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Post by warlock on Jun 4, 2019 12:49:49 GMT -6
I just recently went though one playing as France against Germany. It was still largely BB/BC focused with me unfortunately heavily outnumbered (still had many of my BBs/BCs in the Mediterranean against aggression from Italy) but I had 5 Fleet CVs (66-72 planes each) against 4 enemy CVs of about 50 planes each. I managed to spot their CVs early so sent out my over 300 planes directly at their CV force. I didn't realize it at the time but managed to sink one of their CVs with my first strike and apparently heavily damaged another so their response was rather light and barely managed to get through my CAP protection. I think through the entire battle, they only managed to get in like 4 torpedoes and maybe a half dozen bomb strike one my entire force. By about 3/4 the way through on the match, I managed to reach their 3 remaining CVs with my BB/BC line and between air strikes and shelling managed to sink the remaining 3 CVs and badly damage a several more BCs covering the CVs. It was looking like a fairly clean sweep and I was in the process of withdrawing with less than 20% ammo left when out of nowhere, another line of enemy BBs showed up directly behind my forces and proceeded to smash into a badly damaged BB and BC that I had been slowly withdrawing away to what I thought was safety. Needless to say, already beat up and limping along at less than 10 knots, they got obliterated by the enemy trying to get to grips with my main force. With no ammo left to even remotely try to engage this new force, all I could do is try to get withdraw through a small gap between the two enemy forces and escape. All I can say is thank god for my Carriers because without them I would have probably lost 75% of my fleet. Instead even greatly depleted in numbers, they managed to inflict enough damage on the Fresh enemy BB force that they chose to withdraw rather than hunt down the damaged ships that were slowly straggling behind and on the verge of getting overtaken by the fresh enemy forces. Overall it was a major victory for me since I only lost 1 BB, 1 BC, a couple CLs and a few DDs while taking out 3 BB/BCs and 4 CVs on the enemy side, but it was a very, very near thing. Honestly it was probably one of the most fun battles I ever had in the game.
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Post by brygun on Jun 4, 2019 14:23:54 GMT -6
You're never going to see your flagship force based on the CV squadrons. Its because carriers smell funny. . . . Its the additive in the av gas so you know if the room is going to explode if you light a match. Seriously though... Carriers were in transition to the big deal. When being built they might get some staffing room. The BBs were already built with those. Carrier task force commanders would of course be on their carrier. I think it was meant to mean where the fleet commander of a combined fleet would be. As time improved and mostly it was carriers being built I believe you would start seeing both staff resources and recognition of them as the key decisive element of the fleet. Still, given that Admiral's often had a choice and most Admiral's were older folks coming up from the BB era they might just choose to be on a BB. The CV would in time be the better logical choice. It had direct communication with the long range scouts, though in theory a BB could also be recieving and transmitting to them. The chain of command going through the carrier and its planes being the information getters make it place to be. If you can put up with the smell.
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Post by brygun on Jun 4, 2019 15:54:53 GMT -6
I had my Japanese fleet carrier with strike planes ready on deck catch fire with special warning messages about it. Does that count?
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Post by alexbrunius on Jun 5, 2019 2:33:41 GMT -6
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. If it was a "matter of chain of command", then obviously it would not be Yamamoto either, it would be his superior Nagano Osami, head of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, and the USN battle groups should never be commanded by anyone other than Chester Nimitz Or Admiral King. At Midway Nagumo had full authority over the Carrier fleet which was the part that fought, but obviously not over the invasion task-force ( which you don't have control over in RTW2 either, strange since you should if Yamamoto could call them off, right? ). You basically never have control of forces / authority over forces as far apart as the Midway operation in RTW2.
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jatzi
Full Member
Posts: 123
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Post by jatzi on Jun 5, 2019 2:41:17 GMT -6
I'm playing as America in 1942 and everyone has only built like 1 fleet carrier besides me. Britain went heavy on CVL's but thats it. So most of my battles have been carriers supporting battleships, usually at night which is frustrating. I had one small CVL vs CVL fight with Japan early in the 1930s but it was inconclusive. Hopefully in other games I'm playing the AI will build more carriers.
