Strategic Deployment and Carrier Group Tactics!

[HMS Empire Broadsword]

Hello chaps,

I have recently settled into HOI3, and its Summer 1944 as the USA. I have just spotted a large Japanese fleet, with multiple carriers, battleships and othe ships commanded by Yammamoto, and have sent pretty much 80% of my entire battle forces to deal with it.

Im sending in at least 8 battleships, as well as all 3 of my Carrier Fleets (each consisting of 5 fleet carriers, an escort carrier, and cruisers) to surround the Japanese fleet, which I think should be heavily outnumbered by me.

So how should I attack with carriers? Do I send the Carrier fleet near the Japanese fleet and let the CAG Duty CAGS attack them, or should I try and attack the Japs at range, sending my CAGS on Naval Strike Missions? And while Im here, should I send battleships and cruisers to the same maritime region as the enemy?


The other thing I wanted to know is how do I use Strategic Deployment for land units? Its annoying having to wait for a 4 mile per hour Corps HQ unit to cross the US from NEw York to San Francisco.

Cheers

[Town Watch]

if carrier vs carrier CAG Duty
land based air cover will be a nice boost if you can get any (especially for the BBs)
basically as it is now in the game, CAG duty is for the most part the best carrier air mission, because if has the highest air mission efficiency. Normally air units get heavily penalized, the more squadrons you have in the fight, you can even go to negative efficiency and your units will be shredded vs only a few squadrons. But CAG dutying carrier squadrons can basically stack quite comfortably. Also if you have only a low quality bombing doctrines researched at the time, CAG duty gets you the most benefit. Port strikes can also be effective. essentially they are the way to strike at the enemy if he doesn't come out of port, but your CAGs will get disorganized pretty fast after striking. So its best to use NAVs for that.

Nav strikes from carrier squadrons I would only basically use if the enemy gets a really lucky retreat with damaged ships at like 10% health or something like that. But even so, I think there might be a bug in the current game, which basically allows CAGs to fight at 0% ORG at full efficiency. heard something like that happening. You could use a small part of your CAGs as advanced recon if you want to find the enemy but alone they won't do much dmg. And always leave enough functional CAGs to protect the fleet.

[HMS Empire Broadsword]

Thank you Town Watch. So you're saying use CAG Duty when attacking enemy fleet, but doesnt that mean that I need to place the carriers quite close to the opposing fleet? I dont want to do that with carriers, because they're defencless, and when they take damage it takes months to repair. Surely If I sailed right up to an enemy fleet with acrriers and attacked with CAG Duty planes, my carriers themselves would take hits from Battleships and cruisers?