I feel like my brother and I have started a trend here; now instead of people just saying "we want this", people are saying "We want this, and this is what we think it should be capable of". I love it!

As for my thoughts (and my brother Jacob's too; he prefers that I be the one doing the typing since I'm better at it), Most of it sounds good, but I disagree with the lack of defense against Submarines; they need some defense, at least to represent the strength of the hull; Aircraft Carriers were notorious for being extremely difficult to sink. If they are not to have any defense against subs, then I would say to increase the HP to represent their difficulty in sinking (which should be pretty high to begin with).

We would also get rid of the Battleship pre-req; many early aircraft carriers actually were converted from unfinished cruisers into carriers; converted battleships were less common. If they need a pre-req, then Naval Bombers would be a more fitting one for that.

I think you may get some flak for the "Airfield scramble" idea, due to the controversy about it right now. In this case though, I do think that it would make far more sense for Aircraft Carriers than it does for airfields as it is right now.

All in all, I like the concepts. Presentation-wise, I particularly like the tables you used for the stats-per level. (I didn't know about those). I'll let you know if I think of anything else in this regard.

This doesn't matter, the devs aren't going to change what they have already done, especially if the unit is giving them trouble anyway.

Good point.

It really, really isn't.

This doesn't happen.

The WW II experiences of the classes following USS Essex (top, hangar deck armour) HMS Illustrious (flight deck armour)and HIJMS Shokaku (hangar deck armour) provide interesting comparisons.

Some were pretty tough.

fun > realism

Easy now Eruth, you asked for criticism, and I gave you my honest and semi-unbiased opinion. I'm not trying to nit-pick.

The only reason I would not apply this in the case is because the pattern with tanks does not follow with Naval Units. None of the ships require pre-reqs except for the Nuclear units. So in this case, it would be more likely for the ship to not have a pre-req.

Besides, by that logic we should have to research DD for CC and both DD and CC for BB.

Those classes of ship were already around during the beginning of the era, whereas the 'novel' technologies that aren't as mainline are being built or improved on from previous techs.

I'll give you medium tanks, but the heavy tank were not. It is more than just thicker armour, it is also space, gun, track, engine, suspension and many other things. Most importantly of all is weight. Light and medium tanks can be quite similar but heavy and medium tanks are very different.

Did you just say your own point was pointless?

The argument that CVs were built off Cruisers was to nullify the BB requirement, so you can't really nullify it when it did its job, but whatever
You specifically left out tactical and strategic bombers, any particular reason?

We said they were built from scratch, which they were in WWII, then you went on your silly rant.

I think it makes more sense that America and UK start with carriers in the blitz scenario. Clearly, the requirements for building a carrier should be after level 2 cruisers and not battleships. However, they did have armor and the troops did have minor weapons emplacements for defense. A surfaced sub (for torpedoed attacks) was indeed vulnerable to surface defensive fire thus carriers should have a small defense against subs.

A viable option (playability wise) ought to be to convert units (they would have to be sitting in a factory province). A cruiser could be in 'dry dock' at a port and be able to convert into a carrier (and back again if need be) where it would exchange it's firepower for airport capabilities. Though a medium tank couldn't change into a heavy tank, it could (at a level 2 factory) be converted to a mobile artillery (and back again) of the same level. A light tank could be converted into an armored car (i.e., the armaments are sacrificed to gain more speed).

These conversions would each need to take time, have available space in a production facility, and cost some resources (or even gain resources like with the light-tank-to-armored-car conversion). I think that the manpower maintennance costs would need to be unchanged (or only slightly changed) so I think this would be a fairly reasonable limiting factor in determining which unit types can be converted.

Also, instead of just willy nilly conversions happening across the board, perhaps a research addition should be required. For example, to convert any level light tank to an armored car would require the "Armored Car/Light Tank Conversion Schematics" tech researched (perhaps a smaller tech around day 8 and has pre-reqs of level 1 of armored car and level 1 light tank. Also, to save space on the chart, this tech might share a row with the Armored Car section of the armored classes.

I have been having fits on occasion at the lack of carriers. But one would need to have special limitations. For example, all carriers level 1 - 3 would have to have less capacity than levels 4 - 5 (or whatever counts are decided). And you ought to be able to have a combination of fighters and one choice of bomber types. The limit on fighters should be up to five but sacrificing two fighters to make room for one bomber (so you can have at most 5 fighters or else 1 fighter and two bombers).

Also, non-naval bombers can't land on an aircraft carrier, so to simulate this, an aircraft carrier can only load non-naval bombers at port. Once launched, non-naval bombers taking off from an aircraft carrier can not return to the carrier. Thus, if another airport is not within range of it's target (note I didn't say within range of it's launch point) then the bomber is said to be on a suicide mission and must take on the nuclear bomber behavior.

On that last note, whereas tactical, naval, and regular bombers take up two fighter slots, a nuclear bomber would take up four. This way, a carrier will always have the ability to host at least one fighter and can't carry more than one nuke bomber (which would be serious overkill, otherwise).

Jet fighters would be a special case also. They would take up only one fighter slot, but would have to follow the rules of a non-naval bomber for loading and re-basing. And since they have such short ranges to begin with they would be a less-tempting suicidal unit. I don't think it would be reasonable to make it possible for a level 5 carrier to be able to start landing jet fighters as the era is still wrong. Realistically, jet fighters had a great amount of difficulty landing on converted Hornet class carriers after the war (thus necessitating the Kittyhawk class carriers later on). (And arresting wire technology couldn't handle the faster landing speeds either.)

Finally, on this whole 'scrambling' issue that has everyone's bee in a bonnet. There is a very simple solution to the reality of scrambling air units and it is this. An air unit's ability to scramble was based mostly on the surprise of the attack. To simulate the possible surprise factor, each unit should have a chance to scramble and a chance to fail getting off the ground. For example, a fighter might be given a 50/50 chance to take off. Once it has taken off, however, it must be considered to be re-basing at another airport (if one is within range) or else it must be destroyed. Returning to convoy mode AFTER fighting in a pitched battle for up to 15(?) minutes is completely unrealistic as the airfield is not usable for landing DURING a fight. If the battle is over in less than 15 minutes, the fighter can land. If the battle is not yet over, the fighter must re-base elsewhere or crash.

This is so obvious but has anyone considered it before? Also, tactical bombers and nuclear bombers (if they manage to scramble) should not be allowed to fight this battle and must immediately re-base (or crash if there is no base within it's range).

Finally, the odds of scrambling should depend in part on the class of aircraft (and slightly better odds for level (at least for the fighter) ). A fighter should start at 50/50 but a level 5 fighter might have a 10% improvement which would make it 55/45 chance. A regular bomber might be 40/60. A naval bomber might be 45/55. A tactical bomber might be 30/70. And a nuclear bomber might only be 15/85. The different odds would simulate size of craft, time needed to fuel up enough to escape, and cargo loading times (one doesn't send up a bomber without bombs, though the realism of that part may be debatable).

I almost forgot, if you have jet fighters, perhaps they could have a 60/40 odds of successfully scrambling.

This is my '32' cents since I've taken Ball's 30 cents and added my own 2 cents.

;-]

Jet fighters are just high level fighters and when you scramble, you take off and fly somewhere. If you have a 3 in 5 chance of your plane actually taking off from a strip, I recommend getting new fitters, riggers and aircraft manufacturers.

I haven't read the rest of the post but I presume it is just more inaccuracies(no offence).

Make no assumptions. And a mistake on my take about how the scramble works has nothing to do with my other suggestions and how wonderfully applicable they are to this game.