Is CAP useles or did I miss something?

[Misconduct]

Someone explain this to me, I have 72 P40e's on Moresby with the lowest pilot experience set at 74 while highest is 81. 50% CAP and 30% Rest, and range set for 0. A flight of 16 Betties fly unescorted to Moresby and only 22 scramble, I manage to shoot down 1 then they attack my 2 cruisers and sink both, with 2 loses to the cruisers. Oh Moresby has an Airfield rating of 5 and 65,000 supplies so there is no question of leadership, damaged aircraft what so ever, all 72 were ready to fly.

Seriously whats the point of CAP since its garbage if you are hoping to defend something?

[Big B]

Before screaming murder, and having seen many such results myself, I have one question for you -
What was the weather over the target hex that day? Was it heavy cloud or rain?

It seems warships under heavy cloud will still get attacked, but the CAP often fails to make contact with the raiders....they sneak in and out under heavy weather.

To me, that seems to fly in the face of the advantages of hiding under a storm, but it does seem to work to the advantage of the attacker in air combat in the game.

Other than that - I can't imagine why CAP failed to be a better deterrent.???

Did 22 P-40's actually engage the incoming raid?

[witpqs]

I'm wondering about the 50% CAP + 30% Rest setting. If I understand correctly, 30% Rest means 30% of the squadron's planes will not fly that day. 50% CAP means the squadron will try to keep 50% of its planes in the air at all times. Seems like that could quickly fatigue those 70% who are allowed to fly that day (i.e. not ordered to Rest).

Maybe that messed up the CAP too?

[YukonSD]

I could be wrong here...

With 30% of the P-40's on rest, that would leave about 50 planes available for duty (30% of 72 is 22, 72-22=50). Now, 50% of that reduced number of planes is 25; roughtly the number that sortied for you. The 3 missing planes could have missed various checks, either pilot or plane, and thus not have sortied.

This assumes that 30% rest is applied before 50% CAP.

[Misconduct]

I mean if the manual states "CAP is full of crap" then I can understand, however a P40e should have no problem taking on a japanese bomber thats unescorted. I can understand one or two being driving off by defensive firepower, but seriously 1 kill of 22 p40s?

So how did the betties magically find the cruisers in the rain then? Since the CAP can't seem to find the attackers.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: Misconduct

I mean if the manual states "CAP is full of crap" then I can understand, however a P40e should have no problem taking on a japanese bomber thats unescorted. I can understand one or two being driving off by defensive firepower, but seriously 1 kill of 22 p40s?

So how did the betties magically find the cruisers in the rain then? Since the CAP can't seem to find the attackers.

did you have radar? What did the combat report say? When was the raid detected? ie what range? What altitude was the raid coming in at? What alt was the CAP set to? What was the WEATHER?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: YukonSD

This assumes that 30% rest is applied before 50% CAP.

I think all the percentage settings for air missions are applied against the full 100% total. A developer could say for certain.

[Alfred]

Misconduct,

1. You should reread s.7.4.1 of the manual before you make such emphatic statements in post #1 that CAP is garbage.

2. Then having absorbed what is contained in s.7.4.1, consider how your own command decisions impact upon the performance of your forces.

3. Give us the full picture of what happened if you seriously expect an explanation. In addition to the essential points made by TheElf in post #6, you fail to say whether your available CAP had been whittled down by earlier enemy sweeps, escorted bomber raids.

Frankly, I find too many people make outrageous criticisms of the game model without doing their own homework, which homework if done before jumping to conclusions and posting, would either explain why things happen or at least would enable issues to be presented in a meaningful manner.

Alfred

[Mark Weston]

Just another forum post that quotes one combat result and then extrapolates a general conclusion about the game.

[Canoerebel]

Some of you are giving Misconduct too hard a time.  Perhaps there's a history with him or his posts that warrants reacting to him with such fervor, but I'm not aware of any such. 
 
He uses the word "garbage" in the initial post.  That can be construed as an insulting term, but it's more likely an off-the-cuff and non-hostile expression of his irration at something that seems out of whack.  He'd probably seen similar things before.  I know other players have noted results like this. 

[Puhis]

ORIGINAL: Misconduct

Seriously whats the point of CAP since its garbage if you are hoping to defend something?

I could show exactly opposite results, where only 5 or 6 P-40s shoot down 15-20 unescorted bettys over Port Moresby. That is as "garbage" result as your example.

[witp1951]

Misconduct,

A combat report and screen prints of your CAP units would be helpful in explaining your results. I have found CAP working as I would expect. My experience has been that altitude differentials between the strike and CAP seem to make a big impact. My opponent has been successful against me by slipping strikes well under my CAP [:@]. Lessons learned.

