Interception of Transport Planes

[adarbrauner]

Can they be intercepted? In what phase?

Subsidiary question:

If a player sets a LRCAP in an area far from target but on the flying path of an incoming enemy's strike flight, is there any chance his CAP shall intercept the incoming planes?

for example, suppose Japanese bombers are targeting an objective in Java from East, for example southern Borneo, but the Allied player has set a LRCAP in an hex which is right on bombers approaching path, over Java Sea, some hexes far away from their target. any chance for an interception?

TIA

Adar

[LoBaron]

Air missions are strictly point to point. The flight path is not modelled into the game engine, so interception in a hex along the flight path is impossible.

You have two options:
LRCAP the destination base (actual air combat happening but not modelled in the replay as it happens after the pm phase) or LRCAP the base of origin which will abstract combat by increasing op losses for all planes operation from there.

edit: when you CAP destination base the replay will display an according message ('transports flying to x intercepted')

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Air missions are strictly point to point. The flight path is not modelled into the game engine, so interception in a hex along the flight path is impossible.

You have two options:
LRCAP the destination base (actual air combat happening but not modelled in the replay as it happens after the pm phase) or LRCAP the base of origin which will abstract combat by increasing op losses for all planes operation from there.

edit: when you CAP destination base the replay will display an according message ('transports flying to x intercepted')

When planes are intercepted, they are shown as air-to-air losses. I can't speak as to whether the presence of LRCAP or CAP increases ops losses.

Also, I've never been able to get the "intercepted" message using LRCAP - only CAP with the proper range settings and capabilities (IIRC from the beta patch notes the base being intercepted must be within half of normal range for the plane on CAP). It also depends on altitude, apparently...

[HansBolter]

LRCAP has been effective in intercepting transports all the way back to Uncommon Valor.

Used to see lots more of it in UV than I see now though so I hope it wasn't nerfed.

[RogerJNeilson]

I operate on the basis that sweeps will intercept provided they are at 4 or less hexes range. I picked that up in an AAR a while back and have used it to good effect.

Roger

[adarbrauner]

Roger: you meant they intercept any kind of airplane/mission?

But what do you mean by 4 hexes distance? You can sweep only over an enemy base, isn't it?
Therefore, the sweeping aircrafts shall have a chance to intercept enemy airplanes bounded to, or originating from, a base wich is within 4 hexes from the target you've chosen?

Please furtherly explain

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Air missions are strictly point to point. The flight path is not modelled into the game engine, so interception in a hex along the flight path is impossible.

You have two options:
LRCAP the destination base (actual air combat happening but not modelled in the replay as it happens after the pm phase) or LRCAP the base of origin which will abstract combat by increasing op losses for all planes operation from there.

edit: when you CAP destination base the replay will display an according message ('transports flying to x intercepted')

When planes are intercepted, they are shown as air-to-air losses. I can't speak as to whether the presence of LRCAP or CAP increases ops losses.

Also, I've never been able to get the "intercepted" message using LRCAP - only CAP with the proper range settings and capabilities (IIRC from the beta patch notes the base being intercepted must be within half of normal range for the plane on CAP). It also depends on altitude, apparently...

You should see it in the Ops report ...

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: adarbrauner

Roger: you meant they intercept any kind of airplane/mission?

But what do you mean by 4 hexes distance? You can sweep only over an enemy base, isn't it?
Therefore, the sweeping aircrafts shall have a chance to intercept enemy airplanes bounded to, or originating from, a base wich is within 4 hexes from the target you've chosen?

Please furtherly explain

They can, but my experience is that there is some probability involved. LRCAP is far more effective on a routine basis, but it really hits the groups fatigue and morale. So it is hard to do long term....

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: PaxMondo

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Air missions are strictly point to point. The flight path is not modelled into the game engine, so interception in a hex along the flight path is impossible.

You have two options:
LRCAP the destination base (actual air combat happening but not modelled in the replay as it happens after the pm phase) or LRCAP the base of origin which will abstract combat by increasing op losses for all planes operation from there.

edit: when you CAP destination base the replay will display an according message ('transports flying to x intercepted')

When planes are intercepted, they are shown as air-to-air losses. I can't speak as to whether the presence of LRCAP or CAP increases ops losses.

Also, I've never been able to get the "intercepted" message using LRCAP - only CAP with the proper range settings and capabilities (IIRC from the beta patch notes the base being intercepted must be within half of normal range for the plane on CAP). It also depends on altitude, apparently...

You should see it in the Ops report ...

And during the replay, but I don't unless I:

1) use CAP, not LRCAP
2) meet the other requirements (under half normal range, etc.)

Also, they are air to air losses, not ops. Ops losses are something else.

[witpqs]

I've seen enemy flak take down transport planes too.

[RogerJNeilson]

ORIGINAL: adarbrauner

Roger: you meant they intercept any kind of airplane/mission?

