Question for Those Who Play Japan (Lokasenna welcome now)

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Bullwinkle58
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Question for Those Who Play Japan (Lokasenna welcome now)

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

Can somebody give me five bullet points on what happens re Japanese emergency reinforcements if the Allies land on a hex with the Japan national code? In particular are the new depot (??) units able to be disbanded? Do they need Arms points to fill out? Any idea of what their daily/monthly supply consumption is? Are they restricted white or yellow?
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Jorge_Stanbury »

Hello, you answered some of your questions with the snapshots of this thread:

tm.asp?m=2622371&mpage=1&key=Japanese%2 ... e&#2622371

On the snapshots:
- they are white
- disband button is not grayed
- they should consume few ARM points, as they are mostly light inexperienced infantry
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

Hello, you answered some of your questions with the snapshots of this thread:

tm.asp?m=2622371&mpage=1&key=Japanese%2 ... einforceme?

On the snapshots:
- they are white
- disband button is not grayed
- they should consume few ARM points, as they are mostly light inexperienced infantry

No, that was my brother. [:)]

Funny thing about memory as you get older. I can recall my 8th grade English teacher's car--make, model, color. I can't recall my first wife's birthday, and I went through twenty of them. I don't recall ever posting those screen-shots. I have looked at the Allied ER posts many times, but not the Japanese. Somewhere in there I remembered "depot", but not the rest. Funny.

Anyway, the reason I asked was this. I'm in late-May 1942 and considering doing an SST landing on Japanese soil to activate the Depots. I realize everything is a trade-off. What I'm trying to do is make them eat HI supply. Lokasenna and I are in a scorched-earth game. He's told me supply is his constant worry as we're playing non-historical R&D and he went a little nuts right away. He's also expanded well past historical limits and is in reality kicking my behind in multiple areas, especially islands. I have let him to some extent since much of my navy has been consumed in an all-out war in the Aleutians which I think I've "won", but at a cost elsewhere. On my side, as I've retreated/been kicked out of Chinese cities, I have visited fire and destruction on the newly-Japanese base as I've been able, focusing on LI, with a view to making him haul supply to western China with all the waste that entails.

The trade-off with the Depots is multi-faceted. They are big but untrained. Six-eight months gets them to national experience averages though. They are pretty filled out, so Arms points don't look like a thing. Most of them can't be disbanded, so they're a little bit of a millstone. They're yellow restricted.

OTOH they're a bunch of decent-sized fighting divisions. Japan as I understand it has PP room in 1943. They could be freed up to go out to many places where a new division would help greatly. The Marianas come to mind right away. If they're not fighting they don't use THAT much supply. I'm not worried about facing them in the HI in 1945. If that happens I did something wrong. I'm worried about them rampaging in the first half of 1943. OTOH, I really need to exert supply pressure to the max right now, as auto-vic is on the table when Chungking falls. (He's relentlessly strat-bombed Chungking out of the supply business. It's getting by on 400/day.)

Looking at my excellent screen-shots [:)] I'm more on the side of not activating than doing so. Any Japan players have an opinion on THAT?
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Jorge_Stanbury »

I would like them earlier

as you said, they can train, get better leaders and being yellow restricted (I missed that in my previous post), they can give more room of maneouvre during the early Allied offensive
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

I would like them earlier

as you said, they can train, get better leaders and being yellow restricted (I missed that in my previous post), they can give more room of maneouvre during the early Allied offensive

How about the supply issue?
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Jorge_Stanbury »

I have never played as far as 1943 as to comment on the supply challenges, but Japan will still have some supply left in 1943 and the capacity to build. the crunch will come later on whith the strat bombers, submarines etc.

more divisions will give better room to delay the island hopping, even if those divisions starve afterwards. The longer he can keep the Marianas, the longer he will have some supply building capacity in the HI


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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

Thanks. Still mulling. I have to get out of 1942 alive at this point. [:)]
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by JocMeister »

For what its worth I doubt its worth it. Cool idea though! [:D]

