Carrier should be re-done!!

[Night]

It occured to me today while playing that the system of having carriers take damage from attacking an enemy is stupid,gamey, and ultimatly detracts greatly from the game itself.

I propose the same system that was part of the classic Pacific General (Part of the Panzer General Family)

In that game, you could LOAD airfleets into carriers, and then launch then from the carrier as a seperate unit. This way, you could launch airstrikes, and even if your whole airfleet was destroyed over the target, the carrier is untouched, as it should be, and ready to accept more planes. The price of carriers should be lessened in-game to reflect the fact that you would have to buy an airfleet to make it effective.

IMO this would make thing's a lot more realistic, and give carriers a much better role in the game like they had in real life. The British having carriers and the germans not was a big deciding factor in the war at sea. Anyone who studies what happened to the Bismarck or convoy escort can tell you that. It is simply lazy to have a carrier be 100 KM away, launch an airstrike at a battleship, and take (expensive) damage to it's hull which may force it to withdraw or could even sink it.

[pzgndr]

We're not likely to see unit stacking or carrying units. So, what changes would you propose?

[Night]

Prehaps we could give carriers two sets of strength? one for the carrier itself and one to represent the air units? The air unit's str may fall to 0 and thus it cannot attack or defend until reenforced, but the carrier's strength could be independant and only effected when attacked.

[Blashy]

Carrier taking damage represents loss of AFs.

Makes sense to me.

Make carrier repair less expensive?

[Night]

The real reason I think this is important is the possible mods we will see, not specificly the present game as we know it. Pacific naval battles will be pretty weak if you risk loosing your carrier by launching an air-strike. It will make a lot of people find that carriers are not as viable as they were in real life since it will be enormously expensive to maintain a number of carriers in battle at any given time, you simply wouldn't have enough MPPs without destabalizing the basic structure in the editor.

If two carriers are brought down to 4 or 5 strength in a single turn not by being attacked but by simply launching an airstrike, it turns into an issue of is it helping or hurting you to use your carriers against an enemy, how much damage could you do compared to how much MPPs you will possibly have to spend to repair your flattop. Even worse, if you lose 4 or 5 strength points unexpectedly, enemy ships could simply rush you, and your carrier is half as hard to sink as it really should be. How many planes it is carrying has nothing to do with how many shell hit's it can take. Currently the two are directly connected.

[pzgndr]

Look at the CTVs. Carrier defense values for BBs and CAs could possibly be reduced, thus reducing airstrike losses. That might solve one issue, but would it create another issue? It's worth experimenting and seeing how a game plays out. Better, or no?

[Liam]

Carriers in the North Atlantic carried not many attack planes that could kill of 1/3rd or 1/4th of a land unit. They were specialized, on English Carriers they were friggin' biplanes for christ sakes... whilst in SC1 they were F-15 Strike Eagles with Radar guided Smart bombs. What is done is done, effective against naval targets... Give UK bombers, not unrealistic SuperCarriers from the 1980s

The most advanced Carriers of WW2 were in the Pacific and how effective were they really against ground Armies? How many times did they destroy a Ground Division Alone(hell, I'll bet an aircraft carrier strike never even killed a single platoon singlehandedly from WW2, bahhumbug) let alone Corps, Army, airfleet? Only usually naval targets from what I've known and studied.

[Blashy]

Just open up the editor and play with the combat values, see if that can be of any help.

Test them out.

[jon_j_rambo]

What was that movie? Final Countdown? The one with Martin Sheen.

[Blashy]

Yeah, I've always wanted that movie to play out, see those jet fighters take on the japs in their planes.

It would have been hilarious.

[hellraiser]

I've always had the feeling that units in SC (SC2) do not reffer strictly to the unit itself but more like to an operational combat group, revolving around the 'unit' itself. I.e. an army would be a combat unit with a certain manpower, with tank support and arty support as well, represented in the game as the unit 'army'.

Similarly, a 'carrier' unit would represent an operational battlegroup having as main piece a carrier - the group may consist of several cruisers, destroyers and various other support vessels. An 'air fleet' would represent, aside from fighters, bombers and support airplanes, also the logistic part. Loading an ENTIRE air fleet on a carrier, well... that carrier gotta be damn huge, we're talking about several hundred planes plus several thousand ppl plus fuel, spare parts, etc. After all it's only a carrier not a Imperial Star Destroyer

[Blashy]

Hellraiser, that feeling you have is actually how SC2 is supposed to be viewed; grand scale with units representing a group.

