Now that the developers have corrected several of the worst naval unit qualities (i.e., over-powered AA capabilities of submarines, under-powered attack capabilities of naval bombers, weak shore bombardment of battleships, etc.), there are several more disparities that continue to bother me:
1. the over-stated hit points of aircraft carriers relative to battleships (both have 75 hit points, far over-stating the CV's ability to absorb battle damage); and
2. the over-stated anti-submarine strengths of CVs (5x that of BBs).
At the conclusion of WW2, the state-of-the-art aircraft carriers were the U.S. Navy's Essex-class fleet carriers; the state-of-the-art battleships were the U.S. Navy's Iowa-class fast battleships. The Iowas had a minimum displacement of 45,000 tons, and the Essexes had a minimum displacement of 30,800 tons; the difference in displacement being the tonnage of the battleships' guns and armor. Whereas modern BBs were built to withstand a slugging match with another BB, no CV could hope to survive more than a handful of direct hits from the main guns of a BB or two or three torpedo hits.
And like the battleships, the typical WW2 aircraft carrier had no anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability of its own ---- it relied on its air group and escorting destroyers to provide ASW defense.
Bottom line: the hit points for our in-game CV need to be reduced from 75 to something more like the hit points of our in-game cruisers (50), and the anti-submarine strength of our in-game CV should be no greater than that of our in-game BB (1.0).
4 Replies
18 Jul 2017, 09:25
The anti-sub stats of carriers seem to reflect the stats of aircraft based on them. For the game, these are (apparently) inherent to the carrier itself, as opposed to the "external" air groups that you manually base on them.
While it is true that carrier-based aircraft were very good at spotting and fighting enemy subs (especially force them to stay submerged, greatly reducing their speed and freedom of operation), it is indeed exaggerated. Attacking a solo carrier currently requires a stack of over three subs to be successful. Carriers sailing solo should be no match for even a SINGLE sub; the message would be "keep your carriers escorted or they die to any warship that they meet".
Having said that, we have still have the underlying problem that there are no aircraft available that are effective against surface ships. In reality, no battle group was able to operate anywhere where the enemy had persistent air superiority. See the sad fate of the Prince of Wales/Repulse squadron in 1942, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_Prince_of_Wales_and_Repulse), and the sinking of the Bismarck (sunk by surface ships, but only after after her rudder was damaged by air attack).
After these encounters, no nation sailed capital ships without air cover, and even the cruiser battles around Guadalcanal were fought largely at night.
In sharp contrast, no CoW air force can fight off a balanced enemy fleet, even if they have no air cover at all.
18 Jul 2017, 10:44
Regardless of how similar the game is to wwII, making an undesirable unit even weaker is probably not what the game makers want.
18 Jul 2017, 11:17
DxC wrote:
Regardless of how similar the game is to wwII, making an undesirable unit even weaker is probably not what the game makers want.
That's why I suggested increasing air effectiveness against vessels as well.
The carrier is not an undesirable unit btw... on the 100p map, it is vital to have an immediate punch when invading new continents. Too bad it only works after day 24, but hey, it's something.
18 Jul 2017, 13:49
DxC wrote:
Regardless of how similar the game is to wwII, making an undesirable unit even weaker is probably not what the game makers want.
I agree with Rosko's assessment of the in-game aircraft carrier unit: not only is it not "undesirable," it is indispensable in many if not most games played on the 50-player Pacific map and 100-player world map.
What makes the unit desirable, of course, is its capacity for carrying aircraft ---- and since L1, L2 and L3 carriers can only embark 2, 3 and 4 squadrons, respectively, I have never produced an in-game CV before completing my L4 aircraft carrier research. If I were running the show, I would increase the aircraft capacity of the in-game carriers by at least one squadron for the L1, L2, L3 and L4 research levels ---- which, strangely enough, would bring them closer to the actual capacity of the full-size fleet carriers of the U.S. Navy, Royal Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy.
Reducing the hit points of carriers not only would make them more realistic, it would also have the intended effect of reducing the ability of a large stack of naval units to resist air attacks. Part of the present aircraft-vs-ships imbalance is that the hit points of naval units are so high that sinking capital ships requires multiple attack runs by naval bomber stacks, and the losses from those sorties are disproportionately high.
I might also add that the production costs of naval bombers are out of proportion with respect to the production costs of battleships and aircraft carriers. It costs $6,000 and 1,250 tons of oil to produce a single squadron of naval bombers, but only $8,000 and 1,250 tons of oil to produce a battleship ---- that ain't right. Even allowing for a more flexible in-game costs scale, the cost of the battleship should be several multiples of the cost of producing a squadron of naval attack planes. In the real war, admirals had no problem sacrificing planes to sink capital ships because planes were relatively cheap and battleships were ridiculously expensive. The cost of an Iowa-class battleship was north of $100 million; the cost of an F4U Corsair was about $88,000 (x12 for a squadron = $1,056,000).
