Babes bomb effect

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: JWE

This is why I so utterly hate doing informative posts on these forums. Somebody always wants to jerk it into their little universe.

No, LoBaron, this has nothing whatever to do with skills, or experience, or dogs, or cats, or the color of grass in Kansas. Take the irrelevant stuff back to the main forum and let us get on with detailing the algorithm in question. Thank you.

John,

I think LoBaron's point, after re-reading a number of posts, was:

- as CT pointed there is a feeling/consensus that there were too many bomb hits
- CT would desire fewer bomb hits with greater effect per hit.

- LoBaron speculated that one of the causes of the "too many hits" was the elevated skill ratings for pilots that players are able to achieve in game through various mechanisms. LoBaron would like to see the code changed to address the skills part of the equation...which is not happening.


All of which leaves the modder with addressing the DB by modding accuracy and effect of devices...and seeking to strike the right balance.

My humble suggestion would be to mod certain devices for primarily Land/Installation use and other devices for Naval. The Land/Installation devices would be normalized for uses in those missions and the naval devices would likely use an entirely different formula to arrive at their values.

In a perfect world we could choose load outs for each air unit dependent on mission which would allow for great flexibility of the air unit.

However this ain't a perfect world...so by doing as I suggest... the modder creates aircraft that are suited for either land ops or naval ops ...but not both.

One thing is certain - code ain't gonna change.

but that's not necessary, because in AE we now have different loadouts. For land attacks against LCU and bases the bombers carry GP bombs and for anti shipping strikes they carry AP or SAP bombs. So those different type of bombs can have different values. I am no modder, I am no bomb expert so I got no clue what values I have to enter, I could however just try, rinse and repeat. It would still leave me with my own mod and not the "real" mod so go find an opponent.

Ahh...been away for awhile...so that is what the alt device setting is for in the editor...

In the case of the Val it is set to carry device 1881 - 250kg GP Bomb. The alt device for device 1881 is device 208 - the 250 kg SAP bomb.

Got it...thanks for pointing that out CT.

So now I wonder how the code knows which device to use for which mission? There is nothing that you specifically check in the editor designating GP v SAP.

[castor troy]

Could that be a line in the code like "land attack = GP device x; naval attack = SAP device x"?

I'm no programmer and above is BS of course but hopefully you get what I mean [:)]

[JWE]

ORIGINAL: castor troy
not sure what I've done wrong, I may have opened a can of worms again though.

You did nothing wrong CT. You posed an interesting problem in a very informative way. And I thank you for it. It's the rest of the whining pack who just want to pile on. I won't post anything anymore on these forums, but we are still working with our personal tweaks. I promised you a look and hopefully a better fix for the whole bomb/torpedo thing. Once we figure it out, I'll send you (PM) a new Device file along with all the background stuff so you will see how we got there. It just won't go here. The Babes site is very active within the Babes community, so there will continue to be support and updates.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: JWE

And now the pm whining starts. Ok. That's it. You all can whine away about anything you can find to whine about. This is my last post on these forums. Ya'll have a nice day now.

not sure what I've done wrong, I may have opened a can of worms again though. Guys, I really meant my original post seriously, it wasn't in any way intended to critisize someone or to bring up any negative. I like the mod very much, as mentioned earlier, it just gives a so much more realistic feeling on many things where vanilla fails (ASW, flak or torp spreads anyone?). The only concern I had were bombs vs ships and I stand to what I have said, I just think it took too many bombs (compared to real life) to heavily damage or sink a ship in stock and in the mod it now takes even more (twice?). While I think, no, I dare to say know from reading real life reports, that it usually didn't take that many bombs to sink a freighter for example. With the exagerated hit rate in the game in general we may end up with better results than stock but when going with how the feel is, it would be more realistic to have less hits for more damage as this is what actually happened in real life.

As always, I am absolutely aware that there are other ppl around thinking 100% the opposite, just like there are ppl around that say 9/11 or landing on the moon was a conspiracy. I do want to point out again that I didn't intend to start a fight with anyone and I also tried to keep it as constructive as possible. [:(]

No, you didn't, CT. If anybody it was me bringing a random element into a focused discussion. Carry on, this is interesting stuff.

[tanjman]

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: treespider



John,

I think LoBaron's point, after re-reading a number of posts, was:

- as CT pointed there is a feeling/consensus that there were too many bomb hits
- CT would desire fewer bomb hits with greater effect per hit.

- LoBaron speculated that one of the causes of the "too many hits" was the elevated skill ratings for pilots that players are able to achieve in game through various mechanisms. LoBaron would like to see the code changed to address the skills part of the equation...which is not happening.


All of which leaves the modder with addressing the DB by modding accuracy and effect of devices...and seeking to strike the right balance.

My humble suggestion would be to mod certain devices for primarily Land/Installation use and other devices for Naval. The Land/Installation devices would be normalized for uses in those missions and the naval devices would likely use an entirely different formula to arrive at their values.

In a perfect world we could choose load outs for each air unit dependent on mission which would allow for great flexibility of the air unit.

However this ain't a perfect world...so by doing as I suggest... the modder creates aircraft that are suited for either land ops or naval ops ...but not both.

One thing is certain - code ain't gonna change.

but that's not necessary, because in AE we now have different loadouts. For land attacks against LCU and bases the bombers carry GP bombs and for anti shipping strikes they carry AP or SAP bombs. So those different type of bombs can have different values. I am no modder, I am no bomb expert so I got no clue what values I have to enter, I could however just try, rinse and repeat. It would still leave me with my own mod and not the "real" mod so go find an opponent.

