Adventures with the AI ( stock scenario 2 )

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: my worthy opponent
Hey Larry,
If you've started an AAR, ask the question about expanding HI/LI/armaments/etc. My understanding is that expanding too quickly can cause problems. Also ask what to expand and how much....

I have a real opponent but he requests anonymity and I respect that so for right now let's pretend it's the AI I'm playing and keep going. I've read all the documents and materials available for the setting up of a game from the Jap side and I found it invaluable. It's gotten me started and I'm setting up the game as we speak.

Strategically, I'm thinking of going for Manila's port on the first turn ( instead of Pearl ) to get rid of what Allied subs I can so that I can save what friendly ships I can. I usually have a major problem with Allied subs in the waters just south of Tokyo. Also, I'd like to see if it's possible to invade Australia's east coast at all. The Australian north coast has supply levels too low to be conducting offensive operations. But by staging first at Port Moresby, it might be possible to take over Australia starting at it's NE corner and working south. But that probabbly won't happen until mid-'42 or later.

I got some brownies for father's day and I'm eating them for breakfast, washing them down with chocklate ice cream. I really need to look into some fresh fruit some day.

Yesterday morning was when I started setting up this game. I've already given all the ships a mission to perform, something to do, someplace to go. Right now I'm going through all the aircraft adjusting them as appropriate. I want to set all the trainers at 100%, range 0, altitude 10,000 feet on an appropriate skill set. All the squadrons that have a morale less than 50 I'm standing down. There are three of those, two Nate units and one Ida unit, all in the home islands.

In my previous attempts at this, I noticed that on 08Dec41 the amount of vehicle points I have in the pools drops off a cliff, over 1,000 points in one turn. I interpret this as the units filling up with their authorized equipment and is normal. To respond I've been turning the largest ARM factory into a VEH factory.

I'm planning on turning off all the shipbuilding later than about mid-'44 because I doubt that the war will last that long and I'll never see those ships anyway. I can't do that until T2. Also, I want to go through all the cities and set the supplies required and expansion of facilities as appropriate. I want to limit expansions in China because I want to make China a side show for the most part. I want to see if I can build a rail line from Bangkok to Port Arthur to move LCU's and goodies back and forth as needed. The less I have to ship via boats the better.

I'm wondering if there's some special criteria about the expansion of the various factories building planes and engines and expanding the facilities of the various bases. I'm going to skimp in China and concentrate on my hubs and major tactical bases. What am I missing?

[BillBrown]

How have you configured your air R&D factories?

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the RD Air list. I haven't started to monkey with any of the settings yet and they are as they were set by the scenario designer. I'm planning on rounding off the size of the factories to the next nearest 10's. So an 0(6) factory will become a 0(10) factory. I like round numbers. Those factories that are in cites that are low on supply won't be changed until later.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the story behind the engines and airframes and what's on hand and what I'm building right now and I'm doing this for me so I can get organized but I thought I'd share with you guys in case you're interested what the numbers look like in stock scenario 2 before I've started moving the numbers.

I've sorted the Aircraft Replacement Pool on "in Pool" column descending, so that the highest number of planes in the pool is sorted to the top. I've got 45 x A6M2 Zeros, 20 x G4M1 Bettys and that's not nearly enough. I'm planning on turning off all the aircraft I don't need and concentrate on Zeros and Bettys. I've got 33 Nates and a similar number of various models of Oscar and that should prove adequate for the training to be done and in a pinch I can force the Oscars to carry some of the load. There's only 5 Glens and I'm going to lose a lot more than that in the first week of combat, probably. I want to replace all the biplane spotter aircraft with the Jake.

I've sorted the Aircraft and Engine Production list by the "engine" column so that all those aircraft that use the same engine are grouped together. There's over 100 Oscars and I'm really low on Babs. I'm for sure going to turn off the Ida, Theresa, Mary, Alf, Pete, Sonia, Mabel, Thalia, Ann, Topsy, Claude, Dave, and Nate. I want to concentrate on the Zero and Betty.

The last list at the bottom, The Industry list for "Air" shows what I'm producing before I start moving the numbers. Some of the cities don't have enough supply yet to expand anything. That's another proof that I need to go through all the cities yet to set the supply requirements and the expansion of specific facilities. Home islands getting priority for ports and airfields and not so much fortifying up there yet.

[BillBrown]

Given the discussion in my thread, are you going to change what your air R&D factories are going to R&R? And if so, what do you plan on doing.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: BillBrown
Given the discussion in my thread, are you going to change what your air R&D factories are going to R&R? And if so, what do you plan on doing.

