Aircraft Carrier Combat Advice

[CLReed]

As a new player to the Rule the Waves series with this release, I found that I took to gun combat fairly intuitively. However, I've been a bit nervous about figuring out large scale carrier combat. Now that I've just had my first such battle, I'm fairly certain I don't understand how to approach this properly.

In a battle that seemed pretty evenly matched, the AI completely dominated me, finding my ships first, and then launching wave after wave of attacks well into the night. Meanwhile my strikes rarely found anything other than the enemy CAP, and didn't achieve much even when they found opposing ships. It was beyond frustrating to have all my ships getting torpedoed over and over again at a point when I seemingly couldn't put together any kind of viable strike in response.

Is there any advice that anyone can provide? Or perhaps some detailed explanation/videos on how to approach aircraft carrier tactics in the game? I don't want to throw in the towel right away but if I have more of this in store then the game may very well be over after circa 1935 for me, which would be quite disappointing.

I appreciate the help in advance.

[Stelteck]

The game is never over in Rule the Waves except if you get fired !! You will rebuild your fleet for revenge in the next war.

The point of aircraft carrier engagement is to find the enemy first, then send everything at them. Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to defend against enemy planes, if you are targeted, you will suffer, even will tons of Anti Aircraft guns & fighters.

Avoid detection, and if you suspect you are detected, RUN !

Do you have good air recon capability ? Do not forget that you can put float planes on all big ships, even battleships.
And it is very efficient to have land base long range recon capability nearby. Even Airship base are very good for recon !

Also, if you have a "scout group", you can try to have the enemy attack it instead of your main carrier group.

[CLReed]

It was my first major defeat, and at a point where I'm trying to finish up a war that's gone well against the odds, fighting both the British and the French at the same time on my own. So a tough pill to swallow.

I felt I actually had a major advantage in recon, especially because I had land-based airfields around the entire battle area. My first step was to focus all my searches in the area I anticipated the enemy carriers to be, and that's where they were, but they still found me first. I suppose choosing not to run right away once I was spotted initially was a mistake.

This battle didn't have multiple forces so all my ships ended up clustered together in one force, with no opportunity to create any diversionary force.

I think the thing that threw me off the most was just not understanding where I needed to be sending my strikes to actually hit the enemy. I was sending them towards location reports but it seemed as though they just passed over where the enemy should be and kept going rather than adjusting at all. Perhaps targeting anticipated areas the enemy may arrive at would be a better option, though that seems like more of a guessing game. But regardless I don't see how I could have matched the AI's tempo of strikes, which was surprising because we had a pretty even amount of carrier-based air power, and I had a complete advantage in land-based air power, including naval patrol aircraft and medium bombers. These latter forces weren't particularly effective.

I guess I'm just looking for some direction towards very detailed explanations of how to approach this. I've found some very detailed advice around gunnery and torpedoes that's been useful, and that's where a lot of the community seems to focus the attention, but I have to imagine someone out there has provided a lot of insight on aircraft operations as well.

[Searry]

First thing I do is set heavy cap on all groups and land cap for a group I find something I can't spare a cap for, then I set individual caps for capitals and other ships I don't wanna lose. Then I ready all the strike groups already from the first moment so they are ready to go once the first sightings come from the recon aircraft. Then the carriers either launch multicarrier coordinated launches or just per carrier depending on tech.

Then when I have the best guess about the enemy force from a few spottings I launch my whole force there and keep a holding pattern. If they report they actually hit someting it's great, if enough planes come back you might do another strike but most likely not this early in the game. And depending on if the enemy strike hurts you. If they hurt you or your strike didn't actually do anything you should just run back to base, no reason to risk the fleet.

When it comes to how your ships are fitted the AA directors are the most important. Heavy AA factor is important as well so keep it high. For the close protection invest mostly in MAA and put the last remaining top weight to LAA. They might not destroy that many aircraft but they scare them well.


You should build CVLs and fill them with fighters and a few longest range craft for recon.

Another thing is to keep your CVs always active so the air groups are not completely worthless.

[Spootnak]

I personally have found a lot more success sending my strikes after targets from the target list than to a location. I think they may do some automated searching of their own when you aim them like that, allows me to focus on other things.

In this game a large CAP force does wonders for fending off attacks, I almost always select heavy or maximum CAP if there are multiple enemy fleet carriers.

And then finally, sometimes you just get unlucky, their recon finds you but yours misses them and you eat a full strike package and take damage. At that point you should probably cut your losses and flee.

Remember to put some research into search tech and have good search planes and many of them, the more the better.

[Sappho]

My dogma is "savety first", i. e. have always fighters to defend your carriers. It is better to have too much backup than too few. Keep them away from the battleships. Keep them very far away. Reckon, reckon, reckon. Who sees the enemy carriers first, may strike first ... and will win.

You may even use ships as a bait to trigger an air attack to see from which direction the enemy planes come.