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Gregor_SSG -> RE: questions and remarks (6/11/2007 3:59:54 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: philsublime
As I already mentioned, I really like this game. It has a certain charm to it. And it's challenging and simple at the same time. I few questions:
1. What would be the purpose of not sending in all the planes on a strike? In other words, why would I hold off certain planes?
2. What would be a reason to not use the cohesive strike button?
3. Is there any way I can check how the repairs are going on? Is there even repairs on damaged planes and ships?
4. What is the carrier screen good for, except checking if the planes are in and order them to refuel/rearm?
All my questions have something to do with the fact, that in the scenarios I played, it was all about hitting fast(at best first) and hitting hard. Like this, the long time given in certain scenarios(for example coral sea, 9 days) seems useless, because once the carriers are gone, it's more or less decided in terms of objective points for sinking ships. Fullfilling resp. hindering the opponent to achieve the condition is pretty much always possible by just sending all the remaining ships to the objective as cannonfodder to run out the clock (I know this may be considered "dumb playing", but still...). The carriers to me just don't appear like this big fortresses, but more like expensive weapons you can just use once, that's it...
Can any of you clear my last doubts?
You would usually want to send all your planes against an enemy carrier sighting, but not always, and there's always multiple targets to consider. Lets take Coral Sea as an example. As well as the enemy fleet carriers, there are the Shoho, the Kamikawa, the invasion force and the warships, which can all end up in roughly the same area.
If you're luck enough to know that the fleet carriers are too far away, or its too late in the afternoon for them to strike, then you can attack the other targets with impunity. You only need to escort a strike against the Shoho, the others can go unescorted. Remember, every launch has its own attrition from prangs on takeoff and landings.
If you don't know where the enemy carriers are, you might still consider launching your Devastators against a soft target like the Kamikawa. They are pretty useless against real targets and only slow down any strike they're in.
As for Cohesive, its usually the best option against targets with CAP, as then your bombers and fighters arrive more or less together. Bombers arriving without escort tend to get shredded by CAP and a plane killed or even damaged doesn't get to release its weapon. However it does slow the strike down, especially if the Devastators are included. Worse still, since cohesive planes must fly at the speed of the slowest plane, including a slow plane may cause the strike to return after night or even make a target out of range to a plane that could reach it flying independently. Check those target boxes carefully when you're considering all this.
Planes can get repaired, ships can't. However a ship's damage control efforts can extinguish fire damage, which can reduce its overall damage level.
The carrier screen is useful for checking just what your planes are up to, some people use it more than others. Its handy to watch a couple of strikes cycle through the arm/fuel/takeoff routine as this will give you a good feeling for how it will be after you hit the launch button that planes are actually on their way to the target.
Nobody ever though of carriers as a fortress. Even late in the war, when the US had carrier operations down to a fine art, the Japanese resorted to kamikaze attacks which caused major problems to fleets that had become very adept at defeating conventional attacks.
The thing to remember about carrier warfare is that in the kigdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. One carrier, even with half its planes lost, still rules the roost if the other guy has no carriers left to oppose it.
As for the length of the Coral Sea scenario, it takes the Invasion fleet a long time to sail from Rabaul to Port Moresby. If the scenario is too short, that forces the Japanese onto a predictable timeline, a constraint that they didn't have historically.
Gregor
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