Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Rendova

The Kates will make torpedo runs at 200FT but they fly to the target at 6000 feet so setting cap at 10,000 will work fine. And yes if you play at the harder realism settings the AI cheats and will kick your can in Air to Air combat (5 A6M2's take on 24 F4U's and shot down 16 etc) Another thing when attacking CV's and other large warships set you SBD's to 15,000 FT then they attack in waves of 9 instead of 4. This spreads out the flak and increases the chances of hit (more hits on less ships) which works real well on CV's

quote:

ORIGINAL: lunario

quote:

ORIGINAL: Rendova

The Kates will make torpedo runs at 200FT but they fly to the target at 6000 feet so setting cap at 10,000 will work fine. And yes if you play at the harder realism settings the AI cheats and will kick your can in Air to Air combat (5 A6M2's take on 24 F4U's and shot down 16 etc) Another thing when attacking CV's and other large warships set you SBD's to 15,000 FT then they attack in waves of 9 instead of 4. This spreads out the flak and increases the chances of hit (more hits on less ships) which works real well on CV's

I just hate AI cheating....once i got about 80 F4Fs on CAP and intecept 110 A6M2 and some bombers...59 of my wildcats are shot down and 15 other are damaged...

quote:

ORIGINAL: Oznoyng

I'm pretty new to the game, but I've found that altitude settings make a difference in the air battles.

The biggest benefit so far has been putting P-40's up a bit higher. I was taking lots of losses on P-40's, but they were continually climbing to engage. I bumped up their altitude and it seems that their speed plus dive lets them get the better end of the engagement more of the time. Because of their high altitude suckiness, that doesn't work on P-39D's and P-400's. I tried putting them at 3-4000 feet with the idea that they could dive and engage torpedo bombers, but they seem to climb to engage the escorts, lose horribly in the thin air above 10,000, and end up doing nothing against the bombers. I need to pay better attention to the combat reports on those, but I'm not sure there is a good way to deploy them as CAP that doesn't have them dying in droves.

I am tempted to drop P-39's/P-400's as CAP altogether. Somehow, I'd like to team them up with TBD's offloaded from the carriers, low altitude LBA, or Beauforts and dictate the battle altitude by attacking somewhere rather than be dictated to by putting them up as CAP. They aren't horrible fighters from a manueverability, gun, and durability perspective, but all the Japs have to do is come in high to stack the deck in their favor. I figure if I can force the altitude of the engagement down lower, I can suck the Zeros into an engagement where the odds are less in their favor. I had some thoughts about putting the TBD's at PM, escorting them with P-39's, and trying to chew up some AP/AK.

I must confess that I haven't got a lot of experience with my F4F's yet, since I have generally tried to keep them from getting involved in battles. :)

"Life is tough, it's even tougher when you're stupid" -SGT John M. Stryker, USMC