Escorts can sink a carrier?

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Strategic Command Series >> Strategic Command WWII: World at War >> Escorts can sink a carrier?

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Escorts can sink a carrier? - 6/29/2021 4:01:54 AM

Chernobyl

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I am pretty sure I am reporting this correctly. I was using one CV to bomb enemy carrier A, and the strike used escorts from my nearby escort carrier. Meanwhile nearby enemy carrier B was at low ship strength. The bombing mission targeting carrier A wound up destroying enemy carrier B. Carrier B attempted to intercept, and my escort carrier escorted the bombing mission. Carrier B exploded and sank.

Is this intended behavior? I would assume the worst that could happen is carrier B loses all its aircraft.

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 6/29/2021 5:43:49 AM

Platoonist

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What mode was the escort carrier in? If set to mixed it could have damaged the enemy carrier as well as intercepted its planes if in strike range.

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 6/29/2021 12:37:42 PM

DrZom

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Platoonist

What mode was the escort carrier in? If set to mixed it could have damaged the enemy carrier as well as intercepted its planes if in strike range.

Don't escort carriers fly only one mission per turn? Defending a bombing attack from enemy fighters is one mission; attacking a ship is another mission.

Or did the escort's fighters catch the enemy fighters on the CV's decks before they could take off? That is kinda weird since the escort's fighters are not equipped with bombs or torpedoes. Did machine gun fire sink a ship?

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 6/29/2021 6:49:58 PM

Chernobyl

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Platoonist
What mode was the escort carrier in?

It was in mixed mode. So apparently while flying to escort an attack on Carrier A, Carrier B intercepted, and the mixed escorts from my escort carrier destroyed Carrier B during the dogfight.

The issue isn't whether a carrier is an escort carrier or regular carrier. The issue is why in the world can a carrier get sunk by intercepting an attack on something else? I would imagine the worst that could happen is all your planes get shot down. I've seen fighters destroy themselves on intercept missions before. That makes sense since fighters kind of ARE fighters, but carriers shouldn't lose ship strength points from conducting escort missions. They should lose airplane strength points but that's it.

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 6/30/2021 12:02:50 AM

Platoonist

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This is the section of the manual that covers mix mode being able to inflict damage both on a carrier and its aircraft during an interception. So I am assuming this is the logic behind why it can happen.

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< Message edited by Platoonist -- 6/30/2021 12:29:44 AM >

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 6/30/2021 11:23:16 PM

DrZom

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Platoonist

This is the section of the manual that covers mix mode being able to inflict damage both on a carrier and its aircraft during an interception. So I am assuming this is the logic behind why it can happen.

That makes perfect sense. But here Chernobyl's carrier was not intercepting an attack by an enemy CV, it was escorting, so that portion of the manual does not cover this situation.

It makes no sense that bombers would go on the escort mission, the function of fighters. Rather, because the carrier was on mix mode, it's number of planes in the air should have been half its compliment; the bombers should have been on the deck.

If the argument is that the fighter wing radios back to alert the bombers to the position of the enemy CV, then that attack should also have been at lowered strength to reflect the mixed mode. If so the real question is, did Chernobyl's fighters engage the interceptors at half strength while his bombers attacked the enemy CV at half strength? If they did both at full strengthe, there is a problem. No?

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 7/1/2021 12:16:18 AM

havoc1371

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Common practice in the Pacific War was to follow enemy aircraft back to their CV. Its feasible that a "mixed" mission intercepting an air mission from the heavily damaged CV would call back to their ship to ask for available strike aircraft. Sounds like CV B was heavily damaged and barely functional. Fighters strafing it might cause detonation of fuel and bombs on the flight deck, finishing the job. A CV in "fighter" mode can damage or sink enemy ships and subs with a strike, if its down to 1 or 2 points, so why not a 1-2 point CV?

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 7/1/2021 4:50:42 AM

OldCrowBalthazor

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Yes..I'm taking a second look at 'Mix Mode' now after reading this thread. Its been "all or nothing" pretty much before with me. Very interesting rational havoc1371 has concerning this matter.

