Well, yeah, I guess. The IJN mostly lost due to American decryption and them knowing the IJN battle plans and the Japanese being too spread out to be able to form a counterattack, right?
Yeah, but this time its happening over 5 months earlier, I have all my carriers intact, and they have already lost Lexington. Also I dont think they have the CV Hornet yet.
The historical American victory at Midway was a matter of fortuitous timing and most games don't simulate the factors that led to the loss of the Japanese carriers.
Does this game track if the CAG is fully loaded and on deck when the bombs hit?
The Japanese carriers, except Taiho class, are more vulnerable than the American ones, about on par with Wasp. Americans also have better damage control parties. As IRL the Japanese carriers have their ammunition storages very well protected, but there are no torpedo bulges, no or very light deck armour, usually no tower armour, weaker AAA batteries and the aviation fuel storages are vulnerable.
EDIT: but Japanese AAA batteries have 75 and 88mm guns for barraging, 25, 12,5cm as medium AA and 20 and 25mm for close protection. Those smaller ones hit HARD but they arent as good as on paper because they are magazine fed, instead of belt, and need to reload often. Americans use 75mm for barraging, Bofors 40mm for medium and Oerlikon 20mm for close protection.
How many times a plane can sortie in a day depends on mission type(ordnance/no ordnance), how long the missions are, whether it needs maintenance or repairing between them etc. Its very possible to fly 2 or even 3 bombing sorties, its possible the carriers get attacked before they get to launch or when they are returning home etc. They cant launch if there is no target so using search planes is vital. I'm going to use picket boats now too, their chances of spotting enemy shipping are low, but they will report enemy search aircraft and possibly get attacked, effectively revealing the enemy, at least the general area where they are. Some luck and the picket boats get slaughtered while KB is never seen, but will itself attack.
Not really, the Japanese lost because the American dive bombers appeared over the Japanese carriers when the Japanese strike force was preparing for takeoff on the carrier's wooden decks, fully fueled and heavily loaded with bombs and torpedoes. A few minutes later and they'd all have been in the air.
Not to mention the CAP was occupied slaughtering unprotected American torpedo bombers and in no position to intercept.
Americans used wooden decks too! The whole deck of course wasn't wooden, just the top of it, as steel deck is about 10 times as slippery when wet... Later Japanese used steel decks with some sort of a plastic anti-slippery mat on it.
I think the real Midway went like it did because
A) Japanese had different bombs for ships and land targets - AP for ships, GP(with shrapnel, more explosive power, thinner case, less penetration) and different fuses for land targets.
B) Nagumo decided to wait those 50% of the bombers to be switched to carry better suiting bombs, because
C) Americans were just sighted, because
D) CA Tone's catapult no. 2 didnt work properly, so a search plane was launched over 30min late, and ultimately
E) The Americans had attacked 8 times already, Zeroes had slaughtered all attacks, but were low, spread out and running low on ammunition, when the SBDs arrived.
Ok ive been practicing, while learning how to play the game, and personally ground combat is so boring for me.
The Chinese front is so hard to clear out. Luckily after about 3 months you get some extra divisions in Shanghai that appear..
I still cant figure out how strategic move works sadly, to get my troops from the manchukuo quickly over to china to fight any time within a month (other than sea transport, which will still take weeks for them to move to a dock)
Also, Playing Historical first turn, It seems like if i keep my carrier task force near pearl harbor for 2-3 days I can really clean out the Ships and battleships there (That is until i run out of freaking torpedo's! thats when suddenly i cant sink any more battleships 
. I keep replaying the game for the first few days seeing what works best at pearl harbor, Love the sea combat really.
Then I tried a Quick Invasion of Manilla, and promptly lost 30+ transport ships to shore batteries in 1 turn Never expected that to happen, Not to self never land at important objectives. Land around it.
But god land combat oh how i hate thy.
Great AAR keep it up Erkki This AAR and a few on the official forum is the only reason i keep getting interested in this highly complex game.
Ground combat is a bit abstracted yeah, especially China front can be dull because its mostly an infantry meat grinder, but you can make it more interesting with the bombers... Move some unrestricted bombers(Ki-48, Ki-21) units from Manchuko, dump their good pilots to reserve, fill in with rookies(replacement pilots), and tell them to bomb the troops in open hexes only - I have 2 "training squadrons" that kill approx 250 Chinese daily with minimal investment and no resistance.
Strategic move works with railways and transport TFs. For railing the unit has to be in a friendly base, and destination hex has to be a friendly base as well. Transport TF's advantage over amphibious is, despite the troops pack-up time to strategic mode, that you can fit more troops to a ship and they dont suffer disruption at the sea, plus they unload quicker if destination is port 2 or higher.
Many players like to hang the KB around Hawaii for longer, but there is the risk of submarines(lots of them in Pearl) and destroyers/torpedo boats in the night. I got at least 2 of the BBs out right away and knowing my opponent to be aggressive I moved out at flank speed for 3 days, and got Lexington, and 4 CAs and 5 or 6 DDs from its escorts. Worth much, much more than even 4 or 5 more BBs and the plea of smaller ships.
Manila has a mine field too, you were LUCKY.
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Topic: War in the Pacific: AE PBEM - July 1st 1942 (Read 93528 times)