advice to a noob?

[4Head]

anyone got any tips or advise to help a noob out?
thanks

[pombruv]

Play the vanilla tutorial and read the guides on the community page. Just to get you started :)

[karstens78]

...and have in mind; this has NOT the game-mechanics of Atlantic Fleet....the "Battleship" part of the game is removed.

[jfoytek]

Flood the air with every available spotter you can... Scouting is one of the primary keys to victory...

The Other Primary key to victory is GOOD Logistic's, Don't neglect your Merchant fleet be sure your able to haul those supplies, engineering and gas as needed....

And Finally Avoid Surface Engagements at all costs, Always engage with your Air power at range and ONLY risk a surface Engagement if its the LAST resort...

That Being said your Carrier Task Forces will be your primary offense.... They should be a large chunk of your initial investment....

And those are my tips...

[4Head]

So prioritise air power from carriers. Got it.

Also, I'm playing vanilla US campaign and I only start with 200 command points, what kind of composition should I have for a task force? And over the course of the game should I be building smaller task forces but more, or bigger task forces but less.

[Kraznova]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1280780/discussions/0/3449213285567542951/

[jfoytek]

Originally posted by kebab:

So prioritise air power from carriers. Got it.

Also, I'm playing vanilla US campaign and I only start with 200 command points, what kind of composition should I have for a task force? And over the course of the game should I be building smaller task forces but more, or bigger task forces but less.

My typical starting group in vanilla is 1 DD (Mahan) For Sonar 1 CV and 1 CL (Atlanta) for Anti Air and Sonar assist....

Those are my 3 combat vessels the rest I put into my merchant fleet... also be sure to task 2 DD's to escort your merchants to deal with any submarine attacks....

[Jabreakit Jabawdit]

I'd recommend just going through the tutorials and hopping straight into a campaign. It's basically impossible to lose at this game, so just learn from your mistakes. The game where you take losses is the most fun because I've gotten too good to the point where I only lose ships to submarine spam. I would turn off enemy uses submarines as a beginner unless you are prepared to deal with spam.

People will give you a good strategy, but using a bad strategy is more fun. I would park a surface fleet at the slot and gun it out with all the ships that come to land on Guadalcanal. However, this can be a problem because the enemy will spam convoys at your potentially damaged and unarmed fleet. To solve this, use the b17s at New Hebrides to bomb the important ships and heavily damage them. Most of the time, they will turn around. Do this until week 1 where you will have enough points for an aircraft carrier. Use aircraft to screen Guadalcanal while your ships repair and rearm, until you have enough ships so you can do both simultaneously.

The priority is to never let your enemy land troops or supplies. So destroy merchant ships first, preferably with a screen of submarines.

[7TP_Jw]

completely forget aircraft. they don't exist. sigma rule 1 to learning the game. they're just a conspiracy by global powers. big gun supremacy is best. not even joking, my most fun playthrough had no carriers.

[7TP_Jw]

Or just watch someone play the game for a bit, usually to figure out if you want the game. Thats what I did, taught me basics and ideas, and i kinda just had fun from there. game is easy to pick up. Subs and aircraft are overpowered, and just rotating a carrier around rennell island and screening the solomons will have you sinking the entire IJN in 2 or 3 months at latest.

Lining up aircraft before a strike, with dive bombers I'd recommend forming them into a spacious line formation. With torpedo bombers, try striking from two angles if you have enough aircraft. Same goes for DBs.

ASW patrols of 2 destroyers around certain areas, north to west of rennell for the U.S, west of guadalcanal along the southern edge of the solomons for the IJN. Subs can be difficult to deal with for new players, but there are some decent videos out there that teach sub hunting. Basicaly, try and triangulate with your destroyers, drop charges when your stern is over their bow, have the second destroyer in position to strike after DD 1 makes it's run. Done right, you won't be dreading having to sink 26 japanese submarines whenever starting a new campaign. Or dreading the 80 or so you have to deal with as the japanese. It opens up new strategy.

getting airbases up on other islands, like level 2 or 3 at most, can be pretty helpful aswell for screening the seas. the IJN AI does not use carriers, I have not encountered a single japanese carrier during any of my USN playthroughs. the USN AI on the other hand, will always have a carrier force opperating just north of, east of, or south of Rennell island. Sending a carrier force of your own down there to take it out is relatively easy. Just be warned when you get to december otherwise you'll have an endless stream to deal with.

[7TP_Jw]

Start of the campaign for me is usually just the minimum transport convoy, then a cruiser task force + a submarine and i send them off to grind their gears. most dreadful part is setting up the patrol patterns of all their scout aircraft.

[TheCr33pur]

Originally posted by jfoytek:

Flood the air with every available spotter you can... Scouting is one of the primary keys to victory...

The Other Primary key to victory is GOOD Logistic's, Don't neglect your Merchant fleet be sure your able to haul those supplies, engineering and gas as needed....

And Finally Avoid Surface Engagements at all costs, Always engage with your Air power at range and ONLY risk a surface Engagement if its the LAST resort...

That Being said your Carrier Task Forces will be your primary offense.... They should be a large chunk of your initial investment....

And those are my tips...

Wise choice, been hearing alot of complaints about submarine warfare. How to track them and how to use submarines as well.

I havent really gotten into the game yet, been checking to see if they made any good progress by polishing the game, etc.

Btw can you leave your ships, subs or even the carrier task force as AI to deal with the AI computer opponent?

[VirgoCompany]

You can have your ships set to Fire At Will, in which case they'll target ships and manage ammo on their own. They can be given waypoints on the battle map and will move in a straight line for their destinations, but won't do much in the way of torpedo evasion. But that's pretty much it.

You MUST command all your fleets and tell them where to go, what supplies to load/unload at whichever base you told them to go, and they cannot disengage from enemy contact on their own since that requires going into the tactical battle and manually choosing the retreat options.

[jfoytek]

Originally posted by TheCr33pur:

Wise choice, been hearing alot of complaints about submarine warfare. How to track them and how to use submarines as well.

I havent really gotten into the game yet, been checking to see if they made any good progress by polishing the game, etc.

Btw can you leave your ships, subs or even the carrier task force as AI to deal with the AI computer opponent?

Point 1 about subs: Investing in sub's can pay off... Sub's are a bit OP to be honest and the reason their price is jacked up in most every mod.... I rarely use Sub's in my games because they are a bit over powered but also because they slow down the game a lot... An airstrike from a carrier is fairly quick to conduct.. where are dealing with a sub engagement takes a fair bit of time.....

Point 2 About AI: No the game won't command ships on their own the play must always give some level of interaction... For instance you can tell a ship to conduct a depth charge run and it will attempt to do so.... (This is as close to the full AI experience as you will get in this game)

[7TP_Jw]

And don't play the game harder than balanced combat difficulty. Campaign difficulty doesn't matter, but combat diff just makes things stupid. I've have an engagement between my 3 cruisers and 2 dds (im the IJN) and everyone came away with heavy or worse damage and flooding while the americans (a similarly strengthed force) came away with minor damage to a cruiser. Just plain not fun. Especially when I want to have fun gun battles instead of grind away with aircraft.