Tips and Tricks for the American Campaign

[SoBeFL]

So here's what I've learned thus far playing the American campaign. I'm interested to hear if folks agree/disagree or have other ideas:


Don’t Skip the Tutorial
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You get some nice war bonds at start and some extra ships. Plus, one of your taskforces is in great position to capture Makin Atoll.


Don’t Forget to Use All of What’s Available at Start
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Watching a few streamers on Youtube like Carrier Junyo, it drives me nuts to watch him ignore the CV and other ships on the west coast of California at the start of the game. Also, don’t forget to upgrade the ships in Pearl Harbor at the start and set your BB’s to repairing.


Organize Your Ships into a Few Focused Offensive Taskforces
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I like to have a southern attacking taskforce, a central attacking taskforce, and a smaller taskforce protecting the Aleutians. Initially these are set up as follows:
1. Central attacking task force—2 CVs, 3 cruisers, 6 destroyers
2. Southern attacking task force—2 CVs, 3 cruisers, 6 destroyers
3. Aleutian defense force—2 cruisers

I try to get the repaired BB’s to the central attacking force by the time its ready to tackle Truk Lagoon and it’s extra large shore batteries.

Overall, I continue to add carriers, cruisers, BB's and DD's to each as they're built, with a lower number of these going to the Aleutians vs. the offensive taskforces.


Don’t Ignore Morale
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Keeping your ships happy makes them a bit more productive. I set all my ships to prioritizing building morale. Don’t forget to click the General Quarters button at the start of an engagement to full crew your ships at the start of any battles (if this doesn’t happen automatically).

It takes a few minutes, but I also do this for the cargo ships. This keeps them moving a bit faster when morale is high.


Planes in Ports Are a Lifesaver
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Don’t forget you can swap out planes in ports and send them to attack the enemy. If you find yourself with an enemy approaching one of your ports that doesn’t have a defending taskforce nearby, just swap in dive bombers or Catalinas with depth bombs for spotter planes and send them at the enemy.

Note that ASW Catalinas need to be micromanaged to be particularly effective against submarines. I often have to manually click the depth bomb release to get them to drop at the right moment.


Ports Make Great AA Screens
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Is one of your task forces getting attacked by enemy carriers? If you're near a port, set up your task force right behind your friendly port...with the port in between the enemy carriers and your task force. The port will provide an AA screen for your task force, killing enemy planes as they pass over to attack your task force.


Protecting the Aleutian Islands
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All ports have value. They each contribute monthly to your war bonds. So, keep all those Aleutian Island ports whenever possible. Don’t forget you can swap dive bombers in for scout planes. I do this at the beginning of the game to take out enemies that come to raid and assault these ports until I can get a couple of cruisers up there to defend them.


Capture Neutral Ports Like Tuvalu and Guadalcanal
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These are easy to capture but provide great war bonds and XP to help unlock technologies.


Make Build Decisions by Role Using Math
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Ships seem to fill the following roles in the game:
1. Scouting
2. Moving Supplies
3. Fighting Enemy Planes
4. Fighting Enemy Subs
5. Fighting Enemy Ships and Ports with Heavy AA but Small Guns
6. Fighting Enemy Ships and Ports with Strong Guns

I try to make build decisions based on what gives me the most bang for the buck for each role's most important characteristic. So, for sub hunting, which ship has the best depth charge to build cost ratio? Initially it’s the Clemson DD which costs 22.5 war bonds per depth charge (total cost 45 war bonds with upgrade divided by 2 depth charge launchers)

Initially, for each role I favor:
1. Submarines for scouting (stealthy...useful only for basic ports as ASW planes kill them for minor and major ports)
2. Liberty cargo ships for moving supplies (they can move all supplies, including fuel…so I emphasize them over tankers)
3. Yorktown carriers for fighting enemy planes (12.9 war bonds per plane for upgraded Yorktown’s)
4. Clemson destroyers for fighting subs (see math above)
5. Pensacola cruisers for fighting enemy ships and ports with heavy AA but small guns (17.5 war bonds per 8” gun with 16km range for upgraded Pensacolas)
6. I skip building BB’s until the fast North Carolinas become available (57.2 war bonds per 16” gun with 20km range for upgraded version)…then switch to South Dakotas when they are available (53.3 war bonds per)

I always upgrade each ship to get the extra radar and AA abilities that typically come with the upgrades.


