How To Orchestrate a Carrier Battle v0.1

[Dante Fierro]

Excellent guide LoBaron. I like how you emphasize in Part I - importance of pilot training, and it would appear the game system reflects it well. Reminded me of the Marianas (June 1944) engagement that was such a disaster for IJN.

[jeffk3510]

ORIGINAL: wege80

Hi guys!

Read all these posts and really appreciate all the info given here. In the light of this I'd like to post a question regarding carrier battles.

As we all know, trained carrier pilots is priceless, and you should do everything these pilots survive as long as possible.
Now does it help to place submarines in the hex where the battle takes place or in the way the planes fly from your carriers to the target and back to Increase the chance to get these juicy "pilot bails out and ist rescued" or "wounded and rescued". I remember to have read it sometime age in the forums but that point was never made clear.
For example the subs places in or around Pearl harbor in the December 7th attack should help ... or doesen't this help at all?

Or in other words ... what helps to increase the chance to rescue pilots in the open water?? Cause the fighting over "friendly turf" dosen't count in the open seas, does it?

Greets Chris

Yes, that will increase the chances of recovering them.

[Dante Fierro]

Quick noob question: If DL plays a significant factor in a carrier battle, could one make a rule of thumb not to set up your CV missions to allow immediate attacks on CVs detected, but rather delay (I guess for a day?) until significant DL has been established? Or is it rather better one should attempt to set up as many possible ways to confirm and raise DL during a turn while at the same time have your CVs ready to launch some groups for attack? I realize that tactical situation could dictate choice, but how much does accurate DL factor in - i.e. that even if you feel confident you have a superior force projection, you still may want to delay in order to make sure your DL is high?

Thanks in advance, and looking forward to 2nd part of the document!

[Quixote]

While DL does have some impact, choosing to wait an extra day to engage (when you have the opportunity to engage immediately) is not a good idea. By all means try to orchestrate the most favorable conditions you can ahead of time (including allocating assets for spotting), but you are rarely going to find an instance where you can choose to wait an extra day for a carrier engagement and still expect that A) your enemy's CVs are still within range, and/or B) you own CVs are still floating. Fight your battles as best you can, when you can.

[LoBaron]

Lower DL does translate into lower hit probability, wrong target designation, and an increased chance to not launch at all.
But this is not equal to "no hits".

If in a CV engagement, with both fleets in range of the other, only one side launches a strike while the other - for whatever reason - does not, the one launching the strike ends
up victorious in close to all situations.
Since - if you have detected the enemy carriers by CV based search - the same is most probably true for your own carriers, delaying a strike gives the opponent a free punch. You
will not want to chose settings and/or orders that make such a situation likely.

This means, when your carriers sortie, and there is only a remote chance of enemy forces nearby, they have to be fully combat ready. You can play a bit more bold and stand
down your airgroups until a threat area has been reached to minimize attrition. But this is a very delicate game, some would say gamble, so do this at your own risk and only
if your general intel about enemy force disposition is good enough.


You do have a point when intel about the CV forces position and strenght is not equally distributed.

If you can assure that, while you are able to track an enemy CV TF (via subs and LBA search), your own carriers remain hidden and out of search range, you definitely have an
option to delay battle until you are in a favourable position, or until the enemy CVs have bean attrited by other means than CV based strikes (LBA, submarines, SAG´s, missions
against land targets, plane losses,...).

Actually such situations can happen rather often. The prerequisite usually is a CV protected amphib landing. There the opposing CV TFs often have different initial missions, one side
needs to protect the amphibs against attack, the other needs to deal the max damage against the enemy fleets possible. In such a situation it is well possible that standing off and waiting for the
perfect moment to strike can make the difference between a victory and defeat.

But even in the above example the primary reason for the decision to delay battle will not be DL, but general situational awareness and enemy force attrition, and your means
to delay battle is through not a strike setting while in range of the enemy but through simply by keeping your TFs out of (detection) range.

Last, be aware that an experienced opponent will try to be unpredictable, even in quite clear situations such as protecting invasions.

Even if there are amphibs depending on protection, I will move my fleet CV TFs around aggressively, I might actively search for a CV engagement even if this means lowering the protection
for the amphibs, I might even use the landing craft as bait, I will do anything to keep you guessing about where my CVs will show up next turn and where your best position to ambush
will be. Thinking that just because you were not spotted this turn, you can lower your guard and rest the pilots a bit, is a good recipie to be caught with your pants down.