I'm still in the process of going over your discussion again and again to pick up on all the good advice and then I plan on going through all the R&D factories and changing them to reflect what's needed and round them all off to the nearest 10's. I like round numbers. I'm mostly going to concentrate on Zeros and Bettys. For most of the war.

[larryfulkerson]

I tinkered with my first turn moves almost constantly for two days and after two days I got tired of tinkering with it and sent my moves to my opponent. He's got a dr's appointment tomorrow and will be out of pocket the whole day and the first turn is brutal for the Allied player so I wouldn't expect any moves from him for about 48 hours or so. Maybe early Thursday.

Here's all the invasion TF's and where they are going. Mostly to the PI and the east coast of Malaya at first. And Kaiveng, near Rabaul. I thought I'd start loading up the second wave to get them ready to depart so you can see how many more invasion TF's there are.

I've found the 21st Division at Shanghi and had to split it up to get one part of it to load. I ran out of transports for anything else. I'll have to make trips. I'm going to move the 21st ID to the PI to help take down Manila. There's lots of troops on the Formosa island that I need to move yet and some at Tokyo. I found a lot of units in the home islands that are now strat moving to Tokyo for future loading. There's lots of divisions that I can buy out and move but I'm down to just over 100 PP's right now. I've been replacing leaders.

[larryfulkerson]

According to Tracker I've got a boat-load of really good pilots. I haven't gone through the squadrons culling the TRACOM qualified pilots to TRACOM yet but I intend to do that after the first wave of attacks so that the best pilots are doing the first strikes of the game. After that is done I'll need the best pilots as instructors. I'd like to accellerate the training as much as I can.

As the squadrons lose planes and don't fill back up right away, I'll divert the units that are less than half full to do training for a while to give them something useful to do while they are filling back up. I don't like to send small group partial squadrons to major targets even with escorts. I like to put the pieces of squadrons back together because they make better deathstars that way. I've got a habit of having squadrons upgrade to planes I still have in inventory so they aren't wasted and once I have a large enough pile of new model planes I move the better pilots to the better planes. I like to see how many of the reserve pilots I can stuff into squadrons. The idea is to get them flying SOMETHING, anything, so they accumulate experience and some tiny increase in some skill. I've seen a list of pilots transfering to new squadrons that had about 100 pilots on it. I like to keep my pilots mobile. I like to keep the planes I have on hand in the squadrons instead if possible, rather than an unused reserve. So I expand those squadrons that I can by loading them on a ship and clicking twice on the button that toggles between "no resize remaining" and "no resizing". When I go to disband a group I'll have to see if I can't just find some other job for it instead to keep the very vehicles that will allow a pilot to fly some kind of mission and gain experience.

I don't remember how many PP's I started with but I've got just over 100 left because I've been replacing leaders all over the map. Mostly ships and squadrons. I'm not done yet but I thought I ought to have an emergency fund of PP's for things I haven't thought of yet.

I've turned on the stockpilling of all the CW equipment. They will need that stuff soon enough.

I'm going to do a tour of the major bases and hubs to see what shape I'm in logistically and I'll give you a full report.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's a list of my bases sorted on Supply and I've denoted my major hubs and I've detected a problem already. Babeldaob is way too low on goodies. There's not enough there to supply any more invasion sites. I'll have to dispatch a supply TF right away.

Just after the first turn strikes I'll have to decide on the best positions for the KB and my SCTF's and whatever warships I can scrape together to protect my invasion sites and to recon the future sites. I need to put together a small group of subs to work the future invasion sites right away to do recon for mines and to monitor traffic through those hexes. Most of my subs are near Pearl and I need to recall my midget sub carriers to Kwajalien to refil them with more midgets. I want to swamp the west coast starting in about two weeks. It will take me that long to find the subs, refit them, rearm them, refuel them, and get them all to arrive approximately simultaneously in San Francisco's waters as a blitz to overwhelm the ASW assets that might be there. I expect at least a pair of DD's. I'll have to see if I can't station some subs along the path from SFO to Pearl to monitor the traffic.

I haven't figured out what HQ unit(s) that can increase the number of mines that show up at a port but I suspect it has something to do with a naval HQ unit. I've got some in the home islands that I'm going to move to the south pacific [ and java after I've got control of that island ]. Kwajalein keeps running out of mines. I'll expand the port as a first step to get more mines. The 6th Fleet Naval HQ is there so that ought to help. Maybe I need more naval support?

