Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: mlees

In regards to Uber-CAP, can it be mitigated by house-ruling a maximum CAP percentage setting of the Allied CV fighter groups? (Basically, reduce the max possible size of the CAP.)

This doesn't totally work (as Andy and PzB discovered when they tried to implement this house rule) because the code has a step that launches all remaining fighters under certain conditions. And the summary of those conditions would be if you are late war Allies.

Ahhh rats! Thanks for the reply. [:)]

But after reading the (sometimes heated) discussions in this thread, I became motivated to go out and order the "Bloody Shambles" and "First Team" series.

Thanks for feeding my obsession... err... interests, gents. [;)]

So the best way to regulate it under the current game would be to limit the number of squadrons involved. This would require like minded thinking on both sides. As long as the attacker is putting 100+ bombers into the air, you can't blame the defender for maximizing the number of aircraft flying CAP.

Now, if each attacking airgroup was only 70 planes or so, then the defending player might not mind having his aircombat TFs in seperate hexes - say 2 or 3 carriers max per hex.

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

So the best way to regulate it under the current game would be to limit the number of squadrons involved. This would require like minded thinking on both sides. As long as the attacker is putting 100+ bombers into the air, you can't blame the defender for maximizing the number of aircraft flying CAP.

Now, if each attacking airgroup was only 70 planes or so, then the defending player might not mind having his aircombat TFs in seperate hexes - say 2 or 3 carriers max per hex.

I said essentially the below way back at the start of this thread, in response to the orignal post. But I will repeat here in a bit more detail as strangely this galactically wandering thread seems to have "randomly" wound up back on topic!

Currently in stock (and at least I think this was the case historically) a larger number smaller sized Japanese strikes have a better chance of inflicting damage on Allied CV TFs than a smaller number of larger sized strikes. For example at Philippine Sea, Ozawa's four "large" strikes were effectively defeated. But during Leyte Gulf campaign, the Princeton was sunk by a "lone wolf". This roughly mimics my experience in the game where a 300 plane Japanese strike is totally defeated but a 20 plane strike can go in and maybe get one hit. The game code actually instantiates the idea that larger strikes will (potentially) be more heavily defended against. And this seems fairly historical to me anyway. So one aspect of the problem for the late war Japanese is to engineer situations in which there are a larger number of smaller strikes. This means planes spread out at more airbases especially those that generate attacks at multiple ranges (as same range attacks are more likely to join). This might seem counter intuative to some who seek ways of piling more and more planes onto one base. But the point of the original post was that piling everything in one place doesn't work. And what I'm saying is ... then don't do that!!! Instead spread out! You also make yourself less vulnerable to counter-measures by being spread out!!

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

... Currently in stock (and at least I think this was the case historically) a larger number smaller sized Japanese strikes have a better chance of inflicting damage on Allied CV TFs than a smaller number of larger sized strikes...

This seems to be the opposite of my experience w/UV, which shares the same engine as WitP; one or two large formations of IJ planes will overwhelm the Allied CAP and always get thru to score good hits on CVs. The CAP generally holds its own vs. more numerous "bite-sized" enemy plane formations.

However, it's just opposite for PTs; smaller, more numerous PT TFs seem to perform better than fewre, larger PT squadons.

-In Nik mod, sequential and smaller strikes are pretty effective too. It seems that spending of AA anmo in first strike is an issue.