How To Orchestrate a Carrier Battle v0.1

[Cavalry Corp]

"The premier skill for anybody in command of a ship is naval skill, naval skill, and naval skill. Even for a CV captain, the premier
skill is naval skill. To have a CV captain with 70 air rating does not have any benefit. None. Nada.
The skipper needs to know how to maneuver a ship when the bombs start falling and the torp spreads their fingers, and the better
to evade one or the other eager SAG or sub attack. The higher his naval skill, the better he is at that.

Air skill is for the guys in planes or the squadron commanders, it does not help to drive a ship. Period. "

That is not what it says on the screen when you select a CV commander - The screen suggests what the guy is good for this suggests the opposite. One is wrong, if its the screen can it be taken out as I am selecting CV commanders by air mainly.

[Cavalry Corp]

Is it correct that Jap CV had small units of recon like the recon Judy. The first unit of that appears in oct 42 in RA it has 12 but can be split into 3 x 4 and has a drop tank range of 22 hexes. Maybe a few less or something to get 4 of these on board???

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: cavalry

"The premier skill for anybody in command of a ship is naval skill, naval skill, and naval skill. Even for a CV captain, the premier
skill is naval skill. To have a CV captain with 70 air rating does not have any benefit. None. Nada.
The skipper needs to know how to maneuver a ship when the bombs start falling and the torp spreads their fingers, and the better
to evade one or the other eager SAG or sub attack. The higher his naval skill, the better he is at that.

Air skill is for the guys in planes or the squadron commanders, it does not help to drive a ship. Period. "

That is not what it says on the screen when you select a CV commander - The screen suggests what the guy is good for this suggests the opposite. One is wrong, if its the screen can it be taken out as I am selecting CV commanders by air mainly.

Admittedly the italic part was a bit polemic. I consider removing it.

Thing is, I am not completely sure that the air skill of a ship captain has no impact at all. But even if it does have an impact air skill is triple redundant,
TF commander and even more squadron commanders air skill has significant influence on air ops.

OTOH, I am pretty sure about where naval skill is needed. And it covers about everything neccesary to keep a ship afloat. Naval skill covers succes in
naval mvr/tactical dicerolls, to avoiding battle damage, to keeping a ship afloat with battle damage.

Sacrificing naval skill for air skill is a mistake IMHO. Personally I do not rely on the recommendations of the commander selection.


There is something I noticed a long time ago: If you check the leader attributes, every leader, for every service, got all skills. You can have a USAAF BF commander
with 90 naval skill. He will never have a chance to use it. Same for a ship captains land skill. I don´t think there is any naval combat related diceroll where that
skill would be used, and no, I don´t think its used in bombardement groups. Also, FWIIW, I don´t think that the air skill influences survivability of a ship under air attack,
I rather think it is leadership, naval skill, and crew experience (besides weather, ship DL, mvr and speed,...). It also does has no influence to anything coordination
related. Thats also leadership skill, even IF a ship captain can influence CV air coordination, which I doubt.

I just think a generic set of skills is used because this is easiest to handle datawise. This does in no way imply that every service has use for every skill.

Whichever way I turn it, air skill for a CV captain does not make much sense to me. If somebody has good points why I am wrong, I am always happy to learn something.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: GreyJoy

I think it still needs to be cleared out the whole thing about operating your CVs into big TFs or smaller ones that respect the coordination issue.

GJ, I want to cover that in detail and will try to observe all advantages and drawbacks of the two variants.

My question now is: for what concerns CAP (so let's forget for a moment about offensive strikes), does it matter to have several CVTFs in the same hex (also forget about the possible reaction for a moment) instead of one big TF?

There is a difference in CAP effectiveness, fighters from other groups supporting interception on a specific group will get the "xy is area CAP intercepting"
message, in combat animations, which suggests lower effectiveness.

Will the presence of several TFs in the same hex puzzle the attackers so to divert some enemy bomber strikes to different TFs (even if all present in the same hex)?

I am not sure I understand your question like you meant it. If you are asking if multiple CV TFs are more difficult to intercept than a
single CV TF: Yes, definitely. They got different DLs, and so different chances to be attacked. If a strike is launched against a single
huge CV TF this automatically puts all carriers you got in that hex under attack. I am aware that WitP AE allows the strike now to split
up against multiple TFs in the same hex, but that still does not outweight the disadvantages. The CV battle Mike (offenseman)
has been referring to was partly influenced by the fact that I had multiple CV TFs instead of one.

