Übercorsair and übercap

[Martti]

Why yes, I am complaining.

I decided to make an all-or-nothing attack against the allies trying to land at Mindanao. The date is 10/43. I threw everything I had at hand against the allied carriers. From past experience, I new I needed a sizable escort force to hope to penetrate the allied übercap, so I left my carriers with only LRcap protection and threw everything at the allied cap. About 1000 aircraft flew. Not one penetrated a cap of about 250. 800 aircraft were shot down. Not to mention that my carriers suffered badly. The pilots were experienced, in the 60-85 range.

[marky]

The F4U Corsair, when u absolutley POSITIVELY have to kill every mother #$%#$% Zero around, there is no subsitution!


[:D][:D][:D][:D]

[Yakface]

Playing stock?....if so, that's your problem.  There are mods out there (CHS, Nikmod, Treespider's) which reduce the effect you are seeing.
 
 

[wild_Willie2]

That's why so many people play mods now.
The air to air combat in stock is WAY to bloody.

Try Nikmod....

[Lecivius]

ORIGINAL: marky

The F4U Corsair, when u absolutley POSITIVELY have to kill every mother #$%#$% Zero around, there is no subsitution!

Man, I laughed so hard I had to go on break [:D]

[marky]

ORIGINAL: wild_Willie2

That's why so many people play mods now.
The air to air combat in stock is WAY to bloody.

Try Nikmod....

i like my air and naval engagements just fine. i just sunk or damaged 18 IJN ships [:D]

[marky]

ORIGINAL: Martti

Why yes, I am complaining.

I decided to make an all-or-nothing attack against the allies trying to land at Mindanao. The date is 10/43. I threw everything I had at hand against the allied carriers. From past experience, I new I needed a sizable escort force to hope to penetrate the allied übercap, so I left my carriers with only LRcap protection and threw everything at the allied cap. About 1000 aircraft flew. Not one penetrated a cap of about 250. 800 aircraft were shot down. Not to mention that my carriers suffered badly. The pilots were experienced, in the 60-85 range.

u should play the allies[:D]

[Nomad]

So Marky, boy genius, if everyone plays Allies like you say, they who is going to play Japan? [&:]

I see you are just a pest, not a troll.

[marky]

ORIGINAL: Nomad

So Marky, boy genius, if everyone plays Allies like you say, they who is going to play Japan? [&:]

I see you are just a pest, not a troll.

lol[:D]

thank you

im not so bad once ya get ta know me

[bradfordkay]

Of course, in the actual Leyte Gulf landings, on the first day not a single Japanese plane made it through the CAP to attack the ships.

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: Nomad

So Marky, boy genius, if everyone plays Allies like you say, they who is going to play Japan? [&:]

I see you are just a pest, not a troll.

Why not both?

[Cavalry Corp]

Should not both sides lost a lot of planes

I suppose the allied units were all 80+ exp

I am investing a lot of time in PBEM - and do not like this . I am at March 43 , I can pretty much get 50/50 with the allies when my units are 70+

Read somewhere for the Japs inferior plane types they need +10exp over the allied pilot - who thinks thats true ?

M

[crsutton]

I know that fighting against corsairs just sucks. But look at it as you having to pay the bill for all of those uber long range torpedo carrying nells and bettys you got to play with in 1942. It all balances out.

[mdiehl]

Should not both sides lost a lot of planes

Depends on the date. But in 1944 if the USN defenses aren't saturated, the answer should be "no." The Japanese losing 800 zeroes in a single engagement and the USN losing a few operationally and a couple shot down is within the realm of plausibility if one is willing to suspend disbelief long enough to pretend that at any time during WW2 the Japanese could have put 800 aircraft into one small region of the Pacific in the first place.

For example on 19 June 1944 US VF-31 (in Hellcats -- F6Fs, mind you, an inferior plane as compared with F4Us) 12 American a.c. shot down 28 Japanese zeroes in two engagements. In the first engagement 12 F6Fs vs 6 A6Ms, in the second engagement 11 F6Fs vs 50 A6Ms. No losses to the F6Fs.

On 19 June, for all Battle o' the PhilSea combats, the US lost 6 fighter aircraft and 14 strike aircraft, and shot down 395 Japanese aircraft.

[mdiehl]

Looking at your intel sheets, if the results are accurate (108 allied a.c. destroyed in A2A), if there is any distortion in the game here, it favors Japan. In the real event the Allies losses would have been around 40 aircraft, not 108, based on the general numbers tossed around in your intel.

[ChezDaJez]

Looking at your intel sheets, if the results are accurate (108 allied a.c. destroyed in A2A), if there is any distortion in the game here, it favors Japan. In the real event the Allies losses would have been around 40 aircraft, not 108, based on the general numbers tossed around in your intel.

yeah... okay..NOT! That would only be true if the general level of experience of Japanese and Allied pilots and the aircraft mix were similar to those that participated in the real battle.

If the Japanese player is able to keep experienced pilots alive into 1944, they should perform much better than the poorly trained RL participants. You also need to look at the mix of aircraft shot down on that day as a good portion of those were bombers, not fighters.

One other thing, IRL, the US fleet could not keep all the attackers out no matter how good the their AAW and suffered many damaged ships as a result. In the stock game against an uber allied CAP, there are seldom if ever any leakers.

