Empires Ablaze Scenario Feedback

[el cid again]

OK - now for the other question: what is the meaning of the fighter bomber classification

The manual says it means a plane is not so good at being a fighter as a fighter is nor as good as being a bomber as
a bomber is.

It may be the thinking was this was for something like a Bf-110 - or a Ki-45 - planes that seem to do poorly relative to their
cost and performance - particularly in air combat. There is also a British example in this class that - if it had bombs - had
no trace of a bombsight (the pilots would line up two rivits on the nose with the target - if you can imagine that).

Regardless of what it was meant for - it is a weak modifier in the air combat routine - and it may be the code has changed its significance
over time.

And regardles of what it was meant for - it is not something I like in a theoretical sense. It is better - theory wise - to base your variable on something - and not an arbitrary thing. Consider the many cases of an aircraft with different roles: a Ventura (or a Ju-88) as night fighter is actually WORSE at maneuvering than it is as a bomber (there is more weight for weapons, and performance robbing primitive antennas). Yet in the original WITP system - you would treat this same airframe differently - because the fighter version would not be divided by 2 - but the bomber version would be. Ultimately a system using arbitrary values unrelated to physical reality is less corect - at least in simulation theory.

I try to avoid using the fighter bomber classification at all. But when a plane is a dog - e.g. the Ki-45 - I use it to help skew game resuilts in the direction I think is better. And when someone pointed out the P-38 was so classified - I removed it. P-38 is a strange creature - but it was designed to be a fighter - not a fighter bomber. Its success in the latter role is an accident of development history. In the beginning what USAAF wanted was a LOCAL air superiority fighter - and the power to get the performance desired was not possible on one power plant. They also wanted a lot of punch - and a nose free of engine - never mind propeller arms - was also a technical trick to get punch. They mounted a cannon and four heavy MG up there - and none of them had to sync with the propeller which was not there. The raw power of two engines always gave the plane speed and ROC - and over time they just used ever bigger engines to get more of the same. This was NOT a fighter bomber at conception - and its record hardly justifies using the classification as a penalty - which is how I use "fighter bomber" in WITP.

But I speculate that it is possible the original system intended this classification for P-38 as such: since they were NOT dividing by 2 (as they do for all other 2 engine aircraft not fighters) and since they knew that was "wrong" - that it was a problem in air combat - this may have been intended as a way to simulate the penalty rather than divide by 2. That way the 2 engine fighters would have clear superiority over 2 engine "target aircraft" (non fighters). It is crude - but typical of GG design style.

Overall - we in RHS in particular have become too analytical. We have by this means added many things that were never intended for WITP - but sometimes - and this is the premier example - we try to go farther than is possible in this system. Modding is above all an art of compromises - and what I like (or what you like) may not be universally loved. In this case - since the compromise involves do many desparate factors that at least MIGHT be included in "maneuverability" - there is no way to get a really satisfactory result. The frustration you feel is also felt by everyone else - it only varies slightly with point of view about what is "wrong" vs what? In fact ALL single engine planes are "more maneuverable" than all multi engine planes - the ONLY exception being centerline engine aircraft. It is a fact of physics. Similarly, all biplanes are more maneuverable than all monoplanes - if one thinks about maneuverability in horizontal terms. On the otehr hand, a faster plane is in a basic sense "more maneuverable" than a slower one - and in that sense - the original WITP system was dead on target. Similarly - a high ROC is an indicator of a different kind of maneuverability advantage. So is wing loading, so is power loading - but these are negative modifiers - they subtract rather than multiply - and the less loading you have - the less it detracts from basic performance - something most people have a hard time bending their minds around. In WWII the dominance of raw speed and also ROC began to emerge (and it continued big time in the jet age which followed) - yet it was never absolute: my own initiation to air combat saw US fighters of vastly greater cost losing EVERY air battle for 5 months running - and half the air battles of a long war - in spite of greater speed and ROC - because the enemy exploited better horizontal maneuverability to escape. [For a while we trumped that by using propeller driven A-1 Skyraider bombers as fighters- ironically escorting F-4 fighters acting as bombers] Absolute "this plane is better at air combat" is also not really a performance thing we can show in statistics alone: surprise and initiative and initial position matter far more - and win hands down in all eras. A dog of a loaded air transport has a 10:1 shot of surviving IF it spots the enemy fighter first - and it is very likely to do that - becuase it has more eyes lookinjg around the sky. There is more to the story than a strait up - both want to fight - both are closing - both are at the same altitude - both have the same skill. The biggest factor of all is - who saw whom first?

