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Only if he starts the battle with all those ships there. Otherwise, he doesn't incur any penalties, from what I understand. That's why he should be the spearhead. And once battle is joined, that's when everyone else swarms the area. You want to set the positioning first, which is why he should lead the charge and once he's set your positioning, that's when everyone else can come in and gang-bang the enemy.

Which may be great if you are leading the attack, but the OP is talking about defending Transports as they are conducting invasions... I.E. his ships will be sitting ducks, and all will be "engaged" at once as soon as the enemy shows up.



OP:

A) Get screenshots of the fights. Preferably several ones (like, per fight-hour), with you mousing over some of the ships in the fight so we can see the modifiers.



B) don't put CV's in your transport fleets; Xports slow the fleet's average speed SO far down that even older SAGs can close the distance and start pounding everything... including those carriers.

C) Put your Older Capital Ships as X-port escorts. type I/II BBs or BCs, CAs... those ships are good for not much BESIDES escorting transports (their slow speed won't let them catch up to ships they actually want to shoot at... but if enemy fleets are attacking YOU, they will get a chance to do what they do). If you are JAP, then the Yamato and Musashi, post-1941, are IDEAL for this role. My favorite "transport" fleet is DBB Yamato, DBB Musashi, and 10 transports.

D) While you dont want to mix CV and SAG fleets, you CAN put them in the same seazone; the result will be that the SAG fleets move to engage, the CV fleets hang back. This will provide aircover, as the CV's CAGs will "CAG duty" the attacking ships WHILE your X-port's SAG escorts are exchanging fire.

E) Always haev your transport fleets have 50% more transports than you need for an invasion. As in, if you need 3 transports to carry your force, don't leave with less than 5; nothing's worse than having 1/3 of your landing force straight up die due to a lucky hit.

F) Kee an eye on your health. Even if your invasion is going well, if you notice your ships are starting to fall, order a retreat. Sea-battle retreats take several hours to "work", but they still do.
 
Finally, make sure you change out your CAGs, every time their org goes down. This way they heal at the local air base and your fresh CAGs are ready to go. This is why everyone always says to build x4 CAGs for each CV. So that your CV has 2 CAGs on it and 2 CAGs ready to take their place when they've taken a beatdown.

This is absolutely critical, it more than doubles your effiency because :
1. you don't have to wait for CAGs to recover (well, if your naval warfare is very intensive, you might gets all your cags, reserves includes, standing in airports waiting repairs :) )
2. you d'ont have to take you fleets home which saves plenty of time and opportunities
 
Which may be great if you are leading the attack, but the OP is talking about defending Transports as they are conducting invasions... I.E. his ships will be sitting ducks, and all will be "engaged" at once as soon as the enemy shows up.
Actually, the OP was talking about getting a beatdown by the enemy fleets and didn't know how to win naval engagements. Once he's taken care of their navy in battle, everything else will be a snap, a crackle and a pop. What he first needs to LEARN is how to win battles and destroy the enemy fleets, once he's mastered that, everything else will come naturally.

How hard can it be to land troops when your navies rule supreme and unopposed? Not very. At that point you can land your army anywhere because there won't be an enemy ship to oppose you. That's how you perform a successful Seelowe, you take care of the RN and then you land your armies in England at your own leisure.
 
Thanks guys. This is a ton of information. Not sure how I'll be able to remember all of this. I will remember to do doctrines. And not to use heavy cruisers. Most of my carrier fleets are ones I built. My battleship fleets are ones I start with. I can show a picture because I don't have Internet. I'm doing all of this by iPhone. Where do I see the percentage of my ships?
 
Thanks guys. This is a ton of information. Not sure how I'll be able to remember all of this. I will remember to do doctrines. And not to use heavy cruisers. Most of my carrier fleets are ones I built. My battleship fleets are ones I start with. I can show a picture because I don't have Internet. I'm doing all of this by iPhone. Where do I see the percentage of my ships?

You say you have 1944 in all techs, but that all your capital ships are your starting ones. FYI, unlike everything else in the game, researching ship techs does not help ships already in play, only ones built afterwards (except for the AA tech and doctrines). So if you aren't going to be building more BB/BC/CA, then you can go ahead and stop research on those lines.

When your ships are in battle, go to the battle (done by selecting the fleet, and then clicking the "battle of XXX" shown at the bottom of the ship list), and then hover your mouse over one of your friendly ships in the "battlewindow" to get a popup of the ship's modifiers/percents. If there is a major issue, you might be able to see it there yourself.

a low "effective positioning" and an experience value below 10, for example, would be VERY bad... if that's the case, then it's not that the enemy is beating you, it's that your own ships are so out of touch they are sinking themselves.
 
Practicals are neccessary. You want to maintain them. Thus you have to build them all the time. Otherwise your CVs will take 3 years to finish instead of 1.5 years. Do 2 CVs in the beginning and 4 CL. Stay away from CA. Then when you upgrade your next level, do another 2 CVs and 2 CLs.

But you need to continuously upgrade all your techs. Don't go overboard just doing CL and CV techs. Just steadily upgrade one after another, until the right year comes up.
 
Really good read this thread. Lots of tricks picked up which will hopefully make my second attempt at Star&Stripes more enjoyable (which also includes buffing the Japanese and increasing the difficulty, their navy was gone by mid year of 1942).

I just had to get FtM along with Stars&Stripes after watching my Pacific Blueray set. Found at as I have never played anything cept for Germany and never actually finished a whole game that my knowledge was lacking to say the least.
 
