Late-game help with carriers

[frostycouch]

Hi everyone,

I am finding myself outmatched against naval aircraft in the late game, even with comparable numbers of planes in the air. I would appreciate some advice!

I've attached a screenshot of a recent battle, which obviously ended poorly for me due to the enemy's superiority in landing hits from the air.

Let me start with my overall approach for naval aviation:

• Allow recon to happen automatically
• Upon getting any scouting reports of enemy capital ships (BBs, BCs, OR CVs), I generally launch half of my planes towards the rough location of the scouting report. I generally try to send a mix of torpedo bombers and dive bombers, with fighters as escorts
• Once I engage the enemy and have a firm sense of their location, I launch all remaining planes against the target except occasionally for some fighters to keep on-hand as CAP
• Rinse and repeat
• I leave CAP up to the AI
• I generally ignore warnings of dusk/night landings, as I figure scoring a hit on a capital ship is worth losing an aircraft or two

And here is what I'm noticing:

• Enemy always gets planes near my capital ships faster than I can get to theirs
• Enemy seemingly always finds my CVs and targets them first. This is obviously smart, but I can't ever seem to find their CVs at all
• Enemy seems to get MORE waves of planes than I do. Even with comparable plane numbers (like in the attached example), I seemed to get 2-3x as many "Enemy planes are approaching your ships" alerts compared to "our ships are approaching the enemy's"
• Enemy scores more hits than I do with aviation - this is obviously tied to the above

So yikes! I need some help. Am I missing something regarding naval aviation? It's possible they just have far better quality planes than I do, but I always make naval aviation a high priority and we have comparable budgets. Is my strategy flawed?

Thank you for any help!

Attachments:

[seawolf]

Few tips
1. Carrier battles are a lot more luck based than surface combat, sometimes you’ll suffer a horrible defeat and inflict 0 damage on the enemy, it just happens. But other times you will eventually do the same to them. I’ve lost whole carrier divisions to one strike then the next month two of my carriers will take out four enemy carriers. Generally, the only formula that I’ve seen do well is to have more carriers, and strike at the enemy carriers first.

2. CAP. If you think you’re going to be hit first, whether thats being near enemy airbases or getting a notice of being spotted, set it to max. Otherwise, I always set it to high. (The default is medium)
Having a strong CAP is really the only way to stop the enemy from sinking your carriers. CLAAs help to knock out enemy aircraft that make it past(CLs with DP armament). Finally, one of the most important things I’ve found is you need to keep your ships together. All of your fleet should be in the same place for maximum protection

3. Strikes. Three points.
1. Escorts matter- unless you know you’re going to be hit first, make sure your first strike wave has escorts.
2. Target selection- I usually prefer to wait for two to three spottings of CVs in a cluster to launch a strike. A strike that misses is worthless. Also make sure that the strike is selected to priority target CVs. Only after I’m sure enemy carriers are knocked out do I focus on capital ships
3. Strike makeup. If you’re targeting carriers, I prefer to use a first wave of Dive Bombers only(with escort). But this is just personal preference

[aeson]

One comment that I would make is that you seem to have a very bomber-heavy composition - you have only 196 fighters out of 947 carrier-capable aircraft between five carriers and probably at least four or five airbases, which suggests to me that you have at most 20 fighters per carrier. I would strongly recommend at least doubling the number of fighters on your carriers, because right now it looks like you have a very shallow pool from which to draw your strike escorts and CAP, and the losses that your strike escorts and CAP take are going to drain that pool rapidly over the course of the engagement.

If you're worried about the increased number of fighters cutting into your strike capability, remember that late-game fighters make for pretty capable strike aircraft in and of themselves, that all the bombers in the world won't matter if your carriers are sunk or put out of action because your feeble CAP was unable to protect them from enemy air attack, and that unescorted or inadequately-escorted strikes are more likely to take heavy losses and less likely to score hits than properly-escorted strikes. Deckload (less escorts) plus about a dozen 'spares' to cover losses in the first attack wave or make up a secondary strike force is probably all the bombers you really need, especially later in the game when fighters can fairly effectively double as bombers, and gives you a much more suitable number of fighters with which to provide CAP for your carriers and any other nearby ships you'd like to protect while also remaining capable of providing adequate escort for your air strikes.

[jwsmith26]

I'll start by mentioning some things you can try during battles. Below that I've outlined some things you can do outside of battles to improve your carrier effectiveness in battles.

