Newbie having trouble with CVs

[nutty31]

I apologise for the length of this post, but I'm a lowly newbie that would greatly appreciate any advice about this matter, and sorry if it turns a little ranty half way through.
I just got RtW2 recently, and I have been having a ton of fun with it. I tried my first game as France, messed up quite a lot, got my butt handed to me by Germany, but saw some of the flaws in my designs and strategy, and decided to try again with my new knowledge.

So, I'm now in my new campaign as the USA this time, and it has gone a lot better. I've won every war I got into. My understanding is the USA is one of the easier powers to play, but it's still fun.

However, it is now 1933, and carrier warfare has really taken off (heh). I'm currently in a war with Japan, and my carriers are getting absolutely obliterated by Japanese aircraft.

The problem is that I'm not entirely sure where I'm going wrong here. I've packed as much AA onto my carriers as possible, yet they shoot down maybe 3 planes if they are lucky, more commonly only 1 or 2. The CAP is slightly more effective, but not enough to prevent strikes or even mitigate them much. My scouting also seems to be largely ineffective, I send out a standard scout and half of the time they find either nothing or a stray group of wandering KEs and report them as a DD screen force. Meanwhile the first whereabouts of any of the Japanese CVs is when their strike shows up and attacks my own CVs. It seems the smart thing to do, but very commonly this happens right after my own recon has finished and they either find nothing or something along the lines of "1 DD spotted in this area way outside strike range."

It doesn't seem to help that the game sometimes seems to want to stack the odds against me fairly often right now. Right around the time I am ready to send my first strike, either the weather suddenly makes a turn for the worse, so all aircraft are grounded, or my own CVs are suddenly under air attack. Furthermore, almost my entire fleet is in Northeast or Southeast Asia, yet I rarely get more than 3-4 ships, at all. I know this is meant to be a thing, but it seems unfair when what I am given is 1 CV and 1 CL, and my task is to attack a convoy armed by 3 CAs and 7 DDs, then to be compounded by a sudden storm lasting most of the battle meaning I effectively have to fight 3 CAs and DD escort with a single lone CL. I have managed to sink 1 Japanese CVL so far, and have lost 2 CVs in the process, and it wasn't even my CVs that sunk the CVL, meanwhile both my lost CVs were sunk by air strikes.

The most recent example: Carrier battle in Northeast Asia region. I get Enterprise, one of my first CVs, and still not very large, only 19,000 tons, but this the first CV model I made and I have a larger and more powerful one being built. As escort she has 2 CLs and a DD. Start of mission scouts go up, use all their over 200 nm range, only thing spotted is "1 CL about 150nm away." This is outside my plane's strike range, but I know this is probably the main force and the recon was just bad, so start moving towards them to get in strike range. Knowing I'm probably outnumbered, I don't want to get any closer than necessary, so ready the strike so the planes can launch as soon as possible. Right when they are in strike range, I send the attack...to then be told they can't because of light rain that started literally 5 minutes before. So I turn the Enterprise around, then only a few minutes later she is under attack by aircraft. 2 torpedoes and 1 bomb hit later, and she is sinking. A while later the escorts are ambushed by multiple cruisers and I rush to get them out of there, but still lose one. The enemy entered the battle with 2 CVs (both individually larger than the Enterprise on their own), 1 CVL, 1 CA, 1 CL and 8 DDs.

My side: 1 CV and 1 CL sunk, 1 CL moderately damaged, 1 DD undamaged, -4660 points
Japan: 1 lightly damaged DD, 2 CVs, 1 CVL, 1 CA, 1 CL and 7 DDs undamaged, 69943 points

My only other use of carriers before this was a war with Russia, where I got to use my converted CVLs a few times, but the only time I fought a Russian CV/CVL was the first battle with it, because there was no mention of it in the recon and the only thing I ever saw about it was "UNIDENTIFIED ship sunk by torpedo," a storm happened that grounded aircraft for the rest of the battle, and this was Russia's only carrier, so I am rather inexperienced in Carrier warfare, especially against other carriers. This problem probably isn't helped by the fact that despite having my converted CVLs since about 1922 and having aircraft research on high priority and spying on Japan, Britain and Germany, I never got any aircraft available other than seaplanes, fighters and flying boats until about 1928. Some of these problems with seemingly unfair matchmaking and missions and inconvenient weather is nothing new, but it seems to be heavily compounded with carriers for me. I'm not sure where I'm going wrong but I love this game and want to get better at it, so any advice about carrier warfare would be greatly appreciated. I tried to prepare myself by reading a bit on the forums and reading almost everything about the carriers and aircraft in the manual, but I'm still having serious problems.