Of course, you wouldn't know anything about how the game really works, would you?

Chez

[jwilkerson]

ORIGINAL: Martti

Why yes, I am complaining.

I decided to make an all-or-nothing attack against the allies trying to land at Mindanao. The date is 10/43. I threw everything I had at hand against the allied carriers. From past experience, I new I needed a sizable escort force to hope to penetrate the allied übercap, so I left my carriers with only LRcap protection and threw everything at the allied cap. About 1000 aircraft flew. Not one penetrated a cap of about 250. 800 aircraft were shot down. Not to mention that my carriers suffered badly. The pilots were experienced, in the 60-85 range.

The solution I've come up with to avoid these types of results, is to make more attacks with smaller numbers of planes. The air combat model in the game is such that if the disadvantaged side throws more and more planes into the battle, they will just lose more and more planes. A large attack now and then is needed to keep the other honest and to break patterns. But look at PzB and Pauk's AARs, they've gotten most of their late war positive results with small "sniping" attacks.

And BTW this also works in reverse for the Allies in the early war. Attacking with 100s B-17s into 50+ Tony's can lose 50+ B-17s ... but attacking with 2-3 groups of 20-30 with lose much less. Maybe 6-12 total.

[Charles2222]

mdiehl:

Depends on the date. But in 1944 if the USN defenses aren't saturated, the answer should be "no." The Japanese losing 800 zeroes in a single engagement and the USN losing a few operationally and a couple shot down is within the realm of plausibility if one is willing to suspend disbelief long enough to pretend that at any time during WW2 the Japanese could have put 800 aircraft into one small region of the Pacific in the first place.

Try the proposed defense against operation Olympic (over 7000 aircraft). What you say is largely true "historically" as far as the numbers sent up at one region, but that was largely dictated by their saving planes for the Home Islands defense later, which, of course, only somewhat came off in the form of the Okinawa kamikaze attacks. I don't have any numbers in front of me, but the Okinawa kamikaze attacks did approach over a thousand planes sent, not accounting for the conventional planes that accompanied them.

[invernomuto]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson


The solution I've come up with to avoid these types of results, is to make more attacks with smaller numbers of planes. The air combat model in the game is such that if the disadvantaged side throws more and more planes into the battle, they will just lose more and more planes. A large attack now and then is needed to keep the other honest and to break patterns. But look at PzB and Pauk's AARs, they've gotten most of their late war positive results with small "sniping" attacks.

Is there any plan to officially tweak the A2A combat model to reduce losses for both side?

[mdiehl]

What you say is largely true "historically" as far as the numbers sent up at one region, but that was largely dictated by their saving planes for the Home Islands defense later, which, of course, only somewhat came off in the form of the Okinawa kamikaze attacks.

It was less a consequence of the Japanese "saving planes for later" and more a consequence of Japanese command and control and logistics being unable to manage that many aircraft in a narrow theater. One of the persistent probs in WitP is the sizes of strikes deployable. Only the US managed to develop both the logistics and the command and control functions to be able to deploy huge CAPs over CVs, and then only after about mid-1943, and only the USAAF and RAF managed to be able to send up huge streams of land-based strike a.c. to saturate targets *anywhere.*

I don't have any numbers in front of me, but the Okinawa kamikaze attacks did approach over a thousand planes sent, not accounting for the conventional planes that accompanied them.

Sure. But those thousand a.c. were sent over a period of roughly 1 week. Single raids comprised of huge numbers of aircraft simply didn't happen in the Axis. Even the Phil Sea "Turkey Shoot" was successive waves of a.c. The only "thousand plane raids" of the war (or anything close to 'em) were fielded by the Allies, starting with the big Cologne raid in the ETO.

@Chez:

Of course, you wouldn't know anything about how the game really works, would you?

I know alot more about how WitP works than you know about World War Two history.

yeah... okay..NOT! That would only be true if the general level of experience of Japanese and Allied pilots and the aircraft mix were similar to those that participated in the real battle.

There's one man's opinion.

If the Japanese player is able to keep experienced pilots alive into 1944, they should perform much better than the poorly trained RL participants.

I disagree. In 1943, veteran zero drivers were routinely shot down by well-trained but combat-inexperience F6F drivers and F4U drivers. That is because those qualitative intangibles only go a long ways when the a.c. pitted against each other are roughly comparable. By 1943, the Zero was outdated. It was just barely capable of holding its own against lowly F4Fs through October 1942, despite the Zero pilots generally having more experience.

One other thing, IRL, the US fleet could not keep all the attackers out no matter how good the their AAW and suffered many damaged ships as a result. In the stock game against an uber allied CAP, there are seldom if ever any leakers.

Uber CAP is a problem throughout the war in pretty much every iteration of WitP, but Japanese players don't seem to complain about being able to use Uber CAP in 1942 as far as I can tell. And yes lots of ships were lost to leakers. Not only in 1944 but indeed in 1942. The problem is that small numbers of a.c. have difficulty penetrating any cap. It's one of the details that makes the "Kido Butai Death Star" such an (ahistorically) attractive option for the Japanese, and one of the (several) reasons why the Japanese player routinely takes substantially more ground in WitP than they historically could.