tc27
Junior Member
Posts: 68
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Post by tc27 on Jun 3, 2019 4:52:12 GMT -6
Even post 'CV as main force' tech I am still only really getting engagements where the main force is battleships with CV support and the engagement spawns just outside visual/radar range.
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Post by L0ckAndL0ad on Jun 3, 2019 5:05:53 GMT -6
I'm still exploring the game (my first playthrough, US), it's September 1941, I'm two years into a war with Japan. Russians came into the conflict couple of months before, so I'm stretched really thin. But that also means that there are tons of ships and targets around, still, I'm yet to fight a carrier fight. Or any fight with carriers, actually. The only one I had was a semi-scripted surprise attack on PH, and it was super short and static.
I get tons of cruiser fights and some convoy defense/attack. I'm really outnumbered in number of cruisers, so I don't go on the offensive (do not invade enemy bases), but I have 2 BB, 6 CV, 8 CVL, ~20 CA, ~10 CL, ~130 DD, and enemy BCs and CVs float around in the same sea zone (had CONUS East Coast blockaded for a couple of turns by the enemy actually!), but no luck in 24 months of war.
What's most interesting is that I found that, neither in exercise battles, nor in my PH attack, you cannot set heavy cruisers to screen or somehow otherwise follow your carriers. They revert to independent mode and are considered to be flagships of the Main Force. Not sure if it's connected to "BBs can now screen CVs" tech which I don't have yet, but I have all the previous ones ("Carriers will operate in separate force"), and no dice.
Gotta explore more, but yeah, I'd be glad to hear other people's experience with this.
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Post by ramjb on Jun 3, 2019 5:10:13 GMT -6
I did have some good CV battles in my games. Last one (playing versailles Germany) in the Baltic of all places.
6 of my carriers (2xCV 60 planes, 2xCVL 24 planes, 2x CVL 18 planes) vs 5 russian ones (1xCV 82 planes, 4 CVLs 24 planes).
Managed several strikes on the enemy fleet during the day. Fended off some air attacks on my side (one of my CVLs got pretty badly hit on those but survived). Kept my battlefleet close to my CVs until the sun began to decline and then began an agressive sweep with the big guns towards the last known position of the enemy.
End result: 3 enemy BBs sunk, big carrier sunk, 3xCVLs sunk, plus the random assortment of cruisers and DDs here and there. I lost a CA (unlucky flash fire on a turret when it stumbled against a wounded BB).
And no, the engagement wasn't anywhere close to "just outside visual/radar range". Closes contact recon aircraft did might have been at twice the lenght of my battleship's visual range (and my BBs were moving back towards the CV formations anyway).
You're never going to see your flagship force based on the CV squadrons. Ever. It was standard practice of the time (Even after battles such as Midway or Phillipine sea) that a given formation's flagship would be a battleship, or at least a big gun ship if there was any around with the needed flagship accomodations around. If none of those was around, on a cruiser with flaship facilities. and if none around THEN, on a carrier.
In the phillipine sea, for crying out loud, the american force flagship was a heavy cruiser... (and there were 15 CVs and 7 battleships involved in the american side). In Midway Yamamoto was aboard Yamato. During Leyte Gulf Halsey's flagship was USS New Jersey. Just to name some prime instances.
If what you want is for the carriers to do the heavylifting, it's simple - order your surface forces away towards the CVs during daytime and sail besides them.
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Post by ramjb on Jun 3, 2019 5:12:00 GMT -6
you cannot set heavy cruisers to screen or somehow otherwise follow your carriers. Hm. Strange. in every battle I can remember where CVs and enough CAs were around, at least one division of CAs was close to the carrier force in "screening" orders. Maybe you didn't have enough of them in battle?.
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Post by director on Jun 3, 2019 5:23:53 GMT -6
It is true that Spruance commanded 5th Fleet from a heavy cruiser at Philippine Sea. Carrier task group commanders, however, commanded from carriers. The Fast Carrier Task Force was commanded by Marc Mitscher from USS Lexington and all four component elements were commanded from carriers. Overall fleet control could be from a capital ship or cruiser, but operational control of carriers was exercised from carrier flagships.
All of this stems from RtWs force setup problem (IMHO); we should be permitted to set up squadrons and designate our flagship, with an option to let the AI do so as it does now.