[Dante Fierro]

Alright. Thanks both of you for the good advice. I am also interpreting your comments that you're better off defending by getting the first punch in, if it's a carrier vs. carrier fight with fairly equal forces - then your best defense is a potent offense. Simply putting up 100% CAP and waiting for an incoming raid - is a bad idea, unless, as LoBaron writes, you are fairly confident you are out of detection range of your opponent (that could be a big if) - and really want to be more precise in the timing of your attack (or perhaps you want to simply remain low profile as long as possible, etc.) I know I'm simplifying a lot here, given the myriad of other choices one might have to make in different tactical/strategic situations.

[Cap Mandrake]

Excellent summary. I have to admit I have never paid much attention to the naval search skill of carrier bombers nor have I purposely trained them for this purpose. Of course, they tend to acquire skill over time because of the necessary search missions.

As an Allied player I tend to set the TBF's to 20% search and the SBD's to 10% because I want the SBD's flying attack missions on the first day's battle. Once USMC SBD squadrons start arriving I find the destructive power of your carriers is increased if you replace the USN TBF's with Marine SDB's (assuming they are trained up). I also don't hesitate to replace a TBF squadron with Marine F4F's or even a USN replacement squadron if the pilot skill is good enough and the first day mission is protection from LBA. TBF's are good ship killers once the damage has been done by the SBD's

Only use TBD's if the Martians are trying to capture San Francisco before TBF's are available.

Also very interesting point about cruising speed and strike packages.

[Cap Mandrake]

LoBaron;

Is Engrish your second language. If so, I am seriousry impressed.

[witpqs]

Only use TBD's if the Martians are trying to capture San Francisco before TBF's are available.

Rah, rah rah rah, rah!

[Cap Mandrake]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Only use TBD's if the Martians are trying to capture San Francisco before TBF's are available.

Rah, rah rah rah, rah!

Those heat rays are murder on the slow moving TBD's but sometimes the momentum of the partially molten engine block will get through and do a number on the Martian ship.

[Blind Sniper]

This should be a sticky! [:)]

[alanschu]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Since column C states "TF" and not "ship" I would assume this to be the case.

If its reliable and the context gets explained, it is interesting. But this requires the source to be a dev. And then it still does not explain much
without explaining the numbering first. Could be an intuitive "weighting" of the modifier, not sure.

But without knowing the orignator and where he got his data from, I have no idea how reliable that chart is.

That's clearly a typo. The chart is pretty much just a visual representation of wwengr's How to Choose Leaders. There's two sections with "TF" listed. The bottom values on the chart are for ships, not TF leaders.


The number/color correlates to the importance. 1 is the most important stat.

[LoBaron]

alanschu, the link you provided - thank you very much btw., what a sensational piece of work - rather confirms what I said all the time.

Air skill of CV TF commander = important
Air skill of CV commander = no impact

See below quote from your link with the relevant part highlighted by me:

ORIGINAL: wwengr



Ship Captains

Carriers

This includes CV, CVL, and CVE. Assign leader using these priorities:

• Leadership – Influences the ship’s experience gain
• Air Skill – If the carrier captain will serve as the TF Commander, then he functions as the Air HQ for the TF aircraft. Air skill then influences the number of strike and patrol aircraft that will fly.
• Surface – Influences ship's chance of locating a target during surface combat
• No other skills or qualities have any influence.

You see that air skill only is significant if the captain acts as TF commander as well.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake
TBF's are good ship killers once the damage has been done by the SBD's

Good observation, I agree. There even was a heated discussion on that topic a long time ago, where an evil plan to replace all DBs
with TBs failed rather spectacularily in the subsequent CV engagement.

Another plus for DBs simply is their indpendence to low torp ordnance, a common issue on CVL/CVE types.
For the same reason NavB/LowN for your TBs are secondary skills to keep in mind.


Yes Engrish is my second language Captain, thanks! Although in many instances I even prefer it to my mother language, it simply is more versatile.
Actually, sometimes I have no problems expressing something in Engrish, while in German I struggle to find the right words.

And there is always dict.cc to support my lame attempts at faking a broad vocabulary... [8D]

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Dante Fierro

Alright. Thanks both of you for the good advice. I am also interpreting your comments that you're better off defending by getting the first punch in, if it's a carrier vs. carrier fight with fairly equal forces - then your best defense is a potent offense. Simply putting up 100% CAP and waiting for an incoming raid - is a bad idea, unless, as LoBaron writes, you are fairly confident you are out of detection range of your opponent (that could be a big if) - and really want to be more precise in the timing of your attack (or perhaps you want to simply remain low profile as long as possible, etc.) I know I'm simplifying a lot here, given the myriad of other choices one might have to make in different tactical/strategic situations.

