Good to know UBER Cap is gone

[Sardaukar]

Guys, it's just a game. [8D]

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

Castor is definitely the most negative poster on the forum. I have not seen a single post from him that does not criticize the AE and apparently he still plays it a lot. [:'(] Lot of issues, lot of issues...[:D]

I don't see anything wrong with those obsolete Dutch bombers getting massacred. Everything in mission calculations was against them, exp, plane quality, lack of fighter escort etc. If they had been B-25s with average pilots, I'd have hoped for some chance for bomb hits...but still, unescorted light bomber raid against enemy's No.1 fighter teams is not recommended. [8D]

yeah, I´m sure one of the most or the most negative poster on the forum. I´m also one of the most active players and one that is looking at the game most carefully when playing it. I guess I´m not a that bad player either, even if this combat report makes it look completely different. [:D] I´m not doing unescorted raids when I tend to know that there´s Cap over the target, I´m not crazy. In this case I did NOT expect Cap as I wouldn´t have thought my opponent would be bold enough to send mini KB´s Cap over to a base 120 miles away when I´ve got 100 bombers sitting on Java. He told me there was some LRCAP and the rest was leaking Cap. So Kudos to my opponent for shredding this attack. He deserves the Kudos and I deserve my bombers being shred.

I´m spending a lot of time with this game, this includes the hours and hours on this forum, the hours and hours of doing AARs and the hours and hours of actually playing the game of course. All this together makes this game a too big part of my life anyway but that´s probably also the reason why I bring up such a post to start with this thread.

Of course when I start out with something like "Santa Clause and Buggs Bunny meet up..." and then post the actual combat report afterwards to then even more complain how ridicoulos everything is, this is of course pissing The Elf off and I´m not surprised about it as this can be seen as offensive from my part and he´s of course correct that I should take a deep breath before posting in such a manner. I really appreciate all the work that was put into WITP, the mods of it and AE of course. Therefore I of course see the reason why people get offended as it´s their "baby".

It would have been better for me to just say: is this correct, is this realistic? For me, there´s no doubt that 50 bombers shot down (even Dutch ones) are too many, especially with all the explanations (and therefore expectations from my part) I´ve got. LRCAP and leaking Cap alone should make it less bloody as I (we) were told that this makes Cap worse. In this particular case, I would have expected a slaughter, the slaughter to me would be 30 bombers shot down. Not 60% of the total bomber numbers on Java by not even two dozen Zeroes. The Zeroes had 20mm cannons with 60 shots each IIRC. And they carried 7.7mm MGs, not a that frightening weapon, not even for the Dutch bombers. The Claudes only carry those baby guns, just as the bombers carry obsolete defensive weapons. Most people seem to disagree but except saying they disagree they don´t prove it either. Yes, most bombers were escorted in real life, but also many times they weren´t. And how many times did the defender outnumber the escort and how many times fighters actually got through to the bombers? BoB anyone? If there are enough fighters to deal efficiently with the escort than there are enough fighters left to take on the bombers just as if there wouldn´t be an escort. But does that mean that we now read about incidents when bombers were shot down at such a rate? No IMO. There´s no doubt that The Elf is the expert about air war, in comparison I´m a 1 year old learning to speak. It´s not like that I haven´t read any books though. Many or most of the books that we all here see as gospel have been read by me too. And with all I´ve read I miss those incidents when slaughters (what was seen as slaughters) turned out to be something like has been seen in this example. No matter how obsolete one of the sides were.

Again, to me a slaughter and an acceptable result would have been around 30 bombers shot down. 50? Sure not. But that´s my oppinion. Have I expressed my oppinion in a wrong way? Sure, take my apologies please. Have I changed my mind? No, for me it´s definetely too much. We´re not even talking about write offs, they were all shot down. And look at the intel screen, those are the actual losses, not what the cr makes you think.

I´ve played WITP for years, 99,5% of the time PBEM (this is no offense to AI players so don´t take it offensively please) and I guess by the time I switched over to AE I´ve known everything about WITP. I´ve got high expectations for AE and see it being a real improvement over AE. I am playing it now in a PBEM against Rainer79 where this cr is coming from. Will I stop playing? Sure not. Will I stop complaining? Sure not. I´ve always complained about IMO wrong things in WITP and many were changed (not only due to my complaints of course, I´m only one of many). Do I think AE has reached the line of possibilities WITP has reached sometime around the 1.8 patches? Sure not. I´ve got many complaints about AE and I´m sure many things will be corrected. Airwar, you won´t believe me after this thread I guess, is my smallest problem.

