Air Interception off Carriers - Possible?

[Troyens]

I haven't gotten to use carriers yet, although I did Edit their transport capability up to 5.

Eventually, I will get to them, or, someone surely will produce a WW II Pacific scenario. That brings up a question. . .

Aircraft carriers in WW II got their protection mostly from FIGHTERS flying Combat Air Patrol. They rarely were close enough to enemy warships to be endangered by surface action. Once in a great while a sub could damage them, but that was unusual. Attacks by bombers were the danger.

To defend against bombers, fighters flew CAP - a form of interception.

Not having that option in Civ II was most annoying. Does it exist in Civ III?? If the same defense factor exists for carriers regardless of how many fighter units it is carrying, Civ III then will have the same major flaw as Civ II regarding carriers. A flaw that should be patched ASAP.

 

[Troyens]

17 views so far - and no one seems to know the answer??

 

[Jimmicus]

I can't say for sure, but I have set a jet fighter up on air superiority while on a stationary carrier. It was however never atacked by aircraft so I've no idea whther or not it is effective! I'll do some experimentation in my current game and let you know.

 

[Mr Spice]

There was a discussion about this a while ago, and if I remember correctly the conclusion was this:

It does work, but when you move the carrier all planes are put into sleep so you have to wake your fighters and give them the air superiority command every single turn for it to work. Or you could just station your carrier somewhere and not move it.

 

[Troyens]

Well, as long as it works. . . SOMEHOW!

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Hi there,

I saw your post regarding air superiority missions for fighters stationed on carriers.

I just finished a game last night that was set on continents 70% water on warlord level. I was the Germans and was at war with England and France (how cool is that?). Anyways there was a city of mine on an island that was being attacked by the English. I had an aircraft carrier group nearby that composed of the following; 1 carrier with 2 bombers and 2 piston fighters, 2 destroyers, and 1 battleship. My city on this island was within air range of England and they would bombard the city every turn. I moved my carrier group close to this island city having put both fighter on air superiority missions well before the carrier arrived. The English then sent two bombers after this group. The first bomber hit my battleship but the second bomber was intercepted and shot down by one of my fighters! I had not reassigned my fighters to air superiority since initially loading them onto the carrier. It was really cool to see that happen!

Just thought I'd share my experiences with you all. To finish the story my island city never was captured and my carrier group never had a single casualty. I finished the game with the 4th highest score and was still at war with England having made peace with France.

 

[Richard III]

Moff, tears started to stream down my cheeks reading that story. German carrier pilots, scramblin off the decks to intercept! Planes in the drink! It's beautiful man, beautiful!

 

[Grotius]

I have based jet fighters on carriers, and I've assigned superiority missions to them. But I'm not sure what the rules are: do the fighters stay on "superiority mission" if you move the carrier? For that matter, do fighters in cities stay on that mission indefinitely once it's assigned? Are they "asleep" when it's assigned? I've been regularly re-assigning the mission to be sure.

BTW, the changes to aircraft are one of the many good things in Civ III. I don't miss the tedium of counting squares to make sure I don't run out of fuel. The new bombing animation is cool. And I just love the fighter animation.

 

[Sarcastro]

(Sigh.) My home internet connection is finally restored (it's been out since Excite.com went belly-up on Dec. 1), so I can finally download the patch and finally use Air Superiority! Sweet Jesus, it's been a long wait.

In recent games, I've just had to sit there and take it when fighting someone with bombers. That's rough, but I did develop a strategy to deal with it. This could be of use if, for instance, an opponent somehow develops air power before you do.

The AI seems to want to attack terrain improvements before anything else, so if a city is under attack, in my experience, it's never directly hit until all the improvments around it are destroyed. So if you have a huge force of workers around it, constantly rebuilding the improvements, you can stall actual damaging attacks until you can get fighters to respond, or kill the bombers' base. This works really well if air power is the only way the enemy can get to you, obviously, but if you have the ground forces to defend the workers, it can help remove the enemy's air capabilities as a big factor in the fight.