questions for 239

[Paul#42]

Just because it's so fine

No, really: I think it's a good plan.

Just one remark to what's not covered imo:
There was discussion to let one of our ships up north bombard the stack. I'd rather let them all attack straight in order of decreasing attack strength.

And I'd not attack ships with our bombers or fighters.
Rather deploy them to wheer they have most effect for the upcoming battles.

I'm torn between using workers or slaves for radar towers. Workers are more effective in other tasks and upkeep is nasty but not game-breaking now. But it's a close call.

Do we build any subs in those towns close to the SoDs? Or rather missiles?
I'd think MA in inland towns + towns with rax and missiles / subs in the other?

 

[tomasjj]

Just because it's so fine

No, really: I think it's a good plan.

Just one remark to what's not covered imo:
There was discussion to let one of our ships up north bombard the stack. I'd rather let them all attack straight in order of decreasing attack strength.

And I'd not attack ships with our bombers or fighters.
Rather deploy them to wheer they have most effect for the upcoming battles.

I agree with the German Admiral on both counts.

 

[Yilar]

Just because it's so fine

No, really: I think it's a good plan.

Just one remark to what's not covered imo:
There was discussion to let one of our ships up north bombard the stack. I'd rather let them all attack straight in order of decreasing attack strength.

And I'd not attack ships with our bombers or fighters.
Rather deploy them to wheer they have most effect for the upcoming battles.

I'm torn between using workers or slaves for radar towers. Workers are more effective in other tasks and upkeep is nasty but not game-breaking now. But it's a close call.

Do we build any subs in those towns close to the SoDs? Or rather missiles?
I'd think MA in inland towns + towns with rax and missiles / subs in the other?

The reason to use the bombardment is because AT used the goto command last turn and our boats only have 4 moves left now, and then used up 3 moves to discover the stack, thus we only have 1 move left on a battleship with 2 moves needed to attack, but since the battleship has 2 range bombardment we can use that instead, if we are succesfull in bombardment we can then attack with our 2 other battleships, and if those win we can use our cruiser to kill the carrier, because it will be ahead of the injured destroyers in line of defence.

I agree we should move our remaining bombers to the airbase nw, if the carrier dies there will be nothing to stop us from hitting that boat stack with our bombers without losing anything. The southern front still has 2 carriers that could be holding any number of jets, which are almost certain to kill any bombers that try to injure the boats. I fully expect there to be 4 sams on each transport stack.

As for builds, I don't think it really matters, as long as everything that isn't complete next turn is set to build something with wartime bonus, everything that completes next turn should be armors. Cruises are useless, 3dmg for 60s is just plain nuts. Wether we should rush 5 regular armors i'm still unsure of, every modern armor costs roughly 300-400 gold, which is quite a lot. Still have to remember that we only need 7000-9000 gold to actually begin "mad scientist run" with 90-100% science on the last 4 techs.

 

[donsig]

Niklas's plan for garrisoning the threatened cities and tiles looks good from my point of view and I think the plan to attack the ships is well thought out.

I'm not sure about the jets. I really think we need our eyes and should consider dedicating enough jets to have a full EWS in place. I guess we could wait a turn IF we can use those three destroyers in the north east to scout for any FREE transports heading for the infamous hill. There's also one SABER transport unaccounted for. The information gained from a full EWS sweep is priceless.

It would be helpful in the future if had a log of whatever actions are taken in a partial turn so we could re-create the scene.

I think we should continue to build modern armor and a sub here or there if we think it has a chance at a transport. I'd try to hold off on spending gold and I would not hesitate to draft! Even 2 hp mech inf can help garrison our tiles and cities. The longer we prevent SABER from landing the better.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I'd love to keep all of our cities, if we can.

We are facing potential bombardment from ships and jets/bombers - not much to do about ships (they have a lot of destroyers that could be outside our EWS) - we do have some jets to run CAP, especially down south.

I like the plan. I like the idea of keeping all our cities and forcing them to land in the open.

I don't see anything particularly wrong with it, though there is a pretty serious danger that if we do make a mistake, they go nuts in our core, since we will have nothing there at all.

Should I draft as many mechs as I can?

