User blog comment:Hayashi H/30 October Fighter Quest-chain/@comment-175.156.32.28-20151104080603/@comment-26486243-20151104172033


 * Flak guns will shoot 'most' bombers down, not all. Generally the squadron in the highest slot will survive with a low slot number to the final boss. Rather than worrying about losing ranks though, the idea is that one of the larger benefits of sortieing torpedo bombers is their initial strike. In an AACI + heavy AA situation, the initial strike of most squadrons will be reduced to a level below effectiveness on anything but destroyers, as their slot size is severely reduced. That wipes out the advantage of initial strike. The remaining strength of specialised bombers is adding more firepower to shelling phase, but if the carrier is already at firepower cap, further additions are square rooted, diminishing that angle. The FB is left as possessing that niche as it still enables shelling, the small contribution to firepower doesn't matter if it's already/almost already maxed, but it still adds Air Power - which may or may not be useful, depending on the situation.


 * Air battle nodes don't have a shelling phase. Having more air power and AACI is a defensive move, based on cutting down all enemy bomber squadrons to the point that their damage will only be able to deal scratch at best. With a few other squadrons you should be able to deal enough damage to cross with a B-rank. The idea here is to preserve your plane count and minimise damage taken to the fleet, since the drops in non-boss nodes are bad anyway.


 * The reduction of air power from T62s due to AA and AACI mechanics is why they function better as a preboss amp to gain Air Supremacy on aerial/BWS nodes, while Air Superiority at boss node is generally still a job for pure green fighters. I think I specifically mentioned that the likely reduction in air power from shot-down T62 Iwai will be around 26-33.


 * Chuuha ships always deal 30% less damage in shelling, while damage is 100% from shouha and above. If you put a T62 on an armored carrier on air superiority mode it will shell at 0.7*150 = 105 damage, with a 10/20% critdmg multiplier. If you put a T62 on a normal carrier it will deal zero when chuuhaed. If you put 3 squadrons of torpedo bombers on an armoured carrier, it can potentially shell for more than 217 damage, which is reduced to 150 damage cap in chuuha with a 40% critdmg% multiplier. If you put 3 squadrons of torpedo bombers on a standard carrier, it will shell for 150 (extra FP square rooted) in good health with 40% multiplier, and zero in chuuha. Because stacking torpedo bombers benefits armoured carriers more than standard carriers, while using T62 and stacking fighters benefits standard carriers more than armoured carriers (standard carriers normally have higher slot sizes, so they contribute more Air Power this way), the torpedo bomber complement should be mounted on the armoured carriers that can use them much better, while the T62 should be mounted on the standard carriers that lose little from mounting it.


 * Finally, the shelling order here fires in order of attack range, not in order of fleet position, because this type of combined fleet relies entirely on enemy fleets to trigger double shelling phases. Against a multi-BWS node that does not possess a battleship, it restricts the BWS to shell only twice (once escort once main), which reduces the damage you can take from its shelling - this is one of two main reasons for not holding a single battleship, the second being that FBBs tend to taiha more often than CAs or CVs when hit by a BWS shelling attack. The carriers are going to shell later than the heavy cruisers ANYWAY, because their range is shorter than the CAs. If you have excess slots to spare you can mount a SCAMP on your triple-torpedo attack carrier to make sure it shells first. The flagship spot in particular however is better used by an Artillery Spotting CA (Choukai Kai Ni) than a carrier as a carrier does not benefit from it in any way, while an Artillery Spotting CA has a boost to Artillery Spotting rates when in the flagship spot. Maya's position is arbitrary really. E7 Summer was the map that most clearly showed the idea behind this kind of CTF setup (look at J and M node compositions), and as if the earlier reasons weren't enough, they added a branch rule that would specifically offroute compositions including battleships in addition to carriers, so players were forced to choose between the intended CA-CV survival route, the BB-CV-CVL torpedo stacking route (which taihas the most often), or the BB-CV full power route (which taihas 2nd most often, uses most resources and offroutes the most).