A beginner's manual for operating aircraft

[akosjaccik]

Made with: 1.10 version

Note: I made this "tutorial" for the gentlemen taking their first steps in the game in order for them to be successfully able to conduct their first airstrike esentially. For this reason, I did not touch upon some features (escort fighters, reserves, land bases etc.), but if the need arises, I can include those features as well. Of course, should you have a question, feel free to ask.

Also, excuse me if and when I make a ( or many, rather ) grammatical mistake, hopefully I'll remain clear regardless.

I. Aircraft acquisition

In Rule the Waves 2, there is basically three ways you can start producing a given aircraft.

• Your manufacturers will time to time randomly present you with their own design concepts, also giving you a comparison with your current types. Should you accept it in exchange for some payment, development will begin. In the same manner you might get presented with improved variants of your aircrafts already in active service.
  
• You can buy your allies' types.
  
• For now, I'll just show you the most reliable way, which is presenting your manufacturers a design competition.
  

First, on your strategic screen, click the "Aircraft types" button

Then click "Request proposals for new aircraft". On the pop-up window you can

select your desired role, and two design priorities. For my first, early torpedo bomber, I want to emphasis range.

BE AWARE, that you can only select a "role" you have already developed/unlocked via "Research"!

After a couple of months your manufacturers will show up with their preliminary plans.

The first three items on the list will be the proposed aircrafts. Below them, under "Types in service" you can get

a picture of the capabilites you have currently at hand. This is empty in my case, as I do not operate any torpedo bombers by the time.

Pick one of the proposed plans that best suits your needs and click "OK".

Now you will have to deal with the task of watching other people hard at work.

You can see that your selected type shows up in the "Aircraft types" window, however with a (Dev) marking.

This means that the plans are currently worked on, but you don't yet have a type ready for mass-production.

When your manufacturer irons out the problems and actually starts producing the aircrafts,

you will encounter a pop-up screen that tells you this. In this case you can also see that

my torpedo bomber turned out to be more resilient that originally calculated in the design phase.

Now if you check back on the "Aircraft types" you can see that the (Dev) marking is gone, and your aircraft type is in production.

Well... started being produced, to be exact, but as far as you are concerned, you are ready! Leave the rest to your industry.

II. Squadron management

By now, you have a couple of aircrafts sitting in storages - time to get them out to combat units.

Click "Air groups". You might see "Active" and "Reserve" status labels, but to keep it simple, for now we'll not bother with those.

In this example I wish to equip my freshly minted converted light aircraft carriers. To do so, let's right click on one of them.

You can select "Auto add aircraft" and fine tune it, but I'll show you the "Add air unit" option next.

Remember how we developed a viable torpedo bomber earlier? Well, this is why.

Now that I actually have torpedo bombers fit for service, I can select them under "Aircraft mission".

I can also see that my CVLs have a capacity for 16 a/c. For the sake of simplicity, let's divide

that compartment into two torpedo bomber squadrons, each with 8 aircrafts. Set the "Number of aircraft" to 8, click "OK", then simply repeat this one more time.

Now my CVL Freya knows what she should house. Do note that said 16 aircrafts are NOT on the ship just yet!

Transferring takes time, but in my case even before that, industry has to produce the airplanes in the first place.

Anyway, for CVL Vineta, let's just copy this air group instead of manually setting up the same thing again.

Right click your CVL you just finished, select "Copy airgroup", then right click your empty one and select "Paste air group".

Because both ships can operate the same amount of aircraft, this can be done without any problems.

Now, if you check back on "Aircraft types" a few turns later on, you can see how you war machine started to set into motion.

The two CVLs together require 32 a/c, Henschel delivered 20 for the squadrons, but because the need for aircraft is larger than our production rate,

we can't accumulate reserves, as seen in the last column. Don't worry though, all you need to do is giving them a bit more time.

After a few more months both carriers can report squadrons equipped to full capacity.

You can see this on the "Aircraft types" panel as shown earlier, but it's more apparent and handy to check the "Air groups" panel,

where you can see the sweet, sweet 8/8 by each squadron.

Your fist is at full strength, so time to hit something with it!

III. Aircraft operation in engagements

III./1. - Automated reconnaissance and combat air patrol

First thing you need to do is - DON'T step to the next turn, as you'll need to set these parameters at turn zero. You can modify these settings later on during the fight, however they will only be applied when possible, so for example a modified recon pattern will be applied next morning, when the AI will sortie the reconnaissance aircrafts again.