My BBs and BCs are mostly superior to theirs, and I have been in a war with Japan before, and I won fairly easily. Anytime in this war that my BBs and BCs have gotten into fights with theirs have more often than not had me come out better too, my only big problem is their carriers.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

[hawkeye]

I assume you have gone through akosjaccik 's excellent aircraft guide.
If not, do it right now nws-online.proboards.com/thread/3923/beginners-manual-operating-aircraft

Other than that, I'm not really good with a/c myself, so I'll leave it to others to throw in more help.

[Adseria]

I'm not that great with carriers either, but, on the subject of your AA not shooting many planes down, you shouldn't really expect it to. AA's effectiveness doesn't come from shooting down aircraft, for the most part; it comes from disrupting the enemy aircraft, making them miss, or abort. Either way, the point is, it doesn't matter whether the enemy aircraft survive the attack, as long as your ship does.

[nutty31]

Oct 27, 2020 3:31:58 GMT -6 Adseria said:

I'm not that great with carriers either, but, on the subject of your AA not shooting many planes down, you shouldn't really expect it to. AA's effectiveness doesn't come from shooting down aircraft, for the most part; it comes from disrupting the enemy aircraft, making them miss, or abort. Either way, the point is, it doesn't matter whether the enemy aircraft survive the attack, as long as your ship does.

I get that, but at the same time it doesn't exactly feel like it is effective at disrupting the attack either when they still land hits that result in my carrier sinking. And as I said, the Enterprise sank from a single bomb hit and 2 torpedoes, and the class was designed with the best anti-torpedo protection and damage control available to me (and with the research in the area being on high priority the entire game, although admittedly development in the area has been a little slow lately). Perhaps having my aircraft ready for a strike at the time didn't help, but I never expected that I would be attacked that hard before I even got in range of the only target that was spotted, then have me unable to send the strike because of a sudden change in the weather. It also gets annoying when I can never find the enemy carriers at all, and then they suddenly strike my own carriers.

Maybe my AA is effective at disrupting attacks, but they are just able to send so many more aircraft that some still get through.

[forget83]

What is the composition of your airgroup. I personally always have 2 12~fighters squadrons and wont build my first fleet CV until I could at least squeezed 60+ aircraft in.

[jwsmith26]

It is not unusual in RTW2 for a aircraft model to be developed with one or more attributes that far exceed most of its contemporaries. This happened historically as well - just look at the range of the Zero, which far exceeded that of its primary enemy. In RTW2, more than once, I have developed a fighter that had a speed and range that was 30% higher than every other fighter in the world. One such fighter remained a front line aircraft for almost ten years and surpassed the abilities of 4 generations of fighters as I attempted to develop a better plane. It is quite possible that the Japanese nation had developed planes whose ranges far exceeded the abilities of your current set of aircraft.

Searching from a lone carrier force often results in not finding the enemy force in RTW2, even when you know where that force is located. If I am in a situation where I cannot depend on shore based air to provide sufficient search assistance I will manually send out a second wave of searching planes about 20 or 30 minutes behind the first wave sent by the computer. I'll also try keep to 2 or 3 planes readied with a search mission so I can quickly send out additional planes if I suspect that I have discovered the enemy or need to search a slice of the pattern that might have been skipped for any number of reasons. Even with a second wave my experience has been that I will probably not find the enemy when searching from a single force (carrier or main). In tests using fleet exercises I find that I have about a 20-25% success rate when searching for the enemy using a single search pattern with a following manual search. If you are playing as the USA and fighting in NE Asia it is very likely that you have few options for putting up a search pattern beyond the ships you have brought with you, while the Japanese AI is probably sending out planes and airships from several supporting air bases, possibly up to a dozen, depending on where the battle takes place. Another effect of such long distance battles is to strip destroyers from your force (because they lack the range to reach the battle) further reducing your AA strength. Fighting far from friendly land bases places your fleet at a considerable disadvantage that only worsens as air power begins to dominate battles.

