Influence Wars - Japan 1936 HPP Interactive AAR - GAMEPLAY THREAD

Cybvep said:

As for the first question, check the report from the Guam Campaign.

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I'd like to keep record on which ship has been attributed sinkings.

Final plan of the navy:

Posting it this way is intended to improve readibility.

Adm. Baltasar: Approved
Adm. Gensui Yamamoto: Pending Approval


Re-distribution of the IJN vessels:

Operational plan of the IJN:


Resarch:


Production:

Espionage:

Memo regarding Espionage

I lean more to Admiral Baltasar's solution of the espionage problem, and it might even work as long as the US is the only country we are at war with, if we get to fight more we would either need to overpower their spynetworks too or just keep our home contraespionage up. I fear the offensive nets will be too expensive and that we at some point need to get a minister specialized in (counter)espionage.

I second Gen Cybveps idea of discontinuing factory construction for the reasons given.

Focus on Central and Southern China. 2 Homegun from the Philippines should be transported back to China ASAP.

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Surely you intend to finish off the Philippines campaign first? It'd be folly to leave one unfinished business behind just so one can attend to another unfinished business.

Our espionage operations in China should continue, as the Chinese intelligence is not as well funded or as effective as the US, British or Soviet ones.

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I fail to see the benefit in continued espionage investments in China. They'll fall shortly and we really should spend our scarce assets more carefully.

Memo regarding MP instead of Gar,

While it would be nice to have more MP to patrol our resources we would need them as much to patrol the supply routes. The amount of MP's to archive this for all resources would be staggering and we therefore need to limit ourselves to relatively few critical resources and cities. Only resource provinces with more than 10 resources+factories or 5+ factories should be patrolled, we must trust our cavalry to defeat any uprising elsewhere quickly.

And while I would like to have a lot of MP patrolling our rail trunks no more than a few, place every 3 province, should be used for this.

More important is we need a reserve of Gar to shore up threatened areas, these can also help out the navy as they won't be able to produce enough if their conquests are going at any reasonable speed.


All air airfields with operational planes should also be protected by a single gar brigade to avoid the problems with lost aircrafts seen at the start of the war.

Which units are going to do the patrolling on the Philippines? The Marines will be needed elsewhere.

Memo to General Cybvep,

A very nice overall plan! sadly I disagree with most points!

Lets start with point 1 in the production list.

1. Continue infrastructure developement in China, focusing on the lowest-lvl provinces first. The final goal should be 5-6 lvl railways, at least in 1941. Currently infrastructure developement program costs ~14 IC. The investment cost should not exceed ~15 IC, because there are more important matters

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1. Continue infrastructure development in China, focusing on the lowest-lvl provinces along the chosen path first. The final goal should be 5-6 lvl railways, at least in 1941. Currently infrastructure development program costs ~14 IC. The investment cost should not exceed ~15 IC, because there are more important matters.

And I think we differ in the chosen paths, if they are not along the shortest path from west-China they will be wasted later as they wont be used. Also you have many paths shown on your map but we only need 3, Manchurian, Mongolian and west China all the others will be useless once we press on.

more to follow.

Baltasar said:

Which units are going to do the patrolling on the Philippines? The Marines will be needed elsewhere.

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A cav should go to each major island group, like Philippines, Borneo, Indonesia etc.

An railway to India is only interesting if you intent to walk there! I would prefer to sail.

Generals, Admiralty, our Gracious Emperor,

You've discussed alot in only two days since my letters should have been received at the administrations. Suffice to say, I totally do not approve of the naval plan put forward by Admiral Baltersar. His reforming of the fleets is adequate but operationally I do not agree at all. If we follow that plan we certainly will loose ships while we patrol waters with light fleets searching for subs, which the Americans will certainly be also patrolling searching for our fleets with battlefleets, while we keep our main fleets back at the Philippines. The long at the short of it is, we are sending our least equip ships straight at the enemies sharking grounds!


My Proposed Operational Plan

Phase 0.
Place our NAV bomber on convoy raiding aggressive from Kwajalein out towards Wake and Midway islands.

Phase 1.
With north Philippines pocket taken, redeploy our marines units to Marcus island along with the transport fleets / 5th fleet, leaving one unit of marines in the Philippines for southern island hopping. Prioritise these special forces divisions for reinforcement and upgrade. Organise a wing of tactical bombers to Kwajalein or Saipan if they are within bombing range of Wake, if not we shall have to use the heavy bomber wings.

