Fighters not Fighting

[Rogue187]

I have TFs unloading at Rangoon and Wake that are getting attacked by Japanese aircraft. The airfields are in the same hex as the TF, but the CAP isn't doing much. At Wake, I have 7 F4Fs engaging unescorted Nells, but they only make a token appearance when the attack starts and ends. It seems like they should be bouncing or destroying the groups. Why are they not engaging?

[spence]

Check their respective altitudes and the percentage CAP. If the bombers are attacking and the fighters are at 100ft the fighters won't be able to climb to the attack fast enough to engage. If your percentage is low there will be no/few few planes airborne when the bombers come in and the same situation will occur.

The Buffaloes in Rangoon have a combo of lousy planes, low experience and low morale so they are not very effective. There is one squadron of the AVG that can move to Rangoon without a PP cost. See if they do better.

[BBfanboy]

Radar, or the lack of it could be another factor. You need warning time to get the fighters up there.

[Yaab]

ORIGINAL: spence

Check their respective altitudes and the percentage CAP. If the bombers are attacking and the fighters are at 100ft the fighters won't be able to climb to the attack fast enough to engage. If your percentage is low there will be no/few few planes airborne when the bombers come in and the same situation will occur.

The Buffaloes in Rangoon have a combo of lousy planes, low experience and low morale so they are not very effective. There is one squadron of the AVG that can move to Rangoon without a PP cost. See if they do better.

You forgot the Buffaloes' lousy service rating.

[m10bob]

Even when in the same hex, I set even land based fighters to LRCAP, and even tell them which ships to protect.

[Rogue187]

My Wildcats in Wake have been set to 20K and the Nells are bombing at 7K. I dropped the fighters down to 15K, but are they just too high?

[Lowpe]

post some pictures, combat report and the fighter squadron. Could be lots of reasons as this is a very deep game and your post includes almost no information for a reasoned response (generalist answers might not satisfy you).

[spence]

IRL Wake had no radar and the surf on the reef was so loud that Sound Detectors were useless.
IRL the Japanese bombers were able to slip in, bomb and escape on the first day of the war even though there were 4 Wildcats aloft supposedly waiting for that expected raid to show up.

Of course IRL the Japanese Amphib TF that showed up 3 days later got its head handed to it by the shore batteries/Wildcats losing two DDs sunk with all hands and having 3 light cruiser, 3 DDs and a transport hit because the bombers didn't hit much of anything important.

[Rogue187]

I dont know how to take in-game screen shots sadly.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Rogue187

My Wildcats in Wake have been set to 20K and the Nells are bombing at 7K. I dropped the fighters down to 15K, but are they just too high?

Yes - the interval should be 5K or less.

[BBfanboy]

ORIGINAL: Rogue187

I dont know how to take in-game screen shots sadly.

1. Centre the screen on the image you want to post.
2. Hit the Prt Scr button at the top of the keyboard once. This puts the entire screen image on the Windows "clipboard". Do not copy anything else before you are done or it will overwrite the clipboard image.
3. Open a graphics editing program. Windows Paint will do. Past the screenshot onto the blank canvas.
4. Edit the image by cropping or annotating as you want it to appear.
5. "Save As:" image type .jpg or .jpeg The board software only allows .gif or .jpg images.
6. Remember which folder on your computer you saved the file in
7. Open a new post and type in all your explanatory text. Your picture will go after the text.
8. Click the Embed picture box at the bottom of the posting window and click on the "Click here to upload!" text beside it.
9. Choose Browse, and navigate to the folder where you saved the image. Select it and hit the "Open" button.
10. Don't worry that nothing appears to "Open", just keep hitting OK until the image is uploaded and your post is completed to the forum thread.
11. If the picture is too big in dimension or bytes, you may have to edit it to smaller size or lower resolution to get the board to accept it.

[crsutton]

So, here are the factors that are listed out for you to look into.

Poor leadership
Poor pilots
low morale
high fatigue
no radar
improper altitude

Even buffalos if led and piloted correctly will slaughter un-escorted bombers if the other conditions are rigth.

[urtel]

In mine game against AI 2 buffalos from singapure shutdown 11 nells attacking z-force, i was watch reply and ask mine self how much ammo those 2 guys have...

[spence]

In mine game against AI 2 buffalos from singapure shutdown 11 nells attacking z-force, i was watch reply and ask mine self how much ammo those 2 guys have...

Ammo supply is not directly simulated in the game. As I understand it each plane gets to fire a certain number of times each combat resolution.

Not sure about Nells but the aircrew of the Betty generally referred to their aircraft as "RONSONS" (which was a popular type of cigarette lighter back in WW2). Japanese aircraft in general caught fire relatively easily because they lacked self-sealing gas tanks and armor
(weighty things) due to the relatively low power of their aircraft engines.

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: Rogue187

I dont know how to take in-game screen shots sadly.

Windows 7 onwards has a little program called Snippet. Lets you draw a box around something and save it, it even has pen tools for scribbling on the pic.
Simple cost nothing.

[Rogue187]

I dropped the fighters down to 10K and am getting better results

[jbdenney]

There are a couple of free programs available for screen shots. "JING" is a good free screen shot application but you will need a graphic program to convert the picture types. A good Picture manipulation program is "GIMP". This is a free program along the lines of Photoshop so it has a steep learning curve but it is very flexible.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Rogue187

I dropped the fighters down to 10K and am getting better results

Glad it worked out.

Learn to capture screen images and include them in your post, it isn't that difficult, and you got a guide a few posts above.

It makes problem solving so much easier.[:)]