You Need More Supply Convoys Than You Think
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Build them like crazy. I often set one or two ports continuously building cargo ships and tankers…and I still wish I had more.

If your ports run out of aviation fuel, your spotter planes won’t fly. For even isolated ports, I occasionally turn them to mid supply to get them refueled with aviation fuel before switching them back to none.

I keep all my front-line ports where my offensive task forces are close on high. As these ports become less important, I switch them to supply to clear the supplies out a bit, then occasionally to mid to keep the spotter planes flying.


Selling Planes Makes Upgrading Carriers Pretty Cheap
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Don’t forget that you can sell the planes you swap out on carriers for full value. This makes swapping in dive bombers for torpedo bombers or upgrading planes to new models relatively cheap as you’re just paying the difference between the cost of the planes.


Don’t Forget Your Cruisers
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It’s tempting sometimes to just focus on using planes. However, don’t give up on your cruisers! The ones with 8” guns (Pensacola, Northampton, Portland) are particularly effective in outranging ships and ports with 6” guns…allowing you to set these ships just outside enemy gun range and pick the enemies off efficiently without them being able to hit you back.

Because of this ability to outrange opponents, I tied to shy away from building cruisers with 6" guns.


How to Fight Carriers to Minimize Plane Damage
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I launch all of my fighters and put them in a squad in the middle of the battlefield between the carriers. If this doesn’t lure out their fighters, I then launch a few dive bombers in their direction.

Once the fighters start coming in, I try to intercept each (note this is a different command than attack) with multiple fighters. I micromanage the fighters to keep them attacking what I want. When a fighter runs out of ammo (usually after a dogfight ends and an enemy plane is killed), I put this ammo-depleted fighter in a separate squad of planes returning to the carriers. Doing this helps avoid the remaining fighters with ammo acting buggy and trying to return to the carrier.

After the fighters are dead (or sometimes while this is happening), I keep an eye out for enemy dive bombers and torpedo bombers I can kill. I also kill spotter planes where easily possible.


How to Capture Basic Ports Efficiently
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Basic ports are the smallest ones. For these, I typically send in level bombers (typically carrier-based torpedo bombers with their loads switched) to both scout the port and then to take out the 6" shore batteries. Then I send in a fleet of one surface ship to assault the port. Once the one-ship fleet arrives close-in to the port, I manually select targets to gun down to hit the 50% port damage threshold needed to trigger the arrival of the NPC amphibious assult ships.

I do things this way to try and minimize the damage done to the port so it'll be back up and running more quickly and more of its supplies will be preserved.

Alternatively, you can send in cruisers and BB's with guns larger than 6" ones to target the shore batteries. However, controlling the cruisers and BB's can be a bit slow, and while you're withdrawing them, they'll shell the port indescriminately. This can create a lot of unecessary damage. The flipside is sending in the big boys can be quicker and requires less micromanagement.

(Note--thanks to Stank for his suggestion on using level bombers instead of cruisers to clean out shore batteries. This works great.)


How to Capture Minor and Major Ports Efficiently
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These often combine a lot of the tactics above. First, I lure out the planes with my carriers, using my fighters to pick them off. By doing so, I’m treating these ports and their planes like enemy carriers.

As with minor ports, I use level bombers to take out the shore batteries and then a one ship fleet to get port damage to 50% and start the assault. If you don't want to micromanage planes, send in battleships instead of cruisers to kill the shore batteries as minor and major ports have bigger short batteries and may outgun/outrange your cruisers.