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Post by dizzy on Jun 3, 2019 9:13:21 GMT -6
Usually with 'Cruiser Engagements' Medium sized battles I'll get a couple BC's with destroyer escorts with another Division of CV's and Destroyers. Those are fun missions. Really puts the emphasis on the carriers. Then there are Convoy attack or defense missions as Large sized battles and the forces aren't quite as big as Fleet sized, so they are very fun as well.
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Post by L0ckAndL0ad on Jun 3, 2019 13:09:38 GMT -6
you cannot set heavy cruisers to screen or somehow otherwise follow your carriers. Hm. Strange. in every battle I can remember where CVs and enough CAs were around, at least one division of CAs was close to the carrier force in "screening" orders. Maybe you didn't have enough of them in battle?. Ughm, yeah, I dunno. Like I've said, I'm still exploring the game, I had only those two combats with CV, not a lot to test this. It's now August 1942, 34th month of the war. I have 3 BB, 6 CV, 7 CVL, 22 CA, 14 CL, 134 DD... And no fleet battles. Not even with battleships... Strange.
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Post by ramjb on Jun 3, 2019 13:16:04 GMT -6
It is true that Spruance commanded 5th Fleet from a heavy cruiser at Philippine Sea. Carrier task group commanders, however, commanded from carriers. That's the thing, you're not supposed to be the commander of a task force. You're supposed to be a fleet admiral. Those weren't found in carriers back in the day
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Post by tordenskjold on Jun 3, 2019 14:52:22 GMT -6
Well, I actually had no such CV vs. CV engagements, but in my last playthrough as Austria-Hungary I had a couple of interesting battles where I could choose to keep my BBs away from the enemy and have my planes do the job instead (that was quite a common option for convoy battles). When the enemy had carriers, they somehow always managed to come into the range of my BBs' guns.
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Post by L0ckAndL0ad on Jun 3, 2019 17:36:22 GMT -6
Oh, okay, I got one CV battle. Well, the one I really tried to avoid. I had to risk it and launch an invasion of Saipan, to test it out. Baaaaarely made it out alive. Defending the transports against enemy carriers (the reason why you don't want to invade in the first place, before most of the enemy carriers are gone) is something hard to pull off. Especially considering that I did not find a way to select transport divisions as "support" target for my light carriers. Had to manually steer the BB next to transports to utilize CAP. Yeah, I was wrong about CA screening assignment. It works, just not for lead division I guess. Or something like that. Battle started with invasion force (tranports/DDs) and Main Force (1 BB 3 CL 6 DD + 3 CVL 2 CA 3 DD) about 150 nm away from the target and Carrier force (2 CV, 2 CA, 6 DD) around 200 nm away. CVLs (10k ton, 34 a/c, 24 kn, 24F 10TB) were set to support fast BB (North Carolina replica), who covered the invasion force by cruising nearby. Emphasis on fighters came in handy, because enemy CVs (1 CV of 60 a/c and 1 CVL) managed to launch the first strike before I located them. The problem was with the strike targeting - invasion force stumbled upon some lone destroyers, and aaaaaall my strike packages went for them, instead of going further for enemy carriers. My ships managed to shrug off all the attacks. Even CV Enterprise (33 kn, 76 a/c, 29k ton, 26F 36 DB 14 TB) survived one 1400lb bomb to the deck, and after fighting the fire for 15 minutes and losing 3 knots of speed, she continued fighting. I was unsuccessful in leading the strikes to enemy carriers. Smaller ships got in the way.. By the end of the day, invasion force made it safely to the target area. North Carolina went hunting for survivors under the cover of darkness. I have no blind fire capability yet, so it's very risky. Enemy had couple very good BCs, that maybe were even better than my BB. North Carolina lost B turret to explosion. Thankfully, no flash fire. But enemy carriers did not leave the scene and I caught them at point blank range, thanks to radar. CVL wasn't hard to track. CV was fast and took some effort. Not what I expected, with these targeting quirks, but pretty neat nonetheless.
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tc27
Junior Member
Posts: 68
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Post by tc27 on Jun 4, 2019 2:11:32 GMT -6
Ok - since posting this I have just had an epic two day carrier battle (me as Japan vs Russia) involving pretty much my entire surface fleet and all 8 of my fleet carriers. I was significantly outnumbered in terms/quality of BB/BC so stayed out of visual range right until the end of the second day when I judged the Russian fleet to be damaged enough to risk a brief surface action. Only downside was it kept me up until 1am on a work night
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Post by annamatar on Jun 4, 2019 9:45:41 GMT -6
I've had multiple carrier battle through my multiple playthrough myself. Usually involving between 4 to 8 carriers, usually in the Mediterranean (happened with France, Italy and Germany.)
