How do you even use planes in battle?

[HeyHeyHayden]

I played the game when it first came out, 1 campaign each for Japan and U.S.A, thought it was neat, but needed way more work.

I've come back a year and a half later and.....did planes just get nerfed into the ground? I'm struggling to get any hits with Vals and Betty's even on stationary targets. I've tried attacking from front on, side on, low altitude, high altitude, etc. But the planes always just randomly drop their bombs and completely miss with every attack. Looking at their drops from the enemy ship POV you can see many of the planes arent even vaguely lined up correctly.

So am I missing something, or are planes useless now?

[boris.glevrk]

For dive bombers: don't adjust altitude, attack from side
For torpedo bombers: adjust to lower altitude, attack from side/slightly between side and rear. You can also tweak the torpedo bombing parameters because the default one sucks.

If you are interested I can try to find you my torpedo bomber setting. It basically has 100% hit rate.

[HeyHeyHayden]

Originally posted by boris.glevrk:

For dive bombers: don't adjust altitude, attack from side
For torpedo bombers: adjust to lower altitude, attack from side/slightly between side and rear. You can also tweak the torpedo bombing parameters because the default one sucks.

If you are interested I can try to find you my torpedo bomber setting. It basically has 100% hit rate.

This just doesn't work. I tried it multiple times with dive bombers (groups of 4) against cargo ships and i'd be lucky to get 1 hit out of 12 bombs dropped.

[MizuYuuki]

I always do better attacking with aircraft if I do individual targeting. To do this select the flight leader on the mini-map, and then select all of the aircraft in the flight listing over on the left of the screen before you hit "Attack". That way each airplane in the flight group does individual targeting when you press "Attack" instead of group formation targeting.

[boris.glevrk]

Originally posted by MizuYuuki:

I always do better attacking with aircraft if I do individual targeting. To do this select the flight leader on the mini-map, and then select all of the aircraft in the flight listing over on the left of the screen before you hit "Attack". That way each airplane in the flight group does individual targeting when you press "Attack" instead of group formation targeting.

ah yes, this.
click on the colored square on the plane's tag. then select target, then attack.
This will cause an individual targeting to ensue.

TBH at this point there's no reason to do a formation attack. all my planes attack exclusively in individual mode.

[Herr Flick]

Harder to hit attacking from the stern/bow attacking for the port/starboard is “easier” BUT you have the full force of DP guns and AAA from the ships so you can expect heavy losses, the losses sometimes are complete wipe outs to solve this I actually changed the AA blast radius to 1 as for 1942 the DP guns are more like 44-45 types

Originally posted by HeyHeyHayden:

Originally posted by boris.glevrk:

For dive bombers: don't adjust altitude, attack from side
For torpedo bombers: adjust to lower altitude, attack from side/slightly between side and rear. You can also tweak the torpedo bombing parameters because the default one sucks.

If you are interested I can try to find you my torpedo bomber setting. It basically has 100% hit rate.

This just doesn't work. I tried it multiple times with dive bombers (groups of 4) against cargo ships and i'd be lucky to get 1 hit out of 12 bombs dropped.

[cswiger]

Almost all weapons end up being more accurate in terms of bearing and have greater errors in terms of range.

With regard to dive bombers, the greatest chance of hits ought to be an approach from dead stern. It also tends to result in moderate-to-high casualties. Next is approaching from bow towards the stern, which tends to result in much lower plane casualties. (There's up to maybe a 60 nm/h difference in closing speeds between these two. Attacking front-to-rear minimizes the time that planes are in AA range.)

Approaching from the sides tends to result in fewer hits and often heavy losses as the ship AA guns have their best shooting angles towards their sides. You can miss DDs and even some smaller cruisers entirely with sideways dive bomber attacks, but they can still be reasonably effective against capital ships and iffy against merchies.

[Killerfish Games]

Recommend a look over tutorial: 8. Air Attacks

If you are using dive bombers, go for an Independent Attack.
- Select ALL AIRCRAFT in the flight and order attack (A) or button on Orders panel.

If you are using level bombers, go for a Formation Attack.
- Select the FLIGHT LEADER ONLY and order the attack. All other aircraft will hold formation and drop in a pattern around the target.

