attacking US Carriers... what am I doing wrong?

[LLv34_Mika]

Hi there!

Just started secenario 19 for the 6th time I think. That is my training scenario since I bought the game only a few days ago. The manual is ***** and the pdf on the cd doesn't answer all the questions as well. But ok... I managed to find out the basics myself.

Back to the topic

I was unbelievable happy when I saw that my planes found the both CVs (Lexington and Yorktown) along with some escorts and attacked. The first wave was intercepted by 18 Wildcats but 37 Kates and 48 Vals made it to the ships. Not bad I thought.

And then... flak killed almost everything with the first try. After all 14 Vals were shot down, another 31 damaged. 13 Kates downed and 5 more damaged.

Not a SINGLE ship, not to speak from a CV, was hit!
pls, what am I doing wrong?

is 6000ft not enough for dive bombers?

The best thing is that their fighters/bombers didn't even attack my tast force so it was absolutely perfect!

So what was the problem? Just bad luck? Wrong attacking height? Anything else that can cause such an humiliating result?

One more question: do bombers need fighters to perform better (not beeing driven off by whatever) or doesn't it matter when they passed the fighter cover?

cheers
Mika

[Tuli Vapaa]

Pretty standard loses. Try 15'000 ft+ for dive bombers. They attack in groups of 9 instead on 4. Effective against capital ships, as their AA is murder and more undamaged planes make it to drop their load. Also a good idea to bomb something that doesn't shoot back until your pilots have experienced enough. 70+ experience is usually enough to disable flightdeck of enemy carrier.

[pasternakski]

I'm still trying to figure out a 5-letter word that Net Nanny would turn into asterisks.

One other thing. The AI cheats like a b@stard, so expect to grumble over the outcome of your attacks and air-to-air combat while the enemy gets what seem to be - dare I say it - "inhumanly" good results (this is true even on the "historical" difficulty setting).

Naval search results will often infuriate you, too. The "invisible last turn but today right in your face CV TF" is one example. You also almost never see bombardment TFs on their way to blasting your bases. This kind of thing led me early to playing exclusively PBEM.

One thing that might have been a problem is the lack of fighter escort for your strike groups. Even though the CAP didn't shoot down very many, I think that bombing and torpedo attacks are less effective (due to the scattering effect of the CAP interception). That, at least, has been my casual observation.

[LLv34_Mika]

Hi again!

Tuli, you said that I should prefer attacking ships with less AA until the pilots have enough experience.

Ok, is there any chance to pick a primary target? (eg attacking troop transports first or only CVs, etc)?

Another problem is that if two task forces are within the range of my bombers they sometimes pick the absolutely wrong target. They attacked a few transports and light cruisers instead of the TF with the CVs. In return my AI opponent almost sunk my CVs!

I think I'll switch to pbem too until there is anoter patch. Great game but I'm missing some options (or haven't found them yet)

Cheers
Mika

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: LLv34_Mika
Ok, is there any chance to pick a primary target? (eg attacking troop transports first or only CVs, etc)?

Another problem is that if two task forces are within the range of my bombers they sometimes pick the absolutely wrong target. They attacked a few transports and light cruisers instead of the TF with the CVs. In return my AI opponent almost sunk my CVs!

Well, this has been a point of controversy here since day one. Many players have expressed a desire to be able to specify naval attack targets. The problem is that this would destroy one of the primary design ideas behind the game.

UV was to be an "operational" game where you had only limited control over your subordinate commanders. You would issue the general directives, then have to sit back and watch your idiot AI assistants do any number of stupid things, like send an entire carrier TFs strike aircraft after two transports while the enemy "death star" blew the guts out of your CVs.

In the two years since UV was published, the drift has been toward more player control, although the designers seem to have taken a stand against allowing naval strike target selection.

WitP, as I understand it, preserves the basic UV scheme, but adds modifications that prevent your local commanders from committing some of the worst stupidities (sending LBA unescorted to attack a couple of MSWs at a base where there are 100+ fighters available for CAP, for example).

Still, individual TF targeting is not something that will be allowed. Whether this is a good thing or not, it is a reality of the game system.

[DoomedMantis]

If your escort is large enough then they will attack the CV's. Also not having an escort or a small esocrt against large CAP, itreally screws up the bombing runs of bombers.

Also keep in mind that the bombers face flak at two stages, going in and the bombing run, so at 6000 ft your dive bombers face flak at that height and then again at 1000ft where they drop there bombs. Dive bombers really need to be above 12000ft to get decent accuracy as well, and at 15000ft and above they attack in waves of 9 rather than 4 which helps.

As for torpedo bombers 5-10000ft is ideal for them, and just deal with the flak losses, which were traditionally high for torp bombers anyway. Setting them above 10000ft means that they struggle to get lined up in time for there runs, meaning far less hits.

[DoomedMantis]

Also keep in mind that the lossees on the combat report are often greater than the actual losses on the intel screen. Combat report are the claims, intel sheet the actual losses.

[Rendova]

One more thing that I find happens alot. You may not actually get alot of planes shot down but you get alot shot up, and that leads to you only getting one strike in because by the next day anything that made it home is damaged

[Tuli Vapaa]

ORIGINAL: LLv34_Mika
Tuli, you said that I should prefer attacking ships with less AA until the pilots have enough experience.

Ok, is there any chance to pick a primary target? (eg attacking troop transports first or only CVs, etc)?

Cheers
Mika

I avoid situations where CV to CV battle would occur, until fair (read 3 to 1) ratio in attack force can be mustered.