Headhunter - Lokasenna (A) vs. mind_messing (J) - No MM yet

[Lokasenna]

Check out this plucky fellow.

+11 points in one day!

[BBfanboy]

IMO the problem is the 80% CAP setting. So at dawn, 80% of the fighters are in the air - for a couple of hours.
Then they have to all land at approximately the same time to gas up. That means a queue and holding patterns.
They get down and have to wait their turn at the pump. The pilot has to go in for a whiz and a quick snack/chug a coke, and pay the cashier for the gas. [;)]
Ready to go 30 minutes after landing but there is a queue for takeoff.
Finally take off 40 minutes after coming down, and an hour after entering the holding pattern.

Meanwhile, the interim CAP has been the 20% residual aircraft not sent up at dawn.

Repeat this about three times more during the day, with raids arriving at the worst possible time (as they always do).

I consider 50% a high CAP setting and will go to 60% only in an emergency - the CAP decays pretty fast by PM air phase.

But then, I can't claim to be a master of the air war either so take my opinion as a suggestion to be considered. [8D]

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

IMO the problem is the 80% CAP setting. So at dawn, 80% of the fighters are in the air - for a couple of hours.
Then they have to all land at approximately the same time to gas up. That means a queue and holding patterns.
They get down and have to wait their turn at the pump. The pilot has to go in for a whiz and a quick snack/chug a coke, and pay the cashier for the gas. [;)]
Ready to go 30 minutes after landing but there is a queue for takeoff.
Finally take off 40 minutes after coming down, and an hour after entering the holding pattern.

Meanwhile, the interim CAP has been the 20% residual aircraft not sent up at dawn.

Repeat this about three times more during the day, with raids arriving at the worst possible time (as they always do).

I consider 50% a high CAP setting and will go to 60% only in an emergency - the CAP decays pretty fast by PM air phase.

But then, I can't claim to be a master of the air war either so take my opinion as a suggestion to be considered. [8D]

That may be how CAP works in real life.... but is that how it works in the game?


All raids came from Lae, Buna, and Hansa Bay.

Almost the entirety of the LCUs unloaded in the one phase, however they only have about 95% supply. Am pondering another day and going to sit on the turn until morning.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

IMO the problem is the 80% CAP setting. So at dawn, 80% of the fighters are in the air - for a couple of hours.
Then they have to all land at approximately the same time to gas up. That means a queue and holding patterns.
They get down and have to wait their turn at the pump. The pilot has to go in for a whiz and a quick snack/chug a coke, and pay the cashier for the gas. [;)]
Ready to go 30 minutes after landing but there is a queue for takeoff.
Finally take off 40 minutes after coming down, and an hour after entering the holding pattern.

Meanwhile, the interim CAP has been the 20% residual aircraft not sent up at dawn.

Repeat this about three times more during the day, with raids arriving at the worst possible time (as they always do).

I consider 50% a high CAP setting and will go to 60% only in an emergency - the CAP decays pretty fast by PM air phase.

But then, I can't claim to be a master of the air war either so take my opinion as a suggestion to be considered. [8D]

That may be how CAP works in real life.... but is that how it works in the game?

I will defer to more knowledgeable players to respond to this - but I recall in my tutoring by forumites that very high CAP settings were not good.

[obvert]

This is correct about the high percentage CAP settings. Probably worked better in previous versions of the game where strikes were not so spread out, but if they arrive in all of these little packages, you have to have some planes on stand-by. So the highest I usually go is 50-60%. Wildcats though are not quick to get up either.

Also, the Wildkittens won't fare well against Tojos, which were escorting on most of his strikes in decent numbers. Your CR states how many of your CAP were available, but not how many were up in time. Watching the replay I'd bet you'd see fewer F4F-4 up than the escorts arriving for most of these strikes, and since the Tojos and even the A6M5 trump the Wildcat in speed and maneuver, some bombers will get through.

Then the CVEs themselves are only moving at 17 knots flank with relatively poor flak. Anything than gets through has a good chance to put a TT in the water and anything in the water is likely to hit. Against your CVs with their speed and greater flak the hits would probably be 50-70% less.

To top it off you had thunderstorms which usually work in your favor as the defender, but in this case seem to have kept the bleeding CAP from finding the strikes and maybe even the local CAP from getting to them in force.

I worry about this playing PDU-off. Wildcats forever!! [:(]

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: obvert

This is correct about the high percentage CAP settings. Probably worked better in previous versions of the game where strikes were not so spread out, but if they arrive in all of these little packages, you have to have some planes on stand-by. So the highest I usually go is 50-60%. Wildcats though are not quick to get up either.

