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Post by generalvikus on Jul 9, 2019 11:04:52 GMT -6
Now the community has had some time to learn the lessons of combat, I'd like to re-open the discussion on carrier design. A few points for everyone to consider:
How does an armoured flight deck compare to an armoured hangar hangar deck in - game, where the difference between an open and closed hangar does not appear to be a concern? How about a combination of both?
To what extent is belt armour and hangar side armour desirable?
To what extent do game - related conditions (such as the apparent prevalence of short range engagements, the game's armour penetration calculations, and the preference for fewer, larger bombs rather than more smaller bombs in heavier bomb loads) influence carrier design and tactics in - game?
Is speed armour for carriers?
How effective and important is AA of various types in various time periods?
How does the March of technology (such as the advancement of of search radar technology) affect carrier design considerations over time?
I'd also like to have a broader discussion on some issue that I feel are not talked about enough in the community compared with design, and which we could only speculate on the last time we had this discussion: tactics, doctrine, and strategy. For example:
How should a carrier air wing of a given size be composed, and is air wing composition influenced by advancing technology? More broadly, how should a carrier force be composed and utilised, on its own and in relation to the main force? For example, is it preferable to merge the carrier force and main force into a single Carrier Task Force, and to design one's surface combatants to operate in direct support of the carriers, or rather to position one's main force in between the carrier force and the enemy? How do these doctrinal issues influence the design of other ships? How do these considerations change over time? Broader still, how should force structure more generally respond to the advent and development of carriers? How does the role of carriers - and, for that matter, all other types - change over time? How are these considerations influenced by the nation's strategic position? What can be said on the subject of carrier tactics in - game, and their development over time?
You may wish to comment on and discuss individual issues, but longer, holistic treatise on carrier warfare in game which consider the interplay of design, tactics, strategy, and the impact of advancing technology on all of these factors would be most welcome, if anybody is so inclined, since I think they will offer the most coherent way to debate these issues. After all, it is impossible to consider any of these issues in isolation, and I think we ought to try and avoid our usual tendency towards narrow and tangential debates.
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Post by akosjaccik on Jul 9, 2019 14:18:16 GMT -6
To throw in my twenty dollar fifty cents minus sales tax, I'd like to start with two points. Three, actually. One is: if we manage to collect a fair number of opinions in this topic, let's not forget about the Wiki, where a Carrier Warfare page could very well profit from the posts here. Now, secondly, my experience is based on a limited number of data points, and as such, should only be taken as a subjective style of playing the game, rather than anything more. Third, if my feeling is correct, the topic deals with the carriers in context of the gameplay, as such, I'll think about them as they appear and are handled in my mind in RtW2 (to cut in front of any debates regarding history for example). My experience is based on japanese and austro-hungarian campaigns, and "tainted" with a german campaign in which I got bombed back to the stone age in the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, due to my original computer currently undergoing repairs, I can't provide in-game screenshots for the time being. Personally, I do not take great precautions to have a cheesy 16k-ton proto-carrier in my fleet for conversion (actually I'd like the value to be somewhat variable in each play so the player can't use this information, regardless of "variable tech"), and mainly use the first CVL to have an active vessel allowing me to set heavier-than-air to "High" priority. I tend to not go out of my way to force press much early CVLs into frontline service, because the lowest tech advancement rate I used so far was about 80% which generally allows me to rely on the technology in it's more mature form not too much later. With that said, I did have good success with early carrier operations, still, I favour purpose-built carriers. One thing to note maybe, that on the very first conversion in the first months, sometimes even later I do not use fighters at all, because their purpose would arc from marginal to naught. When it comes to armored carriers, I got completely pulverized in the Mediterranean once playing as Germany against an "oh my God, I want more land-based planes!"-Italy when I first entered the sea in a rather clueless state around when the game came out, which resulted in a... uh, overreaction. Unfortunately, if I recall correctly, these designs were not battle-tested ultimately. The main concept however was a sort-of "defense carrier", with emphasis on (flight-) deck armor, torpedo defense and proportionally more fighters than I normally go for. For now I think that the main threats, given that the player can fairly reasonably get the carrier out of harm's way when it comes to naval gunnery (and if that fails, distances are often small enough that armor helps only in a limited fashion), are aerial torpedoes and bombs. In my games, even 5" deck plates were pierced at an alarming regularity in the latter part of the game by armor-piercing bombs, so deck armor is a good question. It's also an interesting question, how protected the hangars should be. I currently don't have access to the game so I can't check what's the exact weight difference in armoring the deck vs. the flight deck, but I presume stability issues are not