How to Manage Tough Enemy Task Forces
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Sometimes you run across a tough enemy taskforce…for example the ones with battlecruisers, cruisers and destroyers with a ton of AA. If you send planes at these, they just get chewed up. Instead, I like to use the kiting method that works with tough enemies in a variety of video games.

I set up the battle as follows:
Enemy Task Force.......................(distance).......................Cruiser Squad........CV and DD Squad

I then send my CVs and DDs moving directly away from the enemy, and I set my cruiser squad to defend one of the CVs. So both these squads end up moving away from the enemy.

The enemy task force will chase you, but over time get separated as the faster ships run out ahead of the slower ships. This often results in the tougher, slower ships trailing the enemy taskforce all alone without AA cover from the faster cruisers and destroyers. It’s easy then to pick them off with your dive bombers and torpedo bombers, positioning them to avoid the AA of the remaining enemy task force as they fly around them to their targets.

Once this is done, you can slow down your cruiser squad just a little and the remaining destroyers and cruisers will come into your cruisers one at a time…easy for your cruisers to gang tackle and finish them off.


Torpedo Bombers
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Attacking effectively with torpedo bombers is tough, but not impossible…and can be a fun change of pace. According to the Wikipedia article on torpedo bombers, “In the 1930s, the Imperial Japanese Navy developed the best way for torpedo bombers to achieve a hit. They used an ‘anvil attack’, in which two groups of torpedo planes approached the target ship's bow at an angle of about 45 degrees, one on each side of the ship. The torpedoes were to be launched at the same distance from the ship; this would have ensured a hit no matter where the ship tried to maneuver.” Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_bomber

For fast moving ships like battlecruisers, I also like to add torpedo bombers coming in at 45 angles to the stern to the method above. This mean I’m attacking with torpedo bombers from all four corners at once…and requires a lot of plane micromanagement. However, it makes it impossible for the ship to turn away from all the torpedoes.

Also, as the torpedo bombers have to attack at a very low altitude, you don’t want to send them into situations with a lot of AA. I try to focus on single, isolated ships. If you need to isolate a big ship like a battlecruiser out of an enemy task force with a lot of AA, I suggest trying the kiting method described above.


Don't Forget About Bridge-View Combat
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Having trouble getting those torpedo bombers to hit while on the combat screen? Is one little freighter continuously avoding your dive bombers? Don't forget about attacks via the bridge screen. Battles seem to be resolved via a different mechanism than battles through the combat screen. This will likely result in more plane losses than micromanaging on the combat screen, but it's another option if your carriers can put in for an immediate repair.

The flipside is that some bridge-level combat scenarios seem impossible to win. If your submarine is in combat with a couple of destroyers or ASW planes, if you don't micromanage it, it'll almost certainly die.

[Stank]

Thanks for doing this, it is incredibly comprehesive.

An addidional tactic mentioned by others before is to take out the AA at a port using torpedo bombers armed with bombs. You fly them at high altitude as level bombers and they can wipe out AA without being shot down.

[Scotters]

Thanks for all of that info? Following those strategies, do you defeat the AI fairly easily? What difficulty level do you play at?

[SoBeFL]

Originally posted by Stank:

Thanks for doing this, it is incredibly comprehesive.

An addidional tactic mentioned by others before is to take out the AA at a port using torpedo bombers armed with bombs. You fly them at high altitude as level bombers and they can wipe out AA without being shot down.

Definitely a good option to use level bombers. I tend to use the surface ships, though, as it's a bit quicker, but perhaps the planes will allow better control over not destroying everything at the port. The surface ships are really hard to keep from doing this. I'm going to spend some more time experimenting with this. Thanks.

[SoBeFL]

Originally posted by Scotters:

Thanks for all of that info? Following those strategies, do you defeat the AI fairly easily? What difficulty level do you play at?

I play at medium difficulty. I rarely get my ships damaged using the methods above. The same goes for planes, though they take a bit more damage.

