Excellent update. Glad to see you are making progress. Australians can come out of this war with their heads held high - regardless of the ultimate result...
I'd like to think I'm basically the sole person holding this crazy war together, though I'm impressed with how India has handled having to take on one of the Axis Major Powers on its own for awhile. Now it's my turn to shoulder the burden for awhile. I need more expeditionaries from someone if I'm ever going to get some real progress into China, though...
Too bad you lost those ships, this is calling for revenge!
It's a bitter blow to take -
HMAS Australia in particular served with us as far back as the Mediterranean, but there's not much that can be done about it, unfortunately.
Great success in Indochina (see? You can fight a land war in continental Asia and win! You just need a bunch of stubborn Australians to do the bulk of the fighting), but I am concerned about the state of your fleet. True, you saw off the IJN and their fleet is cowering somewhere in China, but it looks like the Australasian fleet is in no shape for offensive operations for quite a while.
Still, India should be able to breathe a lot easier. And maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to pocket the Kwantung army. That would be a coup.
Seems the Germans are not quite out of steam yet in Russia - hopefully a bloody stalemate will keep both of those totalitarian regimes occupied for a while, so that yo can deal with Japan and then decide how to put the hurt on the Hun.
To be perfectly honest, I'm not in any shape to do much more than ward the Japanese off of my coastlines. Period. The only reason I approved such an aggressive naval maneuver was that losing ships from the taskforces would be easier to handle than losing transports with valuable divisions on them. The Allies are more urgently in need of boots than hulls right now, and I was willing to take higher losses than I did today to get those divisions on the ground in Indochina. I'm happy to take the loss of two cruisers and cut and run back to safer waters. Given the Japanese still haven't managed to take Guam, I'm not too worried about their ability to conduct a maritime invasion right now.
Pocketing the Kwangtung Army or even a substantial portion of it would be a major victory, though my real goal here is just to knock them back into China. If we can form a solid front line along the rough mountainous terrain, then we've successfully killed Japan's hope of Empire building in Southeast Asia, and we can either build up for an offensive to try and knock them out of the war or to move somewhere else.
This is why the game needs a blockade system. If we had that, during the invasion of Britain, all we had to do is gather whatever ships the Royal Navy had, plus the Vanguard, and park them outside Dover. That would cut off the supply line from the mainland to Dover. This would force the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine to somehow dislodge the fleet if they want to keep supplying their invasion force. Without the blockade system, navies are pointless. UK had a much larger navy than Germany, yet the Germans were able to do amphibious landings and to supply their beachheads unopposed. Naval superiority should be required for Sealion, so this game needs a blockade system, where a blockaded port would have all it's convoy routes cut off.
Convoy raiding doesn't stop the supply chain, and it shouldn't. There should an option for surface ships to blockade a port completely, with the same effect as taking a territory, as in no amount of supply can actually pass through.
I totally agree that a blockade system would help a lot with unrealistic naval invasions. The insane Sealion success would've never happened if we could've just parked the Royal Navy outside German-held ports and starved them.
I agree on this. However, i think the "patrol" missiong also engages convoys, altough in a much less sucessfull manner than subs "convoy raiding" missiong.
Not just Patrol Missions - the mere presence of a fleet in the province can engage convoys, but there's basically no way to camp a port and shut it down.
Two updates in rapid succession! What have we done to deserve two updates! Praise the Gods of the AAR forum! They are just!
I'm greedy though! More! Great stuff. I just hope the loss of those ships doesn't cripple Australasian seapower.
I suppose this is what's considered rapid succession these days isn't it? I've played a few more updates' worth of game, so we've got plenty to come, I just need to edit the screenshots and write it.
I hope you close the noose and deliver a crushing blow to the IJA in Siam!
Whoever said that you cannot win a land war in Asia? They just said it was a bad idea
To be fair it's still a pretty bad idea, but bold measures are needed to achieve victory against a superior opponent.
The loss of HMAS Australia and HMAS Sydney shows that the IJN does present a serious threat but I think the success of the operation in Indochina justifies their sacrifice. The Japanese position in Thailand now looks extremely precarious and I'm wondering if they will be able to get any of their divisions out of that trap at all?
The IJN is more than just a serious threat, in my mind. If I overplay my hand against them, I /will/ lose any sustained naval conflict against the IJN. They are qualitatively and quantitatively superior to me in most respects, and if they ever turn the bulk of their forces at me, I'm in real trouble. Saying that, I'm more than happy to sacrifice some ships if it gives me such a major tactical advantage in Southeast Asia.
The land situation leads me to believe that you will have an all-out land war in China...
At sea, you really should have sent a BB force. The Vanguard task force can't handle a fight against a substantial fleet, not with only 1 CV.
It might not have been entirely clear from the update, but all three of my taskforces (Vanguard, BC and BB) were sweeping around the deployment zones, searching for Japanese ships. Vanguard was unlucky enough to run into one twice and the BB taskforce was very close, but didn't get there in time to change anything. I've withdrawn Vanguard after that bloody nose, but they did their job. I have plans for how to handle naval operations in the future as that taskforce has been substantially weakened.
