Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: crsutton

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

Well I was thinking if you don't have enough screen protection your capitol ships, you are risking it from high speed destroyers with torpedo runs. So make sure you have plenty of escorts equal to capitols or more. Light cruisers can be and should be escort roles too, but not sure how they lay out the protection screens. But it is overall Commander abilities as well Captains too.

And speed is a factor. Frankly, old American BBs should avoid night action like the plague. They are just too slow and tend to eat torpedoes. I can speak from hard experience on this matter....[:@]

ORIGINAL: crsutton
I do know that Allied surface ships get a gunnery boost sometime around 1/44 to reflect improved fire detection. JWE was the source of that tidbit.

ORIGINAL: Buckrock

ORIGINAL: crsutton
I do know that Allied surface ships get a gunnery boost sometime around 1/44 to reflect improved fire detection. JWE was the source of that tidbit.

Was this what you were referring to?

tm.asp?m=3819133

I took note of "There is a gunnery accuracy bonus for late war Allied ships : AAA more so than Nav."

The last part of that statement is interesting.

ORIGINAL: Alpha77

Posters suggested that my IJN TFs were too large cause of the penality, see eg. here:
tm.asp?m=4230779

And/or in my "AAR" perhaps too: tm.asp?m=4175198

And it looks like it is true (and realistic ofc), because smaller TF at least have no crashes and less losses (not that they hit better ofc), 2 smaller CLs fleets from me survived against larger more powerful fleets, while a big fleet seemed to suffer the penality and BBs sunk.

The other reason suggested by experts is, I was using a night with too good moonlight. But read it yourself if enough time [;)] I lost 4 BBs in bigger TFs for example I played only vs. the AI before, so needed to adapt to a more capable, sneaky etc. human player. This is why I need to try to use best TFs (vs. the AI this is not so important, mostly the AI will also send its ships in harms way, without yourself doing much)
As you can see the Allied player can combine and mass his force (also all nations can work together, as they all speak English), they do not perform worse (as can be seen in the combat reports, with Allies using 20-30 ships fleets, yes they also get some crashes but as explained above with better exp of Allied ships this will fade starting in 43 imho)

Edit, also it seems to be true for some reason that mixing BBs and CA/CLs seem not to be good. Like some others already suggested, I have no idea why tho. In reality you need cruisers for recon and screen BBs (not only DDs). But this can ofc only be coincidence.

Edit2, another source is an AAR by "Obvert" ("Elephant vanished"), who experienced the same CV reaction problem and that his SF fleets did perform badly even not engaging CVs (I noted the same things)