Carriers and Naval Units stuck in storms

[marcdhanna]

Okay, so the Germans must have beefed up their naval bombing capability too, as he bounced his bombers into the North Sea, from clear weather on land, into storms at sea. Sunk two battleships and assorted destroyers etc.

His remarkable planes spotted each of my Battleships with ease through the stormy weather. Meanwhile, my carriers at sea and could not intercept his bombers since they were in storms. I think my land based planes were unable as well.

I think this is a real problem defending England from invasion if the carriers can't intercept.

So I'm cutting off this invasion so far but it's costing me. How is it these German planes are super powerful against naval already? I don't remember my German planes being so potent.

I'm obviously missing tricks here and that's fine, I want to learn, but this PBeM system doesn't give you much time to analyze what has happened each turn! Maybe I can replay all the files at one point to do an analysis? Otherwise it seems the only way to sink into this game is play solo over and over vs yourself on hotseat.

Fafnir is a genius, obviously [&o]

[Fafnir]

Germany has naval tech 1 from the beginning. This is very effective for naval attacks via planes.
The marine bombers have 2 attacks an a very long range.
Moreover the expirienced German HQ/planes will boost all attacks.
They were well trained by killing the french units.
Regarding storms and clear weather at sea. Ships can only be attacked on clear sea, but it sometimes hard to see if
there is storm or clear weather on a spot.
I think it only matters if the spot you attack is clear, you may fly over stormy spots to attack a clear one.

[marcdhanna]

Hello Fafnir,

thanks for explaining and well done to you for sorting out these subtleties of game play.

I appreciate that ships are indeed safe in a stormy sea. Apparently my battleships were in clear spots while my carriers were in stormy spots. I can see that happening and that's pretty cool. Yes, I know your Paras flew over the storms. I suppose it's possible but those transports flew at low altitude since the jumpers did not have oxygen masks, so I don't think this should be allowed. But I guess there may be gaps in the clouds, given what you said about ships being in stormy hexes or not.

But the most important thing I've learned here is that I can use Rommel HQ to conduct lengthy and successful LAND campaigns to gain a lot of experience by killing Polish and French units (rather than going for the capitals immediately, just continue to kill them off, as I could not seem to disband them to prevent this).

Then I can immediately transfer Rommel over to become a hugely successful AIR commander, just like that, who's immediately an expert on bombing ships with Stukas that have Naval ratings geared up.

I think this experience of commanders killing units on the ground then transferring immediate benefits over to air attacks is impossibly ahistorical and even in game terms does not make sense. HQs should gather experience in air and land in separate ways. If that is not happening like that, this provokes:

a) unrealistically risking ground troops to buff up HQ experience, whereas in reality, a commander would want experience minimizing ground losses and minimizing the lengths of battles and wars, not deliberately prolonging them, and

b) making all HQs super HQs in land and air even though that was clearly not the case, with the possible exception of Kesselring.

So by figuring out these mechanisms and using them to the fullest degree, it unfortunately distorts the game from WW2-style strategy into something else. Which is okay I guess, but I came to play WW2, not something else! [:)]