When are the CVs gonna get hardend?

[CRASH]

As long as they can be taken out by a lone suicidal fighter they're pretty much useless.

[Blue Mako]

Edit: Need to learn how to read...

Try again:  Why do the cv's need hardening?  Kamikaze's were feared in WW2, why should they not be feared here?  The US had a lot of ships sunk/crippled by suicide attacks.  I don't like the suicide bombers either but I think they are just a side effect of making the cv's a reasonable softness.

I think eskimo said it best in the other thread:
 

Ships sink when bombs hit them.
It's part of the game.
Get over it.
eskimo

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Blue Mako ]

[Citabria]

uh cv not gv  

[Voss]

With all due respect, Mako (and Eskimo's lack of civility aside), I don't believe there is a precedent for lone fighters killing CV's; even in WWII CV's were harder than that.

The real question is: Why are CV's of one toughness on the NDIsles map, and another toughness on the Mindanao map?

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Voss ]

[Blue Mako]

There is not a precedent for lone fighters killing cv's I agree, but in the attacks by many fighters/dive bombers/torpedo bombers etc, in many cases it took only ONE bomb/kamikaze to kill or cripple a cv/battleship.

I don't think it is that great a problem myself.  After all, the cv respawns 10 minutes later unless the port has been captured.  It shouldn't have to be as durable as IRL, otherwise we should also have to wait a few months after each cv was sunk to get it back...  Now that would be worth whining about.  

[CRASH]

Ok, so I'm to understand that during wwii we lost alot of ships when ONE japanese kamikazee dove into the flight deck?  Got any data to back that one up?  Crippled makes sense, sent to the bottom doesn't.
Your neglecting several facts in your historical argument.
1. It took more than one plane diving into the deck to sink a carrier, as a matter of fact the idea was to hit at the water line or into the superstructure.
2.  Kamikazee runs accounted for a very small percentage of the total number of attacks on American naval assets and for most of the war was not the preferred method of attack like it is here.
3.  It was extremely costly.  You lost a plane and an experienced pilot....forever, no respawn.
4.  Of the a/c that tried to kamikazee in, very few actually made it.
5.  CV's were heavily capped. In ah all the cap in the world wouldnt matter because all it takes is 1 p51 to dive in.  Try catchin' that before it hits the cv.
Given all of this, the question is, how do you compensate for the way things were historically in a game?  Well, one way is to harden the carriers so it takes more hits to kill it.  Second, you amp up the ack so that very few actually get in, again, like it was historically. We can argue about this all we want, but the fact remains, a cv doesnt last 15 minutes in battle because somebody suicides it and that just aint fun.  If things are gonna remain this way with regard to the cv's then why have them at all?


 

Originally posted by Blue Mako:
Edit: Need to learn how to read...

Try again:  Why do the cv's need hardening?  Kamikaze's were feared in WW2, why should they not be feared here?  The US had a lot of ships sunk/crippled by suicide attacks.  I don't like the suicide bombers either but I think they are just a side effect of making the cv's a reasonable softness.

I think eskimo said it best in the other thread:
 

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Blue Mako ]

[Blue Mako]

Your points are well stated and make sense.  However, just with regard to the last suggestion, if you are going to have the cv's "historically" hardened then you need to include the following:

Bomb/kamikaze hits disable flight operations.
Damaged cv's travel slower.
Cv's can't turn on a dime.
Cv's take about 6 months to respawn/get repaired.

Otherwise hardening the cv's is just going to make them even more gamey, not more realistic, IMO.

The fact remains that kamikaze's did inflict heavy damage when they did hit a vessel.  This is also true in AH so it will continue to be used as a form of attack no matter what happens.  Dweeb's Law(tm) ensures this is the case.

Increase the realism/effectiveness of the cv ack but don't make the cv tougher is my suggestion.

[Kweassa]

If the CV is so precious it must be kept alive... then GUARD IT.

 Unless there's a mission going on, there's usually not more than 1~2 people out to get a CV. If the people weren't so busy vulching and gang banging a neutralized airfield, and if just ONE of them had enough brains to foresee someone's gonna try to kill it and fly active CAP duty around a CV, it can be easily stopped.

 If people are so busy hoarding up a base and fighting on deck alt that nobody is willing to guard the CV, then tough luck.

 Someone's gonna come higher and sink it.

[Kweassa]

Oh, and don't tell us it's impossible to stop an oncoming CV killer. Ofcourse it is impossible to stop a plane that already began its dive. If perchance anyone's thinking flying right on top of the CV is CAP, for their information it is not.

 You have to catch the killer while he is making his way to the CV, not when he already arrived and has the CV on his vis. This takes time and effort, just like gooning a neutralized base needs time and effort. If a base is down and nobody goons it, it's not gonna be conquered. If a CV is in danger of being attacked and it's not guarded, it's gonna sink.

 This is more about figuring out what the team needs in current situation, rather than something to do with realism.

 Asking to toughen up the CV without taking this fact into consdieration is like asking "let's toughen up the CV so we can all have fun furballing, without having to worry about would-be CV killers."

 .. and, this is the same with the defenders also. If everybody is so busy just furballing around enemy CV planes, and nobody takes time and effort to get a heavy plane up to kill a CV, then the CV survives. Planes from the CV will eventually overrun a nearby base.

