I thought I would make a post concerning the recent emphasis on the Air Model in AE. First let me say that the discussions here, for the most part, do not go unnoticed. In my case I have tried to get on the forums and stay apprised of issues, but usually I am late to a thread that is a hot topic. Recently circumstances have allowed me to spend more time reading through some of the latest topics, and I STILL hope to start my PBEM with JWE as soon as I can get back up to speed.
Concerning the Air model, and (AE in general) we are in an interesting time. The game has been out for some time and many, many smart people have had chance to play it and take into places that few of us are unlikely to reach. As an example PzB and Andy Mac are doing things in their game that have never been done before with AE. Others are testing bounds of the Original Engine and our “bolt on” design features in their own way. The bottom line is we are reaching uncharted territory more and more frequently.
In the last few weeks there has been a lot of attention on the Air model as we test this undiscovered territory, and tend to do so with wildly differing circumstances. ie. late war variables that are hard to predict and a-historical force allocations and unprecedented battles (in terms of RL). This is fine, in fact it is the whole point of the game, but the reality is a lot of what we see never happened IRL because the circumstances of the real war were very one-sided. Some players like Pzb are reaching areas of this game that have no precedent and are difficult to judge as realistic or not, unless one delves very deeply and with great detail into all the factors that are at work in HIS game. He does a fantastic job as a devout IJ FB, and by all accounts is probably one of the best, if not THE best at his game. There are others of course, (Nemo
but I can’t list them all.Other people test the air model as a hobby. Again, this is fine. I welcome it. I just ask that when you do you do so responsibly. What I mean is that running a couple sterile tests in a sandbox scenario, makes not a scientific process. In particular doing so and then broadcasting your findings after a couple runs and making a claim that such and such is broken only stirs the pot!
There ARE issues. There always have been. There likely always will be. Some weaknesses have been identified, others are still hiding. Many of these are legacy weaknesses that are held over from the original WitP. Remember we “developers” are not the original developers. We are all players first. None of us were professionals to begin with. Some would argue (Right Castor? ; ) that we are still not professionals…
What are the weaknesses I see? Well there are several, and I won’t go into each and every one, but will speak to the one that generates most of the discussion here:
Uber Air battles. This is an easy one. It is a legacy weakness, and one that we spent an awful lot of time trying to address, uber CAP, bloody results, leaky CAP, you name it, this game does not do well. That said we made great strides, and expert players have shown that you CAN minimize the impact of this weakness by playing carefully. But you have to know what is reasonable and what isn’t. One of the ways to do this is to try to understand how real world Air Operations work. If you do a little light reading you will find that Air Operations in WWII were cyclical in nature. Sustained heavy combat Ops were difficult to maintain. Maintenance cycles and fatigue, force flow, logistics, often did not allow a “Balls to the Wall” “throw everything at them but the kitchen sink” mentality. Air forces spent themselves against each other, made gains or not, and then went into a phase of rebuilding.
Additionally, Commanders had a lot of responsibilities to cover with their Air assets. They couldn’t afford to mass them at a single point of attack, all at the same time, and from a material readiness of 100%. In fact Air units were NEVER at 100%. I hate to use exclusive words like NEVER, but in this case I am fairly confident…ok lets say it was rare, so I don’t have to respond to the first nit-noid challenge to that statement.
The average WitP’er may know this. He may not. Most of our experienced, well-read players know it as gospel, which is why it is rare to hear them complaining vocally about the air model, because they understand the dynamic, they know how to plan an Air Operation and execute it. More importantly they know when to cease operations, and pull back to lick their wounds. The Average player may not, and may also employ the old Tank Charge. This is the old Command & Conquer, or pick your average RTS game, strategy of build, build, build, ATTACK! And hope you carry the day by sheer brute force. At this point I hear a couple of you laughing, because you know what I am talking about. Others are saying… “uhhh, what’s wrong with that?”. Ok, I am talking to you, the latter -- Stop doing that! YOU are part of the problem ; )
This game doesn’t work that way. It never has. It never will. That is what makes it so special. Sure that tactic CAN and will work, but it will work in such a way that you will cry “I won, I won, but it shouldn’t have worked that way, such and such aspect of the game is broken!!!” and your opponent will say, “That is BS! That never happened in WWII!! This game is broken!”
It IS possible to push this game into ludicrous speed. I have said it before and will say it again. You can code a game and plan for as many wild and crazy permutations as you want, but you can’t code a human being’s play nor his propensity to try and game the system. The only way to prevent such things is with Hard Code, and despite some of the mis-informed comments I’ve seen on the forum of late there IS NO HARD CODE in the Air model. At least as far as the AE design team’s work is concerned. Any hard code that may be in the game is left over from the original designers, and was not part of our development process.
Part of the reason we are seeing a new round of scrutiny on the Air Model is that as the game progresses into ’44 and ’45 the likelihood of larger air battles are greatly, if not exponentially increased owing to the natural increase in Force flow, or the arrival of newer and bigger Air units. Additionally each game is different, as the players who run the games are different. We have several Mods out there, and Michaelm has graciously provided several different EXEs that treat all these factors somewhat differently. Few of us, developers included, can maintain the bubble on why one game plays out one way and another plays out that way. KEEP this in mind when you see something you don’t like. Check yourself first. Are you playing a personal mod? What version of the game are you playing? Are you playing responsibly? Are you that RTS player? What do you REALLY know about WWII? I thought I knew a lot when I started playing UV in 2002. I have learned A LOT since then.
The key to the Air War for those of you who want to know is to play as realistically as you can. Have a dialogue with your opponent. It takes two to play a game like this responsibly. Have realistic expectations, and don’t try to break your opponents back in one turn. It won’t work. You will be disappointed. Not only with the outcome of the battle, but with the way the engine handled it.
At this point I would like to invite those of you who are experienced Air players, to post your rules to success. (PzB, Nemo, Lo Baron, Nik et al you know who you are). I think the community would benefit greatly from a new round of insight into what IS reasonable and what isn’t.
I would also like to ask that is this thread becomes hot, that we keep this constructive and avoid flaming, bashing, whining etc. If you have an issue please start it in another post in the appropriate forum. Thanks for your attention!
Just my two cents, but overall I am still very happy with the way things are holding up.
Cheers!
Elf
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