Comprehensive Wishlist

[ColinWright]

Did the AT unit participate in the attack and did it evaporate? (it seems to be absent from the second screenshot) If so, this is how OPART has always worked. I distinctly recall it taking place in the first PBEM game I ever played. That would be back in the days of OPART I.

[rhinobones]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Did the AT unit participate in the attack and did it evaporate? (it seems to be absent from the second screenshot) If so, this is how OPART has always worked.

Evaporated = Eliminated = Yes it did evaporate.

It’s been a couple of months, but as I recall the AT unit was only used as a blocking unit. Don’t know about the early days of OPART, but this is the only instance I have detected of a unit successfully breaking out of a total encirclement. Paragraph 7.18 (and some sub paragraphs) seems to be requesting that a “breakout” possibility be incorporated into the game engine.

Also, upon further review, the AT unit is in a green state of supply. I had initially thought it was a depleted unit, but that is obviously not the case.

Regards, RhinoBones

[JAMiAM]

I hesitate to argue with a months-old memory of what might have been, but my guess is that the unit was actually participating in the attack, evaporated and then its absence allowed a retreat path for the artillery unit to take. I've seen that case many times, but I've NEVER seen a case where a non-participating unit suddenly got overrun during its own turn, by a retreating enemy unit.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

I hesitate to argue with a months-old memory of what might have been, but my guess is that the unit was actually participating in the attack, evaporated and then its absence allowed a retreat path for the artillery unit to take. I've seen that case many times, but I've NEVER seen a case where a non-participating unit suddenly got overrun during its own turn, by a retreating enemy unit.

Maybe it should happen, though. It might be a change for the better.

As it is, it's 'we're surrounded and running out of ammo, general, what can we do?'

'Hmmm. Panzers to the right of us, panzers to the left of us. There is that reserve field bakery company holding the door closed behind us...but it's not participating in the attack. Damn!!!'

As I understand it, the program has the defender look at all the attacking stacks and attack the weakest. How hard would it be to get it to look at all adjacent stacks and attack the weakest?

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Maybe it should happen, though. It might be a change for the better.

As it is, it's 'we're surrounded and running out of ammo, general, what can we do?'

'Hmmm. Panzers to the right of us, panzers to the left of us. There is that reserve field bakery company holding the door closed behind us...but it's not participating in the attack. Damn!!!'

As I understand it, the program has the defender look at all the attacking stacks and attack the weakest. How hard would it be to get it to look at all adjacent stacks and attack the weakest?

I don't think the item in bold is true yet. Regardless, this is in the wishlist (7.19).

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: Boonierat

Could it be possible to prevent a unit of splitting in 3 when its airlifted from one friendly-controlled airfield to another? its annoying having to recombine them almost every time [;)]

See 6.10.

Also, I'm probably gonna start beating the proverbial dead horse again but is there any particular reason why limiting air units to 3/hex max has never been changed?

Well, 8.15 & 8.16 are similar.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Maybe it should happen, though. It might be a change for the better.

As it is, it's 'we're surrounded and running out of ammo, general, what can we do?'

'Hmmm. Panzers to the right of us, panzers to the left of us. There is that reserve field bakery company holding the door closed behind us...but it's not participating in the attack. Damn!!!'

As I understand it, the program has the defender look at all the attacking stacks and attack the weakest. How hard would it be to get it to look at all adjacent stacks and attack the weakest?

I don't think the item in bold is true yet. Regardless, this is in the wishlist (7.19).

What does this '(7.19)' refer to? The thread only has five pages, and it only goes back to August 2007.

Anyway, I'm quite sure defenders will attack the weakest attacking stack already. At any rate, that AT unit popping is pretty typical. One of the first things I learned...

[JAMiAM]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
What does this '(7.19)' refer to? The thread only has five pages, and it only goes back to August 2007.

Download the file attached to the first post of this thread. That is the wishlist. Item 7.19 is an item on it.

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Anyway, I'm quite sure defenders will attack the weakest attacking stack already. At any rate, that AT unit popping is pretty typical. One of the first things I learned...

The defender is not going to fire at a unit that is not attacking it. The AT unit is grade A, prime beef, for an artillery unit - but only if it is part of the attack. The passive defenders in the AT unit are subject to bombardment losses, and AP fire before they can get off their first shot, and so it's not unlikely at all that the unit would evaporate if it were committed to that attack. Then, the retreat path would be opened for the artillery unit to run through, after the flank attack against it by the remaining units that are shown to have advanced into the hex is executed.

I think that there is a confusion of cause and effect in Rhinobones' description of the situation here.

[ColinWright]

I'm sitting here testing various series of events numbered between 571 and 720 or so. Go to game, find a bug, go back to the editor and find (hopefully) the cause, go to game, find...