[el cid again]

Yet another problem is that "historical air combat statistics" are not right or safe to use as a guide.

They are not the product of scientifically designed controlled testing. They are not complete. They are not even clear in many instances. I once did a study of the 1982 Falklands war - and to my surprise I was able to discover the fate of every machine - even two Harriers that probably killed each other - by hitting each other moving side by side in bad weather. But in spite of knowing "everything" from both sides and from forinsic evidence - there remain uncertainties - and the data is nothing like what I need to build an entirely correct air war model for the conflict. I need at least 30 - preferably more - instances of each kind of event - and I need complete confirmed knowledge of every outcome to do that. It is not possible in any air conlfict to have this sort of data.

Problems include but are not limited to:

1) You don't know what someone who didn't come back would report to you - most of the time. You may assume mechanical failure - but the plane may have been shot down (see the case of the Ki-76 en route to Germany - we can guess - but we do not know: whatever its fate - it is the only such plane and the event is not a statistically valid indicator of anything). Just because it was shot down does not tell us much: the vast majority of the time the plane shot down never even knew the shooting plane was there. It is more like a shooting problem at an amusement park than something our air combat routines can recreate most of the time: the performance matters no a whit if the pilot is not using it to get away. So we just don't have complete data - and if we did - I promise the totals would look a lot different then they do.

2) When you DO have a report from a participant, it is unreliable. He has a point of view - and only one point of view. He may not be telling the truth - who wants to admit "I screwed up and lost an expensive airplane - my crewmen - and my ability to believe I am the greatest"???
Air combat claims are ALWAYS inflated in all air forces in all eras - often grossly so - and lead to even outrageous claims (like 17:1 over Korea - which modern scholarly analysis with incomplete data can show must be false). A long war with vast numbers of sortees should be more statistically meaningful: and if it is Vietnam may be instructive: best data indicates USAF achieved no better than 1:1 by the end of the war - way up from infinity to 1 against us when air combat began (because we lost EVERY engagement). Now you will read other numbers - and hear passionate arguments about the matter - but that is the way we study it. As an eyewitness at the time - in operations centers on board ship - it certainly appeared to be grim. And the sorts of things that really happened are not the sorts of stories anybody but me will tell: they do not imply absolute American technical superiority in all things at all times. Things like using rocks and dynamite to bring planes down, using the OLDEST of the possible planes available because they were MORE likely to win against us than using newer - and faster - planes. Wht your intuition says - and what your pilots say - is not all there is to the story.

3) Air combat statistics are too broad. A "kill" is anything that is killed. A P-38 shooting down Adm Yamamoto in a two engine bomber-transport is just as much a kill as taking out a Zero is. But we do not konw how many "kills" are vs what? A great score can be run up by exploiting operational factors - hit them after a long - and unarmed- transit - when they are tired - out of gas - and unable to shoot back. [We even had propeller planes hunt jet fighters over Germany - not for combat like our routines would have it - but simply by hanging out watching for em to land - and then hitting them when they could not fight - but were strait and simple - and often unarmed - targets. Now this is as valid a kill as any other is - but it is not an indicator of which plane is better at air combat or which is more maneuverable in any sense at all.


I used to care for very expensive flight simulators - very elaborate things that have something like movie screens outside on which what you see is projected - and the whole thing moves - under such power the controls once broke the legs of a pilot "flying" one of them. Using such machines one can "fly" anything - even something that does not exist - or does not exist in our country - or in our time. We can learn things no pilot in old times could - and our pilots have practiced things like crash landings under conditions worse than they will ever have to deal with - so that any real crash will be within their experience curve. As a resident computer engineer on such machines, I got to the point I could fly anything - against anything else if we hook two of them up to simulate air combat. After a certain point - a person with enough experience no longer cares what he flies: you simply exploit what you have vs what they have. I can "proove" any plane you want can beat any other plane you want - but it is not meaningful - because it is not the plane that is in combat - it is the mind of the pilot. Ultimately air combat is about the same thing as any other form of combat: an enemy is not defeated until he is defeated in his mind, then he is defeated utterly. A flight of Argentine fighters took on a British helo in the Falklands - at that time NATO helo defense tactics were untested in actual combat - but after they failed to come close to hitting it - the four fighters gave up and went home. Helo pilots were told - on theoretical grounds - "face your enemy" - and as he comes in - move to the side. He will not be able to score - and with the weapons of that era - it turned out to be entirely true. Yet normally - by most lay analysis - a helo is nothing but a target to a combat jet. The idea it cannot even be hit would not occur to most people.

