ORIGINAL: ny59giants
For those with a better understanding on this issue (which is probably most of those out there), what ships should I accelerate and/or halt?? Please explain it in small words. [:D]
My advice, which will differ from others is as follows....
Use a sheet of paper and keep track of the building point changes as you do this so that you know exactly how many points you are spending.
1. Halt CV Shinano. Huge point sink, Comes too late, too few planes, worth too many vps when sunk.
2. Halt all submarines. You don't need them initially and they are your most effective weapons. At 26 to 33 build points
per turn for each, you can save a bunch of points. Later, you can go back and turn on subs one at a time as you need
them to replace losses or when you have other ships available.
3. Accelerate the Musashi. Others will disagree, but here is my reason. By continuing Yamato on normal and accelerating
the Musashi, you will get both units on the map early. M should arrive 30-45 days after Y. These are the two most
durable and intimidating ships that Japan has, and they are the BBs with the best chances of success against the U.S.
N. Carolina and S. Dakota class ships that also start appearing in early summer. They also have about the best AA
out of all the Japanese ships early in the war, which is important. After they are completed, you would then roll the points
into accelerated carrier construction as explained below.
4. Search through your DDs. There are a few with radar that are 200 days or less out. Find these and accelerate them as
you really need radar equipped ships in the fleet.
5. Carriers. Look at the CVLs and CVEs. Ask yourself if each one is worth having in the fleet. The VP cost when they are
sunk is very high, and some of them are quite fragile. I would complete the ones that hold a good number of aircraft,
but I would halt the ones that only carry less than 36 planes. They are nothing but a target. You can always finish them
later when you have extra points. I will then allow the other carriers with less than 200 days to continue building at
normal pace, later accelerating if I have extra points. I initially halt everything from Taiho on up for the first couple of
months to save points and get the other stuff out the door. Then I resume as points become available (you will get a big
block of 180 when Yamato completes and if you accelerated Musashi, you will get 540 more when she completes). I first
resume the carriers that are 900 days or less on normal. I then accelerate the ones that are farthest out so that they
catch up to the carriers in que ahead of them. If you do this right it isn't expensive since it only costs double and not
triple to accelerate a ship early during construction (during the period where you can't halt them). Later, in the game
you will devote more and more to getting these carriers done, eventually accerating groups of them. The object being
to get them to arrive as close together as possible so that you can build an effective fighting force. As a general rule,
you want to have as many of these carriers arriving by turn 800 as you can. By that time the Essex class will be starting
to appear in number, and your surviving starting carriers will need the reinforcements. The other thing that this method
does is that it ensures that you get an effedctive force and do not fritter away your spaced out builds one at a time. If
you complete one carrier and lose it in action before the next three get finished, you have diminished your forces that
will be needed mid-game. However, if all four carriers arrive together mid-game, then you have an effective force even
if you earlier had lost all of your carriers in action.
Merchant Points:
1. Halt every AK,AP,TK that you can. Build only as you need them.
2. Convert some AKs to ARs and a couple to MLEs. Spend all of your available merchant points to accelerate these ships,
especially the ARs.
3. Turn off any merchant shipyards in excess of what you need to save the HI. In fact, you might want to consider
converting some of your excess merchant shipyards to naval shipyards early to give you additional points needed to
accelerate naval construction and assure getting the carriers by mid game. Don't go wild with this, however. You will
need to make sure that you don't create a supply shortage created by the industry expansions and shipyard
conversions.
Hope this helps. I am certain that others will disagree, but this is the strategy that I have found to be successful in my
games.
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. They will upgrade to the right guns as time goes by. TOE class should have been 2089. Really good catch. FWIW when you see gun being substituted by very similar guns which can do the same job ( 37mm US ATGs replaced by 2lber British ATGs) then it probably is intentional.