Western Citadel Beta Testing

[engineer]

Western Citadel is ready for Beta testing. Send me a PM with an e-mail and I can send out scenario files for this. Changes:

Scope: Modified late scenario 1926-1930

Changes:

Guam: After the collapse of the Naval Talks in 1921, the USA goes forward with its plans to turn Guam into a major fleet base. Several US fleet train units are postponed given the budget priorities in 1920-1924 associated with pouring money into the Guam base.

Truk: Defenses here are beefed up by the Japanese.

Mid-decade arms race: The US and UK have the historical naval holiday in 1922 and 1923, but when they see that the Japanese are laying down warships as fast as they can, the USN and RN get construction budgets in 1924, 1925, and 1926. That means more reinforcements for 1926-1930. The OOB has Kii, Invincible, and Tillman class dreadnoughts. The USA and UK also get modern heavy cruisers by mid-scenario. This also means the USA will have dozens more potential scout planes by late scenario. With no treaty, the US and UK CA's are presumed to displace 11,000 to 13,000 tons have much better protection than the historical "Kent" and "Pensacola" class cruisers.

Airships: The USA historically had the Los Angeles. In this scenario, the rearmament budgets provide a second Los Angeles class airship for the US inventory and a third with early scenario delivery. The Akron's are approved and under construction but they only amount to very heavily armed individual airships since there is no code to embark an airwing. The UK gets the R100, R101, and ahistorical R102 in 1929/1930 as helium filled airships, similar to the Los Angeles in performance.

Additional Japanese Escort Construction: The IJN gets several dozen destroyers, destroyer escorts, and PG's reflecting wartime construction programs.

Japanese Coast Defenses: There is an error in WPO insofar the 240 and 305 mm guns are actually short range and relatively inaccurate howitzers. The historical 16" guns mounted in the early 1920s were surplused from cancelled battleships due to the Washington treaty. Consequently, the WPO shore guns would be a variety of 8", 6", and 4" guns along with the large howitzers. The Japanese OOB is substantially modified in accordance with a US military monograph published after WW2 that catalogued Japanese shore defenses. The Inland Sea and Tsushima Straights end up more well protected, but Formosa and the Mandates, except for Truk, are less well protected.

Atoll Tweaks: The port and airfield values in the Central Pacific have been tweaked.

Additional US Bases: Astoria, Coos Bay, Eureka, and Monterey have been added on the US west coast. Astoria combines the local port and the upriver facilities in Portland and includes shipyards and a new supply head.

AP's: There is a major rework of the AP's. I've dug around the web and identified a lot of additional available shipping that increases the Allied sea lift. In addition, I've drawn stronger differences between a plain AP (a liner taken up hastily from trade), an upgraded AP (a former liner converted to a troopship), and purpose-built military transport (APA). In the mid to late scenario (and the initial USS Henderson), the USN will get wartime construction of purpose-built APA's. Troopships (upgraded AP's) can convert to a merchant cruiser and each type of AP has a different merchant cruiser (small, medium, large). The merchant cruisers can upgrade back to troop ships. (I am worried about a potential endless loop of upgrades on the part of the AI). The Allies also have liners and super-liners as very large AP's (~20,000 tons and ~40,000 tons, respectively) which are fast, thirsty, and can carry a lot of troops in one load.

The Infernal Device: US plans called for the Atlantic Fleet to join the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor by H+60, but in WPO, the Atlantic Fleet is dribbled in over a 1000 days. This scenario presumes that Japanese spies manage to sabotage the Panama Canal and trap the Atlantic Fleet in the canal. The fleet arrives as a unit at about H+500. Some old battleships that were still in refit when the fleet sailed escape being confined and join the Pacific Fleet by sailing around Cape Horn.

Ground Force Replacements: It seems odd to me that NZ and Australia can produce as many replacements as the USA, given the wide disparity in populations. NZ has had their replacement rate trimmed. The USA has their replacements increased. However, several of the US units start the game understrength so for the first few months, the replacements will be absorbed just getting the Army back up to strength.