And for what concerns AA fire, is it better to have a massive CVTF with several BBs attached or more CVTFs with one BB each... so to say, given the same amount of AA guns in the same hex, does it matter for AA coverage to have it spread over multiple TFs?

An A/C on a shipping attack run suffers 3 AAA phases. First on ingress alt targeted by ships in the TF (obviousely if gun range is within ceiling alt), second on weapon release alt from the
ship under attack (IIRC in addition CLAAs in the TF can fire as well), third on agress again by the TF.

So, on first glance this makes concentrated AAA of carriers in a single TF the better choice, but only on first glance.

Because all CVs expend AAA ammo firing on aircraft not attacking them (from DP high ceiling guns), and so are later in a worse position
when under attack themselves. Also they do not aid in the defense with lower caliber guns like 40/25/20mm, as for example the 40mm Bofors - the
premier longer range AA point defense gun on USN ships - as it only has a ceiling of 9800ft. Usually in a CV engagement the ingress and egress will
be flown between 10-15k.
This leaves us with the large number of DP guns (e.g. 5in/25 Mk 10 installed on many USN ships, or the IJNs 5in/40 Type 89) for shooting strike ingress
and egress, and with regards to those there are a couple of ship types better or equally strong equipped as carriers which are also less vulnerable to
drawbacks from expending ammo not in self-defense, as they will not be primary targets.

So in case all multi carrier TFs get under attack, in total there are a lot more guns available against the strike as when concentrating the carriers
in a single large TF.



EDIT: I am aware that the solution to the question whether to go single or multi TF is more difficult to find for the Japanese than for the USN,
as the IJN is always short on suitable CV escorts, at least in numbers required.

The advantages of using a low number of CV TFs are much greater than for the Allies, I will try to pay attention to this.

[Rob Brennan UK]

Very insightful post. The ship commander thing had never occured to me before (might explain the 3 new reefs in the DEI ). I'll be looking at ship commanders next turn for sure.

TYVM for this.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

ORIGINAL: cavalry

"The premier skill for anybody in command of a ship is naval skill, naval skill, and naval skill. Even for a CV captain, the premier
skill is naval skill. To have a CV captain with 70 air rating does not have any benefit. None. Nada.
The skipper needs to know how to maneuver a ship when the bombs start falling and the torp spreads their fingers, and the better
to evade one or the other eager SAG or sub attack. The higher his naval skill, the better he is at that.

Air skill is for the guys in planes or the squadron commanders, it does not help to drive a ship. Period. "

That is not what it says on the screen when you select a CV commander - The screen suggests what the guy is good for this suggests the opposite. One is wrong, if its the screen can it be taken out as I am selecting CV commanders by air mainly.

Admittedly the italic part was a bit polemic. I consider removing it.

Thing is, I am not completely sure that the air skill of a ship captain has no impact at all. But even if it does have an impact air skill is triple redundant,
TF commander and even more squadron commanders air skill has significant influence on air ops.

OTOH, I am pretty sure about where naval skill is needed. And it covers about everything neccesary to keep a ship afloat. Naval skill covers succes in
naval mvr/tactical dicerolls, to avoiding battle damage, to keeping a ship afloat with battle damage.

Sacrificing naval skill for air skill is a mistake IMHO. Personally I do not rely on the recommendations of the commander selection.


There is something I noticed a long time ago: If you check the leader attributes, every leader, for every service, got all skills. You can have a USAAF BF commander
with 90 naval skill. He will never have a chance to use it. Same for a ship captains land skill. I don´t think there is any naval combat related diceroll where that
skill would be used, and no, I don´t think its used in bombardement groups. Also, FWIIW, I don´t think that the air skill influences survivability of a ship under air attack,
I rather think it is leadership, naval skill, and crew experience (besides weather, ship DL, mvr and speed,...). It also does has no influence to anything coordination
related. Thats also leadership skill, even IF a ship captain can influence CV air coordination, which I doubt.

