Kingfishers, Seagulls and Other Search Issues

[Icedawg]

First of all, I really like this game. However, I have a few questions that I'd really like answers to.

1) Why aren't Kingfishers and Seagulls available on American BB's and CA's? Shouldn't these be aboard most of the USN BB's and CA's? Without them, the USN's search capabilities are greatly limited and a player is forced to search with valuable DB's.

In WITP, these float planes are highly valuable search aircraft, so it appears as though one of these games (WITP or CAW) has messed something up here.

2) Another question related to searches - how do I assign specific air groups to search missions? Several times now, I've had large numbers of carrier-based A6M2's off wasting their time searching when I would rather have them performing CAP or available for strike escort. How do I stop this?

3) Yet another search question - how do I recall search aircraft? I thought I saw something in the manual about recalling them, but I was unable to relocate the relavant section of the manual later when I actually wanted to recall some.

[Panther Bait]

Unlike the Japanese, I don't think that the USN did a lot of search missions with its capital ship float planes.  IIRC, they were mostly intended for gunnery observation and ferrying important passengers to and from the ship.  The Kingfisher and Seagull both have a pretty low top/cruise speed and would not have been very effective at searching large areas of ocean, probably.

[Icedawg]

So, it sounds like WITP is a bit off in its modeling of these aircraft then. In that game, you can use them rather effectively for search missions (they seem to do much better than Jakes, Alfs and Daves for the Japanese).

[anarchyintheuk]

In WitP you're the big cheese/top dog/master cylinder of the Pacific. You can choose to issue a directive ordering the USN to use floatplanes to search. If you believe that using floatplanes to search from the USN capital ships is not historical, you can simply turn them off. In any event, in both games I haven't noticed a speed penalty in connection with their use, which isn't realistic either.

[Panther Bait]

As anarchyintheuk mentions, you are playing different levels of command in CAW versus WitP.  In CAW you are more like the OTC (officer in tactical command), whereas in WitP, you are some combination of the CinC, JCS and the chief executive.  As OTC you are somewhat controlled by official doctrine, as the CinC/JCS you define doctrine.

[Gregor_SSG]

ORIGINAL: Icedawg

First of all, I really like this game. However, I have a few questions that I'd really like answers to.

1) Why aren't Kingfishers and Seagulls available on American BB's and CA's? Shouldn't these be aboard most of the USN BB's and CA's? Without them, the USN's search capabilities are greatly limited and a player is forced to search with valuable DB's.

In WITP, these float planes are highly valuable search aircraft, so it appears as though one of these games (WITP or CAW) has messed something up here.

2) Another question related to searches - how do I assign specific air groups to search missions? Several times now, I've had large numbers of carrier-based A6M2's off wasting their time searching when I would rather have them performing CAP or available for strike escort. How do I stop this?

3) Yet another search question - how do I recall search aircraft? I thought I saw something in the manual about recalling them, but I was unable to relocate the relavant section of the manual later when I actually wanted to recall some.

The US planes were not generally used for searching and there was no doctrine to enable them to be tied into the carrier based search plans. The case for the Japanese was exactly the opposite, planes carried by surface ships were an integral part of their search doctrine.

You don't assign specific air groups to searching, it is all handled automatically by the system on a Task Group basis. It is this automation that saves you a lot of work, and ensures that Japanese float planes are used first for any search missions so circumstances would have to be very extreme to see something other than those planes, and then bombers, used for searching.

Gregor

[Icedawg]

You don't assign specific air groups to searching, it is all handled automatically by the system on a Task Group basis. It is this automation that saves you a lot of work, and ensures that Japanese float planes are used first for any search missions so circumstances would have to be very extreme to see something other than those planes, and then bombers, used for searching.

Gregor

I figured this out last night and was greatly disappointed. I was hoping this game would be moderately detailed - at least to the point that I could assign specific planes/pilots to search missions and to search specifically designated areas. But alas, the computer does all of that, and several other detail-oriented game elements, for the player. For me, this effectively takes all of the fun/challenge out of the game making it virtually pointless to play.