Drydocks: These were part of US planning for the Pacific War since 1922. The USA starts to get a trickle of AR's in 1927 that turns into a flood in 1928 and 1929 to simulate the mobile drydocks in the War Plan Orange planning and historically built in WW2.

Upgraded Reinforcements: In many cases reinforcements will arrive in upgraded form. It is presumed that the work as performed in East Coast shipyards instead of bringing out a ship that immediately disappears into West Coast yards for a couple of months.

Pre-War Activity: The war is not a "bolt from the blue". The Japanese Empire delivers an ultimatum to the West demanding evacuation of western forces from China. The USA announces the intent to reinforce its position in the Western Pacific. The Japanese then declare war. During the month of so of diplomacy between the initial ultimatum and war, the US cuts orders for several units to prepare for overseas deployment and the old battleships on the west coast are brought up to snuff. Guam is fully supplied and has a submarine squadron and a sub tender in residence.

Artwork: I've added some public sourced images for the scenario descriptions from the US Naval Historical Center photo archives. There is no ship artwork added. I've selected existing WPO artwork that is an approximation of the ships.

Overall, this scenario tilts the balance further against the Japanese. However, the US and UK would have about a 10:1 industrial advantage on the Japanese.

[tocaff]

You've got mail.

[engineer]

[font="times new roman"]A comment from my play-testing:  Note that since the US Airships only have one aircraft per unit, they are unable to participate in strikes and any missions other than patrol. I have verified that they do scout and may conduct bombing runs on surface ships or submarines detected during patrols. This is their only direct offensive application.  This precludes dispatching the American airships to conduct bombing raids on Tokyo.  However, this comports with the USN doctrine for airships strictly as reconnaissance assets instead of continental bombers.  One alternative might be to increase the airframe count from one to two as an administrative fiction to allow strike participation and cut the pay-load by 50%.  While this fiction offends sensibilities with respect to making it more difficult to eliminate the airships, it does serve to make them more effective scouting platforms and currently, I see where their great endurance seesm to get insufficient weight in the scouting algorithms.  [/font]
[font="times new roman"] [/font]
[font="times new roman"]I noted a worry that a circular loop possible in the upgrade scheme (Civilian Passenger Ship > Troopship > Auxiliary Cruiser > Troopship > Auxiliary Cruiser etc.) that the AI may end up bewildered and suck all the AP’s into a black hole of yard refits.  I think that black hole exists.  Military transports in ports with shipyards will upgrade to Merchant Cruisers unless the upgrade toggles have been turned off.  What I’ve done is kluge a solution together.  In Slot 61, I’ve set up the game for a human Allied player who controls the AMC conversions but the Japanese AI only has the hard-coded Osaka conversion from AK to AMC.  In Slot 62 I’ve set up the game for a human Japanese player who controls the AMC conversion but the Allied AI only has the hard-coded San Francisco conversion from AK to AMC.  In Slot 63, I’ve got the hands-free scenario for both sides computer controlled and both sides have the AMC upgrade turned off.  In Slot 64, I’ve got the hot-seat version with both sides having enabled AMC conversions.  This is highly inelegant, but the logic is pretty simple.  Unfortunately, this might be a non-trivial coding task in the core game since there is nothing that I know of that selectively disables individual ship classes via the preferences within the scenario selection process. What I’ve seen in the data base is that the classes are manipulated with either availability delays or individual ships have delays in the scenario data sets. I’ve also postponed the AMC availability until 7/26 so the automated first turn doesn’t trap human controlled ships into an upgrade.      [/font]
[font="times new roman"] [/font]
[font="times new roman"]People who got the original Beta last week don't have the black hole problem.  I had disabled the Troopship to AMC conversions so that is basicly like the Slot 63 version described above.[/font]
[font="times new roman"][/font] 
[font="times new roman"]I've zipped all four variants together with art and scenario notes but it's grown to 3.5 MB.  If you have an interest in only a few of the options or a very full mail box, let me know by PM and I can repackage things into smaller bites.  [/font]

[engineer]

More proof-reading and corrections.  If you start a game there are some ships listed as sunk at "unknown" locations.  I tracked that down to a data base error.  If you have a seven digit entry delay, then the ship shows up as sunk.  The vessels in question are:
 
1952 - TB Nashi
1953 - TB Sumire
1954 - TB Enoki
5675 - AK Saramaca
5676 - AK Tivives
5766 - DD Morrison
 
Each ship has a seven digit delay, typically there is an extra zero between the year and month so, for example, it reads 2801205 instead of 281205. 
 