First task of the day is to organize our protection and to locate the enemy.

Press the button shown on the image.

This will bring you to the "Routine air ops" screen - meaning that the AI will handle these for you according to your orders.

On the left you can define the search pattern for each force, applied to the selected one. This is important, because your

bases and carriers will (start to) launch the recon and the CAP immediately at turn 1, if the weather and the daylight permits doing so.

Set your desired search pattern and CAP density, however as I am trying to show the technical side of air ops, I won't go into "preferred settings" for now.

After some time passes, you can observe your carriers turning into the wind and sending out the recon.

In my case CAP is not circling above, as I did not equip my carriers with fighter aircraft for the sake of this presentation to have less clutter

(plus because it's 1920).

III./2. - Manual reconnaissance

Quite frankly, you won't get a better tutorial about this than jwsmith's videos, but since one of our AVs is present, might as well assign some tasks for her.

Look for the yellow "flash"-icon - this is your strike setup window. As it is defaulted to my carrier division,

I have to switch to my "Seaplane Carrier Division" in the lower left corner.

For now, simply check the checkbox on the leftmost column. This means that I'm about to order one floatplane with a "Recon" mission on "Light" loadout by default.

Next, select the crosshair icon, and mark a spot on the map to which you wish to send your recon.

When you left-clicked on the desired spot on the map, simply click "Launch strike". No need to complicate.

...rinse and repeat! Grab the top aircraft marked as "unready", select destination, launch strike.

For the reconnaissance, we'll (in this case, automatically) equip the aircraft with "Light loadout". This means that they'll be incapable to conduct strikes,

however in turn they can use "Rng lt" as in "Range valid for light loadout". On my screen you can also see that

should I equip my floatplanes with one 250kg bomb, I'd need to look at the "Rng hvy" column, meaning that the range would decrease to 65 nautical miles.

III./3. - Conducting a simple, uncoordinated airstrike

Let's say you located your enemy one way or another - or you did not, but you want/risk armed and readied aircraft at hand once you do so. Excellent! Now, you can notice that I (or the AI rather) sent off one torpedo bomber squadron worth of aircraft on the initial recon sweep, leaving me with ~75% of my TB complement to conduct strikes with as long as my recon is out there. In this case I could've set "no search" in turn zero, and manually conduct reconnaissance operations with my floatplanes on AV Carsten, reatining my full strike capability at hand. Alternatively, you can utilize "Floatplane search" under "Doctrine" on the strategic screen as well. Regardless, let's prepare a strike.

Again we'll utilize the "Set up strike" window (yellow flash-icon).

I'll grab my carrier-based torpedo bombers and check that they are set to "N strike" as in "Naval strike". This should be the default option for them, however.

Notice how when I select ALL of my torpedo bombers (TBs), the game tells me "Strike exceeds deck load" in the top right corner.

I simply don't have enough deck space to launch all of my aircraft at once.

The simple solution would be to uncheck one squadron, but for the sake of example, let's prepare a full deckload strike.

Under the "Spot" column I can see that my carriers are capable to spot 12 a/c. This means that (given that all of the aircrafts are in operational condition)

I'll need "one and a half squadrons". Therefore I'll click on one of the numbers in the '#' column and set it to 4.

Notice that I did so with Freya's aircrafts. Vineta can launch all of her remaining planes at once, as the other half of her complement

is already on a recon mission out there (and even the remaining half has one aircraft in a damaged state).

[Strictly speaking, the game will let me ready each and every aircraft of the carrier at once still, but not launching them.]

While in this example there is no need to tamper with the armament, let's talk about the ordnance as well. In the rightmost column you can see that

all in all you have four options: Torpedo, or three kinds of bomb configuration. You have all the bombs in the world, but only two aerial torpedoes per TB.

Your loadout first and foremost influences your max range, as you can see in the "Rng lt / med / hvy" columns.

In the "Torpedo" column 'H' means that when this particular aircraft type carries a torpedo, you need to work with the "Rng hvy" value.

Once you are content with the setup, press "Ready strike".

Now your crew start to work their wonders and put your a/c into "Ready" state, meaning that once you give them the sign,

they can take off practically immediately. You can notice that we did not do this step for the recon floatplanes. RtW automatically linked

the readying and launching stages, and I did not bother with this of course because the recon areas are static, so quick reaction capability

is not something one needs for the initial reconnaissance sweep. When striking a reported contact, however, time is of the essence, this is why

"Ready strike" is important in this case.

If you click the "Air formations" icon, you can watch your operations from a different perspective.

