I do like this game but some things seem very odd. I'm starting my first carrier battle (Coral Sea) and have yet to find the American fleet. He seemed to find me easily enough.
Several bombers and torpedo planes headed toward me so I just used this defense - surrounding the carriers with my ships to prevent the torpedo planes attacking them and having my own bombers and torpedo planes fly CAP above my carriers. The downside of this is that I can't land any planes. Also odd is the B17 does better in a dogfight than a zero. Hmm.
I wouldn't call it a dog fight, but Zeros would be vulnerable to attacking formations of B-17s IRL. I believe one American gunner on a B-17 shot down five Zeros in one mission (and won the MoH). Although, B-17s were pretty terrible in an anti-shipping role.
Hobbes, why can't you land your (carrier-based) planes? As long as your carriers have an empty cargo hold, you can command planes from adjacent hexes to land, same with airfields. Doesn't matter if a plane is right above the carrier.
Strategic/High-level bombers were indeed ineffective against ships, as the ships tend to do these fancy evasion maneuvers like shown below with the Hiryu carrier in Battle of Midway. If the Hiryu wouldn't have turned port/left, the B-17 bombers would have possibly damaged it.
Another good example is the sinking of the immobile(!) battleship Tirpitz at the end, which took many British bombers, later with 5.4t Tallboy bombs, to finally sink her. From 29 dropped Tallboys on the ship, only two were direct hits and one near-miss. That's quite a terrible hit-chance on an immobile large target.
I remember reading something in "Shattered Sword" about how the Japanese used some sort of mechanical "computer" to aim their AAA, and that evasive maneuvers threw this aiming off because it took several seconds for the computer to churn out a new firing solution.
Although the B-17's could get lucky. During the Guadalcanal Tokyo Express battles, 1 Japanese destroyer captain was so contemptuous of the accuracy of the B-17 he refused to make evasive maneuvers. A B-17 sank his ship. His comment upon being fished out of the water, "Even a B-17 could get lucky."
Of course! I was forgetting I could land from an adjacent hex. Would it not be better to always force take off and landing into an adjacent hex rather than overhead. Fighters could still fly CAP from an adjacent hex and it would stop this gamey bomber blocking move with friendly torpedo planes sitting above the carriers. I think friendly aircraft should not be allowed to plot the end of move in hexes that contain friendly ships - they should be able to fly over them obviously. Also torpedo planes should be able to fire upon an adjacent ship even if in a hex containing an enemy ship - maybe with a 30% - 40% penalty? To me this would make carrier warfare far more accurate and less open to gamey play.
Cheers,
Chris
Last edited by HobbesACW on Thu Jun 25, 2015 6:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Updated the previous post. Are players happy with the gamey carrier tactics that can be employed to prevent damage? Do other players use these tactics?
Hovering above ground/naval units with aircrafts is no protection as long as you don't cover a single ship with 7 aircrafts. The blocking aircraft will be simply pushed away for the attack.
Also good to know is that only up to three fighters will intercept the dive bomber.
That's great. Still a bit worried about blocking torpedo bombers with a wall of ships. Is this a valid tactic? You might hinder an attacking torpedo bomber but it shouldn't totally prevent an attack? There would always be very large gaps to aim through.
The Gamiest tactic I have discovered with carrier battles so far is the delayed deployment tactic. Instead of deploying your aircraft at the begging of the battle, leave them in reserve. When you locate the enemy fleet you can then deploy ALL your attack aircraft around the closet carrier(s) in one turn instead of one per turn per carrier. Instant coordinated strike!
kverdon wrote:The Gamiest tactic I have discovered with carrier battles so far is the delayed deployment tactic. Instead of deploying your aircraft at the begging of the battle, leave them in reserve. When you locate the enemy fleet you can then deploy ALL your attack aircraft around the closet carrier(s) in one turn instead of one per turn per carrier. Instant coordinated strike!
I will have to try that tactic next carrier battle I run across.