Ahh...been away for awhile...so that is what the alt device setting is for in the editor...

In the case of the Val it is set to carry device 1881 - 250kg GP Bomb. The alt device for device 1881 is device 208 - the 250 kg SAP bomb.

Got it...thanks for pointing that out CT.

So now I wonder how the code knows which device to use for which mission? There is nothing that you specifically check in the editor designating GP v SAP.

This was posted by michaelm sometime back:

Alt Device

Basically you can link devices in a sequence specifying what missions can use said device. The code will attempt to swap out any device that has a 'Alt use' value that is applicable to the mission being executed. It will find the first alternate device that is applicable for the mission being executed.

It is a simple method that can be horribly broken if you try to chain too many devices together or give it conflicting mission profiles.

For example: The 100kg SAP can be linked to the 100kg GP linked back to the 100kg SAP. This is done by putting the next device in the chain in the 'Alt device' field of the device\n (100kg SAP has AltDev of 100kg GP; which has AltDev of 100kg SAP) Now to keep the SAP limited to naval attack, you put 6 in the 'Alt use' field, and 120 (to use for land and AF attacks) for the other linked device.

Alt Use

Below are the values for the 'Alt use'. Just add the numbers of the missions that can use the device together.
- define PM_NAVAL_ATTACK 2 // used for naval attacks
- define PM_NAVAL_ATTACK2 4 // alternate for naval attack (like torp replacement)
- define PM_LAND_ATTACK 8 // used for land (ground/port) attack
- define PM_LAND_ATTACK2 16 // alternate for land (ground/port) attack
- define PM_AF_ATTACK 32 // used for airfield attack
- define PM_AF_ATTACK2 64 // alternate for airfield attack

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: castor troy
not sure what I've done wrong, I may have opened a can of worms again though.

You did nothing wrong CT. You posed an interesting problem in a very informative way. And I thank you for it. It's the rest of the whining pack who just want to pile on. I won't post anything anymore on these forums, but we are still working with our personal tweaks. I promised you a look and hopefully a better fix for the whole bomb/torpedo thing. Once we figure it out, I'll send you (PM) a new Device file along with all the background stuff so you will see how we got there. It just won't go here. The Babes site is very active within the Babes community, so there will continue to be support and updates.

thanks JWE

edit: tried to pm you but I don't see the option to do that

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: JWE

Yes, effectively it was halved. I used the weight of explosive rather than the weight of the whole bomb. This does tend to make AP and SAP bombs a trifle puny however.

Anyway, it was intended to be just a starting point and good player feedback is not only welcome but probably necessary. JuanG has already chimed in with some suggestions, but I’m dipped if I can find them again. Hopefully he’ll see this and repost them, or I can send him a pm or something.

Changes are to Eff, Acc, and Anti-Soft. Smaller bomb Acc went up, larger bomb Acc went down. Anti-Soft was lined up along with the artillery algorithm. Things seem to work ok for the land model part, but I can see how anti-shipping might could use some help.

I’ll pm you a spreadsheet that shows the original values, the DBB values and the possible values for AP and SAP Eff that would help your anti-shipping results. Also a nice little chart from 1944 showing the HE content of various bombs, so you can see how we got here from there. These are simple Device data changes, so they will update into an ongoing game with no problems.

I wonder about the idea of changing bomb accuracy. Bombs (other than retarded) are not very affected by winds - unless the altitude of release is very high and crosswinds come into play - but otherwise - bombs are pretty much the same, with the opposite of what seems to be said above - smaller are more easily knocked off course than larger are.

I also think the idea of blast radius has escaped most involved with WITP algorithms: as the size of an HE device (bomb, shell, anything) increases, the effect on a soft target increases - but not in direct proportion. Rather, in propoortion to the square root of the size.

What I do like about JWE's changes is that he uses the explosive weight vice bomb weight. I think that makes a lot of sense. The reason I do not use it is that we often do not know the the data - total bomb weight is almost universally available - but not the content. Further - once you get into that - one needs to think about WHAT the explosive is? During the war, the Allies in particular changed the explosives used, such that a smaller weight might be associated with a bigger effect - and commonly was. Again, the problem with going that way is you need a lot of data for all nations to be fair. The simple assumption that all bombs are similar (by class anyway) at least has the merit of no great requirement for research time, and being fair in the crude sense.

[JWE]

Hi Deion; and welcome. Btw, are you with the Spanish group or the EU group? Not that it matters, just curious.

You have it right: the headers in the game are just text strings, and have nothing to do with anything. The data fields service several individual and distinct game modules that have very different parameters; but the editor has a text name field, so anything in that field gets so named. It is meaningless.

You need to consult spreadsheet-1 (attached), that’s where the differences are highlighted. Clearly, I agree the whole stock RoF thing is nonsense. When I did Acc, there was a RoF component involved, but Babes Acc is a function of RoF, sectional density (spreadsheet-2), and those vestigial aim-point devices that aren’t accounted for in the code (spreadsheet-3). The math is included for each spreadsheet, and each one has the calculations in the Col header.

Appreciate the data from Pavel Dimitrovich. Will fold it in, but you must realize that normalization will damp out his excursions, notwithstanding he was the only one to present things that way. I do agree this is a subjective exercise, but Pavel was just so totally out of nominal, that he gets a dinky multiplier on the source scale. Large scale game, moi droog, dermo sluchiatsia.

Hope the attached spreadsheets make your life more pleasant.

[ed] Very sorry, this was supposed to be a PM. Some people captured it, so may as well keep it on the forum, but the Attachment is gone.