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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

For what its worth I doubt its worth it. Cool idea though! [:D]


Yeah, I'm about 60/40. I am doing some things with my SSTs. A dot base back here, a dot base back there, pretty soon it's 200 VPs. I already landed on one of the non-Japan-coded Kuriles to shake him up, and found a base building unit. 70 Marine Raiders lost, but good intel.
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by JocMeister »

Thats going to keep him nervous! [:D]
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Alfred
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Alfred »

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

Hello, you answered some of your questions with the snapshots of this thread:

tm.asp?m=2622371&mpage=1&key=Japanese%2 ... einforceme?

On the snapshots:
- they are white
- disband button is not grayed
- they should consume few ARM points, as they are mostly light inexperienced infantry

No, that was my brother. [:)]

Funny thing about memory as you get older. I can recall my 8th grade English teacher's car--make, model, color. I can't recall my first wife's birthday, and I went through twenty of them. I don't recall ever posting those screen-shots. I have looked at the Allied ER posts many times, but not the Japanese. Somewhere in there I remembered "depot", but not the rest. Funny.

Anyway, the reason I asked was this. I'm in late-May 1942 and considering doing an SST landing on Japanese soil to activate the Depots. I realize everything is a trade-off. What I'm trying to do is make them eat HI supply. Lokasenna and I are in a scorched-earth game. He's told me supply is his constant worry as we're playing non-historical R&D and he went a little nuts right away. He's also expanded well past historical limits and is in reality kicking my behind in multiple areas, especially islands. I have let him to some extent since much of my navy has been consumed in an all-out war in the Aleutians which I think I've "won", but at a cost elsewhere. On my side, as I've retreated/been kicked out of Chinese cities, I have visited fire and destruction on the newly-Japanese base as I've been able, focusing on LI, with a view to making him haul supply to western China with all the waste that entails.

The trade-off with the Depots is multi-faceted. They are big but untrained. Six-eight months gets them to national experience averages though. They are pretty filled out, so Arms points don't look like a thing. Most of them can't be disbanded, so they're a little bit of a millstone. They're yellow restricted.

OTOH they're a bunch of decent-sized fighting divisions. Japan as I understand it has PP room in 1943. They could be freed up to go out to many places where a new division would help greatly. The Marianas come to mind right away. If they're not fighting they don't use THAT much supply. I'm not worried about facing them in the HI in 1945. If that happens I did something wrong. I'm worried about them rampaging in the first half of 1943. OTOH, I really need to exert supply pressure to the max right now, as auto-vic is on the table when Chungking falls. (He's relentlessly strat-bombed Chungking out of the supply business. It's getting by on 400/day.)

Looking at my excellent screen-shots [:)] I'm more on the side of not activating than doing so. Any Japan players have an opinion on THAT?

Bullwinkle,

You are underestimating the damage you can do if you pick the right target and launch a proper "volunteers" only mission. The JFBs are just trying to discourage you on purpose.[:)]

1. Only the Guards Depot div comes in at full TOE (actually it is overstrong). The other 9 reinforcing divs come in at only 65% of TOE. That means they will consume many armament and manpower points directly (and even more HI points indirectly).

2. It is absolutely irrelevant that the main component of these divs is "light" infantry. The cost to add a single IJA Infantry squad is based on load cost which is either 17 or 19 (check with editor to see which particular one has been used for these units). Hence the minimum cost, per single squad, is:

17 armament points plus 17 manpower points. Note that indirectly consumes 102 HI points, points which normally would never be used up by a Japanese player before 1945 and therefore unavailable to build advance aircraft in June 1942.

3. Not too many Japanese players build up a large armament pool by mid 1942. They just don't suffer the army losses to require one. their increase in consumption of armament points tends to occur later when they start to get normally scheduled reinforcements. Thus you would be forcing them to change their production priorities away from their beloved advance aircraft.

