Why do you want low LRCAP? Can you get by with using some of float planes on CAP?
Most cruisers and capital ships only carry a couple of spotters and they are not much of a deterrence when 20+ dive bombers escorted by modern fighters are on your case. Also, if you are doing bombardment some float planes should be set to recon the hex with the rest performing naval search.
You don't actually need to set the target. Just set them to a Recon mission and you'll be fine.
I took Lowpe's post #10 above and put it in a txt document to save in my Matrix Games/WITPAE/Docs folder. Here it is for any others who want to do the same:
EDIT: I also did it in Rich Text Format (RTF - readable in WordPad) but cannot upload this to the forum, so just open the text file in WordPad, format it how you like and save it as an RTF file.
Thanks to Walker84 for opening up this thread to me. This was obviously a good discussion. I can add just a couple of things. I've never set a reaction range for a bombardment task force. I do think that this had something to do with the unexpected movement. Also, setting the task force to Full Speed changes what is expected to happen. The bombardment mission set with Mission Speed has the task force move at mission speed to a hex where the task force will make a full speed run into the target at night, then run toward home full speed during the day. It will then proceed at mission speed. Setting the task force to Full Speed, for me, makes the run in to target less predictable. I may get there during the night, maybe during the day.
I've had problems, using mission speed, when I assigned the bombardment mission when I was closer than the full speed run-in distance to the target. If the target was 6 hexes away, and my task force full speed was 9 hexes, and I then set the task force to bombard, I've had strange things occur. I've seen my task force move away from target in order to get to the desired full speed distance from the target. I've also had it just sit there and do nothing. Walker84's setting was Full Speed, so this may not apply.
My recommendation is to use Mission Speed, and assign the mission as far away from the target as possible, helping the AI come up with a reasonable approach.
Just my experiences, nothing definite. Good discussion though.
I have been bombarding a trapped Japanese unit on a small island one hex away from my bombardment TF home base. No problems at all making the round trip.
The only time the bombardments seem to draw a blank (retire without firing) is if lack of recon drops the D/L on the enemy too low or the weather is horrible (heavy rain or severe storms).
No matter how bad a situation is, you can always make it worse. - Chris Hadfield : An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth
I have just had one of those horrible moments when you watch the combat replay and your naval bombardment force turns up somewhere it was not supposed to be. Although I have asked Apbarog not to view this post we have had several (friendly) discussions about it already.
Here's the situation. I ordered a night naval bombardment of my opponent's base at Tagula Island and all looked well until I saw that the TF had sailed in the wrong direction to Rennell Island where, after I sank a couple of TKs, my opponent's LBA had a field day as my TF was left a sitting duck in the daylight, a few hexes from Lunga.
Now, I can accept that orders get misconstrued in war and commanders embark on suicidal missions (Charge of the Light Brigade?) but it still irks me that this could happen so arbitrarily in the game. If I had decided to raid Rennell and got it wrong so that my ships were still there in daylight to get bombed I could live with it.
So I had to go back to the saved turn to check if I might have targeted Rennell by mistake and this wasn't the case. However, I realised I forgot to set the TF reaction setting to zero which may be the root cause of this. I don't think the TF could have diverted to Rennell to bombard so it must have been some kind of reaction, even though the TF path was nowhere near 6 hexes of Rennell at any point. Would it really react that far in response to say a Mavis sighting a couple of Allied ships near Rennell?
As you can imagine, I'm disappointed and very wary about bombardments now so thought I would raise this in the forum in case anyone can shed any more light on this. I have also provided a map below summarising the movements as well as the task force settings I had used.
how did u make the game look like that pic? wat mod?