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Ron Saueracker -> RE: Ability to divide Carrier fighter squadrons... (5/28/2006 5:15:32 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: el cid again
quote:
Being able to split IJN CV groups is because the group is a "Daitai", not because of the available slots on the CV.
In game terms, only groups of a certain size (group type) can split.
As to why historically, ...?
Michael
This may be linguistics. A Daitai is a squadron! Some Japanese translate this as "unit" - meaning "four three plane elements" - and from midwar it formally became "four four plane elements". That is certainly a squadron.
But the larger carriers typically carried two "fighter units" in their "fighter squadron" - and Hiryu and Soryu each had "one and a half units." To make this even more confusing, the Japanese had a concept (which may have been superior) of the entire formation formed up (regardless of what carrier a unit or flight came from) as an organization in its own right (with names that do not translate because we have no similar concepts).
Thus getting "one and a half units" from a carrier might not matter much - it was the total you got from all the carriers you led. It is not the squadron (Daitai) that is dividing - it is something larger - we might call it a "carrier fighter group." And there is something larger still conducting the operations - a "carrier formation combined air wing."
In game terms, all nations should be able to split because this simply seems nomenclature driven and is the only way to achieve tactical flexibility, and it does enhance the ability of a CV, so the Japanese should not be the only side capable of employing this. Historically the USN and Allied fighter formations on CVs were called squadrons so get limited by a coding decision (squadrons can't split...groups can). Japanese were called something else so get labelled a group and get the split designed for massive 72 plane groups. This is obviously an early design oversight which was never addressed.
What would have been more useful is a more flexible mission menu, where one could employ their squadrons on multiple missions (ie...more than two selections) using a percentage/priority slider or something similar. This would have made this ability to split or not totally irrelevant.
More importantly however, the VB 8 squadron which absorbed VS 8 in my PBEM still shows a max size of 18 and has 36 pilots and 36 planes (18 in reserve). I'm assuming there might be a problem.
The float plane group fix seems to be working as my floatplane flights are filling out again.
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