I´m ranting a lot, that´s true, doing this in real life about real life issues too. Perhaps I´m doing it in a wrong way at times, but I´m surely not one of those guys we in Austria call "Yes-sayers". No idea how that´s called in English or if you even know what I mean. Anyway, usually there´s some truth in what I´m ranting about and I´m not 100% off with my rants. Sometimes I´m also 100% on target I guess. In this case, many people disagree with me and I don´t have a problem with it. Some agree it seems.

Again, my apologies for how I´ve started the thread, but I still stand to my opinion that IMO the losses are too high.

cheers

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: mjk428

ORIGINAL: dbfw190

mjk428- he was implying what Castor said was crazy, not calling the guy crazy.

So if I was to tell you to take a deep breath and run your post through an intelligence filter before pressing "OK", you wouldn't think I just called you stupid? OK. Either way, it's still a personal attack. I didn't see any personal attacks by Castor Troy so I don't think it was justified. Criticizing a product is not a personal attack.

If I say "The Jonas Bros stink", I'm not attacking them, I'm just saying I don't like their music. Although I certainly understand why they wouldn't like my opinion of their product. However, Castor Troy didn't even go that far. It's more like: "I bought the new Jonas Bros album and I couldn't stop playing it. However, the chorus on track 4 really gets on my nerves so I may stop listening."

edit:

For any devs feeling unloved. Be glad you didn't work on Rogue Warrior. Loser of this bet has to play it to completion.

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/701866/TheFeed.html

both my start of the thread with the "Santa Claus... etc" thing and the sanity filter were not the way we should have posted, but I was the one that started it. It´s not surprising The Elf was pissed off, so just forget it guys.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Fishbed

From what I am counting in the report, a lot of those 50 planes were written off or got lost on the way home, they didn't get destroyed in direct combat - they dropped their load but back home they were too damaged to be flown again, and they count as a A2A loss, right?

no, they weren´t. There was one op loss, but the ops report didnt´show a single line that any bomber was a write off. I haven´t checked each squadron before and after if the write offs have changed but I´ve checke the op report and there was NO write off. They were all shot out of the sky.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Alfred

Anyone here know of an instance when the Dutch consolidated their obsolete Martin bombers and launched 89 against a single target?  Well that just screams ahistorical to me.  When one player engages in ahistorical actions then I see absolutely nothing wrong with an ahistorical outcome resulting.

So the OP had a loss of 50 bombers, which he thought was too much but he thought a loss of 30 bombers would have been acceptable.  Really, on what basis was that conclusion reached?  Surely not on the basis that AE is a simulation, because it is not.  Nor on the basis of precedent because...well not too many come to mind.

Then we have other players' experiences to guide us on whether ubercap exists in AE.  Beside the examples quoted in this thread, look at Canoerebel's AAR (and separate thread) where he bemoans that 160 Wildcats had limited success against Japanese bombers in the Kuriles.  To offset that example, there is Q-Balls recent experience in the Celebes.

The Elf has it in one.  If I employ poor tactics and get spanked, the fault lies with me, not the game.

Alfred

what has the tactic to do with it? Can you show me my lines where I said I should not have lost anything at all. 21 Zeroes accounted for nearly 50 bombers (if we give three bombers to the Claudes). Sounds like nice shooting and being everywhere at the same time. Sounds also like a lot of ammo. But hey, that´s just me saying that it would be hard for 21 fighters of any type shooting 50 bombers of any type out of the air. When there are more people saying that´s how it should be, this proves me wrong obviously. That´s how democracies work, even if the ratio is 51:49 it means the 49% are wrong while the 51 are right. In my particular example the ratio for me being wrong is of course far higher, I don´t deny this. I still haven´t change my mind though.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: 1275psi

30 betties -unescorted -vs a pack of fighters

No survivors
A comaparable situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MONSFUS5iwI