modeled in RtW, and I can't remember of too much issue with detonations in the hangar space apart from losing aircraft. ...yet. Maybe I would try 5 - 6" D and 2" FD, if the deck armor covers more area, areas which the FD does not. For the belt, I'd armor the machinery area against maybe cruiser calibers, whereas the hangar sides would be either unarmored or armored against fragmentation. For AA, I'd much rather rely on the CAP after my experiences with Germany, so I definitely do not tend to make a christmas tree out of the carrier. In situations like above, I ordered maximum fighter presence in the air, with at least ~60% of the complement consisting of fighters - I have an aversion against fighter-mules though, and I except any carrier to have some offensive capability. Shooting down enemy aircrafts matters little on the tactical-, and nothing on the strategic screen, and I don't have a good enough (or any) comparable database to decide how effective is AA at actually deterring incoming attacks, so the one certain thing is to sink the opposition - which require strike craft. Still, by default I do not really armor my CVs unless I get slaughtered.As such, I do not have too much rule of thumbs when it comes to design. Depending on my financial situation and played nation, my " fleet carrier" designs tend to scatter around the 80 - 120 mark, when it comes to hangar space (and generally towards the lower end). This might be a controve... okay, more controversial opinion , but in RtW2 I do not really utilize speed for carriers. My reasoning is that I never really stop to use balanced middle-of-the-road fast battleship designs due the fact that more often than not I can't rely on adequate circumstances for aircraft operations, meaning that the carriers should keep up with-, and preferably have just a tad bit of speed reserve compared to said battleships, resulting in my designs having ~29+-1 knots, virtually never above 30. Specific later/heavier aircraft models do not require higher speeds in RtW2, and the vast majority of the situations in the game do not require either. Should I order the carriers into "Core" formation and join up for the night or something, I simply slow down with the battleship force for that half an hour. Should the AI attack my carriers, it knows where I am, and I cannot outrun an airplane anyways. Hangar space or simply cost is more important. Honestly, with the hangar, I still do not have a strong enough feeling. With the "armored carrier" above, I said "a minimum of 60% fighters", indicating that by default I tend to utilize unescorted and uncoordinated strikes, and I put heavy emphasis on raw strike capability. An example is 8-8-8 F, 12-12-12 TB, 10-10 DB for a 80 a/c CV. Dive bombers become frightening in late-game, then again, dive bombers become available in late(er) game, as such (and because I am lazy, plus the danger of potentially losing experience) I do not change the air groups of the carriers - especially because losses almost don't matter in a strategic sense, so I am not forced to rotate squadrons. Experience is key however, so carriers never get to relocate to the reserve fleet. For their usage, IF conditions allow flight operations, once the CAP is up (medium by default), I arm just about bloody everyting for naval strike (I am yet to be exploded due to the armed and readied aircrafts), H for DBs if at least say, ~150nm is achieved with that. Very rarely do I need to adjust that; generally when in pursuit of fast, small vessels. When it comes to my own gameplay style, first strike is excessively important, and with it comes reconnaissance. It's not a strict "given", but I tend to utilize floatplanes and catapults on my capital ships and cruisers, often taking over recon duties from deck-borne craft. Floatplane search priority is my go-to generally, and usually I use a few more manually ordered searches after the initial sweep as well. Still, the first valid target, especially if there is no other disturbance (TR) in the area, gets a strike package, consisting of two plus-minus one squadrons of mixed strike aircraft as a rule of thumb (for example, against destroyers in the late-game I favor dive bombers). In a way I do not "hold back" on and keep strike capability in reserve, because if hostile carriers are present in the area, it is nigh impossible to kick my air groups over the enemy main group to reach those anyway, so I am usually not afraid to saturate the area with whatever I got. Anything my pilots attack is one more enemy unit that has problems, and the strike window isn't infinite, and finally, I never got screwed so far due to having to conduct flight ops at the wrong time. Again: yet. It is very important to note however that I did not have much opportunity to play with the current patch and with the limited torpedo loadout, and that could and very likely will restructure my opinion above fairly significantly. Overall, maybe the best(?) way to describe my style is that I utilize my carriers simply as "floating airfields" whose air groups - most importantly - I control directly and manually, and which I keep out of harm's way, and because of this, they are detached from the main battle group plus not particularly well-armored whatsoever. For the night, mainly before reliable radar is installed on them, I generally bring them in to the main force as "Core" to keep an eye on them, them set them to support again come dawn. While they give me a very important strike formation (again: I have yet to see how this will change with the limited torpedoes), surprisingly mainly for myself, they never got to be the majority in my fleets. With Japan, I tend to reach maybe a rough 50-50% parity compared to other capital ships in the late game (almost always using "medium" game size), with the A-H maybe 20-40% (while less important for them, manual strike capability is invaluable), never really counted it, but mainly due to my reluctance on betting on the weather and daylight (and hey - not least on the battle generator!), solid gunnery capability remained still an important requirement for me.