 

[tomasjj]

I say yes to drafting.
This is make or break time, survival is pri. 1.

 

[donsig]

Yes draft. And have we moved those three destroyers in the northeast yet? If we haven't then we should surely first scout the area for FREE transports. If we find any we should try to garrison any threatened cities. We might be able to do this since Niklas's plan only uses the units we have now. We could add drafted units into the mix to protect more cities if need be.

 

[Yilar]

As long as they don't capture The Pier, The New Yard, The Squeeze, The Meeting Room, The Marina, The Red Tape or The Shallows we should be able to survive. I don't think you should draft from all cities, cities using specialists might be an idea to draft from, happiness is not an issue with 10% lux, some of our core cities are having WLKTD, maybe draft from them?

 

[Paul#42]

I'm pretty sure we should draft from all cities where possible!!

We might also check some towns for the back end of a ship chain.
They might still produce some Marines and ship chain them right to us and thus increase their numbers.
Imo Transports in (or very near) harbor or being built is the limiting factor there.

If I wanted to deceive us (and if I was clever), I'd pretend to be weak and surprise with being strong in excactly that department.

Still I won't disband any towns but would defend as hard as possible - that involves excessive draft sessions imo...

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I won't draft from the cities that are making 1 turn MA, since doing so will hurt us.

 

[Paul#42]

we can add a worker (not slave!) to such a city.

 

[General_W]

I like the plan to go after the ships.
Niklas's suggested defense strategy makes me a little nervous.

Bombardment makes an enormous difference in the survival odds of defending a city.
For example: Niklas has calculated that 2 Mechs and 5 MAs is plenty to hold any 100% defense tiles. (The New Yard, The Marina, The Red Tape and The Squeeze) If those cities aren't bombarded, it's true that they will only be killed by marines ~.05% of the time.

However if they Bomb each unit down to 2 hit points (totally doable in our south with all their bombers and destroyers) - then the Marines win and capture the city 30% of the time!

If we can kill 2 destroyers and the Carrier up North - then we're much safer there and Niklas' number aren't too far out of line.
But if we fail to get the carrier - I think we really need to disband a couple towns to free up more units to garrison the south and the north cities.

If Saber actually takes a town that's within range of their transports, we could get the save back missing 1/3 or more of our towns.

Bottom line: Based on how the naval attack goes in the North, and how many units are in range in the south, I think we need to do a better job of garrisoning our cities and metros than Niklas has proposed.

 

[peter grimes]

Perhaps this save needs to be played in stages, in case situations arise that require more team input?

 

[Yilar]

Perhaps this save needs to be played in stages, in case situations arise that require more team input?

Isn't that exactly what we have done so far?..
We just need to move the units into place and scout the eastern front, as I listed in the picture in the other thread.

 

[Niklas]

Bottom line: Based on how the naval attack goes in the North, and how many units are in range in the south, I think we need to do a better job of garrisoning our cities and metros than Niklas has proposed.

I don't agree. While I agree with your point that bombardment could pose a problem and could bring some units down a few notches, it's also the case that I haven't even counted any drafted units. It's not that many places that would actually be vulnerable to bombardment by air (I'm much less worried about ships, since they will miss a lot), and we can stack these places with a couple extra drafted Mechs. That would seriously decrease the odds again. Also we have Jets for air superiority, and SAMs to take down some bombers. How many could they send on us anyway?

 

[Niklas]

I think the first (next) stage would be to do that bombardment with the Battleship and see where that gets us.

 

[General_W]

Do the bombardment and make the attempt to sink the Carrier - then we can re-calibrate.

Also - is it possible to get a screenshot of the invasion fleet in the South? I can't open the save here at work, and didn't get time to look myself last night.

@Niklas - that makes me feel better. If we add even a few drafted mechs to help soak up damage - and have reasonable air defense in the key areas, then I agree that should be ok

 

[donsig]

Do the bombardment but also please use those three destroyers in the northeast to scout for FREE transports.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I hadn't thought about drafting and rejoining workers.

Would it make sense to rush workers in some of our western cities and draft a ton of mechs? We could get a lot of units pretty cheap that way.

 

[Yilar]

Can only draft once per turn in republic...