Your CAGs are automatically set to CAG duty. That means they are always ready to go and fight to defend your CVs and destroy enemy ships.

As for SAG, I believe is a Surface Action Group vs. a CTF a Carrier Task Force
 
So I just restarts. I'm gonna make my carrier fleets my main one. 2 carriers. 4 light cruisers. And 2 destroyers. Then my old heavy cruisers with my transports. And I am fast lining my tech for my carrier fleets and doctri as. Hoping I can get to 44 techs very fast

Also. How does one use torpedo boats?
 
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SAG = Surface Action Group, a fleet intended to close with the enemy and defeat it using naval artillery IE. BBs, BCs, and CAs.

I don't really like your fleet composition. 2 CVs can only pack 4 CAGs that's approximately the firepower of about 1.5 BBs. General consensus is if you're going pure CTF that 3 or 4 carriers is the sweet spot. 6 CAGs from 3 Carriers is roughly the firepower of 2 BBs assuming 1941 techs. So shoot for 3CV/4CV & 4CL/5CL depending on how cautious you feel. Also you really don't need the DDs. CL's are better at air defense and that's the overwhelming threat. The high sub attack of DDs is rendered moot by the high sub attack and detection from the CAGs. Seriously CAGs do horrible things to submarines. You'll be spending leadership for a ship type that doesn't really bring anything new. Also DD's in the Pacific can cause problems with range limitations. Lastly, if your DD construction practical is cold then a new DD is going to cost almost the same as a CL with a hot construction practical.

I like to have 4 CTFs minimum for outbreak of war in the Pacific and often prefer 5. You start with 3 carriers in 1936 and 2 under construction. I like to group the older carriers into one fleet. I'll typically use the existing CL's to round out the SAG and BB/Transport Fleets. Then after the 2 carriers in the queue already under construction finish in mid 1936 I'll start 3 more after the first round of CV techs complete. I won't start their CAGs though. Those 3 will finish in 1938 and then I'll start 4 more which will finish in early 1940. I'll start 8 more carriers in 1939 once the war breaks out and the IC restrictions are loosened. If I do it right those carriers will finish in the summer of 1941 just in time for the war. 3 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 8 = 20 carriers = 5 CTFs @ 4 CVs each. All CAGs get started in 1939 AFTER the 1941 light airplane techs are completed since CAGs take nigh forever to upgrade.

I can see the point in using 1 star admirals but unless you're playing multiplayer I'm not sure that the micromanagement is worth it. I generally find that the IJN doesn't last long enough anyway for any of my naval commanders to gain a skill rank.
 
So I just restarts. I'm gonna make my carrier fleets my main one. 2 carriers. 4 light cruisers. And 2 destroyers. Then my old heavy cruisers with my transports. And I am fast lining my tech for my carrier fleets and doctri as. Hoping I can get to 44 techs very fast

Also. How does one use torpedo boats?
That's if you are taking the other advice. As I've said. 1 Star Admirals for each fleet. That means 6 ships per fleet. 2 CV 4 CL or 3 CV 3 CL. Period.

You keep 4 or 5 of these fleets. And you let your highest skill Admiral lead the spear-head, then you swarm with the other fleets, once battle has started. The point is to get your admirals to skill 9. Then you can promote the hell out of that admiral to do whatever you'd like. But first level your admiral up.

You have to remember a lvl. 9 Admiral gets +90% to his positioning bonus. That is where you get your most damage done, with your positioning bonus.
 
the safest way to level up a naval commander is to give them a sub or two and send them convoy hunting in a convoy rich area. They'll level up very fast, and you incur no risk to your actual fleet while doing so. After your commanders get to a decent level, reassign them to your actual fleets and go take on the enemy!

Also, SonofWinter's advice is very good, but is also about the most complex way to do things. Having to 'swarm' every battle with 5 or so fleets can be very micro-intensive. The USA can get away with alot of non-optimal play, especially in single player, so do not be afraid to just make a killer fleet that has a 50% positioning penalty with Nimitz in charge, his base skill level offsets the penalty.

There are really only two 'unbreakable' rules: don't have carriers and capital ships in the same fleet, and don't have carriers/capitals without screens. Its important to note that you can have carriers and capital ships in the same battle without issue, just not the same fleet.
 
Using the best admirals for subs to train them up even more, works for certain countries but I just don't see the need when you're talking about the USA. Seriously, just how long is the IJN lasting in your games? There's not really a point to send Nimitz and Halsey out as sub commanders when you can give them a carrier fleet each and inside of several months have completely destroyed the IJN. After the IJN is dead, who are you expecting to fight? Most of the Italian navy should be sunk by the time you get to join the war at the hands of the Brits, and unless something very weird has happened the UK should also have the Kriegsmarine aside from the odd submarine totally bottled up.

Now, granted, multiplayer would be a totally different beast. For SP though, I really don't see how you're supposed to train your fleet commanders when there will probably only be a dozen or so significant naval engagements in the first months of the war. If you play optimally, after that first set of battles, the IJN should be totally neutered. Yeah you can still convoy raid while your marines work on taking the S. Pacific but seriously unless you're contemplating fighting the Soviets down the line there's not going to be anyone else that's going to provide a meaningful fight for the rest of the game.
 
Yeah I agree and wanna take it one step further. Its not worth for it England and Germany as well. At the beginning of the war you want your most skilled commanders in command of your carriers to take out the Kriegsmarine. As Germany you simply dont have enough ships to counter the RN and even when you do, i.e. going Kriegsmarine instead of landbased warfare, you still have enough skilled commanders who can easliy gain experience as long as you dont all promote them to 4 stars...