Adjust the search pattern
You mentioned that you just let the computer set your search patterns for you. This has a couple of disadvantages. The computer will often set searches to pass over large swaths of land which of course is not useful, so it is worthwhile to look at the pattern and make adjustments to the areas covered. In addition the computer sets the search distance much too high, in the late game it is generally set to 600 nm for carrier forces! This means that your recon planes will fly out well beyond any reasonable location of the enemy fleet which is generally closer than 200 nm. Those planes will fly until they are running low on fuel and will generally return much too late to be used for strikes in the battle. You should reset the bounds of the search patterns and shorten the distance flown to a reasonable distance. I will also adjust the search patterns and sometimes the CAP density for my land bases, in some cases actually lengthening the search so that PBs launched from distant air bases can reach the battle region.

Use airships
If you are going to be fighting near land bases it is also useful to set up some airship bases in the area. Because airships move slowly they can act as a second wave of searchers moving behind the first wave and picking up enemy ships that may have moved into the space behind the first wave of searchers.

Beef up the search
You should use more planes for search than are provided by the automated process. This is especially the case if you are having difficulty locating the enemy carriers and certainly the case in any situation in which your carrier search is not assisted by nearby land bases. I will usually send a second wave of about 6 search planes that I manually launch to follow on after the automated search. Some players use small naval strikes of 2 or 3 planes for this purpose, but this has a downside - those planes will not return until dusk, or they run out of fuel, unless they actually find and attack the enemy. On the upside you might achieve a lucky hit, but it is just as likely that you'll lose all three planes to enemy CAP.

Watch for downed recon planes
You can sometimes spot the approximate location of the enemy carriers by watching for your own search plane losses. To use this technique, you need to immediately pause the game if you see a message indicating that one of your search planes has been shot down by enemy CAP. You can find that lost recon plane. You can do this by examining the Air Formations screen. Look for any search squadron that has a current strength of 0/0/1. Next double click on that squadron's line in the Air Formations screen. This will center the map on the location of the downed plane. Often the location will be near an air base or possibly over the enemy battle line, but if it's in an area where the suspected carriers lurk you have likely found the enemy carriers. One caveat, the game provides this clue only on the turn in which the recon plane is shot down. The on-screen icon for the 0 strength plane will disappear in the next turn and so will your chance to find the culprits who shot it down. By the way, I don't consider this an exploit. The known absence of search planes or a failure to check in often provided clues about the presence of enemy fighters where they had no business being. 

Use coordinated strikes
You didn't mention if you are using coordinated strikes, but if you are not you should be. Your squadrons will suffer fewer losses because any escorting fighters will be more likely to engage the enemy CAP. Your bombers will also perform better. It appears that the AI does not often use coordinated strikes, which is probably why you are seeing so many incoming strikes. The many small strikes are actually to your advantage if you have adequate CAP, which should make mincemeat of small unescorted strikes.

Bring enough fighters to the fight
That leads to the next point. As the years go by you must increase the number of fighters on your carriers. In the 20s fighters are almost unnecessary. CAP is pretty ineffective and often doesn't even intervene. By the early 30s my carriers are typically carrying 1/3 fighters because enemy aircraft are becoming more dangerous both in their bombing attacks and in the fighter attacks. By the late 30s, early 40s my carriers are carrying at least 50% fighters and by about the mid 40s they have closer to 2/3 fighters on board. By this point enemy bombers have become very deadly and you need to take them out before they get a chance to attack. Similarly, you will need fewer bombers to do decisive damage, but you will need a strong escort to survive the enemy CAP.

Denser is not always better
You'll want to pay attention to the CAP density over your naval forces. You should know that fighters on CAP duty will remain in the air only until they have used one half of their fuel (they will also land after being involved in X number of air-to-air battles). They will then land to refuel and take off again on CAP. This means that fighters that took off at dawn on a CAP mission will sometimes be landing just about the time that enemy strikes are arriving, which is obviously not good. To exercise some control over this automated process I will often leave my CAP density at medium for my carrier forces until I have sent off my first strikes and then turn it to high or max in anticipation of the enemy strikes arriving. This sudden increase will typically send any idle fighters into the air and if it is timed right can fill the sky with fighters just as the the enemy arrives.

Adjust who gets CAP
If your main concern is protecting your carriers then you may want to take a look at the orders for your carrier divisions. If they have a Support order that means they are sending 50% of their fighters off to protect the supported friendly division, often automatically set to be your battleline. If you know your carriers are under imminent threat of attack you might want to consider changing these orders. If you are close to an airbase you can also consider requesting fighter support. If one of your carrier divisions has been isolated and needs additional fighter support you can also directly assign that division fighter support from other carrier divisions.

Concentrate on fighters
You can do some things in the years leading up to war to improve your chances during battle. As you can tell from the above I consider fighters to be the decisive weapon in the late game. Your bombers may do the dirty work but without effective fighters they'll never get the chance. Aircraft undergo a renaissance in the mid to late thirties. The rate of technological advances is much faster during this period than in the preceding 15 to 20 years. You have to stay on top of your fighter development because a fighter even 2 or 3 years old can be dominated by a newer fighter. Especially during this period and into the 40s I devote at least 50% of my aircraft development time researching new fighters to make sure I don't fall too far behind the AI machines. Bombers and scouts take a back seat because they do not evolve as fast as fighters.

