Amphibious Invasions-Newbie

[TheOx]

Ok couple Qs on Amphib Invasions.

1) I am taking serious losses due to coastal batteries, despite bombardmnets and aerial strikes leading up to the invasion. How do I mitigate this?

2) Are LSTs better than APs/AKs? Less losses?

3) My casualty rates seem high, even when I'm going against light opposition. Like 300 casualties when I have them outnumbered and beaten down with air attacks and bombardment. Shouldn't these guys be suppressed?

TIA

-Ox

[John 3rd]

Happens all the time for little reason.  There is active discussion on the Forum as to big Invasion TF versus many small Invasion TF.  Seems to follow a person's taste more then anything.  One thing that can help is to have several warships in your Invasion TF as well as a Bombardment TF hitting the target at the same time.
 

[wernerpruckner]

actual losses or only the reported casualities ??

300 is not high,.....try some havy landing in Alaska
or a heavy landing against a well defended base ( I landed on Saipan in a PBEm a few days ago with 3 Marine Divisions, 6 RCTs, 6 tank battallions and several other units.......I had casualities of 35000 and actual losses of 5000 on the first day of the invasion.

[niceguy2005]

Reported losses are misleading.  I find many squads disabled during a landing quickly repair.   Opposed amphibious invasions are messy and it shouldn't be easy.

CD guns have more effect on initial invasions, logically.  As the invasion progresses I see defensive fire drop off.  For really big invasions I like to use the wave approach.  The first wave is a shock wave whose job is to secure the beach and deminish defensive fire.  The second wave (often bigger)then goes ashore and this is the force that I expect will be largely responible for taking the base, as the first wave is probably too badly beaten up.  A third wave stands off shore in reserve. 

All your amphibious TFs need plenty of PGs, MSWs, DDs and even CLs.  These ships suppress defensive fire.  If your losses too high you probably don't have enough of these ships in the landing TF.

[John Lansford]

1) Put some cruisers and destroyers in the amphibious landing TF.  They will engage the CD guns and draw their fire as well.  Your troop ships will still get fired on but not as much.
 
2) LST's unload all at once, so you get the maximum amount of firepower on the beach in the shortest amount of time.  This is CRITICAL for an amphibious landing vs a defended atoll, since the attacker must conduct a shock attack the first turn of landing.  On larger islands, the LST's (and their relatives, the LSD, LCV, etc) ability to unload quickly means they don't hang around long for airpower or enemy surface TF's to find them.
 
3) Casualty numbers in landings are misleading; they are not all killed or even wounded, but confused/dispersed/wet and hungry and most will reorganize and be able to fight soon.
 
Make sure you've got ships loaded with supplies only in a separate TF that unloads at the same time as the troops hit the beach.  Even though your troopships have supplies on board with the men, they unload all the men first before the supplies get unloaded, so your soldiers will be getting hungry (and low on ammo) if you don't have a supply TF with them.

[engineer]

Some tips:

• If you're playing the allies, also include an Amphibious corps HQ with the invasion.  This will sharply reduce the disruption on landing. 
• The landing craft (LST, LCM, LSD, etc.) also have an effect on reducing the amount of disruption on landing.
• I seldom use the large or medium AP's in an invasion force since they take so long to unload.  They are also handy for shuttling units from the West Coast or Oz to a front line staging base so I don't want to get them shot up in an invasion.   
• Since you want the unit to hit the beach in a single day if possible, I prefer to use small AK's and small AP's if possible, but at least double if not triple the capacity of your invasion fleet versus the requirement of the unit.  For example, most US divisions are about 100,000 points of AK/20,000 points of AP, create your invasion task for with 200,000+ of AK capacity (30 large AK's).
• Transport TF's have a maximum ship count of 100 ships.  If you get into 1943/1944 where you have lots of barges (LCT, LCM, LCVP) you almost need to divide your divisions into the regiment sized sub-units so you can get it onto a taskforce that is mostly barges.  Since the barges have short "legs" (ranges of just a few hundred miles) you may need to include some Large AKs to serve as ad-hoc tenders for the barges so they can get from Point A to Point B to do the invasion.
• Sometimes I'll load troops on top of a few thousand points of supply that are spread in several AK's in the TF.  This doesn't help on turn 1 of an invasion, but if you've got your troops unloaded you can split off the empty ships and send them out of harm's way while the supply carrying ships with the escorts remain off-shore and finish unloading supplies over the beach. 
• Idiot AI exploit:  The AI typically bombards the 1st turn of an invasion and shock attacks the 2nd turn.  If you have have enough troops ashore to secure a 0:1 result for the Japanese attack then they will end up with heavy fatigue and heavy disruption when the Allies get to resolve their land combat attacks.  Even if your units have 50% disruption/fatigue, this gives your forces a big edge and they can chase the defenders right back through their trenches as long as you're actually attacking and not forting up behind the sea wall and waiting for your disruption/fatigue to recover.