This is also handy because there are some states (For example taking off or landing if I recall correctly), when your squadrons

do not show up under the strike window at all, however they are still mentioned here.

Once you defined targets of opportunity (this can be approximate location of the enemy, for example you are expecting them

to head for their home ports and draw up an intercept course for your strike based on that asumption; locations marked by your scouts on the map;

or - as you can see on the image - "live" data provided by your lookouts or radar), go back to your strike window.

Select your squadrons with "Ready" status, pick a location on the map (Or use the "Target" panel in some cases, but let's not complicate),

and "Launch strike".

Technically you can launch "Unready" squadrons as well, but of course, they first have to be readied and spotted, so the time

for their arrival will be later by that much.

If both you and your airmen did everyting semi-well, the next thing that will require your attention is the pop-up window

notifying you about the torpedo hits on the enemy. Congratulations, you just conducted your first successful aerial strike!

[jwsmith26]

That is one excellent tutorial, akosjaccik . Very well done indeed.

[dohboy]

This one might need a pin in it.

[pashahlis]

I agree. Pin it. And to think that this came into existence because of my question

[williammiller]

Thread is now sticked - very useful info for new and old players akosjaccik !

[Spaghet Shipwright]

what a great graphical presentation of a complicated, but crucial mechanic.

[cabalamat]

> You can buy your allies' types.

How do I do this?

[aeson]

Oct 28, 2019 17:57:35 GMT -6 cabalamat said:

> You can buy your allies' types.

How do I do this?

- Be in an alliance with another power

- Open the Aircraft Types menu

- Set the filter option to compare with some specific type so that you can see other powers' aircraft

- Right-click on an aircraft used by your ally and click 'Buy'

You'll have to pay some amount of money - in this case 900; I don't know if that's a fixed cost throughout the game or if it goes up for more advanced aircraft - and you may take a prestige hit for buying aircraft overseas rather than domestically. Afterwards, the aircraft should appear in your aircraft list and will not need to be developed:

[warspite1995]

Excellent Guide Thank you!

[trifler]

Excellent guide!

I'm compelled to point out though that all cases of "aircrafts" in it should be changed to "aircraft" since it's both singular and plural. "Aircrafts" is not a word in either UK English or US English. A quick replace all would take care of it.

[brygun]

This is a very good guide. If its all right I'd like to add a few tips from my own experiences.

= Put aircraft type into the name
Why: Although the game adds the type of plane in some battle messages for aircraft it doesnt do it for all of them. Doing it manually is a bit more informative of what is going on.
How: Open the aircraft types page. Right click on a name. Select "rename".  There are various letter sets you might use. A possible 2 letter code is "FT" for fighter, "DV" for dive bomber, "TB" for torpedo bomber, "MD" for medium bomber, "WS" for floatplane scout and "WB" flying boat. Note that by using "W" for "Water" it avoids confusing F of fighters in quick visual scans.

= Attack recon to pinpoint enemy
Why: If you launch a large scale "Alpha strike" of all your planes but miss where the enemy moves to the delay in them flying out, circling and flying back means missing a huge amount of your fighting power.
How: First send out your floatplane scouts and any carrier scouts as normal. Attack recon means putting a few attack planes into different "ready" strike groups. Fighter escorts are recommended for each attack recon. My normal group currently comes to ~6 dive bombers and 2 fighters. This comes to three (3) or so attack recon teams per carrier.  The rest of attack planes and a few escorts are readied normally (suggesting each squadron of torpedo planes gets 2 escort fighters).
Once the recon planes give their spotting report(s) the attack recon is set out in a local network of nodes. One of the attack recon nodes should be a little ahead of the sightings projected motion, another at one side and the other opposite. With more groups you can create more patterns. If the enemy is carriers bear in mind they may turn into the wind to launch aircraft.
Once they fly out hopefully one or more attack recon will attack enemy ships. If you double click on the message in the log on the left it will shift the map to that location. This is where the enemy ships actually are. Zoom in. Open up the air strike control page, click on the select target and on the map select the center. Now send out your big attack package with their escort to here. They have a very high chance of finding the target ship(s).
There are some downsides to this tactic. Most obvious is that you are adding the time for a second set of recon activities. This delay is nothing compared to sending a massive airstrike out that never found its target and wastes hours in flight and again being readied. The precision of the attack recon phase also comes at the cost of aircraft losses. The smaller front groups are much more vulnerable to enemy CAP and somewhat more to AA. However they can also weaken the enemy CAP making the main massive strike more able to penetrate. Third is that some of the dispersed attack recon may miss finding the ships, such as if the enemy went east so your east attack recon found them but west attack recon did not. These planes will waste a cycle time in their flying around but it is only a few from the attack recon rather than a major strike being wasted. These missed attack recon tend to become available for the second wave or follow up air strikes. Attack recon will suffer higher losses.
Currently I use dive bombers with fighters for the attack recon saving the torpedo bombers for the major strike. As I write this I now become curious about using bomb loaded fighters on N Strike missions for the attack recon. You really only need one of the messages to pop up to confirm the enemy fleet locations.