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Kweassa ]

[Kingonads]

Mako I have been reading this post and I hate to say this but I think the CVs need to be hardened too.  U say it would take 6 months to respawn, and it should travel slower and it would lose flight opps, well I agree that maybe if it was possible for HT to model all that sure but as it is CVs move slow enough and the turning on a dime have U ever seen the bombsight footage of a dive bomber the CVs turn on a DIME when in a emergancy.  Now as for the next part the Damaged flight opps well howa bout no suspened flight ops just no ordance and 25%fuel from all planes off that cv when it is hit.  As for the 1 bomb hitting and sinking CVs and battleships lets look back at those battles it was a golden beebee that got through that sunk the CV or Battleship U know the one in a million bomb that was placed perfectly and hit a flaw in the deisign and hit the ammo keg of a ship or the fuel under the decks of a CV now lets look at the thousands of bombs that never killed a cv or let alone even serriously damaged one.  I think it was the USS Lexington that took what almost 10k pounds of bombs and was still afloat and it got hit by 3 torpedos to boot.  ( although I think only 2 exploded) the ship limped back to port almost 400miles away at a whopping 4-6knts yeah it lost fighter ops but was it outa the war HELL NO.  did it come back 6months later yes did it get hit again better belive it did it sink not quite was it damaged of course.  The CVs in AH R WAY to weak I suggest 6k to kill first 2k causes loss of 50% fuel, the next 2k that hit it loses 25% more fuel and ord. and slows to half speed and begins to smoke ( major FPS hit) the last 2k will sink it.  Its easy its simple and its the closest thing we will get to realistic CV damage untill a better CV damage model comes about.  But that would mean that the CV would need a whopping 100+ guns on it and thats from .50cal up.


                              hodo

[Yeager]

The whole naval aspect in AH seems very immature to me.

 

[Buzzbait]

S!

CV's don't need hardening.  In fact I think in many ways they are more durable than the real life thing.

One Squadron of Dauntlasses carrying single 1000 lb bombs sank 3 CV's at Midway in less than 5 minutes.

Japanese to a huge extent, and U.S. Carriers were very suseptible to bomb hits. Neither of them had armoured flight decks.  That's right, just a few inches of ordinary steel.  Bombs went through it like a hot knife through butter.  A CV hit by a single bomb, or hit by a shell from a Cruiser would have significant damage, like elevators destroyed, magazines exploding etc.  Right now the first few hits have zero effect.

British Carriers in the second war had armoured flight decks, and were able to withstand direct hits from Kamikazes and some bombs.  But they also had a lot less room for aircraft because of the armour.  A British Carrier typically carried 40-45 planes compared to 80-90 planes on a U.S. CV.

Do you guys want restriction on the maximum number of planes which can launch from a CV before it has to return to base to get another complement of aircraft?

Finally there is a prescedent for a single aircraft sinking a CV.  A lone Japanese Kamikaze turned the USS Franklin into a burning inferno which had to be towed back to the USA and was later sold for scrap.

There are many other instances of Battleships or Carriers being sunk by one or two hits from aircraft.

[J_A_B]

USN CV's weren't necessarily sunk by single Kamikazes, but they were often very badly damaged by them, often to the point of being useless for months.  Several of the USA's big carriers were knocked out of action for many months because of a single airplane (usually a Kamikaze). In AH this is effectively the same thing as being sunk.

USS FRANKLIN
USS Belleau Wood (sp?)
USS Enterprise (flying elevator pic)
USS Bunker Hill
USS Princeton (sunk)
USS Saratoga

All of those ships, having been hit by a single plane, were either knocked completely out of the war or at least required a refit.  In the case of the Bunker Hill, it was 2 planes--but just one caused enough damage to render the ship useless for flight ops.

Either way, the damage was severe enough that the "carrier sunk and replaced in 10 minutes" in AH seems reasonable.

Now if AH modeled British carriers, with their armoured flight-decks, things would be a different matter.

J_A_B


EDIT:  Franklin cruised back across the Pacific under her own power, a tremendous achievment.

[ 11-22-2001: Message edited by: J_A_B ]

[Steven]

Well, at Midway...if my memory serves from readings, the bomb damage occured after a re-arm and the flight decks were full of bombs previously loaded and aircraft with new bombs loaded and full fuel.  

I seem to recall that bombs tend to fall through the flight deck to explode below.  It's nasty, but not typically a thing that would sink the great ship.  Damage below the waterline is completely different and is most likely a death blow.  And, I think a lot of times flight decks could be repaired with plywood.  I'm no expert and will quickly yield to anyone who says I'm wrong on this.  It would seem natural to suggest any bomb hits on the CV decks should disrupt air operations, but bombs on the runways of land bases don't do anything to disrupt air ops.  One thing I would love to see is something to make the high alt buff demolishing a moving target be much more difficult and force more traditional cv attacks via TBMs and hopefully some dive bombers (SBD, Val, Kate) not here yet but introduced soon.  Anyway, my understanding is it's damage below the waterline that is most deadly.

[ 11-22-2001: Message edited by: Steven ]

[AKDejaVu]

There's no equitable solution for kamikazi CV runs as long as there is no loss for doing it.  The kamikazi can replane instantly... the CV is now hours away.

Realism meet game.  Game eat realism.

AKDejaVu