Anti Air Bugged?

[Pritswalk]

So far in every playthrough I have played AA has yet to contribute more than 10% of air kills in a war. No matter how much HAA, MAA, or LAA I have installed the results are the same, AA just cant hit aircraft. It honestly feels like refitting ships with new AA is a complete waste of resources.

Also the same goes for Jet Attack except even jet fighters seem to struggle to intercept them, which while annoying is really compounded by the AI knowing where you are and instantly launching them at your carrier group at battle start.

[Lord Hausgold]

It is because AA mostly disrupt attack runs rather then kill. It also often damage the planes making them turn around and return before even launching a attack. So taking off AA would save on money, tonnage, and surface space at the cost of planes being able to strike harder and easier on you.

As for your jet problem no idea someone else here that can explain it better will come by and correct me if I screw up explaining.

[Andrew Cree]

That sounds about right.

AA shouldn't be a big killer of enemy aircraft, that's the job of the CAP.

Are you remembering to order you carriers to provide CAP to your battle line and scout force?

Without SAMs, once the planes commit to an attack, all heavy AA (Dual Purpose or DP guns) in range will fire at the attackers.

Next is the target's Medium AA, which is guaranteed to fire before non-jets make their attacks.

Finally is the target's Light AA which is more complex, in that the tracers disrupt the attack before it is made, however the faster aircraft are more likely to avoid getting damaged until *after* the attack is made.

All the AA has a disruptive effect on the attack, most effective being Light AA (but worst at killing) and least effective being Heavy AA.

[khorne8]

Originally posted by Lord Hausgold:

It is because AA mostly disrupt attack runs rather then kill. It also often damage the planes making them turn around and return before even launching a attack. So taking off AA would save on money, tonnage, and surface space at the cost of planes being able to strike harder and easier on you.

This is right, AA is just a shield. CAP fighters are the sword, if you want to kill enemy aircraft rather than just scare them off. The other thing to understand is that the aircraft vs. AA interaction seems to bounce around a lot depending on tech. Which is cool, of course; that's how it was in reality.

If you're lucky enough to fight a war after getting ahead in the tech race, you can rack up AA kills. Recently I scored around 30% AA kills IIRC because it was in the late 1940s and I had cutting edge tech on massed 5" DP AA batteries, and the unfortunate enemy didn't have the air to surface missiles to let them stay out of the barrage. What happened to the IJN in 1944, basically.

Originally posted by Lord Hausgold:

As for your jet problem no idea someone else here that can explain it better will come by and correct me if I screw up explaining.

I am not an expert, but the expert explanation I have seen is that CAP needs a substantial speed advantage to intercept well. Check the speed of the enemy aircraft against your fighters; perhaps it's time to go yell at Grumman to design you something with a bit more juice.

[ulzgoroth]

I haven't had a lot of trouble shutting down enemy air attacks with CAP, but they also seem to have been slow to switch to JA even in the 60s rather than trying to strike with LJF and such.


SAMs seem pretty good at imposing some attrition on aircraft, but considering each MSAM launcher is likely to weigh as much as a jet it may be a shaky advantage.

[ifernat]

I think the air war has a number of serious flaws.

1) There needs to a radar picket formation that actually has destroyers surrounding a task force at a sizable distance, rather than following the capital ships like ducklings.

2) The fact that airplanes don't do anything on the strategic layer besides ASW between turns is a major issue. There is no way to have the continuing pressures/attrition of an air war in a sea zone or part of it. Instead of these randomly generated BS battles that aren't tied to anything that the battle generator throws out. We need battles that are tied to goals. A cruiser action to strip defending ships, which leads into a convoy battle where if the player wins, a base doesn't get resupplied and its air corps is ineffective at supporting a defending fleet in a follow up bombardment mission, which leads into an invasion.

But instead you can wind up in the situation where you can have 200 Patrol Bombers in the Caribbean with 1+ km ranges, capable of covering every inch of the sea zone and a surface raider can still operate without issues, enemy merchants can still sail through, etc.

3) The arbitrary restriction on only having a single aircraft being prototyped at any given time and in service is perplexing as hell to me. Prototyping costs money. Why is that not enough for balance reasons? Instead by the 40's it takes most of a year to prototype a plane, and you need to cycle between five or so different kinds of aircraft, which means that unless you're okay with one of the types becoming obsolescent you pretty much have to rotate through all of them. Are you the USA and really need an ultra long range fighter like the P-38 to provide air coverage in the Pacific but not be the primary fighter for the shorter range work from your carriers? Tough Luck.