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Post by kaguya on Jul 9, 2019 15:16:42 GMT -6
The main consideration of any carrier design is the reality that carrier fleets will spawn no further than 150 miles from each other with respective surface fleets in between them. Proper position of the main force will allow your battleships to tank the majority of the strike and leave little for your carriers to handle, which in my experience means the survivability of a carrier comes second to its offensive power. I've only lost one carrier in an actual fight, and that was because it was run down by sneaky battlecruisers after I stripped its escorting destroyers away to scout. Of course, no amount of armor is going to protect against raiding capital ships, yet speed is incredibly expensive to the point where my carriers don't exceed 30 knots to make room for more planes.
The AI is also lacking in its carrier competency, partially caused by the game only giving it 3-4 carriers (including CVLs) in any fight. I've never had the full brunt of the US Carrier Force attack my carriers as Japan so oddly enough the only competitor in this aspect is Russia of all nations. If the AI launches strikes of 30-40 planes, the standard auto assigned airgroups of 1/3rd fighters is enough to mitigate the effects of these strikes on heavy CAP.
My experience does come with a caveat in that I've rarely fought wars in the 60s at the peak of technological progress but I will brag that I've fit 282 planes onto a 80,000 ton carrier and have sent strikes from it.
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Post by rimbecano on Jul 9, 2019 15:22:25 GMT -6
My controversial position on carrier doctrine is:
1) Never scrap capital ships. 2) Never build keel-up carriers. 3) When you would scrap a capital ship, convert it to a carrier instead.
This results in carriers with:
1) Low aircraft complements per ton, thus 2) No flight deck or hangar side armor, as they take too much weight and would reduce the air complement to almost nothing. 3) Very high aircraft complements per unit cost: Building a keel-up CV generally costs 3 or 4 times as much as converting an old battlewagon for the same size air group. 4) Very low speed: the minimum for the carrier type involved if the original ship was slower than that, or the speed of the original ship otherwise. This is because adding too much speed starts to squeeze out the air wing, and also because refitting to oil/speed starts to erode the cost advantage beyond 25 or 26 knots.
My anti-aircraft doctrine is to stick as much medium and heavy AA as I can on everything, generally with a large complement of 5" DP armored to 1" once that's available. I've started going for 4" unarmored AA for carriers, and a somewhat less numerous AA battery than I might otherwise use, though, to save weight for aircraft, given point 1 above.
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Post by ulzgoroth on Jul 9, 2019 15:51:02 GMT -6
Low complement per ton leads to high hull upkeep. Though maybe that doesn't matter much in the face of aircraft upkeep.
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Post by mycophobia on Jul 9, 2019 15:58:16 GMT -6
I haven't had enough late game carrier battles to really pitch in, but as far as slow carrier goes, I find that they are a little too vulnerable outside of fleet battles.
While your battle line can guard the slow carriers in fleet battle, in many mission times where CVL and some CV spawn without BB escort, they can run into trouble against fast BCs or even just CAs. I have sunk carriers in Cruiser engagement between CAs since the carrier are too slow to put any reasonable distance between itself and my pursuing CA. I have also lost BCs since they are forced to stay behind in to put themselves between superior enemy BC(That they could've outrun) to protect slow CVs.