What we are trying to do is set up statistically average models - and to indicate to them relative indexes of performance of various aircraft. Some of the names of the fields are unfortunate - "accuracy" is not exactly accuracy - "maneuverability" either is not maneuverability - or it is an average of many kinds of maneuverability - at all altitudes - and it does not distinguish the meaning of things like "this is a biplane" - "this is a great preforemer at low altitude and a dog up high" - or a dozen other things I could name. UNLESS the composite values in these fields are AVERAGES of the strengths AND weaknesses of a plane - they are "wrong" in some theoretical sense. But there is no way to know when we get it right - and opinion of reasonable people may reasonably differ even if we come close.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: el cid again

The above discussion confused torque and turning with angular momentum as the issue with a twin engine fighter.

Torque is force applied in rotation. Angular momentum is momentum in rotation. Torque is applied to overcome angular momentum to make the plane roll. When an aircraft is made to roll, the control surfaces convert some of the force of the oncoming air into torque, which rolls the aircraft because it changes the angular momentum.

I did not go into it, but since you mention it in your post - larger control surfaces will generate more torque which will change the angular momentum more quickly. If the formula did not account for that, it could be one of the design issues that causes the performance of certain aircraft to lie outside of the formula results. BTW, control surfaces farther away from the centerline also generate proportionally more torque than those closer to the centerline, so even exactly where each surface is matters. Those details are way outside of my knowledge of these aircraft.

There was no confusion between torque and angular momentum in my post, nor do I assert it is "the issue" with a twin engine fighter.

Regarding engine torque, the P-38's two engines rotated their propellers in opposite directions, thereby canceling each others torque so there was no bias when rolling one way or the other. I presume that many twin engine fighters were designed that way.

Regarding the weapons, I addressed only placement and it's effect on angular momentum. Accuracy for centerline weapons should be higher as you say. The last time I looked at RHS, the P-38 had the exact same device for .50 cal machine guns as did those fighters with wing-mounted weapons. Obviously one or the other was wrong, or you ran out of devices. Similar considerations apply for the 20mm cannon - it should be a device with higher accuracy that that for wing-mounted 20mm cannon. I do not know what the weapons set is in Empires Ablaze so I had not commented.

There is a great deal of truth in most of these statements - but there is something far more profound:

you cannot really figure out how a plane is maneuvering UNLESS you get ALL the details of THAT PARTICULAR plane at that particular moment into the calculation. At Boeing - we did this - even for planes and missles not yet extent. We built the control surfaces - hooked them to whatever controlls them in a real plane - and then "fly" the apparatus in a computer. We change altitude, speed, name it - and we MEASURE the EXACT movement of the surfaces - and we know how big they are and where they are on the plane - so we then can calculate how they will change the flight of the plane in the air. NOTHING like this is possible for us here: we do not have comprehensive data on the control surfaces, and other physical data for every plane - just gross data - and some of that we must estimate. [We may know gross weight, empgy weight, maximum speed at sea level - and 20 other things - but we don't have all we need to do precisce calculations - which run to hundreds of perfoermance data points and thousands of physical layout / size data points for each machine. If we DID have all that data - we would NEVER be done doing WITP data entry - because it would take a couple thousand years to enter it all.]

