Any tips for a noob

[YUP]

[:D]hi any tips anyone

[borner]

this is going to sound simple, but there is a great deal of information throughout the forums. Experienced players such as Tocaff, Ike, Miller, Nomad and a host of others have some great pointers scattered all over. Best hint I can give is do not expect even a rookie to play like the AI does. Start head to head play with some smaller senarios (I jumped right in a full senario against IKE and paid for it).
 
As Japan, keep your ML's going non-stop. As the US. KILL THEM!
Unless you have a very good reason not to, use your CV's in force, not scattered TF's
Beware of commanders charging off against orders
F4U's are very over-valued. Historically, there were already deadly, here, there are one step below F-22's!
 
 
Good luck and welcome. It is nice to see all the new players. I do not think I have ever seen this much activity in this forum!

[Ike99]

this is going to sound simple, but there is a great deal of information throughout the forums. Experienced players such as Tocaff, Ike, Miller, Nomad and a host of others have some great pointers scattered all over.

I would think you would be included in experienced players now borner.

[borner]

thanks. I think I am getting there, but I will let you know after I see how badly Nomad beats me, and when you and I get into our rematch!
 
 

[YUP]

Ive played several while doing my AAR

[tocaff]

Tips, hmmmmmmmmmmmm.........

If you think that you've covered everything it's a sure thing that your opponent will do the 1 thing you didn't think of.

Never think that you know it all as there's always a new twist to learn.

Weigh the possible gains against the possible loses.

Minefields never stop an invasion, but they can hurt your plans for future opps.

Sweeping mines will also clear adjacent hexes (sweep Tulagi & do Guadalcanal as a bonus).

Do not enter Nell & Betty range with your fleets until you can protect them.

Use the KB now, later it'll become obsolete.

And blah, blah, blah.............read and you'll pick up on some great tips.

[bigbaba]

best tip i learnd on the hard way against ike:

dont ask yourself what your opponent will do...ask yourself what he CAN do.[:D]

i aggree on the massive usage of ML as japanese. i had 5500 defensive mines at lunga and nearly the same number at irau..unfortunary, the game ended and i was not able to see what this mines were able to do.

further tips:

-use barges instead of AP when you can>>>no loses to the omnipresent allied bombers.
-watch the fatigue of your fighter pilots. its better to have 20 well rested pilots in the air then 60 tired.
-be very very carefull with your bomber and fighter pilots as the japanese player. dont waste them because you dont get well trained replacement. it means: dont send them to missions far away from their base and dont let their moral sink. rotare them out and let them rest.
-dont waste japanese bettys/nells on ground/AF attacks. they suck here badly but they are realy good ship killers.
-try to fortify lae, buna, PM, GG, irau, lunga asap to level 9, because its impossible later in the game when the allied pressure increases.
-build more then only 2-3 AF to level 4 and above.
-dont use your japanese CA in carrier-TF. they are much better in surface combat.
-you have few DDs with radar as japanese. put them in CV and surface TFs.
-try everyting you can so the allied player can not get his corsairs in range of your main bases. that means: get and hold irau, lunga, russel island, GG, PM and LEA LEA west of PM. put some INF/ENG/AA units there.
-i would say, its better to use your japanese submarines mainly as minelayers.
-set your float planes (on your CS for example) mainly at ASW-patrol.

[YUP]

I no those ones I learnrd them the hard way

[YUP]

And thanks about how much activity I caused

[xj900uk]

ORIGINAL: borner

F4U's are very over-valued. Historically, there were already deadly, here, there are one step below F-22's!

Hang on. The F4U was the best Allied Fighter/Fighter Bomber of the Pacific campaign. Only the P51 came close that and that was not deployed in large quantities. Unfortunately the US Navy didn't realise it until 1945 - pity there's not an extra mod that prevents the US Navy from re-equipping its carrier squadrons with F4U's, unlike the Marines (and also the Royal Navy, in fact I think the RN got their's just ahead of the USM)

[borner]

yes, it was the best. By far. But here they have sidewinders, Directional thrusting, and 3" thick armor

[bigbaba]

in one of my games, 16 corsairs managed to shoot down 71! japanese fighters and lost only one of their own planes.

sure, corsairs were realy good, but even a corsair must run out of ammo.[:D] they are a bit too good in this game.