[Scotters]

So is medium difficulty a good enough challenge?

[SoBeFL]

Originally posted by Scotters:

So is medium difficulty a good enough challenge?

I'm playing the campaign through for the first time...so it's okay for me. I'll probably try hard afterwards. I've seen other posts saying the hard difficulty is unrealistically broken. What do you think?

[SoBeFL]

Originally posted by Stank:

Thanks for doing this, it is incredibly comprehesive.

An addidional tactic mentioned by others before is to take out the AA at a port using torpedo bombers armed with bombs. You fly them at high altitude as level bombers and they can wipe out AA without being shot down.

Tested level bombing to clear out shore batteries in ports. It works like a charm. Thanks for the suggestion Stank. I've updated the guide above crediting you.

[Squadl]

By attacking an enemy base, try to attack from the south with dircetion north (by setting waypoints on the bridge view). Your planes will airborne faster.

[SoBeFL]

Originally posted by Squad:

By attacking an enemy base, try to attack from the south with dircetion north (by setting waypoints on the bridge view). Your planes will airborne faster.

Ahh nice. Do you mean attack from a direction that has your carriers sailing into the wind so that they don't need to turn?

[Squadl]

Yes.

This maneuver avoids you from rotating carriers in combat mode. It drove me crazy with my 5 CV group, that not all bombers took off from their decks at the same time. Later I discovered that they allways heading north direction to airborne their planes.

So keep this in mind when it's your turn to attack enemy fleets you have early enough discovered or when you want to start a big airraid on a port.

Set a waypoint not far away from your carrierfleet to north on the bridge map and save time.

I rebuilt TF58.1 to TF58.4 (576 Helldivers, 336 Corsairs and lots of spotters).

When playing TF58.1 (5 carriers):
My routine is to start 6 Flight-Groups of fighters from the 2 Independence-class light carriers, 1 spotter from a BB, CA or cruiser, then starting all DiveBombers from 3 Essex-class carriers and the two Independence-class carriers. I am putting all DB's in one group. Mark them all and send them by waypoint +5000 m above my fleet. Meanwhile the spotter is reccon the target above 5000m to avoid AA. You can use a fightergroup for this job too, if your spotter has no ability to get this height.
When I am finished with scouting the DB Swarm has mostly reached the altitude I ordered them and they are ready to start the attack as one unit.

[Squadl]

I forgot the U.S.M.C.

After US Navy TF finished their job from a far distance, they'll steam away for refull, another target or patrol duty to search enemy fleets behind the frontline.

Now it is time for the Marines, these groups start raiding the port and attack torpedo boats and perhaps nearby enemy convoys.

Each of these groups is a big airfield of is own with a Navy Fleet sailling nearby. They'll stay at the occupied area untill the port and airfield is repaired and upgraded or the port is no longer in frontline.

With this tactic it is possible to have some kind of island hopping, like it was done by the americans at this time.

Each of my Assault Groups of the Marines have 6 Casablanca-class carriers with an older cruiser, ligh cruiser and 6 DD's in use. I am planning with 8 of such groups in my actual campaign.

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To build such forces needs lots of war bounds, so I start early with upgrading ports. first 3 TF's up to 5 TF's are my "early-game" to "mid-game" force with each 1 BB, 2 CV's, 1 CA, 4 DD's and the remaining ships you are starting with.

My personal historical build-order:

Without tutorial I build to fill the first 3 TF's with:
*made a mistake here... 2x Yorktown class is correct*
2x Yorktown-class carrier
8x DD
1x Wasp-class carrier
4x DD

Now saving warbounds to upgrade Western Alaskian islands for better airfields (1 or 2 ports)

then saving warbounds for TF-4 and TF-5:
4x Essex-class carrier
2x Northampton-class heavy cruiser
1x Colorado-class Battleship
8x DD
Now the last BB at Pearl is finished with repairing.

