When a carrier travels across the ocean, it normally has an escort force and air wing that protects it. This forms the CVBG or carrier battle group.
This is typically a few ships forming a screening force and parts of the air wing "cleaning" the sea area ahead.
The game fails to replicate this.
Ships travel at different speeds so that careful formation you set up, pretty quickly falls apart a few hours into the trip.
Air wings search a fixed area and when the carrier moves beyond them, the search ends.
What would be much more realistic is if this components performed their tasks relative to the CVBG. Those search aircraft should be moving their area of search in the same direction and speed as the CV. The escorts in the CVBG should travel at the same speed as the CVBG (with out having to be on the same pixel).
6 Replies
28 Jan 2017, 00:26
I agree completely regarding how carrier escorts operate in the real world, but it's difficult to duplicate in the game given COW's programmed dynamics and other limitations. In particular, an in-game carrier batter group is usually comprised of the carrier, its BB, CC and DD escorts and its air group in single stack, all moving at the speed of the slowest naval unit in the stack, and I know of no way to have separate naval units (i.e. those outside the stack) move at the same speed. That said, I still try to duplicate the screening tactic by having one or more DD squadrons running back and forth ahead of the main carrier group. The downside is, of course, that requires periodic monitoring and active manual adjustments.
BTW, in present-day real world, the U.S. Navy typically uses one or more nuclear attack submarines to help screen carrier battle groups in advance of the main force.
28 Jan 2017, 07:55
It would be hard to replicate that kind of formation in CoW. What I usually end up doing is stacking everybody in a big group, which should raise defense if needed (put enough destroyers and cruisers with your carrier and all it fears will be battleships).
In addition, you can send subs to scout the route ahead for you. Destroyers work as well, but can alert an enemy to the path of your carrier group.
On occasion if I'm running low on food, I will send convoys of infantry and militia to scout ahead and probably die, Stalin-style. You solve both your carrier and your food problems in one go!
28 Jan 2017, 08:40
Yep.
In the present mechanic, I normally have several submarines running the intended path of the carrier. Inside that screen, I normally have a DD or three doing racetracks up and down the path. Inside that is the carrier with an attached troop convoy (controls speed) and then leading and following the carrier are more convoy units (sacrificial goats).
If there is enough slots in the air wing count, there will be a rotation of NavBomb scanning the various nodes up ahead.
One thing to keep in mind on all of this, is to watch the back door. A submarine can easily catch something moving at convoy speed. Submarines in stealth mode can see your battle group and remain undetected except from those NavBom searchers. A wily opponent will send that stack of 8 submarines up the back door and target just the carrier stack.
Notice I have not even bothered talking about BB stacks. Those things are about useless unless there is a CVBG around to protect them.
28 Jan 2017, 16:27
I like the idea
What you want is a group in an extended formation, so that all Units in this group move with same speed in the same direction.
In my opinion this would be very usefull not only for sea units but falso for land units, especially moving in a onward frontline.
The troublesomeness I see is that the allowed paths on the map on land as well as on sea dont run parallel, so that distant units are not able to hold the exact distance over time.
For that reason I am not sure how a formation could be realized
28 Jan 2017, 23:02
Arbales wrote:
The troublesomeness I see is that the allowed paths on the map on land as well as on sea dont run parallel, so that distant units are not able to hold the exact distance over time.
For that reason I am not sure how a formation could be realized
On land you have the added complication of varied terrain, so when a column hits a mountain it will go considerably slower than a column running through plains. What F. Marion is proposing on sea is very doable, and I look forward to trying it sometime.
"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week." - General George S. Patton, Jr. "Do, or do not. There is no try" - Yoda
29 Jan 2017, 12:50
of course its doable in this way, but an ingame automatism would be very nice, too.
By holding the right mouse button you mark and activate a group of distant units. The game mechanics let you give all of them one single target at once. In the existing way they are not automatically marked as one group because they have different locations, so they will make their way on teir own with different speed..
But inside the game it should be very easy to implement a mechanic marking them as a group, just as if they were located at the same place, so that they move as one group with same speed (of the slowest).
This solution still uses one target for the group, but its easily to program.
Very more difficult it is for the known reasons to program formation orders. I suggest to try to program such a mechanic by the possibility to choose from a set of given formations in which the group will be spreaded automatically
