Rules 1.5 beta: overpowered defenders in air battles

If you found the carriers next turn you could manage with your fuel, if you don't, you have to fly back and waste two turns to relaunch. Its quite a risk....

You are right though, the hidden deployment rules are still a work in progress with not yet all wrinkles ironed out...

I ran several tests with 2 vs 2 carriers. Rules 1.5.4 beta. Max fighters, no Kido Butai. I also investigated your mini-test. I noticed that mostly the initiator loses the battle (the initiator is the one who sends the first attack). So, I started looking into why this was happening.

First I thought it was because the success probability of First Strike (FS) is lower than Scramble the CAP (SC). At maximal distraction, FS fails in 2 of 3 cases, SC fails 1 in 2 cases. It turned out that even if I allow 100% success, the initiator is still at a disadvantage..

I saw that after the initiator sends an attack group for a raid, he becomes very vulnerable to a counter attack. Here is an example with the US being the is initiator, both carriers have 1-1 CAP in the air:
Turn1/Scouting phase:
1. Carriers are discovered, 1-1 CAP fighters in the air. Note, that the fighters should never engage the scout as it make them vulnerable later in the turn.
Turn1/Prep phase:
2. US launches 2 fighters and 4 bombers.
3. IJN runs a SC - let's say succeeds and extends his CAP size to 3.
4. US runs a FS - let's say he succeeds and arrives at the IJN carrier (at this point 3 IJN CAP could intercept them, but they will not do it for now)
5. IJN launches 4 bombers.
Turn1/Activations:
6. US air group of 6 flights attacks IJN carrier vs 3 IJN CAPS. Depending on rolls, on average 2 bombers can get through which are seriously threatened by AA, so it may not be worth for the IJN carrier to do evasive maneuver.
Turn1/Remaining:
7. IJN moves his 4 bombers to US carrier
Turn2/Prep:
8. US has to land his 1 CAP and runs a SC - let's say succeeds and extends his CAP size to 2.
9. IJN lands 3 CAP and launches 3 bombers.
10. US launches 3 flights in the air.
11. IJN does a FS and moves his 3 bombers to the US carrier (now 7 IJN bombers and 2 CAP at US carrier)

After merging 7 IJN bombers and attacking, the US can maximally stop 4 bombers with 2 CAP, 3 bombers will surely get through. On average about 4-5 will make it through.

As you see, after the first waves the average odds are: 2 US bombers attack the IJN carrier and 4-5 bombers attack the US carrier. So, counterattack is stronger than initiator attack.

You probably notice that the 3 bombers in step 10 can attack the IJN without CAP resistance in the second wave, but remember the IJN full counter attack is coming again.

I think something similar happened in your test, but it was not so obvious in the first rounds because it was distorted by Kido Butan and lucky rolls (in the first turns CAP failed and FS succeeded, which is not a typical outcome as at max distraction the success probability of FS is only 33%, SC is 50%). Also, you stopped the test, but if you moved the 4 flights in your turn 3 to IJN carrier, the IJN carrier would have been hurt in the next round as there was to be no IJN opposition.

So, as a consequence the initiator has lower probability to inflict damage if he attacks, even with 100% success rate of FS. With FS success rate at 33% it would be foolish for him to initiate an attack. Thus he will just launch flights and let them become CAP from the next turn on. Other side will do the same, so eventually nobody will want to attack first.

I do think you are taking the theory a bit too far. There are loads of points in that playthrough that require a successful activation or can be played differently. Especially a failed Scramble activation will immediately open up a possibility for a First strike counter. Leaving out all other activations will indeed probably favor one tactic or the other, but you cannot use only two orders. The game will only work in its totality. Especially orders like Kido Butai, Long range aircraft and Press the attack give opportunities to exploit or counter the usual dynamic of the game. You (justly) think the success rate of FS is low, but with disruption you also only have a 50% chance of getting both fighters in the air with Scramble! Which would change the odds greatly at point 6, combine that with the ‘Press the attack’ activation and that strike suddenly becomes way more lethal.

Secondly, why would the US player not wait another turn to get a bigger strike in the air vs a weaker CAP? If he does not play first strike and waits a turn he can even leave one more fighter behind to augment his CAP. He can see the IJN player has a CAP of 3 but also knows all 3 only have 1 fuel. Next turn 3 flights need to be landed, if he waits, the IJN player can at max launch 2 more fighters for his CAP next turn (As he cannot carry more than 5, but by doing so he wastes the possibility of a strike next turn). The US player can then try an attack next turn, at least fighting a weaker CAP and still with the choice of augmenting his strike with a FS from his carriers as the IJN player is pushed into a corner keeping his CAP up.

Also, the risk of causing fire on an enemy carrier is an incentive to strike first, as when the fire is not quenched at the end of the turn the entire carrier is worthless for a turn.

All the above involves a lot of order activations, which can change the odds at any time. If you fail either Scramble! or First strike can instantly chance the dynamics of the battle.