You should be careful about making judgements about how things work in RTW2 based on a single battle, or several battles, or even on several wars. RTW2 is extremely variable, as were real-life battles. As in real-life battles, the success or failure of a single searching plane or a single successful bomb hit can determine the outcome of a battle, but you have to be careful about taking the wrong impression from such events because they are an event, that is, a one-off occurrence. The game needs to support such events because they happened historically, but they are often not typical of what commonly happens in the game. 

[nutty31]

Oct 27, 2020 9:26:32 GMT -6 forget83 said:

What is the composition of your airgroup. I personally always have 2 12~fighters squadrons and wont build my first fleet CV until I could at least squeezed 60+ aircraft in.

My Langley class CVs (my only CVs so far) have a hanger size of 55 aircraft, and my loadout so far with them has been 20 fighters, 20 tbs and 15 dbs. Is it more effective to have a smaller number of large squadrons, or a larger number of smaller squadrons? Also I am in the process of building a new CV of a different design, which will have substantially more AA, a hanger size of 67 planes, and more armour, with the only drawback being slightly slower (24 knots compared to 26). However, I'm still stuck with my entire carrier force being a single CV and 2 CVLs I converted from some of my first pre-dreadnought battleships in about 1922 for the next 14 months (even then that's only another CVL, I need to wait 23 months for my new CV), and that's assuming I can keep those alive.

It is not unusual in RTW2 for a aircraft model to be developed with one or more attributes that far exceed most of its contemporaries. This happened historically as well - just look at the range of the Zero, which far exceeded that of its primary enemy. In RTW2, more than once, I have developed a fighter that had a speed and range that was 30% higher than every other fighter in the world. One such fighter remained a front line aircraft for almost ten years and surpassed the abilities of 4 generations of fighters as I attempted to develop a better plane. It is quite possible that the Japanese nation had developed planes whose ranges far exceeded the abilities of your current set of aircraft.



Searching from a lone carrier force often results in not finding the enemy force in RTW2, even when you know where that force is located. If I am in a situation where I cannot depend on shore based air to provide sufficient search assistance I will manually send out a second wave of searching planes about 20 or 30 minutes behind the first wave sent by the computer. I'll also try keep to 2 or 3 planes readied with a search mission so I can quickly send out additional planes if I suspect that I have discovered the enemy or need to search a slice of the pattern that might have been skipped for any number of reasons. Even with a second wave my experience has been that I will probably not find the enemy when searching from a single force (carrier or main). In tests using fleet exercises I find that I have about a 20-25% success rate when searching for the enemy using a single search pattern with a following manual search. If you are playing as the USA and fighting in NE Asia it is very likely that you have few options for putting up a search pattern beyond the ships you have brought with you, while the Japanese AI is probably sending out planes and airships from several supporting air bases, possibly up to a dozen, depending on where the battle takes place. Another effect of such long distance battles is to strip destroyers from your force (because they lack the range to reach the battle) further reducing your AA strength. Fighting far from friendly land bases places your fleet at a considerable disadvantage that only worsens as air power begins to dominate battles.



You should be careful about making judgements about how things work in RTW2 based on a single battle, or several battles, or even on several wars. RTW2 is extremely variable, as were real-life battles. As in real-life battles, the success or failure of a single searching plane or a single successful bomb hit can determine the outcome of a battle, but you have to be careful about taking the wrong impression from such events because they are an event, that is, a one-off occurrence. The game needs to support such events because they happened historically, but they are often not typical of what commonly happens in the game.

From the information I have on the Japanese aircraft, I think my newest planes are slightly faster overall, with my fighters being substantially faster than theirs, but have less firepower, other than that I'm not sure how our planes compare. However, I just noticed that I haven't been keeping up with marking outdated planes as obsolete, so it's very likely my squadrons have been being supplied with planes with far worse range than is available in other models.

As for lack of bases for destroyers: I acquired land, bases and airbases in NE Asia from my last war with Russia. However, they aren't developed enough to fully accommodate the force I have present there, and Japan seems to have much more land based aircraft capacity. Furthermore, a lack of KEs means I had to put a substantial number of destroyers on trade protection, but with more KEs coming into service I am reinforcing my battlefleets with the freed up DDs. The airbases also haven't been much use as most of the engagements have taken place on the East coast of Japan, which is the opposite side of my airbases in the area.