I did however had a huge carrier engagement between USA and Japan in 1943 in the Central Pacific. Basically all 9 of my carriers stationned in the area fought against the 7 japanese carriers + our mutual battlefleets.
The result was quite amazing with around 265 japense aircraft shot down, 2BB's 2 CA's and 2 CV's sunk on the jap side. As the USA, I lost around 120 planes, 1 CV badly damaged, 3 damaged, 1 sunk CA, 4 DD's lost. I almost made contact with the japs carriers with my Iowa-like battlecruisers but the scenario reached it's end before I could do anything serious. A few months later, the Japanese surrendered.
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Post by alexbrunius on Jun 4, 2019 9:54:45 GMT -6
You're never going to see your flagship force based on the CV squadrons. Ever. It was standard practice of the time (Even after battles such as Midway or Phillipine sea) that a given formation's flagship would be a battleship, or at least a big gun ship if there was any around with the needed flagship accomodations around. If none of those was around, on a cruiser with flaship facilities. and if none around THEN, on a carrier. As far as I know Nagumo was commanding the Japanese Carrier forces from a CV both in Pearl Harbor and in Midway as well as all battles in between, despite having both Cruisers and Battlecruisers at his disposal as close escort. If Yamato could be built in RTW2 it would not be included in the same battle since it was trailing the Midway Carrier strike force by some 300 miles or more, unable to influence or be influenced by the actual battle at all.
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Post by dizzy on Jun 4, 2019 10:04:27 GMT -6
Had a 2 day battle in the North sea as Germany vs Britain. Involved some 15+ carriers and countless support vessels. The fleets mostly broke into two groups on either side as I tried to split one from the other and drove up the middle. When it was all over with, I lost a quarter of my fleet, but my air crew had sunk three quarters of the enemy ships and half their carriers while I didn't lose one. I did, however lose over two thirds of my air crew. The number of bomb and torpedo hits from my air wings were incredible. It was an amazing fight.
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Post by ramjb on Jun 4, 2019 10:24:40 GMT -6
You're never going to see your flagship force based on the CV squadrons. Ever. It was standard practice of the time (Even after battles such as Midway or Phillipine sea) that a given formation's flagship would be a battleship, or at least a big gun ship if there was any around with the needed flagship accomodations around. If none of those was around, on a cruiser with flaship facilities. and if none around THEN, on a carrier. As far as I know Nagumo was commanding the Japanese Carrier forces from a CV both in Pearl Harbor and in Midway as well as all battles in between, despite having both Cruisers and Battlecruisers at his disposal as close escort. If Yamato could be built in RTW2 it would not be included in the same battle since it was trailing the Midway Carrier strike force by some 300 miles or more, unable to influence or be influenced by the actual battle at all. It's not a matter of "influence or be influenced", it's a matter of chain of command. Midway was an operation that included the whole of the Combined Fleet that was in conditions to take part. There were operations ranging from the Aleutians down to the mid-pacific. Nagumo was commander of the carrier force; he was tasked with bombing Midway into oblivion, and to search and look for the american fleet and acted with the proper operative freedom - but he wasn't in charge of the operation. The dude in charge was still Yamamoto; no need to prove it, the whole thing was called off when Yamamoto said "Let's go home", not before. Likewise, in game, once independent carrier task forces have been researched, most of your carriers will be deployed in independent carrier divisions which, if ever sailing beyond the visual radius of the flagship, will revoke to AI control (thus they have operative freedom, even while it's you calling the strikes, because, well, people would complain A LOT about the carriers doing their thing on their own without any player input at all). In battle you can perfectly sail your surface warships away from the engagement and end up at 300 miles from them aswell, doesn't change things a tad: those carrier divisions have all commanders on their own, so in an in-game representation of Midway you could abstract nagumo was aboard one in charge of them, while you (the "yamamoto" of the force) are sitting in a BB, even if you're 300m off the place where your carriers are launching planes. Which is what happened historically too. In game the overarching commander of all forces in the map is you: you're the CiC, leading several subordinate divisions and squadrons. Those divisions and squadrons have their own commanders, including the carrier forces. And your place is not on a carrier: it's in a battleship with flagship status. Which is pretty accurate for the time.
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