4. Rare is the Japanese player who has a substantial PP surplus in mid 1942. It will be a tough decision for them to expend PPs now on units which could not be really used on the frontline now (when the divs are cheap being at only 65% of TOE, but still a substantial expenditure) instead of supporting their frontline operations, or waiting until 1943 when PPs may be more plentiful but the divs will be more expensive if filled out.

5. Even if the PPs are spent, they will still use up new cargo space and incur unplanned for fuel consumption in being transported away from the Home Islands. Once there they create additional pressure on the SLOC. Once deposited on islands (which is what your JFBs are suggesting is their preferred use of the divs) you simply bypass them or if they have been deposited on an island which is in the headlights of the 3rd/5th fleets, being starving they present bonus VPs to the Allies.


From the above you can see I would not be deterred. But the trick is to capture a base with industry to make it worthwhile. Refresh your memory with s.13.6 of the manual.

(a) capture a Japanese aircraft factory it should become permanently lost to aircraft production
(b) capture a Japanese HI factory and it's production halves. Hence if initially it is size 100, the Allied capture brings it down to size 50. Then when recaptured by Japan it becomes size 25. It would therefore cost Japan 75k in supplies and 75 days to bring it back to it's original size. Not to mention the lost aircraft production in the meantime
(c) capture Manpower centres and the reduction is down to 10%

Japan starts with little in the Home Islands and most Japanese players do not reinforce the home front at the expense of the frontline. Therefore what you should do is:

(i) find out which production bases start off lightly defended on 7 December 1941
(ii) check through signit to see if they have subsequently been reinforced
(iii) send sufficient force (if necessary on xAP vessels) made up by "volunteers" of course (remember you can subsequently resurrect the destroyed unit). Travel silently
(iv) land and capture by coup de main the industrial centre. You just have to hold for one day to get the benefit

then hear the howls of protest from JFBs (but perhaps not from your opponent) at such a sneaky move. Have no sympathy for them for it will teach them rnot to play a soundly based military operations game using RTS tactics, forgetting all about rear area defence and all the non sexy things which they find to be boring.

Alfred

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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by offenseman »

Devious Alfred, downright devious. [:D]
Sometimes things said in Nitwit sound very different in English.
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

Wow, Alfred. Much food for thought. Much to research.

I would group your comments into two chunks: "The Chevy", which can be done with an SST landing on Para Jima. Activates the Depots and all the rest of what you say flows from that.

or, "The Cadillac", with activation plus potentially deranging effects on production and factory damage.

I do have all of the Intel reports in my Archive folder and can search them easily. The main issue with the Cadillac is the route to get an xAP, even a 20+-knot model, in close enough to land. I have one idea of a route that might work, but Lokasenna is a fanatic about naval search. He pays a lot of attention to it. (n one case already his thinking it "failed" him led to some head-scratching by him. In reality I had just made the moves long before he had search up. Within hours of the war starting in fact.)

My screenshots were made, I think, before Michaels' patch that added the ancillary symbols such as the (+) on the LCU details screens. I thought the TOEs were fully fleshed in the screenshots, but I didn't look in the Editor. I'm not that conversant with that program. If they are at 65% of TOE that would tend to swing me to doing this, in either model. Your comments on lift and maintenance costs if they were indeed bought out for perimeter use are also spot on. I suppose an ardent Japan player could air-lift them to Asia and use them as heavy garrison units in China, freeing up unrestricted LCUs, but that would tie up a lot of transports for a while, as well as eat supply and ops losses to fly such a large body of troops.

Anyway, I have to do some digging. At minimum if this idea adds to the Allied bag-of-tricks and makes Japan players stay home a bit more it's all good.
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by obvert »

ORIGINAL: Alfred

Bullwinkle,

You are underestimating the damage you can do if you pick the right target and launch a proper "volunteers" only mission. The JFBs are just trying to discourage you on purpose.[:)]

1. Only the Guards Depot div comes in at full TOE (actually it is overstrong). The other 9 reinforcing divs come in at only 65% of TOE. That means they will consume many armament and manpower points directly (and even more HI points indirectly).