Thanks for all the advice, I'll try to incorporate it into how I use my CVs. I guess I am still getting into the flow of the game, at least as far as carriers are concerned. I seem to have completely depleted Japan of BBs and BCs, so the only problems are the aircraft and DDs, the second of which shouldn't be too much of a problem soon

[spacenerd4]

Oct 27, 2020 18:20:48 GMT -6 nutty31 said:

Oct 27, 2020 9:26:32 GMT -6 forget83 said:

What is the composition of your airgroup. I personally always have 2 12~fighters squadrons and wont build my first fleet CV until I could at least squeezed 60+ aircraft in.

My Langley class CVs (my only CVs so far) have a hanger size of 55 aircraft, and my loadout so far with them has been 20 fighters, 20 tbs and 15 dbs. Is it more effective to have a smaller number of large squadrons, or a larger number of smaller squadrons? Also I am in the process of building a new CV of a different design, which will have substantially more AA, a hanger size of 67 planes, and more armour, with the only drawback being slightly slower (24 knots compared to 26). However, I'm still stuck with my entire carrier force being a single CV and 2 CVLs I converted from some of my first pre-dreadnought battleships in about 1922 for the next 14 months (even then that's only another CVL, I need to wait 23 months for my new CV), and that's assuming I can keep those alive.

It is not unusual in RTW2 for a aircraft model to be developed with one or more attributes that far exceed most of its contemporaries. This happened historically as well - just look at the range of the Zero, which far exceeded that of its primary enemy. In RTW2, more than once, I have developed a fighter that had a speed and range that was 30% higher than every other fighter in the world. One such fighter remained a front line aircraft for almost ten years and surpassed the abilities of 4 generations of fighters as I attempted to develop a better plane. It is quite possible that the Japanese nation had developed planes whose ranges far exceeded the abilities of your current set of aircraft.



Searching from a lone carrier force often results in not finding the enemy force in RTW2, even when you know where that force is located. If I am in a situation where I cannot depend on shore based air to provide sufficient search assistance I will manually send out a second wave of searching planes about 20 or 30 minutes behind the first wave sent by the computer. I'll also try keep to 2 or 3 planes readied with a search mission so I can quickly send out additional planes if I suspect that I have discovered the enemy or need to search a slice of the pattern that might have been skipped for any number of reasons. Even with a second wave my experience has been that I will probably not find the enemy when searching from a single force (carrier or main). In tests using fleet exercises I find that I have about a 20-25% success rate when searching for the enemy using a single search pattern with a following manual search. If you are playing as the USA and fighting in NE Asia it is very likely that you have few options for putting up a search pattern beyond the ships you have brought with you, while the Japanese AI is probably sending out planes and airships from several supporting air bases, possibly up to a dozen, depending on where the battle takes place. Another effect of such long distance battles is to strip destroyers from your force (because they lack the range to reach the battle) further reducing your AA strength. Fighting far from friendly land bases places your fleet at a considerable disadvantage that only worsens as air power begins to dominate battles.



You should be careful about making judgements about how things work in RTW2 based on a single battle, or several battles, or even on several wars. RTW2 is extremely variable, as were real-life battles. As in real-life battles, the success or failure of a single searching plane or a single successful bomb hit can determine the outcome of a battle, but you have to be careful about taking the wrong impression from such events because they are an event, that is, a one-off occurrence. The game needs to support such events because they happened historically, but they are often not typical of what commonly happens in the game.

From the information I have on the Japanese aircraft, I think my newest planes are slightly faster overall, with my fighters being substantially faster than theirs, but have less firepower, other than that I'm not sure how our planes compare. However, I just noticed that I haven't been keeping up with marking outdated planes as obsolete, so it's very likely my squadrons have been being supplied with planes with far worse range than is available in other models.

As for lack of bases for destroyers: I acquired land, bases and airbases in NE Asia from my last war with Russia. However, they aren't developed enough to fully accommodate the force I have present there, and Japan seems to have much more land based aircraft capacity. Furthermore, a lack of KEs means I had to put a substantial number of destroyers on trade protection, but with more KEs coming into service I am reinforcing my battlefleets with the freed up DDs. The airbases also haven't been much use as most of the engagements have taken place on the East coast of Japan, which is the opposite side of my airbases in the area.

Thanks for all the advice, I'll try to incorporate it into how I use my CVs. I guess I am still getting into the flow of the game, at least as far as carriers are concerned. I seem to have completely depleted Japan of BBs and BCs, so the only problems are the aircraft and DDs, the second of which shouldn't be too much of a problem soon

Sounds good, but try to get the next class up to at least 80 a/c, I've noticed a great difference in how you can send out much heavier strikes.