large A/C repair rates

[XPav]

Originally posted by elmo3
Here is an excerpt from Fire In the Sky, pg 276. It's a discussion on B-17's and maintenence:

"...Officers called upon Fortresses in Australia and the Solomons to fly many missions of all types, including long-range flights, which increased wear and tear on the aircraft and crew. Add to the equation improving but still mediocre maintenance, and the Forts were beaten up by 1943.

And after that, I believe the B-17s were withdrawn!

I just read that page last night, and while I don't have the book on me, they said that the B-17 (and other heavy bombers) wer used much more for patrol duties rather than bombing.

The medium bombers did most of the work.

So, quite frankly, after reading that, the repair rates don't bother me that much. Flying patrol missions doesn't seem to cause the massive damage that bombing missions do.

[elmo3]

Just found out there is a B-17 at a local airport this week. Hopefully my 2 1/2 year old son and I will see it tomorrow. I might even have a shot at a ride, but for $400/half hour I doubt my wife will agree to that.

"But honey, I need to take the flight for research related to this neat game I'm playing..."

[jcjordan]

Elmo, even if your wife ends up leaving you, it's definately worth it. I've gone on B17, Ford Trimotor & P51 flights. I liked the P51 the best since I was able to log the time as dual flight time.

[strollen]

After reading Joel description of how the plane repair process works, I must say I am baffled by the logic to it. In contrast the way engineers repair and expand bases made perfect sense to be.

It seems to me that repairing a plane is a primarily a function of how many aviation support (AVS) you have, how busy the av support guys are, how advanced a base is, and the size/complexity of the plane being repaired.

I am not sure why having one plane repaired would affect the next plane being repaired assuming that you have enough facilities and mechanics to go around.

If I was designing this subsystem here is what I'd do.

Take the number of AV support and subtract the total number of sorties for the day. (This simulates the routine pre- and post flight maintaince and arming etc.) Sorties in excess of AV support would increase operational losses. The remaining AV support personal are available to repair damaged planes.
Each remaining AV support generates a repair point. I'd limit to the total number of repair points to say 30*base size. (I.e. there much more limited number of hangers, repair benches at level 1 dirt runway, than a Rabaul or Cooktown so having a ton of mechanics won't help.)

It would take say 5 points to repair a fighter/attack plane 10 for a level bomber and 20 for a heavy bomber. I'd keep the repair roll that says a plane has an 80% chance of actually being repaired.

So for example a Level 4 base with 120 planes, and 150 av support, would repair 2 fighter and 2 level bombers (30 points) on a day when all the planes were flying. However on days when no mission are schedule cause of weather, it could repair up to 6 heavy bombers (120 points.).

It seems to me that this would be far more historical than sticking 250 AV support points and all your planes in the most advance forward base.

[denisonh]

Very good point on making repairs a function of the available support, facilities and operational tempo.

I would still randomize the actual repair, but instead of a flat percentage rate to repair, a normally distributed random variable for the amount of points to repair for each a/c using the idea presented by strollen:

fighter 5 +/- 2
med bombers 10 +/- 3
hvy bombers 20 +/- 6

Or something to that effect.

I believe that there must a random element to account for the vagaries of combat effects.

But the important point is that by controlling the OPTEMPO of the bases operations, it will give the player control over the maintenance situation.

[strollen]

I agree that there should be some random element, and your approach is as good as any.

The other point I forget to make is that the large bases like PM, Rabaul, and even Guadacanal actually were a collection of three or four different airbase with most fighters based on the smaller strips. So logically they should have a repair capacity several times a single strip. This of course assume they have enough mechanics and supplies.

I realize that UV probably won't see major changes, but hopefully something like this will make it into WITP.

[seeker124]

Well, I've been baffled by why my B-17 raids have been slacking off so badly lately. Thought it was the pilot mis-allocation bug, but I reckon it was actually the decreased repair rates.

I concur that the repair rates need a tweak. Part of the problem, of course, is that, if the game simulation is good, the players will not (for long) make the same mistakes that the real commanders did. Instead they will immediately adopt the "historical war-winning solution". I suppose the drastically changed repair rates are a tweak to at least impede events that were too ahistorical from happening.

After all that: How about the idea of implementing cannibalization to influence ready planes. Something along the lines of the old John Hill game about the Yom Kippur war, where one squadron could be scrapped to bring one back into play from the damaged box. Applied on a plane by plane basis rather than squadron level (since the game already allows withdrawing a squadron). I'm not sure about this idea. It may be getting too far down into the weeds.

[denisonh]

In a current PBEM game, I am running my B-17s about once every 2-3 days at 25,000 ft. It seems to working so far in turns of keeping a majority mission capable, but they really don't do anything (7 runway hits if I am lucky).

But if a an entire airfield suspends operations to conduct maintenance, there should be some increase in repair given adequate supplies, support, and airfield capacity, just as Strollen has suggested.

It may be a way to penalize heavy operations without the ridiculous situation of having 8 a/c sitting idle on an idle airfield for 2 weeks with only 1 a/c being repaired in that time frame (In a current PBEM game,Rockhampton on 16 May still has 7 of the 8 damaged B-17s that started there:mad: ).

[Black Cat]

Both Joel and Erik said the they are knotching down the repair rate times to be a bit closer to 1.11, but still not as fast as it was.

I think that`s a very good thing.

Your once every 2-3 days Missions seems a bit light, but hopefully we`ll have some hard historical info on that soon.

I`ve found in further casual testing with 1.20 that once you get past 20,00 feet the damage you do isn`t ( acording to the After Action Reports ) worth the effort...especially with the small strike packages of 12-16 Bombers going in, however that may be Fog Of War and more damage is being done then the reports indicate.. IMHO UV has a very thick FOG which is good.

I`m going to try a H to H game playing both sides to see the actual damages done, hopefully ( and assuming the AI is being honest vs us ) that will give some accurate info...

I don`t think more testing time ( for me anyway ) is warrented until the next Patch.