I have so far finished my experiment with interception rates.
*snip*
My first surprise (and most likely the reason my own Fighter Squadrons perform so poorly): Interceptors never launched in the round they are ordered to perform CAP (= Combat Air Patrol). Only in the following round they will start intercepting enemy aircraft.
Well that's both interesting and highly annoying, since the AI knows where your units are, and will tend to avoid cities that can defend themselves, in favour of those that can't. Presumably the distance over which CAP-missions can be flown depends on the Range-stat of the (Fighter) planes involved...? So you would have to station a dozen or so Fighter-squadrons in a town central enough to defend as many potentially vulnerable neighbours from incoming Bombers as possible,
before the AI starts bombing them.
So transferring a fighter to a dangered aera means, that the fighter will need three rounds to get operational (1. round: transfer, 2. round: receiving orders, 3. round: finally getting operational and performing CAP).
Which adds weight to my suggestion of making Fighters M=2,
if that would indeed then allow both rebasing
and setting to CAP on the same turn. At least that way your flyboys might go on duty on Turn 2, rather than Turn 3...
What I do not know how the movement of Aircraft Carriers intervenes with CAP.
I suspect that it doesn't, so long as you don't have the 'Cancel Orders...' preferences checked, and avoid using the 'Wake all' right-click stack-command after you've set the Fighters aboard a Carrier to fly CAP-missions.
And I have currently no idea how to test that.
From my current game-in-progress (PtW, Standard-size, Random-Map/-MyCiv/-AICivs, Emp), I
do know that if you have ships (threatening an enemy's coasts and) within range of enemy Bombers, the AI
will bomb them if it has nothing more attractive to do -- at least the PtW-AI will. And if you have a Fighter aboard a Carrier in amongst (or nearby) that Fleet, it
can fly CAP-missions (my single Carrier-based Fighter eventually shot down an incoming Ottoman Bomber
)
So to test the effect of Carrier- movement, you'd need a map where the AI's Bombers can't reach your homeland. Then you could put a stack of Fighters (with 100% intercept-probability) onto a small fleet of Carriers (remember to turn off their AA-defence, if you're doing this in C3C), set all the Fighters to fly CAP missions, and then sail your Carriers into range of the AI's Bombers (which likewise should have their Lethal Sea-bombard ability turned off under C3C). After your Carriers arrive (and fortify?) in enemy waters, count how many turns it takes before your Fighters get scrambled. Even if the "no CAP until 1T after the mission is set" rule also applies to Fighters on a Carrier, if the time in transit was longer than 3T, you may get an immediate interception/ shootdown. Once your Fighters have made their first interception, move the Carriers 1 tile and count how many more turns it takes before the next interception/ shootdown occurs.
Using, say, 10-12 Fighters aboard 3 Carriers, vs 10 AI-Bombers, and running this trial 8-10 times, you should be reasonably sure of getting reasonably representative results.