The TB's and DD are wartime construction for the the Japanese and USA, respectively.  The AK's are some of the 1920's era merchant shipping that I added. 
 
Also, I've found some of the very late-game US capital ships seem to be missing their scout plane detachments so I have to dig in to what happened there. 
 
 

[engineer]

Thanks to JCA for some tips on EditorX.  A number of minor errors are getting fixed.  I'm also expanding the aircraft data base with over a dozen additional planes. 
 
Pending updates will include C1A to C9 transport aircraft for the USAAF.  The C1 was from Douglas, the C8 is a Fairchild.  The rest are various flavors of Fokker and Ford Trimotors.  The Dutch will also get some Fokker transport squadrons for the East Indies.  Historically, the US transport arm was small and dispersed as individual planes, but in a big scale hot war, it's logical that they would concentrate and show up as transport squadrons. 
 
Attack Planes:  I'm splitting out the A3 and A3B.  I'm also cheating a bit and accelerating the A8 Shrike to a late scenario aircraft since a hot war would likely accelerate aircraft development in a big economy like the USA.
 
Patrol Planes:  I'm going to add the S-38, Consolidated Commodore, and the UK's Calcutta flying boat. 
 
Fighters:  The US will get the Berliner-Joyce P-16 and an up-engined Hawk, the P-18.  I wish I could persuade myself to bring in the P-26 as a 1930 plane, but that's too big of a stretch.
 
Bombers:  Look for the USA to get the Keystone LB-6 and LB-10 level bombers as well as the B1 Supercyclops and B2 Condor as successors to the Martin NBS-1. 
 
The Fairchild C8 also has a recon version, the F-1A.  That will be a late-scenario upgrade for the DH4 recon ships.  In addition, the War Department put a lot of the Army's observation planes in the National Guard so I've added some National Guard recon sections and support elements for that. 

[engineer]

I've found a bug in the upgrade scheme for the AMC's.  WC has the passenger ship > troopship > AMC possible path by way of upgrades.  However, if you get a passenger ship in the game when both the troopship and AMC upgrades are active, the ship will immediately upgrade to AMC.  Each each upgrade inflicts 10% systems damage, the ship also has 20% systems damage on it. What's worse, if you want to get back to the troopship, it appears that you have to upgrade back to a troopship for another 10% of damage.  That's not the design intent.
 
Since the upgrades take about a month to repair in a good yard and the San Francisco AMC upgrade is a six month exercise, what I may do by way of a fix is to delay the AMC upgrade availability until September and scrub the OOB so that all AP's entering after that date already have been upgraded to a troopship off map in Europe or the East Coast.  That will keep just one level of upgrade available on the AP's.  I also have to review the upgrade toggles on each AP in the OOB. 

[engineer]

I can't seem to get around the cascading upgrade problem.  The best work-around that I can find involves having alternating windows.  For example, AMC upgrade enabled for September 26, then a new troopship upgrade available in April 27, etc., then a new AMC upgrade in Sept., 27, etc. so there is not a loop.  Quite frankly, that seems waaaaay more trouble that it's worth. 
 
Plan B:  This basically cans the convertibility of AP's to AMC's and vice-versa.  The game should allow what historically occurred.  What happened is that British and the Commonwealth tended to turn large AP's into fast merchant cruisers (both WW1 and WW2) and the USA converted coastal passenger ships into mine layers (WW1).  In the UK case, they typically made the conversions at the outset of hostilities and then switched the ships back to AP's once the German surface raiders had been swept off the seas.  This is a lot easier to code into the ship classes.
 
1)  Some number of large passenger ships with UK/Commonwealth registry will enter the game as a fast European AMC.  It will have UK naval armament.  Sometime in 1927, an upgrade will be available to switch them back to troop ships.
 
2)  The Small AP(US) troopship will get a possible upgrade in 1927 to make a one way transition to a slow AMC with mine-laying capability.
 
