Aircraft Carrier Change

[Katsuraw]

Aircraft carriers could be reworked so that they can earn xp from their aircraft and fleets and armadas add 1 aircraft capacity each. In return, their promotion tree should change to better integrate into a fleet. Furthermore, the act of launching an aircraft should cost 3 movement.

Promotions:

• Level 1: Armoured Flight Deck: +10 CS on the defence
• Level 2: Angled Flight Deck: Movement cost to launch aircraft reduced to 2
• Level 3: Advanced Engines: +2 movement

• Level 1: Combat air patrol: +15 anti air strength to all naval units within 2 tiles. +2 sight range.
• Level 2: Carrier Flagship: +5 CS to all naval units in 2 tiles.
• Level 3: Deck Crews: Can heal outside of friendly territory and after attacking.

• Level 4: Supercarrier: +2 additional aircraft slots.

 

[Haig]

I like an idea that Eagle Pursuit had:

Aircraft carriers would have a build-in aircraft attack where you target an enemy (kinda like current city ranged attack) and planes would attack the target.
It would lessen the micromanagement.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Aircraft carriers could be reworked so that they can earn xp from their aircraft and fleets and armadas add 1 aircraft capacity each. In return, their promotion tree should change to better integrate into a fleet. Furthermore, the act of launching an aircraft should cost 3 movement.

Promotions:

• Level 1: Armoured Flight Deck: +10 CS on the defence
• Level 2: Angled Flight Deck: Movement cost to launch aircraft reduced to 2
• Level 3: Advanced Engines: +2 movement

• Level 1: Combat air patrol: +15 anti air strength to all naval units within 2 tiles. +2 sight range.
• Level 2: Carrier Flagship: +5 CS to all naval units in 2 tiles.
• Level 3: Deck Crews: Can heal outside of friendly territory and after attacking.

• Level 4: Supercarrier: +2 additional aircraft slots.

Aircraft Carriers are capitol ships that had no actual offensive combat capailities on its own. actually they're more of floating airstrips and less of floating fortresses. classical RPG ish promotions rule shouldn't apply to them as it was proven near impossible (And not historically accurate. CVs are very vulnerable if any 'combat ships' (warships with offensive capabilities of its own, this included missile ships as well) closed in (and it did happens sometimes in WW2. in 1940 (i think), German 'Battlecruiser' (or Battleship but i'm not sure if it was 'Panzerschiff' or 'Pocket Battleship') easily whacked British CV. Likewise in 1941-42 IJN Yamato did have a first kill count, with American CV being its victim. (somewhere near the Phillipines I think).

Aircraft Carrier should be a unit class that earns promotions through purchases. Actually This should be a unit that made extensive uses of Technical Upgrades concepts proposed by @Boris Gudenuf

 

[Evie]

You're talking about the battle off Samar.

The Imperial Japanese Navy and its battleships *lost* the battle off Samar to the American escort carriers and ended up running with their tail between their leg.

More generally, carrier planes and their aviators were a quintessential part of the carriers - trying to represent carriers without planes is a waste of a unit slot. The carrier unit should include its air group rather than building it separately.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

So then.
1. Each carrier comes with air squadrons automatically. When issuing attack order, how will these order go?? clicking at a carrier to browse an available plane or hit 'attack' order and a carrier can launch one unit. with this then. a carrier can do as many attack runs equals to number of unit slots available abroad in one turn?
2. if one carrier air unit is destroyed. this unit still needs to have air squadrons replenished. how should it be done?

 

[Haig]

Havent really thought it all the way, maybe a carrier would start with one plane/attack and upgrades would add to that.

Also the type of plane could be an upgrade
(Jets having more range and strenght etc.)

I think it would also help a.i. to simplify air combat.

 

[Evie]

As I see it the carrier would basically be a sea unit with air actions (air strike, superiority, and a new naval patrol action). At first the carrier can only perform one action per turn, but upgrades/promotions (angled deck, etc) would enable two or more actions per turn.

The carrier wing has a separate health bar that appears on the carrier. When this bar is depleted the carrier cannot launch further air missions, but it will heal naturally when the carrier heals, and can only be destroyed if the carrier is.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

There are some 'natural' progressions hat could be implemented with the idea of treating the Aircraft Carrier and its Air Wing as a single Unit.