While they may still end up as attractive options due to cost, I just want to bring Slow CV/CVL's vulnerability in smaller surface actions.
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Post by Blothorn on Jul 9, 2019 16:24:05 GMT -6
I may write a longer treatise later, but my primary thoughts:
I've found that dive-bombed (or shelled) carriers tend to suffer heavily from fires regardless of armor, so I don't prioritize defense against them. I do like TDS, both against night-time destroyer attacks and torpedo bombers, since a torpedoed carrier is effective until it sinks. Speed is double-edged for carriers, since rather than planes having absolute relative wind requirements carriers need to go at maximum speed--in the right wind conditions, it can be impossible to keep your carriers behind a much slower battleline. I tend to go for around 30 knots--a bit of maneuvering room next to my typical battleships, but not enough to get them into trouble too quickly. For AA, I tend to give carriers decent MAA/LAA complements to help encourage DB misses. My CVLs rarely have any main battery and my CVs typically just a light main battery--I'd rather increase numbers or passive defenses on the carriers themselves, and rely on escorts for HAA. It works pretty well; I don't think I've ever lost a carrier to anything besides submarines.
I think tying surface combatants and carriers together is usually wasteful--best results are usually achieved by a combined surface/air strike, and whenever your battleships are shooting at enemy ships your carriers should be out of direct support range. The primary exception would be if land-based air is a substantial threat, and combining HAA/CAP resources is particularly valuable. That said, I think more important than following fragments of strategy advice is developing a robust fleet doctrine adapted to likely opponents and weather conditions, building ships to complement that strategy, and playing to its strengths. In the North Sea, no investment in aviation can compensate for battleship inferiority--many battles carriers will never manage an effective strike due to weather, and except in the window between search and blind-fire radar no speed advantage ensures a carrier group's escape from a poor-weather encounter with a battle group. This encourages building for battleship superiority and then building fighter-heavy carrier loadouts, to minimize damage from an opponent's carrier superiority in a rare fair-weather battle. In the Mediterranean carriers are indispensable because a strong CAP is the best defense against land-based air, but one can choose between battleships and fighter-heavy carriers or a focus on carriers as both the sword and shield of the fleet. In the Pacific weather is fair and land-based air is less of a threat; strike-heavy carriers are dominant.
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Post by aeson on Jul 9, 2019 19:25:22 GMT -6
Things to be aware of: - Some B is required if you want armored guns. - Carriers can use any combination of B, HS, and FD, including B-only, HS-only, and FD-only, but if the carrier has D then it must also have at least as much B.
- FD is roughly 27% heavier per inch of thickness than D - HS is roughly 30% heavier per inch of thickness than B - Per Fredrik here, FD is assumed to be slightly shorter than D. - Torpedo bombers can carry 1,000lb - or heavier - bombs reasonable distances by the mid-1920s and possibly earlier. - Dive bombers can carry 1,000lb bombs reasonable distances by the mid-1930s and possibly earlier. - Regardless of size, carriers have a soft limit of 16 main and 16 secondary guns and 100 aircraft. - Spot value appears to be slightly more than half the air wing, regardless of how large the air wing becomes or how old the carrier happens to be, plus one per catapult. - A carrier that can operate N '20s-era aircraft can operate N '50s-era aircraft within the game.
B - main belt armor D - main hangar-level deck armor FD - flight deck armor HS - hangar side armor I don't think conversions can have flight deck or hangar side armor, anyways - at least, I've never been able to add any when I've tried. I agree that it'd probably cost too much of the already-somewhat-small air group that most conversions have to be worthwhile, though.
Building a new battleship from the keel up usually costs more than building a new CV, and if you have an old battlewagon that has any two of good-enough armor, good-enough firepower, and good-enough speed it might be cheaper, or at least no more expensive, to upgrade the old battlewagon to hit the third 'good-enough' and build a new carrier than it is to build a new battleship or battlecruiser and convert the old battlewagon into a carrier.
