Airpower and COTA et al

[Arjuna]

Yeh but ours is from a brown beer bottle.[;)]

[RayWolfe]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna
Yeh but ours is from a brown beer bottle.[;)]

Opps! Did I say cut-glass? I think I meant broken glass. [;)]
Do you remember the "incident" of the Black Bottles in the mess in the 1968 film The Charge of the Light Brigade?
Ray

[HansBolter]

I've been reading the series of books by Michael Reynolds lately; Steel Inferno, Men of Steel, The Devil's Adjutant and am curently in the middle of Sons of The Reich. I get a real kick out the useage of such phrases as "seen off" and "written down"....a yank has to really stop and think about what that actually means.....

[RayWolfe]

I guess the biggest problem is the British penchant for understatement. The classic being the British Brigadier in charge of the 29th Commonwealth Brigade at the Imjin River in the Korean war. He reported to his American Divisional commander that "things are a bit sticky here". The Yank obviously thought that things were a bit sticky there when in fact 29 Brigade was being overrun by a rather large number of Chinese. I can't remember how many Chinese there were but casualties were described as 1,000 29 Brigade, Chinese 10,000
Sticky indeed.
Ray

[jungelsj_slith]

ORIGINAL: sterckxe
At the scale of the Panther engine (average of 5 day battles involving 1 division on each side) tactical recce aircraft were only available at the divisional level - and then only for US forces from 1944 onwards

Hmm, this just isn't true. Take a look at guderian's book, or better yet, Raus's
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/030681 ... 64?ie=UTF8

Raus goes into detail about aerial recce and how in many operations, they were in constant contact with aerial recon. Air recon did a great job of warning ground troops about incoming units, as well as their disposition. This allowed Raus in many cases to prepare ambushes or change lines of attack, etc.

In a operation where the germans had total air superiority, and which relied on aircraft to succeed, I would certainly expect aerial recon to play an important part.

[jungelsj_slith]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

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Paul,

One of the issues with simulating aircraft movement in conjunction with ground movement is the massive discrepency in speed. We can get away with a one minute time interval for ground movement, where a motorised unit can move 250m per minute. However, in that same time a WW2 fighter bomber is moving 5000m. Ideally you would want to reduce the time interval for air units. That way they will be able to observe locations they pass over before they are too far away from them.

Integrating the two is not a trivial undertaking. If we were to reduce the time interval then the game would slow down to a crawl as far as ground units are concerned. Probably the best method is to reduce the time interval, but only process ground units every minute anyway. This would be a BIG job as it's terribly low level. I would prefer to wait until cpu speeds were faster too. Interesting. Thanks.

I guess I don't see the need to physically simulate the position and movements of aircraft - when all we really need is perhaps a "burst" of visibility in a certain area that we request recon in.

I'm thinking this would be similar to what we have now with airstrikes - have a seperate button for aerial recon which simply reveals an area (momentarily) that we choose - and of course it will be limited recon, subject to the same rules we have now with limited ability to perfectly ID units, etc. Panzer campaigns has a system similar to this, and it works very well.

[Arjuna]

Billy,
 
Understood. However, in practice a recon aircraft with a typical 20km horizon making a sweep would effectively cover the entire map. So I would think it a bit unrealistic to just target one sector of the map. What could be done would be to allow the scenario designer to set an air recon level for each side and then use this to determine sighting of enemy units ( albeit with minimum intel level ) where a better/direct sighting report is not available. What do you reckon?

[Arjuna]

While we are at it, we could also allow the scenario designer to set a special sigint level and do likewise.

[Deathtreader]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Billy,

Understood. However, in practice a recon aircraft with a typical 20km horizon making a sweep would effectively cover the entire map. So I would think it a bit unrealistic to just target one sector of the map. What could be done would be to allow the scenario designer to set an air recon level for each side and then use this to determine sighting of enemy units ( albeit with minimum intel level ) where a better/direct sighting report is not available. What do you reckon?

Hi,

Yes!!! That's exactly the sort of thing I hoped for when I started the thread!! And it could be based on degree of air superiority as well. So BFTB when the weather clears would be higher levels for the Allies & near zip for Axis. Desert Crusades could be near equal etc.
C'mon Billy -- you have more clout than I do -- say "Yes".

Rob.[:)]

PS/ Like the Sigint idea too........

[jungelsj_slith]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Billy,

Understood. However, in practice a recon aircraft with a typical 20km horizon making a sweep would effectively cover the entire map. So I would think it a bit unrealistic to just target one sector of the map. What could be done would be to allow the scenario designer to set an air recon level for each side and then use this to determine sighting of enemy units ( albeit with minimum intel level ) where a better/direct sighting report is not available. What do you reckon?

Sounds good to me! Having some sort of player choice in there would make it interesting, but I can understand if it works without it

[pamak1970]

Sounds good to me! Having some sort of player choice in there would make it interesting, but I can understand if it works without it

Like having the player request this "recon level" for certain turns during the game?
The pool of requests will be of course limited simulating the available recon sorties at the start of the scenario.