It is perfectly true that P-38 engines spin were opposite - and I agree - this is likely SOP for a two engine plane - and not a source of trouble for them. What IS a problem is that the mass of the engines is far from the axis of the aircraft - so an aircraft of equal mass and power in which these masser were NOT on the wings would have an inherant advantage over P-38 in that respect. P-38 pilots in combat generally DID try to make a firing pass in a dive at great speed - which in a sense is a "maneuver" - and even "changing position in the sky" - but it isn't trying to out turn them. Given the powerful armament- and that a plane in a dive is even faster than it is on paper using level data - this was a very successful way to fight. It does not imply that a plane which knew it was under such attack would lose - and indeed surely it would usually not lose - because in all eras a plane that knows it is under attack is almost certain to survive any given firing pass. To the extent planes in WWII "cheated" - so that a fighter under attack could end up shooting down the attacker ON THAT PASS - it was planes like Oscar and Zero which were doing it - although there were Allied pilots who did that on some occasions - particularly after they learned they could out dive a light Japanese fighter. [Let him go past you - then come up behind him]

What we need is data that guides the air combat routine about RELATIVE OVERALL performance of aircraft. Not putting in engines is a mistake - which is why the original system had divide by 2 for 2 engine planes and divide by 8 for 4 engine planes. The exception they made for all 2 engine fighters was a mistake IMHO - but ultimately you may believe a Ventura night fighter is twice as maneuverable as a Ventura bomber if you want to - IRL is is slightly less maneuverable - and nothing I can say will change your mind.

.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Nemo,

If you look in the AE Air thread you will find that they responded to my query about Fighter versus Fighter-Bomber to the effect that there is no difference when the FB is being used as a fighter. There is only a difference in how the FB behaves when it is carrying bombs. In other words, changing a plane from a FB to an F does not improve its air-to-air performance.

This might be what they said in the AE thread - and it might even be true in AE (but I doubt it)

but it is neither what the manual says

NOR what I can show in testing.

I can show a statistical difference in the same situation with the same plane - if run a statistical number of times both ways - classified as fighter and as fighter bomber.

Whatever they posted, in WITP and in fact, the manual is right: but the difference is not great - on the order of a few per cent.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Here is a photograph of the P-38 Lightning together with the prototype F-35 Lightning. Notice how small is the cockpit of the P-38. I've seen comments that it was among the most cramped of WWII fighter cockpits. Note too that the wingspan exceeds that of the modern/future jet fighter. Maybe some of these things contribute to the performance that it did achieve.



BTW, I realize that Sid wants a consistent formula and methodology. In my view the objective is an accurate portrayal of the various aircrafts' capabilities. Using a formula to get close, then making any fine adjustments warranted by historical information seems sensible and practical.

And for the record - Sid agrees: with focus on "sensible and practical" we devised a modifier which is so far only used by two planes in the set -for special flaps - including all P-38 versions. So we did use the formula to get close - then we adjusted to get it more correct - and we also reclassified the aircraft (which I think WITPQS suggested as well) - and I tested both changes - and found both DID matter - but not enough to skew the plane to the point of NOT being reasonable. P-38 is not something you want to see on the screen as a Japanese player. It reminds me of what a combat Marine once told me about a .50 cal: "it sounds very good when it is yours, and it sounds very bad when it is theirs" IF reasonable is the standard- P-38 should be significantly better than any other multi engine it meets in any situation - and it should be competative with any enemy fighter it meets - in an overall sense. Overall sense means just that - not that it must have the highest statistic in every category. Since NO single engine fighter can EVER have the durability rating of a P-38 - it MUST have an edge there- and indeed the reason number of engines is a factor in durability is that it really is a factor. Nobody complains about that. It is true, it is fair - what more can you want than getting it right. But there is a price to pay for those engines out on the wings - and if they wanted not to pay it - they could have done - puttiing an engine in the front of a P-39 (it already had one in back driving by extension shaft) - and got a sort of American Ki-62. Since they did not do that - it is not fair to pretend they did.

[Nemo121]

Cid,

You are using obfuscation and language to play games now. So let's focus on what we're actually trying to discuss as opposed to all the errors everyone else brings to the party.

1. Mvr means more than just sustained rate of turn. Given and obvious.

2. Twin-engined planes which don't have any adjustement made to their Mvr end up being ueber-manoeuvrable. So you divide by 2 and say that's better. I agree. On the other hand I think divide by 2 is excessive. It is a WAG ( Wild-ass guess ) you came up with and to defend it to the death as you are doing is highly questionable.

