Land Base Aerial Support

'''This page covers a recently implemented game mechanics and thus may have unconfirmed information. Use the information herein with caution.'''

Introduction
The Land-Base Aerial Support (tentative name abbreviated as LBAS for now) is a system introduced in the May 2nd-3rd 2016 update along with the Spring 2016 Event, which enables seaplane, carrier-based, and land-based aircraft (but not Autogyro/Liaison Aircraft) to be launched from an air base and to assist you during the sortie.

Currently, this system is only available in E4, E5, and E7 during Spring 2016 Event.

Prerequisite
Currently, the only way to unlock the air base is to clear E3 and its prerequisites during the Spring 2016 Event.

You will receive your 1st Air-base after clearing E3 and your 2nd Air-base after clearing E4.

The 3rd air base can be unlocked by clearing E5 during the Spring 2016 Event. Though E5 is optional, players are recommended to clear E5 before proceeding to E7 for additional air-base firepower.

How To Use
First introduced in Spring 2016 Event, after clearing the Map E3, you'll be able to establish an air base from which you can launch aircraft from. You can launch carrier-based aircraft and seaplanes, as well as land-based aircraft that is exclusive to this support system.

In certain maps where land-base aerial support is available, you can activate the support and assign aircraft to the airbase as shown here:

When the land-base aerial support is active for that map, a mark will be displayed below the sortie button.

At the start of the sortie, you can designate up to two target nodes per airfield where aerial support will be performed. You can also select a single node in order to concentrate all of your aerial support there.

When you reach the node where the aerial support is requested, a land-based air battle will take phase before the carrier-based air battle, the support expedition, and the initial torpedo strikes. This allows them to weaken the enemy air fleet and their air power, allowing your fleet's air force to secure air superiority more easily.

If you have cleared Spring Event E4, you'll have an additional airfield to accommodate more aircraft, allowing you to target four nodes instead of two. Clearing Spring Event E5, will unlock the 3rd airbase fleet/squadron.

Similar to the shipgirls, the air fleet that are assigned to the air base needs to be resupplied as well.

The refueling process for aircraft is similar to the refueling the shipgirls. However, the right box resupplies bauxite instead of ammunition. Use drag and drop to un-equip a plane from air base.

Caution:  Un-equipping a plane from an air base will make that plane unavailable for 20 minutes while it is being "relocated"

Aircraft Flight Range and Classification
Aircraft that can be assigned into an air base can be divided into the following categories:
 * Carrier-based Aircraft : Can be equipped on both air base and aircraft carriers. May be further categorized as fighter, bomber, and recon aircraft.
 * Seaplanes : Can be equipped on air base, cruisers, and battleships. Generally have lower performance compared to carrier-based aircraft.
 * Flying Boats : Can only be equipped on a flying boat tender (such as Akitsushima) or air base. Has enormous flight range.
 * Land-based Attack Aircraft : Has greater flight range than carrier-based aircraft, but cannot be equipped on shipgirls.
 * Interceptor Aircraft : Purpose-built aircraft for intercepting bombers that are stationed in the air base. Has lowest flight range.

Options
There are 5 options in the airbase menu as shown below. You can click the label to flip between these options:



Those options are, in left-to-right (for pictures above) to descending order (for description below):
 * 【出撃】 Sortie


 * Allows the player to choose nodes where you want airbase support.
 * Recommended if you require extra firepower in a few nodes.
 * 【防空】 Air Defense


 * Protects Air Base from Enemy Raid.
 * Provides additional fighter power in nodes that receives airbase support within squadron combat radius(unconfirmed)
 * 【退避】 Retreat


 * Prevent your planes being damaged by Enemy Air Raid. However, damage to resources stockpile might increase?
 * 【休憩】 Rest


 * Increase Morale Recovery Speed
 * Bauxite natural recovery speed would be halved if you set your squadron to this status. (i.e. 1 bauxite regen every 6 minutes instead of 3.) Does not affect those who have more bauxite than the natural regen cap.
 * 【待機】 Standby
 * Sortie your fleet without airbase support?

