Were have all the sailors gone?

[Weasel]

Playing Guadalcanal and moved my US fleet to bombard 3 Japanese air bases. When all was said and done everyone of my ships was sunk with absolutely no damage at all to the Nips. Is this correct or a scenario glitch?

[Currahee]

Fleets at sea are very vulnerable to air attack; they don't evade, throw up AA, etc. This is why Daniel McBride, in Braunschweig, has honor rules limiting air attacks against ships at sea. In Guadalcanal, you can deal with it by putting your ships in port at the end of each turn, where they are relatively safe from air attack. You can get a couple of bombardment pulses out of them, but have to keep them near a report to retreat to by the end of your turn....or, have honor rules to deal with it. Or, keep them within fighter range, and keep CAP over them.

Good news is, they're not worth any victory points!

[Weasel]

Ok, thanks. Hard lesson learned there. Boo hoo. Well I guess the Nips have the run of the South Pacific now!

[CyberGeneral]

Using Ships against Gasmata, Buka & Rabaul is a risky and useless task as the 150mm Guns of each of the Island Static Defense units are no match for the US Navy. (Each Jap. Island location of Gasmata, Buka & Rabaul historically was a strong-hold for Japanese, and not something the US Navy was going to go after at that time period in the war)... The Ships should always be used to Bombard the Japanese at Guadalcanal, AND THEN, defend the Slot against the on-coming Japanese 1st turn where they (in turn) have Destroyers & Crusiers set to attack... Anyone taking the US side should also be conservative as to how much of the naval force that player should have involved & how much of the Naval force to place in secured Ports for later turns...