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Development Diary #18 - 25th of February 2009

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King said:
I believe Carriers like to run away (i.e. widen the distance) when in Naval combat. CAGs on the other hand are air units and so cannot take part in Naval combat for this reason.
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Will we be able to set the "stance" of CAGs?

For example, an "aggressive" stance that automatically launches the CAG　to attack when the task force is engaged. It would sort of suck if the Hood is being pounded by the Bismark, and the British player has to actively go and tell the Ark Royal to launch it's CAG. There should be a way to tell the CV's to automatically launch their CAG's if their task force is engaged.
 
Kikaider said:
Well for 2) I knew it would be one of the two ways i proposed (and guessed it would probably just be Hangar lvl = efficiency of CAG), but I guess this way isn't bad, because I can just abstract that to mean efficiency of the cag increases with the number of planes aboard which is indirectly simulated/defined by the hanger level (in my head, even if I'm the only pyscho that does it). To me it just makes more sense.
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This way works for me. We can just pretend that the CAG is smaller for ships with smaller hangar levels. Of course the CV should not be able to upgrade the hangar level after construction unless we get overhauls in HoI3. Once it is built that should pretty much be it. Also I hope that the hangar level tech is directly related to hull or some other design, so that players just dont research the hangar level and disregard all else, trying for maximum efficiency.

3) i think the way king put it (cag is just a cag) means that that there will not be a design component to CAG like there is for divs (and maybe this inderectly tells us there won't be an air wing designer?) but maybe we can define cags oriented offensively/defensively through tech (like for example if I play canada, I may just want a few carriers to protect/escort transport fleets, so I'll ech-up the defensive aspect of cags)
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Perhaps there will not be an air unit design function in HoI3. That is alright I suppose but it would be a great thing IMO. I am sure that the CAG can be influenced one way or another via techs, this should certainly be a major function of the tech for CAGs, rather than a linear tech tree.
 
Bullfrog said:
This way works for me. We can just pretend that the CAG is smaller for ships with smaller hangar levels. Of course the CV should not be able to upgrade the hangar level after construction unless we get overhauls in HoI3. Once it is built that should pretty much be it. Also I hope that the hangar level tech is directly related to hull or some other design, so that players just dont research the hangar level and disregard all else, trying for maximum efficiency.


Perhaps there will not be an air unit design function in HoI3. That is alright I suppose but it would be a great thing IMO. I am sure that the CAG can be influenced one way or another via techs, this should certainly be a major function of the tech for CAGs, rather than a linear tech tree.
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I'm hoping there will be a "deck park" tech which the US will start with and Japan & the UK will not, as the latter two believed in stowing all aircraft below. Researching this tech would increase the efficiency of UK/Japanese CAGs as it would simulate larger airgroups (increased "hanger" tech).
 
Johan said:
I suppose we should end with a note about carriers. Yes carriers not longer fight in Naval combat (well ok they do just very very badly), instead the CAG is now a separate air unit that can be used as an air unit. Thus you can bomb enemy air bases and support naval landings with it. However the actual effectiveness of the CAG unit is modified by a carrier tech value called hangar. This is essentially the amount of physical space on the carrier for air units. We also have a separate tech for armour. A rather neat consequence of this is we can model the differences between the design philosophies of the British carriers as compared to the American and Japanese ones quite neatly inside the tech system.

alpha_feb25.jpg
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What about situations like the battle of Midway when the enemy caught a carrier without it's aircraft ready? Is there a chance at least to catch the carrier without aircraft cover? Should be a small chance...
 
King said:
1) It's just a graphic to show that the ship is firing no more and no less.
2) Air units are always 100 planes
3) A CAG is a CAG
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Yes but like you have CAS aircraft, Interceptors etc will a CAG be definable as Fighter heavy, strike craft heavy or be a research entity on its own? Ie it will have 100 planes with a hit value lets say a 10 vs other planes, 20 vs ships etc. The value increases with tech research. or will a carrier have several cag's dependent on the size of it's hanger and they can be made up of say a fighter cag, a dive bomber cag and a torpedo bomber cag?.
While either is not that critical in naval combat it may be against land operations where they may run into dedicated interceptors or fighters...

Other than this point of clarity what i have read so far is awesome.
 