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Post by dorn on Jun 5, 2019 5:12:32 GMT -6
I'm playing as America in 1942 and everyone has only built like 1 fleet carrier besides me. Britain went heavy on CVL's but thats it. So most of my battles have been carriers supporting battleships, usually at night which is frustrating. I had one small CVL vs CVL fight with Japan early in the 1930s but it was inconclusive. Hopefully in other games I'm playing the AI will build more carriers. Strange. I played as UK with 1920 start, very large fleet and 1 have one CV early as conversion from battleship. After that another carriers were operational: 1929: 2 1937: 4
1938: 5 1940: 7 1941: 8 1942: 9
Germany build 3 carriers during 1939-40, France was late and built them in 50s. Soviet Union built 1 early in 1931 and another 2 in 1943-4. Japan built 2 in 1939, another in 1944, 1949, 1955 and was at end of game building another 4 carriers. Italy built during 40s 3 carriers and in 50s they are built or building 7 carriers. USA has at the end of game the largest carrier force. They built during 40s 9 carriers about 1 per year, another 7 during 50s and at end of game they have 6 under construction. If I compare in 1955 my fleet with USA fleet: UK vs USA: CV operational: 12 vs. 15
CV under construction: 0 vs. 6
CVL operational: 1 vs.10 CVL under construction: 0 vs. 2
Total aicrafts on carriers (USA forecasted) - operational: 1042 vs. 1236
As UK i have already scrapped 2 CVLs and 1 CV (slow conversions).
So carrier forces are quite large however for AI nations it starts mainly in 40s. Probably could be several years earlier for non-European nations.
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Post by warlock on Jun 5, 2019 12:44:09 GMT -6
I'm playing as America in 1942 and everyone has only built like 1 fleet carrier besides me. Britain went heavy on CVL's but thats it. So most of my battles have been carriers supporting battleships, usually at night which is frustrating. I had one small CVL vs CVL fight with Japan early in the 1930s but it was inconclusive. Hopefully in other games I'm playing the AI will build more carriers. Yeah that is what I am seeing, Carriers supporting BBs but lets be honest here, that is kind of how it worked in WW2. You basically had your surface combatant fleet out in front of the CVs trying to scout/intercept enemy surface combatants before they could get in close on your carriers. As far as the enemy building carriers, I agree they seem to always be late to the party but I think this is because we, the player, know just how valuable Carriers are and place alot more heavy an emphasis on them. I know that I personally set every technology research except Aircraft and Carrier related tech to low the second Aircraft and Carrier tech becomes available which usually means I have the abilityto build full on purpose built CVs upwards of 5-10 years before anyone else. I also know that I stop building or greatly reduce building BBs and BCs the second I can build CVs as well. Both this practices combined give me a pretty huge air advantage over the AI.
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Post by goodman on Jun 5, 2019 13:07:18 GMT -6
There might be a problem with later wars or the scripted events war with Japan. I also went about 2 years without a significant fight as GB vs Japan in late 1940s. I'm chasing their fleet around the globe. I have ships in NE Asia, SE Asia, and Northern Europe, as do they. But the only things I get is convoy attack/defence and cruiser action. The Japanese declines all other combat.
I have had CV battles vs the French and the Americans in the late 1930s. But nothing quite like irl Midway battle. It was more like my CVs strike their Battleship group, and their CVs strike my battleship group. And battleship fight was still the most important.
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Post by tordenskjold on Jun 6, 2019 5:12:28 GMT -6
Right now I'm having a GB vs. US fleet battle south of Ireland where the enemy fleet was initially positioned some 100 nm west of mine. It was scouted by land-borne planes from Cork, so I'm launching the whole of my carrier force against it. Let's see what comes out of it...
:EDIT: And here's the result. As you can see, it was only "half" of a carrier battle, as the enemy had one only CVL (plus several AVs). But at least I was able to harass the enemy BBs with a clean sheet regarding my ships, yet with some attrition to my aircraft.
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Post by tordenskjold on Jun 7, 2019 2:26:16 GMT -6
Well, some battles later I have to admit: It's mostly the enemy lacking sufficient numbers of carriers for such engagements, in principle. Right now in 1944, the only sea power that can compete with GB in terms of carriers are the US, perhaps also Japan, but apart from that, Germany, France, Russia and Italy appear to be still stuck on BBs and BCs. So, battles against these are usually engagements in which my carriers (and possibly also land-based planes) can decimate their capital ships largely unimpeded, while mine keep their distance and, in later stages, go after the sparse carriers that loiter around largely without relevance to the actual "battle". Well, maybe I should go for the US and try to test their force...
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Post by ramjb on Jun 7, 2019 4:51:16 GMT -6
apart from that, Germany, France, Russia and Italy appear to be still stuck on BBs and BCs.