Now saving warbounds for Midway and Johnston Island while moving further to the west When I got Gilbert Islands group, Ellice Islands, Marshall Islands, Wake Island and the Solomon Islands group I stop. Now the enemy ports will be better armed.

2x North Carolina-class Battleships (20 nm range) will be needed to form TF-6 and TF-7
2x Nothhampton-class heavy cruisers
4x Essex-class carrier
8x DD

Now I starting saving warbounds only for upgrading occupied ports and buy newer planes for my older carriers.

Thanks to the realismMod of Agent X, I am now in the year 1943 and able to get all the ships I have planned for building and have enough recources to feed all these sailors and planes.

4x TF-58 groups (with 4x South-Dakota BB's, 4x Iowa-class BB's, 10x Essex-class carriers, 8x Independence-class carriers, 8x Cleveland-class light cruisers, 4x Baltimore-class heavy cruisers and 16x Fletcher-class destroyers).
And building the U.S.M.C. "little giants" fleets.

And after a loong time of building up my fleet it is time to move further to the central, western and northern pacific.

[SoBeFL]

Originally posted by Squad:

I forgot the U.S.M.C.

After US Navy TF finished their job from a far distance, they'll steam away for refull, another target or patrol duty to search enemy fleets behind the frontline.

Now it is time for the Marines, these groups start raiding the port and attack torpedo boats and perhaps nearby enemy convoys.

Each of these groups is a big airfield of is own with a Navy Fleet sailling nearby. They'll stay at the occupied area untill the port and airfield is repaired and upgraded or the port is no longer in frontline.

With this tactic it is possible to have some kind of island hopping, like it was done by the americans at this time.

Each of my Assault Groups of the Marines have 6 Casablanca-class carriers with an older cruiser, ligh cruiser and 6 DD's in use. I am planning with 8 of such groups in my actual campaign.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To build such forces needs lots of war bounds, so I start early with upgrading ports. first 3 TF's up to 5 TF's are my "early-game" to "mid-game" force with each 1 BB, 2 CV's, 1 CA, 4 DD's and the remaining ships you are starting with.

My personal historical build-order:

Without tutorial I build to fill the first 3 TF's with:
1x Yorktown-class carrier
4x DD
1x Wasp-class carrier
4x DD
1x Essex-class carrier
4x DD

Now saving warbounds to upgrade Western Alaskian islands for better airfields (1 or 2 ports)

then saving warbounds for TF-4 and TF-5:
4x Essex-class carrier
2x Northampton-class heavy cruiser
1x Colorado-class Battleship
8x DD
Now the last BB at Pearl is finished with repairing.

Now saving warbounds for Midway and Johnston Island while moving further to the west When I got Gilbert Islands group, Ellice Islands, Marshall Islands, Wake Island and the Solomon Islands group I stop. Now the enemy ports will be better armed.

2x North Carolina-class Battleships (20 nm range) will be needed to form TF-6 and TF-7
2x Nothhampton-class heavy cruisers
4x Essex-class carrier
8x DD

Now I starting saving warbounds only for upgrading occupied ports and buy newer planes for my older carriers.

Thanks to the realismMod of Agent X, I am now in the year 1943 and able to get all the ships I have planned for building and have enough recources to feed all these sailors and planes.

4x TF-58 groups (with 4x South-Dakota BB's, 4x Iowa-class BB's, 10x Essex-class carriers, 8x Independence-class carriers, 8x Cleveland-class light cruisers, 4x Baltimore-class heavy cruisers and 16x Fletcher-class destroyers).
And building the U.S.M.C. "little giants" fleets.

And after a loong time of building up my fleet it is time to move further to the central, western and northern pacific.

Fun! I love that you're trying to build up your forces with an eye towards history.

[SoBeFL]

I've been playing through the American campaign on hard now (post was originally made while playing at medium difficulty)...and all of the above work great. I've added a tip about using ports as AA screens based on a new technique that's worked well for me.