Personally I think that the divisor should be somewhere between 1 and 2. Currently I'm using inductive methods and am getting reasonable results across the range of twin-engined fighters/fighter-bombers when I use a multiplier of between 0.8 and 0.875. Obviously this should be applied to twin-engined bombers, night-fighters etc as well. I have no problem with A-20s and Frances' being pretty manoeuvrable since their low top speed will still make them easy meat.

The biggest factor of all is - who saw whom first?

Yeah, sure. If I'm a Stuka pilot flying towards a target in the English channel which is being LRCAPPED by a couple of squadrons of Hurricanes and Spitfires I'm really going to be delighted that I've seen them before they've seen me since my plane is SOOOO ueber-manoeuvrable and so long as I've seen them I can avoid them. No, oftentimes no matter if I see them first its my JOB to go where they are, push through their attacks and deliver ordnance on target. In that situation anyone who knows anything about the reality of things and doesn't go down the proverbial statistical rabbit-hole with Alice is going to realise that the Spitfires are likely to have a field day ( absent confounders such as 1,000 Me-109s flying escort or something equally "rabbit out of a hat"ty ).



Question:
How much better are fighter-bombers at naval strafing or ground attacks than fighters?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Mifune

To answer part of this problem, in an effort to standardize by using formulas. We used what factors were readily available in reference books. Remember that the "manuever rating" is something of a misnomer to begin with.

I realize this and I have great respect for the work that you did. The ultimate would be if test data were available for all aircraft, then actual known data could be used. The second best approach is to use a formula, and modify it's results where historical information is available. Note that historical information does not mean merely combat results statistics (I have said this many times before but I keep getting wrongly credited with fanboy type nonsense). Third best would be a rigid formula where all formula results were accepted as gospel.

I and others have pointed out that it is impossible for a formula - any formula that we could use - to be so accurate in predicting the aerodynamic performance that we should adhere to it rigidly. It's inevitable that there will be outliers where the formula just fails to predict their actual performance. Given that it makes sense to use relevant historical information to modify the results of the formula where available and appropriate.

In addition, Nemo believes he has found reason to believe the formula itself should be modified because it over penalizes 2E and 4E aircraft. That last point I have no opinion on at this time.

We must also realize that while we might want to compare formula results, what really matters is how the code uses those results. For example, it's been identified that MVR ratings above 36 have a disproportionate impact. That one we know about. What else is in the formula that we don't know about?

When we see MVR of 30 versus MVR of 33 we think of that as a 10% difference. However, the code might use it in such a way that it has a 50% impact on results (all other things being equal). In our hypothetical example, IRL does a 10% difference beget 50% impact? The point is that the formula that gives us the MVR rating is only a very small part of the picture.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Cid,

You are using obfuscation and language to play games now. So let's focus on what we're actually trying to discuss as opposed to all the errors everyone else brings to the party.

REPLY Not sure I follow that - but I am sure you are sincere - and if it seems so - I don't mind your saying so. My skin is thick - and I do not require every perception to be the same as mine. But I NEVER deliberatly obsuscate - except maybe under pressure in a legal fight.

1. Mvr means more than just sustained rate of turn. Given and obvious.

REPLY Not sure why you say that - but we do agree - so I am with you so far.


2. Twin-engined planes which don't have any adjustement made to their Mvr end up being ueber-manoeuvrable. So you divide by 2 and say that's better. I agree. On the other hand I think divide by 2 is excessive. It is a WAG ( Wild-ass guess ) you came up with and to defend it to the death as you are doing is highly questionable.

REPLY Maybe. Maybe it isn't so wild. They used divide by 8 for 4 engine planes - and THAT seemed excessive. They used divide by 2 for 2 engine planes and divide by 1 for 1 engine planes - so it was not really my idea at all. I just cut out the exception for 2 engine fighters - and made 4 engine bombers consistent with the 1 and 2 engine case. It really is Matrix idea - I just cleaned it up. And further - since I have built air combat models for decades of a more complex sort - I must say I think it is a brillant concept on the part of GG - I can show it is indeed in the ball park - even for 3 and 6 engine cases.