It would be GREAT if there was a way in the event editor to skip to a specific event -- or at least to skip to the last defined event. It's getting really tedious scrolling through six hundred events every fifteen minutes.

[a white rabbit]

..could AA-units participate as defence in Airfield Attacks ?
 
..Airforces across the world park them on airfields for this purpose, it seems odd they are no use in toaw..

[a white rabbit]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

ORIGINAL: rhinobones

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit
. . . i'm at 6N 124E

Looked it up, nice place to launch satellites into synchronous orbit. That probably explains some of the experimenting . . . the elephants too.

Regards, RhinoBones

I'd love to retire in a place like that.

..got electricity, mains water, the internet, dusky maidens, and an organic food source (meat, veggie and fruit). In this day of electronic workplaces maybe Matrix could move their Toaw develoment office here ??

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..could AA-units participate as defence in Airfield Attacks ?

..Airforces across the world park them on airfields for this purpose, it seems odd they are no use in toaw..

I wonder if they defend against bridge attacks now.

...kind of comic if they can't. AA would now be wildly effective -- except in two of its primary roles.

Anyway, someday someone has got to accept that the primary way in which AA exerts an effect is not to shoot down aircraft. It's to reduce the effectiveness of their attacks.

[a white rabbit]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..could AA-units participate as defence in Airfield Attacks ?

..Airforces across the world park them on airfields for this purpose, it seems odd they are no use in toaw..

I wonder if they defend against bridge attacks now.

...kind of comic if they can't. AA would now be wildly effective -- except in two of its primary roles.

Anyway, someday someone has got to accept that the primary way in which AA exerts an effect is not to shoot down aircraft. It's to reduce the effectiveness of their attacks.

..as far as i can see they do a good job in attacks on a hex and thats all..

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..could AA-units participate as defence in Airfield Attacks ?

..Airforces across the world park them on airfields for this purpose, it seems odd they are no use in toaw..

I wonder if they defend against bridge attacks now.

...kind of comic if they can't. AA would now be wildly effective -- except in two of its primary roles.

Anyway, someday someone has got to accept that the primary way in which AA exerts an effect is not to shoot down aircraft. It's to reduce the effectiveness of their attacks.

..as far as i can see they do a good job in attacks on a hex and thats all..

They mow down attacking aircraft now -- one has to hack the hell out of the AA values to get anything resembling historical results.

Really, I'd like to see the following.

1. A reduction in AA values to produce historical losses to flak.

2. An AA effect that would divide the attacking strength of the aircraft in a given combat by the value of the AA present. This should probably not be linear: even a few flak guns would reduce the effectiveness of attacking aircraft as compared to their effectiveness if the target has no AA strength at all. Offhand, I'd about double the effectiveness of aircraft given no flak -- but have it rather rapidly fall to about half of its present value given even modest quantities of flak. The effect should -- if anything -- be increased for bridge attacks. No AA guns at a bridge, and bombing it is a training exercise. A couple of batteries and it becomes pretty hard to just concentrate on coming in low and straight and hitting that bridge dead-on. Flak should also affect the effectiveness of interdiction strikes and -- of course -- affect the effectiveness of airfield attacks.

3. Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage. Most times, most places, AA units did not participate in ground combat. It should be possible to choose this option for one side but not the other. For example, it was rare for the British to employ their flak units in ground combat before 1944. The Germans, on the other hand, used them in this role extensively from the word go. Moreover, and regardless of doctrine, flak often simply wasn't in a position to participate in ground battles. For example, if we had a 20 km hex scenario that included the German Sedan crossing in 1940, there was a ton of flak in the Sedan hex on May 14. That doesn't mean it was up supporting Grossdeutschland, though. It was mostly several km from the line, guarding the pontoon bridge over the Meuse. So unless one side enjoys virtual air supremacy, it's fairly unrealistic to allow flak to use its full firepower in ground combat. Even if it's in the hex, a lot of the time it's not at the actual front.

[Erik2]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
3. Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage....

I often put AA units in separate formations with their own icon colour combination (= own airforce) and on internal support.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Erik Nygaard

I often put AA units in separate formations with their own icon colour combination (= own airforce) and on internal support.

Yeah. However, this is hardly an ideal solution, and increases the problem of ant units.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Erik Nygaard

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
3. Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage....

I often put AA units in separate formations with their own icon colour combination (= own airforce) and on internal support.

Yeah -- I had done that in Seelowe up until recently. Thing is, then you want to keep them away from the front entirely, as having uncooperative units in a stack will adversely affect its performance on defence.