Phase 2.
Use all 4 fleets (1st 2nd 3rd and 4th), but only with the 1st and 2nd initially, along with our marine corps to attack Wake. Bombers to support with air artillery, as well as CAGs so long as they are not needed for naval operations/battles.

Phase 2a.
If the Americans bring in support, engage like we did at Guam. As we take damage rotate in the other fleets in the area. This time we should have the fleets on standby for a more decisive course of events. We won the last battle with good odds but didn't have the force to prosecute it further. By using a larger grouping of fleetsw we should have this tactical power.

If we are doing poorly then cut our losses with a fighting retreat.

Phase 3.
With Wake taken, we can re base additional fighters there, some ships shall have to be rotated back to Japan for repair, while it is unlikely we can have the last lot of damage repaired for replacement, with wake taken we have a good airbase. So that further missions can still count on island based aircover.

Phase 4.
We roll on to Midway, if Wake has been taken, then the American fleets have likely taken a fair amount of punishment. Rinse and repeat, even if we don't have the garrisons to keep Wake well defended*, once Midway is taken we are in a powerful position, our Tokyo lines will be somewhat more secure.

This reduces the need for sub hunting fleets thus strategically our weakness in this area is mitigated.

Phase 4a.
If we lost at Wake, then we need to pull back to the home islands. We don't attack Midway.

Phase 5.
Roll on Johnston, possibly at the same time as Midway since the fleets will be operating in the same area. It's not a particularly strategic target, but we don't want our supply ships cut off from a flank. Johnston only has a rather minor port itself.

Phase 5a.
If either we failed at Wake or Midway we don't attack Johnston island. Since we would be overextending ourselves there.

Phase 6.
We need some intel on Hawaii like sticking a sub on passive there. Although following this plan invasion here will be considered fairly imminent. Intel comes last on the agenda here so it is most up-to-date by the time it is needed, and we've not just left a sub crew out in the Pacific waiting to be found.

* I really do mean push on even if we don't have a specific garrison ready just yet, the recruitment time for a garrison force is a couple of months, we should be able to spare a garrison from elsewhere in the Empire for that short period of time until we have built that which we need. Marines should never be sat around playing guard duty except possibly in Bikini, Philippines and Hawaii once we rule the pacific. Since here there are multiple small islands in the chains that might require some 'mobile' warfare.

Strategy:
The overall plan is port denial to the American fleets. Rather than try to go 'toe to toe' with the Americans, who will only get stronger and stronger over time, we aim to strike at the heart of their pacific power projection base at Hawaii. With Hawaii taken we have a single location that the Americans will be fighting for, it's the only real one they can reach from their own ports (once we have taken Johnston and the Christmas Islands as well, but given they are small ports they are fairly useless to the American fleets for re basing to) that matters.

We can focus our naval battlefleets here, and fortify the islands to literally make a rock that all the American fleets will break against as they try to retake.

For this plan to work we keep moving forward, once one island is taken, we move immediately to the next, hopefully we shall have taken our targets before the Americans can get their act together and damaged fleets can be kept damaged by re-engaging them.


Rationale:
We cannot wait for the repairs and refits of the fleet. What Admiral Baltesar is failing to take into account is that the Americans have a MASSIVE economic advantage over us, truly they do! The more we delay, the more ships they can put in the water. For every couple months we delay, that's another ship in the water for the USN Pacific Fleet. A slow campaign will leave us fighting a growing fleet, and we shall be in a worse and worse off position until our navy is all in port for repairs and refit.

At this point the Americans will have free reign to hunt all the supply lines of out Pacific holdings, we shall loose convoys like sand slipping through an hourglass with no chance to regain the initiative. Without convoys it is just a matter of time until our besieged island castles are staved out and we loose the pacific.

Instead we need to push the Americans back so they can't use their numerical advantage to cut off our supply lines. If the USN can only reach some of our islands, then we know exactly where to put our escorts and sub hunting fleets.

At the moment, although the administration has declined to have commented yet, I would presume the American subs are hunting our Tokyo routes, not our Chinese routes, that shows that the US can reach nearly all our pacific holdings. That's about 9 separate convoy routes, over about 1000km radius area. There is no possible way we can cover that area even with all those Subhunter fleets, and even then our subhunter fleets themselves need protection from an even more limited pool of four fleets.

