For those with a lot of naval experience, take US vs Japan, should you have your carriers sit 1 zone back parked somewhere(with the rest of your boats for protection) and have your fighters and naval bombers run naval missions in the next zone over, thus keeping your expensive ships out of the fight, or should you have them just sit on the carrier mission and have your carrier patrol in a big group with all your other boats?
Should carrier Planes be on carrier mission or use the planes to patrol
- Thread starter kendric
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The normal way to use them would be search & destroy mission in the same region the enemy ships you want to destroy are located. The Carriers will normally keep their distance inside battles as long as you don't lose most screens in their fleet.
Keep your carrier planes with the carrier in the zone it operates in, and construct air fields where you can to station land based bombers and fighters from.
The only situation where you realistically want to use it as a mobile airfield for manual operations is e.g if you're trying to support a naval invasion with close air support and shore bombardment from it.
The only situation where you realistically want to use it as a mobile airfield for manual operations is e.g if you're trying to support a naval invasion with close air support and shore bombardment from it.
I was testing some things our earlier this week on the beta patch and here are my observations, overall I think naval air combat is weird and I think a little bugged with fighters vs other air.
Here's what I saw in my tests:
Here's what I saw in my tests:
- Fighters on AS/INT missions in an air region with a naval battle do not directly join the battle. I believe that includes fighters from CVs not in battle on air missions in the region. Instead, Air Superiority ratings in the air region lower enemy Sortie efficiency from the carrier. The detriment isn't that bad in my experience and is small compared to overcrowding penalties or doctrine bonuses.
- Sea air regions are some of the largest and smallest air regions which throws a wrench in making things standard when you're using air missions.
- Having fighters on AS/INT in an air region will interrupt enemy planes attempting naval strike missions on ships. You'll see this since those bombers will join combat but will do 0.00..% damage to ships. NAV/CV can still fight the fighters on the carrier.
- Planes on naval strike missions directly join the battle, whether from land or another carrier. They can shoot down enemy planes and can bomb ships
- N.S. mission planes from CVs will repeatedly join the battle using the mission cycle like you'd expect. Their airwing can also be replenished on the carrier during the battle since they're just running missions (unlike airwings on CVs in naval battle)
- Land based planed on NS missions can naval strike once per cycle with new ships in the battle. That's what I observed even though other sources say it is just once per battle. Changing the airwing size might allow this, but it also might just be that you're allowed a combat width of land planes to join and the new ships increased the width.
- The more planes on NS the better, I was getting something like consistent percentage of the airwing joining the battle so it didn't just cap at some number. That's with 1k sized wings and battles with about 20 BBs
- NAV and probably CAS on NS missions totally destroy fighters from CVs in naval battle. In my tests I could put 45 NAV on a NS mission that join a battle with 225 FTR from CVs in battle and the NAV would kill all of the fighters. With these 1:4 odds the NAV were getting 4:1 kill ratio against the fighters (using 1944 tech).
- Too many carriers per battle penalty doesn't apply if the carriers aren't in the battle (? I think I confirmed this but might not have)
The likely reason the ai CV fighters die easy is because the ai lags way behind in researching, producing, and deploying new cv fighter tech. Your 1944 planes are fighting 1936 or even 1933 fighters.
The only time I've ever used Carriers to run air missions is as USA vs Venezuela- there's never been any other need for it in my playthroughs. Keep your planes on your carriers for battles, and then have your fleets patrol under land based air cover- you'll win the naval war with less than 10 ships lost.
Currently Naval Warfare is a joke.
Currently Naval Warfare is a joke.
Wait, you actually have to have the planes a mission? I always thought that you just need to leave them on the carrier. I think I also saw them interveign in naval battles, even without specific mission.
No you don't need missions.
As far as I have seen Airwings on Carriers that have air missions will pause them for the duration of the naval battle to fight with the Carrier anyways.
They're automatically in any battle the carrier is in- don't worry about that. But they can be used in the same way as land based planes from the carrier.
Arivili, thanks for that detailed reply. That info flies in the face of what most people seem to be claiming but your info sounds way more researched. It feels like a case of what works good enough vs whats best.
The only time you need to assign carrier wings a mission is if you want them to actively do something outside of naval combat. Ground support an invasion, fly air superiority, do a port strike all require manual orders.
Be aware that any cv wing manually assigned to a mission will not participate in any naval combat.
Port strike can be a good use of CV NAV mission bc of generally limited NAV range. TAC is generally better at invasion support bc of huge range.
You guys are either not reading or ignoring his findings. He is claiming that fighters on carriers just doing a carrier mission are pretty bad compared to having them run missions. I have not verified this but I think we should not say Just keep them on carriers is correct until more testing can be done.
As he says:
My take away was that there are definite advantages to keeping carriers out of combat with their planes on NS missions, as long as mission efficiency isn't too low from huge air regions like in the pacific. And to my surprise the CV FTRs were consistent losers to NAV which I think is buggy or there was something weird in my testing- one quirk that could have influenced it is that I was testing NAV against CV fighters in naval battle where the CV fighters have AS from land.
As he says:
My take away was that there are definite advantages to keeping carriers out of combat with their planes on NS missions, as long as mission efficiency isn't too low from huge air regions like in the pacific. And to my surprise the CV FTRs were consistent losers to NAV which I think is buggy or there was something weird in my testing- one quirk that could have influenced it is that I was testing NAV against CV fighters in naval battle where the CV fighters have AS from land.