Are you Great Britain and need a resilient patrol plane in the contested skies of the Mediterranean and SE Asia, but would also like a long range version to keep an eye on the long coastlines of Africa...heresy.

4) The lack of attrition in strategic turns, plus the battle generator's reluctance to let the player have their carriers except for every half dozen turns or so negates the whole purpose in having a well funded standing corps of airmen. A country can start the war with a painfully bad air force, but by dint of the battle generator throwing out cruiser and destroyer actions for several turns it doesn't matter because given 3-4 months before the carriers get called to action a country can build/train and deploy an air force from scratch.

5) Reconstituting a carrier's air wing is too easy. Along with #4, a carrier that winds up totally deplaned should be an expensive paper weight for far longer. The game as its currently coded, something like the Battle of the Philippine Sea (Marinas Turkey Shoot) doesn't mean jack on a strategic level. Whereas in actual history, the Japanese Carrier force became irrelevant for lack of trained air crew, in this game the undamaged Japanese Carriers sail off and in a month or two they're ready to go again, which given that the Battle Generator spat out a meaningless destroyer action in the intervening month, didn't cost them anything.

[Skrain]

Originally posted by ifernat:

I think the air war has a number of serious flaws.

1) There needs to a radar picket formation that actually has destroyers surrounding a task force at a sizable distance, rather than following the capital ships like ducklings.

2) The fact that airplanes don't do anything on the strategic layer besides ASW between turns is a major issue. There is no way to have the continuing pressures/attrition of an air war in a sea zone or part of it. Instead of these randomly generated BS battles that aren't tied to anything that the battle generator throws out. We need battles that are tied to goals. A cruiser action to strip defending ships, which leads into a convoy battle where if the player wins, a base doesn't get resupplied and its air corps is ineffective at supporting a defending fleet in a follow up bombardment mission, which leads into an invasion.

But instead you can wind up in the situation where you can have 200 Patrol Bombers in the Caribbean with 1+ km ranges, capable of covering every inch of the sea zone and a surface raider can still operate without issues, enemy merchants can still sail through, etc.

3) The arbitrary restriction on only having a single aircraft being prototyped at any given time and in service is perplexing as hell to me. Prototyping costs money. Why is that not enough for balance reasons? Instead by the 40's it takes most of a year to prototype a plane, and you need to cycle between five or so different kinds of aircraft, which means that unless you're okay with one of the types becoming obsolescent you pretty much have to rotate through all of them. Are you the USA and really need an ultra long range fighter like the P-38 to provide air coverage in the Pacific but not be the primary fighter for the shorter range work from your carriers? Tough Luck.

Are you Great Britain and need a resilient patrol plane in the contested skies of the Mediterranean and SE Asia, but would also like a long range version to keep an eye on the long coastlines of Africa...heresy.

4) The lack of attrition in strategic turns, plus the battle generator's reluctance to let the player have their carriers except for every half dozen turns or so negates the whole purpose in having a well funded standing corps of airmen. A country can start the war with a painfully bad air force, but by dint of the battle generator throwing out cruiser and destroyer actions for several turns it doesn't matter because given 3-4 months before the carriers get called to action a country can build/train and deploy an air force from scratch.

5) Reconstituting a carrier's air wing is too easy. Along with #4, a carrier that winds up totally deplaned should be an expensive paper weight for far longer. The game as its currently coded, something like the Battle of the Philippine Sea (Marinas Turkey Shoot) doesn't mean jack on a strategic level. Whereas in actual history, the Japanese Carrier force became irrelevant for lack of trained air crew, in this game the undamaged Japanese Carriers sail off and in a month or two they're ready to go again, which given that the Battle Generator spat out a meaningless destroyer action in the intervening month, didn't cost them anything.

I agree with pretty much everything in this post, and the fact that RTW3 doesn't have this proves that any idea or belief of a "grand strategic goal" is a total fantasy, this game is simply far too shallow to allow for it.

[ulzgoroth]

I'm at a loss for why (A) you expect a game about naval battles to simulate the naval aviation conducting a protracted ground-based air war and (B) you think 3-4 months is enough time to train up effective air wings.