With the Americans holding the bases they currently do, they can attack us anywhere over that massive area. Hell they can even invade the home islands tomorrow if they so wished! That is why we must push them out of the pacific so that we can concentrate our fleets in the area of overlapping range.

I propose that we instead keep those Subhunting fleets near our home waters such that the area of overlap between their operations and the Americans battlefleets is minimised. The Sea of Japan for General Surts sake is this region here;



But I also stated that we could go as far as the Taiwan straights, and the Philippines Sea. Just so long as the Green Water navies are not placed out in the pacific around Bikini and Kwajalein, because if they are, they shall surely draw an American Battlefleet sooner or later and we will have our ships sunk!

Now ok, maybe we shan't have a 'Grand Shoal' of subs, and we should only use them for reconsence, either way like our destroyers, they aren't going to be the critical decides of these battles.




Production

We cannot 'half heartedly' launch into a mass mobilisation by on the one hand saying; let's wait for new and better technologies, and on the other saying build build build. That is the kind of folly that makes us loose focus, and when we don't have a focus and a plan, that's when things break down.

Almost unilaterally, us Admerials and Generals have called for production and doctrine over technical enhancement. Although it has been recognised that in the realms of the army, they will in the future need to 'mechanise' their forces to be a deterrent to the Allies and Soviets.

Therefore asking for new modern Battleships is flying in the face of our current aims. I might as well ask for the laying down of two more CV and 6 more CAGs to go with it considering our needs in naval aviation as well, and how much IC is that going to cost us?

Quoted from last year the associated costs are;

Fleet carrier = ~27 months, ~11 IC
Light carrier = ~18 months, ~6.6 IC
Battleship = ~27 months, ~10 IC
Battlecruiser = ~21 months, ~9 IC

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Even with a 20% effective discount given our mass mobilisation we are looking at, at least 3yrs of ~10IC. Or the choice between ~6 modern escorts, or 1 capital.

Given that we will loose escorts in more number than capitals it makes much more sense to cut capital research and focus on maintaining our fleet escorts. After all we are being conservative by putting in for repairs at fairly light damage, so if we pursue this level of rotation, then we should only loose our capitals if we are careless.

If we pursue my island hopping campaign, then we are in an even better position since we shall be fighting from the defensive and a position of security for our main fleets. Rather than having to patrol the entire pacific constantly to protect ourselves!


Given what technologies we are investing in, we should drop improving our destroyers in favour of what we are actually building. Light Cruisers, who perform overall much more effectively than destroyers...and we have many old destroyers anyhow.



Strategically, if we win the Pacific War then we shan't need any more capitals really since we shall be fielding the home advantage in air cover all the time and decisive engagement is no longer a priority. The time for the build up is over and in the future we shall dominate the Pacific not by the warship but from the air, from island bases, from home ports.

We would only need new capitals if we envisage in 5 years time the Pacific is still under contention. If it is, then it is likely then we have already been thrown back to the home islands by the larger USN. If not, then we have already won.

I have a feeling that this war can be 'won' within the year by a lightening attack.

The Americans declared war on us, so we have to show that we are stronger than them otherwise they'll just think us weak and not truly recognise our strength.



Anyway, not to dwell on that tangent. Garrisons and new CAGs need to take the highest priority, followed by the infrastructure plans and light cruiser production which should follow the strategy set down in 1940. That means that two more light cruiser hulls to be laid in a few months time when the IJN Kashiwara and IJN Keshi are half way through production*, and only then can we consider more infantry and future mechanised forces. About 8 months from now when the IJN Shoho and IJN Kurama come out of dock, and we have 15IC to play around with can we consider a modern capital replacement. But that is still some time away



* To that end, I am surprised and dismayed that the Cruiser techs in engine and armament have not been researched as requested nor was Special Forces Training, requested as far back as 1940! At least the training doctrinal technologies were put on the list then (~post #499) this backlog still needs to be got though before we cand start other research topics.

Nor has Baltersars requests for;

Small warship ASW
Radar
Fire Control System Training
Commander Decision Making

Been put on the list either. So I can back up his assertion that some clerk has misplaced the research requests (post #451). Nevermind, now the oversight has been noted it can be rectified post haste.



Technology
If we are focusing on a doctrinal route, then these technologies needs the highest precedent.

