Influence Wars - Japan 1936 HPP Interactive AAR - COMMENT THREAD

[Baltasar]

Common sense is increadibly uncommon these days ;-)

Yes, I am aware that the number of escorts will not be correct. However, I wrote that the ships / fleets have been seen, so we know of their existence with 100% certainty. Anyway, it's just statistics. I do like to look up some ship or the other on wikipedia and compare their historical fates with our AAR ;-)

[Cybvep]

Italy is certainly doing better than IRL... although it looks like they will lose in Africa.

[Baltasar]

No news there. Bad thing is that they'll lose divisions down there, good news is that they'll stop losing that many merchants. What buggers me is the lack of success by the Wehrmacht. If they could just start biting of bits of the Red Army, that'd be helpful. As it is, I am afraid that Germany may run out of manpower and quickly, ie by doing futile attacks across the sea crossing to reach Sweden and such. In fact, a good deal of their forces might be wasting their time in a staring contest with Sweden.

[Cybvep]

No news there. Bad thing is that they'll lose divisions down there, good news is that they'll stop losing that many merchants. What buggers me is the lack of success by the Wehrmacht. If they could just start biting of bits of the Red Army, that'd be helpful. As it is, I am afraid that Germany may run out of manpower and quickly, ie by doing futile attacks across the sea crossing to reach Sweden and such. In fact, a good deal of their forces might be wasting their time in a staring contest with Sweden.

Much to my surprise, they aren't doing these suicide attacks and there are no unreasonable superstacks in that area. I guess that they consider other fronts more important.

[Baltasar]

Other fronts? Which other fronts do they have except vis a vis Sweden and Russia?

[Cybvep]

Other fronts? Which other fronts do they have except vis a vis Sweden and Russia?

Spain.

[Gensui Yamamoto]

Ay.

Spain will likely be the collaspe of Germany, but it can go well if Portugal goes Axis randomly, or the Germans bog down an attack in the mountains in the North. But also the Germans and Spanish can get encircled, then it is bye bye Axis.

The Germans are actually doing alright for a HPP game, I see the SU crush a lot of German attacks without Germany going anywhere. I might attribute it to us building a navy, which might have caused the Russians to build more ships meaning less divisions etc. but then I don't know for sure. Eitherway, Germany 8 times out of 10 appears to loose the war in Russia in my experience with this mod.

[Baltasar]

Yamamoto, can you draw up a resarch plan for the two of us? Won't have access to my game for a few days :-/

[Gensui Yamamoto]

On the topic of duel specialisation;

See my post #495 in the Gameplay thread for the Dec 1940 update.

Given our use of CAGs at land it might be prudent that we research a land support focus. But I might also suggest we reaffirm their naval roll focus. Although this won't be as efficient as a single focus any additional land wars are still going to utilise our CAG assets and we would like to mitigate loss of sea rolls by seeing that aspect respected.

With out heavy fighters we have aircraft fighters with the dedicated air attack roll. CAGs are attack aircraft. Not air superiority ones.

Research Priority:
CAG Land Mission focus

That was when the strategy was first laid out, given that we were fighting in China. It was put in the research queue back then, but for some reason disappeared and so when I noticed that in the Jan '42 had it added again. Again I assumed it got researched, hence my great supprise when it turned out recently not to have been the case, when I ticked it off the list for a second time.

Sorry I might assume a bit much for people to remember that far back and I do appologise for that, but you can understand why I kept banging on about a particular tech given it hadn't been researched twice after being mentioned. If it had been researched back then, rather than this current tech being the land roll we would be burning through the naval roll.

[Cybvep]

It "disappeared" because we dropped it. We believed it was too risky and would put us at a disadvantage vs the USA and the UK. Also, that was 2 in-game years ago...

Moreover, it isn't a good idea to research CAG Land Focus and THEN research CAG Naval Focus, because we may need to fight naval battles soon. Therefore, both need to be researched at the same time IF we want to pursue this strategy.

And WTF is "ground attack roll"? Seriously?

[TheBromgrev]

It's "role" not "roll"

Actually, at the moment the naval focus for cags is a bit overpowered. You get more of a sea and sub attack bonus from that doctrine than you would from 3 tech levels I think, so if you want to maximize your naval striking potential you should ignore the land focus. Besides, you need your CAGs to fight off the Americans right? Using them in China was a very good idea in the early stage of the AAR, but I don't think it's wise to use them in China anymore.

[Cybvep]

We don't have twin-engine bombers and he wants to use CAGs for both air support and against enemy fleets.

BTW keep in mind that I move damaged CAGs back to Japan or one of our air bases in the Pacific Ocean, so we cannot count on exploits/bugs connected with zombie CAGs etc.

