ORIGINAL: LoBaron
So how did the majority of escorts magically arrive together?
Ok I try again:
All of the strike arrived together! It was coordinated. The escorts engaged CAP and were outnumbered, so in your situation they only were able to pretect those bombers you see with them together in the combat animation. That you see the rest of the bombers arriving without protection is just a sign of the escorts being overwhelmed,
not lack of coordination.
Hmmmm. Does that mean that every strike is coordinated? [;)] I guess I don't really buy that. I don't think they are coordinated because even against smaller CAP it is often the same kind of result. For the Allies too. They sent massive waves of LBA that was shredded as the fighters and bombers 'arrived,' or were 'shown,' or were 'in' different packages. Yet those same planes could coordinate into one package arriving protected from CVs?
Maybe we need to wok on more precise terms for what is going on. If this is coordinated, what was the CV strike that blew up most of the Allied CVEs, uber-coordinated? There is a big difference. So what are the right terms?
Why is it so different, and usually a much better result for the attacker, coming from 4 separate CV TFs maybe up to 10 miles apart as opposed to coming from one big LBA base?
Explaining the details of the abstraction doesn't really help make the coordination any better.
No it doesn´t, but that is what I tried to explain. You are in a situation where what you percieve as 'coordination' (= everything, or most of the strike, moving in together and protected by CAP in a single combat animation) is close to impossible. You are running several hundreds of planes from multiple bases of origin into the heaviest CAP/EW combinatino the Allies can muster. There are a whole lot of things preventing your single big combat animation. The more complex the setup, the number of units, the heavier the defense, the more often a strike cohesion will be less than perfect, and it will happen due to multiple different reasons. Only part of what you see is caused by coordination issues as I define the term and as it is used by the game engine.
Almost all from one base actually. A few escorts from the base in the next hex, but most all from Fusan. Are you say we can NEVER expect any decent coordination against a well protected target? That is inherently false, if so, as it happens occasionally from LBA and often from CV air.
I don't mind some 'uncoordination.' That would be expected. What sucks is when the bulk of escorts arrive almost completely without bombers, not sweeping but struggling under the close escort penalty, and yet those escorts are all different speeds, as I said, set to different alt bands, and the other several hundred bombers come in to get massacred completely. This just a turn after a large package from a CV (not all planes mind you, but still around 440) arrived together, with devastating results.
It doesn't make sense. The HQ numbers are similar from the CV commander to the LBA HQ commander. What is so different?
In your situation I would assume the chance of several combat animations occuring to arrive 100%. I was not posting to help you to improve coordination, but to lower your expectations on how a coordinated strike looks like in this situation.
I don't mean to be a pain, and I realize you're offering a lot of knowledge, but I wonder if you've tried this version. Are you playing the beta? Do you have these same problems, or not?
Yes, and loving it. I have not played the beta this far into the war as you are (last stock game PBEM was still with the latest official patch), so I do not have any experience with huge late war strikes, but I already know what to expect based on the changes.
Cool. I actually like the beta too, in spite of my comments here. it is better this way than everything in a mass that obliterates every target.
My expectations will always be higher though than what I'm seeing now because I have seen it work. Rarely, but I have. I want to know more and make it work better. It should in my opinion if it does from the CVs. In fact LBA should be able to organize and and take off closer together than CV air, find their way better using landmarks, etc. Just don't' see why there is the massive difference in result unless there is an inherent and unalterable game system advantage for CV air coordination. If there is, then this all makes more sense. If not, then something is wrong with LBA calculations at present or with our understanding of what makes those strikes coordinate better.
At one point I think Damien said he and Nemo 'figured out' LBA coordination in using the beta. I have some hunches about what it would take, but a larger discussion might be better. I'll think about posting in the main forum. It's a worthy topic, although charged, but common understandings really need an update in using the beta.
All of this said, I'm not completely unhappy with my own results here. Three CVEs hit while challenging a massive fleet with huge CAP and lots of very good flak. The CV strike is the one that seems really odd in terms of results, but somewhere in between would be ideal, where LBA can be a real danger and CV air is not going to obliterate 15-20 ships with each launch.
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
