Deathifier
Posts: 362
Joined: 6/17/2002
From: Sydney, Australia
Status: offline
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Hi Energisteron,
The game is quite complex and even after years of playing and studying the documentation you'll continue to find things you don't know about.
It also helps to have a good fundamental understanding of the game mechanics so I've answered your questions with a healthy amount of detail to hopefully help you understand how things work.
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1. During a complete turn there's masses of data coming my way; possible sightings of ships and subs, aircraft etc, but rarely does any sort of unit symbol appear on the map, just a hex is listed.
When the turn ends and I attempt to react where do I find all this information for review? There's signals' intelligence, operational reports, and a summary of losses and current scenario score, but all those sighting reports?
I would have liked to see an 'incident' marker on the map with a pop-up of the relevant information, e.g.a periscope with pop-up 'Blenheim depth charged sub here (date and time)
I am having to laboriously find all these hexes on the map manually and assess their relevance and importance. Is there an easier way?
A large quantity of the information produced during a turn is placed in one of the reports or directly on the map in some way.
For example:
Ship and sub sightings are placed in the operational report and after filtering (automatically by the game) they are placed on the map.
Aircraft reports (e.g. sightings of enemy aircraft by your own ships, search aircraft being shot at, transport aircraft being shot at, aircraft crashing on landing, being written off, and similar) are in the operational report.
Combat is in the combat report, which can be turned on and off in the game preferences.
Recon reports (e.g. ships spotted at anchor) are placed on the map.
There are no incident markers and no direct link between the reports and the map.
The interface was not built with that in mind and whilst it can be frustrating given the general advances in UI over the years you will, in time, learn roughly where things are on the map grid and the interface does let you jump to specific bases and units easily enough.
You will also learn what is and is not important to pay attention to, for example if you know a sub is roaming around a specific area that is usually enough for you to do something about it.
Transports moving through the area? Consider routing them around it.
Hunting it with an ASW surface task force? Use the patrol mechanism and make sure the react range is set to max (in the TF window, bottom right) and the ships should chase the sub around automatically.
Hunting it with an ASW carrier force? Put the carrier in range and let the aircraft take care of it.
The general idea is that usually you don't need to track sighting reports on a hex by hex basis.
Key information such as carrier positions, invasion fleets, or bombardment groups can get lost in the volume of information however, at least vs. the AI, if you don't immediately see their fleet units then those fleet units will often do something to get your attention.
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2. Even on the very rare occasion an enemy TF symbol does remain on the map during my orders phase, I cannot order an attack on it! What am I doing wrong?
If I leave the CV to plan its own day, occasionally it will attack, but more often doesn't. What to do?
Firstly - why you can't find carriers, in the Operation Buccaneer scenario (#13 in the list of stock scenarios) the Japanese carriers don't turn up until about a month after the scenario begins.
As for directly attacking them, or any other naval unit, the simple answer is you can't.
All naval attacks along with any other activity set on "commander discretion" will chose targets automatically.
For non-naval attacks you should be setting targets or your assets will waste a lot of energy achieving very little.
For naval attacks your role is to setup the situation as best you can to achieve your goals.
This involves:
Getting search aircraft in place (e.g. from land bases, carriers, and float plane equipped ships).
Making sure your aircraft have enough supplies (e.g. base supply, carrier stores, torpedos available at air HQ if based on land).
Making sure your strike platform (e.g. carrier) is in range for the aircraft involved at their current settings.
If your search aircraft can see the enemy, your planes have enough supply available, your planes are set to the right mission, the weather is not terrible, your pilots have decent morale, your leaders are not scared of a fight, and your planes are in range then a strike should go out.
If flying in to opposition (e.g. enemy CAP) then your strike (esp. from land based units) will tend to want an escort before it will fly.
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3. CV v CV battles seem very difficult to orchestrate and again rare. During my 4 playthroughs only once have my CVs located and attacked an enemy CV and this was achieved by leaving the flotilla commander discretion on air operations, but most times he does nothing!
When I correctly guess an enemy CV location, search that area, leaving torpedo /dive bombers listed as Naval attack (but not specifying the target, unless a land base, because it is not allowed), most times there's no attack.