3)  There will still be the San Francisco AK to AMC upgrade available, but I need to be sure that this gets the slow AMC with US armament.   
 
Other changes in the works:
1)  I've modified the Hex data file to put in the Columbia River nearly to the Dalles, but this isn't in the graphics file, its just the blue hex edges.
2)  Railroads have been added for Astoria and Monterrey. 
3)  County Public Works departments have been added in the Hawaiian Islands as a source of supplemental engineering.  Similar units are planned for Hong Kong, Singapore (Swire, Jardine-Matheson, Hutchison-Whampoa, etc.), Alaska, Saipan, & Okinawa.  Malaya had major tin mines so some civilian engineering capability would be there, too. 
4)  Japanese Levee en masse:  During WW2 the Japanese impressed civilian manpower for defense on Okinawa and in the Marianas.  It seems plausible to create a weak, poorly trained Japanese squad to represent these levies and add them to the islands where the Japanese had settled. 
 
 

[Terminus]

A lot of those civilian levies were Korean workers...

[engineer]

That's a good point.
 
Some supplemental research http://www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/Islands/CnmiCh_2.pdf shows that the population on Saipan and Tinian was low in the 1920s (under 4000 people) and the surge of about 40,000 Japanese/Koreans that took place after 1930.  Under those circumstances, the levee idea is impractical for the Marianas since the people there in the 1920s are essentially the same ethnicity and culture as down the chain on Guam.  These guys aren't going to charge machineguns for the Emperor.  At most a few hundred Japanese civilians are plausible for an engineering contract.  
 
On Okinawa, my better half was stationed there for awhile and recalls lingering antipathy between the ethnic Okinawans and ethnic Japanese.   The Japanese Statistical Yearbook gives total population for Okinawa prefecture (which I would think covers the entire Ryuku's) at over 550,000 people for the 1920s http://www.stat.go.jp/data/chouki/zuhyou/02-06.xls  The increase from the first census in 1898 is about 20% over a 30 year span so that would probably be natural increase and not a lot of Koreans. It seems me that raising thousands of ill-trained levees is still quite plausible and probably should be distributed throughout the Ryuku's.  I recall a figure of about 10k for the WW2 levee mobilization on Okinawa but that's just off the top of my head.  I'll shoot for somewhere around 20,000 infantry chain-wide.     
 

[engineer]

1)  I'm going to add the PN-12 seaplanes to the US OOB.  Historical deliveries started in August 1928 so a mid-1928 intro is plausible.  The Navy bought over 100 of them from a variety of manufacturers with deliveries stretching into the early 1930s.  The performance stats I'll use a little more generous that Tanker's on a thread elsewhere in the Forum.  The data on the plane shows that several test flights carried a 2000kg useful load to altitudes over 15,000 feet and test flights with a 2000 kg load of over 1000 miles were made.  Operational performance should be derated from controlled test flights, but I'm thinking along the lines of 1000 lb payload for 900 miles endurance and a 12,000 foot ceiling.
 
2)  Improved Fleet Oilers:  If you launched a full Pacific Fleet operation on Wake in mid-1926 with Midway as no more than a primitive base, the US player will discover that his underway replenishment capabilities are clearly insufficient.  The improved fleet oiler class (authorized in 1926 and built in response to the declaration of war) that will start joining the USN in 1928 will have a 5000 fuel capacity growing out of that operational experience.
 
3)  Minor leaders:  The minor Allied powers will run out of leaders with the increased number of ships that I've put with their OOBs.  That means I need to go in and reassign some US leaders to Canada, NZ, Australia, and the Dutch. 
 
4)  USAAC OOB:  I'm digging into this and will be tweaking things here according to some ongoing research.  I'm thinking that the USAAC will essentially line up as pursuit squadrons (single engine fighters), attack squadrons (starting the DH-4's and moving to A3/A8's), and bombing squadrons (twin engine biplane bombers).  This will involve reviewing the build rates and the upgrade path for the US planes.  One squadron was organized in the late 1920s with Sikorsky flying boats for use as maritime patrol in some clear inter-service poaching.  I'll probably compress the pre-WW2 expansion into the wartime expansion that would accompany a Great Pacific War for squadron assignments. 
 