For example, from a 1936 Italy savegame: ~55M to turn a 1914 (designed) / 1917 (commissioned) 3x3x16" 23kn battlewagon with adequate armor into a 3x3x16" 28knfast battleship with adequate armor, ~144M to replace it with a 2x3x17" 28kn fast battleship with good armor, ~23M to convert it into an 83-plane 24kn carrier, ~57M to turn it into a 76-plane 28kn carrier, and ~91M to build a 31kn 84-plane Essex-type carrier from the keel up. Even building the new carrier and giving Caio Duilio 3x2x17"/Q1 guns with 18" face / 6" top armor, a 28-knot engine plant, three floatplanes, two catapults, and a seaplane hangar would only cost about as much as building the replacement 2x3x17" battleship and converting Caio Duilio into a carrier using the ~23M conversion.
Caio Duilio might not be a good fast battleship with either upgrade, but it'd probably be a good enough fast battleship when operating with my other fast battleships, and while the replacement battleship could certainly be cheaper, so could the new-build carrier.
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Post by noshurviverse on Jul 9, 2019 20:51:34 GMT -6
Personally, I've made it a habit to always create one or two of these type of early game BCs. At the start they work well at bullying enemy CAs and since they've got larger guns than the predread battle line they can lurk behind it to add to the firepower. Once the game gets past the point where they're worthwhile in direct combat they can be sent out to the colonies before being converted into the first-generation light carriers.
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Post by stevethecat on Jul 9, 2019 23:41:46 GMT -6
I have fallen out of love with carriers a bit, between never being able to build angled deck CVs, super late unlocking of deck catapults, the extremely high chance of bad weather stopping launches and every other battle starting too late in the day all conspire to make them a bit more hassle than they are worth.
And 'Worth' comes in 3 flavours:
1, The cost of airframe maintenance which gets damn high. 2, The cost of managing airframe which in time gets damn high. 3, cost in strategic points, your CV's can be matched up against enemy combat ships, which is fine... IF the weather lets you use them and IF the time of day is correct.
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Post by wknehring on Jul 10, 2019 4:30:10 GMT -6
My experience after 3 playthroughs until 1955-1958 (2 Germany 1920; 1 A-H 1900) and many games started and stopped (the majority after bugs or errors- e.g. sinking one MBT and getting pop-up windows after every mouseclick):
early carriers:
It depends on the navy I play and how fast the CV-techlevel develops. I had good experiences with Germany 1920 with mothballing the obsolete CA untill I could convert it to a CVL. Replacing propulsion system and adding bulges to get a CVL with an air group of 20-24 planes and capable of doing about 21-23 knots is quiet enough. Armament wise I build them with 4x1 4" DPs and as much AA as possible with 4 AA-directos. For accelerating CV-techlevel and have some backup in late 20s/ battles, these are good enough.
In a game with Italy I built 2 large AV and converted them to CVL- the convertion is realtively cheap with about 12 months build time.
In addition I built 2 purpose built CVL with an airgroup of 28-30 planes and a speed about 28-30 knots. Armament is the same. Protection is about 2" B, 2" D, 3"CT, if possible maximum box-protection (3" B, 2" D) and TDS 1. That´s enough imo for such cheap vessels. Later they become CAP-carriers and mostly support my CV-force flagship. Totally obsolete CVL (mostly the CA-convertions) later become trade protectors. I have no clue if that is a good idea, but in case I have to defend convoys, against a lone BC or some CA, I would be glad to have some TBs to deal with them and backing up my own cruisers.
midgame carriers:
To be honest- I hate theses designs. I have a clear concept in my mind and I hate to built my CV with 8 8" guns (why not some Graf Zeppelin-like 8x2 6" casemates?). I had games I started to built 4-6 CVL instead of 2-3 of these (imo) crap vessels. In my last playthrough with Germany 1920 I built such a CV and it fastly became a 2nd line vessel. I could not boost its airgroup larger than 60 planes (the successor class had 80 planes, only a few years younger), speed-wise it made 29 knots (all following CV-designs did 33 knots) and although I replaced the 8" guns with 5" DP-guns, it feeled like obsolete the entire game until the end. I don´t like them! Protection was about 4" B, 3" D, 4" CT, 2"/1,5" turrets (5" DPs), TDS 4, inclined belt, box protection.