Sometimes an enemy CV has attacked mine and I am pleased my CAP works and any fighters kept in reserve are usually scrambled to intervene.
In one extreme case I had already captured Port Blair, the airstrip was operational and I'd flown in some Seafires and Barracudas, when a 2CV Japanese task force turned up in the bay. Despite the marker being on the map, I could not order an airstrike! Why?
So, what am I doing wrong here?
For CV vs. CV battles. If your CV's do spot enemy CV's often the carriers will react to each other and launch strikes no matter how bad the odds of success are.
They do need to be close enough though - around 10 hexes or so - to react.
About the only thing that will stop any strikes from either side is bad weather.
If they are getting close and not fighting, chase them.
In the buccaneer scenario your fighters have much shorter range than your bombers and you will probably want to use your bombers on normal range at most to actually be effective.
So close the gap - charge right up to them (range 2 or 3) and follow them if they run away.
You outnumber them so force the fight or at least find out where they are going to so you know where to watch in case they come out again.
If they retreat to port you can also try attacking the port.
Most bases look to have at least some fighter cover though, and there are some land based torpedo bombers around, so make sure your fighter groups are ready if you do try a port attack.
Do keep in mind that you need to see them during the turn and the best way to do this is to spot them during the turn and not rely on sightings from previous turns.
What usually happens is some aircraft in the carrier task force are on search and they spot targets and strikes can then launch.
Also keep in mind that units move so you need to think ahead and put your fleet where the enemy is going and not where they currently are.
Also keep in mind that the sighting reports may not give you accurate information on speed or heading so spend some time considering what the hostile task force is doing and thus where it might be going, consider how fast the ships in the task force move in general, and consider where it is based out of and thus where it might return to when it finishes its task.
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4. During an island base combat the results seem very variable - fair enough, but why when I am subjected to a Japanese bombardment attack, why do I get information as to how many casualties they themselves have suffered, presumably as a result of a counter-bombardment, yet I get no info on my own casualties?
How would I know exactly how many gunners were being used against me?
If I attack, casualties are often fairly even for a deliberate attack, but the enemy often experiences ten-fold my losses with a shock attack? Again, apparently exact numbers of troops on each side are listed complete with casualty totals. How would I know this?
Bombardments will result in counter-bombardment fire from appropriate devices so you are correct in identifying why they take damage during their own bombardment.
If there is no info on your own casualties you probably didn't take any.
Small scale bombardments, and even large scale bombardments, can (esp. in rough terrain and/or vs. fortified units), do little damage to the target and some damage to the side bombarding.
Regarding how many guns you are facing you can only really guess - look at the units involved (in the combat report), look up their info (you may have to start a game as the other side to do this), and guess at their strength level (e.g. maybe the guns are disabled or in a fragment somewhere else).
Ground combat depends on the type and quality of forces involved, the place being fought over, preparation, disruption (e.g. from airstrikes), supply level, leaders, and HQ's nearby.
Without knowing the circumstances of the fight it's hard to say if your results are good or bad.
If your deliberate attack resulted in 1:1 odds then I would expect an even exchange.
If your shock attack tipped those odds to, say, 3:1 or higher and resulted in you capturing the base then maybe some small units were destroyed or you punched through their front line forces and hit the support squads.
The combat report will tell you how the damage was distributed between device types so you can compare the effect of your different attacks.
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5. Reconnaissance missions can fly over a base every day for weeks, very rarely being shot down, and I hear the clicking camera noise but seemingly get absolutely no extra information for this effort, e.g. probable troop numbers, fortification level, airstrip and port capabilities.
Where do I find this information?
You always know the airfield and port levels of the base from the map itself.
Fortification improvements you can't see until you launch a land assault however if they increase it is shown in the operations report.
Recon missions increase the detection of units present at the base which affects the info shown around the base hex on the map.
If you highlight the icons on the corner of each base it will show you estimates for:
Types of ships and number of ships in port.
Number of ground units and how many of each troop type is present overall.
Number of fighters, bombers, and auxiliary aircraft present.
The more recon the higher the detection level and the more accurate the information is.
It's still light on detail and of questionable accuracy even with good recon however it helps you see what is there in general and better detection does seem to help attack missions.
I hope this helps you :)
- Deathifier
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