The size of the Air Wing in Fleet Carriers started at about 30 - 40, went to 60 - 80 in US and Japanese carriers in WWII, went to 100+ in the late war Midway class supercarriers (on battleship instead of cruiser hulls), stayed at 100 but now heavier jet aircraft for the post-war Super Carriers starting with the USS Forrestal

That means 3 basic changes in the Air Wing size, one of which could include the big jump to jets, which also requires a change in the Carrier itself: wooden flight decks that had been normal until then couldn't handle the greater weight and impact of jet landings and take-offs, so major upgrades and rebuilds were necessary.

ALL Air Wings were optimized to fight Ships. The torpedo-carrying aircraft was carried by the first aircraft carriers (1918 - 1920) and dive bombing as a technique was developed by the US Marine Corps aviation and immediately added to carrier air groups in the 1930s.

So, the Air Wing or Group gives the aircraft carrier a range of action of X tiles, which will get much longer with the introduction of jet aircraft, and within that radius they can perform strikes against ships with a major bonus to their strike factors, strikes against 'ground' targets with much less effect, attack enemy aircraft, or provide more protection to the aircraft carrier itself against enemy air strikes. They also, but without requiring action by the gamer, could give the aircraft carrier a Vision range equal to their attack range: the same aircraft were used for air strikes and air reconnaissance.

Technical Upgrades to Aircraft Carriers I suggest could be:
Damage Control Parties - Reduces any damage inflicted on an Aircraft Carrier by 25%
Armored Flight Decks - increased defense factor for the Aircraft Carrier and can carry Jets
Angled Flight Decks - increased striking and air defense factors because more aircraft can get into the air faster

The Aircraft Carrier Unit should be available right after the Battleship (Dreadnaught launched in 1906, first purpose-built carrier launched 1917)

The Supercarrier, which includes all the basic Technical Upgrades and can carry 100+ Jet aircraft (so, Air Group strength much higher than anything previous) would come around 1956 CE, or mid-Atomic Era by Civ VI standards.
Possible Technical Upgrades for the Supercarrier would be:
Nuclear Propulsion - requires Uranium instead of Oil Resources, faster
Kevlar Armor - increased defense factor for the Supercarrier
Carrier AWACS - increased range and factors for Carrier Air Group, increased air defense for the Supercarrier.

 

[Civinator]

I have a similar setting for aircraft carriers in my C3C mod CCM 2.50:

Spoiler :

 

[Katsuraw]

Aircraft Carriers are capitol ships that had no actual offensive combat capailities on its own. actually they're more of floating airstrips and less of floating fortresses. classical RPG ish promotions rule shouldn't apply to them as it was proven near impossible (And not historically accurate. CVs are very vulnerable if any 'combat ships' (warships with offensive capabilities of its own, this included missile ships as well) closed in (and it did happens sometimes in WW2. in 1940 (i think), German 'Battlecruiser' (or Battleship but i'm not sure if it was 'Panzerschiff' or 'Pocket Battleship') easily whacked British CV. Likewise in 1941-42 IJN Yamato did have a first kill count, with American CV being its victim. (somewhere near the Phillipines I think).

Aircraft Carrier should be a unit class that earns promotions through purchases. Actually This should be a unit that made extensive uses of Technical Upgrades concepts proposed by @Boris Gudenuf

Right, but aircraft carriers have been given modifications, refits, etc to increase their effectiveness. Midway class for example was retrofitted with the angled flight deck. I bring this up because other naval units such as the naval ranged and melee directly reference physical/technological upgrades in its promotions. Furthermore, IRL, Carriers are credited for their actions in war, so they should also earn promotions. My idea was for the carrier to be more integrated into the fleet operations, specifically in the CAP and Carrier Flagship promotions, granting additional buffs to the fleet.

 

[Katsuraw]

I like an idea that Eagle Pursuit had:

Aircraft carriers would have a build-in aircraft attack where you target an enemy (kinda like current city ranged attack) and planes would attack the target.
It would lessen the micromanagement.

Ah, I thought of this. I would give carriers 2 functionalities: Scout and Strike. Carriers would have a sight of 3, movement of 3 (like it is now). Scout costs 3 movement and extends sight by 2 for 3 turns. Strike costs 3 movement and acts as a 5 range ranged attack. Promotions can decrease the movement cost of strike, add additional movement points and add range to the ranged attack. This way you could upgrade an atomic era carrier to an information era carrier to add more CS.