I just think a generic set of skills is used because this is easiest to handle datawise. This does in no way imply that every service has use for every skill.

Whichever way I turn it, air skill for a CV captain does not make much sense to me. If somebody has good points why I am wrong, I am always happy to learn something.

LoBaron is right-naval skill for the ships' Captains primary skill set.

However (and a big however), Air skill is very important for the taskforce commander, who is (or at least should be) a different entity from the individual ship captains.

Sorting available TF commanders by "air" will yield a very different picture of suitable choices than will sorting them by "naval". Historically good air combat TF commanders are "Air", historically good boat drivers / surface fighters have good "naval" skills.

LoBaron-I propose amending your pilots / naval commanders' section to offer guidance on selecting a taskforce commander too. Perhaps 1)e)?

[SenToku]

As I understand it, Air TF's Commander's Air- skill has same functionality as Air HQ commander's Air skill = Increases the number of strike/patrol aircraft that will fly. Does this affect the number of CAP planes as well?

[obvert]

quote:ORIGINAL: LoBaron

"The premier skill for anybody in command of a ship is naval skill, naval skill, and naval skill. Even for a CV captain, the premier
skill is naval skill. To have a CV captain with 70 air rating does not have any benefit. None. Nada.
The skipper needs to know how to maneuver a ship when the bombs start falling and the torp spreads their fingers, and the better
to evade one or the other eager SAG or sub attack. The higher his naval skill, the better he is at that.

Air skill is for the guys in planes or the squadron commanders, it does not help to drive a ship. Period. "

ORIGINAL: cavalry

That is not what it says on the screen when you select a CV commander - The screen suggests what the guy is good for this suggests the opposite. One is wrong, if its the screen can it be taken out as I am selecting CV commanders by air mainly.

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Admittedly the italic part was a bit polemic. I consider removing it.

Thing is, I am not completely sure that the air skill of a ship captain has no impact at all. But even if it does have an impact air skill is triple redundant,
TF commander and even more squadron commanders air skill has significant influence on air ops.

OTOH, I am pretty sure about where naval skill is needed. And it covers about everything neccesary to keep a ship afloat. Naval skill covers succes in
naval mvr/tactical dicerolls, to avoiding battle damage, to keeping a ship afloat with battle damage.

Sacrificing naval skill for air skill is a mistake IMHO. Personally I do not rely on the recommendations of the commander selection.

This discussion highlights an issue I've confronted since beginning this game several years ago. I say this with all due respect and deference to the experience of most players commenting here who have many more years at this than I do.

Often veteran players state something emphatically and definitively. I love that so many take the time to post this information, but it would help everyone, new and old alike, if we could think of learning this game more along the lines of science. Everything is a theory. Proving a theory requires evidence. Even when proven, it is still a theory.

It's much harder to say something indefinitely and yet provide useful information, and yet if we can do this it leaves the door open to discussion and questions. After the first comment above most players probably sat back and said either, 'yes, this is known and is exactly what I do,' or 'wow, I didn't even consider this and assumed the game telling us that a high air skill for a CV commander would make that the most relevant skill.'

What would also help these kinds of discussions is some kind of evidence. So few players really show their findings based on tests or critical moments in games that have taught them about these processes. Sure, it takes a bit more time to run a test, or to dig up a compilation of combat reports, but these are invaluable to provide evidence to back up and support so many of these ideas. For all players, especially those just beginning, I would highly encourage anyone who is serious about understanding the minutia of the game to have a test scenario ready for running a variety of things over several turns to see for themselves how it can work. Sulusea for instance ran great tests on Tojo variants and other IJ aircraft against 4Es, and his method was transparent and thorough, leaving little doubt that the ultimate findings were useful.

The truth, as usual, seems to me to be somewhere in between. Air skill does not keep away sub fired torpedoes, does not help the ship avoid air or sea based strikes, but if you happen to form an air combat TF and don't choose a commander with good air skill, and your CVs have guys with only good naval skills, then you're out of luck when you try to strike anything. You might need to break off a CV or two for various missions while at sea or the fleet commander may even perish on a ship that sinks. I usually aim for both skills in my CV commanders, when possible. I have also never tried placing a CV commander on with low air skills, so I don't know what this would do. because even very experienced players say they are not completely sure, and until I really try this or see evidence, I'm not going to trust my CVs in a situation that is dangerous and irreversible without first testing it out. I'll at least hedge my bets for now.

