Contents
Tips for Beginners
Upgrades
I spent my two upgrades on torpedo bombers and bombers so I can sink the enemy fleet with one attack.
Where to Go
As you start ignore everything (the surrounding enemy fleets, the first point you need to go, etc. and rush for E3 (or the vicinity of it). You don’t have to actually reach it but the zone needs to be within the range of your air attacks.
Waiting Game
Remember to go at full speed and give the order “defensive position” by appointing two officers in navy positions whenever there’s an air attack. Even if you don’t match their numbers you should be fine as long as you use your damage control crew efficiently.
Orders
(Not that important but provides smooth gameplay)
Use the defensive position order the second you see enemy planes on the radar. It needs to run its course before you issue a new order (you can’t cancel an order after activating it) so you can’t just order defensive position and a minute later call supplies order.
So if you do the defensive position order earlier, you can call for supplies earlier after the enemy attack. As such, If you reach approximately 50% on supplies and no attacks on the horizon, may be a good time to call for supplies.
How Defense Works
On the radar, there’s a small number on top of each enemy plane. You need to at least match that number on your defense points shown on the top left side of the screen so you don’t take any damage. But even if you do, just use your damage control crew and you should be fine. So don’t worry about taking damage, but use defensive position order whenever you can. It doesn’t cost you anything.
Damage Control Crew
Keep one in the pumps (you’d know where they are if you played the tutorial and do that!) the other one in the middle and the last one in the far right. Prioritize fires. When you see a flood, if you have one crew at the pumps ignore it.
How Attacks Work
(Important bit)
Now for this, I’m not 100% sure but here goes: each attack needs a specific number of planes of the right type. If you see a light blue tactic with the number 2, that means if you’re gonna use that tactic you need 2 bomber planes. BUT, tactics can be done by the same bombers, so if you pick two light blue tactics with the number 2, you don’t need 2+2=4 bombers but still need 2 bombers. So far I think I’m on the right.
The confusing part begins when you see a tactic with two numbers on them. I don’t know how they work, but this is the second most important advice I’ll give you: Don’t care about risk or received damage! Just use whatever tactic that seems most powerful to you. You can imitate the tactics used in the stream as well (the devs did a stream where they show how to pass the level).
When you air attack, don’t aim for the E3 but aim for the south-west of E3, because the invasion fleet always appears at E3 and makes its way towards your second objective position. By the time your planes arrive there, the fleet will be in the vicinity and you can finish them with one attack if it’s powerful enough. And now the most important advise: You don’t need fighters in the attack squadron. Just send bombers and torpedo bombers.
Conclusion
By doing these on normal difficulty, not only I was able to survive with crummy defenses, I also defeated the invasion fleet with only one attack. And all I used was torpedo bombers and bombers. If you did the mission but the screen where the code was shown passed too quickly, they did a hotfix for that as well, so give it a shot again!
Great tutorial. When it comes to not sending fighters, they are crucial if you come across an enemy fleet with fighters.
I was able to survive using a similar strategy. The key to victory seems to be deck management–be sure you carefully plan your missions to ensure you don’t have to do a lot of moving airplanes around the deck. Create waves of launch and recovery cycles to maximize efficiency. It is also a good idea to keep a fighter CAP overhead to aid defense when you get a package of 8 enemy fighters inbound. My strategy has been to hold the officers in the crew bunks until I need them for either defense or to boost an attack–that way they won’t get tired at a critical moment. Selecting the right positions for your crew also seems to help, as the original positioning of crew members does not seem to be optimized for their skills. Now that I understand the underlying gameplay, Aircraft Carrier Survival seems much more manageable. I actually like the complexity, as it forces difficult resource management, targeting, and timing decisions. Overall, I think the developers did a great job creating a fun, yet sometimes challenging game.