Doing 14 Things at Once

Captain has the conn

Well, think about it for a second. It is a very strange form of combat. I've had multiplayer games that were as short as "first to 10" Quake deathmatches. Since you have no respawns, your carrier doesn't pop up all shiny and new in a new location. Once it's gone, it's gone. This makes every decision extremely important, and they are all done in real time, so you can't plan for 5 minutes, nevermind hours about what the best way to take care of those four MiG-25 Foxbats escorting three Tupolev Tu-22 Backfires is. Those same Backfires are launching AS-4 Kitchen missiles from 150 miles out like crazy, and you have no way to reach them. Any fighters you have will first need to get through the MiGs (not an easy task), and no missiles of yours can reach that far (sorry, the Phoenix missile is being discontinued. No 100 mile air-to-air sniping for you =)

FMV clips tell the story

A Tomahawk missile launch

Even a 100,000 ton carrier can't withstand more than two or three hits from the super-deadly AS-4. You can shoot some of them down, but when you consider that those Backfires have 5 each, making 15 total, what do you do?

online weapons reference

a pair of Hornets go to battle

In the meantime, you also can't forget your objective (ie, the reason your fleet is invading Russian territory in the first place), the source of the attacks (those fighters and bombers didn't appear from nowhere. If this wave loses, there's sure to be a second one - you need to take their homebase out fast), and the possibility of an attack from another direction (Russian fleet sneak up behind you? Chinese submarines below?)