Task Force Combat - # of ships in Task Force

[Tom_Holsinger]

I request information concerning the relationship between task force size and naval combat, both surface and carrier vs. carrier. I am WITP newbie but played hundreds of hours of the original Gary Grigsby’s Pacific War. I’d also like to know how the answer might differ concerning War Plan Orange.

The last paragraph of Part 6.2 of the WITP-AE manual says that the fighting power of task forces larger than 15 ships is somehow diminished in anti-aircraft, and both attacking and defending in surface combat. WPO's manual says the same thing. I’d like to know how this is accomplished.

I’d also like to know what factors the AI uses in determining what size task force to build in a given location, though this is limited to surface combat, bombardment and carrier task forces.

My experience in Pacific War was that the AI plain sucked at building effective task forces. It insisted on assembling several piddly little ones rather than one big TF, with the result that those kept getting destroyed by air attack or in surface combat while inflicting minimal damage, especially against full 15-ship/destroyer division player-assembled TF’s. Basically players used Mahanian principles of “Don’t Divide the Fleet” to assemble big, high fire-power TF’s which could easily defeat the smaller AI-assembled TF’s in detail.

I just purchased both WITP-AE and WPO, and have only watched a few AI vs. AI turns of each. It appears that the AI in both games keeps assembling the familiar piddly little TF’s. I have yet to see it assemble even squadron-sized battleship/battlecruiser TF’s – those seem to be only division-size at most and generally have only 2-3 dreadnoughts. AFAIK, those will be eaten by a big carrier strike in WITP, or a WPO player-assembled surface combat TF composed of an eight dreadnought squadron with 2-3 cruisers and a half-dozen destroyers as screen. Which means they would only be enjoyable in PBEM.

Am I wrong on this, i.e., can the AI's piddly little TF's defeat really large player TF's? If so, how am I wrong? Is WITP-AE any better on this than WPO?