until now. Gingas?! Please tell me its an obscene number of Gingas
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Jan 2, 2021 23:33
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  The PT boats are back and somehow manage to penetrate through all the screens. Argh. Also note the giant xAP set on fire by a single .50cal hit. Doubtless she will burn out.  Counting the hexes this lines up to be a convoy outbound from Peal, bound of reither Australia or the south pacific. Shame we didn't get an attack position this time but we ought to be able to harass them all the way now.  Seadragon tries for unescorted cruisers between Borneo & Indo China. Thankfully MK14s do their usual.  Even when he can get CAP up the intensity of the dogfights over Singapore is definitely dying down.  He seems to have endless reserves of these poo poo Dutch fighters. But they are good enough on defence. More sweeping needed.  We lose a Nell over Clark. This is happening much less often than I thought it would so I’m not too upset.  And Manila. Same old same old.  The Oscars don’t do so well over Singapore today, despite there being no Scythes for this fight.  A low level raid sneaks in under the CAP at Balikpapan and hits the oil. We will need to do something about this ASAP.  Yesterday the P-35s bombed from 20k feet. Today the strafe at 100, but still don’t hit anything.  A second Zero sweep evens today’s scoreboard over Singapore.  Nells from Kompong Trach destroy a bomber on the ground at Taiping.  The KB hits Kendari to minor effect.  At Manado a bomber is destroyed at least.  At Ambon they get nothing, in part probably due to the heavy flak here.  Stop bombing the loving oil!!!  I should probably remember to tell them to stop doing this.   Hahahaha how do you like the 4x defence modifier now, bitch.   Quiet enough again.      Slight down today. Need more sweeping.  Yes I did tell you to go and sweep mines. No that is not what I meant you to do. Points for trying your best I suppose.  Well she might just survive, but probably not.  This loving game. This was a single .50 hit. Even if you consider that to represent a burst….  As quick as they came, they go. We lost both our Kuantan Aces today.    The Imperial Guards are just off Kuantan, and open their sealed orders. I also order them up to full speed in order to ensure they get 2 phases of unloading. Recon has suddenly decided there is half a division defending Mersing, lets see if that is true!  I set more DDs to guard the mouth of the Gulf of Lingayen.  A lot of ships are reported in the harbour at Soerabaja.  But quite a lot of fighters are also present.  gently caress it, you don’t win wars through cowardice. Full speed ahead!  I bring in a unit of Oscars and divide it to set up an exquisitely layered CAP over Balikpapan.  As you might have noticed, the Manado Garrison has been reported in the fighting at Ambon, so I throw together a quick invasion to see if Manado is infact undefended.  And also for Zamboanga. There is now enough of the Philippine reserves mobilised on Mindanao to deny me a quick victory, so it is going to be a case of wearing them down. In theory the light industry at Zamboanga could be helping him stay in the fight, so I will start by taking that for ourselves.  I dispatch some older CLs and DDs from Kwajalein to potentialy gently caress with this convoy. Jobbo_Fett posted:Gingas?! I certainly plan to build plenty of P1Ys, but I'm not sure what that has to do with jets. Or do you mean the Tenga? Pharnakes fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jan 3, 2021 |
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Jan 2, 2021 23:58
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Pharnakes posted:
japanesedamagecontrol.jpg
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Jan 3, 2021 00:23
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Pharnakes posted:I certainly plan to build plenty of P1Ys, but I'm not sure what that has to do with jets. Or do you mean the Tenga? Yes! And yes!
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Jan 3, 2021 01:23
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Pharnakes posted:I certainly plan to build plenty of P1Ys, but I'm not sure what that has to do with jets. Or do you mean the Tenga? Googling Tenga gives you an idea of how much some Japanese companies have changed since WW2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenga_(company)
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Jan 3, 2021 01:43
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gohuskies posted:Googling Tenga gives you an idea of how much some Japanese companies have changed since WW2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenga_(company) I mean... Tenga wasn't a company in World War 2. Now, Hitachi on the other hand...errr... ewwww...
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Jan 3, 2021 02:13
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gohuskies posted:Googling Tenga gives you an idea of how much some Japanese companies have changed since WW2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenga_(company) In this case, the Tenga was a proposal for a jet-powered variant of the Ginga bomber. It's pretty obscure and probably won't be showing up near the top of google searches (even if it does have a wiki page). I'm assuming the original "3.5 years" mention is getting Kikkas much earlier than historical (as in IRL it had its first flight 8 days before Japan surrendered). There are other possibilities, but practically everything else jet-related for Japan was still in the proposals stage (though of course those paper designs could show up too).
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Jan 3, 2021 04:29
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Lord Koth posted:In this case, the Tenga was a proposal for a jet-powered variant of the Ginga bomber. It's pretty obscure and probably won't be showing up near the top of google searches (even if it does have a wiki page). They also had their version of the Komet in various powered stages
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Jan 3, 2021 04:36
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Jobbo_Fett posted:They also had their version of the Komet in various powered stages Not a jet plane. 
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Jan 3, 2021 04:37
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Lord Koth posted:Not a jet plane. Drat, you're right, its even better... its ROCKET POWERED 
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Jan 3, 2021 04:39
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So, could a WW2 buff tell me how effective PT boats were in the real world? I recall learning that MacArthur escaped the Philippines on one but other than that don't remember much. They seem to be fairly effective here in WitP.