Know what's in your squadrons
You'll want to keep an eye on the plane models that are actually equipping your carrier based squadrons. The game is not good at prioritizing carrier squadrons to be stocked with the latest models, so it is likely that some older models are serving on your carriers. There is not much you can do about these choices - you can't specify which plane models will be assigned to your carrier squadrons. The best you can do is to shift squadrons equipped with older planes to shore bases (if you have enough carrier capable squadrons) or into older second-line carriers such as CVLs.

Show your pilots some love
Of course, planes don't fly themselves and your greatest assets are your pilots. If you are in the habit of putting everything in reserve between wars then you are throwing away your incredibly valuable trained pilots. Pilots with superior experience will perform better (for instance, they will be able to fight more air-to-air combats before landing due to lack of ammo) and pilots that start a war already at good level or above will have a definite advantage over the AI pilots that are almost certainly put into reserve between wars. My practice is to always keep my carriers active between wars to preserve my pilot's experience. Alternately, I will move them into land bases that are kept active. I generally keep several land bases active, preferably NAS because they are much more efficient at training pilots than distant airbases. I will move any veteran or expert pilots into these bases at the end of a war to preserve their experience, while other squadrons at level good and below generally get put into reserve. It is expensive but the benefits become apparent when war breaks out. I'll aslo mention that pilot losses affect experience so casually throwing planes into dusk strikes will likely result in a loss in experience for that squadron if it takes heavy losses. 

As you can see there are many levers you can pull to make your carriers and planes a more effective fighting force.

[kastratore]

I will also adjust the search patterns and sometimes the CAP density for my land bases, in some cases actually lengthening the search so that PBs launched from distant air bases can reach the battle region.

I didn't know you can do that, and i really wish i did. It felt like a waste to see my airbases sending scouts into the Baltic, when the engagement was clearly happening in the North Sea, or vice versa.
Great post, i learned a lot from it, but it would be great if more of that stuff were documented in one place, cause i feel like i learned much more about game mechanics from scouring this forums than from reading manual.

[frostycouch]

Hi everyone,

Seawolf, jwsmith26, and aeson - you guys are awesome, thank you for the feedback and excellent tips. As kastratore mentioned, I learned a lot from this post!

I think the most critical improvement is to beef up my CAP capabilities; as several folks noticed, the default composition left me totally understaffed. The other tips are also tremendously helpful. A few follow-up questions came up as I tried to think this through further:

1. Managing my air fleet: Is it possible to manage what types of planes are in my fleet? More specifically, can I retire old models of planes? It seems like I just accumulate old models...I know I can choose how many fighters/bombers/etc. are on a given aircraft carrier, but I don't know how to manage the entire air fleet

2. Jwsmith26, when you say that you prioritize the research of new fighters, do you mean that you just request proposals for new fighters every 2-3 years? Or is there something else to it?

3. CAP: Do I have to manually hold back fighters for CAP or are they automatically assigned? When I go to the "strike" panel, and I see planes there, should I always keep X fighters on-hand or does that strike page automatically exclude fighters reserved for CAP?

Thanks!

[aeson]

Apr 9, 2020 10:54:30 GMT -6 frostycouch said:

1. Managing my air fleet: Is it possible to manage what types of planes are in my fleet? More specifically, can I retire old models of planes? It seems like I just accumulate old models...I know I can choose how many fighters/bombers/etc. are on a given aircraft carrier, but I don't know how to manage the entire air fleet

You cannot specify which models should be used by a squadron, though if you're up for the micromanagement you can shift squadrons around depending on what aircraft they have.

You can also right-click on an aircraft in the Aircraft Types menu to mark it as obsolete, though there is no guarantee that that will hasten its replacement in your squadrons and the game usually automatically marks aircraft obsolete after it's been in service a few years anyways - at least if you have a newer model of that type available.

3. CAP: Do I have to manually hold back fighters for CAP or are they automatically assigned? When I go to the "strike" panel, and I see planes there, should I always keep X fighters on-hand or does that strike page automatically exclude fighters reserved for CAP?

The game does not automatically reserve fighters for CAP, it only automatically assigns CAP missions to available fighters up to some number dependent on your CAP setting and whether or not your carrier division is responsible for only its own CAP or is also covering some other division.

2. Jwsmith26, when you say that you prioritize the research of new fighters, do you mean that you just request proposals for new fighters every 2-3 years? Or is there something else to it?