[xj900uk]

Corsairs don't need any ammo to shoot down Jap planes. There is at least one documented case over Okinawa in mid '45 where a Corsair pilot with no ammo in the middle of a high-altitude fight with a Nick got on its tail, opened up the throttle and simply drove straight through it! Despite extensive damage to his prop and front of the aircraft he was high enough to be able to glide back for a dead-stick crash-landing and was able to walk away to be credited with the 'kill'

It is also well known and documented that by 1944 the Americans were running up almost cricket scores against the inexperienced Japanese pilots, particularly during the Marianas Turkey shoot and beyond. I seem to recall David McCampbell, the USS Essex air-group commander shooting down 7 planes in one engagement at this battle (admittedly he was flying an F6 Hellcat) and then a few months later in October '44 ably assisted by one of his fellow pilots (McCluskey?) between them they managed to shoot down no few than 15 Jap planes (out of a formation of c.60) in one sortie, McCampbell claiming 9 (a record!) and McCluskey(?) another 6 before driving the remainder off.
So the US were certainly capable of doing this, and remember the F4U was even better and more rugged than the F6 (although I'm sure a few US Navy pilots might disagree with me on that one!)

[bigbaba]

but we are not speaking about leyte or marianas, where the japs pilots were not able to fly strait ahead..we speak about 1943 and +70-80 XP japanese pilots...at least in this game.

anyway..even with the corsairs too good preformance, the japanese player has a chance to win in this game...by VP...through his battlefleet.

[xj900uk]

However it is worth noting that even by early '43 the IJN were definitely feeling the pinch, and most of the best/most experienced pilots were already dead and the replacements coming through were not up to much.
This was probably the most serious problem facing their air-arm (although I grant you there were others!), lack of pilots and in particular lack of trained pilots. As they were running out of good pilots, the IJN in their great wisdom decided to dispense with their original idea of both basic and advanced training being conducted gradually well away from the front by instead cutting back on basic training to max 100 hours and then sending the fledgling pilots to the front line squadrons to complete their advanced training including gunnery and air combat tactics 'at the front'. Most of them didn't have a clue and the USN/USM shot them down in droves. And this is for a force that was already being bled white in combat! It is worth noting that, horrified by the losses and the fact that the half-trained pilot's life expencancy could literally be measured in minutes in combat, the IJN lobbied hard to go back to the old pre-war system (which they did adopt in late '44, by which time they no longer had a carrier arm anyway nor any aviation fuel to spend on any kind of training)
One could also argue quite convincingly that what really finished off the cream of good pre-war pilots was the Solomons campaign in particular around Lunga/Guadacanal. Both sides took horrendous losses (ships, men and planes) but the US could replace its losses (admittedly with difficulty), the IJN could not. In fact with hindsight it was a tremendous mistake by Yamamoto to strip the CAG's of their remaining pilots and send them to reinforce Rabaul and Bouganville for operations in the Solomons in late 42/early 43, they accomplished little and loss horrendously, thus reducing the cadre of surviving good/experienced pilots to pass on some of hte advice, ideas and tactis to the green pilots that were now turning up with depressing regularity at hte front-line squadrons. You could say even that getting involved in Guadacanal itself was a mistake on the part of the IJN as they got drawn into a war of attrition they could not afford - Yamamoto knew htis and still allowed it to happen, so one must adjudge that his decision over this was faulty.
Thus by early '43 there were loads of green inexperienced pilots already at the front-line squadrons, most having flown little over 100 hours operationally (their US equivalents on the other hand would have flown at least 300 hours before they got to the front-line squadrons, including a good amount of ACT and gunnery) and no advanced combat training, and very few remaining experienced pilots with the know-how and time to pass on their knowledge to the green horns.
By the time of Leyte Gulf this had reached quite ridiculous proportions, with some of the IJN proto-pilots lacking the experience or know-how to even land back on the carriers they were taking off from (IMHO one of the hardest things a pilot would ever have to do, regardless of his training/experience)

BTW I do agree with you that the IJN player has a chance to win in 1942 through his battlefleet and pressing on to take PM, some stuff on the Australian mainland, and most importantly Numeua by 31.12.42. If he hasn't won by the time the first Corsairs start to appear in Feb '43 (and the Hellcats in the Summer of '43), let's face it he's lost.

[Miller]

The only way to bring down Corsairs in UV is to wait until they have been on CAP for a long period of time, high fatigue does allow you to shoot a few down, but even then you will still lose more of your own.

Its a pity we cannot alter a/c stats with the editor to make them less uber, could also bump up the F4F stats a bit to make it more competitive with the Zero.

