Use this mod maybe??
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/580720/discussions/0/1642039362998917583/

Why are you proposing that he cheats for something so easy?

I once thought to make a guide just for this but Covid and real life happened... So in the end I never published it. Should just have made it very simple and do it in an afternoon but my intention was to create the ultimate guide... And yeah.

But for 30 mins admiral difficulty, it is very easy. You simply have to play until you create for yourself some good habits which allow you to organise your fleet of aircraft so you can deploy it fast enough to counter every threat while not getting hit or losing any aircraft. It is pretty easy to do for me now, my average time on any mission is 45-50 mins and my ultimate best score is an hour and fifteen minutes. This is completely on vanilla game, of course.

It would be easier if you simply ask questions about what trouble you at the moment. I'm going to answer your first question: the game is built up in such a way as to allow you enough time to recover your planes whatever happen. The trick here is to click on a landing plane and set its moving order before its animation is done (as soon as it is "caught" by the elastic, so to speak), which allow you time to do or chain at least one other command before having to return for the next plane landing. Once you get it and can do this every single time without having another plane which would be auto landing on top of it crash on it then all you have to do is concentrate at the landing pad when you have a backlog of aircraft and move those landed aircraft on one of the two back elevators. Make sure to fill one elevator first over the other. Once it is full you move the planes down and you continue landing planes, sending those on the other unoccupied back elevator. Even if you're not used to do this you should have ample time to move the two planes on the bottom level to empty spots for repairs and send the now empty elevator back up. Once the second elevator is full you send it back down, rinse and repeat until all planes landed.

Talking about the bottom level, I usually have dedicated spots for all my crafts. My attack planes get the four first spots reserved, in front of elevator one at the front of the carrier, so when they get ready they can rapidly get back up if I need it. The next spot is reserved for VTOLs, in front of elevator two. The next spot is either VTOL or a big helicopter (depending on what I have getting repaired at the moment), while the next two spots are always reserved for the other two big helicopters. And the last two spots are reserved for the small helicopters. In the end game it get very hectic and I sometimes "cheat" depending on the situation but I keep this organisation at least 95% of the time and it really help me to keep a good rotation up as I use very little time/brain power having to ask and second guess myself where everything has to move when I'm in a hurry. It also help a lot not to forget a specific plane somewhere as I don't have to lose a lot of time scanning the whole floor to assess what I have available and ready.

A very advanced trick is that I realised, after a long while playing, that aircraft need to be staggered when you park them, otherwise at least one is going to lose a lot of time waiting for the other in front to finish parking. To prevent this, I always park the first place in spot #1 then the second in spot #3. Then the next pair is going to park at #2 and #4 respectively. The second plane don't lose any time parking up when doing so and it prevent a lot of jams.

I of course have a similar kind of organisation with armed crafts on top. Ask me if you want me to share.

Carrier Deck is at its core a game about organizing stuff.
First realize that you can park fully kitted out planes below deck. That means you can load up planes and helos with whatever configuration you wan and then stash them under deck for the rush.


Second establish an order of things. I usually reserve tge F-18S (?) for Naval duty (blue) and use the F-18s for green and red missions. Two Ospreys on deck are both blue for infantry insertion (since those are the only helos which can do and missions frequently require two at once), 2 anti-sub helos and one commando helo. Once I get a third Osprey that one goes commando and the helos all go yellow.

Next, never have more than 10 planes on deck, that is left upper corner, the first lift, the two spots next to the lift and 4 spots beneath that. Awacs goes between the tower and the lift.

Fourth, Naval surveillance is much more crucial than either sub marine or air surveillance. You can reasonably quickly counter subs or planes, which only take 1 or 2 units each, but ships take up to 6 units, for which you need wind up because they take quite some time to start and you won't be able to do it without advanced warning. That means the two AWACS are exclusively for naval surveillance.

Other than that it really is all about proper organizing.

