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Another question: I was reading the manual and I guess I had missed it when I previously played, but one thing concerned me about this plane. Does it make a poor CAP plane due to its horrid climb rate?

When set to CAP, only a portion of the planes are at the altitude set. The rest are scrambled from the ground and attempt to reach combat altitude, and my understnding is that the calculation relies heavily on its climb rate.

Therefore, does it perform better in LRCAP? As far as I understand LRCAP, the majority of the flight is operating at altitude, and the horrid climb rate would be mitigated.

The Wildcat does one thing well OG. That being, making a good target for Japanese fighter aircraft.

In real life once the US pilots had discovered the weaknesses of the Zero and the strengths of the Wildcat they came up with tactics that leveled the field.  

ORIGINAL: tocaff

In real life once the US pilots had discovered the weaknesses of the Zero and the strengths of the Wildcat they came up with tactics that leveled the field.  

and promptly turned the Zeroes into the flying torches they were designed to be!

Morale and fatigue levels play a big part with any fighter sqd's performance.....best to have 99 morale and less than 30 fatigue to get the best out of them.

Oh a new avatar!  See what a few wins can do for a guy?

They were getting close to relegation.

The better the radar the better the cap plane. Rate of climb makes a difference, but early warning makes a bigger one. All of this is just my opinion.

Lrcaping your own taskforce or base always seemed like gaming the system, so I've never used it.

ORIGINAL: tocaff

Oh a new avatar!  See what a few wins can do for a guy?

[;)]

[:)] Good for your team.  

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

ORIGINAL: tocaff
In real life once the US pilots had discovered the weaknesses of the Zero and the strengths of the Wildcat they came up with tactics that leveled the field.  

and promptly turned the Zeroes into the flying torches they were designed to be!

LOL! Frankly the Zero lived-off its reputation long after it lost its tactical edge.

ORIGINAL: OG_Gleep

... When set to CAP, only a portion of the planes are at the altitude set. The rest are scrambled from the ground and attempt to reach combat altitude, and my understnding is that the calculation relies heavily on its climb rate.

How 'bout increasing the ratio of CAP to escort? Of course, an increase in CAP percentage will also increase pilot fatigue, but hopefully you will be able to rotate your squadrons before their morale is shot to hell.

As far as I understood reading the manual and dev postings, only a % of the CAP set will be at combat altitude, the rest including those launched due to radar need to climb to where the bombers are...F4F's don't match up THAT bad against zeroes...except climb  rate. LRCAP as far as I understood, would start at combat altitude and either dive of climb to where bombers are at.

CAP is not as effective as you'd like in most situations.  This probably represents planes being out of position to intercept or not finding their intended targets.  Then again when you run into the infamous "UBER CAP" your planes are in for a bad day.

ORIGINAL: OG_Gleep

As far as I understood reading the manual and dev postings, only a % of the CAP set will be at combat altitude, the rest including those launched due to radar need to climb to where the bombers are...

Won't an increase in CAP to escort ratio put more CAP in the air, or is there a fixed number of planes in the air at any time regardless of the CAP percentage?

In other words, does 100 % CAP mean all fighters are just dedicated to CAP (and not all of them are flying at the same time)?

If you dedicate a larger % of a squadron to CAP then you're bound to have more in the air at any given time, more on alert also.

I thought LRCAP was something different than just 100% cap. And larger cap doesn't nessisarily mean more planes. I found some tests that showed a higher volume of fighters in the air at 30 cap with radar then 60 without radar. So I am not sure. I do know that for the planes taking off, climb rate heavily influences performance, which is why the original thought why the F4F sucks so bad against zeroes when they didn't really. They didn't get 10:1 ratio but I didn't think it was 3:1 - 4:1 against.

F4Fs seem to have an acceptable loss rate for me unless you're dealing with the Kido Butai. I set my F4F CAP (17,000') very high most of the time and try to  steer clear of any danger to my carriers until I can operate with 2 CLAAs per flattop.

Using hit and run ops to get the pilots experience up is always a good idea.

I still maintain the Kido Butai are modded stonger in this game than they actually were but hey it makes the game more playable for the other side I guess.

If you look at Lundstrom's First Team books you see that the Wildcat did much better than most folks routinely think.  He does not address the Marine Squadrons, but the Navy actually killed more Zeros than lost Wildcats by the end of Midway, and had a 22 to 21 ratio at Guadalcanal.  It has always bugged me that ALL the GG designed games have a "Zero Advantage" built in for the first year of the war.  In one game I lost 54 F4Fs to 0 Zeros in an even fight with fresh pilots.  That's pure BS.  As an experiment, I modded a scenario and gave the USN squadrons an equal experience rating and still lost F4Fs in droves.  The "Zero Advantage" wasn't there in real life and shouldn't be there in the game.

The only gripes with regards to the UV air model is that the Wildcat is underpowered whilst the Corsair is way overpowered. As I said earlier I think fatigue is critical. If you want fresh fighters keep the CAP level% no higher than 20 until the day you expect combat.

Compared to the A2A in WITP where everyone dies UV does perform well overall.

Hrm....for 6 Gun Points, the F4F-4 gives up points in every other area. Has anyone noticed the 3 performing better then the F4F-4?

I just don't have enough recent game experience to draw any conclusions other then the Advantages the Wildcat had over the Zero isn't modled in game. IMHO this is what would have happened if the Japanese had Self Sealing Fuel tanks.

Has anyone ever had a game where either you or the AI was able to preserve its pilot pool when the Corsairs and Hellcats start taking the field? That may have something to do with the power of the later allied planes.