AoD surface naval combat works decently except when one side contains a few (3-4) CVs and the other none. Then you get almost 100% (exactly 100% in my limited experience) CV strikes, no surface action, and the non-CV side runs away before suffering significant losses. In maybe 15 such actions I have seen exactly three ships sunk on the non-CV side (not counting actions where that side consisted entirely of a single DD or TP flot, although even then they survive more often than not).
In AoD (although not in RL) it is more effective to not send your carriers at all if the enemy has none and your surface forces are strong.
Besides that:
-All CVs should be capable of ground support missions, or if that is too hard, could increase the max. bombardment malus. This itself should be different for one province islands and for bigger places. Impressionistically, slightly higher than now for one province islands, lower for bigger ones, much lower for continental masses.
-More brigades for CVs would be better (actually for all ships; one is too few for DDs). The CORE 'better watertight protection' and 'better range' brigades are both good. The latter should have gradations depending on fleet train type techs.
-In the game CVLs serve even less purpose than in RL. Somewhat better in CORE where CVs take so long.
-CVEs were very important in RL, but hard to model in the game. If done as a tech upgrade to convoy escorts, they would be essentially free as units--and their ground support use would be lost.
-Ideal would probably be to represent directly both CVEs (as divisions of three?) and convoy escorts (as flotillas) and allow both to be swapped between on-map and convoy escort duty at different exchange rates. They would also have to be swappable both ways, so there would have to be tracking of the origins of the contents of your convoy escort pool. (Of course the escort allocation algorithm itself needs overhaul, but offhand it is not clear whether that would interact with this issue.)
In AoD (although not in RL) it is more effective to not send your carriers at all if the enemy has none and your surface forces are strong.
Besides that:
-All CVs should be capable of ground support missions, or if that is too hard, could increase the max. bombardment malus. This itself should be different for one province islands and for bigger places. Impressionistically, slightly higher than now for one province islands, lower for bigger ones, much lower for continental masses.
-More brigades for CVs would be better (actually for all ships; one is too few for DDs). The CORE 'better watertight protection' and 'better range' brigades are both good. The latter should have gradations depending on fleet train type techs.
-In the game CVLs serve even less purpose than in RL. Somewhat better in CORE where CVs take so long.
-CVEs were very important in RL, but hard to model in the game. If done as a tech upgrade to convoy escorts, they would be essentially free as units--and their ground support use would be lost.
-Ideal would probably be to represent directly both CVEs (as divisions of three?) and convoy escorts (as flotillas) and allow both to be swapped between on-map and convoy escort duty at different exchange rates. They would also have to be swappable both ways, so there would have to be tracking of the origins of the contents of your convoy escort pool. (Of course the escort allocation algorithm itself needs overhaul, but offhand it is not clear whether that would interact with this issue.)