Is Naval Combat like Land Combat in that FTRs must retreat if there are no naval units left at the end of a combat round?
Yes correct. Planes fly back to carriers as the carriers retire from battle.
I think this is answered by “At the end combat cycle air units that cannot land on aircraft carrier [ on page 6] or excess to Aircraft Carrier capacity must retreat.” but it seems odd.
In the event that your carriers are allocated as hits, and you have a situation where you have more planes then carriers to land on them, your required to retreat excess planes, because it now becomes a question of a quasi- kamakazi run, because the planes have no place to land.
e.g., my American FTRs in Hawaii (n.b., willing to brave the withering Japanese naval AA guns) scramble to engage Japanese air in the surrounding sea zone, but only get one round of combat before they have to retreat to Hawaii?
If its just air vs air and no naval below, then yes its one round. Remember the air combat is always aerial combat values.
Same with Hawaiian DAS that scrambled to support the fleet under attack. One cycle of combat and they have to land? I’m having a hard time with this one – I tried to justify by saying o.k. you have to land on CV to refuel for the next cycle of combat, however we don’t make that distinction in Land Combat.
This is different: AS long as you have naval combat you can perform concurrent air combat rounds over the sky, eventually air superiority will occur and you get to attack ships until they retreat or are destroyed. So this may be multi round affair.
I saw some earlier discussions on this. It sounds great on paper, but once I started rolling dice and lost a nice navy while aircraft just sat in Hawaii, I didn’t understand it anymore.
Huh? why didnt the carrier just retreat? If the enemy bring in a fleet and has no air cover, he will be chewed up if the other side has air cover. Thats the way its supposed to be. Perhaps im not getting what happened. Provide an example.