Bobb4 said:
Yes but like you have CAS aircraft, Interceptors etc will a CAG be definable as Fighter heavy, strike craft heavy or be a research entity on its own? Ie it will have 100 planes with a hit value lets say a 10 vs other planes, 20 vs ships etc. The value increases with tech research. or will a carrier have several cag's dependent on the size of it's hanger and they can be made up of say a fighter cag, a dive bomber cag and a torpedo bomber cag?.
While either is not that critical in naval combat it may be against land operations where they may run into dedicated interceptors or fighters...

Other than this point of clarity what i have read so far is awesome.
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No you just build a CAG. It is a single unit like a FTR or a NAV.
 
looking nice :D
 
King said:
I believe Carriers like to run away (i.e. widen the distance) when in Naval combat. CAGs on the other hand are air units and so cannot take part in Naval combat for this reason.
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Maybe a different question would help... Will carriers if attacked by a fleet try to get their planes to also attack the engaged fleet? (Either recall them from another mission or start to launch them) So there would be two battles, one navy->navy one air->navy.

I assume like land battle navies can be fighting both an air attack and naval combat at the same time.
 
Yay, yet again a very good feature.
 
King said:
we see no problem with this
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One problem would be if someone wants to equip a few carriers mainly with fighters, to provide defence against land-based air during operations close to enemy coastlines, while keeping others equipped mainly with anti-submarine planes for ASW operations.
 
Wobbler said:
One problem would be if someone wants to equip a few carriers mainly with fighters, to provide defence against land-based air during operations close to enemy coastlines, while keeping others equipped mainly with anti-submarine planes for ASW operations.
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A Carrier is a carrier, you equip it with a CAG. We don't want that level of micromanagement.
 
King said:
we see no problem with this
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Maybe I am just paranoid, but my specific concerns are:

- with only one unit on the CV's, it is all or nothing. So if you want to have CAP above your carrier, your bombers are completly useless. On the other hand, if you attack a target, that carrier does not contribute to the CAP at all. Could lead to problems in one CV TF's

- with everything mixed together, your CAG always has 100% of it's strength dedicated to its current mission. So when intercepting incoming strikes, it will be a fighter unit while striking at enemy shipping, you will have attack planes. Another possible problem would be how to differ the losses. If you suffer heavy losses in CAP, do your bombers also suffer damage (like getting 75% str losses in air combat even your bombers aren't on CAP...)

Just my two biggest points with the CAG model. But I guess you already know that.
 
King said:
we see no problem with this
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So, the CAG will be a maid-of-all-work unit--stats will probably be it'll have 1/2 the air attack of a pure fighter unit and 1/2 the sea & ground attack of a NAV or TAC, based on the idea that the CAG is a combo of 1/2 FTR unit + 1/2 CAS or NAV...

Perhaps the Carrier unit will have an enhanced air defense value to simulate the CAP that would be present even if the CAG is away fighting--realistically, carrier always kept 8-12 fighters home to deal with attacks even when launching big strikes...

As a naval nut, I would love it to be super-granular, but I see why it will not be, and I think a good workable middle ground can be reached.
 
Wobbler said:
One problem would be if someone wants to equip a few carriers mainly with fighters, to provide defence against land-based air during operations close to enemy coastlines, while keeping others equipped mainly with anti-submarine planes for ASW operations.
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I guess we are not getting that kind of detail. Though I hope that techs influence the CAG in specific ways rather than +1 CAG tech gets xyz stat increases, +2 CAG tech gets xyz stat increases, +3 CAG tech gets xyz stat increases.....This IMO is no different than HoI2.
 
King said:
A Carrier is a carrier, you equip it with a CAG. We don't want that level of micromanagement.
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Understandable, but if you need to switch your one CAG CVs missions according to the current situation could also lead to micromanagement.

It would be great if you could simply have a setup like CAP until enemy shipping is sighted, then attack. So you could forget about micromanaging your CV's most of the time. Maybe this is already possible with the new order system.
 
If a carrier is engaged in naval combat (with its crappy naval combat skill), will it be able to launch its CAG, so that is can engage the enemy in Air-to-Navy combat? Or is it "busy" and thus unable to do anything useful asides from getting shot to pieces?
 
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