(Another note to my test list; try CVs with bad air skill commanders.) [;)]

[offenseman]

ORIGINAL: Rob Brennan UK

Very insightful post. The ship commander thing had never occured to me before (might explain the 3 new reefs in the DEI ). I'll be looking at ship commanders next turn for sure.

TYVM for this.

Three reefs? Drat, I thought I had gotten 4 when that CL was torpedoed trying to get back to Java.

[pharmy]

So this chart is only valid for the CVTF commander - not the CV captain itself? Only one modifier/check is used for the air ops of the TF?

[LoBaron]

obvert, don´t let the sentence highlighted by you lead you to false conclusions about the reliability. The reason I pointed out that I am not completely sure is because
I always attempt to use the scientific approach. I do not see the code. So, scientifically speaking, I cannot rule out an influence with absolute certainty.

But I got pretty strong empirical and logical evidence that it is either not impacting, or neglectable in this guides´ context.

ORIGINAL: obvert
What would also help these kinds of discussions is some kind of evidence. So few players really show their findings based on tests or critical moments in games that have taught them about these processes. Sure, it takes a bit more time to run a test, or to dig up a compilation of combat reports, but these are invaluable to provide evidence to back up and support so many of these ideas.

Just to make sure there are no confusions about what a combat report is:

A combat report alone demonstrates that you had a battle with certain units involved which ended with a specific result.
A row of combat reports demonstrate you had a row of battles with certain units involved leading to specific results.

Besides the fact that a combat report is subject to FOW, which already makes the data displayed very unreliable, in addition it shows only a tiny fraction of the information
required to assess the important triggers leading to a specific game result. Usually by far not enough information to understand the context leading to the result.
Which is why I find repetetive posting of combat reports to demonstrate a well hidden element of a complex situation with 100´s of variables pretty useless in the best case,
extremely misleading at worst.

SuluSea had an advantage that the requirements for his tests were extremely simple.
He skillfully set up a small sandbox, posted the few parameters required to show the context, and then display the varations with help of the reports. It was very good testing,
he kept it simple and reduced the variables to an absolute minimum.

This was the opposite extreme of what you want proven - the existence of a nearly not noticeable impact of CV commander air skill on a wide variety and flavors of a CV
air combat enviroment. A combat report and a short description will not tell you anything in such a situation. At least nothing more valuable than a simple statement
about the outcome.

If you want to "show proof" for something like that, the only way to do it would be posting the savegames of your tests - which would need to include a couple of 100 tiny variations,
a video of every single combat replay you did, to show the data you are basing your theory on.

Your gonne need to set up a website to post the vids. And get more than half a dozen people to file through that stuff out of empirical interest.

[jeffk3510]

ORIGINAL: icepharmy

So this chart is only valid for the CVTF commander - not the CV captain itself? Only one modifier/check is used for the air ops of the TF?

I have that chart printed out and use it.. but I have always wondered at what levels your commander's skill has to be at in order to have those values increased. Does that make sense?

[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.

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

obvert, don´t let the sentence highlighted by you lead you to false conclusions about the reliability. The reason I pointed out that I am not completely sure is because
I always attempt to use the scientific approach. I do not see the code. So, scientifically speaking, I cannot rule out an influence with absolute certainty.

But I got pretty strong empirical and logical evidence that it is either not impacting, or neglectable in this guides´ context.

ORIGINAL: obvert
What would also help these kinds of discussions is some kind of evidence. So few players really show their findings based on tests or critical moments in games that have taught them about these processes. Sure, it takes a bit more time to run a test, or to dig up a compilation of combat reports, but these are invaluable to provide evidence to back up and support so many of these ideas.

Just to make sure there are no confusions about what a combat report is:

A combat report alone demonstrates that you had a battle with certain units involved which ended with a specific result.
A row of combat reports demonstrate you had a row of battles with certain units involved leading to specific results.