But what do you mean by 4 hexes distance? You can sweep only over an enemy base, isn't it?
Therefore, the sweeping aircrafts shall have a chance to intercept enemy airplanes bounded to, or originating from, a base wich is within 4 hexes from the target you've chosen?

Please furtherly explain

Transport planes flying to or from a base will in my experience be intercepted if I have my fighters on a sweep mission targeting that base provided my fighters are flying from their own base that is within 4 hexes of the intercept base. This is of course subject to the normal supply, base size, weather etc etc.....

Doing a search through my archived combat reports I located 530 instances of this... the last one being:

War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\SAVE\archive\Combat_Events_440325.txt
00166: Transports flying to Tandjoengbalai intercepted
00167: Transports flying to Sorong intercepted
00168: Transports flying to Sorong intercepted

It doesn't tell you the results of the interceptions, but looking at the plane losses for that move would indicate some were shot down whilst the others will have turned back. Its 8 months ago in game time so I don't have the data any more in Tracker from then.

I suspect since then my opponent realised and stopped flying into bases where I was sweeping in this manner.

I used a program called Windows Grep (Open source) to search all the text files.

Incidentally you also get a report in the aoperations report for example....

War in the Pacific Admiral's Edition\SAVE\aoperationsreport_431029.txt
00251: Transports flying to Raba intercepted





Roger

[LoBaron]

Sweeps do not intercept transport missions Roger. They tangle with either CAP or LRCAP under the right circumstances, thats it.

What you might experience is one of the following:
1) leaky CAP due to proximity between bases.
2) inadvertedly set LRCAP

LRCAP against transports works as advertised. The effectiveness significantly decreases with mission range though. There was a bug with LRCAP not engaging transports effectively due to incorrect range calculations. Michael fixed it in one of the betas about 12-18 months ago IIRC.

[RogerJNeilson]

Interesting, as I have intercepts occurring in the past, and I don't use LRCAP because of the fatigue that it incurs, and the units were set to sweep the base in question - but it was a while ago so maybe its a feature of the Beta of the time which has now been sorted. I have no up to date information as my opponent seems to have stopped trying to evacuate or reinforce where I am sweeping.

Roger

[adarbrauner]

Is the LRCAP on enemy's airport effective only against transport planes, or even against other outbound missions and planes?

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Roger Neilson 3

Interesting, as I have intercepts occurring in the past, and I don't use LRCAP because of the fatigue that it incurs, and the units were set to sweep the base in question - but it was a while ago so maybe its a feature of the Beta of the time which has now been sorted. I have no up to date information as my opponent seems to have stopped trying to evacuate or reinforce where I am sweeping.

Roger

Roger I do not doubt what you say. I am 99.9% sure though that you are not witnessing a cause/effect relationship but rather a random correlation between settings and events. That happens a lot in WitP and people tend to jump conclusions before they ran any proper verification and negative tests. Thats how all those hard to debuff urban legends are born.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: adarbrauner

Is the LRCAP on enemy's airport effective only against transport planes, or even against other outbound missions and planes?

It is effective on all outbound missions. Note that this is highly abstracted to mitigate limitations in the game engine, which is to my best knowledge also the reason for losses not showing up as A2A but rather as op losses.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

ORIGINAL: adarbrauner

Is the LRCAP on enemy's airport effective only against transport planes, or even against other outbound missions and planes?

It is effective on all outbound missions. Note that this is highly abstracted to mitigate limitations in the game engine, which is to my best knowledge also the reason for losses not showing up as A2A but rather as op losses.

I will try again with LRCAP - perhaps I wasn't meeting the range requirements or something.

However, I am going to reiterate that without a doubt the losses show up as A2A and not Ops. Likewise with flak losses from enemy flak at the destination - they show up as flak.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

I've seen enemy flak take down transport planes too.

Heavy flak will murder transports carrying an air born assault. It is nice to see.

Other than that, I use LRCAP to interdict transports. They will engage escorts and sometimes can have a bloody air battle that nobody ever sees in the replay. Sometimes they miss the transports but that is OK because a lot of troop transport happened at night for just that reason. OP losses on transports are very high so it all seems to work out in the end.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: witpqs

I've seen enemy flak take down transport planes too.

Heavy flak will murder transports carrying an air born assault. It is nice to see.
Oh, yes - I forgot about that! Also, I recently saw flying boats damaged and at leas tone destroyed at a base I had captured shortly before. They had to be pulling out troops.

Other than that, I use LRCAP to interdict transports. They will engage escorts and sometimes can have a bloody air battle that nobody ever sees in the replay. Sometimes they miss the transports but that is OK because a lot of troop transport happened at night for just that reason. OP losses on transports are very high so it all seems to work out in the end.

[SheperdN7]

+1000 on the heavy flak point by crsutton. I got a baptism by fire in my first para-drop, that's for sure.