You do have a point as First strike has indeed a 33% chance of critical failure, which might be a bit harsh considering that you also waste a complete strike in case of failure. Maybe a better critical failure effect would be that a certain number of flights (say, like D3) get lost and return to the carrier. I also realize that in my test-game I forgot to apply the critical failure effect of First strike. So that is indeed a point we need to look at. After all, both First strike and Scramble have both not seen a lot of testing yet.

On a related note; I did some quick and dirty research on CAPs at the four great carrier battles.
- At Coral Sea, US CAP was 9 Wildcats, 8 Dauntlesses. They downed 6 out of 69 planes as most of the CAP missed the incoming aircraft

- Midway Island launched 6 Wildcats and 20 F2A’s as aircover, they downed 5 planes (and got annihilated themselves)
- At Midway Hiryu had a CAP up of 12 planes but they failed to keep her from sinking from an attack of 24 dauntlesses.

- At Eastern Solomons the US spotted the incoming Japanese strike and launched a CAP of 53! Wildcats. Most of them missed the incoming planes, some got intercepted by the escorts, but almost no damage was done.

- At Santa Cruz the IJN got a CAP of 15 Zero’s. They downed 2 and aborted 2 planes
- The US got a CAP of 37 Wildcats, most made no contact, 2 enemies were downed.

Seeing a pattern here? Going back we might even wonder why we have the possibility of a CAP at all in the game. It is only after the US improved their fighter direction centers that a CAP started to make a big difference, as shown at the Mariana’s, but the Carrier war was all but over at that point as the IJN had no quality pilots left.

Food for thought…

I am glad we are having this discussion, thank you for taking suggestions worth considering.

On your first point I think we fundamentally disagree. I think any game should be balanced on the basic level. If the game becomes balanced only after certain player decisions and luck-dependent conditions, I see that as a problem. Such decisions as which country I choose (so I can get Kido Butai, or Press Attack) and do I roll something extraordinary should not be considered for balancing.

I also think game should be fun - I think we 100% agree here. With current rules mathematically the best way to win is to launch as many flights as possible aand leave them as CAP. Then wait and do nothing. That is not fun. Your suggestions to my example was for the US to delay their first attack to the next turn. If he does not attack in the first turn then IJN will not move his 4 bombers (Vals) to the US carrier, but leave them to be CAP the next turn. US will have max 9 flights ready for attack in the second turn (if his FS succeeds) and the IJN will have 6 flights for CAP by then (4 Vals launched the previous turn + 2 fighters if he makes a successful CS this turn). As I defender I will take those odds any day. So, I still see no case when it's worth attacking first.

I am a bit confused why you listed examples that CAP was not very effective in real life, because this is exactly the point I am trying to make: the game has CAP still overpowered. So, I am for weakening the CAP in the game, so the best tactic in the game should not be building a strong CAP and waiting. (Just a note that at Midway the IJN CAP was not too bad, they shot down dozens of US planes. They failed only because at one point they got too far from their carriers, so the last wave attack coming from another direction found the carriers undefended).

I may be wrong about the above, of course, I might have missed or misunderstood something. Let me know if that's the case.

Anyways, I am exploring two things currently:
- limiting or disallowing launch-land when carriers were under attack (activation) in the previous turn (normally this happened in real life, so it would make sense)
- allowing FS only for the initiator's first attacks (this is very tricky to define without complicating the game, has to be thought through. Something like you can do 2 FS-s in the game if you discover the enemy first, otherwise FS is not allowed for anyone)

Let me know your thoughts - if you are not already tired of this discussion

Great discussion, no problem there. You make a good point that you could add the Val's to the CAP. I did not think of that. (they would of limited value, but there is a strength in numbers indeed). I would result in a Zero + Val vs Wildcat + Dauntless slugfest just thinning the numbers on both sides.

The reason I brought up the historic data was that historically, a CAP was very inefficient (at midway, they picked off unescorted, VERY slow Devastators), and furthermore, almost worthless when flights were escorted. Even a cap of 53 planes (that would be 9 flights in Naval War) was just bypassed at Eastern Solomons because they could not find their opponents. So I agree that we need some kind of rule to reign in the CAP (I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear).

There are several ways to do this, so again that’s why I did a bit of research there. The key here is that it still needs to be fun, allow for choices, be simple (KISS principle), and preferably keep close to historical actions.
So these are the options that come into my mind, please add to the list if you have other idea’s.
Note that not all these options have to be implemented, we can pick and choose till we find some sort of balance (or go for something completely different):
- The strength of fighters can be reduced -> not allowing for the second kill. This allows escorts to shut down a Cap on a 1:1 ratio. This finds precedent in history as escorted flights were usually not shot down in numbers. However, this might be a balance problem for non-carrier fleets that rely on a bit of land-based air cover as their only means of defense.
- A softer variant of the above is to roll if you can continue to attack the next plane. So if you won your fight you can only attack the second flight on a 4+ for example
- A roll could be introduced to find an incoming flight. Which means that every CAP fighter needs to roll to be able to intercept the incoming planes. This would still favor big CAP’s though, but it would be historical.
- Diminishing returns could also be introduced. Since a CAP is spread out, it is unlikely that the entire cap will be involved in the first strike (at midway, there were continuous strikes one after another, drawing the entire CAP eventually). So the first CAP flight can join the fight on a 2+, the next on a 3+, then a 4+ capping out at 5+ for all subsequent flights. This will put a soft cap on the amount of CAP flights that can be effective.
- A hard cap on the CAP (see what I did there?), i.e. no more than 3 flights can be assigned to CAP for a squadron. This is very straightforward but also takes away a lot of decision making from the player.
All idea’s and numbers are just from the top of my head currently.