No, he is flat out incorrect imho. This is slightly risky in SP and down right suicidal in MP. All it takes is one enemy carrier group moving into your sea region and your carriers are screwed. The cv wings with orders will not be involved in the naval combat. Also, cv plane efficiencies are usually too low for this to work due to their limited range.
His "quirk" is the naval air mechanic that land based fighters performing the air superiority mission over a sea region will limit the efficiency of cv wings if they have air superiority. That and the ai has a very low priority on researching, producing, and deploying new cv aircraft tech.
If they are doing a mission in the zone which the carrier is in they would defend it, and then not just get killed by NAV as he suggests.
Here's the concrete screenshots and a save you can test out yourself (f49b just base game).
I set up the scenario through tag switching, turning AI off, giving research and giving equipment.
Before running the save turn the AI off so it doesn't do anything stupid (open console and use the "AI" command).
Cuba has ~200 FTR on their CVs are are entering battle. Cuba has 1.9k land based jets on AS in the Caribbean to really drive home that they've got supremacy. Cuba has a radar in range.
USA has ~150 NAV on a NS mission coming from carriers anchored in an adjacent seazone, of which ~50 get to join the battle due to sortie efficiency.
Here's screenshots of the results with some annotations. On the air stats screen only care about the latest bump on the graph, I was doing other things before this.
All screenshots are taken from USA's perspective.
The battlefield so it is clear what the scenario is:
Taken when Cuban fighters are depleted:
Next sortie from USA:
Battle's end- NAV never damaged boats because of Cuba's AS in the region:
If Cuba doesn't have AS in the region they lose all of their fighters within about a day, and the NAV kill ships:
When I went back to redo the tests for these screenshots I realized that the NAV on air missions replenishing is one of their huge strengths. I think there's a critical point in numbers where NAV just slaughter FTR, and since NAV replenish they'll eventually whittle them down to that point like in the scenario where CUB has air supremacy. It'd be especially useful in long battles.
kendric is also correct about how this strategy works in regards to keeping the carriers on hold safe. You just need your fleet doing a mission in the area and they'll jump in to save the carriers as long as they aren't in another battle. I bet having air missions also increases your overall surface detection.
I set up the scenario through tag switching, turning AI off, giving research and giving equipment.
Before running the save turn the AI off so it doesn't do anything stupid (open console and use the "AI" command).
Cuba has ~200 FTR on their CVs are are entering battle. Cuba has 1.9k land based jets on AS in the Caribbean to really drive home that they've got supremacy. Cuba has a radar in range.
USA has ~150 NAV on a NS mission coming from carriers anchored in an adjacent seazone, of which ~50 get to join the battle due to sortie efficiency.
Here's screenshots of the results with some annotations. On the air stats screen only care about the latest bump on the graph, I was doing other things before this.
All screenshots are taken from USA's perspective.
The battlefield so it is clear what the scenario is:
Taken when Cuban fighters are depleted:
Next sortie from USA:
Battle's end- NAV never damaged boats because of Cuba's AS in the region:
If Cuba doesn't have AS in the region they lose all of their fighters within about a day, and the NAV kill ships:
When I went back to redo the tests for these screenshots I realized that the NAV on air missions replenishing is one of their huge strengths. I think there's a critical point in numbers where NAV just slaughter FTR, and since NAV replenish they'll eventually whittle them down to that point like in the scenario where CUB has air supremacy. It'd be especially useful in long battles.
kendric is also correct about how this strategy works in regards to keeping the carriers on hold safe. You just need your fleet doing a mission in the area and they'll jump in to save the carriers as long as they aren't in another battle. I bet having air missions also increases your overall surface detection.
I'm double posting because I think I figured out at least part of the root cause:
Naval air battles are (likely) determined as airwing vs airwing, so airwing size matters for the gang up chance. If fighters are split up into 45 individual airwings and are facing a single NAV airwing of the same size then FTR will lose every time since they are actually fighting 45:1 instead of 1:1.
I ran a test case with FTRs in 45 sized airwings and all the NAV in 29 sized wings and NAV still win, so I think NAV get grouped as a single airwing among airwings that sortie at the same time. Sending small (1 or 2 plane) NAV airwings against the 45 wing sized fighters and NAV lose.
That has other implications like carrier deckspace is even more important and carriers should be specialized instead of split.
Attached is a save a couple of days before the battle would start, you can mess with the airwings to see it for yourself.
Naval air battles are (likely) determined as airwing vs airwing, so airwing size matters for the gang up chance. If fighters are split up into 45 individual airwings and are facing a single NAV airwing of the same size then FTR will lose every time since they are actually fighting 45:1 instead of 1:1.
I ran a test case with FTRs in 45 sized airwings and all the NAV in 29 sized wings and NAV still win, so I think NAV get grouped as a single airwing among airwings that sortie at the same time. Sending small (1 or 2 plane) NAV airwings against the 45 wing sized fighters and NAV lose.
That has other implications like carrier deckspace is even more important and carriers should be specialized instead of split.
Attached is a save a couple of days before the battle would start, you can mess with the airwings to see it for yourself.
That's really interesting data! Thanks. Have you compared using cas instead of nav against ships. Having nav after the ocean war is over is kinda meh.