Choosing Sortie will allow you to choose nodes you want airbase support. Choosing Air Defense will skip the choosing node process but will allow interception of enemy air raids, so you should only choose Air Defense mode with AA planes equipped at the airbase. Retreat is currently unknown. Rest supposedly means you don't want airbase support at maps where you can use it and thus you'll not have an option to choose which nodes to attack.

Cost

 * Putting planes onto a land base consumes bauxite.
 * Check these links to see each plane's cost:
 * Fighter, Torpedo Bomber, Dive Bomber, Seaplane, Land-based Attack Aircraft, Interceptor Fighter, Reconnaissance
 * Note that the cost listed in these tables are the cost for equipping 1 plane, but each slot in your land base can have 4 planes (for reconnaissance planes) or 12 planes (for other planes), so you'd need to multiply the listed cost by 4 or 12 respectively to get the equip cost per slot.
 * Some planes, like Shinden Kai, Prototype Seiran, and Type 1 Land-based Attack Aircraft cost more than a hundred bauxite just by putting them into the air base.
 * Sortieing planes consumes fuel and ammo.
 * You can check the cost by comparing your fuel and ammo before and after the sortie.
 * Resupplying planes would consume fuel and bauxite.
 * Fuel consumption is equal to 3 times the number of planes lost, and ammo consumption is equal to 5 times the number of planes lost

Limitations

 * Each aircraft has their own "flight range", which indicates the combat radius of the aircraft. Aircraft that have low flight range may not be able to effectively support the map nodes that are too far away from their air base. In most cases, land-based fighters have greater combat radius than carrier-based aircraft.
 * The aerial battle phases of Land-Base Aerial Support are calculated separately from Opening Airstrike and Support Airstrike expeditions, and aerial conditions from one phase will not be carried over to subsequent phases.
 * The air fleet may become demoralized if your fleet does not reach the node their supports are assigned to. The Air Fleet can also be demoralized if used too often.
 * When you change an aircraft that is assigned in the land base, the aircraft that is switched out will be tagged with "配置転換中" to indicate that it is currently being relocated, and it will be unavailable to be reassigned to either a land-base or shipgirls for the duration (20 minutes ). Thus, do NOT change your aircraft too often.
 * Each airbase slot only has 12 planes and thus they are quite susceptible to enemy AACI especially when ships like Light Cruiser Tsu-Class present.
 * Warning: Swapping an aircraft assigned to the land base can cost you Bauxite depending on which plane you are swapping them into. There is no usage indicator to show the potential loss of Bauxite. Thus, do NOT change your aircraft too often.
 * Warning: When a land base squadron is sortied, it will cost  fuel and some ammo per squad. Again, there is no indicator that this is happening.

Enemy Raid
As of the May 5, 2016 update, enemy air bases will now raid allied air bases in Spring '16 E-5 and E-7. This is triggered randomly within the map itself. Damage to the bases can result in losses of planes (starting from the first slot) and resources. Efficacy of sortied planes may also decrease, although at least bombing damage is unaffected. To mitigate the effects of enemy raids, players may assign bases to "Air Defense". Enemy Raids will always occur twice before reaching the Boss node.

Mechanics
Outlined below is how the LBAS operates during a sortie

All information in this section are now under verification, please treat information in this section carefully.

Fighter Power Calculations
There are 12 planes per slot for most planes in your Land Base hanger. This works the same as if you were to equip them in a 12 slot carrier equipment slot.
 * Fighter Power Calculation from each individual squadron are treated separately.