Opinions on proposals

My Priority list would be organised (high priority to low);
(modern implies keep researching until current year or near current year)
(^$ seconded others techs)
(" already in research tree)

General
Rocket Tests^$
Advanced Aircraft Designs^$
Industrial Efficiency '42
Industrial Production '42
Repair Workshops '42
Radar '43^$
Combat Radios '43^$

Naval
Naval Air Control Doctrine '38--->modern*
Naval Air Command Structure '38--->modern*
Cruiser Main Armament '41^$(higher priority for future ships)
Cruiser Engine '42 (higher priority for future ships)
Cruiser AA Armament '42
Small Warship Radar^$
Battleship Taskforce Doctrine '41^$
Carrier Taskforce Doctrine '41
Battleline Cruiser Doctrine '41
Cruiser Escort Doctrine '41

Fire Control System Training '41
Radar Training '41
Commander Decision Making '41
Capital Ship Training '41^$
Cruiser Crew Training '41^$
Carrier Crew Training '41^$
CAG Naval Roll '40

Cruiser AA Armament '42
Capital AA Armament '42
Scout Planes '42
Maritime Attack Ordinance '40

*why my predecessor ignored these, and I didn't spot their woeful out of dateness last tech update is beyond me!!

Army
Special Forces Training '36
Amphibious Warfare Equipment '40 <---Again this should have been kept up-to-date as possible!

^ These are really in the backlog of things that were low priority at the time, but should have moved up the list but didn't. Hence they technically should be the highest priority before any of the below;

Jungle Warfare Equipment 39'

Small Arms*------------------------------------Seconded
Offensive Support Weapons--------------------Seconded
Bridging Equipment ----------------------------Seconded, low priority (not a huge number of rivers in our lines of advance)
ART Barrel/Ammunition-------------------------Seconded
Carriage/Sights---------------------------------Seconded

FTR Pilot Training-------------------------------Seconded
FTR Ground Crew Training----------------------Seconded
Combat Radios---------------------------------Seconded
Infantry Training*--------------------------------Seconded
Artillery Training* --------------------------------Seconded
Officer Training--------------------------------Seconded
Defensive Support Weapons-------------------Seconded, low priority
Man-portable AT Weapons---------------------Seconded, low priority
Combat Medicine-------------------------------Seconded, low priority

CAS Ground Crew Training --------------------Seconded, low priority
CAS Pilot Training------------------------------Seconded, low priority
Tank Crew Training----------------------------seconded, very low priority

Order there looks reasonable if that's how you'd like it army



Espionage
I concur with the aggressive spy strategy, even if we are not actively disrupting them in the military production and research fields, if we can take their focus off doing that to us we shall have a major bonus.

1. A sharp short-term increase, from 0.95 to 6. This is to ensure that we can destroy the American spy network in Japan quickly and build-up our own in the USA.
2. Once the most obvious short-term problems are dealt with, a gradual decrease from 6 to 2.
3. Once the situation is stabilised, we should decrease the budget to 1.5 and stay at this level.

If the British or the Soviets attack us, we should stick to counter-espionage only and keep the budget at 2 level.

Our espionage operations in China should continue, as the Chinese intelligence is not as well funded or as effective as the US, British or Soviet ones.

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Industrialisation of the Empire
If the Administration decides to slow factory production in the Empire, then it is this Admirals opinion that we divert the funds to first constructing a new CAG wing given we should be aiming to have about 1 extra for every 4 needed, then when we have completed some preliminary rocket tests and this CAG wing is produced, we can then use the industry freed up to thus construct a rocket test site. Although the industry probably only frees up about 2/3rds of the cost of the site

It is this admirals opinion that somewhere on Shikoku island would be the best location for such a site since we can limit/watch access off this island to the mainland and Kyushu thus helping to prevent intelligence leaks. Secondly it is unlikely that the Americans would ever choose the island for a point of invasion, unless they were also taking Kyushu. I would doubt that the Americans would be able to pull off such an invasion successfully with out current garrison.

We could have rocket/jet aviation sometime late '43 at this rate which would considerably make us the dominant airpower in almost the entire world so long as we switch from H-ftr to these new models when the time comes...

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PS: In my forum name Gensui is actually a title/rank not really part of the name itself, therefore Adm.Yamamoto would be more appropriate.