The successor-class (Manfred von Richthofen-class) as said was 33 knots fast, had 8x2 5" DPs, 40 + 40 AAs + 4 directors and an airgroup of 80 planes. Protection was 6" B, 4" D, 2" FD, 2" HS, CT 5 or 6", TDS 4, inclined belt + box protection. These 3 CV were the backbone of my fleet and sunk half of the Russian fleet in 2 wars. To be honest, they were attacked about 2 or 3 times in about 25-30 years- all they got were some minor torpedo hits (the AAA shot down a large amount of strike planes, before they could drop their load). If I had not resigned in 1958 because of some kind of bug/error, I would used them as long as possible.
lategame carriers:
The Richthofen-successor (Europa, only 1 unit) was an enlarged version with 90 planes, 8x2 5"Qu1 autoloader-DP, 16x2 3" atoloader-DP, 40+40 AA + 4 AA-directors (and when I am right, it had long range). It participated in 2 battles and did a fair amount of damage.
The Europa-successor-class (planned were 2 vessels), was a slightly enlarged version of the Europa with 2,5" FD and an airgroup of 100 planes. They were not commission because I resigned in 1958.
Conclusion:
All these CV had a protection against torpedostrikes and a small amount of plunging fire against 16" and medium range fire against 8" in the later versions. Unfortunately I had no DB-action against my CVs, so I don´t have any experience against them at the moment. But here I guess with 2" FD I have a good chance against HE-bombs. Against 2000lbs AP-bombs, I guess there is no proper protection ingame. So my opinion is some Fisher-style "speed is the best protection" and of course AAA and a good protection against CA (most of them were armed with 6" guns in my games).
The size of the airgroup will not grow beyond 100 planes- I would call that impractible. But that´s personal flavour I guess.
airgroups:
That´s quick-
early game: 1/3 fighters, 2/3 torpedo bombers, size of the squads depends on the spot value (normally I use 2 small groups of fighters and 1-2 large groups of bombers) mid game: about 1/3 each type (my Manfred von Richthofen load out was 2x10 fighters, 2x15 TB, 2x15 DB) late game: DB become supporters, TB become main damage dealer (Manfred von Richthofen: 2x10 fighters, 20 DB, 2x20 TB)
I chose 2 smaller groups of fighters, because I have the impression that I have more engaging CAP groups in the sky. And the more CAP-groups there are, the more enemy squads get interrupted from delivering their bomb load.
With A-H I only used a small number of 30 planes escorting CVL with 2x10 fighters and 10 TBs- they were 3 or 4 vessels. The rest were landbased planes, challenging the entire Mediterranian and Indian Ocean (with assitional (to my homeland ones) airfields at Albania, Libya, Sardinia, Rhodes and Sicily- after gaining 12 points the first time in RTW2).
AA-effectivness:
AA for its own is quiet useless, especially in the lategame when enemy bombers come in at high speeds. That´s the opinion with my BB/BCs (they normally have 10-12x2 5"Qu1 autolaoder-DPs, 40+40 AAs and 4 AA-directos).
What makes AA effective is the combination of target-AA, screaning-AA, CAP and speed. My late DDs with 36 knots and 4x2 4"Qu1 autoloader-DPs are realively effective in the escorting/screaning role. And I try to give every capital ship group its own CAP (CVL fit best in this role).
I had a class of BCs doing 33 knots and have 10x2 5" DPs and 40 AA each, they were realtively immune against DBs and landbased MBs, but took a fair amount of torpedo damage in a few battles. My 28 knots BBs with even more AA took much more bomb damage. Older BBs with 24 knots are pure victims! But in the end it depends on the number of enemy planes and how fast I can kill enemy airfileds/CVs- in the end this is the best protection for your surface fleet!
