Help!

[currahee55]

I've played WITP a lot, am now playing first game of AE, and having some trouble!

Two questions (for now!)-

First, my carriers in Coral Sea (I'm Japanese) will simply not attack his carriers, nor will his attack mine.....a few of my torp bombers set after some of his surface ships, and a lot of his carrier aircraft have attacked my surface and amphibious TF's, but we can't seem to generate a carrier battle?!

Maybe I haven't found his carriers; altho I know they're near. This leads to question no. 2- how do you set the vectors for the naval search function?! For example, does 180 to 220 mean you start at 180, and go clockwise to 220? Are the degrees measured from North, or from your heading? And will you cover all of those designated vectors, or if your aircraft are insufficient, will you just cover 180, and never get to 220? If it's counter-clockwise, it's a completely different result. And what does "random" mean, 360 degrees? And when you set it using the map, only one or two swaths are highlighted, is that all you'll search?

Any help greatly appreciated; I'm going crazy, my fleets are sinking, and my carrier pilots are sitting around drinking sake.

Ed

[bacchus]

Emorris

There are so many reasons as to the carrier forces not attacking that it is hard to pinpoint your problem. Range, weather, sighting... ect could all be issues.

As far as search patterns: the ranges are clockwise so 180 - 200 means you are patrolling 20 degrees instead of 340. A rule of thumb is that 1 plane per 10 degrees af search arc (am/pm). If you set the arc larger than you have planes to cover, it will cover in a clockwise manor as well filling out the first arcs in the clock first and so forth. When you look at the arcs on the map the different colors are am/pm searches. Random is simply that, random. Not advisable in carrier battles. I usually set a large number to scout (30-40% of dive bomber group) and in the direction I suspect the enemy as scouting seems way more important in AE verses WiTP.

[jackyo123]

the carrier fights will come - make sure youve got sufficient search aircraft (maybe 30% of your DB force and any land based planes) on search.

For naval arcs - its always clockwise. so if you set '20 - 120' you will get ONE single plane searching a 10 degree arc in the morning, and an adjacent 10 degree arc in the afternoon. Thus, you need 18 planes (180 degrees morning, 180 afternoon) for full 360 degree coverage.