Fleet attacking but not doing any damage

[jayswimmer]

I'm Germany with a large surface fleet attacking a small British carrier group (2CVs, 4CLs). The British are completely out of supply and fuel with full organization. I have full supply, fuel and organization. They are trapped in the Med without a port. Every time I enter the same sea zone as them, we fight and nothing happens. Could they really be that effective at dodging me? I engaged a small surface fleet of theirs and completely destroyed it.

I can't figure out why I can't hit this fleet. Help!

 

[Wraith11B]

If you've deprived them of every port and locked them inside the Med, they get magic supplies; I've no idea how, but they do. It might be that you could reload the game and the fleet would finally get sunk.

 

[markkur]

Sounds early to mid-game. That Brit Fleet is a fast one and it's hard to sink CVs. Try making one of your own or a large fleet and CLs and DDS and stay on its tail. (splitting your fleet in the sea-zone)You might sink the CLs but the CVs are not easy. I have awesome techs and a 3CV Fleet with 6 CLs and I still danced a bit sinking an old CV yesterday.

 

[jayswimmer]

It's 1942, so mid-game. So I will just keep hunting them and hoping that I catch them.

 

[browd]

Having a second surface action fleet to harass them as they flee to a new sea province is helpful. Best case, you get their CV fleet ping-ponging back and forth between two sea zones that your surface action fleets are in -- they will die eventually.

 

[marxianTJ]

Yeah if you engage and you're not doing damage it's because your fleet is too slow to catch them - CV based fleets *only* run away from you, and if they're too fast, and start the fight outside of your gun's firing range, you will never catch them and they will simply retreat eventually.

The solution is to continually engage them (since it benefits your leader and ship's XP level regardless) and hope you eventually get a bad weather event that causes your ships to start out in firing range and eventually sink them - or concentrate on building faster ships (CLs and DDs) to buff the speed of your fleet - or try removing some of the slower ships from your fleet to see if that can bring you up to snuff.

 

[Didz]

I found in my USA game that fleets of CA's and CL's were fast enough to catch them. In fact I had two fast pursuit fleets of 6xCA each that I used specifically for that purpose.

 

[jayswimmer]

Thanks guys. That makes a lot of sense. I split my fleet in half to do the ping-pong thing, but two months went by before I sank a couple of the destroyers. Based on this, I'm thinking about splitting my capital ships from my cruisers in the same sea zone so that the cruisers have a better chance of engaging and offering me some small chance of the big guns getting a shot in as well.