Question about building on IC on Malaya????

@wittmann:

Afternoon Suprtramp.
Yes it can. Only Navy blocks naval movement(or a Strait of course!).
An island is a separate territory, yes.

With the exception of Subs and Transports, which cannot block enemy movement by themselves.

OK thanks for the help!

ok thanks

@TexCapPrezJimmy:

I think your first situation is correct but I’m having a hard time understanding the benefit of the second situation, unless I’m misreading it. If you are engaging in combat in the sea zone and the coastal territory (with the SZ the only access point to the territory), why wouldn’t you just bring the transport along with the naval attack to assist in capturing the territory?

If the blocking ship was not on the coast (one sz out), you could kill him in combat and move transports in during non combat to off load them onto the  coastal tt you just took. Assuming that you indeed did take the coastal tt by other means.

@TexCapPrezJimmy:

So let me get this straight, in sea battles, you can kill an enemy blocker ship (destroyer) in the combat phase and move your fleet past that SZ into the next SZ in the non-combat phase assuming that none of your fleet is engaging in a combat move. Is this correct? If so this really changes things for me in Pacific…

Yes that is what I was referring to. You can kill the enemies ships in combat (using just a few ships or planes even). Then in noncombat move into the cleared sz (1st move) with your ships that where not involved in the battle. Then (2nd move) to the coast to off load your transports on to the coastal tt you also took during combat. Of coarse the 2nd sz could not be hostel. You can also do this to join two of you fleets together. It doesn’t come up to often, but in P40 it could be useful to both the allies or Japan (especially when you consider NB).

No.  Scrambling occurs during the Conduct Combat phase, so all combat movements will have been completed.  Scrambling only occurs in sea zones in which attacking units end their combat movement.

Say the Japs had DEI & Phil, and its main force is at Carol Is. Ideally if you could get 5 allied subs in range you could spread them out in 5 different sz all at once costing Jap $ (8-10 ipc) and forcing them to buy more DD’s to go after you. At the very least it could be a stall tactic or weaken the Jap force. Jap would need to make a choice to attack your main force w/o DD’s (cheap causalities), or leave the convoy raids in place. If Jap goes after the subs, you may have created targets of opportunity to go after.

@Praetorian:

@Autarch:

IC’s are supposed to be gateways for new units. I always envisioned them not as factories but as major transportation terminus’ such as rail heads or ports where combat units were transported, offloaded then assembled for battle. There is far too much involved in building armaments and recruiting, training and supporting major combat formations for factories and other infrastructure to be built from scratch on war torn front line territory.

Thats a fair rationalization of what IC might represent.  However, I still think it doesn’t cut to the core issue, that with an IC on the mainland, Japan becomes too powerful.  The IC build is pretty much an automatic build at this point with my group (and I assume, others) because it eliminates so many of japan’s logistical problems (and those logistical problems are fun).

I guess a question I still need to answer is if Japan decides not to build an IC on the mainland are they shifting the balance of power too far to the Allies or does it (as I suspect) shift the balance more to the middle?

It certainly would make it more difficult for Japan. A major IC in Asia is more than twice as efficient as the same amount spent on transports. If your going to houserule this away, you better do something to (further) hamstring China and the UK/Anzac as well.

I would like to thank you guys for the advice, because I won my game against my best buddy.

I immediately pushed my Navy South and took NSW from the Austrailians (he had alot of troops in Queensland).  I also built a factory in Kwangtung which the next turn I made 9 men there (and a transport) followed by 10 tanks the next turn.  I traded NSW for a few turns back and forth eventually killing off all the Australian troops two turns before America could send their then massive navy to Austrailia.

I used two transports and took Sumatra and Malaya with Battleship and Destroyer support, and smashed the remaining Brits and 3 Chinese in Yunnan at the cost of about 8 planes to the 4 British planes and several infantry.

With Australia clear of troops I moved transports and bombers into a poor India and took it over and blocked the United States from reaching Austrailia, Japan, or the Phillipenes.

Thank you all for the advice, but next time Ill attack sooner with Japan, the Brits got rich fast which caused me a big headache.