Personally I think that the divisor should be somewhere between 1 and 2. Currently I'm using inductive methods and am getting reasonable results across the range of twin-engined fighters/fighter-bombers when I use a multiplier of between 0.8 and 0.875. Obviously this should be applied to twin-engined bombers, night-fighters etc as well. I have no problem with A-20s and Frances' being pretty manoeuvrable since their low top speed will still make them easy meat.

REPLY: I did propose square root - but no one liked it. I did play with it - and for 4 engine bombers it becomes 2 - and that seems excessive. It is still in the ball park though. The real reason it was not popular is that the P-38 maneuverability advocates still don't want to divide by 1.4. But I think that might be acceptable. Even if bombers and transports become more survivable - that is probably right. ANY plane is LIKELY to survive IF it knows it is being attacked - on any given pass it is a 10 to 1 shot it will maneuver enough to live. So while I tend to think "divide by number of engines" is closer - I think "divide by square root of number of engines" is also in the ball park - and I have only done suggestive tests to show it may not be quite as good - not statistically valid exhaustive tests. I am saying you might be right - and resubmitting a proposal I made on the board for your consideration.

The biggest factor of all is - who saw whom first?

Yeah, sure. If I'm a Stuka pilot flying towards a target in the English channel which is being LRCAPPED by a couple of squadrons of Hurricanes and Spitfires I'm really going to be delighted that I've seen them before they've seen me since my plane is SOOOO ueber-manoeuvrable and so long as I've seen them I can avoid them. No, oftentimes no matter if I see them first its my JOB to go where they are, push through their attacks and deliver ordnance on target. In that situation anyone who knows anything about the reality of things and doesn't go down the proverbial statistical rabbit-hole with Alice is going to realise that the Spitfires are likely to have a field day ( absent confounders such as 1,000 Me-109s flying escort or something equally "rabbit out of a hat"ty ).

REPLY: One plane vs many is not exactly an ideal or normal situation. The point remains - a Stuka pilot who actually SAW the enemy would probably not keep flying towards them - and if he did not - he has the initiative to engage or deny combat - because he had first contact. At first sighting planes are so distant there is a good chance they do not see you yet. It isn't maneuverability that matters though - it is time and distance. Even in the case where the pilot elects to close - he gets to pick the altitude - and that may be a significant factor. He may get to pick other things - like being up sun. The point remains - we are dealing with an exceptional case - and even if it is 1 vs 1 in classical dog fighting - the guy who had the initiative should have advantages (aside from the choice not to be in the fight at all).

I do have a point here: gamers think that air combat is about strait up relative maneuverability and firepower - but IRL it is not. Victory - both offensively and defensively - is NOT decided by the relative merits of the plane - and by an order of magnitude. Lots of things matter - but total focus on speed - ROC - turn rate - the whole some of maneuverabilty - is not the dominant thing people in these debates usually believe it is. I am not saying we don't want a fair and consistent rating system - rather the opposite: I oppose special cases unless there is a special cause - and I worked long and hard to get things fair and consistent in a relative aircraft vs aircraft sense. But when things to not work out for your pet airplane - instead of saying "the P-38 should have won" (it might be "the zero should have won") remember that the GG idea of letting die rolls modify the strait up situation - is right - and no plane should always win. I am pleased we no longer have uber cap - and there are almost always penetrators in RHS.


Question:
How much better are fighter-bombers at naval strafing or ground attacks than fighters?

I did not test that - just fighter bomber vs fighter ratings for air combat. But I believe the Forum and the Manual are likely right. IF the air combat data I gathered is right - it is about 3 per cent - in the range 2 to 5 per cent better for air combat in every test - never the same - never less.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: Mifune

To answer part of this problem, in an effort to standardize by using formulas. We used what factors were readily available in reference books. Remember that the "manuever rating" is something of a misnomer to begin with.

I realize this and I have great respect for the work that you did. The ultimate would be if test data were available for all aircraft, then actual known data could be used. The second best approach is to use a formula, and modify it's results where historical information is available. Note that historical information does not mean merely combat results statistics (I have said this many times before but I keep getting wrongly credited with fanboy type nonsense). Third best would be a rigid formula where all formula results were accepted as gospel..