[xj900uk]

Plane-4-plane the Corsair is miles better than the Zero in any incarnation bar the final one (A7M Sam). The only way the Zero could hold it's own was in a low-speed turning match, which the Corsair pilots (and, for that matter, all of hte US/UMC) had been specifically trained to avoid. Specialist tactics had been evolved by early 1943 (after the capturing of an intact Zero in the Aleutians).

BTW I do believe the F4F Wildcat is represented about right in the game, it is good at everything bar the Zero which will outfly it although it does have speed and ruggedness on its side.

Incidentally, Claire CHennault of the FLying Tigers fame encountered the Zero long before the rest of his compatriots, in the middle of 1941 over mainland China. He quickly worked out what its strengths (range, maneuverability, climb rate) and weaknesses were (losses a lot of maneuverability at high speeds, lack of armour plate, poor dive rate) without ever having the chance to evaluate one close up, and devised tactics for his fellow P40 pilots to use against it which are remarkably like what the USN/UMC came up with by early 1943. He even sent his reports on to Washington in August 1941 (three months before Pearl Harbour). What happened to them and why they were so studiously ignored is another matter entirely... [8|]

[bigbaba]

its very true what you wrote about japanese navy aviation and its problems/mistakes during the war. it was simply stuppid to put such great pilots (maybe the best in the world at the beginning of the war) in planes which yould explode after one lucky hit.

the USN on the other hand, had a very different and intelligent training system by rotateing the aces out and let the greenhorns learn advanced air combat from this veterans.

about winning the game:

it is possible to win as the japanese even in scenario 16 (without midway CV) by VP. in my game with nomad, we are at the end of march 1943 and i still have over 5000 VP advantage with most of nomads surface fleet disabled.

you just have to take his carriers out asap (even by exchanging the zui/sho for them) and keep your battlefleet intact. you also can destroy many corsairs....at the ground by closeing their AF by your suoerior navy.

[xj900uk]

Agreed although I do disagree with you on one point. In Dec 1941 the IJN had both the best pilots and best planes in the world. The Zero was a beautiful plane with a phenomenal range, turn of climb and manueverability. Unfortunately as you point out it had one small defect - no armour plate whatsoever, although if you look at Japanese planes in general at the early stage of the war this was a common fault with them. Not one of their 1941 types, not even the highly rugged D3A Val (a plane which I am lucky enough to have actually flown) had any form of protection for the fuel tanks, not even basic self-sealing cork. In 1941 and up to Midway this wasn't a problem as the Zero pilots had the bounce and the opposition (Claire Chennault excepted) had any idea on how to deal with them.

One of the main problems was that the Japanese aviation industry, under urging from the pilots themselves, had developed designs for the wrong war - maneuverabiliby and climb-rate were more important in WWI than II. THe Americans quickly realised (and the Japanese far too late) that these had been superceeded by ruggedness, powerplant, armament and above all speed - whoever was in the fastest plane could usually dominate the battle
Their second problem was that although the manufacturers (like Mitsubishi, who made the Zero) realised that it would quickly become obsolescent and needed to develop proper replacements (not just tinkered upgrades). However they had neither the time, resources, money or even encouragement from their government who just wanted more of the same rather than diverting precious resources towards something that may never role off the production lines for another 18 months...
It is worth noting that despite this, Mitsubishi did manage to develop an ultimate version of the Zero, with a decent powerplant (2000 hp engine), a specially strengthened aluminium frame and acceptable protection/armour plate. This became the A7M Sam (aka Reppu I think) but development problems with the engine, allied bombing and the effects of an earthquake meant that by the time Japan surrenedered in August 1945 only 7 had rolled off the production line and only one plane ever saw combat. One of the saddest stories of WWII - after the wars end it was evaluated in the US and found to be the equivalent of the late model F4U and could even hold its own with the F8 that was just coming into production, and above 25,000 feet it had no equal.

Another problem that the IJN (and JAAF) had was concerning their pilots - they just used them at the front line until they dropped. One could say that they didn't have enough pilots of a good enough calibre to replace them when they were desperately suffering from the effects of combat fatigue, but this tendancy to keep their best pilots at the front come what may meant that most were eventually lost more through the effects of fatigue (or mistakes brought on by fatigue) than anything else.

I am thinking of playing a scenario 16 game as the Japanese against the AI but haven't quite gotten around to it yet. However it would be interesting to see how it pans out...

[bigbaba]

ehm, you flow a VAL? you mean in a flight simulator? or in real life?

if you want to play the game, forget the AI...realy. try to get a game against one of the good players here (ike, nomad, boner, miller...the forum if full of them).

UV is a "ok" game against the AI, but against a human opponent, you can get much much more for your money.