Kaiho - Taiho Sister **DONE**

I agree totally with that; IJN carriers to me have notoriously been under cost; glad to see someone throw out a reasonable cost for this unit.

  I suggested starting the conversion at 24, but your caution of costing it to low should be well heeded.

I'd personally lean to 25 mainly because of the USN's 4 cap Intrepid and Hornet;; but either or is fine

Wow, I blink and see what I miss!

I will comment that I think 9 AA may be a tad overblown. RB said giving Taiho 8 AA was "a stretch", but done for "game balance reasons". I know WHY we want it, but even the Essex doesn't have 9. IIRC the only carrier that does is Midway, and the only IJN unit that does is the A-150 (Tsushima).

That said, I won't kick and fuss if people think this is the way to go. It IS essentially a "fantasy" unit, with a 1945 date.

Similarly, I do feel the "class limit" thing is a fudge. Ise and Hyuga (pre-conversion) were "improved Fusos", but they are separate classes and don't expand the class limits. Limited classes is part of life for the IJN; Kaga and Akagi, Hiryu and Soryu... one each, lads. You can still pair this with Shinano for a late-war build, or pack in some Unryus. Or just ignore history and use some of the Kido Butai. Or ignore class limits entirely if you want.

Just my two cents on those issues. Not something I'm going to fight about.

Regardless, looking at the proposal, I feel 26 points is about right. This is a potent carrier, whether you can take 1 or 2.

I am glad to see this being done. I do understand why Taiho didn't get TD 1 (she was hit by a single torpedo and that caused her to have an AVGas explosion hours later), but the design on paper deserved it, and its lack really cripples its utility.

EDIT to add: And if Taiho had EDF, I would still use her.  It's so important for the IJN in the late war, as their best carrier-based fighter is the A6M5, until the 1945 "Sam" becomes available... and that's not as good as a Corsair.

 I agree with Brigs, and SWO on the points of a 9AA value and cost comparing with the UK units;

   Maybe i'm wrong on this, but i always thought some of the IJN carriers were cost a little low, again maybe as Brigs said to keep Japan a little competitive.

Don't know if its a little late, but maybe lowering the AA to 8 and costing her at 25 makes it all seem more game friendly.

 Just thinking about it; giving her the same max AA value as the Midway seems a bit much.

  

 

Flak, I agree there is a difference, but it's not that great.   Your post got me curious, so I looked at some numbers.  Thanks to Hap's spreadsheet, I did a data pull on all the Torpedo Bombers and Dive Bombers in the game with an introduction date of 1942 or later, including the Fighter Bombers like the Corsair and Fw-190.  These are the planes:

Barracuda Mk.II
IL-2M Sturmovik
SB2C Helldiver
TBF Avenger
TBF-1 Avenger
F4U-1D Corsair
Firefly F.Mk.I
DAP Beaufighter Mk.21

Ju87E Stuka
Me 410 B-5 Hornisse
D4Y3 "Judy"
D4Y1 "Judy"
Elite D3A2 "Val"
B7A2 "Grace"
B6N2 "Jill"
Ju87D Stuka
FW-190A3/U3
RE.2001CB Falco II

Taking straight up averages, this is the result:
Allied Average Armor: 5.125, Average Vital Armor: 8.25
Axis Average Armor: 5.0, Average Vital Armor: 7.9

The main thing that creates this difference are the low armor and vital armor values on the Stuka.  If you take the two Stukas out of the equation, this is the Axis number:
Axis Average Armor: 5.125, Average Vital Armor: 8.125

This, of course, doesn't really factor in a bunch of other things, like Press the Attack, Divide the Defense, Range 1 attacks, etc.  But let's face it, this is a late war carrier, and only 5 carrier-based attack planes really matter in this discussion: Avenger (vital 9), Helldiver (vital 9), Corsair (vital 8 as a bomber), George (vital 9), and Jill (vital 8).  Yes the Jill is vital 8 vs. the Avenger's 9, but it also has a range 1 attack that gives it a placement advantage against defensive air, and while it might still face ship AA at range 1, it is generally much lighter than the dreaded 8 AA.  If anything, the 6 Armor rating on the Corsair and Fw-190 is more of a problem, as it makes them pretty hard to abort (only 33% of the time vs. 7 AA and 45% of time vs. 8 AA).

I don't know that the lack of a 9 armor, carrier based, Axis torpedo plane is enough to justify overly inflated AA on a carrier.  Lots of other things factor into Allied superiority in air defense, including greater access to higher AA ships and in some cases, tougher carriers able to withstand hits that Axis carriers can't (looking at you Soryu!)   That said, 9 AA is still a big deal, period.  The abort rate against 5 armor planes jumps big time: 7 AA (52%), 8 AA (64%), 9 AA (74%).  9 AA seems high to me, but if this carrier is going to get it, it should be a factor in its cost.

If this ship was 8 AA and otherwise unchanged, its darn near a clone of HMS Implacable.  If that we're the case, I'd say call it 25 points.  Paying 1 more point (26) to get to 9AA seems like a very small price to pay.  

While I think carrier values at the top and bottom of the scale are a bit too "compressed" (the low end carriers are very hard to use effectively for their cost, mainly because they generally can't defend themselves from air attack, and the very high end carriers are, collectively, probably too cheap), I think the carriers in the 18-25 point range are pretty consistently costed for what they are. There are some set 1 and 2 outliers (Akagi is great, but too expensive from my perspective), but for the most part, you get what you pay for across the various navies when it comes to CAP 3 carriers. The desire to give the IJN a boost in the late war shouldn't include throwing the unit cost conventions out the window. I'm not a huge fan of 9 AA here, but if that's the direction, let's at least try to get the cost reasonably right.

At 26 points, this is still an AWESOME carrier. Spoke to Brigs (long time fan of the IJN in War at Sea) last night and he said he would take this at 26 points over MI Akagi (28) or Kaga (27) EVERY time if he could. For anyone who's been here for a while and knows Brigman, that's saying something.

I am with SWO and would prefer to see AA8 and 25 points. Nice analysis.

I could go on at length about the inflated armor values of many aircraft. Unfortunately, I don't think seriously inflating Kaiho's AA is the right response. Or more to the point as mentioned above, the AA8 value already is an inflated value "historically."

I could live with AA9 and 26, but I think AA9 and 25 would be pushing too hard.