I have to agree that this system brushes up against greatness, but would do better to allow more granularity in CAG construction and if a mission applies to the whole CAG or just parts of it. The big problem with the system as described is that it cannot replicate some of the reasons behind the US victory at Midway. Planes equipped with the wrong bombs, the carrier runways tied up by the need to land returning aircraft, and the cat-and-mouse game of what you choose to strike with and what you choose to leave in reserve. As Midway showed, there is a big difference between having aircraft on a carrier ready to strike a land target and ready to strike a naval target and making the wrong decision can cause major problems. Sure this is somewhat covered by having the whole CAG group assigned to one mission and have it be the wrong one, but I think that concept misses out on a potentially better way.
If I understand the system as presented correctly, players have an all or nothing choice: strike with the whole CAG and leave the carrier undefended or focus on defending the carrier and not be able to strike at all, except at the opposition's CAGs which may or may not be striking. Imagine a scenario where both parties decide to focus on defense and a carrier naval battle occurs without anyone launching any planes. In such a case I think you've created more micromanagement, not less, by forcing the player to constantly change the mission of his entire CAG group as the situation changes rather than giving orders to 1/2 to stay behind and defend the carrier and 1/2 to strike and potentially return focus to say, the massive land battles raging on the Eastern front. And I think you're somewhat needlessly losing the ability to follow your mantra for this game and give more control to the players, if they want it. Just mimic what you're already doing with other units where composition is something that has defaults, but that the player can monkey around with if they want.
This is all from a player who doesn't like micromanagement and never got into Vicky--the way described would, I think, give me more micro headaches than giving me the ability to fine tune my CAG composition and orders before engagements and not have to worry that every hour I'm not watching what is going on I'm blowing the whole battle by not switching around naval attack order to defend.
On land you can have air commands, such as the screenshot in Dev Diary #17 with Luftflotte 4, which include more than one type of plane (FIG and TAC). And it appears that you can give that command more than one mission with different priorities, and allow an AI commander to direct the right planes on the right target, without any micro. You can set continuous air superiority missions for fighters, and we believe that the AI commander will scramble the planes and direct them towards enemy bombers when they are detected encroaching into the area which you have set for the mission, using the province(s)/region(s)/circle/cone method. You can leave your fighters to defend your country against strat. bombing for lengthy periods with little direct input from the player.
Why do you consider that the same will not happen with naval air commands?
The slightly surprising thing in this Dev Diary IMHO is not the naval/CAG stuff, it is a general point by King that:
King said:
Air units are always 100 planes
This means that there will be no building of air wings of different sizes by including 1 or more air groups, ie. nothing like the land division builder. This limits the variety of air units that might occur, not only because all units will be a uniform size, but also because you can't mix more than one type of plane within a wing.
If this is correct, then it means that it was never going to be on to create CAG's consisting of one Group of FIG, one NAV and one CAS, or some other mix that the player decided. I can understand the micro-naval players would want this, to replicate as closely as possible some of the historical battles involving carriers, but then we had all this out with the micro-land players who wanted regiments/battalions and god knows what level of micro in what is supposed to be a grand strategy game.
If I understand it correctly, the CAG will be a unique air unit, but which will probably be based on the techs you have developed for different plane types, but less, because it will be an abstraction of a unit which includes some FIG/CAS/NAV. So in theory the NAV part of the CAG should have good stats for attacking enemy ships, at least as good as your land-based NAV, but since it will be only part of the CAG, say a third of the planes, then you can't expect a CAG to provide the same air to ship attack values as a NAV Group with 100 torpedo bombers. Nor can the fighter element of the CAG provide the same stats as a Group of 100 fighters. Nor the CAS/NAV element provide the same ground attack as a Group of 100 TAC or 100 CAS.
Nevertheless, since the CAG includes all of these elements simultaneously then it should be able to provide a simultaneous naval strike/CAP role, so that if an enemy TF is sighted in the same province the CAG can engage any enemy CAG, and also seek to bomb the enemy ships. Even if it can't do both at the same time, then I would expect the AI commander to shift it back and forth between those roles as required during the battle. There seems to be an assumption that the carrier protection mission is purely a CAP defensive role, when it seems perfectly possible that protecting the CTF is not just about providing air superiority over your own ships, but also attacking enemy ships within range that are a threat to the CTF. Especially, if you have an option of setting the stance of the carrier protection mission, between agressive/defensive, in the way we can see with other air missions.
So in single sea province engagements I don't see any loss from having this sort of abstracted CAG, and I'm with Bullfrog on this one. And I see alot of benefits that the CAG fits exactly into the air unit model, so presumably you can land them at an airbase, transport them in TRP, etc. and all of the combat/movement rules apply in exactly the same way for them as other air units. The link between the CV's and the CAG's is now broken, and they are no longer just a "brigade" of the CV, they are a truly independent unit.
The biggest problem if I understand the comments made is if you want to carry out a long-range strike either against enemy ships in another province, or against land-based targets, such as a port strike. If this means the whole CAG buzzing across the map into the adjoining province for several hours, then the CTF have no CAP. Let's not jump to conclusions on this - we still don't know the air-to-air nor air-to-ground combat models, and how Paradox are going to deal with the air speed issue on moving air units between such small provinces. If the effects of other air units is abstracted as a cloud where air power can be projected across provinces/regions, rather than whole wings flying in a formation at 40km per hour from province to province, then the same should be true for CAG, and in that case the CAG should be able to project a port strike with its bomber elements and still maintain the CAP.