Also, the Wildkittens won't fare well against Tojos, which were escorting on most of his strikes in decent numbers. Your CR states how many of your CAP were available, but not how many were up in time. Watching the replay I'd bet you'd see fewer F4F-4 up than the escorts arriving for most of these strikes, and since the Tojos and even the A6M5 trump the Wildcat in speed and maneuver, some bombers will get through.

Then the CVEs themselves are only moving at 17 knots flank with relatively poor flak. Anything than gets through has a good chance to put a TT in the water and anything in the water is likely to hit. Against your CVs with their speed and greater flak the hits would probably be 50-70% less.

To top it off you had thunderstorms which usually work in your favor as the defender, but in this case seem to have kept the bleeding CAP from finding the strikes and maybe even the local CAP from getting to them in force.

I worry about this playing PDU-off. Wildcats forever!! [:(]

Indeed. My CVEs will have Hellcats at some point, realism be damned. I'd be OK with using the FM-1 and such, except for the downgrade in firepower.

Yeah, thunderstorms could have stopped the leaky CAP. They did show up a little in the PM.

I watched the replay last night and will watch it again here shortly, but in some of these strikes I think I had good numbers of escorts engaging right away.

[Lokasenna]

Thought about this some more. In my game against Bullwinkle, I've been running my KB CAP routinely at 80% CAP/20% rest, when I've only wanted fighter coverage. Which has been often lately as I'm covering some other ships.

I don't run into any problems there. I get that the Zero has much better climb than the Wildcats and all that, but still... my CAP has completely butchered almost every incoming raid. The only thing that gets through sometimes is 1 or 2 4Es. The rest die or are driven off.

[Lokasenna]

I sent a "test turn" to MM with only a change in CAP settings. All I did was drop the CAP settings from 80% CAP, 20% Rest to 50% CAP and no rest.

It's pretty much comparable.

I don't think it was the percentages of CAP here, and I'm really not convinced that 80% CAP or 50% CAP makes much difference in the number of planes that make it into the air (due to fighter scrambling) except perhaps in the case of whether you're expecting many strikes (where 50% may be better due to rotating planes?) or just a few big strikes (where 80% will be up at the start and better to hit, say, a coordinated CV strike package).

Really wish the game wasn't this opaque on this aspect.

Combat report from that test turn attached. Major notes:

More Wildcats from the CVEs are in fact in the air during the sweeps on Moresby, presumably because I had none set to Rest so they would scramble up in this combat situation.

>> Comparable number of Wildcats on CAP to meet the first strike: 124 instead of 116. This shoots a hole in the theory that 50% CAP settings spreads the CAP out longer, rather than everybody being up at once...because it certainly looks like everybody is up at once here, too.

>> The majority of strike packages still get through, despite planes being vectored onto the bombers with less time for total intercept than the time to target.

>> In this replay, more planes are listed as scrambling. If anything, wouldn't this be WORSE than 80% CAP where the planes are already in the air but on standby?

>> Even a 28-Kate raid, unescorted, gets through 104 Wildcats and 23 of them get to drop torpedoes. That is f-ing horrendous performance on the part of the CAP. This makes me think that VRF units are just worse, and nobody told anybody that they are.

>> 32 Vals came unescorted against 102 Wildcats still in the air and 15 of them made it to their drop points. Absurd. Again, something else is going on here besides CAP percentage settings.

>> Despite fewer raids against the CVEs (more flew against the fleet carriers in this replay), there are actually fewer Wildcats up on CAP by the end of the string of strikes than there were when I had 80% set. Probably just statistical noise, but something I'd want to keep my eye on were I to do more tests.

>> In almost every instance in this combat report, the VRF units have much higher times to intercept than the VF units.


It could very well have been the Thunderstorms in the hex. I have noticed before that "severe storms" or "heavy rain" means that sometimes my bombers get through the CAP completely to bomb the airfield, with no air combat taking place.

[HansBolter]

You guys are really confusing me on CAP.

I have always operated under the impression that 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is in the air, 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is on the ground at the ready and 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is being processed.

If I set the squadron to Escort with 70% CAP, ONLY the 70% will ever get into the air in the CAP role.

The other 30% is allocated to Escort and if there are no bomber missions from the base that turn the 30% will rest and NOT join the other 70% in the CAP role.

So, if you want more planes in the air on CAP you have to increase the CAP percentage.

Is all of this incorrect?

