I'm Back! - Do Planes indicate carrier groups?

[Schlageter-JG26]

Just getting back to this wonderful program.

I'll be catching up on mods since I started playing with fatigue, boat speed and guns way back when. Hope to find some cool stuff out there by now! :up:

Btw - Sorry to read of my Connecticut neighbor passing away last year.

But here's a question - it is March 27th, 1942 in my new campaign. I have just begun my 3rd sortie and have sailed out so I am just SW of Midway by a few hundred miles. Contact inbound reported... very fast... aircraft... ENEMY!!!!

Does the game have random flights that far out from the Japanese mainland, or does it populate flights within a radius of a carrier fleet?

Do I have a carrier fleet somewhere within reach and a full complement of torpedoes? :arrgh!:

Also - does the game put fleets in approximate locations based on historical data?

Or should I watch where the plane goes when it leaves and follow that angle??

[tater]

If it's stock, in that location it's a bug where the Midway attack forces (early june) generate their airgroups even without the CVs being there.

[Schlageter-JG26]

Bummer. I was playing it late last night when the plane came across... I think my butt tightened when I thought there might be a battle fleet about to roll over me. :ping:

[Morpheus]

Hi

i got alerted on a carrier task force through excessive air traffic in my area, coming off the same location (java seas). i marked the positions and directions, and found out the general course of the fleet. i made a run around attack and sunk 4 carriers, can not rembember the types ... was a lot of fun, and keept me in excitement over the night :)

kr morph

[Red Lord of Chaos]

There seem to be 2 airgroups moving west from Midway, one fast, one slow, it was tempting to track in on the slower one but I couldn't get anything on Sonar.
Playing as a U-Boat there seems to be a similar carrier airgroup on the south east side of grid KM.

[Frame57]

I get sent to the Celebes sea a lot for some reason and I decided to head in the direction the aircraft were coming from and sure enough I found some Japanese Carriers. Does not always pan out for me though.

[tater]

The planes are indeed related to CV airgroups. The problem lies in "scripted" groups in the campaign. "Scripted" (as opposed to "random") groups in SH4 spawn their airgroups from the moment the campaign loads their .mis file (as requested by Campaign.cfg).

Some will be "real" others will not.

It's sort of silly since the airstrike paradigm has all those planes flying around all the time, which would never have happened in RL. 99% of the time there should be no planes.

[Frame57]

I agree they do spawn at a ridiculous rate. especially if you play the german boats in the expansion edition. I can set my watch by those aircraft....But I have fun shooting them down. My german crew sucks at it so i usually man a gun myself to get er done. But my american crew generally nails the Betty's everytime but not so much with the bombers or torpedo planes.