Question on Carrier CAS

[jura28]

As we know, carrier naval bombers fight automatically in naval battles that fleet engages. CAS is useless for this. I never used carrier CAS, because I'm not willing to micro those wings above the land and keep the fleet within range etc, but now I'm wondering - what if carrier CAS was automatically attending land battles within it's range? Maybe it does work that way already and I just didn't know. So, does it?

 

[ApalmSWE]

dosen't the carrier CAS figth in naval battles?

 

[krieger11b]

According to the stats, carrier CAS are more accurate than carrier NAVs, just less powerful when they hit. I guess that is supposed to represent torpedo planes vs dive bombers?

 

[jura28]

dosen't the carrier CAS figth in naval battles?

Probably yes, I'm not sure.

According to the stats, carrier CAS are more accurate than carrier NAVs, just less powerful when they hit. I guess that is supposed to represent torpedo planes vs dive bombers?

Yeah, I just noticed the difference in naval attack is only 1 compared to 2.5, that's not so bad as I thought.

 

[Meglok]

dosen't the carrier CAS figth in naval battles?

They do afaik. The question is can you afford the research and production. As Japan you may skip CAS altogether due to it's range limitations and because you can't spare the production and research time. As the USA you can afford to overcrowd the decks with planes.

 

[Louella]

Every aircraft on the carrier, will fight in naval battles. Sometimes with results, like a carrier fighter 1 being credited with the last hit on an enemy super-heavy battleship.

I've found carrier CAS to be kind of only useful for very, very, very, specific situations, one of which is providing air support for naval invasions outside the range of tactical bombers. Usually, that limits it to invading Japan, when China and the Soviet Union are not your allies, and won't let you base aircraft in their territory. Almost anywhere else in the world, tactical bombers can be based close enough that carrier CAS are kind of irrelevant, other than various peculiar ahistorical scenarios.

Something that might be of interest to note, is that the Japanese and American carriers that start with CAS wings embarked, are the only carriers that the AI will use that ever have CAS on them. In the standard game, the AI will only embark Fighters and Naval Bombers on all newly built carriers.

 

[Dalwin]

I am fairly certain that carrier CAS do not automatically participate in nearby land battles. Personally I do not use them, but I could see them as important to things such as an invasion of Hawaii since you won't have any island bases in range to provide support.

 

[Dan1109]

Yeah, that would be a nice improvement to the AI to get carrier based planes to attack/support nearby land battles (or perform port strikes), if they have full naval supremacy and "Intel" shows naval attacks likely to not occur. Maybe we can get that worked on in 1.4 as its airpower related.

 

[Anaraxes]

Carrier CAS does automatically fight in naval battles (unless you've sent it away to do ground support over land). The usual reason people displace CAS with more NAV is because they don't care about ground support, and find the NAV more effective at eliminating enemy fleets. If your doctrine (that is, player plans and intentions, not the game research doctrine) calls for carriers to be only anti-naval forces, you won't want the naval CAS.

If you want to give your invasions the edge of air support, you'll want some CAS, which aren't entirely useless in the anti-naval purpose, but also good for ground support, unlike NAV. Carriers can get your CAS close to the province being fought over, whereas with land-based air you don't always have a good nearby airfield, and you'll have to invade more places, closer together, to stay within your air cover. Carriers give your CAS more reach for a deeper threat. But of course, if your marines have sufficient superiority over the enemy, they perhaps can win even without any air support.

AFAIK, CAS without orders will not automatically join any nearby land combat. (The same goes for the other carrier planes; FTR will not automatically intercept bombers, or run air superiority in your sea zone, but only join naval combats, and NAV will not patrol or attack ships other than those that your carrier gets into battle with. Zone mission assignments are separate from naval engagements that planes join when their carrier is engaged and they have no mission assignment.)

I imagine that if carrier CAS flew off and joined a ground combat, leaving their carrier to get ambushed by an enemy fleet, and were blowing up tanks instead of enemy carriers or battleships, the forum would be inundated with complaints about carrier planes automatically going on missions, rather than complaints about them not automatically going on missions. The current system lets you assign them to one job or the other, so you have that much control -- but you do have to choose.

(The choice reminds me of the commonly-told story about Midway where Nagumo keeps changing his re-arming his planes to switch them between attacking Midway itself, or to attack nearby naval forces.)

 

[Dan1109]

Well, my point is for the AI to do it...smartly though: conditions like full naval superiority, for a certain amount of time, maybe only send half available planes, leaving the rest for fleet defense, etc.

 

[Anaraxes]

Well, my point is for the AI to do it...smartly though:

But "smartly" is exactly where you'll run into trouble. Paradox will be viciously excoriated by everyone who didn't get exactly the results they expected from letting the AI choose. It should have been smart enough to put all the CAS into that battle, rather than saving half of them for some attack that wasn't going to happen! It should have been smart enough to know that land battle was a easy win, not worth assigning the CAS, which I'd rather have bombed some convoys! Etc. There's plenty of cases where there's not a clearly right assignment -- or worse, the right tactic to have chosen is only obvious in hindsight, which won't stop the complaints from rolling in about how stupid the AI is compared to the hindsighed player. Micromanagement to make the player responsible for those decisions is the only way to keep those complaints down. But of course that will just lead to the "too much micromanagement" complaint from others.

There's no way for Paradox to make everyone happy.

 

[Dan1109]

Again, for the AI player, not for the human player and the naval combat AI to override.

Knowing when they are not needed is another conditional as well. In the off chase an AI or human player "ambushes" an AI fleet supporting a ground invasion, or broken arrow support to a ground fight in dire need, the planes would only not be around for a 7 hour window, worst case. Can even have RNG decide if they were ambushed just after taking off (wow, that would be an advantage actually), or just after dropping ordinance and combat fuel exhausted making them useless until landing.

Lots of complex decisions can be put in place to make almost all people not complain that this concept doesn't cripple the AI.

If it ends up working out well, then this AI could be selectively enabled for the player. But it would still be a choice for the human.

HOI3 had its fair share of AI issues by the time all design and support was shut down, and LOTS of micromanagement issues. But somethings it did well, and every facet of them game, you could enable/disable the AI to control. I'd like to see HOI4 go that direction, more optional complexity, but good AI to take care of it if you don't want to do it yourself. But we are some years away from that...