Besides the fact that a combat report is subject to FOW, which already makes the data displayed very unreliable, in addition it shows only a tiny fraction of the information
required to assess the important triggers leading to a specific game result. Usually by far not enough information to understand the context leading to the result.
Which is why I find repetetive posting of combat reports to demonstrate a well hidden element of a complex situation with 100´s of variables pretty useless in the best case,
extremely misleading at worst.

SuluSea had an advantage that the requirements for his tests were extremely simple.
He skillfully set up a small sandbox, posted the few parameters required to show the context, and then display the varations with help of the reports. It was very good testing,
he kept it simple and reduced the variables to an absolute minimum.

This was the opposite extreme of what you want proven - the existence of a nearly not noticeable impact of CV commander air skill on a wide variety and flavors of a CV
air combat enviroment. A combat report and a short description will not tell you anything in such a situation. At least nothing more valuable than a simple statement
about the outcome.

If you want to "show proof" for something like that, the only way to do it would be posting the savegames of your tests - which would need to include a couple of 100 tiny variations,
a video of every single combat replay you did, to show the data you are basing your theory on.

Your gonne need to set up a website to post the vids. And get more than half a dozen people to file through that stuff out of empirical interest.

I completely understand the reluctance to 'muddy' the discussion with vague combat reports. A detailed set of annotated combat reports either taken from a game where you have access to both sides or enough time has passed that the outcomes are clear would be useful though. In this case the ideas could be both theorized and exemplified.

I haven't gotten around to doing any for CVs yet, but I'm close. I just need the CVs to appear in the test game I am moving forward. When I have those I'l gladly post the kind of thing I'm thinking of, but it will be a few months down the road.

The other Sulusea style test would not be so hard for isolated features. If you want to test just command influence, you set everything the same, run a battle multiple times with two different commanders with opposite skill sets, and see what happens. Then one could post an exemplary report while compiling results in another area to show the results of multiple runs. I know something has to be chenged to get different results, but this could be a very small item not critical to the test. Or it could be run one day, then pushed forward a day so the weather would change for the next test run. So on for 10 different turns.

Anyway, I think there are methods that would work.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: obvert
The other Sulusea style test would not be so hard for isolated features. If you want to test just command influence, you set everything the same, run a battle multiple times with two different commanders with opposite skill sets, and see what happens. Then one could post an exemplary report while compiling results in another area to show the results of multiple runs. I know something has to be chenged to get different results, but this could be a very small item not critical to the test. Or it could be run one day, then pushed forward a day so the weather would change for the next test run. So on for 10 different turns.

You will need more tests for a result on this than the ones SuluSea´s test required.
You don´t know what you are looking for, combat replay and result wise. There are a few candidates for what air skill on a carrier commander could influence, and you
do not know how big an influence it is.

So if you want to follow the scientific approach you are proposing in the first place, you need to formulate an expectation and verify it by doing a certain ammount of combat replays
using different CV commander air skill, and compare your postulated result to the average of the testresults.

If this turns out empty, you need to formulate a new expection, rinse and repeat. Until you either ruled out all potential influences, or found the correct one.
This is very tedious to do right. More so if the expected effect is small. And even more so if it is probably not there.

Anyway, I think there are methods that would work.

Definitely. Should you find something contradicting what I am writing here, please show the result to me. I would apprechiate it as it would improve
the correctness of the guide for the benefit of the WitP community. [:)]

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy
LoBaron-I propose amending your pilots / naval commanders' section to offer guidance on selecting a taskforce commander too. Perhaps 1)e)?

You got a point. Initially I wanted to remain strictly chronological with th guide, so from the initial not battle related part to the battle related part,
to the battle, to the aftermath. I start to think this will not be possible without admitting for loss of readability, as you demonstrate with your
suggestion.

According to chronology, TF commander selection would be in a chapter together with TF creation/composition, but logically it would be better
suited like you are proposing. I think I will deviate from a chronological order where neccesary and this seems to be the case on the squadron/
ships/TF commander topics.

Thanks!

[obvert]

Just a note to pop this back to page one as it seems there is some interest from new players right now.

[dr.hal]

Yes this is of interest for my CVTF commander as there are still conflicting views. One thing is for certain, it would be great if all my commanders had 90s across the board, then I wouldn't have to worry about it! Hal

[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

[witpqs]

Ships and submarines between their base/carrier and the place of battle help to rescue pilots.