[Jones377]

1) The CL trick

This is a huge exploit in both SP and MP. For example, as Japan you can prevent the patrol requirement if the allies send a carrier raid against the home islands. You do this by having a single CL patrolling the home islands and another CL on a nearby base. During the first turn you ask for reinforcements which will arrive on turn 2. The result is that both CL are sunk but much more importantly the base does not receive a single bomb. This will avoid having 1/3 of the fleet patrolling the base for the next several turns. This is a huge exploit that can decide the whole game. The 2 CL lost is a small price to pay. It works on other bases too but for the Japanese the home islands is the only one that can trigger a patrol requirement.

This could be fixed by allowing planes to attack both the single ship and the base on the same turn OR trigger the patrol requirement if you lose ships outside your base too. As the Japanese it can be worth defending Truk in this manner too so option 2 wouldn't really fix that.

2) Stopping surface raids/invasions

The defending player can stop an non carrier based invasion fleet or raid using a single ship and a handful of land based bombers simply by pressing the air option in the battle screen. The few bombers would inflict none or minimal damage to the invasion fleet and a surface battle is avoided. Result after 5 battle turns, invasion stalled!

This could be fixed by forcing a surface battle at some point like in turn 2 or 3. Or by having the surface fleet defending the base withdraw when the troop ships reach shore as it's not the players intention to defend it with ships, only planes.