Has the imperium rebuilt its Death Star ?

[beppi]

That attack was not funny [X(]. I would say there is no way to capture such a base without cutting off supply.


Ground combat at Pegu (55,53)

Allied Bombardment attack

Attacking force 138389 troops, 2219 guns, 1257 vehicles, Assault Value = 4869

Defending force 167376 troops, 2260 guns, 2798 vehicles, Assault Value = 5323

Japanese ground losses:
155 casualties reported
Squads: 2 destroyed, 9 disabled
Non Combat: 1 destroyed, 7 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Guns lost 3 (1 destroyed, 2 disabled)
Vehicles lost 16 (2 destroyed, 14 disabled)


Allied ground losses:
4694 casualties reported
Squads: 110 destroyed, 291 disabled
Non Combat: 16 destroyed, 46 disabled
Engineers: 10 destroyed, 55 disabled
Guns lost 113 (25 destroyed, 88 disabled)
Vehicles lost 6 (1 destroyed, 5 disabled)


Assaulting units:
1st New Chinese Corps
23rd Indian Division
19th Indian Division
40th Infantry Division
14th Indian Division
81st (West African) Division
3rd New Chinese Corps
11th (East African) Division
6th New Chinese Corps
36th Indian Division
5th Chinese Corps
26th Indian Mountain Gun Regiment
2/13th Field Regiment
8th Medium Regiment
85th British AT Gun Regiment
2/9th Field Regiment
III Indian Corps
23rd Indian Mountain Gun Regiment
24th Indian Mountain Gun Regiment
98th Field Artillery Battalion
30th Indian Mountain Gun Regiment
25th Indian Mountain Gun Regiment
29th Indian Mountain Gun Regiment
XXXIII Indian Corps
33rd Indian Mountain Gun Regiment
2nd Indian Field Regiment
6th Mixed A/T Mtr Regiment
272/273rd Bty 80th AT Gun Regiment
2/11th Field Regiment
21st Indian Mountain Gun Regiment
5th Field Regiment

Defending units:
1st Tank Division
14th Tank Regiment
2nd Indpt SNLF Coy
24th Ind.Mixed Brigade
46th Division
41st Division
2nd Guards Division
56th Division
25th Ind.Mixed Brigade
28th Ind.Mixed Brigade
22nd Tank Regiment
5th Division
20th Division
1st Division
9th Tank Regiment
75th Infantry Brigade
26th Ind.Mixed Brigade
30th Division
21st Ind.Mixed Brigade
2nd Tank Division
Yokosuka 2nd SNLF
4th RF Gun Battalion
52nd Construction Battalion
18th Medium Field Artillery Regiment
2nd Ind.Hvy.Art. Battalion
5th RF Gun Battalion
6th RF Gun Battalion
3rd Ind.Hvy.Art. Battalion
60th JNAF AF Unit
5th Field AF Construction Battalion
53rd Const Co
10th RF Gun Battalion
15th Const Co
35th Fld AA Gun Co
92nd JAAF AF Bn
7th Field AF Construction Battalion
49th Field AA Battalion
20th AA Regiment
6th Air Division
11th RF Gun Battalion
25th JAAF AF Bn
22nd Ind.AA Gun Co
2nd Ind.AA Gun Co
23rd AA Regiment
11th Ind.AA Gun Co
31st Field AA Battalion
1st RF Gun Battalion
3rd Mortar Battalion
21st Air Defense AA Regiment
26th Fld AA Gun Co
2nd Mortar Battalion
Southern Army
26th Air Defense AA Regiment
15th Army
21st Ind.AA Gun Co
1st Air Defense AA Regiment
21st Fld AA Gun Co
3rd Medium Field Artillery Regiment
29th Army
1st Medium Field Artillery Regiment
2nd RF Gun Battalion
38th Field AA Battalion
5th Mortar Battalion
40th Field AA Battalion
25th Air Defense AA Regiment
11th Air Defense AA Regiment
37th Const Co
42nd Air Defense AA Regiment
3rd Ind. Mountain Gun Regiment
32nd Field AA Battalion
14th Ind.Art.Mortar Battalion
36th Const Co
32nd Air Defense AA Battalion
51st Construction Battalion
54th Const Co
11th JAAF AF Bn

[ADB123]

It looks like the Allies were shooting uphill and the Japanese were shooting downhill...

[crsutton]

And your point is?. You are attacking a dug in defender with less than 1-1 odds and using some pretty craptacular Chinese troops with very little in the way of equipment . Generally 3-1 is the bare minimum and you will have to wear them down. Yes, I would expect the only way to take them out is to surround them.