The problem I saw with this was the power balance between carriers and other naval units. If you gave the carrier (or carrier armada specifically) the same ranged strength as a fighter, it blows the battleship/missile cruiser out of the water. You'd also need to factor city bombard strength and so on, as well as AA interactions.

This would only work if a carrier's mechanics are changed to having "charges", each action costs a charge and charges regenerate every few turns and have separate cool downs. This represents the launch, recovery and repair of launched aircraft. However, you'd have to factor how AA strength affects this. This prevents the carrier from being a higher range, higher CS naval ranged unit that can attack several times per turn.

I'd give the carrier 2 actions to start with, and they regain charges every 3 turns. That way, if you rotate your strikes, you can launch an attack every 1.5 turns on average, which balances it with other naval units. The carrier just has high burst damage potential which seems accurate.

If this were the case, I'd change the promotions to:

• Level 1: Angled Flight Deck: Increases action charges by 1
• Level 2: Catapult Launch: Regain charges 1 turn faster
• Level 3: Advanced Engines: +2 movement

• Level 1: Combat air patrol: +15 anti air strength to all naval units within 2 tiles, +1 sight range when scouting.
• Level 2: Carrier Flagship: +5 CS to all naval units in 2 tiles.
• Level 3: Deck Crews: Can heal outside of friendly territory and after attacking.

• Level 4: Supercarrier: +1 action charge

A fully promoted carrier can attack twice per turn on average or unleash a truly devastating strike mission. The problem then is how you deal with AA. If you made it so that for every 15 AA strength your opponent has over your strike, that charge regains 1 turn slower, that might work.

This would allow carriers to be upgraded too, since there is a glitch that causes upgrading carriers to delete all on board planes. You'd have to add a maintenance cost to carriers though, 2 aluminium, 1 oil sounds fair. An upgraded carrier would cost uranium instead of oil.

For base stats, since you have to factor in Armadas and Fleets, the ranged strength of an armada should be close to the ranged strength of a fighter, without bombard strength (since that's not the job of a carrier). I'd do it like this:

Aircraft Carrier:

• Melee CS: 65
• Ranged CS: 80
• Range: 5
• Sight: 3
• Movement: 3
• Actions: 2
• Maintenance: 13 gold, 2 aluminium, 1 oil

And the subsequent Nuclear Carrier:

• Melee CS: 75
• Ranged CS: 90
• Range: 5
• Sight: 3
• Movement: 4
• Actions: 3
• Maintenance: 19 gold, 2 aluminium, 1 uranium

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

There are some 'natural' progressions hat could be implemented with the idea of treating the Aircraft Carrier and its Air Wing as a single Unit.

The size of the Air Wing in Fleet Carriers started at about 30 - 40, went to 60 - 80 in US and Japanese carriers in WWII, went to 100+ in the late war Midway class supercarriers (on battleship instead of cruiser hulls), stayed at 100 but now heavier jet aircraft for the post-war Super Carriers starting with the USS Forrestal

That means 3 basic changes in the Air Wing size, one of which could include the big jump to jets, which also requires a change in the Carrier itself: wooden flight decks that had been normal until then couldn't handle the greater weight and impact of jet landings and take-offs, so major upgrades and rebuilds were necessary.

ALL Air Wings were optimized to fight Ships. The torpedo-carrying aircraft was carried by the first aircraft carriers (1918 - 1920) and dive bombing as a technique was developed by the US Marine Corps aviation and immediately added to carrier air groups in the 1930s.

Eh? Ain't there any 'Land attacking Carrier Airwings?' at that time yet? Japan DID invest some effort on CV to attack land targets especially in 20-40s in their war VS China (Since Republic of China at that time did not have a real Navy beyond a small fleet of gunboats and Destroyers to fight against, so Japan simply fitted land attacking bombs to torpedo launching planes.). EVEN Imperial Japanese ARMY has one or two Aircraft Carriers (with personnels dressed in Army uniforms and using Army organizations rather than navy I think. Navy running infantrymen regiments either as fighting men dressed in sailor unforms or dedicated marines and with armored supports were common. Army running a fleet of heavyweight warships... mmm not so much)

So, the Air Wing or Group gives the aircraft carrier a range of action of X tiles, which will get much longer with the introduction of jet aircraft, and within that radius they can perform strikes against ships with a major bonus to their strike factors, strikes against 'ground' targets with much less effect, attack enemy aircraft, or provide more protection to the aircraft carrier itself against enemy air strikes. They also, but without requiring action by the gamer, could give the aircraft carrier a Vision range equal to their attack range: the same aircraft were used for air strikes and air reconnaissance.

