Matrix Games Forums

We're playing with Jafele a game with lots of water and islands. I wonder if cruisers/battleships are not too strong vs planes. Naval units don't have any stack rules, but planes have it. It's easy to make a naval stack of doom and enemy torpedo planes are useless, they just die. Maybe ships are too cheap? Maybe they need stack rules? Less HP vs torpedo planes? Or maybe everything is OK, it is my first real naval game. Does anyone have similar feelings?

In the real war torpedo Bombers were slaughtered. By both sides. It has to fly slow level and steady to launch a torpedo while the ships blaze away.

Haven't fought many naval battles with aircraft, I play solo and the AI doesn't use them.

I've always felt ships were too imperious to air attack, at least cruisers and battleships. Ships sailing without proper escort (a carrier) should be sitting ducks from air attack, especially when few in number.

Isn't that editable in the ptmaster?

I have seen some pretty bad airstrikes as well.
I tend to agree that cruisers have waaayyy too much anti air potential.
I think that the navy does need a little tweaking. Perhaps we could start a navy wishlist thread? I will if know one else does.
Meanie

Cruisers have a value of 400 against planes (cruiser II 500), flaks an attack value of 60 (flak II 80). It doesn´t make sense.

In AT(G) Cruisers basically function as flak-ships. Its the only ship that has good odds against enemy air.

If the enemy has a lot of cruisers (like in this example) you should consider using submarines and battleships against them instead.

best,
Vic

In case anybody missed it:
http://www.vrdesigns.nl/?p=241

best,
Vic

Stack limit for naval units is a normal consequence of stacking limits for air units. I think it is a great suggestion to implement such limit so that air strikes become more dangerous to ships. I also think that air cover should not be optional cause the history showed that air attacks vs ships were devastating (damage was done by both level bombers and torpedo bombers) and aircraft carriers became kings of the seas replacing battleships in that role.

So my suggestions are as follows:
1) implement sea stack limit
2) balance cruiser/bship AA capabilities to make air strikes strong to devastating to a fleet without air cover (with attacker air loses as well due to AA fire)
3) balance fleet AA + air cover to be an effective protection against air strikes but it should still be possible to hit a score against defended fleet, although at much higher price.

All I know is; fleet with Cruisers is deadly against enemy bombers, fleet without Cruisers is dead meat in the water. Especially Cruisers lvl II and higher, they really are devastating against enemy airpower, as they historically were. Cruisers also gain Exp fast because they shoot down so many planes, same with them doing coastal bombardments... which counts for BB's as well. 10 turns of coastal bombardment and their Exp is already in the 60's and climbing.