[rominet]

ORIGINAL: Misconduct

Someone explain this to me, I have 72 P40e's on Moresby with the lowest pilot experience set at 74 while highest is 81. 50% CAP and 30% Rest, and range set for 0. A flight of 16 Betties fly unescorted to Moresby and only 22 scramble, I manage to shoot down 1 then they attack my 2 cruisers and sink both, with 2 loses to the cruisers. Oh Moresby has an Airfield rating of 5 and 65,000 supplies so there is no question of leadership, damaged aircraft what so ever, all 72 were ready to fly.

Seriously whats the point of CAP since its garbage if you are hoping to defend something?

On which scenario?

[Grfin Zeppelin]

Indeed, a cap set to high can cause problems too. I had 5 waves of those Banshees (unescorted) with their crap pilots going throught my cap of crack Zero pilots. They only managed to catch the 5th wave God I love this game

[usersatch]

I think CAP works fine.  I'm fighting on Shortlands right now and I have two layers of CAP set up. First layer at 17,000ft with carrier air for each TF and another layer at 5,000ft with LBA over Shortlands.  The japanese have thrown the kitchen sink at me from Moresby, Lae, Buna, and Rabaul over the course of almost two weeks and not a single aircraft has scored a hit on 100+ ships. I'm not shooting down much during each attack, but hey, it adds up.
 
I'm finding that while pilot experience and sheer numbers are important, the mechanics of CAP are even more important (altitude, distance, etc.)
 
Now that I've boasted about it, I am expecting to lose half my APs tomorrow!

[Misconduct]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Some of you are giving Misconduct too hard a time.  Perhaps there's a history with him or his posts that warrants reacting to him with such fervor, but I'm not aware of any such. 

He uses the word "garbage" in the initial post.  That can be construed as an insulting term, but it's more likely an off-the-cuff and non-hostile expression of his irration at something that seems out of whack.  He'd probably seen similar things before.  I know other players have noted results like this. 

I think people have taken the post differently then it was intended, I was blowing off steam on my post and it was not to be taken as an insult towards the players or the game. I have always moderated myself quite well on the forums and far back as WITP I can remember only one heated conversation where I got emotional.

If anyone took the post as an insult then I'm sorry, I was blowing off steam from having 5 bad dice rolls due to rather uneventful circumstances.

Basically the P40s were flying cap at 16,000ft however radar only picked the betties at 34km at 4000ft.
So basically to answer my own question the CAP was flying to high.

I am curious I guess I need to split my squadron into 3 and fly 3 different CAPS Low/med/high?

[John Lansford]

I've got three squadrons of fighters on Makin, all three set to 60% CAP (10% rest).  That's 24 P-38's, 24 F4F's, and 25 P-40's.  The AI sends Bettys and Sallys from the islands to my north every day to attack the shipping there, sometimes with escorts, sometimes without.  Most of the time my fighters chase them away or shoot all the bombers down, but every once in a while only a small handful of fighters (fewer than 6) show up.  Then it gets interesting.
 
However, the vast majority of the time my fighters do their job and protect the ships and men at the base.  Losses among Bettys attacking Darwin got so heavy the AI withdrew the squadrons; I'm noticing more and more Betty attacks in China (retraining rookie pilots?) and very few in the SW/Central Pacific regions now.

[Misconduct]

I moved a squadron of P39's to Moresby to cap at 6k figuring the Betties that come in at 4k, 50% cap and 20% rest, now just need to wait and see what happens on the next raid, I think I need to move my P40 cap higher to 18k because Sally's are coming in at 17k to bomb the port.

Hopefully in the next day or so I can re-read everything about CAP and see if I missed something, far as I know the only problem would be Moresby only has the Australian I Corps there, I know the Fighter Hq's give a bonus, not sure if Australian I corps matters much in the situation?

[witpqs]

It's interesting to see the interplay of the CAP and Rest settings. I've just set CAP % accordingly and watched fatigue from turn to turn. The only time I've seen fatigue jump is when CAP % is high or a squadron escorts a raid (mostly say engaging in combat and/or at long range).

So far I've only used Rest for things that are otherwise 100%, like supply or troop transport missions. There it is definitely helpful. Early in AE the Rest percentage only applied to combat missions. Fatigue in transports carrying supplies would sky out and drive up ops losses. That meant lots of managing transport squadrons turn to turn. Now I can set a squadron to transport supplies with 10 or 20% Rest and fatigue stays acceptable, and ops losses low.

[Dili]

When the raid was detected? Maybe just some fighters or the snall number that was in the air could reach them due to that. In WW2 with no early warning most of bombers "always went trough", they were too fast.