I'd best take a look at the economy.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's the chart. I never became very good at finding what I needed to know from looking at this. I get that I'm not bringing in enough RES, fuel, or oil to meet demand. I've got a good pad of HI though, which is a good thing. It's a long time until I'll have to pay some HI for the pilots ( at the first of the month ). Most of my transports are still enroute to their duty ports, the place where to get the goodies. There's only 12 CS TF's so far and those are between Hakodate and Ominato and one route between Sapporo and Hirosaki, both for RES. I've got tankers headed for Sapporo for the 603K tons of oil there. I hope to have Miri up and producing fairly soon.

[jdsrae]

You need the small ACM boats as minefield tenders. You might want to convert some more from small xAK like the Kiso class.
Disband then in the port where you have mines and they will maintain 150 mines each.
To lay more mines use the CM for your ports and the I-12# subs or fast CM for enemy ports.
Mines have nothing to do with port size or HQ.

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: jdsrae
You need the small ACM boats as minefield tenders. You might want to convert some more from small xAK like the Kiso class. Disband then in the port where you have mines and they will maintain 150 mines each. To lay more mines use the CM for your ports and the I-12# subs or fast CM for enemy ports. Mines have nothing to do with port size or HQ.

Thanks for the info. So if port size and HQ units don't increase the numbert of mines at a port what in the world would? AKE's? AE's? Anything at all?

[jdsrae]

You just need to lay more. Try a Minelayer task force with CMs in it, give them a few escorts as not many have depth charges.
Select the ‘lay mines’ toggle and point them at a target base

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: jdsrae
You just need to lay more. Try a Minelayer task force with CMs in it, give them a few escorts as not many have depth charges. Select the ‘lay mines’ toggle and point them at a target base

In this current game I have loaded about 4 subs with mines at Kwajalein and when I try to create some more sub minelayers the message I get is "no more mines of that type available" and I have to give them a regular sub patrol mission instead. I'm looking for a way to have an infinite number of every kind of mine there is at each port I guess. At least the submarine types.

[jdsrae]

Ah no can do. Mines are produced at a set rate.
You can check in the devices pools what the rates are but from memory you get enough of the sub mines to use one sub per month, so about 40/ month.
Slightly more for the other mine types that are CM laid but not enough to run continuous mine ops.
If you don’t use ACM to protect them they deteriorate

[larryfulkerson]

ORIGINAL: jdsrae
Ah no can do. Mines are produced at a set rate. You can check in the devices pools what the rates are but from memory you get enough of the sub mines to use one sub per month, so about 40/ month.
Slightly more for the other mine types that are CM laid but not enough to run continuous mine ops.
If you don’t use ACM to protect them they deteriorate

Ah so. Thanks very muchly. I'll try to play a better game knowing that.

[larryfulkerson]

I've only just started unloading troops at Singora and Patani and AF troops are in the mix downloading to take care of the planes already there. The scenario setup stations a large number of Nates at Singora and I need to replace them with Oscars or maybe even some Zeros if I can spare them. I'm going to move my finest fighter squadron to Bangkok to battle the AVG which is usually stationed up there in Rangoon I think. There's a small Mavis group at Patani to monitor the ship traffic in and out of the Singapore area. Also, to help find the POW and the Repulse. Also, to watch over the landings on the east coast of Malaya. I need to move some spotters to this AO to do ASW work near the busy ports. I never seem to have enough recon assets prior to my invasions so that I almost never know what's there before I invade. I need to stop that. Recon helps I've been told. The detection level is so low over Singapore that I have no idea what's going on there. I need to fix that. I've got missions already scheduled to hit the Singapore port at night to try to get the damage started so the engineers there can't build forts quite so quickly.

[larryfulkerson]

Three troop TF's are heading to Bataan Island, one is moving to Jolo to start a base there, one is heading to Kaivieng, 3 are headed to Kota Bhura, one to Kushing, one to Makin, one to Tarawa, 2 to Miri, one is already at Patani and 2 more are headed that way, 4 are heading to Singora, one to Vigan, and one to Wake. Other TF's are loading for the second wave. Also, some of those landing spots are going to need a supplimental shippment of supply for the expansions to proceed almost immediately. I'm slightly worried about what damage might occur at Miri associated with the take down.

[larryfulkerson]

I just now received my opponents moves and I'm watching the playback and the last midget sub left for offensive operations got lucky and speared the BB West Virginia with a torpedo. It probably didn't hurt the BB much.

[larryfulkerson]

I sent this TF of two PB's out to destroy an Allied sub I spotted and what happens but one of them is having major drama. It will probably sink before it can make it to any friendly port. I feel like I should escort the hurt one with the survivor to pick up the men if it sinks. Saigon is too far away so I'm going to head NE to the nearest friendly port. It's probably got a massive fire going on.