Tips and Tricks Thread

[Team Triss]

Post here any hints, tips, and tricks you learn or discover while you play. Maybe we can get a pinned topic out of it.

-When mousing over a mission you can recover, you can toggle squadrons to go between Deck and Hangar so they don't necessarily go to the deck and you have to send them to the hangar.

[Team Triss]

-Similar mechanism to the above, you can toggle between Dive and Torpedo bombers to go on Recon and Identify missions right before clicking Prepare.

[Normancon]

- Moving officers has a cool down. Select their location wisely. It may also be worth looking at their station ahead of moving them to determine if anything needs to change first. Some stations rarely change based on your preference, It is wise to determine them and change them early on them move the officer to prevent the need later.
- I personally find it nice having a couple fighter squads on deck nearly all time except for strikes. This prevents some lead time in specific missions where you can be attacked and have to send out 2-3 friendly cap missions all around the same time.
- Don't forget to use the support vessel near the end of a game to replenish up to 2 lost squads of a given type. This can save a small amount of points each time that can be used for new escorts, officers, crew, etc.

[Lionel23]

Question, I couldn't find this in the tutorial or gameplay... what's the Yellow Shield Icon on the ships mean? Like the Brooklyn-class has 4 'Yellow Shields' on its portraits. Is that how much life or ships are in that squadron? I also see those on enemy fleets... so I wasn't quite sure what that meant compared to its Attack and Defense values?

[Svartkladd]

Originally posted by Lionel23:

Question, I couldn't find this in the tutorial or gameplay... what's the Yellow Shield Icon on the ships mean? Like the Brooklyn-class has 4 'Yellow Shields' on its portraits. Is that how much life or ships are in that squadron? I also see those on enemy fleets... so I wasn't quite sure what that meant compared to its Attack and Defense values?

It seems like it's their "HP". More shield mean that it has more health. As I understood, their defense value counters you attack value (like armor) and whatever attack value comes through should take out those shields. Though normal HP bar would be more convenient to estimate planned attack efficiency.

[Lakel]

Just have to ask, how many of yall got "1 to 3 kills" and actually get more than 1? Fair few battles where anything but a guarantee means nothing more than 1.

For the sake of tips and tricks, I'll highlight the value of spotting your planes in the correct order as well, while getting ready for that 5am start of air ops. Save the delay of having to clear a path for the recon planes you buried in the rear.

[Normancon]

Originally posted by Lakel:

Just have to ask, how many of yall got "1 to 3 kills" and actually get more than 1? Fair few battles where anything but a guarantee means nothing more than 1.

For the sake of tips and tricks, I'll highlight the value of spotting your planes in the correct order as well, while getting ready for that 5am start of air ops. Save the delay of having to clear a path for the recon planes you buried in the rear.

I've actually been surprised by that. It seems there is a good bit of randomness to it. I had it say 1-2 and instead the flight sunk all 3 ships in the fleet which was nice.

[Seager]

#1 Pay attention to "war circumstances" after mission 4 in the campaign - if you play missions in a good order you can make some of them very easy thanks to the "war circumstances" bonuses.

#2 Complete optional objectives in missions - your admiral levels up twice as fast if you do them - more important than getting all the medals!

#3 If you know for sure there's an enemy behind he "?" mark on the map you can use identify without having to recon it first. Much faster.

#4 If you start the mission undetected (dark eye icon) you can stay undetected for as long as you destroy all enemy scouts and avoid contact with the enemy. Undetected means enemy can't attack you at all.

#5 You can destroy only carrier or an airstrip in bases to render an enemy fleet useless - without that they will not be able to attack you.

[Lakel]

Originally posted by Normancon:

Originally posted by Lakel:

Just have to ask, how many of yall got "1 to 3 kills" and actually get more than 1? Fair few battles where anything but a guarantee means nothing more than 1.

For the sake of tips and tricks, I'll highlight the value of spotting your planes in the correct order as well, while getting ready for that 5am start of air ops. Save the delay of having to clear a path for the recon planes you buried in the rear.

I've actually been surprised by that. It seems there is a good bit of randomness to it. I had it say 1-2 and instead the flight sunk all 3 ships in the fleet which was nice.

At least somone has, thanks for the answer. So far ive been boned by it every time, nothing more than 1 kill per mission besides the one strike I had a guarantee of 3 kills. Managed to kill off their CV in the first strike.

[Mike Sholo]

I'm quite sure everyone knows this, but...

Zulu time in the Pacific (game time).
Sunrise: 05:00
Sunset: 22:00

Planes cannot take off between those hours, but they can be operating and can land after 10:00 p.m.

[Brygun]

+1 on pinning the thread

[Team Triss]

Originally posted by Mike Sholo:

I'm quite sure everyone knows this, but...

Zulu time in the Pacific (game time).
Sunrise: 05:00
Sunset: 22:00

Planes cannot take off between those hours, but they can be operating and can land after 10:00 p.m.

I forgot this was posted here and just discovered it again myself, but this adds to another tip I thought of on a related note.

Might as well make use of the downtime at night to resupply so you're ready to go at 0500.

[IrateQuaker]

Come up with your favorite airstrike strategy. This makes loading your deck and sending the attack faster. As an example, I always send three torpedo squadrons, using the two cards under offense. The single squadron in the second slot and two squadron in the fifth. The fifth slot in your attack orders gets a lot of great bonus benefits by way of other squadrons so it is my linchpin attack. It pays to spend a little time figuring out how the cards interact with each other.

[Danikov]

Originally posted by Lionel23:

Question, I couldn't find this in the tutorial or gameplay... what's the Yellow Shield Icon on the ships mean?

It's the number of ships in the unit, that's why some units have much higher stats than one ship would have normally, it's multiplied out. You can sink some, but not all of a unit and reduce its power proportionally.

[Mike Sholo]

Originally posted by Danikov:

Originally posted by Lionel23:

Question, I couldn't find this in the tutorial or gameplay... what's the Yellow Shield Icon on the ships mean?

It's the number of ships in the unit, that's why some units have much higher stats than one ship would have normally, it's multiplied out. You can sink some, but not all of a unit and reduce its power proportionally.

Thanks

[Mike Sholo]

Originally posted by IrateQuaker:

Come up with your favorite airstrike strategy. This makes loading your deck and sending the attack faster. As an example, I always send three torpedo squadrons, using the two cards under offense. The single squadron in the second slot and two squadron in the fifth. The fifth slot in your attack orders gets a lot of great bonus benefits by way of other squadrons so it is my linchpin attack. It pays to spend a little time figuring out how the cards interact with each other.

That's complicated, because it depends on the enemy.

For my first two missions (in the campaign) I did this setup and it works pretty well:

2# Anvil
3# Torpedo Run
4# Bulwark
5# Defensive Bombers

That means 2 fighters, 1 dive bomber and 3 torpedo bombers.

In the 3rd there are many surface ships, each with different blockers so, depending on the TF, attack, defensive or support maneuvers cannot be used, or some positions are reduced or blocked.

The good news is that when you're planning your attack, time stops, so you can play with your cards without stress ;)