naval air strike too easy?

[MrBlizzard]

Playing the Axis, rel 1.3
This turn my planes attacked some enemy fleet in the Mediterranean sinking many ships and without losing a single aircraft.
It seems to me a little too easy.
Here you are some examples,
in first example an italian tactical air group attacked and sunk 2 London CA groups

[MrBlizzard]

Here another attack by another land based italian air group:
The whole fleet was annihilated without losing a single plane.
The brithis lost 14 naval groups in all the attacks, the axis didn't lose a plane.
I think we got a small problem [;)]

[Essro]

You're going to have to elaborate more on what you think you are seeing.

In the first screenshot the Italian Bomber did "2 damage" and "0 sunk" at a loss of zero to himself. That's a pretty basic result. They damaged some ships, that's all. The UK player should escort that with a carrier. You'd get a different outcome.


In the second example, I'm guessing it was an un-escorted UK air sup unit traveling via ship transport directly across the Med. Bold. A sort of in game Operation Pedestal.

I am also guessing you are playing the AI?

Am I understanding your examples correctly?


Transports absolutely get hammered if travelling alone I've noticed. And rightly so.

[AlvaroSousa]

Land based air is unbelievably destructive to any fleet. That Italian air unit is 300 planes at full strength. They Americans had what 150-200 at Midway and they effectively sank 2 WarPlan carrier groups.

[MrBlizzard]

ORIGINAL: Essro

You're going to have to elaborate more on what you think you are seeing.

In the first screenshot the Italian Bomber did "2 damage" and "0 sunk" at a loss of zero to himself. That's a pretty basic result. They damaged some ships, that's all. The UK player should escort that with a carrier. You'd get a different outcome.


In the second example, I'm guessing it was an un-escorted UK air sup unit traveling via ship transport directly across the Med. Bold. A sort of in game Operation Pedestal.

I am also guessing you are playing the AI?

Am I understanding your examples correctly?


Transports absolutely get hammered if travelling alone I've noticed.

Yes playing against AI, that's why tranports (carrying planes in crates) were travelling alone and were obliterated

[MrBlizzard]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

Land based air is unbelievably destructive to any fleet. That Italian air unit is 300 planes at full strength. They Americans had what 150-200 at Midway and they effectively sank 2 WarPlan carrier groups.

I didn't figure that there were 300 hundred planes, now the result is clear [:)]
At Midway the land based planes didn't hit anything, the KB was sunk by CV planes [;)]

[AlbertN]

Airplanes should be lethal to ships - no question asked - when they've initiative.

There are scarce cases of ships 'winning' over planes and usually that's faulty of the CV in question (Example, the HMS Glorious, a CV sank by BCs) - whereas even a single bomber can sink a BB, in the example of the Italian BB Roma. Sure it was a radio-guided bomb, but it was sent right down the chimney pot.
There are lots of example of LBA squadrons hammering convoys, their escorts, and battle squadrons.

[AlvaroSousa]

The A.I. should be grabbing escorts when it can

[Essro]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

The A.I. should be grabbing escorts when it can

AI really ought to send those transports through Red Sea.

I'm guessing it's going for shortest distance?

[ThunderLizard11]

Nice screen shots OP. Naval torpedo bombers, like the Fairey Swordfish, were very effective (especially for a bi-plane that looks to be straight out of WW1). However, the Sparviero (sparrowhawk) Italian torpedo bomber only sank a few British war ships, like a destroyer, and damaged several cruiser so the amount of ships sunk in game seems unrealistic. Maybe the issue is AI not protecting its transports with air cover.

[scout1]

ORIGINAL: Alvaro Sousa

Land based air is unbelievably destructive to any fleet. That Italian air unit is 300 planes at full strength. They Americans had what 150-200 at Midway and they effectively sank 2 WarPlan carrier groups.

I could be wrong ….. but ……

Midway didn't have anywhere near that number of land based aircraft and none of the land based aircraft did any damage to the flat tops …..

but yes, land based aircraft were considered a premium threat to flattops ….

[Michael T]

Level bombers were pretty useless v ships. Torpedo bombers or dive bombers, whether land based or carrier based were the threats.

[sol_invictus]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

Level bombers were pretty useless v ships. Torpedo bombers or dive bombers, whether land based or carrier based were the threats.

Agree. A good example; if memory serves; was the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. The level bombers didn't cause a problem but the torpedo planes sank them.

[MrBlizzard]

What do you think about this?
Interceptors from 1° Jagdkorps bombed and sunk BB Marat, 7 points of strenght lost in this attack by soviet BBs


Ok ground attack planes like stuka, ok level planes like torpedo SM-79 but even interceptors can easily sink a BB?
[:)]

[AlvaroSousa]

Air units are a mix of units. You probably got lucky in the rolls. In fact you got mega lucky because it is hard to sink a unit in port.

[MrBlizzard]

I'm a lucky man [:D]

[Essro]

ORIGINAL: MrBlizzard

What do you think about this?
Interceptors from 1° Jagdkorps bombed and sunk BB Marat, 7 points of strenght lost in this attack by soviet BBs


Ok ground attack planes like stuka, ok level planes like torpedo SM-79 but even interceptors can easily sink a BB?

Okay, even I'm going to call out this one lol.

Yes, you got very lucky. Interceptors--regardless of tech level--only have ONE naval air factor. Maybe even that's too much lol.

But for those who want an explanation...here is a photo of a FW-190 carrying a freakin torpedo...I googled "FW-190 dive bomber" and got results and still can't stop laughing. It was a prototype but nonetheless.....

[MrBlizzard]

Nice bird indeed, never seen before [X(]
yes I suspect too that 1 of naval air (1 on 10 scale?) is probably too much for interceptors; 'cause if you have 20/20 air squadrons you can do two hits as average.
The naval flak seems really too low, in 20 attacks I lost some 4 air strenght points;
the coordination of land based planes was very difficult against ships in ww2; a nice model would be if every single air squadron comes alone against the ship and takes is amount of flak.