Above 45 minutes gets a little harder because your carrier takes damage even if you play perfectly and the AI can and will rush you (there is literally no way you can defend against three times 4+1 planes).

Organization and practice. The above comments lay out some really good tips. One that is critically important IMO - if a plane is returning and you don't have a mission you'd need to get it ready for, it may make sense to send it below and repair even if the plane isn't smoking. Planes can usually fly 2 missions before they start smoking, sending them below to repair resets that counter. Then when you actually do get stacked up with missions you can land them and turn them around right away and they are able to do it safely.

Yeah, managed to do it after a few tries. Mostly not getting stuff like 3 blue ground missions when you only have two Ospreys or two carriers almost simutaneusly.

Where do you rearm VTOL aircraft?

Most often one on launch pad and the other on one of the two back spots. But again if you get 3 blue ground targets in a row (and especially if they require 2 ospreys each) you might as well restart because there's nothing you can do really. Now if they would appear after 20 minutes I would be fine. It is survival after all. But I got such a configuration of enemy forces within first 5-10 minutes.

... What? Why would you have a problem with 3 blues in a row? I'd like to see that way more often. As long as you launch the first wave fast enough you even have plenty of time to repair after your second sortie. If you already have your third Chinook then you're just laughing. Anyways...

Originally posted by Azilljorin:

Where do you rearm VTOL aircraft?

Usually anything that land on the pads get immediately rearmed there. Even if it need immediate repair. It is extremely rare that you need to land many helicopters or VTOLs in a row. If I really need to move something quick I usually send them in one of the two spots around the tower, which act like catch-all for me. I often use them to quickly rearm and resend radar aircraft, for example.

Sorry, but if you only have 2 ospreys and no chinooks and you get 2 strenght 2 ground blue targets nad then another one for a total strenght of 7 there's no way you're going to make it in time. I also had runs where I got a lot of harriers incoming and they would require helipads for landing.

I'm not exactly sure about the names. I meant the big helicopters in my last message.

Yeah I had runs where I had no chinooks (the big helicopters) and ones where helipads got cluttered with incoming harriers. Again you just need to try it until you get somewhat favorable enemy spawn and incoming friendlies. It's not easy by any means but doable.

Does anyone have list of the aircraft code in respect to their names? Like when you click on the aircraft it would say "Prowler" or "Viking" or "Harrier" but when you queue a mission, it would say "S3" or "A6". Cause when it's so chaotic and I have multiple different aircraft, I would queue a wrong aircraft.

Originally posted by PoDH:

Does anyone have list of the aircraft code in respect to their names? Like when you click on the aircraft it would say "Prowler" or "Viking" or "Harrier" but when you queue a mission, it would say "S3" or "A6". Cause when it's so chaotic and I have multiple different aircraft, I would queue a wrong aircraft.

I never look at the names. Even tho I played over 700 hours now I could not name most of those vehicles even to save my life. I always look at the shadow icon instead. And to be totally level with you, I learned by heart the amount of clicks I need to do to select all of them. Which always screw up with me whenever the game suddenly decide to switch the order of the curved speciality aircraft with the fixed wing speciality aircraft for no apparent reason at all... -_-

Originally posted by PoDH:

Does anyone have list of the aircraft code in respect to their names? Like when you click on the aircraft it would say "Prowler" or "Viking" or "Harrier" but when you queue a mission, it would say "S3" or "A6". Cause when it's so chaotic and I have multiple different aircraft, I would queue a wrong aircraft.

https://www.slitherine.com/game/carrier-deck

AIRCRAFT TYPES AVAILABLE

Fixed Wing Aircraft:
F18 “Hornet”,
F18S “Super Hornet”,
A6 “Intruder”,
S3 “Viking”,
EC2 “Hawkeye”,
C3 “Greyhound”,

Rotary wing aircraft:
SH60 “Seahawk”,
Ch46, “Sea Knight”,
V22 “Osprey”,
AVBB “Harrier”,

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you won't make to to 30min. :O

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2841848692