I thought if the wall formation really does block torpedo planes from attacking carriers I will have a rule that this is the tightest formation I can have - leaving a space to allow an attack at the front and rear of the carrier force. Seems strange that I have to leave myself vulnerable to give the enemy torpedo planes a chance! Do most players just form a wall of ships? If so can the game be changed to allow torpedo planes a chance as mentioned in the earlier posts? Is it just me that finds this tactic strange?
Just played out this turn and the B17 pictured took my weakened carrier down to one point (from four) and took no damage itself. Starting to think this wonderful game isn't so wonderful - just a weird game. It's certainly a flying fortress - destroys zeros with ease and also performs better than a dive bomber at anti-ship ops. Sigh.
I am going agree with your general thinking about combat here, it feels weird.
I think ground combat is fine and I think that ship versus ship is mostly ok. I think air versus ground is ok too. Where I see the problem is air versus air and air versus ship. The air versus air problem is more a stat problem than mechanics problem. The air versus ship is a mechanics problem. First I would probably halve the currently ranges. Second, all air versus ship attacks should be a special attack that is one use, then land and re-arm. The offset would be to make the attacks more powerful. Its just strange in the extreme to have dive bombers and level bombers loitering around the target making repeated attacks and just being slowly killed. Its just feels wrong, wrong, wrong.
You want the careers to launch quick, devastating air strikes, not the mish-mash it currently is. I would also look for ways to make the air and naval forces stand apart from each other. In the early war, if a P-36 comes against the Zero, it should be blown from the sky. Early war B-17s are pretty weak, make sure that's reflected. Early war, American torpedoes need to be much less effective on every platform and Japanese torpedoes need to be more effective on every platform throughout the war. Make Japanese naval gunnery more effective and perhaps give American ships a larger sight range because of radar.
As it stands, air and naval warfare is just bland.
I have pushed myself past playing the Java land battle through the Battle of Midway. To be honest, I am simply not having enough fun versus effort. I think Coral Sea was fine from a design perspective. I think Midway was once again heavy handed with the scripting, making the "surprise attack" a little too canned. I think the vanilla feeling of the sides is partly to blame for my lack of enjoyment. Playing as the Japanese really needs to feel different than playing as the Allies. It's not just that. Early in the war, the Allies were fighting at a distinct disadvantage from a quality and a quantity standpoint. This is entire not present in OOB. The Allies outnumber me in every scenario in every department. To make this even worse, the weapons fight the same. A P-36 is just as good as a Zero and so on. The game is really falling flat for me.
I've not got as far into the game as you swatter so this is disappointing to read. I hope some tweaks can be made, at least to the data, to make the models more historically accurate. A B17 should at best be a 0+ when attacking a ship.
I was curious if you could limit the use of aerial torpedoes by increasing the cooldown to fuel levels. I hoped that landing on carriers or airfields would reset the cooldown, but that unfortunately doesn’t happen.
It wouldn’t have helped preventing constant bombardment of non-torpedo bombers anyway. You could tweak all aircraft fuel settings to low values, but chance is high that you screw up scripted events and mission goals that require long airplane ranges in original missions.
It’s a tricky matter, but I guess fair play with the current torpedo cooldown situation that cheap aircrafts (or subs and destroyers) can still wear down the heaviest, expensive armoured ships in time, while the other bombers can rather do only damage to the non-/light armoured ships.
There is a radar specialization for US that provides radar range 10 to all US ships (also for ships of British Fleet spec?). Ships normally have no radar ranges, only planes typically do with a range of 6.
I’ve been more or less fine with the original naval stats while testing, but I didn’t like the fact that Japan also fielded radar from 42/43 on which is totally ignored here. Even if their radar wasn’t that sophisticated as the Allied ones, it still gave a good hint if something was there or not, similar like we can only guess in the game if it’s either a plane or a ship.
Too bad there was no difference made here between aircraft and ground/naval radar.
I guess such historical closeness was ditched in favour for a more balance, in particular for multiplayer. No problem for me at least, as I’ve already modified the radar ranges for myself, and won’t play with the Naval Radar spec. I only hope I will never play a map/mission one day where someone gave the AI the Naval spec. Radar range up to 18 would kill me for sure!