And this is surprising...how?. Most navies of the era didn't place their bets on carriers. Some of them voluntarily decided not to have them in the first place (like Italy). Doctrines vary from nation to nation, it's normal that some countries will go for ocean-going large fleets with carriers, others will do with much smaller numbers. Carriers were (and are in game) expensive to build, and very expensive to operate, and I see as perfectly normal that some nations do not go for mass producing them. Player hindsight is 20/20, we all know the importance of that ship but that wasn't proven until WW2 happened... and even afterwards we've seen very few nations with carriers, some of them gave them up for a time (the UK), and only one has been using them extensively (the US). Anyway in my games there are always plenty of CVs to go around... almanac at endgame (playing as Japan):
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Post by victormagnus on Jun 7, 2019 15:41:14 GMT -6
I, uh, technically had a CV-CV fight! 1947 GER vs US+UK, me as the poor Kriegsmarine admiral who had to make something out of that. 4x BCs and 6x CVs for GER, 2x BB 4x BC 8x CV for the combined USN and RN fleet. So, of course the scenario starts just as the sun was finished setting. And I'm playing on Admiral difficulty, with all my CVs under AI control. Not a single airplane was launched until everything was over, each side's BBs/BCs stumbled around in the dark for eight hours looking for each other. The only ships which actually found anybody were...all the CVs. At 3:00 in the morning.
No, really.
A combined 14 Fleet Carriers had a <2,000m-range gunfight with 5", 4" and 3" shells going EVERYWHERE for about an hour, before everybody agreed to just break it off and go home, eternally ashamed of just how much of a CF that whole engagement was. No ships were even sunk; the CVs just roughed up each other's unshielded gun mounts and planes.
There have been a few other battles that were effectively decided by the CV-CV fight, but each time the surface fleets do eventually get stuck-in by putting down the few burned-out hulks that were left over from the air strikes several hours ago.
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Post by tordenskjold on Jun 8, 2019 9:25:31 GMT -6
And another similar engagement in October 1950. As most of my BBs had been damaged the previous month during a convoy attack (in which the French lost one CV and one CVL to my BBs, but those were damaged by DDs in the subsequent night chase after the remaining carriers), I could hardly afford to face the enemy fleet directly, but instead opted to keep my distance and again have the carriers do their job (which obviously worked well, as the two fleets never actually met). But albeit the fact that I actually managed to sink one CV and nearly the other (Bearn had a only a thousand or so float points left when she reached Cherbourg), it was again a really one-sided battle. I don't recall any air attacks on my fleet at all.
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Post by generalvikus on Jun 8, 2019 11:36:02 GMT -6
And another similar engagement in October 1950. As most of my BBs had been damaged the previous month during a convoy attack (in which the French lost one CV and one CVL to my BBs, but those were damaged by DDs in the subsequent night chase after the remaining carriers), I could hardly afford to face the enemy fleet directly, but instead opted to keep my distance and again have the carriers do their job (which obviously worked well, as the two fleets never actually met). But albeit the fact that I actually managed to sink one CV and nearly the other (Bearn had a only a thousand or so float points left when she reached Cherbourg), it was again a really one-sided battle. I don't recall any air attacks on my fleet were at all
It would be difficult to argue that there's much point having those carriers in the Channel, though!
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jatzi
Full Member
Posts: 123
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Post by jatzi on Jun 10, 2019 2:06:40 GMT -6
Ok I finally had a true carrier on carrier fight with Japan as America in like 1950. They had two CV's and I had one CV and two CVL's. It was actually really inconclusive in terms of the carrier fight. I went heavy with my CAP and Japan's strikes came in unescorted so they were torn up really bad; one bomb hit on my CV, the Enterprise, and one torpedo one of my CVL's. Their initial strikes went up against my BC's, which also had CAP, and they were almost entirely ineffective. However, as a consequence of the heavy CAP my strikes went in with a light escort and they too were torn up pretty bad. They hit the Japanese carriers but didn't do much. After 3 strikes for both sides neither of us had any real numbers of aircraft left so I unleashed my BC's and the AI did the same. I continued sending out strikes with what was left, as did the Japanese, which sank a cruiser but other than not much. The true prize came after dark; I had driven off the IJN BC's and found their carriers with my BC's. I only sank one due to my ships running out of ammo but it was their best carrier so I was happy. Overall the I lost a DD and they lost a CV, CA, and 3 DD's. In terms of aircraft they lost around 154 while I lost around 45. Most came from the carrier sinking but I did come out on top in the air battles as well.
I stopped at 1955, probably should have continued but oh well. America is too easy to play as. I sank two carriers in my entire game, and had 3 engagements where carriers faced each other. the first was totally inconclusive and short since it started right before night fell although a single strike from both sides attacked the other's CVL's. The second, against Britain, had all the strikes on both sides falling on BC's; I sank the British CV when I came upon it with my BC's while retreating from their BC's and I sank it with gunfire. And the third is described above. I was hoping for me but it was a good first game for RTW 2. Missile tech seems bugged though cuz I unlocked the tech but couldn't use it.
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