Climb Mt. Basset! Japanese Witp:AE AAR

[grumbler]

Don't American subs basically shoot blanks?  I only ever used them as recon assets.

As vM points out, they certainly don't "shoot blanks," they just have a higher dud rate (50%).  That means that 50% of the torps do normal damage, which is a much higher rate than you get from using them strictly as recon assets.

[Neil]

Naval guns have a very low dud rate.  If I were the Allies, I would consider using my superior battleship forces.

[Ideologue]

Don't American subs basically shoot blanks?  I only ever used them as recon assets.

As vM points out, they certainly don't "shoot blanks," they just have a higher dud rate (50%).  That means that 50% of the torps do normal damage, which is a much higher rate than you get from using them strictly as recon assets.

I'm just saying the main value I received from my subs as an Allied player was intel, so I considered them to be recon assets, not fighting ships.

Sort of like B-17s, although you and vM believed I believed they were effective ship-killers.

[grumbler]

Don't American subs basically shoot blanks?  I only ever used them as recon assets.

As vM points out, they certainly don't "shoot blanks," they just have a higher dud rate (50%).  That means that 50% of the torps do normal damage, which is a much higher rate than you get from using them strictly as recon assets.

I'm just saying the main value I received from my subs as an Allied player was intel, so I considered them to be recon assets, not fighting ships.

And I am just saying that I think you were misusing them if you "only ever used them as recon assets."

Sort of like B-17s, although you and vM believed I believed they were effective ship-killers.

While I think it is a bit late to tell me what I believed at some point in the past, I don't think B-17s should "only ever used them as recon assets," either.  Even the B-17D could do a decent job of busting up enemy infrastructure, though its availability was low.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

To continue the SNLF discussion:

I will probably split one or more of the divisions into regiments at some point.  The divisions are nice for major assaults, but with only four I can't cover much territory at once.  By June I doubt I will be making many major amphibious assaults, so keeping all the divisions intact will waste combat power that I will need to defend strongholds.

[jimmy olsen]

As already alluded to in the joint thread, the Pearl Harbor attack did not go so well.  The only ships sunk were a DD and minesweeper.  Lots of bomb hits on the battleships, but it was mostly Vals.   The midget subs actually scored a hit, though.  I launched a follow up the next turn that put more 800kg bombs into four battleships.  In both raids my Kates seemed more interested in bombing Honolulu than the fucking harbor.   Also, Kaga's fighter squadron was gutted while strafing the Pearl Harbor airfields.  To add insult to injury, the Manila strike by mini-KB never launched.

I think I am still on pace to trap Enterprise, though.  Drakken also sent out a bunch of ASW task forces during turn two, one of which ran into KB-1 during the night and probably lost a DMS for its trouble.

My submarines are active already, with an AKL and a tanker to their credit.

The Asiatic fleet appears to be making a run for the Japanese landings in north Luzon.  I don't expect the surface assets to survive very long, especially with mini-KB passing south of Takao right now.

Does the game give you the option of bombing the oil reserves at Pearl?

[Ideologue]

Iirc that would fall under port attack.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

Correct.  There is no way to specifically target fuel storage, but port attacks do have a chance to hit fuel storage areas.

[grumbler]

Does the game give you the option of bombing the oil reserves at Pearl?

It wouldn't do them much good, as it wouldn't have done the Japanese much good historically; the US had plenty of black oil, and plenty of tankers to ship it with (in fact, they had tankers mothballed because the supply of tankers so exceeded demand).  Add to that the fact that oil storage tanks are easy and fast to build, and you have a non-issue.

The fleet needed six months after the war started just to get manning to wartime levels on existing ships.  They couldn't have moved against the Japanese before that, and the Japanese couldn't do damage that would take six months to restore.

Now, the machine shops and torpedo storage bunkers were a different matter, but also much, much harder to impact with air attacks, especially with the puny Japanese bomb loads.  They were right to focus on the ships and aircraft.

[Neil]

Yeah.  I'm reading up right now on the British Pacific Fleet, and it's really interesting how difficult it was to deal with built up industrial areas with carrier planes or even naval gunfire.  Machine shops were really resistant to attack, although it seems that the attacks were useful in chasing away people who could fight fires in incendiary attacks.