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Jan 3, 2021 04:46
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Guper posted:So, could a WW2 buff tell me how effective PT boats were in the real world? I recall learning that MacArthur escaped the Philippines on one but other than that don't remember much. They seem to be fairly effective here in WitP. Very much a glass cannon. Not sure how effective they were in terms of real life attributed kills vs losses and so on, but they are designed to go fast, strike hard, and get the hell out of dodge. Most carried 2 torpedos, sometimes 4, boast some good AA guns in the 20mm and .50 cal range. Downsides are that it doesn't take a lot to tear into them and start killing crewmembers. 18% of all American torpedo boats were lost for various reasons, with the majority being Accidents, Friendly Fire, Scuttling, or Sea Conditions. And if they sink anything, its an amazing return on investment comparatively.
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Jan 3, 2021 06:27
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the main limitation to PT boats was their range, which is why most of the action they saw was within the Solomons campaign where they could operate out of land bases close to the forward edge of battle
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Jan 3, 2021 06:56
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They are only really effective as you see them being deployed now - against poorly coordinated invasions. This is a risk I just have to take at the moment when I need to grab everything I can, but later on when invasions take so long for ground units to plan, each invasion by either side will probably be more than adequately escorted and PT boats would have to get very lucky to do much.
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Jan 3, 2021 09:01
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PT boats were mostly meant to move through shallow waters and attack lightweight shipping targets. They were continuously upgunned throughout the war for this purpose.
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Jan 3, 2021 09:10
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  A DMS that doesn’t get torpedoed?   Allied Cruisers have somehow slipped past the Kongos to do… this. Extremely rude but maybe better than a direct confrontation with the invasion fleet.  Shortly after we start our landing at Mersing.  The 22nd Australian brigade is reported to be opposing us. They won’t be enough.  This is another one of those heart stopping turns I see. In fact both sides will probably break off almost without a shot. Could this mean Ark Royal is in port in Soerabaja then?   No this is Ark Royal, I thought it was Hermes. We hit her twice with 36cm shells but for no significant damage. No I’m sure that’s Hermes in the picture. Ark Royal lacks side art maybe? Weird. (Note from future, Ark Royal at this point did lack side art) More importantly though here is Ark Royal ohh soooo vulnerable and the entire KB is on Port Strike   We bump into them again. Ark Royal is still on fire at least, maybe she won’t be able to launch? That would be something. I am absolutely kicking myself now for not putting some planes on naval strike. I could see some small minesweeping and ASW TFs around,and I didnt want time and bombs wasted on them rather than the juicy stuff in port at Soerabaja   The LIz keep on keeping on.  This is by no means the KBs full strength. Could the mission controller have decided to send some after Ark Royal?  Well that wasn’t a total waste of time. Kortenaer should be hosed, a couple of small tankers, maybe a sub.  Some kingfishers strafe a sub chaser, and get strafed back.  Somehow there’s only 16 Zeros up in CAP over the KB. This is not going good.  The CAP at Balikpapan works at least.  And today they go for the middle, 10k.  A belated sweep turns up from the KB over Soerabaja. I think I’m having heart palpitations.  Some Beauforts try at Mersing.  The CAP is a bit leaky but against medium bombers that doesn’t matter. No sign of his carrier aircraft yet. Please please please let him also not be on naval strike.  We are saved. That's the end of the air phase, and his carrier groups are either not ordered to be on naval strikes or else hosed up somewhere. Military historians are going to have such a fun time examining todays series of gently caress ups on both sides lmao. And my heart hasn’t exploded yet! That was a probably unhealthy shot of adrenaline though.  Yeah we aren’t going anywhere. This is our beach now, no bogans allowed.   Today we didn’t feed him army points!       A hard day in the air for both of us. Well in the air for him, on the ground for us actually.  Nothing big showing up yet.  Yes this is our carriers and his cosying up in the same hex without fighting each other.   Atsuta Maru is still alive! This is a substantial triumph, with the fires out she can be tied up alongside and quite likely saved. Kanzyu on the other hand is still on fire. Well, they can once unloaded at least.  In other surviving torpedoes news Shirayuki has arrived at Hong Kong and will be right as rain in a week.   In order to facilitate rapid unloading I set the damaged transports into their own TF set to unload, while the rest are ordered to suspend unloading for a day. This should ensure the damaged ships unload as a priority I hope.  Kuantan is substantially hosed up, and over half the surviving airplanes are grounded. I pull the airworth Betties back to Saigon to get them out the engineer's hair, and set all the fighters to CAP. with some LRCAP on Mersing.  After considerable internal debate I decide we have enough supplies ashore at Mersing for a day of combat, so everything will withdraw to Kuantan where they should be out of torpedo range and the CAP can be concentrated at range 0.  This probably isn’t necessary, but I set Nagato & Mutsu to bombard. Kong & Haruna are with wave 2 and will arrive at Kuantan tonight to make sure no more bombardments happen there, and I really don’t want any fuckups or delays that would give Alikchi an extra day to react to this.  The Imperial guards are of course ordered to shock attack.  While the tonks are set to pursuit. This should get them almost all the way into the next hex.  Well, the KB’s fuel situation precludes us from getting up to anything too spicy. All we can really do is turn for Balikpapan, but I will have them stop short to keep within strike range of Soerabaja. Missions will be 50% port 50% Naval. Hopefuly that will let us finish of Kortaener at least, and maybe he will do something stupid. After this the KB is going to need a week off though, probably in Hong Kong.
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Jan 3, 2021 12:39
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heckuva haul on that port strike!
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Jan 3, 2021 12:50
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drat, that Kuantan bombardment hurt. How long does it take for damaged planes to be repaired?
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Jan 3, 2021 16:09
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