2. It is absolutely irrelevant that the main component of these divs is "light" infantry. The cost to add a single IJA Infantry squad is based on load cost which is either 17 or 19 (check with editor to see which particular one has been used for these units). Hence the minimum cost, per single squad, is:

17 armament points plus 17 manpower points. Note that indirectly consumes 102 HI points, points which normally would never be used up by a Japanese player before 1945 and therefore unavailable to build advance aircraft in June 1942.

3. Not too many Japanese players build up a large armament pool by mid 1942. They just don't suffer the army losses to require one. their increase in consumption of armament points tends to occur later when they start to get normally scheduled reinforcements. Thus you would be forcing them to change their production priorities away from their beloved advance aircraft.

4. Rare is the Japanese player who has a substantial PP surplus in mid 1942. It will be a tough decision for them to expend PPs now on units which could not be really used on the frontline now (when the divs are cheap being at only 65% of TOE, but still a substantial expenditure) instead of supporting their frontline operations, or waiting until 1943 when PPs may be more plentiful but the divs will be more expensive if filled out.

5. Even if the PPs are spent, they will still use up new cargo space and incur unplanned for fuel consumption in being transported away from the Home Islands. Once there they create additional pressure on the SLOC. Once deposited on islands (which is what your JFBs are suggesting is their preferred use of the divs) you simply bypass them or if they have been deposited on an island which is in the headlights of the 3rd/5th fleets, being starving they present bonus VPs to the Allies.


From the above you can see I would not be deterred. But the trick is to capture a base with industry to make it worthwhile. Refresh your memory with s.13.6 of the manual.

(a) capture a Japanese aircraft factory it should become permanently lost to aircraft production
(b) capture a Japanese HI factory and it's production halves. Hence if initially it is size 100, the Allied capture brings it down to size 50. Then when recaptured by Japan it becomes size 25. It would therefore cost Japan 75k in supplies and 75 days to bring it back to it's original size. Not to mention the lost aircraft production in the meantime
(c) capture Manpower centres and the reduction is down to 10%

Japan starts with little in the Home Islands and most Japanese players do not reinforce the home front at the expense of the frontline. Therefore what you should do is:

(i) find out which production bases start off lightly defended on 7 December 1941
(ii) check through signit to see if they have subsequently been reinforced
(iii) send sufficient force (if necessary on xAP vessels) made up by "volunteers" of course (remember you can subsequently resurrect the destroyed unit). Travel silently
(iv) land and capture by coup de main the industrial centre. You just have to hold for one day to get the benefit

then hear the howls of protest from JFBs (but perhaps not from your opponent) at such a sneaky move. Have no sympathy for them for it will teach them rnot to play a soundly based military operations game using RTS tactics, forgetting all about rear area defence and all the non sexy things which they find to be boring.

Alfred

You certainly wouldn't get howls from me, just a lot of congrats! I've thought of these moves for a very long time while playing Japan, and the truth of it is they are available early in most games. For these reasons I usually spread out the Home Island troops to the most vulnerable locations in the North East and begin building forts right away. I also have Mavis searching, Jakes at Marcus ASAP, and keep some pickets and usually a few I-boats out in the mid-Atlantic in the hopes of spotting this kind of a move.

I wouldn't discourage you at all from doing this, as it would be really fun to watch. However, a move so deep would require a lot of luck to pan out, and would suppose your opponent has played the opening poorly by neglecting the Northern front. He certainly has not based on the activity up there so far, so I would imagine he has also begun preparing deeper defenses.

But forget all of that. Go for it!! I want to watch! [:D]
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Encircled »

I-boats out in the mid-Atlantic

Now that is what I call advanced recon[;)]
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Bullwinkle58 »

ORIGINAL: obvert

I wouldn't discourage you at all from doing this, as it would be really fun to watch. However, a move so deep would require a lot of luck to pan out, and would suppose your opponent has played the opening poorly by neglecting the Northern front. He certainly has not based on the activity up there so far, so I would imagine he has also begun preparing deeper defenses.