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 7/1/2021 10:11:25 AM

Torplexed

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It might be a tad simplistic but I always think of mix mode as "fighter-bomber" mode. A lot of US naval planes like the Hellcat and the Corsair could be equipped with rockets and bombs in a pinch. A lot of them were as the decks of US carriers increasingly were dominated by fighter wings to help stave off the kamikazes. The usual compliment of dive bombers and torpedo bombers had to go to make room.

In the final months of the war, the Hellcat sometimes even carried a pair of "Tiny Tim" antishipping missiles, though these were more often used against hardened ground targets than the few surviving Japanese ships. There were even experiments with carrying a single centerline torpedo.

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 7/1/2021 10:11:54 AM

The Land

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quote:

ORIGINAL: DrZom
If the argument is that the fighter wing radios back to alert the bombers to the position of the enemy CV, then that attack should also have been at lowered strength to reflect the mixed mode. If so the real question is, did Chernobyl's fighters engage the interceptors at half strength while his bombers attacked the enemy CV at half strength? If they did both at full strengthe, there is a problem. No?

So basically in mixed mode a carrier's stats are the average of those in naval/tactical and fighter mode. So this should certainly happen.

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 7/1/2021 5:08:21 PM

Chernobyl

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Platoonist
This is the section of the manual that covers mix mode being able to inflict damage both on a carrier and its aircraft during an interception.

Okay, this is close to what happened, so I gather it's not an unintentional bug.

And I realize that sometimes aircraft followed other formations to their carrier, as at Midway. And I realize that my "mixed" escorts include bombers.

But it still feels completely wrong. I ordered a bombing mission against one ship, and another one (which was quite far away) explodes and sinks. This sequence of events will happen every single time under certain circumstances simply due to the fact that the anti-ship attack value of the escorts is applied to damage the escorting carrier. In real life, the escorts would tend to stay close to the main bombing mission and wouldn't venture out across the sea every single time to chase the enemy escorts back to their other carrier. I mean it's plausible that this could have happened SOME of the time, but certainly not every single time. Escorts are supposed to protect bombers, not leave them to venture off hundreds of miles to attack an enemy carrier that launched an intercept CAP.

AFAIK carrier intercepts are treated exactly like land fighter intercepts but that doesn't seem realistic to me. I mean they weren't really able to intercept enemy strategic bomber formations attacking targets hundreds of miles away; getting all the fighters up from down below via the elevators and launching them was a much more time consuming process than scrambling interceptors from a land base. Not to mention few carrier fighters were good at fighting at 25000 feet.

So perhaps it might make more sense to limit CV intercept range to 1 (and not increased by upgrades). A carrier could provide CAP but only for adjacent hexes (usually friendly vessels). This would make long range intercept self-destructs impossible. It would encourage a mutual protection formation of carriers and escorting vessels, sailing close to one another instead of spreading out alone over the ocean. This might be more 'realistic'. And it would also perhaps more accurately represent the limitations of carrier air defense, where even with radar warning, getting fighters into the air before the enemy arrived was barely possible, much less intercepting enemy bombers striking another target a thousand miles away.

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RE: Escorts can sink a carrier? - 7/1/2021 5:44:21 PM

The Land

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Chernobyl

But it still feels completely wrong. I ordered a bombing mission against one ship, and another one (which was quite far away) explodes and sinks. This sequence of events will happen every single time under certain circumstances simply due to the fact that the anti-ship attack value of the escorts is applied to damage the escorting carrier.
quote:

It will have a chance of happening every time a carrier with a very low Hull value has orders to perform intercepts, and then happens to intercept a raid which is escorted by a carrier set to Mixed mode.

(I'm unclear if the actual raid itself is also able to attack the Hull of the intercepting carrier?)

I'm not sure this is a big problem. If you have carriers with a very low Hull value then it's possible to retreat them, to turn off intercepts, to put them into tactical mode...plenty of routes to avoid it (though the AI may be too dumb to use them.)

Maybe reducing intercept range might be appropriate, though not to 1 which would be crippling, and any reduction would also have a bigger effect on the AI than on human players who understand the positioning...

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