I'm a bit behind once again, but here I come heroically playing catch-up, comrades!
A surprisingly busy month for the dead of winter, at least along some fronts. The Red war machine grinds ever onwards!
As the new year of 1946 opens, winter continues to exert a firm grip. The latest Soviet attack on Ushumun, which began on 30 December, goes on, while a major new Soviet attack began on Chegdomyn on 1 January: it would prove to be one of the biggest battles of the campaign so far, with the air forces of both sides weighing in. For example, the poor weather in Chegdomyn lowers the effectiveness of the Soviet attack by an estimated -21.9%.
I suspect that this will become an ongoing theme this month...and in the following.
With no effective Soviet fighter cover nearby, a brand new air base (one was being held ready) was built in Nikolayevsk na Amure. A base upgrade to level 2 facilities was started the next day, as hardly any repairs were yet possible in the bare-bones base.
Truly a marvel of Soviet engineering, that.
On the morning of 5 January, the last of the northern pocket was eliminated in Susuman.
Vur h--erm, I mean,
Da, komrade!
Early on 8 January, all the transports in Ulya were merged into the Red Banner Pacific Fleets, the 1st Marine Division was loaded up, and they all sailed south for the first Soviet amphibious operation of the war. Their destination was Okha in northern Sakhalin, opposite Nikolayevsk na Amure, which was now crucially able to offer air cover for the invasion fleet.
I admit, I'm not really sure why this move makes any strategic sense. It looked like on the map a division was already crossing the strait, and I don't see a Japanese navy preventing that crossing. I suppose getting the Marines into the action is a reason, but why expose the navy to do so?
The main reason for this inaction, on the Soviet side at least, was clearly recurrent supply problems.
Same old song and dance...
Level 3 radar station upgrades were completed in Kaunas, Lwow and Brzesc Litewski on 15 and 16 January, part of the growing radar network on the Western Front. Improvement of each to the next level was started immediately and given the highest production priority.
Not entirely sure why we're making this investment? I get the in-universe explanation of intel, but personally I've always thought of radars as a bit useless for land wars, since knowing where the AI's troops are hardly is needed to beat the AI handily.
The campaign in
Australia had been successfully wrapped up, however
[giving your humble authAAR a warm inner glow, at least].
I'll drink to that, mate!
The Red Banner Pacific Fleet is a motley collection of wrecks isn't it? Still it gets the job done which is the main thing, though I have no doubt the crews are all desperately hoping they never meet an enemy fleet!
I'll refrain from ranting on the subject, but looking at Paradox's motley and haphazard assignment of CA versus CL irritates me to no end, particularly given the artificial and ahistorical capital/screen designation split between the two.
See, this is a failure of the game logistics system. I can not think of a single loggo worth his salt who ever "Returned to Sender" supply. For damn sure, even in Iraq in 2010 when nothing really offensive was going on, I still had a pile of MREs, more ammo, etc than I could ever foresee needing, but there really wasn't any urge to give it back to Big Army.
Paradox made the system simple in allowing it to move just one hex a day. The issue is that supply didn't move like that. Where some hexes are just 20-40km apart, no one is going to say "Yep, that's far enough!" They're going to move as long as they have daylight and even longer if they can safely move at night. Thinking of the Red Ball Express, they moved as much as possible around the clock, even at a significant fuel penalty, which, to be fair, only the Americans could really afford at the time. Maybe super close to the front line they couldn't always get reliable supply, but by and large, as long as supply trains weren't under stress, the rear areas could get it.
I'm in the minority as I do actually like the supply system, at least when I'm not actively cursing it
in-situ. It's certainly far from perfect and a crude approximation, at best, of a real-world logistics network, but it accomplishes the metagame task of causing logistics to be both necessary and important to pay mind to, and infuriatingly opaque and impossible to truly control under anything less than pristine conditions. Thus, in spite of its manifold flaws, it
does reflect real life with shocking accuracy in the end.
The problem here is that upgrading from Moscow usually doesn't solve the problem as its the last provinces that causes it all to explode, so upgrading from the furthest bad supply and backward is usually better. When the furthest unit (which is the one that is served first) request everything is mostly fine, when the next unit (that) can't get its supply it covered it will go over a different route incurring more supply tax, this continues until the demand in Moscow is rather large.
This is broadly true, although one need not upgrade the
very end of the bad supply but rather start upgrading near one's rear lines, so to speak. The supply system is
supposed to be designed to supply the farthest units first, which means that if not enough total supply makes its way to the troops the rear areas will tend to be hit harder, all else being equal (which it usually isn't).
There's always Arcade Mode...
Heresy, only to be expected from a submarine proponent!