[beppi]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

And your point is?. You are attacking a dug in defender with less than 1-1 odds and using some pretty craptacular Chinese troops with very little in the way of equipment . Generally 3-1 is the bare minimum and you will have to wear them down. Yes, I would expect the only way to take them out is to surround them.

The point is more or less, 95% of the squad losses where Indian and British units and 110 killed squads + 291 disabled is quite a good rate for a bombardement.

[crsutton]

It was your own personal "Cold Harbor"[;)]

"I have always regretted the second assault at Cold Harbor was made. No advantage whatsoever, was gained, to make up for the terrible loss of life" U.S. Grant

[Misconduct]

Yeah, hate to say this - but you are going to need some massive airpower to break this defense. Even then with the losses you will need some serious reinforcements to that.

I really ignore all Chinese units, AI or PBEM - I even gave my PBEM opponent a great tip by telling him i won't even bother with it, really the key is to defend and hold up objectives, however when you lack supplies or airpower, in my "opinion" its not worth since he can easily out gun me in every respect except manpower.

[ADB123]

ORIGINAL: beppi

ORIGINAL: crsutton

And your point is?. You are attacking a dug in defender with less than 1-1 odds and using some pretty craptacular Chinese troops with very little in the way of equipment . Generally 3-1 is the bare minimum and you will have to wear them down. Yes, I would expect the only way to take them out is to surround them.

The point is more or less, 95% of the squad losses where Indian and British units and 110 killed squads + 291 disabled is quite a good rate for a bombardement.

The 3:1 rule holds for artillery as well as infantry in AE. If you want to bombard, you have to have a significant advantage in numbers of big guns. And even then it works much better if your opponent's troops are cut off from supply and disrupted by Air attacks.

In general, Artillery attacks in AE are very risky unless you know for certain that your opponent is heavily outgunned. Otherwise counter-battery fire will devastate you as you saw there.

[pompack]

ORIGINAL: ADB123

ORIGINAL: beppi

ORIGINAL: crsutton

And your point is?. You are attacking a dug in defender with less than 1-1 odds and using some pretty craptacular Chinese troops with very little in the way of equipment . Generally 3-1 is the bare minimum and you will have to wear them down. Yes, I would expect the only way to take them out is to surround them.

The point is more or less, 95% of the squad losses where Indian and British units and 110 killed squads + 291 disabled is quite a good rate for a bombardement.

I'll go even further and say that bombardment attacks only have two valid purposes:

1) Recon by fire: the number of your dead will tell you how strong they are
2) Sap supplies: If you have a reasonable amount of artillery and your opponent has very little you can significantly deplete his supplies at little cost by bombarding. Of course if your opponent has a lot of artillery you deplete his supplies even more but your cost is pretty much as shown in the OP.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Misconduct

Yeah, hate to say this - but you are going to need some massive airpower to break this defense. Even then with the losses you will need some serious reinforcements to that.

I really ignore all Chinese units, AI or PBEM - I even gave my PBEM opponent a great tip by telling him i won't even bother with it, really the key is to defend and hold up objectives, however when you lack supplies or airpower, in my "opinion" its not worth since he can easily out gun me in every respect except manpower.

From my game, January 1945:
===============================
Ground combat at Taiyuan (91,40)

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 43724 troops, 663 guns, 253 vehicles, Assault Value = 795

Defending force 80289 troops, 496 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 2876

Japanese adjusted assault: 398

Allied adjusted defense: 7285

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 18

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), leaders(+), experience(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
10540 casualties reported
Squads: 264 destroyed, 170 disabled
Non Combat: 395 destroyed, 124 disabled
Engineers: 34 destroyed, 33 disabled
Vehicles lost 46 (17 destroyed, 29 disabled)


Allied ground losses:
254 casualties reported
Squads: 22 destroyed, 8 disabled
Non Combat: 5 destroyed, 21 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled


Assaulting units:
110th Division
41st Division
9th Ind.Mixed Brigade
4th Cavalry Brigade
27th Division
36th Division
69th Division
37th Division
3rd Ind.Mixed Brigade
9th Mongol Cavalry Division
1st Army
6th Medium Field Artillery Regiment

Defending units:
43rd Chinese Corps
1st Chinese Cavalry Corps
40th Chinese Corps
4th Chinese Cavalry Corps
33rd Chinese Corps
80th Chinese Corps
8th Route Army
1st Chinese Corps
47th Chinese Corps
27th Chinese Corps
34th Chinese Corps
57th Chinese Corps
3rd Prov Chinese Corps
24th Group Army
14th Group Army
13th Group Army
15th Group Army
Jingcha War Area
18th Group Army
8th Group Army
39th Group Army
36th Group Army
6th Group Army
1st War Area
7th Group Army
10th Chinese Base Force
===========================

This is not an abberation; there have been dozens of attacks such as this as the Japanese AI seeks to stop the steamroller a late-war, well-supplied, Chinese army can be. Note that the Chinese side has a (-) in experience, yet still won decisively.

