Search A/C being launched before dawn

[Prince of Eckmühl]

Search aircraft are being launched at 0400, even those not denoted as having night operation capabilities. This would appear to contradict the information in the manual.

PoE (aka ivanmoe)

Edit/Correction: Carrier-based search a/c appear to launch slightly later than their shore-based counterparts, perhaps 0410.

[AlvinS]

I had wondered about this also. When I select "Run Unil Dawn" the units launch before it reaches dawn. I did not check the exact time, but I will pay attention next game.

[Marcus Caelius]

AIUI, "night ops" refers almost entirely to combat and landing.  If a plane launches before dawn, it almost certainly isn't going to fight or land until daylight, nor would it be expected to be within visual range of an enemy until then.

[Prince of Eckmühl]

The manual says that CAP and Search don't take off until dawn. In reality, they are doing so as much as an hour before dawn. And they do suffer operational losses in taking off. If the losses are incurred at an accelerated rate because of game's night-status, then the behavior probably needs to be remedied.

PoE (aka ivanmoe)

[alexs]

I'll check into this.

[Prince of Eckmühl]

I want to correct myself in several regards to this issue:

First, this doesn't occur in all scenarios. For instance, I ran the Wake Island scenario to test the concept and found that Japanese search a/c appeared to take off considerably AFTER dawn.

In the 1942 scenarios (historical), I observed that the search a/c were indeed taking off before dawn, but there didn't appear to be any hard and fast time from scenario to scenario.

The second point makes sense given differences in latitudes and time of year and the relationship of each to the onset of dawn.

PoE (ivanmoe)