Lopsided CV battles

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: gunny3013

My PC will not allow access to any other program while the game is running and print screen simply doesn't give very much information. Outside of that I'm not skilled in the program enough to post any other information. Sorry

Sure you can. Just go into your save directory and cut and paste the combat report from the action here. Lots of good text hints in that. Don't edit it for brevity, there's some tasty tidbits of clarity in there.

[Dili]

Since the IJN torpedo bombers never fired a shot in anger prior to Pearl Harbor (with a torpedo) it is curious why they rate so highly and the RN torpedo bombers rate so poorly.

In all Mediterranean war only twice British FAA planes put a torpedo in an italian warship at sea despite dozens instances of attacks.
What they were good was hitting ships at night in the harbours. Taranto is just one example of many. That can only be achieved with slow and low airplanes vs a base defense prepared to fire against high altitude level bombing and of course badly placed anti-torpedo nets.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: gunny3013

My PC will not allow access to any other program while the game is running and print screen simply doesn't give very much information. Outside of that I'm not skilled in the program enough to post any other information. Sorry

I can tell you that -weather- had no impact or effect and we both took a single swing at each other in both circumstances. The period was early and mid 42.

It's not that I lost my whole fleet that matters, it's that he walked away without a scratch both times. Oh, and the game is VS. a live opponent.

In about a half dozen other "live" games, both sides took hits although the USN took the brunt, in this one I have never stood a chance. Hate to ask this but... is there a way to minipulate the program?

The game doesn't "like" to be minimized., but it can be. Alt+Tab will minimize the game, allowing access to a paint program to paste screen shots captured with the print screen button.

It's re-maximizing that the game doesn't like and it shakes itself out graphically in fits and starts until it properly restores the screen display.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: gunny3013

My PC will not allow access to any other program while the game is running and print screen simply doesn't give very much information. Outside of that I'm not skilled in the program enough to post any other information. Sorry

I can tell you that -weather- had no impact or effect and we both took a single swing at each other in both circumstances. The period was early and mid 42.

It's not that I lost my whole fleet that matters, it's that he walked away without a scratch both times. Oh, and the game is VS. a live opponent.

In about a half dozen other "live" games, both sides took hits although the USN took the brunt, in this one I have never stood a chance. Hate to ask this but... is there a way to minipulate the program?

The game doesn't "like" to be minimized., but it can be. Alt+Tab will minimize the game, allowing access to a paint program to paste screen shots captured with the print screen button.

It's re-maximizing that the game doesn't like and it shakes itself out graphically in fits and starts until it properly restores the screen display.

This.

You can reduce the averse effect of re-maximizing by closing all ingame screens before alt-tabbing out but I still would not reccommend to do it more than once per session, and even then you might notice graphical artefacts.

Personally I save and reload. It is a hassle but there is only so much you can do with a source code this old.



@gunny3013: You can access op/combat/intel reports through the savegame folder. If you have the -archive switch in your command line then you can access all reports ever generated by the game by acessing the save/archive folder. For screenshots there are a couple of freeware programs that allow you to take screenshots without exiting a program.

As has been stated a couple of times in this thread already, providing very detailed ingame data and additional information about the battle itself, as well as the battles´ context and preface, is essential if you want to get any helpful analysis from the forums. If not you all you will get is opinionated guesswork and general statements.

It is absolutely possible to fight a CV battle to a draw against the IJN - even very early in the war, with luck even win. But you have to do your homework and engage from a position of advantage, what that is exactly depends on the situation.

[gunny3013]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: gunny3013

My PC will not allow access to any other program while the game is running and print screen simply doesn't give very much information. Outside of that I'm not skilled in the program enough to post any other information. Sorry

Sure you can. Just go into your save directory and cut and paste the combat report from the action here. Lots of good text hints in that. Don't edit it for brevity, there's some tasty tidbits of clarity in there.

There's about 10,000 of those files and I'm not searching through all that. Can they be eliminated after a game?

[Erkki]

You can also run the game in windowed mode.

If you really really want to run the game in full screen and take screenshots, you can use a capturing program such as ScreenHunter to do it for you - saves the entire screen or a pre-designated part of it on a folder of your choice.

Re-entering the game after alt-tabbing to desktop can shake the game graphics badly. To me, if theres a menu open the background will become black, and if I do it during a combat animation the background will be black again and all the graphical effects of the combat replay vanish.

One way to reset the graphics seems to be entering and exiting either one of the database libraries, either aircraft or device/ship menus. I sometimes lose the mouse pointer and going there makes it appear again.

[gunny3013]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: gunny3013

My PC will not allow access to any other program while the game is running and print screen simply doesn't give very much information. Outside of that I'm not skilled in the program enough to post any other information. Sorry

I can tell you that -weather- had no impact or effect and we both took a single swing at each other in both circumstances. The period was early and mid 42.

It's not that I lost my whole fleet that matters, it's that he walked away without a scratch both times. Oh, and the game is VS. a live opponent.