[ifernat]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

I'm at a loss for why (A) you expect a game about naval battles to simulate the naval aviation conducting a protracted ground-based air war and (B) you think 3-4 months is enough time to train up effective air wings.

I'm not certain if you're agreeing with me and its not coming out well or if you've not understood my point.

I don't need reports every turn that Japanese Marines got bombed by planes from Guadalcanal. But I do need land based naval aviation to actually do something even if the battle generator doesn't (can't) call up a particular sea zone for a battle.

The Siege of Malta. British LAND BASED fighters and bombers spend months skirmishing in the skies over and between Malta, Sicily, and Libya. Great Britain has to pointedly reinforce the air corps there multiple times at great cost. For the most part the ships at sea never clash, but the Italian inability to deal with this outpost and its LAND based aviation ultimately dooms their North African campaigns as supply ships and associated escorts go down in the hundreds.

RTW3 does not have aviation target 'merchant' shipping, nor the occasional destroyer serving as escort.

Force Z. LAND based Japanese naval aviation, sinks two primary capital ships. There's not even a Japanese fleet in the area. This dooms the defense of Malaya.

In RTW3, this battle never happens because there's no matched or semi-matched fleet to put up OR it happens but the battle spawns in the middle of the Java Sea for ***reasons*** with neither Japanese or British aviation able to contribute and nothing about what actually happened can actually happen in the game where an incorrect invasion report combines with the fog of war to lure the British into danger because an underfunded, under trained LAND based CAP cover isn't organized enough to provide support, and Fleet Intelligence thinks it isn't an issue regardless because the Japanese planes don't have the range to reach the waters off Malaya... 'according to our best estimates.' None of this does, or even CAN happen in RTW3

The Battle of the Bismarck Sea. There's no US ships within several hundred miles of where this fight takes place. But the resulting carnage brought about by LAND based US Naval Aviation dooms the Japanese position in New Guinea.

In RTW3, this battle never happens, and can never happen.

My point is that if I invest in a Naval Airfield, it should be a consideration not just in the tactical battles but on the strategic level. Right now, unless a tactical battle spawns in that sea zone on that turn, in range of that air base, then paying to have a strong land based naval aviation component is burning budget to no effect.

The whole reason certain campaigns, events, and battles took place gets completely lost because RTW3 completely disregards the reasons or systems that made many of these places relevant. Do I want to re-fight the Pacific War beat for beat. No...

Do I want an opponent in the South China Sea to find themselves having a very rough time (regardless if the Battle Generator throws out something irrelevant or nonsensical) if they've decided to bypass the Philippines and the expensive airbases I've built and stocked there. Yes, very much yes.

On B) I'm agreeing with you, and you seem to miss this. RTW3 makes air craft and crew regenerate and skill overly quickly. Right now you can have a skeleton air force in a sea zone and when war breaks out either create or transfer enormous air formations and in a few months you'll have a perfectly serviceable but not elite air force in theater.

This shouldn't be happening. Air craft need to be cheaper, but the time to build out and train naval aviation needs to be longer.

See my prior comment how in RTW3 a situation where something like the Battle of the Philippine Sea doesn't mean squat in the game. The Carriers mostly go undamaged or unsunk and sail off. In actual history, it didn't matter. They were 50,000 ton steel paper weights without air crew, and the attrition occurring over the entire theater of War made it impossible for the Japanese Training program to meaningfully reconstitute that force. In RTW3, general RNG is going to result in 2-3 months of questionably relevant cruiser and destroyer actions or convoy raids and then another carrier battle will happen and the Japanese Carriers will be fully restocked, maybe with air crew aren't quite as elite, but they'll still be serviceable.

That's my point.

[WM_NWS]

Some good discussion and feedback here - thank you!

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by ifernat:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

I'm at a loss for why (A) you expect a game about naval battles to simulate the naval aviation conducting a protracted ground-based air war and (B) you think 3-4 months is enough time to train up effective air wings.

I'm not certain if you're agreeing with me and its not coming out well or if you've not understood my point.

I didn't, it seems.

I'm not sure I'd frame it first as an air problem, since the majority of your incidents involve two things that aren't handled in the game - naval airstrikes outside the context of an engagement between surface forces, and naval logistics. We've got convoy actions and trade warfare/blockade, but convoy actions don't really do anything except rack up victory points, and loss of trade only has nation-wide effects, not localized ones.