 

[VSWG]

Section II.F of the 'List of Must Read Threads' has some excellent threads about invasions:
tm.asp?m=1274014

[Hawspipe]

300 wow that's good compared to me I got wiped out

[John Lansford]

I'm currently taking Medan the hard way; low EXP infantry division, no HQ, no engineers (Japanese have 9 fort level), heavy aerial/naval bombardment.  The Indians are making headway, but only because I've got four large TF's feeding them supply every turn from offshore.  The Japanese have five LCU's (mostly base units and engineers but at least one infantry brigade) and they're dug in tight, but they've got little supply and no way to get reinforcements.  I've got Georgetown, Alor Star and the two Sumatran bases just west of Medan, so I've got plenty of air support.

Still, three straight days of shock attacks have only reduced the forts to 7, but I feel the next turn may crack their defenses...

On the other end of the spectrum, when my recon planes noticed Ulithi was lightly held (base and one engineer unit), I staged a surprise invasion from New Guinea and took the base with little fighting.   Once my Woleai invasion TF's take their objective, Truk will be cut off from any chance of supply and over 60 LCU's will be isolated.

[bradfordkay]

"If you're playing the allies, also include an Amphibious corps HQ with the invasion. This will sharply reduce the disruption on landing. "

Shouldn't that be an Amphibious Force HQ, not Corps?

And I am pretty sure that it has to be on an AGC in order to get the invasion benefit.

[John Lansford]

An Amphibious Force HQ won't even load on anything but an AGC anyway, so they just sit there at San Francisco until you can get one there.

[AirGriff]

I'm at the point where I am planning some large scale invasions myself, as allies. I know the dismal view of LCI in the game, but do the more experienced folks out there find them useful at all?

[esteban]

I'll just expand on some things that have already been said.
 
1) Put at least 1 cruiser (or even a BB) in each amphibious TF that is involved in an opposed landing.  The games targeting algorithms mostly go after the "most expensive" ships in the opposing TFs first, so coast defense guns will shoot at the cruiser and leave most of the transports alone.  Cruisers are by and large impervious to most coastal defense guns in the game. Also having 1-2 cruisers in an amphibious TF is nice if you are attacked by air or surface TFs.  They too will tend to go after the cruisers and other escorts first, and leave your transports and their cargo alone for a large part.
 
2) Ships that generate the least disruption to the troops they disembark, from best to worst 1) LSTs, LSDs, LCIs, small allied landing craft  2) APs and Japanese barges 3) AKs.  The actual numbers are in the rules somewhere, but I am not going to look them up at the moment.
 
3) Have your units prepare for an opposed landing, preparation points help a lot.  The one downside of this is that Japanese units preparing for an enemy base can sometimes be seen on Allied intelligence reports and therefore give away your plans.
 
4) Put an Allied amphib HQ on an AGC and send it with the invasion force if you are Allied.  That will give your landing units a bonus against disruption.
 
5) Get about 10-20 AKs, have them load maybe 500-1000 supply each, and attach them to the invasion force so that they unload supply for the assault units.  You can have them fully load with supply if you have such good air and sea control around the target that you can have the AKs sit there for 15 turns unloading, but if you want to have them get in, drop off supply and get out then hold the loading to just 500-1000 supply.  Don't have your ships that are loading assault troops also load the supply for those assault troops.  They will unload the troops before they unload any supply, so the troops will be sitting there on the beach without supplies (which means they will not recover disruption from the landing) for 2-3 turns until the supply comes ashore. This is even more important when landing on atolls, because your invasion troops will shock attack each turn you land units--so you must get them supply from turn 1. 
 