Extreme settings such as 100% or 0% CAP always have a disadvantage in WitP.
For 100% the most obvious are that you deny escorts for your strikes, and that you get a very high atigue gain with this setting.
Both points work against you immediately in case something does not turn out exactly as you planned.

I general I would reccommend to start at a 50% setting and slightly adapt due to mission specific factors, force relation, and admin stuff...
Personally I would consider 80/20 settings for CAP as already quite extreme, but YMMV.


EDIT: just to avoid misunderstandings: I am referring to CV borne CAP in combination with escort settings for potential naval strikes here.
As soon as LBA or other mission types are concerned, entirely different factors come into play.

Also the above does not cover special cases, such CVE groups solely assigned to CAP/ASW duty for example.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Blind Sniper

This should be a sticky! [:)]

I take this as a compliment, but TBH there are already so many extremely valuable guides out there that you could already clutter a whole forum
section with em. just think about all those - much better structured than this one - Alfred guides, or wwengr's sensational leader guide just now
linked by alanschuin this thread.

Also it is, sadly, incomplete. I really want to find the time to finish it, or at least cover all amjor CV battle aspects I initially intended to, but this has
to wait until I find more time.


What I already wanted to advertise for some time now, is a sticky in the war room which holds all important guides and is updated whenever a new
interesting work pops up. But I guess this is difficult to achieve, or at least difficult to maintain.

I would have no issue to remove the Air Coordination guide for this matter and simply replace it by a generic guide link collection. But then it would be my
task to maintain it, and I cannot gurantee that I will find the time to do that.

[Blind Sniper]

I would have no issue to remove the Air Coordination guide for this matter and simply replace it by a generic guide link collection. But then it would be my
task to maintain it, and I cannot gurantee that I will find the time to do that.

Of course no pression at all and many thanks for your time spent in these guides, hope to see the final version [:)]

[alanschu]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

alanschu, the link you provided - thank you very much btw., what a sensational piece of work - rather confirms what I said all the time.

Air skill of CV TF commander = important
Air skill of CV commander = no impact

See below quote from your link with the relevant part highlighted by me:

ORIGINAL: wwengr



Ship Captains

Carriers

This includes CV, CVL, and CVE. Assign leader using these priorities:

• Leadership – Influences the ship’s experience gain
• Air Skill – If the carrier captain will serve as the TF Commander, then he functions as the Air HQ for the TF aircraft. Air skill then influences the number of strike and patrol aircraft that will fly.
• Surface – Influences ship's chance of locating a target during surface combat
• No other skills or qualities have any influence.

You see that air skill only is significant if the captain acts as TF commander as well.

I'm not sure if the Naval helps much in evading air attacks either, based on that link. I tend to still keep quality air captains in charge of my CVs in case my current commander is incapacitated for some reason, or is assigned elsewhere, I need to split the TF, etc.


EDIT: FTR this thread has been interesting since I have historically never used my dive bombers as search if I have any appreciable amount of float planes in the TF. I am changing that now.

[LoBaron]

There are many skill/exp related dice rolls not covered by wwengr´s post, such as damage control, collisions, a more detailed description of what happens
when, as he puts it, naval skill influences "locating a target during surface combat", and a lot more.

So draw your own conclusions. I wouldn´t underestimate the complexity of specific combat related dicerolls and the number of variables involved.



Re: splitting TFs:

I would avoid doing so in a combat environment.

Better define your TF composition before the operation. If you focus on flexibilty and redundancy there already you avoid the necessity for mid-ocean experiments.
You can always exchange ships between existing TFs, so there is no need to rely on ship commanders becomming TF commanders at random.

If the current commander of a CV TF is incapacitated this usually means a lot of trouble for the carriers it contains, and your flagship - the largest CV in the TF - already sunk.
Maximizing strike size might be one of your lesser problems by then.


To make this clear: All I am saying is that nav skill is by far more important for CV captains than air skill, nothing prevents you from looking for air skill as good secondary.

[alanschu]

Sometimes TF splitting happens automatically based on damage.


Have you done experiments with differing nav skills and things like damage control and collisions and whatnot? The leader ratings are definitely hiding behind some level of a nebulous cloud.

I'm certainly open to the idea that ship captains could be restructured (simply from a standpoint of "You, drive the ship! I'll worry about the carrier ops!").