Technical Upgrades to Aircraft Carriers I suggest could be:
Damage Control Parties - Reduces any damage inflicted on an Aircraft Carrier by 25%
Armored Flight Decks - increased defense factor for the Aircraft Carrier and can carry Jets
Angled Flight Decks - increased striking and air defense factors because more aircraft can get into the air faster

The Aircraft Carrier Unit should be available right after the Battleship (Dreadnaught launched in 1906, first purpose-built carrier launched 1917)

The Supercarrier, which includes all the basic Technical Upgrades and can carry 100+ Jet aircraft (so, Air Group strength much higher than anything previous) would come around 1956 CE, or mid-Atomic Era by Civ VI standards.
Possible Technical Upgrades for the Supercarrier would be:
Nuclear Propulsion - requires Uranium instead of Oil Resources, faster
Kevlar Armor - increased defense factor for the Supercarrier
Carrier AWACS - increased range and factors for Carrier Air Group, increased air defense for the Supercarrier.

And how to represent air wing casaulty reducing Carrier offensive capability? Naval aircrafts aren't assembled inside carriers, instead they were built in assembly plants on land.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Please read my post. Carriers aren't prohibited from attacking land targets with their Air Wing, they just aren't as good at it as land-based aircraft are. After all, ALL the carrier aircraft were single-engined types with less bomb-carrying capacity than the twin-engined medium bombers or even the heavier land--based fighter aircraft. On the other hand, their munitions (torpedos, armor-piercing bombs) were optimized against naval craft, and attacking ships was primarily that they trained for.

 

[Civinator]

After all, ALL the carrier aircraft were single-engined types with less bomb-carrying capacity than the twin-engined medium bombers or even the heavier land--based fighter aircraft.

Of course here you are only speaking about WW2 carriers (with the exception of the Doolittle Raid - and those B-25s were not able to land again on the carrier), not about cold war and modern carriers.

Here is per example the Civ 3 twin-engined carrier-based A3 Skywarrior, frequently used on board of cold war US carriers:

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Of course here you are only speaking about WW2 carriers (with the exception of the Doolittle Raid - and those B-25s were not able to land again on the carrier), not about cold war and modern carriers.

Here is per example the Civ 3 twin-engined carrier-based A3 Skywarrior, frequently used on board of cold war US carriers:

View attachment 612450

Sorry, should have made that clear: the 65,000 ton and up Supercarriers have an entirely different set of Air Wing capabilities in Range, Striking Power, Reconnaissance, etc based on the use of advanced jet aircraft - and, most recently, increasing use of missiles and UAVs of all kinds, which van Crefeld has maintained for a decade or more are the real future of military Aviation.

I think Post-Modern Units are largely wasted in the game without a radical redesign of the late game Civ, but if we were to proliferate late-game Units I'd note that of the 60 or so 'aircraft carriers' in the world today, 3/4 of them are smaller 'carriers' that only carry VTOL, helicopter, and UAV machines, and some of that class were originally 'Upgraded' conventional WWII and post-WWII (non Super) Aircraft Carriers. They could be added to the game but really I feel would be redundant unless the game also shows the real cost of building and maintaining a Super Carrier in Industrial infrastructure and resources required.

 

[jsciv69]

I would like to see Amphibious Transport Carriers. This would go perfectly with the hopeful return of Marines to the Civ Franchise. I myself served on a ATC. The USS Tripoli. This functioned manly as a Carrier for transport helicopters. But it was also capable of also supporting Hover-Planes. This would be a vital late-game Sea- unit. Instrumental for Amphibious operations of any kind.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

the thing I hate about how Civ 6 handles carriers is you have to purposefully get them attacked in order to earn experience points. maybe the airplanes themselves should earn XP for the ship.

 

[Katsuraw]

the thing I hate about how Civ 6 handles carriers is you have to purposefully get them attacked in order to earn experience points. maybe the airplanes themselves should earn XP for the ship.

Yeah, implementing a built in ranged attack to emulate "strike missions" would allow the carrier to earn xp instead of on board planes.