The update to OPART III forced me to go through all the AA values. As long as I was having at the 40 mm Bofors, I figured I might as well give it an AP value of 0 and recolor the British AA units so as to make them cooperative. Now the Brit can stick his AA units in front-line stacks and gain some AA protection without negative consequences.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
2. An AA effect that would divide the attacking strength of the aircraft in a given combat by the value of the AA present. This should probably not be linear: even a few flak guns would reduce the effectiveness of attacking aircraft as compared to their effectiveness if the target has no AA strength at all. Offhand, I'd about double the effectiveness of aircraft given no flak -- but have it rather rapidly fall to about half of its present value given even modest quantities of flak. The effect should -- if anything -- be increased for bridge attacks. No AA guns at a bridge, and bombing it is a training exercise. A couple of batteries and it becomes pretty hard to just concentrate on coming in low and straight and hitting that bridge dead-on. Flak should also affect the effectiveness of interdiction strikes and -- of course -- affect the effectiveness of airfield attacks.

See item 8.12 in the wishlist. But it would seem to me that if a plane is sent to the "on hand" pool by Flak, then that's a similar effect, just less subtle. The planes weren't destroyed, they just didn't get to drop their bombs.

3. Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage. Most times, most places, AA units did not participate in ground combat. It should be possible to choose this option for one side but not the other. For example, it was rare for the British to employ their flak units in ground combat before 1944. The Germans, on the other hand, used them in this role extensively from the word go. Moreover, and regardless of doctrine, flak often simply wasn't in a position to participate in ground battles. For example, if we had a 20 km hex scenario that included the German Sedan crossing in 1940, there was a ton of flak in the Sedan hex on May 14. That doesn't mean it was up supporting Grossdeutschland, though. It was mostly several km from the line, guarding the pontoon bridge over the Meuse. So unless one side enjoys virtual air supremacy, it's fairly unrealistic to allow flak to use its full firepower in ground combat. Even if it's in the hex, a lot of the time it's not at the actual front.

You can delete the Flak equipment's AP value in the equipment editor if you want.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

I'm sitting here testing various series of events numbered between 571 and 720 or so. Go to game, find a bug, go back to the editor and find (hopefully) the cause, go to game, find...

It would be GREAT if there was a way in the event editor to skip to a specific event -- or at least to skip to the last defined event. It's getting really tedious scrolling through six hundred events every fifteen minutes.

You can use the F6/F7 thing. You need an XML editor, though.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
2. An AA effect that would divide the attacking strength of the aircraft in a given combat by the value of the AA present. This should probably not be linear: even a few flak guns would reduce the effectiveness of attacking aircraft as compared to their effectiveness if the target has no AA strength at all. Offhand, I'd about double the effectiveness of aircraft given no flak -- but have it rather rapidly fall to about half of its present value given even modest quantities of flak. The effect should -- if anything -- be increased for bridge attacks. No AA guns at a bridge, and bombing it is a training exercise. A couple of batteries and it becomes pretty hard to just concentrate on coming in low and straight and hitting that bridge dead-on. Flak should also affect the effectiveness of interdiction strikes and -- of course -- affect the effectiveness of airfield attacks.

See item 8.12 in the wishlist. But it would seem to me that if a plane is sent to the "on hand" pool by Flak, then that's a similar effect, just less subtle. The planes weren't destroyed, they just didn't get to drop their bombs.

That's a pretty lame rationalization. This happens with all losses. What I'm talking about is that even if -- say -- only 5% percent of the planes on a sortie become OPART 'losses' due to flak, bombing effectiveness should drop by 50% or so.

An excellent example is those sorties against the British warships off Crete. Now, I haven;t been able to locate German losses to flak -- but they apparently weren't severe. Certainly nothing like what OPART III would produce. However, as long as the British were able to keep up their flak umbrella, their losses were fairly modest. Once they ran out of ammunition, though, they were promptly slaughtered.

Flak doesn't shoot down planes: it wrecks their aim. That's an overstatement -- but it's the gist of what needs to be simulated.

3. Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage. Most times, most places, AA units did not participate in ground combat. It should be possible to choose this option for one side but not the other. For example, it was rare for the British to employ their flak units in ground combat before 1944. The Germans, on the other hand, used them in this role extensively from the word go. Moreover, and regardless of doctrine, flak often simply wasn't in a position to participate in ground battles. For example, if we had a 20 km hex scenario that included the German Sedan crossing in 1940, there was a ton of flak in the Sedan hex on May 14. That doesn't mean it was up supporting Grossdeutschland, though. It was mostly several km from the line, guarding the pontoon bridge over the Meuse. So unless one side enjoys virtual air supremacy, it's fairly unrealistic to allow flak to use its full firepower in ground combat. Even if it's in the hex, a lot of the time it's not at the actual front.

You can delete the Flak equipment's AP value in the equipment editor if you want.

Yeah -- and I do. Ideally, however, one shouldn't have to resort to the editor for what was in fact a common situation -- flak not being used at the front, either out of doctrinal rigidity or because it had better things to do.

Flak needs a major rethink in OPART. It's not especially useful to just dig in your heels and insist everything's fine.