[BBfanboy]

I recall seeing a post that said that units that are still in "Carrier Capable" status rather than "Carrier Trained" suffer some degrade of their performance. That would likely apply to the VRF squadrons early in the war since it takes something like 3 or 4 months on the carrier to become fully trained (in carrier ops, not in air missions). I don't know what the penalties for not being fully trained are, but slower turnaround and launch operations seems reasonable. I think there could also be coordination issues, which may include coordinating with shipboard radar controllers to make the intercept. All just speculation on my part.

HansBolter - You pose some good questions to which I do not have any answers. Your model of how CAP missions work in the game programming could be correct, or partially so. I look forward to the more experienced players responding!

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

You guys are really confusing me on CAP.

I have always operated under the impression that 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is in the air, 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is on the ground at the ready and 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is being processed.

If I set the squadron to Escort with 70% CAP, ONLY the 70% will ever get into the air in the CAP role.

The other 30% is allocated to Escort and if there are no bomber missions from the base that turn the 30% will rest and NOT join the other 70% in the CAP role.

So, if you want more planes in the air on CAP you have to increase the CAP percentage.

Is all of this incorrect?

So far as I can tell, the only guys that won't fly are those that are set to Rest. If you have 50% CAP and no other settings, those other 50% are still available to be scrambled to intercept.

My assumption, born out by the numbers I see in combat reports, has always been that whatever percent is assigned to CAP is in the air. This is then subject to being worn down from successive strikes and whatnot.

In small cases, I've seen this exactly - 16-plane Brit units on 50% CAP, 30% Train, 20% Rest always had 8 planes in the air against raids or sweeps. 25-plane units with 80% CAP, 20% rest always had 20 planes in the air and reported in the combat replay text.

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

I recall seeing a post that said that units that are still in "Carrier Capable" status rather than "Carrier Trained" suffer some degrade of their performance. That would likely apply to the VRF squadrons early in the war since it takes something like 3 or 4 months on the carrier to become fully trained (in carrier ops, not in air missions). I don't know what the penalties for not being fully trained are, but slower turnaround and launch operations seems reasonable. I think there could also be coordination issues, which may include coordinating with shipboard radar controllers to make the intercept. All just speculation on my part.

HansBolter - You pose some good questions to which I do not have any answers. Your model of how CAP missions work in the game programming could be correct, or partially so. I look forward to the more experienced players responding!

Pretty sure they start as Carrier Trained. Regardless, they've been on my CVEs since they arrived 4-6 months ago: more than enough time to become Carrier Trained. The VMF unit has been on Long Island since around the same time period (November-December, 1942). It's now May 1943.

Penalties listed for being Capable, but not Trained, are just higher ops losses. I've never actually noticed a substantial increase. There may be one, but it appears to be minor.

[Sangeli]

I don't think this issue is particular to just CVEs; lost in the combat reports was a small strike of 8 Vals and 9 Tojos against 65 fighters. 7 of the 8 Vals managed to drop bombs which is simply unacceptable from a USN point of view.

What caught my attention the most about these combat reports are the tallies for how many fighters are airborne, on standby, and being scrabbled. If you look at those numbers instead of the supposed "total" of all the fighters engaged in CAP the result makes a lot more sense. Very few fighters in any of the battles were listed as airborne so from that angle it is an understandable result.

Another thing I picked up on was the number of CVE fighters that were diverted to CAP over the hex. Has anyone ever tried using LRCAP of fighters on CVEs on its own fleet? I know that for LBA that LRCAP does a better job protecting fleets than does CAP. Would be interested in seeing some testing on optimal fighter configuration on CVEs because it seems everyone gets burned by them except the Japanese!

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Sangeli

I don't think this issue is particular to just CVEs; lost in the combat reports was a small strike of 8 Vals and 9 Tojos against 65 fighters. 7 of the 8 Vals managed to drop bombs which is simply unacceptable from a USN point of view.

What caught my attention the most about these combat reports are the tallies for how many fighters are airborne, on standby, and being scrabbled. If you look at those numbers instead of the supposed "total" of all the fighters engaged in CAP the result makes a lot more sense. Very few fighters in any of the battles were listed as airborne so from that angle it is an understandable result.

Another thing I picked up on was the number of CVE fighters that were diverted to CAP over the hex. Has anyone ever tried using LRCAP of fighters on CVEs on its own fleet? I know that for LBA that LRCAP does a better job protecting fleets than does CAP. Would be interested in seeing some testing on optimal fighter configuration on CVEs because it seems everyone gets burned by them except the Japanese!

My attention also. The numbers engaged would start out very low, and then climb to the total. But the time to target is still very bad. I'm hoping that it was just the weather, or those diverted to help with the sweeps (which I'm not doing that way in future...), that caused such bad intercepts.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

You guys are really confusing me on CAP.