Halving the Launch/Land capacity of a carrier under attack is also a possibility, but I can see some gamey tactics exploiting that, but it might be worth to try it out and see how it effects the game.

On the balancing of the game we don’t entirely disagree. I do agree on the fact that a game should not be balanced on luck-dependant actions. But the fact that those actions exist does need to be taken into account. Damage control is on a 4+ because all fleets have a way of improving that. Speed of ships is standardized because every ship has the possibility of using flank speed.

Any considerations of the air game have to take into account that there is an activation that allows for a 1-turn attack, and an activation that allows for a 1-turn CAP. The value of the other air-related activations is that it disallows cold calculation to dominate the game, just as all surface-related activations allow for swings in gunnery and torpedo attacks. This is at the very heart of Naval War, exactly because it allows for different swings than almost any other game and breaks with the calculations that lie at the hearts of those games.

I've tried this before, but did not like that attackers knew exactly how many bombers would go pass the CAP. I also tried allowing escorts to shoot twice at the interceptors (even those already engaged), but that killed too many flights, losses were too high.At first, this sounds like an artificial limit - I am sure this could be exploited.

The rest of suggestions definitely look promising at first sight. Just wondering how much they would complicate the game. I will try to think them through and run some tests when I have the time.

Btw, are you under any time pressure to release 1.5? Or you will just release it whenever it's ready. Just want to have an idea of the urgency of figuring this out.

A hard cap is always something of a last resort measure. One example is the hard cap on ship escorts, if I find another way to fix that I'll remove it immediately.

The beauty of making your own game is that I don't have to answer to anyone. I aim to have periodical updates, but there is no set time. Past months have been pretty busy, so I'm kind of behind on 1.5, but with all these improvements to the air game it would be pointless to release them now.

Most people who play the game regularly know that they can find the Beta-rules on the forum. The main bottleneck of a release is the datacards. There are over 1100 ship datacards to be generated and the file becomes so large that I cannot upload it to the download section myself. So my webmaster (family) needs to do it for me. Usually when I get to the point that no more changes will be made to datacards that I can consider releasing a version. If I need to add or fix stuff in the rulebook that is no problem afterwards as I can upload a new version any time I want.

Currently I've added a few new ships, but more importantly, some new features to the datacards like being able to damage the searchlights. Then there are the reworked Officer cards and now the Command station cards. So once we sorted out all the air game stuff I might release 1.5 to the download section.

I really like the following idea so made some calculations and mini tested for rolls (I am not 100% sure how it will work out in a proper game).

The reason I liked this idea is that normally 2-3 caps are able to intercept based on rolls. From the mathematical perspective if 5 flight CAP is ready to intercept then the chances are the following:
13% that 1 flight will intercept
35% that 2 flights will intercept
35% that 3 flights will intercept
13% that 4 flights will intercept
2% that 5 flights will intercept

It means that in 70% of the chances there will be 2 or 3 interceptors. And there is 98% that at least 1 flight will intercept. If more caps are added, they change the chances a bit, but not significantly.

A few remarks, questions:
1. this rule basically makes the CAP designation unnecessary. All flights in the air (that still have ammo aka not on their way to land) could be used as CAP. Fuel for CAP would not be an issue they would get as many as normally. If necessary, the CAP order could still remain for quick launching CAP.
2. For consistency, I think the flights that tried to intercept, should be considered to have moved in the turn (even if they did not actually manage to intercept due to bad roll). This would prevent someone form sending everyone in the air on interception and then in the same turn sending unsuccessful ones to counter-attack mission. I have a feeling that using their movement would be enough, however another alternative would be to consider them to have finished their (unsuccessful) mission and head home. This needs concrete testing.
3. less than 6 flight attacking air groups will struggle to get through. Best tactic for attackers is to form 8-member groups before attacking. This CAP rule would make 2-3 member air attack groups useless. Should we maybe change the odds depending on the number or attackers? How was it in real life: were smaller groups harder to engage by the interceptors? Or was it actually easier?
4. Probably it's just me, but for me max number of 8 air groups and getting token for 5+ groups felt a bit unnatural. Why not maximizing 5 or 6 per air group? This feels more natural for fleet carriers that generally have 6 launch/land capacity. I am sure you had a good reason to have the cap at 8 - can you tell me bit a about this.