5)  Tip:  The USN seems to have almost all of their BB's entering the game with fire-eating captains.  Typical stock CO's have a naval rating over 60 and an administration factor under 30.  Even sailing from San Diego to Pearl will put many battleships into repairs for a few points of systems damage as a consequence.  The stock captain for the Langley is distressingly average when men like Halsey and Mitscher are on the beach.  When a task force is formed in port, you can go the ship screen and replace the captain with a political point cost.  I don't plan to change the assignments, but players would be well advised to spend their political points reviewing this instead of rushing the nth engineer unit from the USA to Pearl. 

[engineer]

Per Wikipedia:
[blockquote]
The General Staff produced a mobilization plan in the 1920 reorganization that in the event of war would create an expeditionary force of six armies, 18 corps, and 54 divisions. Each army would have an Air Service attack wing (one attack and two pursuit groups) and an observation group, each corps and division would have an observation squadron, and a seventh attack wing-observation group would be reserved for the Expeditionary Force's general headquarters. A single bombardment group was planned, relegating bombardment to the most minor of roles. All aviation units would be under the command of ground officers at all levels. This structure provided the principles by which the Air Service and Air Corps operated until 1935.[/blockquote]
A US group would typically have three or four squadrons so each notionally, each army would involve provision of six fighter squadrons, three attack squadrons, and three observation squadrons.  The AEF would have a similar air complement.  My initial calculations and adjustments for Western Citadel would boost the total USAAC from a 1926 historical OOB of 6 pursuit sqdrn, 4 attack sqdn, 11 bombardment sqdn, 8 observation sqdn, and 1 transport sqdn to 14 pursuit sqdrn, 7 attack sqdn, 14 bombardment sqdn, 10 observation sqdn, and 2 transport squadrons.  The extra 25 squadrons represent an accelerated build-up during the mid-1920s so the USAAC would have its 1931 strength accelerated by 5 years. 
 
USAAC Strike Force:  I think the "Mitchell effect" with the sinking of the Ostfriesland helped contribute to the overabundance of bombardment squadrons in the USAAC.  Certainly there were true believers in airpower in the USAAC so a Wing of heavy bombers would be plausible, too. They would absorb most of the twin engine planes.  An aerial offensive against Japan would be limited by the technology available in the period.  The "bomber generals" would probably lobby to move onto Guam and attack Saipan & Tinian and then go for taking islands or bases in China to bombard Formosa.  The Ryukus would appear to them as bases for taking a late game offensive to Kyushu. 
 
Pre-war deployments would identify "Orange" (Japan) as the most likely Great Power opponent of the United States.  Luzon would not be reinforced, even in the 1930s, it only had two squadrons.  Guam would be a Navy/Marine operation.  Significant units would be deployed in Hawaii (2 pursuit, 2 bombardment, 1 attack, and 2 observation).  The round-out forces for one Attack Wing would logically be located on the west coast:  four more pursuit, 2 attack, and one observation squadrons.  The rest of the USAAC would only provide one attack wing and the technological imperative for cool, complicated airplanes meant that the USAAC was really oversupplied with bombardment squadrons.  Looking at the ground OOB, the US ends up with three armies notionally committed in the Pacific along with the AEF so by early 1928, one would expect the USA to be building toward four attack wings with an observation squadron integrated with each division and corps.  That's a lot more aircraft.
 
More research is necessary, however, since the same imperative that would accelerate USAAC development would be operating in Japan so I need to verify the Japanese OOB, too.   

[engineer]

FYI

[engineer]

Given the doctrine of having an observation squadron with each corps HQ, it seems plausible to go ahead and give each HQ an integrated aviation support capability.  I think something along the lines of 20 aviation squads and some light flak guns would be reasonable.  That would let them support a squadron and have some organic AA protection. 

[engineer]

The USAAC tweak is getting bigger than I initially thought.
 
Congressional Legislation renamed the US Army Air Service to the US Army Air Corps in July, 1926 in the historical timeline.  I'm going ahead and making that a little faster so all the late scenario US aviation forces will have USAAC. 
 
