Suggestions for improvement of TAC-air dynamics

[Romdanzer]

Hi All,

Well I've played this game now for a while with a '39 campaign game as Axis on normal setting (1.7 with Hotfix) against the AI to get a hang of things in this game and have conquered besides some minors all the major powers Poland, France, England and now Sovjet Union all the way to the Urals - currently my frontline is around Neberhezny Chelny past Ufa to Orenburg in December 1941.

I have noticed that over the course of the game I gradually but surely tend to employ air strikes by Tactical bombers less and less. In the end in my Barbarossa campaign I only used them for:

a) Destroying the last remnants of units whose strength was 10% or below
b) In attacks where the land avenues of attack where extremely geographically limited (attack on Gibraltar for example)
c) Attacking fleets

Anything else is just MUCH too expensive from a cost / benefit analysis. You spend 12 PP per strength point of TAC-air and lose 1 strength point in like 50% of the air strikes - attacking inf and armour which lose like between 5%-20% strength in one attack. This PP-damage being far less than the average of 6 PP loss as attacker. This disbalance of PP-loss is so extreme that you can perform Economic warfare the other way around playing against the AI, where it has TAC-air and attacks your ground units which you just constantly repair. An example being the phony-war period in November, December 1939 where the French AI can waste all it's PP in futile air strike attacks on the German inf units...crazy...

In essence TAC-air is way too anemic from this cost-benefit situation in the game as it stands. At the moment I just use them to give land attacked enemy units the last rest and destroy them blasting a hole into the front where the panzers can then march through. (i.e. where the tactical advantage of the situation is more important than the PP-loss) Even in 1941 where I have tech level 3 (!!!) Tac air units all along the front this didn't change. This doesn't feel right at all when compared to how important tactical air forces actually where in WW2 and how much effort when into them from all sides involved.

Therefore I would have two suggestions to improve this:

1) Why not change the strengh of Air units from the integer variable it is now to be a real number where you count fractions. i.e. 4.6 or 9.7. (What you show as strength on the unit would be rounded normally - like land units essentially) This would allow to make a much more varied air strike loss table where instead of just losing 0 or 1 you can loose a fraction of strength. Like for example 0.1 or 0.2. Makes slow attrition of air or low amounts of losses much more possible. As well as losses slightly higher than just 1 with 1.1 or so for extremely bad attacks.

The thought behind this idea is that it could be relativly easy to implement and yet still make quite an impact.

2) Interdiction mission - why not also create a mission where the effectivety of a unit is temporarily reduced instead of the strength. Just like sea bombardments from battleships only with TAC-air. This representing TAC-air units going after and disrupting the supply and communication lines, bombing rail lines, roads etc...

This would mostprobably be much harder to implement but would create lots of choices when you could combine that with normal air strikes.

Well just my 2 cents on that issue.

Romdanzer

[Razz1]

Ja, I find out that when I attack a weak unit and know it will be destroyed, I recieve a 1 point strenght loss 90% of the time.

I avoid killing remenant units as Germany. Soviets have too many units for me to loose 12pp on a unit.

However, if it is high Armor unit I will destroy it.

I consistently use air to:

Increase my odds when availabe

shift the lines and break through

encircle the enemy

If I can refrain from using air, I will, due to the losses.


If you were to make TAC too stronger it would upset the balance.

[Uxbridge]

I noticed this problem some time back.

In ETO we have solved it by using generals in a different way. Instead of having them attached to the front line, we have them in specially made level-1 motorized corps units. These are the only units that may have generals attached and give between 0 to 27 % raised combat efficiency to nearby combat units depending of proximity. They are supposed to portrait a mixture of command units and logistics.

These HQ units are very vulnerable to TAC and if destroyed their absence will reduce the effectiveness of the frontline units. Therefore the opponents tries to knock out as many as they can each turn, which in return will lead to fighter units trying to knock out the opponents TAC-units in preemptive strikes. If one side can obtain total mastery in a front sector, he will also be stronger on the ground. This system have led to a totally different intensity of the air war. It works very well.

[Romdanzer]

Well you see that's in my eyes the whole beauty of my first suggestion of using fraction numbers for the strength points of Air units.

A) It's not really that much of a difference in the current general dynamics of the game system in it's entirety, however it allows a much more varied and differentiated Air Units losses table, thereby making small changes in the average loss amount just as possible as medium changes or large changes, which is currently very difficult with only 1 and 0 as loss options.

B) It "only" requires a change of the variable type from a programming view point. (I realize though that there may be other hidden consequences that I of course cannot be aware of without knowledge of the source code) The only other thing one has to consider is how the fraction amount is illustrated on the unit - normally rounded like currently with land units would be my suggestion...

If you think about it for a while at how exactly the current situaition comes about (all a consequence of the "binary loss choices" with the loss tables) you realize this small change goes a long way to being able to change something without having to do a game system revamp. In addition small changes can be implemented at start in the loss table so as to try out how much change can be done while keeping game balance.

Romdanzer

[Uxbridge]

Yes, your suggestion should solve many issues with the balance between air and ground and also between air and air, adding the benefit of being able to make a more detailed combat resolution. The current system is most likely either a relic from the very first programming, or an effect of placing the air system late, on top of the rest. I'm quite sure we won't see the change in ToW I. Maybe in ToW II.

[RandomAttack]

Personally, I think the CRT causes way too many losses.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2357136&mpage=1&key=&#2357136

I changed mine to reflect 1/3 chance of losses and find it much more "realistic".  Of course it's just a personal preference.  This is a "5-minute" fix that requires no other gameplay changes, etc. Simpler is better in my view.

[Romdanzer]

Well when it comes to the determination of the air strike air loss column I think I have found a bug... see my post on this subject for more info:

tm.asp?m=2382932

In all honesty after a quick resume of my analysis of 431 Air Strike reports the resulting statistics seem to support this. Up to 99% of all Air Strikes conducting by player TAC-units the air loss column is the column 1. Irrelevant of any other factors like, air unit strength, land unit strength, Air unit tech, air strike effectiveness etc....

Romdanzer

[RandomAttack]

Agreed-- I had a much smaller sample size, but between that and actual playing I don't recall EVER seeing anything but a "column 1".