= Suggested 100 plane loading
I recall somewhere there is negatives for having more than 100 planes on a carrier (to be confirmed). Working with the attack recon concept my recommended load out is: 2 of TB of 20 planes, 3 of DV of 8 planes, 3 of FT of 12 planes.  (well actually Ive been using 2 of FT of 18 planes but I just realized 3 of FT of 12 planes is a little easier to assign escorts to the 3 DV squads).
In battle it seems I can just squeeze off a Medium cap level with ~2 fighter planes for each TB and DV squadron. Often a few fighters may be left for recon or manually launched extra CAP when enemy planes come in.

[williammiller]

Nov 16, 2019 17:29:55 GMT -6 brygun said:

= Suggested 100 plane loading
I recall somewhere there is negatives for having more than 100 planes on a carrier (to be confirmed). Working with the attack recon concept my recommended load out is: 2 of TB of 20 planes, 3 of DV of 8 planes, 3 of FT of 12 planes.  (well actually Ive been using 2 of FT of 18 planes but I just realized 2 of FT of 12 planes is a little easier to assign escorts to the 3 DV squads).
In battle it seems I can just squeeze off a Medium cap level with ~2 fighter planes for each TB and DV squadron. Often a few fighters may be left for recon or manually launched extra CAP when enemy planes come in.

This is correct- more than ~ 100 aircraft embarked on a single carrier can slow down operations (and increase accident rates) in RTW2...this factor is based on information gleamed from both USN and RN studies and experiences.

[Deleted]

Nov 16, 2019 23:05:06 GMT -6 williammiller said:

Nov 16, 2019 17:29:55 GMT -6 brygun said:

= Suggested 100 plane loading
I recall somewhere there is negatives for having more than 100 planes on a carrier (to be confirmed). Working with the attack recon concept my recommended load out is: 2 of TB of 20 planes, 3 of DV of 8 planes, 3 of FT of 12 planes.  (well actually Ive been using 2 of FT of 18 planes but I just realized 2 of FT of 12 planes is a little easier to assign escorts to the 3 DV squads).
In battle it seems I can just squeeze off a Medium cap level with ~2 fighter planes for each TB and DV squadron. Often a few fighters may be left for recon or manually launched extra CAP when enemy planes come in.

This is correct- more than ~ 100 aircraft embarked on a single carrier can slow down operations (and increase accident rates) in RTW2...this factor is based on information gleamed from both USN and RN studies and experiences.

Is the increased accident rate statit, or does it rise with the number of aircraft? For example my 250 a/c CV did quite well.

[williammiller]

Nov 26, 2019 5:19:59 GMT -6 @pavelsvt said:

Nov 16, 2019 23:05:06 GMT -6 williammiller said:

This is correct- more than ~ 100 aircraft embarked on a single carrier can slow down operations (and increase accident rates) in RTW2...this factor is based on information gleamed from both USN and RN studies and experiences.

Is the increased accident rate statit, or does it rise with the number of aircraft? For example my 250 a/c CV did quite well.

IIRC penalties should increase the greater the excess is over 100 - I will have to check to see if that is the current implementation.

[williammiller]

Nov 26, 2019 10:29:19 GMT -6 williammiller said:

Nov 26, 2019 5:19:59 GMT -6 @pavelsvt said:

Is the increased accident rate statit, or does it rise with the number of aircraft? For example my 250 a/c CV did quite well.

IIRC penalties should increase the greater the excess is over 100 - I will have to check to see if that is the current implementation.

Right now there is simply a flat increase in ready time and accident rates if you operate > 100 aircraft on a single CV.

After internal discussion that will be changed to a sliding scale (i.e. the greater over 100 planes embarked the greater the negative effect will become), and I think adding to it as to negatively affect other things (such as possibly fire chances, extra aircraft losses when the CV is damaged, etc) is a viable boost as well.