Most likely, what jwsmith26 means by "prioritize the research of new fighters" is that he requests new fighter proposals with more frequency than other types. E.g. instead of a Fighter - Dive Bomber - Torpedo Bomber - Floatplane Scout - Flying Boat - Medium Bomber rotation, it might be something more like Fighter - Dive Bomber - Torpedo Bomber - Fighter - Floatplane Scout - Flying Boat - Medium Bomber or Fighter - Dive Bomber - Torpedo Bomber - Fighter - Dive Bomber - Torpedo Bomber - Fighter - Floatplane - Flying Boat - Medium Bomber rotation.

Also, I would generally recommend that you request new aircraft proposals as often as you are able to do so, regardless of whether or not you're placing more emphasis on one type than another, because there can be very large performance gaps between aircraft developed only a year or so apart, especially if you're in a transitional period such as the mid- to late-'30s and '40s (biplanes to monoplanes at least, maybe some jet-ish performance later in the '40s).

[jwsmith26]

Apr 9, 2020 10:54:30 GMT -6 frostycouch said:

Hi everyone,

Seawolf, jwsmith26, and aeson - you guys are awesome, thank you for the feedback and excellent tips. As kastratore mentioned, I learned a lot from this post!

I think the most critical improvement is to beef up my CAP capabilities; as several folks noticed, the default composition left me totally understaffed. The other tips are also tremendously helpful. A few follow-up questions came up as I tried to think this through further:

1. Managing my air fleet: Is it possible to manage what types of planes are in my fleet? More specifically, can I retire old models of planes? It seems like I just accumulate old models...I know I can choose how many fighters/bombers/etc. are on a given aircraft carrier, but I don't know how to manage the entire air fleet

2. Jwsmith26, when you say that you prioritize the research of new fighters, do you mean that you just request proposals for new fighters every 2-3 years? Or is there something else to it?

3. CAP: Do I have to manually hold back fighters for CAP or are they automatically assigned? When I go to the "strike" panel, and I see planes there, should I always keep X fighters on-hand or does that strike page automatically exclude fighters reserved for CAP?

Thanks!

1. Using the obsolete option is your primary tool for managing which planes will be manufactured. You can toggle a model's obsolete status by right clicking on the model's line in the "Aircraft types" screen. The game will never manufacture more than one aircraft model for each role. The model that is manufactured will always be the most recently developed model that is not marked as obsolete. This means that you can refuse to manufacture a newer (presumably less effective) model by marking it obsolete. This process let's you control which model you will produce.

Marking a model as obsolete affects the production of the plane, however it does not affect its use in your air force. You will find that many models marked as obsolete may still be in service in your air force and deployed into squadrons on your carriers. To see which obsolete planes are still in service in your air force open the "Aircraft types" screen and check the "Show obsolete types" checkbox. Look at the "In service" column and you will see that many obsolete planes are still in service, meaning they are currently deployed in your squadrons. It can take quite a bit of time for older models to be replaced by newer models because of the relatively slow rate of aircraft production.  

2. Speaking specifically about the mid 30s to about the mid 40s I will typically ask for a new fighter proposal every other request. That is, a bomber, a fighter, a different bomber, then another fighter, then maybe a PB, then another fighter. If I get a batch of inferior fighter prototypes, I'll sometimes immediately request another fighter proposal, meaning the 2nd request for proposals is underway before the 1st fighter model has even left development. I might let a torpedo bomber hang around for perhaps 2 or 3 years before I request another proposal for one. Scout planes and PBs in this time frame often get updated only every 4 years or so. It is important to drive up the bomb load for dive bombers in the mid to late 30s, so I give DBs some priority until they can carry at least a 1400 lb. bomb. After that they also languish while I concentrate of developing fighters. In the mid 40s medium bombers become more important because they begin using more advanced bombing techniques, so In that time frame I'll try to make sure they are regularly updated.

You can see that it is possible to tailor your development and aircraft production to meet your particular air strategy and adjust aircraft development and production to take advantage of changing technologies over the years. It is a very slow process but it is one you can manage.

3. You don't have to do anything to assign fighters to CAP duty but you may need to take steps to preserve fighters if you want to use them for escort duty. The AI will become greedier when the CAP intensity is increased. At maximum CAP you will likely be hard pressed to find fighters for escorts because the AI will grab every available fighter and assign it to CAP duty. If you immediately set your CAP to maximum on turn 0 you will want to ensure that you will have fighters available for escort duty by giving them an escort order on turn 0 and readying them. This will cause the computer to keep its hands off the fighters you want to use. If you set your CAP to medium it is very likely that there will be some fighters unassigned and still available in later turns but this also depends on how many fighters are available. If you only have a single squadron you may need to split it and assign a section to escort duty if you want to preserve some fighters for escort duty.