For the record - every statement here is correct - and we have no disagreement - and if anythign I said implied I think otherwise - it is not what I meant to say. I do NOT think WITPQS is unreasonable - in spite of intense disagreements he has had with me in this matter - and he DID say what he says he said.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: Mifune

.
In addition, Nemo believes he has found reason to believe the formula itself should be modified because it over penalizes 2E and 4E aircraft. That last point I have no opinion on at this time.

.

I think Nemo is in the range of reasonable opinion - and it might be a better thing to have a different function re number of engines. There are several ways to do it - the easiest is to apply a K - a constant multiplier. Another approach is to use a mathmetical function - as in square root. It is not obvious to me what the K or function should be? The original system used a K of 1 - that is number of engines - just not consistently - and I moved in that direction deliberately - and I like the result. But it is entirely possible another factor would be better. It is not easy to see how we can tell that? I do not have confidence in any sort of data enough to build a simple index or test. I could build complex models - but for 250 planes - it would take years.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

For the record - every statement here is correct - and we have no disagreement - and if anythign I said implied I think otherwise - it is not what I meant to say. I do NOT think WITPQS is unreasonable - in spite of intense disagreements he has had with me in this matter - and he DID say what he says he said.

Thank you.

[Nemo121]

How much better are fighter-bombers at naval strafing or ground attacks than fighters?
 
Cid, you anwered this for A2A combat... but I'm asking it in terms of ground combat. I understand that in A2A fighter-bombers get a 3% diminution relative to fighters BUT in striking ground targets how much better are fighter-bombers than fighters?
 
 
Ok, so we're looking at a K somewhere between 0.8 and 0.875.  Cid was suggesting the square root of the engines which ends up as a modifier of 0.71. So, what I am proposing to do is pretty much to split the difference and end up somewhere in the middle by multiplying by 0.8. So, a P-38L would end up with 32 Mvr while the P-38G would end up with 26. Those are good Mvrs but worse than the top-line single-engined fighters of the respective times.
 
This will also result in IJN twin-engined fighters in 1942 having Mvr of around 24 going up to a maximum of about 29 or 30 with the Ki-93 in 1944 ( which should still make it relatively unsurvivable in the face of massed fighter opposition ).

[el cid again]

I tried to say - and failed I guess - that I do not know - I only speculate. I did not measure this. I cannot see the code - and if I could - it is not likely I could read it strait up quick and easy. It is not that sort of code. [Proper code - almost never done with peculiar exceptions - is wholly documented INSIDE the code itself - is modular and structured to be easy to read. WITP code is wholly undocumented, even outside the program, it is not structured to be read, and it is often modified so that even the original writer has no sense of what it now does. A quote I love to give by a Matrix programmer helps understand: "After a year I thought I had a handle on this. Then yesterday I saw a branch that changed everything - and I am sure of nothing." I DID speculate it is small. A proper reply requires building a test bed and running many tests - at least 30 of them.

Let me coment on your proposed value modifiers that, based on testing, they will not have dramatic impacts. I like the current system a lot - and I think it may be more valid (it is good form to use a simple concept like "number of engines" and when I do a K other than one it is calibrated - we measure it - as we did for the durability function - where K = 2 - because we figured out it should be 2 by measurement).
But while I am more comfortable with the K = 1 as a working value until we have a way to measure what K should be -

on theotetical grounds I admit we do NOT know what K should be

it is almost certainly not actually one

and these values you are proposing are not unreasonable in the sense of totally skewing or distorting the routines - they will work so well no one will be able to say they are wrong - and P-38 partisans will still be unhappy because their favorite does not "outmaneuver" a fill in the blank case . The spirit of the composite value is here.

[witpqs]

Just a thought - even the 3% you saw might be well within the statistical margin for error in the sample of tests that you ran.

[el cid again]

It is possible. GG loves die rolls. They are everywhere in his designs.

But to make that unlikely, I conducted 100 runs with 10 different models of planes classified both ways - to build a statistically valid data set.

IF you were right I would expect at least SOME runs to have fighter = fighter bomber results - and that never happened.

IF you were right I would expect at least SOME runs to have fighter bombers better than fighter results - and that never happened either.

In 1000 runs - the chances both these cases would exist and the mean average difference is wrong is very small.

It is good enough I could use it in a legal case - and while that does not mean you have to proove it absolutely - you do have to establish it beyond a reasonable doubt.