I have always operated under the impression that 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is in the air, 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is on the ground at the ready and 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is being processed.

If I set the squadron to Escort with 70% CAP, ONLY the 70% will ever get into the air in the CAP role.

The other 30% is allocated to Escort and if there are no bomber missions from the base that turn the 30% will rest and NOT join the other 70% in the CAP role.

So, if you want more planes in the air on CAP you have to increase the CAP percentage.

Is all of this incorrect?

So far as I can tell, the only guys that won't fly are those that are set to Rest. If you have 50% CAP and no other settings, those other 50% are still available to be scrambled to intercept.

My assumption, born out by the numbers I see in combat reports, has always been that whatever percent is assigned to CAP is in the air. This is then subject to being worn down from successive strikes and whatnot.

In small cases, I've seen this exactly - 16-plane Brit units on 50% CAP, 30% Train, 20% Rest always had 8 planes in the air against raids or sweeps. 25-plane units with 80% CAP, 20% rest always had 20 planes in the air and reported in the combat replay text.

[

So that would mean that if you set Escort with 50% CAP and want the other 50% to scramble you had better NOT give any bombers at the base a mission.

Surely the 50% not set to CAP, can't both Escort AND scramble?

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

You guys are really confusing me on CAP.

I have always operated under the impression that 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is in the air, 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is on the ground at the ready and 1/3 of what is allocated to CAP is being processed.

If I set the squadron to Escort with 70% CAP, ONLY the 70% will ever get into the air in the CAP role.

The other 30% is allocated to Escort and if there are no bomber missions from the base that turn the 30% will rest and NOT join the other 70% in the CAP role.

So, if you want more planes in the air on CAP you have to increase the CAP percentage.

Is all of this incorrect?

So far as I can tell, the only guys that won't fly are those that are set to Rest. If you have 50% CAP and no other settings, those other 50% are still available to be scrambled to intercept.

My assumption, born out by the numbers I see in combat reports, has always been that whatever percent is assigned to CAP is in the air. This is then subject to being worn down from successive strikes and whatnot.

In small cases, I've seen this exactly - 16-plane Brit units on 50% CAP, 30% Train, 20% Rest always had 8 planes in the air against raids or sweeps. 25-plane units with 80% CAP, 20% rest always had 20 planes in the air and reported in the combat replay text.

[

So that would mean that if you set Escort with 50% CAP and want the other 50% to scramble you had better NOT give any bombers at the base a mission.

Surely the 50% not set to CAP, can't both Escort AND scramble?

I would imagine not.

If you happened to do that, then whichever ones flew off with the bombers clearly wouldn't be available as CAP.

[obvert]

I think the issue is that the game knows that the fighters have to refuel and rearm, so that if you have 80% CAP you'll hit the first strike hard but you have no planes on stand-by to come up later. I've always used a 50% or lower CAP for CVs and it's worked pretty well for me on the Japanese side. For the Allies, I'll have to see.

The other major factor not yet mentioned here is their distance setting. A CAP set to range 0 will perform better in that hex than a CAP set to range 1-7. I usually have some of the CVEs performing a 0 hex CAP to make sure something is up in force immediately.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: obvert

I think the issue is that the game knows that the fighters have to refuel and rearm, so that if you have 80% CAP you'll hit the first strike hard but you have no planes on stand-by to come up later. I've always used a 50% or lower CAP for CVs and it's worked pretty well for me on the Japanese side. For the Allies, I'll have to see.

The other major factor not yet mentioned here is their distance setting. A CAP set to range 0 will perform better in that hex than a CAP set to range 1-7. I usually have some of the CVEs performing a 0 hex CAP to make sure something is up in force immediately.

Everything here was Range 0, except the CV-based planes, which were set to 1 as I wanted them to leak over if necessary.

My experience doesn't bear the bolded part out. Indeed, the combat text says all the planes that engaged were on standby! The only difference was that more were scrambling with the lower CAP setting and fewer were on standby, which is surely worse than all standby, no scrambling.

I think the key is just to not have any on Rest, but you'll also wear your pilots out that way.

[obvert]

I guess the only way to tell what real effect these changes have is to test using these settings with lots of iterations to account for weather and randomness.

[Yaab]

Lokasenna, you should be thankful for Thunderstorms. If it hadn't been them, you would have lost all six CVEs. Japanese torpedo bombers in Clear weather are murder. In Thunderstorms, they are as useful as the hobbits in Moria.

[Lowpe]

Lok, don't read my AAR until you run your next turn. There be spoilers there.