It sounds like you might be using a Formation Attack with the dive bombers causing them to drop in a pattern around the target??

[Herr Flick]

I usually select all and have line ahead and space them out 100 the bombers dive in a nice single file 1 by 1 I think that’s best for dive bombing?

Originally posted by Killerfish Games:

Recommend a look over tutorial: 8. Air Attacks

If you are using dive bombers, go for an Independent Attack.
- Select ALL AIRCRAFT in the flight and order attack (A) or button on Orders panel.

If you are using level bombers, go for a Formation Attack.
- Select the FLIGHT LEADER ONLY and order the attack. All other aircraft will hold formation and drop in a pattern around the target.

It sounds like you might be using a Formation Attack with the dive bombers causing them to drop in a pattern around the target??

[boris.glevrk]

Originally posted by cswiger:

Almost all weapons end up being more accurate in terms of bearing and have greater errors in terms of range.

With regard to dive bombers, the greatest chance of hits ought to be an approach from dead stern.

That's IRL, not in this game.
In this game every plane has a RNG lateral error, and then another RNG bomb/torpedo release error.
So if you dive bomb from stern, chances are you will have most of your planes entirely not flying toward the target ship (the flight path doesn't intersect with the hull at all). But if you dive bomb from sides, the flight path will intersect with the hull, and the bomb RNG will decide whether the bomb hits.

it's obviously suboptimal but I think the time has come for me to suggest a better dive bombing program (it's customizable via txt file) to increase their effectiveness. Right now dive bombers are almost entirely irrelevant.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by boris.glevrk:

Originally posted by cswiger:

Almost all weapons end up being more accurate in terms of bearing and have greater errors in terms of range.

With regard to dive bombers, the greatest chance of hits ought to be an approach from dead stern.

That's IRL, not in this game.

Observation of the games' behavior strongly suggests that both gunfire and bombs tend to miss by being short or being long much more often then they miss laterally.

it's obviously suboptimal but I think the time has come for me to suggest a better dive bombing program (it's customizable via txt file) to increase their effectiveness. Right now dive bombers are almost entirely irrelevant.

If your tactics are suboptimal, you can try different things to improve.

Using decent tactics in WOTS allows dive bombers to take on almost all ships effectively, except maybe the most heavily armored battleships and cruisers. I get more kills using dive bombers than from torp bombers by a wide margin.

I also take many fewer dive bomber casualties than torp bomber casualties.

[HeyHeyHayden]

Well after trying it some more it seems to be an issue with the way the AI figures out how to attack ships after you start the order.

Ive been using individual attack the whole time, always attacking from the side. I started looking at my vals from the enemy ship POV and it seems like they dont target correctly, and end up flying rolled slightly to the left or the right (depending on the direction the ships you're targeting are going in). Thus when they release the bombs they drop at odd angles and miss.

I've found the longer you wait to start the attack, the more accurate you are, with clicking the attack button at the last possible moment giving the best hit rate. It seems to be a problem with how the Vals track the ships when ordered to attack, as they end up not predicting correctly and having to adjust, giving them the weird roll angle.

So my recommendation is to group them line abreast, select the target for all of them, have them fly side on to the ship, and then give the attack order as late as possible.

[MizuYuuki]

Interesting. Although, you are exposing the planes to more AA and flak doing that.

[HeyHeyHayden]

Originally posted by MizuYuuki:

Interesting. Although, you are exposing the planes to more AA and flak doing that.

Not really. The planes stay exposed the same amount of time since you're doing the same approach as usual. The only difference is clicking the attack button as late as possible. If you click it earlier, they still fly the same path, but automatically adjust and start the dive.

[Jimbles]

Originally posted by boris.glevrk:

For dive bombers: don't adjust altitude, attack from side
For torpedo bombers: adjust to lower altitude, attack from side/slightly between side and rear. You can also tweak the torpedo bombing parameters because the default one sucks.

If you are interested I can try to find you my torpedo bomber setting. It basically has 100% hit rate.

Do you still have this info, i'm paralysed atm due to some serious torpedo bomber nerfing on TTE