Sortie Aerial Combat
When you sortie to a designated node the bombing phase is similar to that of the Opening Airstrike stage with a few exceptions:
 * Each squadron will go through the entire process of from stage 1 to 3 once but without enemy bombing, costing losses to enemy fighter group
 * This reduce the fighter power required for main fleet to obtain air superiority in that node.
 * Orange or red text will be displayed at the bottom of the screen if allied plane losses exceed certain thresholds in each attack
 * There is no text message for AP/AS/AS+
 * AP/AS/AS+ is recalculated after every bombing pass, based on the remaining enemy fighters that survived previous bombing passes.
 * Air Defense does not affect AA
 * In the case of a concentrated (2x) attack on a single node only, enemy AA defense will eliminate planes during both passes, but only plane losses from the second passes will be accounted for when returning to base. However, it appears plane ranks are lost in accordance with losses from each pass.

Air Defense

 * Stationed squadrons will protect your land base from enemy air raids.
 * Intercept and Anti-bomber stats are far more important than Anti-air stat.

Damage Calculation
Note that in this section, CL0= non-critical hit while CL1= critical hit, which is different from other pages on the wikia.
 * It have been observed that non-critical damage range (CL0) is different from the regular damage range, or bonus exist.
 * When Ryuusei Kai or Type 1 Land Attack Aircraft attack enemy ships, torpedo animation is displayed but the damage is close to the usual Dive Bomber range, except when CL1 (critical) happen.
 * Dive Bomber and Torpedo Bomber follow same calculation, and their damage difference is only determined by individual plane's stats and plane count. AFter May 5 fix, Type 1 Land Base Attack Aircraft's damage have been increased and other things are unchanged.
 * Attack power affected by number of planes remain in the attacking slot
 * Number of proficient plane in the squadron does not affect CL0.
 * Placement of Bombers/Attackers does not affect CL0, and probably not for CL1 either.
 * not affected by sailing direction (engagment) nor formation.
 * Aircraft Proficiency does not affect Cl0.
 * Whether you focus your attack onto one node or separate them to different node, their attack power won't be affected. (it would only affect the number of time you can get LBAS support in that node)
 * Abyssal flagship protection could happen when attacking abyssals.
 * Contact bonus exist and can be found via API, but there're no graphic display

Distance Calculations
The distance shown on the aircraft doesn't reflect their actual deployment range for some aircraft. Below is a list of exceptions or anomalies.
 * Rank also may have an effect on distance. Planes have been observed to not be able to deploy to the same node they did in the previous sortie after losing rank. Zuiuns have been observed behaving as such.
 * Range of your entire squad is determined by the plane with longest range within your squad. However, when you force those short-ranged aircraft to go further than their original range, their performance might drop.

Note: You can send a bombing sortie to an Air Raid node and physically damage the enemies. While doing this currently doesn't serve any purpose, sending fighters to Air Raid node can significantly whittle down enemy bombers to be within AACI killzone, allowing your AACI-capable ships to annihilate all the enemy bombers to prevent damage to your fleet and makes S-rank at Air Raid node much easier. This come in handy during Spring 2016 Event when one of the E-6 debuff nodes located at E-5 Node I requires an S-rank.

Trivia

 * When the system was first implemented on May 3rd 2016, there was a bug that caused the bombing damage from land-base aerial support to be omitted from internal enemy HP damage calculation, which occasionally causes a supposedly sunk enemy unit to be able to act as if they were alive (able to attack/be targeted by your fleet), as shown here
 * Two days after the system's implementation, an emergency update was deployed to fix the performance of land-base attack aircraft.
 * The air base featured in the Spring 2016 Event is located at Johnston Atoll, while the air base in Spring 2016 Event E5 is the Henderson Field (now Honiara International Airport), located at Solomon Islands; near to Buin and Rabaul.
 * In-game, the island allied bases are located on is named Erehwyna Island, an anagram of Anywhere Island.  This is likely a tonge-in-cheek reference to the fact that range calculations are based off of fleet start points, which can vary even in the maps themselves, implying the island has the magical property of being able to move to wherever the player fleet starts in each map.