Be nice to have if it could be fit in though. (Although something like the Battle of the Bismark Sea seems certain to be unfun. Either you run out a clock where you can't really do anything but take hits, because your defenses against air attack are 100% passive in nature, or you just get a popup about having a whole destroyer division wiped out and losing tons of points because the enemy has a base. Which isn't a problem you're empowered to solve.)

Originally posted by ifernat:

On B) I'm agreeing with you, and you seem to miss this. RTW3 makes air craft and crew regenerate and skill overly quickly. Right now you can have a skeleton air force in a sea zone and when war breaks out either create or transfer enormous air formations and in a few months you'll have a perfectly serviceable but not elite air force in theater.

This shouldn't be happening. Air craft need to be cheaper, but the time to build out and train naval aviation needs to be longer.

On B you're not agreeing with me, but it's on a matter of fact - I don't think new air formations (or ships) become effective in 3-4 months. We may be defining 'effective' differently, I generally don't think units below 'good' status are ready.

[evilcherry]

I don't see the battle of bismarck more unfun than sub attacks or random mining. Just like submarine kills means more tonnage for ASW and mining means minesweeping, having ships sunk by land-based air means you need to invest in more AA in general.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by evilcherry:

I don't see the battle of bismarck more unfun than sub attacks or random mining. Just like submarine kills means more tonnage for ASW and mining means minesweeping, having ships sunk by land-based air means you need to invest in more AA in general.

Except that wouldn't be honest. A convoy protected by 8 destroyers was attacked by over a hundred bombers (with some fighter escort). There's no way you could have made the destroyers able to stop that. What conceivably could have, but didn't, would be the land-based CAP - of which there was quite a bit present.

[evilcherry]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by evilcherry:

I don't see the battle of bismarck more unfun than sub attacks or random mining. Just like submarine kills means more tonnage for ASW and mining means minesweeping, having ships sunk by land-based air means you need to invest in more AA in general.

Except that wouldn't be honest. A convoy protected by 8 destroyers was attacked by over a hundred bombers (with some fighter escort). There's no way you could have made the destroyers able to stop that. What conceivably could have, but didn't, would be the land-based CAP - of which there was quite a bit present.

Maybe I'm not clear enough but it was still. If you are moving a small number of ships in an restricted area without much air cover, while facing hundreds if not thousands of attack aircraft, you shouldn't last long.

That means you should never, even leave lone ships close to enemy territory - which makes strategic sense!

It is basically the same problem Germany faced in WW2 - it is unsafe to cross the English channel even if there is no major surface combatant present.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by evilcherry:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Except that wouldn't be honest. A convoy protected by 8 destroyers was attacked by over a hundred bombers (with some fighter escort). There's no way you could have made the destroyers able to stop that. What conceivably could have, but didn't, would be the land-based CAP - of which there was quite a bit present.

Maybe I'm not clear enough but it was still. If you are moving a small number of ships in an restricted area without much air cover, while facing hundreds if not thousands of attack aircraft, you shouldn't last long.

That means you should never, even leave lone ships close to enemy territory - which makes strategic sense!

It is basically the same problem Germany faced in WW2 - it is unsafe to cross the English channel even if there is no major surface combatant present.

Yeah, you're unclear - I'd suggest reading what the battle in question was. (I didn't know before it was raised here either, I'd heard the name but not looked into it.) This was a convoy running troops to a port under Japanese control. This is the kind of thing you flat do not have control over in RTW. And it's not clear what you could do differently - certainly if the 8 transports were escorted by a division of fleet carriers they might have been fine, but that would have been bizarre (even without Japan's exceptionally severe army/navy issues).

[Benjamin Magnus]

I tend to agree that AA in game is pretty weak. CAP should be the main defense, but compared to documented kill rates in the pacific theatre of war, AA in game only operates at about 1/3 to 1/4 of effective rates. Heavy AA in particular falls behind.

Just for clarity, Ive never managed to get kill rates higher than 8% in game, while focusing very heavily on maximizing AA. And RL kill rates were somewhere around 35%.

Edit: Thats American data, so by the end of the war, very effective guns were shooting down aging planes with poorly trained crews. So 35% should probably be the extreme high on the effectiveness range.