How to spot enemy ships with aircraft

[smacktoward]

I played RTW1 a lot more than I did RTW2, so the aviation parts of RTW3 are still kind of new to me. I've been equipping my CVs and CVLs with a mixture of fighters, torpedo bombers and (when they become available) dive bombers, mostly because that seems in line with historical practice. But while my carriers have proven to be pretty good at the CAP and strike missions, they are terrible at actually spotting enemy ships. I get lots of reports, but when the strike package arrives at the reported location it inevitably doesn't find anything like what was reported. This makes it difficult to prevail in a fight where the enemy has carriers too, as I can never pin down their location.

I'm trying to figure out how to get better at the recon mission. The manual isn't much help, so I thought I'd ask here. (Apologies if this has already been discussed; I checked both the RTW3 and RTW2 forums and didn't find any previous discussion, but it's always possible it's there and I just missed it.)

Part of the problem is that I'm not really sure which part of the game system I need to get a better handle on.

• Maybe it's the composition of my air wings? I've been using a mix of fighters, torpedo bombers and dive bombers, mostly because that seemed in line with history. But maybe there's some other type I should be including? (Do naval patrol aircraft fit on carriers? When the game says "naval patrol aircraft," I think of something like a PBY -- but that could just be me misunderstanding the category.)
  
• Maybe there's some air mission between "general recon that produces vague reports" and "launch a strike package" that I'm failing to perform?
  
• Maybe this is just the game Working As Designed, since spotting ships by air was a pretty dicey proposition in real life too? I guess I could see that argument, though it would make me a bit depressed since, while it may be accurate, it definitely is not interesting or fun. (A lot of the air stuff in general strikes me as less fun than the original battlewagon focus of RTW1, sadly. I can't even speak to the missile-age stuff, since slogging through the air stuff usually leads me to quit my games around 1950 or so.)

Any thoughts?

[kingbenno]

I believe it gets more reliable as technology advances But I believe, at least early game, that the report is only generated once the plane returns to base/carrier. There is a time attached to each report as well as a direction they are traveling in so you kinda have to estimate where they will be as they will not be in the same position. You can edit search patterns of your forces (image attached), all searches start from the lead ship of your force (you have up to three forces in a battle: scout, carrier and main) and follow a cone pattern. So if your carriers are attached to your main force as a support the search radius will be around the lead division. To adjust your search pattern there is a button next to strike that is a green plane and like a cog. This allows you to set CAP level and adjust search parameters including night search and two phase search option. Not entirely sure what two phase search option is exactly but I find it helps. Personally I prefer land bases to do scouting where possible to free up aircraft for strikes and cap and they have much longer range. Also I believe land bases keep the search settings you apply in battle while your force is given a search setting in the rough area where the enemy is similar to how your ships usually start in the direction the enemy is.
I find it helps to have each carrier target a different location to maximise the chance of finding the target as I find that if one group finds them, nearby groups will also move to that location. I haven't had much luck using the reports as a target and selecting position yourself is usually better. Also if you click on a report in the reports tag, it should show a blue line which if the target hasn't changed speed or direction, and the report wasn't wrong (it usually is a bit off), should be where the spotted enemy is. I might be completely wrong about a lot of this as it is all anecdotal but I hope it helps. The manual is still a bit **** and actually just wrong in some areas but is good for a basic overview on game mechanics, but leaves way too many finer details out in my opinion.

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