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Post by dorn on Jul 10, 2019 5:47:55 GMT -6
My experience is:
20s There are not many airplanes and if they usually carry torpedoes or use level bombing which is easy to evade Conclusion: TDS is key, carriers do not need to be armoured as the main threat are surface ships against which speed is the key. 30 knots are usually enough. Carrier needs some fighters but primary should use as many torpedo bombers as possible
30s Situation starts change as diving bombers are used more often. However main point is range. Usually battles is in such range that carriers used heavy load. This means that to protect carrier a lot of flighty deck armour is needed. But it is quite heavy and usually without armour you can double your aicraft complement (my opinion is that armour is a little heavy. There has been mentioned that Illustrious class could be done in RTW2 and I agree but it is without deck park. And if you take armour away, you can easily double aircrafts). It means that if originally you have 1/3 of fighters and 2/3 of bombers you can triple your CAP and still have about half more bombers I do not think that in actual state of RTW, armour is better than aicrafts. It is a pitty that it is not more balanced to have really some dilema. Again TDS is key against torpedo bombers.
40s and later
Situation changed that dive bombers has such ordnance that to have armour that matter you need to sacrifice just too much, so always aicrafts is better. Usually you need a little more than 1/3 of fighters needed in the first half of 30s. But as fighters usually can carry reasonable bomb load it does not matter so much.
Note: I have not seen yet changes related to torpedoes limits. But as I understand 2 torpedoes per aicraft means practically 3 strikes as some torpedo bombers are damaged and shot down after the first two strikes.
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Post by kaguya on Jul 10, 2019 10:44:03 GMT -6
On the issue of dive bombers versus torpedo bombers, in my experience dive bombers don't bring enough benefits to justify their lower damage. I've had a port strike as Japan against the USSR using 7 carriers of 144 planes each with 2/3rds being dive bombers, and I could send one wave of dive bombers before the Soviet battlecruisers started moving out of port. It was honestly pathetic seeing a maximum of 5 bomb hits against stationary targets when torpedo bombers could manage hits in the tens. I actually sank zero capital ships and promptly retired all of the dive bombers I had and switched back to torpedo bombers afterwards. The only real success I've seen from bombs is when a 1,000lb bomb penetrated 5 inches of turret armor and instantly blew up one of my best battleships, but that could have been a level bomber for all I know.
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Post by Enderminion on Jul 10, 2019 10:59:05 GMT -6
Personally I tend to armor Carriers not at all, and I tend to carry about 1/2 the Airwing as Fighter Squadrons, about 60% fighter 40% TB in the early era, dropping to 50% fighter 40% TB 10% DB in the later era, I also tend to stack well over 100 planes on my Larger carriers
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Post by klavohunter on Jul 10, 2019 11:12:13 GMT -6
The main consideration of any carrier design is the reality that carrier fleets will spawn no further than 150 miles from each other with respective surface fleets in between them. Proper position of the main force will allow your battleships to tank the majority of the strike and leave little for your carriers to handle, which in my experience means the survivability of a carrier comes second to its offensive power. I've only lost one carrier in an actual fight, and that was because it was run down by sneaky battlecruisers after I stripped its escorting destroyers away to scout. Of course, no amount of armor is going to protect against raiding capital ships, yet speed is incredibly expensive to the point where my carriers don't exceed 30 knots to make room for more planes. The AI is also lacking in its carrier competency, partially caused by the game only giving it 3-4 carriers (including CVLs) in any fight. I've never had the full brunt of the US Carrier Force attack my carriers as Japan so oddly enough the only competitor in this aspect is Russia of all nations. If the AI launches strikes of 30-40 planes, the standard auto assigned airgroups of 1/3rd fighters is enough to mitigate the effects of these strikes on heavy CAP. My experience does come with a caveat in that I've rarely fought wars in the 60s at the peak of technological progress but I will brag that I've fit 282 planes onto a 80,000 ton carrier and have sent strikes from it.
I feel a significant part of the problem is the AI's propensity for wasting a lot of its carrier airpower attacking land airbases that respawn for free after the battle, instead of sending more naval strikes after your fleet.
Because of these relatively weak anti-ship strikes, my carriers' CAP and AA bubble tend to shred attackers, and occasionally a single bomb gets through and does relatively minor damage.
I don't armor the flight decks, and the main deck gets 2" of armor on my full-up CVs. In addition, they only get 5" magazine-box belt armor.
I'm considering making some new, better-protected CVLs dedicated to carrying a 34-fighter CAP, since my OG CVLs are pretty lightly armed and armored. They've easily survived the single odd bomb that hits them, but I'm running out of practical things to spend money on.
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