6) Plan on having 30-50 APs/AKs/LSTs/LSDs for each division in the invasion.  For APs/AKs cargo capacity doesn't matter, because they will all be loaded well below their individual capacity.  That way the division gets ashore much faster.  Apply similar ratio of total transports to size of unit for regiment and battalion sized units.  If you are looking at an AP that has 2000-3000 cargo capacity of troops onboard, it will take that AP several turns to land all that "over the beach".
 
7) Air port attacks are a good way to silence a lot of the enemy coastal defense guns before the invasion goes in. 
 
 
 
 

[John Lansford]

I neglected to put any ships larger than a DD in a large LST TF in my Woleai invasion, and they got chewed up by the CD guns.  Four DD's and a half dozen LST's were either sunk or crippled; if I'd put some old CL's in the TF they would have been the target for all those guns instead of the transports.
 
I keep the LCI's in the same TF as the LST/LSD/LSV when they're carrying infantry divisions or RCT's.  They don't carry much in the way of LCU's but they do unload men quickly.  They won't carry anything mechanized like tanks or artillery though so they're wasted if you're hauling a tank regiment or battalion.  They're also fast enough to be in an AP TF without slowing them down.

[Yamato hugger]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

On the other end of the spectrum, when my recon planes noticed Ulithi was lightly held (base and one engineer unit), I staged a surprise invasion from New Guinea and took the base with little fighting.   Once my Woleai invasion TF's take their objective, Truk will be cut off from any chance of supply and over 60 LCU's will be isolated.

And if you were playing me, that wouldnt matter as I keep Truks supply level around 800,000. [:D]

Course I wouldnt waste 60 LCUs there either. Nice prison camp you made there, congrats!

[John Lansford]

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

And if you were playing me, that wouldnt matter as I keep Truks supply level around 800,000. [:D]

Course I wouldnt waste 60 LCUs there either. Nice prison camp you made there, congrats!

Yep, along with Rabaul (22 LCU's) and Kwajalein (33 LCU's), I figure a significant number of Japanese frontline and rear echelon ground forces are now out of the war and can now amuse themselves with coconut growing and fishing.

[engineer]

AI Observation:  I haven't played enough games to be sure, but it seems that the Japanese AI follows a "Strongpoint" doctrine where major islands are held with lots of LCU's (20 to 40+), but the Pacific has so many atolls, that nearly as good substitutes are close by and lightly held.  A determined "Island Hopper" like John's offensive recounted above will be able to create large self-administered POW camps.  However, the AI isn't a complete idiot.  I was a little slow in getting my noose around Truk and the AI managed to evacuate about half of the LCU's and move them to Saipan.   

[John Lansford]

I've noticed a significant buildup of ground forces on both Guam, Saipan and Palaus, but not on Tinian and Yap.  Guess where my next targets are?  My DB's are already hitting the airbase at Palaus, and my carrier TF's have ravaged the Marianas for weeks now.  I'm just waiting for the evacuation TF's to start heading for Truk like they did earlier on for Kwajalein and Rabaul...

[engineer]

In my game, the AI forted up on Truk, Saipan, Palau, the Bonins, and Manila after I had cleared the Marshalls and taken the Solomons & New Britain.    That left Guam, Tinian, Iwo Jima, Yap and Ulithi as handy bases to neutralize the nearby strongpoints.  It also left Okinawa and the Home Islands lightly held except for the strongpoints at Kagoshima, Osaka, Sapporo, and Tokyo.  Six months later Okinawa bases had supported landings on Kyushu and 4E bombers from Nagasaki & Iwo Jima had racked up an auto-victory on points.  I took Saipan the hard way just see how it fought out.  I needed something like 7 US army divisions and six weeks to completely destroy the 28 garrison LCU's that amounted to ~5 infantry divisions plus supporting units.  But all my infantry was 95 to 99 experience at the end of the fight.  Dumb AI! 

[bradfordkay]

ORIGINAL: John Lansford

An Amphibious Force HQ won't even load on anything but an AGC anyway, so they just sit there at San Francisco until you can get one there.

Hah! I am just now learning that fact (through experience)!!!