[TheBromgrev]

Unless you modded them out or lost them, you should have started with 1 medium bomber wing and 2 heavy bomber wings. If you still have your heavy bombers then I'm curious as to why they aren't being used to bomb China's industry back to the stone age and lower China's national unity. Was this covered in an old update?

[Cybvep]

Unless you modded them out or lost them, you should have started with 1 medium bomber wing and 2 heavy bomber wings. If you still have your heavy bombers then I'm curious as to why they aren't being used to bomb China's industry back to the stone age and lower China's national unity. Was this covered in an old update?

Yes, we are doing that. It has been mentioned several times. However, the efficiency of STRATs is debatable, as we have no doctrines and didn't research even a single HB tech.

1 TAC is not enough for air support, lol .

[Surt]

I'll be absent Tuesday to Thursday, visiting Germany, Bitburg actually, but might not have opportunity to look in those days.

ps. played another test game and for once neglected to take our the Aleutians, which meant the US invaded Sapparo with 30 divisions and a fleet containing most of its remaining strength. Germany had been overrun then in late '44. Only they apparently neglected supplying them with concoys or the port was not big enough with 30 divisions and 50 ships any way they OOS soon and killed off ... game breaker.

[Cybvep]

Yeah, the AI likes to do crazy things from time to time. Now you know what I must deal with here . I cannot allow game-breakers to happen - that's why I use save-game editting or create custom decisions to fix various issues.

Have fun in Germany.

[Baltasar]

Fun in Bitburg? I believe that's unheard of....

[Gensui Yamamoto]

It "disappeared" because we dropped it. We believed it was too risky and would put us at a disadvantage vs the USA and the UK. Also, that was 2 in-game years ago...

Who was "We"? I have been through the game play thread over tea to reaffirm my position last time I queried why the Land focus role had disappeared, and could not find any post towards this at all. There wasn't any negative comment for the Dec '40 - May '41 update (post #530) and it was already approved in the research list then. The only questioning comment I could find between then and the next update was your query Cybvep;

#539

Should we terminate the development of CAG Land Focus?

Then after you took over from Comm Cody for a bit you [Cybvep] even liked the idea of the focus;

#566

I also believe that land focus for our CAGs may be a good idea, but only if we expand our bomber force.

Surt even commented between the two posts directly on air strategy (#546) but he didn't dismiss the idea at all, rather he didn't comment either way.


Yet, for some unknown reason in the Jun '41 - Aug '41 Update (#594) the tech disappears from the research queue. Not to be noticed until much later when I wanted to put the naval focus in the queue. Yet finding that it hadn't been researched I wanted to make it top priority so we could get a move on with updating the air doctrine.

Honestly I don't mind odd mistakes, but I do find it a bit rich to have it stated that their was 'some decision made' when in fact there wasn't any dissenting voices back then. There haven't been when I asked it put back on the research list for a second time, and only now people querying the concept as if they totally disagreed with it from the start. We were still using air support in China then, and it will be likely that we will again in the future, or elsewhere against the Allies. Even people think they [CAGs] are only for use at sea.

------------------------------------------------

However given that now the rest high command has decided following this debarcle not to support this motion there is little point continuing it, if it is going to breed dissension. What I said on how our carriers will not be able to go toe to toe with the Americans will hold whether or not this tech was completed or not. Therefore I do believe we are wasting an opportunity by not following this strategy. We'll all have to realise that because the rest of the high command has expressed a wish to end this research, then they have wasted many valuable research days by terminating it.

My last comment on this will be that; I hope the army commanders understand that in the future I won't be that forthcoming in supporting large scale operations against powers that need really need some form of bomber wing, because we haven't put in place any migigating measure.

[Death6]

A soldier in the chinese front here!

Generals and officers when can we see a breakthrough in Japan! My friends and bretheren dying everyday!

[Cybvep]

@Gensui Yamamoto I'm too tired to search for posts which referred to this decision/discussion, but keep in mind that: 1) Gen./Adm. Cybvep is not ME, i.e. he is neither the Emperor/General Tojo nor the Administration, 2) sometimes I make a decision based on common sense or interpret general statements in a way that makes them practical, so not everything has to be said or announced explicitly and 3) neither the IJA nor the IJN has total power and the IGHQ is not a democracy, although obviously the opinion of the majority carries much weight. Moreover, I don't know if you remember, but the Administration answered your calls once or twice directly and it was connected with CAG Land Focus.

@Death6 That's a fair question, actually. However, I don't think that I will be able to answer it. It appears that the Chinese lost momentum, but whether we will achieve a breakthrough is a different matter. Casualties are mounting, but we are not gaining that much ground. It is a bit like WWI.