In about a half dozen other "live" games, both sides took hits although the USN took the brunt, in this one I have never stood a chance. Hate to ask this but... is there a way to minipulate the program?

The game doesn't "like" to be minimized., but it can be. Alt+Tab will minimize the game, allowing access to a paint program to paste screen shots captured with the print screen button.

It's re-maximizing that the game doesn't like and it shakes itself out graphically in fits and starts until it properly restores the screen display.

This.

You can reduce the averse effect of re-maximizing by closing all ingame screens before alt-tabbing out but I still would not reccommend to do it more than once per session, and even then you might notice graphical artefacts.

Personally I save and reload. It is a hassle but there is only so much you can do with a source code this old.



@gunny3013: You can access op/combat/intel reports through the savegame folder. If you have the -archive switch in your command line then you can access all reports ever generated by the game by acessing the save/archive folder. For screenshots there are a couple of freeware programs that allow you to take screenshots without exiting a program.

As has been stated a couple of times in this thread already, providing very detailed ingame data and additional information about the battle itself, as well as the battles´ context and preface, is essential if you want to get any helpful analysis from the forums. If not you all you will get is opinionated guesswork and general statements.

It is absolutely possible to fight a CV battle to a draw against the IJN - even very early in the war, with luck even win. But you have to do your homework and engage from a position of advantage, what that is exactly depends on the situation.

As was stated earlier in this posting as well, Detailed info is a lot more difficult to get than you seem to realize.

...to heck with a draw or a victory! I would have settled for a single hit! 4 CV's sunk and all four flew against their IJN opponents and came up ZILCH! not a bloody scratch! Nada! couldn't even hit a cargo vessel. All the while he wipes out my entire fleet in one single air strike! Something is a miss.

Remember in AI games and games against other opponents my CV's aren't heroic or anything but they can at least score a few hits with no problem. It's just this one player's CV's that seems to have star trek shields to maximum...

[spence]

As mentioned, lopsided CV battles didn't happen until 1944.

Although the Japanese were the first to create a powerful air striking force in their First Air Fleet/Kido Butai they were little better prepared to conduct a carrier vs carrier battle than their US adversaries: simply because no such battle had ever been fought by anyone until Coral Sea. At that battle neither the Japanese nor the Americans displayed any particular acumen. Its ending as a Japanese tactical victory was hardly a certainty when the IJN strike aircraft left the scene of their attack on the US CVs (the Lexington was making 20 kts when the fuel vapor explosion overtook it).


Likewise the Japanese "first team" can hardly claim to have showed "how it's done" at Midway.
Experience gained fighting obsolete aircraft with lousy pilots while bombing nearly defenseless cities doesn't count much in CV battles. It's CAP did well for a while against American ineptitude but the fact remains that at the moment that those SBDs smashed the KB the number of Japanese strike aircraft launched at the American TFs was precisely ZERO. The Hiryu's two subsequent strikes were well done except that only a few of the participating a/c were ever going to be available to strike again.

The remaining CV battles of 1942, resulted in pretty even damage:

1 US CV, Hornet, sunk
USS Enterprise damaged severely twice
vs
1 IJN CVL, Ryujo, sunk
CV HIJMS Shokaku damaged severely
CVL HIJMS Zuiho damaged

(IJN subs did well but their contributions did not contribute to the CV battles directly: and six of them died in the Solomons).

Lopsided battles between CVs really have no historical basis.

[spence]

By the time the first IJN bomb/torpedo was dropped at Pearl harbor the FAA had scored hits on 4 Italian, 3 French and 1 German battleship, along with a crippling torpedo hit on an Italian CA, and bomb or torpedo hits on 10 destroyers.

http://www.fleetairarmarchive.net/Axis/Shipssunk.htm

[Erkki]

Do you read what people write to you?

[spence]

Do you? As on December 6th, 1941 how many bomb and torpedo hits had IJN flyers scored against warships? In port? Underway at sea?

[Erkki]

ORIGINAL: spence

Do you? As on December 6th, 1941 how many bomb and torpedo hits had IJN flyers scored against warships? In port? Underway at sea?

Please re-read. How many had the British... Before they did?

Swordfish, Albacore and Wildebeest are awful planes in the games because, duh, they were awful planes. Your points basically are that X should be N because something happened historically. What happened historically in any battle may or may not be a typical average or median results. Sample sizes for naval battles especially are very low and hardware quality in them was not the only factor.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: gunny3013

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: gunny3013

My PC will not allow access to any other program while the game is running and print screen simply doesn't give very much information. Outside of that I'm not skilled in the program enough to post any other information. Sorry

Sure you can. Just go into your save directory and cut and paste the combat report from the action here. Lots of good text hints in that. Don't edit it for brevity, there's some tasty tidbits of clarity in there.

There's about 10,000 of those files and I'm not searching through all that. Can they be eliminated after a game?