There are way too many aviation base forces forward deployed in the Far East.  Batan will be downgraded to a company of Filipino's and Wake will be a weather station/Coast Guard detachment.  The generic base forces will be renamed to align with an air group and the aviation resources will typically be 50 to 65 aviation support.  The USAAC will retain the squadron as the basic unit of maneuver, but the heavy bombers will remain in groups and be consolidated into the "Strike Wing", as the home for the Douhet Disciples at a level similar to the Air Corps that are assigned to IX Corps Hawaii, SW Pacific, and S Pacific.  One exception will be the 19th Bombardment Group that will be come into the game on a squadron basis in 1927. 
 
The DH4 will be widely used as the basic attack and observation plane.  It will be superceded by the A3 in the attack role in 1928, but I expect that there will still be DH4 observation squadrons operating in the late game.
 
My initial sketches align as discussed above.  Most of one air corps will be available initially, but dispersed between Hawaii and various bases on the West Coast.  By late summer 1926, the US player should be able to have an Air Corps (six pursuit squadrons, three attack squadrons, and four to six observation squadrons) deployed to the central Pacific.  The Southwest Pacific Air Corps will arrive in theater from existing units elsewhere in the USA during the fall and winter of 1926.  The South Pacific Air Corps will consist of new units raised after the start of war and will filter in during the first half of 1927.  The AEF Air Corps will consist of new units and some units held in reserve to defend the eastern USA and be deployed in the 2nd half of 1927 and wrap up in early 1928.  The existing heavy bombers of the Strike Wing will deploy during 1926.   Over time, each of the four air corps will also receive a group of transport aircraft.  Further 1928 reinforcements would increase aircraft for the Western Department and might reinforce the Strike Wing. 
 
My guess is this will make surface and sub operations increasingly risky near US bases as time goes on.  However, from my playtesting so far, it seems that airpower is still likely to lack the critical mass to stop a determined invasion in it's tracks. 
 
More interestingly, the Japanese wouldn't be ignorant of the garrison levels on Wake and Batan so instead of having a sledgehammer smashing flies, I can take a look at the scenario files to see if I can reassign some of the initial assets assigned to tackle these targets to make different moves and mix up the initial Japanese offensive in the game to be something more lethal to Allied interests.       

[engineer]

The air force tweaks are done so now I've moved on to adjusting the pre-programmed TF's and objectives.  The majority of the changes are focused on the Japanese side since I suspect most players will be looking at things with a human allied player. 

Tweaks:
1)  Some of the US sub TF's from Guam are hard-coded for patrol locations.
2)  Some of the merchants in the US overseas empires are hard-coded to evacuate for Pearl and may run across Japanese TF's.
3)  Given the US fortification of Guam, an invasion force is necessary.  This seems to be working out well.  Typical prudent play for the USA involves patience and accumulating resources, but having the Guam garrison involved in a pitched battle at the outset of the game will tempt players to sail west sooner instead of later. 
4)  I'm still playing with how to develop a more aggressive Japanese offensive on Luzon.  There may need to be a house rule for the US solitaire player to go in and kick-start the Japanese marching on Manila since the current AI seems to dig-in in Luzon, but the invading forces on Mindanao behave aggressively and chase down the US troops and conquer the island.   
5)  There's more, but I need to keep some things quiet so players will see some surprise in the play. 

I've also gone in with EditorX and substituted leaders to clean up the nationality/rank errors that show up for locations and leaders. In addition, there were a number of air leaders who had two pilots pointing to them. I've cleaned those up as well.

[engineer]

I ran about a half-dozen games through the first week to 10 days of the campaign to make sure things were launching correctly and things were working like I wanted them to.  These were run with a human Japanese player, but I mostly played hands-free and just let the initial programmed task forces execute their missions.  Now I've started a similar exercise, but playing the human side with computer AI on the other side.  I've already picked up some items to tweak.  For example, the Guam Invasion Force was turned back by the AI about when it reached Iwo Jima and ended up debarking the troops back in Tokyo.  I have some ideas on how to fix that, but most of the tweaks were working fine.   

