Carrier vs Carrier battle

[OneShoe]

What are the proper aircraft settings for this? Mixed. Fighter. Bomber. I sunk everything that was stationed at Pearl Harbor, but got nowhere vs carriers at sea. Also, my battleships and subs seem to have no chance at all vs carriers. I'm playing the naval mod. I understand with this mod, each ship is really a "group"- so, carriers are actually carriers + all the supporting ships that protect them? That's why nothing can really damage them except other carriers or maritime bombers? Do I have this right? Why not just build carriers exclusively?

[atshii]

Killing carriers is very different in the naval mod than normal game.

I think it is developed by idea from statistics, in history just 1 or 2 carriers were sunk by surface ships during the war, all the rest by planes and subs.

So the mod reflects this, check the different naval unit statistics. Most surface ships have very poor attack value against carriers.

Kill them with bombers and have some of your carriers in fighter setting to escort the attackers and then intercept when enemy counterattacks next turn. Having subs around is also good if they can hit damaged carriers or even surprise them if they try to run.

[Hairog]

Fantastic answer Atshil. I couldn't have said it better myself. I did a lot of research and as atshil said carriers were virtually never found much less would have let a surface force get close to them. Any commander and captain worth his salt would have search planes and CAP in all daylight hours and would have very good situational awareness vs a surface task force. Even a force with a few cruisers with search planes were no match for a carrier with 20 to 90 and US carriers hardly ever went out without a companion carrier.

"That's why nothing can really damage them except other carriers or maritime bombers? Do I have this right?"

Not exactly. The inability to damage them with battleships etc., is not a function for them being impregnable. I built into the mods the inability to find a carrier task force. So your frustration with attacking them to no avail is actually not being able to find them. There is only a 20% chance of catching a carrier task force in the open sea. This is actually very high compared to reality. And then yes I have made them hard to damage as well to reflect that if by chance you got lucky and ran into one they would most likely have a huge speed advantage and a pretty long head start. So your opportunity to have much time to damage them is very short.

The only two who were sunk by gunfire were a jeep carrier that got caught near some islands when the Yamato and their task force blind sided them by chance as they came around an island chain. In all of WWII this was the only time this happened. Even then the Jeep Carrier almost got away despite being comparatively slow. A full sized fast carrier would not have let itself be in such a situation and if it did it would have escaped fairly quickly on sheer speed alone. It takes a lot of shells and a lot of luck to hit an opponent at long range while it is dodging and weaving and separating at a fairly good speed.

The other was a full sized British carrier that was commanded by probably the worst commander that their ever was. He came from the submarine service and was apparently clueless as to how a carrier operated. He knowingly sailed towards two heavily armed German Cruisers at full speed. He did not have any planes ready to launch, no CAP and no search planes. And the worst thing he did was he kept heading straight for the cruisers at full speed with shells landing all around and kept on going while the shells destroyed the carrier.

" Why not just build carriers exclusively?'

I assume that you play historical simulations to learn about history and the choices that the on scene commander was faced with. You already have the huge advantage of hind sight and I would hope that you were not out to just win but to learn something in the meantime.

Not building battleships from day one would be very ahistoric. No one, even the carrier junkies knew how useless the battle wagon had become. Even if you were clairvoyant, you would have never had the political clout to stop all production of BBs even after the first few encounters with carriers.

I purposefully kept all the historic ship builds in my mods to reflect these facts. After the first couple of carrier battles I think you could reasonably stop building Battleships and still be within historical bounds.

Hopefully you all enjoy the Naval Mods.

By the way you can thank Hubert and Bill for building in a very useful and relatively easy to use scenario editor. The naval mods would never have been possible except for the foresight of these two.

Harry

[Hubert Cater]

Thanks Harry, and thank you for making such a very well enjoyed mod as well :)