I'll say it again--many Allied players need to get into the late war and stop re-playing 1942 over and over. It's a different game.

Would a human Japanese player make this attack? Maybe not. But the AI is doing it largely because I'm not giving it a choice. A PBEM game could be directionally the same.

[JeffroK]

And,
 
The AI is quite happy to set up a kamikaze force of 1000's of airframes.
 
Given the lack of real AAA it becomes an interesting battle approaching the Home Islands.
 
On the OT, hopefully the new stacking experiment would make it very expensive to have stacks like this.
 
 

[Smeulders]

It might be that some people missed it, but the first attack was a BOMBARDMENT attack. I can see how a shock or even deliberate would cause such casualties to the attacker, but bombardment ?

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

And your point is?. You are attacking a dug in defender with less than 1-1 odds and using some pretty craptacular Chinese troops with very little in the way of equipment . Generally 3-1 is the bare minimum and you will have to wear them down. Yes, I would expect the only way to take them out is to surround them.

you have noticed that this is a BOMBARDMENT? [:D] The old story of COUNTERbombardment always being many times more effective than BOMBARDMENT. The one that bombards actually is the one that usually gets his head chopped. [:D] Even that in the op´s example the defender got far more and better artillery but in general, counterfire is more effective than prepared bombardments for what reason ever. Just stop bombarding.

[herwin]

Bring in the KB and bombard it for a few days. That will wipe out the supply.

[CaptBeefheart]

Bombardment hasn't been a good option since it was nerfed in the early days. Now, in the case at hand, I'd be looking at an Inchon-like invasion at Tavoy or even further down the coast. That would break the impasse. Also, shore bombardments are still quite effective.

Cheers,
CC

[ADB123]

ORIGINAL: herwin

Bring in the KB and bombard it for a few days. That will wipe out the supply.

Harry - that was the Allies who were attacking... But you are certainly right - hit those Chinese troops with the KB too and they'll soon be begging for more counter-battery fire instead...[;)] [:D]

[henhute6]

ORIGINAL: herwin

Bring in the KB and bombard it for a few days. That will wipe out the supply.

What a waste to use KB for that. The only mission of KB should be sinking of Allied shipping and especially carriers.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: ADB123

ORIGINAL: herwin

Bring in the KB and bombard it for a few days. That will wipe out the supply.

Harry - that was the Allies who were attacking... But you are certainly right - hit those Chinese troops with the KB too and they'll soon be begging for more counter-battery fire instead...[;)] [:D]

The Allies should lie low. Calculate the force required to hold out during a shock attack and pull out the rest.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: henhute6

ORIGINAL: herwin

Bring in the KB and bombard it for a few days. That will wipe out the supply.

What a waste to use KB for that. The only mission of KB should be sinking of Allied shipping and especially carriers.

You need to mass the KB (and the Combined Fleet to protect it) to keep it from being attrited. The massed KB creates a no-go zone for Allied warships and shipping, which means it is most useful against targets that can't flee from it--i.e., bases.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Smeulders

It might be that some people missed it, but the first attack was a BOMBARDMENT attack. I can see how a shock or even deliberate would cause such casualties to the attacker, but bombardment ?

I was responding to a tangent about Chinese units. Not trying to hijack.

To your point, yes it is a bombardment, but the OP doesn't give any Fort data for either side. Also, 2000+ guns for both sides is probably at the extreme for the engine, and we've often seen cases where large numbers of weapons cranked through the algorithms can give interesting results. We also don't know exactly, without much editor digging, what sort of gun type ratios are in those 2000+ tubes for each side.

(Warning: AI player POV directly ahead) One thing the AI does, which I wish it didn't, is it lets the Japanese bombard late-war Allied bases nearly every day and recieve sometimes 200 squad KIA totals for no gain in Allied KIAs. I don't think that's a script issue, but rather a base code issue. It's also a situation where it's hard for a human player to "cut the AI some slack" by playing around the practice. Short of abandonning the base it's impossible to stop the AI from bashing against the beseiged base turn after turn. I have one case in northern Sumatra where the AI has lost probably 20,000 KIA over several months doing this while costing me essentially nothing. A human player would have stopped long ago.

[Canoerebel]

Bullwninkle, are you sure your'e playing agaist the AI? It sounds to me like you're playing against John III.

[:D]