It's pretty straightforward. You just want the CombatReport.txt with the relevant date in your save game folder. For example, my last PBEM turn's releveant combat report is "combatreport_421026". Just find that and it should be viewable in any word or notebook-type program.

Irrelevant save files can certainly be eliminated after a game. The "combatreport_421026" I used here will be written over the next time I play an October 26, 1942 game also.

My recommendation is to go into the save directory and just scroll (quickly) down the different save files until you get to the combat reports per se. Then you can identify the latest one for cutting and pasting here.

Good luck.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: gunny3013
As was stated earlier in this posting as well, Detailed info is a lot more difficult to get than you seem to realize.

I don´t think it is that difficult, but YMMV.

Anyways, there is a general rule to data analysis: S*it in, s*it out.

It is your decision to do the work and provide sufficient data for a conclusive analysis - or not. Just don´t expect any valuable responses to your questions in case you don´t.

Anyone else ever have this issue?

As far as I am concerned, no, I don´t have this issue. Except if I made a mistake, on either strategic or tactical level, or was outsmarted by my opponent. Happens.

[Erkki]

Or just sort the files by date, windows remembers it for the folder. Ta-daa: the latest save, sign reports, combat reports and ops reports are always on the top or bottom.

[Insano]

In the absence of information my best guess is that the OP dive bombers were not set at dive bombing altitude. This means any hits scored (none) against a warship maneuvering at speed would be a fluke

[Feinder]

If you don't remember the date of the battle, in order to retrieve the .txt file you can...
a. Probably just sort by size: the big battles are going to generate larger files.
b. Look on the ships sunk screen, it'll tell you the data that your CV(s) were sunk, then pull back the .txt file for that date.

-F-

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: spence

Do you? As on December 6th, 1941 how many bomb and torpedo hits had IJN flyers scored against warships? In port? Underway at sea?

Those poor dumb Japanese. Obviously they should have prepared better.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: spence

As mentioned, lopsided CV battles didn't happen until 1944.

Although the Japanese were the first to create a powerful air striking force in their First Air Fleet/Kido Butai they were little better prepared to conduct a carrier vs carrier battle than their US adversaries: simply because no such battle had ever been fought by anyone until Coral Sea. At that battle neither the Japanese nor the Americans displayed any particular acumen. Its ending as a Japanese tactical victory was hardly a certainty when the IJN strike aircraft left the scene of their attack on the US CVs (the Lexington was making 20 kts when the fuel vapor explosion overtook it).


Likewise the Japanese "first team" can hardly claim to have showed "how it's done" at Midway.
Experience gained fighting obsolete aircraft with lousy pilots while bombing nearly defenseless cities doesn't count much in CV battles. It's CAP did well for a while against American ineptitude but the fact remains that at the moment that those SBDs smashed the KB the number of Japanese strike aircraft launched at the American TFs was precisely ZERO. The Hiryu's two subsequent strikes were well done except that only a few of the participating a/c were ever going to be available to strike again.

The remaining CV battles of 1942, resulted in pretty even damage:

1 US CV, Hornet, sunk
USS Enterprise damaged severely twice
vs
1 IJN CVL, Ryujo, sunk
CV HIJMS Shokaku damaged severely
CVL HIJMS Zuiho damaged

(IJN subs did well but their contributions did not contribute to the CV battles directly: and six of them died in the Solomons).

Lopsided battles between CVs really have no historical basis.

The thing to take away from this is that the first carrier battle in history took place in May 1942. There was training and doctrine on both sides but basically the Coral Sea and three other carrier actions in 1942 were fought in the blind as far as experience goes. Surface battles were built on hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge but not carrier battles. Both sides had their advantages and failings and any of those battles could have gone in any direction. By 1943 both sides had gained valuable experience. Experience that really could only benefit the side that could produce better ships and aircraft quicker. We know how that ended up.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: gunny3013

My PC will not allow access to any other program while the game is running and print screen simply doesn't give very much information. Outside of that I'm not skilled in the program enough to post any other information. Sorry

I can tell you that -weather- had no impact or effect and we both took a single swing at each other in both circumstances. The period was early and mid 42.

It's not that I lost my whole fleet that matters, it's that he walked away without a scratch both times. Oh, and the game is VS. a live opponent.

In about a half dozen other "live" games, both sides took hits although the USN took the brunt, in this one I have never stood a chance. Hate to ask this but... is there a way to minipulate the program?

The game doesn't "like" to be minimized., but it can be. Alt+Tab will minimize the game, allowing access to a paint program to paste screen shots captured with the print screen button.

It's re-maximizing that the game doesn't like and it shakes itself out graphically in fits and starts until it properly restores the screen display.

This is why I play in windows mode (start 'maximised'). I set the screen resolution so that the Windows task bar is visible at the bottom of the screen. I can just click on other programs, or on AE to change back. Without all the 'full screen' mode stuff that goes on there is no problem switching back and forth.