But forget all of that. Go for it!! I want to watch! [:D]

I looked at four potential targets, both from a sea approach as well as in-hand data POV. One, my preferred target, has a division sitting on it. One, near as I can tell from hex-side colors, won't work for a landing and overland is not possible given the size of the landing force and the time needed to march. Of the other two, one has a much better approach story and based on all I know has 1323 men in the hex defending, none combat squads. I don't know about forts. I'd guess at least a 2-3 by now, but I don't have full Alert data in Tracker as I had to dump once for RAM reasons.

If the HI landing doesn't work/is seen an SST landing can't be stopped and will do the Chevy portion. That's the fallback.
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Alfred »

Any deep moves into "Injun" country always need luck to fully come off.  But even an aborted move can reap considerable benefit as it sows into the opponent's mind a new set of conditions they have to guard against.  I always point out that the secret to successfully out manoeuvring an opponent is to increase the number of options they have.  Particularly when those options involve defensive postures.  Any Japanese assets located on the Home Islands are defensive and can be kept there in 1942 by adept Allied play using much fewer assets.  IOW, a great Allied force multiplier.
 
I haven't bothered to open up the scenario from the Japanese position but have instead relied on the 2010 planning maps.  There I count on 7 December 1941 many weakly held bases directly approachable from the sea.
 
Kyushu
 
3 bases with zero AV
2 bases with 8 AV
 
Shikoku
 
2 bases with zero AV
1 base with 9 AV
 
Honshu
 
9 bases with zero AV
3 bases with 8 AV
2 bases with 9 AV
 
Hokkaido
 
3 bases with zero AV
 
All these bases have industry and all are on the coast.
 
I commented on three industry types because they automatically suffer considerable damage upon capture independent of the presence of engineers.  An important consideration if adopting the Chevy version.  However, the Cadillac version allows for Yankee engineers to volunteer their services.  Their enthusiasm in the endeavour could see substantial damage caused to Home Island oil/refinery/resource centres and aircraft/engine/armament/vehicle factories plus shipyards, when they capture the facilities.  Can you imagine the consternation on the enemy if their Home Island rail traffic of oil to refineries is reduced?  Why it would make those overseas oil deposits more valuable and require sealift back to mama through seas saturated with hungry Allied subs.
 
There are therefore many potential targets.  About 25 potential target locations.  Of course some of these targets may have received reinforcements but ...[:)]
With the Allies having 3 SST, three simultaneous Chevy landings can be made.  Simultaneously several Cadillac operations could be mounted, remembering that each xAP would be combat loaded to unload fully on D Day and thus will not be carrying a complete Allied LCU.  You don't need a regt worth of AV to capture a base with a zero AV enemy garrison.
 
Travel silently; use waypoints to disguise radio identification of destination; send swarms of insects to multiple destinations.  Push forward if ID'd, even if he guesses correctly the destinations, the enemy can't swot all the insects before they arrive.  Or redirect some ID'd xAPs to other destinations; after all the LCUs are not going to be prepped for the landings so they can easily be sent to a new destination.  Ah, decisions and more decisions for the enemy.[:)]
 
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by CT Grognard »

Talk about a suicide mission [:D]
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by Alfred »

They are all "volunteers".[:)]
 
Besides they will not be carrying cyanide pills nor turn their guns on themselves.  So no suicides.  They have to be killed by the enemy.  That won't happen if there is no, or insufficient, enemy present.
 
If the Soviets were activated they would volunteer in their millions.  And all would receive Hero of the Soviet Union medals before they left for their mission.[;)]
 
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RE: Question for Those Who Play Japan (No Lokasenna please)

Post by CT Grognard »

The same holds for Japanese raids on Allied bases with HI.

Imagine a surprise invasion of a relatively undefended Los Angeles. 2000 oil centres, 2500 refinery, and 860 HI - that's a lot of Allied production capacity seriously hurt. It will probably be worth triggering CONUS reinforcements!

I have to try this [:D]
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