ORIGINAL: JocMeister
If you set your CAP up low to protect shipping/ground troops you can get skewered by sweeps and if you set it high bombers always get through virtually unmolested. If you set them up both ways you are toast either way. I think some tweaking in this regard could be in order. This happened to me just a few turns ago when I had lowered all my CAP to 15K in order to protect some shipping at Terapo. Erik then swept Terapo at high altitude (31K) and of course got the insanely powerful dive costing me some 15 Hellcats for 2 Tojos.
The trick of layered CAP is to set up staggered altitudes which are both effective against high alt sweeps and bombing attacks. There are situations
where this is not possible as there are not enoug ressources available, but it is entirely possible when force relations are about equal.
I NEVER set a high percentage of CAP at max alt. You don't need to. hat xou need to do is stagger CAP in layers, so that in case bottom layers are
attacked by sweepers, the result is sweepers initially up high suddently below the higher CAP layers, which then have a chance to perform a diving
attack.
If you set all your planes at an alt band (e.g. 15k) this is obviousely not working. But if you set up multiple layers, space them so that every lower layer
is within reasonable distance from the following top layer, and then cream the whole with a small hinalt CAP of your best altitude interceptors and good
pilots, you have a pretty good chance to pose a threat to sweeps as well as strikes.
The trick is not to do this out of a habit and simply use standard altitudes without paying attention to what the opponent does, but react to opponents setup.
this is also the reason why personally I enjoy this aspect of the game so much. You need to outwit your opponent to remain competetive with your setup.
Also of note here is that the escort only consists of 6 Zeroes so despite the fact that many of the planes in the "low CAP" are older models they should still have been able to inflict some heavy damage on the strike planes.
Definitely, but ther was not so much CAP to tangle with as well, for reasons I partly understand but am limited in interpretation because I did not see the turn.
It might just have been enough that the Zeros bought enough time for the fast Judys to break through.
But I think my main point remains? I´ll simplify to make my point clearer.
-The best possible detection you can get is roughly 30 minutes.
-The time it takes for fighters on CAP duty but sitting on standby to scramble is also roughly 30 minutes.
Isn´t something very obviously wrong here? Since the majority on CAP duty is sitting on standby that actually means that the majority of the CAP have no chance to intercept the incoming strike?
This would be very consistent with what I have seen in my game so far. I regret now that I just recently lost all my combat reports in a disc crash. Would have been very interesting to go back and look at all the other "odd strikes" I have been on the receiving end of.
I still think there might be a problem concerning intercept time and detection time. My gut feeling says that this does not effect the IJ as much/at all. I base this (very loosely I´ll admit) on the fact that my opponent have had a good amount of both escorted and unescorted strikes go in right through the CAP with none to slight losses. I have not had this happen from my side at any time that I can recall.
Maybe, but to be honest I have not payed much attention to any relation there. I will look for it in the future.
Note that the time to intercept only tells you about the
last fighter able to reach the strike. It does not tell you anything else.
This means that if you got 20 fighters scrambling against an inbound strike, 'time to reach interception is 29' only tells you that this
is when fighter #20 arrived, it could well be that the other 19 were already battling it out 10 mins after detection.
As I said, your main problem still was your best fighterrs up high and so a very low intercept probability.
I case you still got the save from before you can try it out. Set up layers with P39 lowest at about 12k, stagger up slowly by putting the Warhawks a bit
higher, then the Tbolts and the Spits at alts between 15 and 20, and most of the Lightnings at up to 20-25k. If you want to set a few Lightnings as top cover
to simulate expected sweep protection, just to not make the setup unrealistic.
I am pretty sure the strike will get creamed.