[engineer]

Still tweaking the Japanese AI.  I've tried basing Guam Force at both Truk and Palau, but the AI takes over the invasion force and sends them to Tokyo almost immediately.  I tweaked the AI modules to put Guam as a higher priority target, but it didn't work to prevent the AI from hijacking the TF.  This week-end I'll try basing Guam Force at Pagan so they can reach Guam and start the landing immediately to see if that will make it stick. 
 
I've got a similar issue with the Legaspi invasion force.  The duration of the voyage from the starting Japanese base is so long that the AI aborts the mission and redirects the task force long before the invasion can take place.
 
A silly question, but given this problem with hijacked invasion TF's, why do the landings at Davao take place without a hitch time after time after time?   
 
I've also moved a fighter squadron to Tinian to give air cover for the Japanese around Guam.  With years to wargame the opening offensive, that seems like a pretty obvious step in response to the US fortification and reinforcement of Guam.  Unfortunately, it's sticking in a CAP mode over Tinian.  That sounds like I need to program the fighters to sweep Guam.
 
Lingayen landings are taking place well now and in one test run, the Japanese even moved off the beach to assault Clark Field in the first ten days of the scenario. 

[JagdFlanker]

Lingayen landings are taking place well now and in one test run, the Japanese even moved off the beach to assault Clark Field in the first ten days of the scenario.

wow - you already one-upped the stock scen AI!

btw thanks for the info again - havn't had a chance to work on the mod for a couple weeks, but hope to get back on the horse soon. dang work!

[engineer]

Guam is fixed.  Pagan is such a poor harbor that fewer troops could embark onto the invasion shipping than they could in Tokyo or Truk, but I tweaked the composition of the invasion force so now the 197th Independent Brigade has their hands full with the Japanese swarming ashore the backside of Guam.  Since Guam is not an atoll a prolonged ground battle appears to be in the cards.  The Japanese fighters on Tinian launch one offensive sweep of Guam on Turn 1 then settle in to fly CAP, but they will intercept any offensive missions that the US planes on Guam try to run at Tinian or Saipan. The US shore batteries will wreak havoc with the invasion force but enough troops will get ashore to make it interesting. 
 
In the early versions of the scenario, the US subs would sortie and take pot shots on the battle cruiser force off Guam and eventually they'd get lucky and put some fish into one or another of the Kongo's.  The shore batteries would sink or cripple the destroyers so things go progressively easier for the US.  I've fixed that by putting a dedicated ASW task force of Jap destroyers around Guam so the US subs are having a much harder time getting into position to snipe at the forces off Guam and I'm taking away fodder from the big coast defense guns.  The Japanese light cruisers come out the worse in the bargain.   
 
I'm going to make one last attempt to tune the Philippine invasions this week and then I'll call it quits.
 
One other tweak.  I was reviewing the DANFS and found that USS Arkansas was in yards for upgrades until December 1926.  The USS Florida was never upgraded historically before being retired.  I'm making a designer decision to have the Florida in yards getting upgraded AA armament, blisters, upgraded fire control and conversion from coal to oil at the outset of the scenario.  I've subtracted both of them from the Atlantic Fleet reinforcements that show up in September 1927 and have them sailing around the Horn to show up in San Diego in late 1926 early 1927 since the Atlantic Fleet is bottled up in the disabled Panama Canal.   
 
Another tweak on the Japanese side is that the underlying logic of the situation is that the Imperial General Staff would have recognized the inevitability of conflict in the Pacific before on-going Anglo-American construction in the new naval arms race closed the window of opportunity for the Empire to decide things by force of arms.  That means they would have been accumulating fuel stocks against a cut off of imports from the NEI.  The total fuel available to the Japanese player at the outset of the game has been boosted by about 1,000,000 tons and scattered around various ports of the Empire.  That will give a Japanese player more strategic freedom. 

[engineer]

My efforts for a more complete offensive in the Philippines seem to be coming up short so I'm moving into a wrap up mode.  There are some major map changes for North America that I've updated (see the Invading North America thread for those).  Other than that, it's mostly a matter of double checking changes and reversing some of the Philippine changes that didn't work out to the things that seemed to work best.