[hellraiser]

'You feelings serve you well my young apprentice' some jedi/sith stuff from the movies.

[willgamer]

Haven't gotten into the scripting/editor thing, but I'm wondering if it's possible to something like giving a carrier, upon arrival at a friendly port, up to some number of free replacements?

If not, perhaps HC could consider this approach as a quick fix possibilty. Maybe even consider adding "airgroup" as a research item to give the number of free replacements available.

[Yohan]

CVs sans their planes are toast if caught, perhaps a review of Midway would be in order. They need to be very well protected and I think the current rules are good.

[Sombra]

Anybody has found a good use for the carriers right now?

Destroyers valuable for hunting subs

Battleships for destroying destroyers

Subs for hunting and killing battleships.

Carriers?

[ April 27, 2006, 01:02 AM: Message edited by: Sombra ]

[hellraiser]

Carriers perform more or less ok against subs and surface vessels. They kinda suck against land based air, but IRL they must've sucked as well (to my knowledge, carrier based airplanes were generally inferior in performances compared to land based planes, at least in the first years of the war) - you can use them to soften up a garrison prior to landing troops, I think.

[Cheese Panzer]

Originally posted by hellraiser:

Carriers perform more or less ok against subs and surface vessels. They kinda suck against land based air, but IRL they must've sucked as well (to my knowledge, carrier based airplanes were generally inferior in performances compared to land based planes, at least in the first years of the war) - you can use them to soften up a garrison prior to landing troops, I think.

That's about right. Early war UK carrier planes were bi-planes, and while the Swordfish was a good plane when unopposed it had a very short life-expectancy against fighters. Keeping in mind that carrier units represent about 1/10 the airplanes of an airfleet, and that the UK did not use naval planes to perform ground attacks in Europe, in game carriers perform pretty historically.

I would really like to a game mechanic where carrier planes cannot kill ground units but do lots of supply and morale damage instead.

[CPT Pete]

I think reducing the damage a carrier group takes is a good idea. IMO when you purchase a carrier you get naval group + an air group. They cost the same as 2 seperate groups and take as long as 2 groups to produce but currently take damage like a single group. If carriers were set to take half the damage it would compensate for this.

[Qyusson]

carriers may perform like they really did, but ingame they r too expensive compared to what theyr worth.. their costs should be decreased dramatically, not only their reinforcements but also their upgrades. With the disappearance of the need for training in the early game for uk, game is pretty dull when playing allies untill the arrival of the soviet union

[Yohan]

Guys, CVs were used in the Western theatre very sparingly. They had almost no punch versus land units and the main action they were involved in was the Med and not even that a ton as the British High Command did not want to risk them.

Why make them stronger than they really were?

[Desert Dave]

As originally posted by Yohan:

Guys, CVs were used in the Western theatre very sparingly. They had almost no punch versus land units and the main action they were involved in was the Med and not even that a ton as the British High Command did not want to risk them.

Why make them stronger than they really were?

My reading of many Histories over the years, would incline me to concur, completely.

Unless "air cover" was available, UK did not risk them very much; one thing they did do - ferry Spitfires to Malta once Fleigerkorps X was done decimating that island.

They can be useful, here and there,

BUT not "super carrier" as in SC-1.

You can "upgrade" isofar as air attack and ASW, so use them improved (... and, pay the cost of making them more like later and better Pacific CV's), or use them selectively.

[CPT Pete]

CVs were used in the Western theatre very sparingly.

The point is not were they used historically but rather "what if." I want to see the impact carriers may have had in the Atlantic or Med if they had been built and used. If I spend the MPPs to build one in the game and I develop advanced fighters and long range aircraft the carriers that I put in the Atlantic or Med should be better than what was historically there. That's the point.

[Desert Dave]

As originally posted by CPT Pete:

If I spend the MPPs to build one in the game and I develop advanced fighters and long range aircraft the carriers that I put in the Atlantic or Med should be better than what was historically there. That's the point.

If you do all that,

Researching and spending and upgrading,

Wouldn't they THEN be more your

Super-Carrier

(... as ONLY USA had... Japanese were a distant 2nd, UK way, WAY behind, like in 7th place, relatively speaking)

Preference? :confused:

[CPT Pete]

Yes, they may become super carriers relative to what each side had historically. However, they aren't cheap, require a substantial investment in research, and take the longest to build. If historically the UK or Germany or Russia had made carriers a priority and thrown research, time and money at it, is it conceivable that they would have been able to develop something comparible to what the US had? I think so. So in the game, if I make it a priority, I should get my super carrier.