I think the game got it just right -unescorted obsolete crud vs elite pilots/planes -equals disaster.

while I don´t know how to take out number of bombers and fighters of a youtube video, when I compare it to my engagement then it would mean that if there are 30 bombers there would be only around 7 fighters, taking down 15-18 bombers. This would give more or less the same massacre ratio I suffered. The problem I see, the more bombers there are and the less fighters, the harder it is to achieve a massacre kill rate. Take a raid of two bombers, shoot down one and you achieve a 50% kill rate. Take 100 bombers and it will get quite hard to take 50% down I guess. Especially if you have 4 bombers for each attacking fighter on the defense. I left out the Claudes once again.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: tazaaron

ORIGINAL: mjk428

ORIGINAL: TheElf



I'm sorry, not sure what you mean?

You gave a good and detailed explanation of why the results Castor Troy was so unhappy about were within the bounds of a realistic result. I completely understand why you don't want the claim "Uber CAP is back" to stand, especially if that's not the case.

Then you put this totally unnecessary cherry on top:

Next time take a deep breath and run this sort of thing through a sanity filter before posting like this...

I might be a new poster to this forum but not someone who hasn't kept up with everything over the YEARS but why even start a argument, Castor can defend himself yet he hasn't thats what he wants someone like you to step forward, hes watching you carry the spark. Ive seen his past posts and its good theres someone who points out some downfalls in the game but i agree with Elf, and this doesn't just apply to this game people scream murder on any game thread when things go against them a small % of the time. You can have 199 perfect caps but the one time its off they scream THE GAME IS BROKE DONT BUY IT. This is outright insane or none of us would be here, if you got proof post it and im not talking one engagement with crap bombers that cant even run from the battle with no escort im talking proof. Ive had some crazy results about once a MONTH, u dont see me yelling into the forum that its broke he shot down 21 bombers,go upstairs and tell your mom if thats the problem. If it happened every turn it might be a different thing and id point it out. It must be a good game or Castor wouldnt have 7050 posts on this forum. If your looking for the perfect game with no flaws every now and them, well im sorry to tell you but you might as well go out and step in front of a truck because its not going to happen.

You either love me or hate me, im not going to beat around the bush its just a waste of time. Ive been around the block a few times so show it or stay home.

Aaron

sorry Aaron, I´m surely fighting my battles myselve and am not watching someone to carry the spark. I´ve started this thread at night times, watched it some time and went to bed. Woke up again and went to work yesterday, not coming back home until night again while I had some time to peek into the forum yesterday during the day. It´s Friday morning now (at my place) and am again at work but got some time to spend more than just a couple of minutes on the forum. And as you can see from my row of posts one after another, I don´t need anyone to carry the spark. And I can asure you that I´m the last one that would tell ANYONE that he shouldn´t buy the game, that´s ridicoulos.

my 7000 posts and my ranting reputation (that you might not have known yet) shoud be enough to tell you that I don´t need someone to fight my fights. So if you want to fight me, you surely will find me and not someone else to replace me.

[Sardaukar]

"If there are enough fighters to deal efficiently with the escort than there are enough fighters left to take on the bombers just as if there wouldn´t be an escort."
 
I don't think this is necessarily correct.
 
IMHO, fighter escort has the tendency to draw intercepting fighters from bombers and they also get wary about getting bounced by escort when attacking bomber. Thus even small escort has more effect than their numbers would dictate. This tendency can be seen for example in Battle of Midway with relative success of Thach and his companions despite being badly outnumbered.
 

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

"If there are enough fighters to deal efficiently with the escort than there are enough fighters left to take on the bombers just as if there wouldn´t be an escort."
 
I don't think this is necessarily correct.

IMHO, fighter escort has the tendency to draw intercepting fighters from bombers and they also get wary about getting bounced by escort when attacking bomber. Thus even small escort has more effect than their numbers would dictate. This tendency can be seen for example in Battle of Midway with relative success of Thach and his companions despite being badly outnumbered.

of course it´s not 100% correct. I know every word and every letter is worth the weight in gold on the forum so you have to 100% correctly express your opinion. I don´t disagree with what you are saying, but IMO escort or not, if you have 100 defending fighters and 20 escorts for example then there will be enough fighters of the defender that can take on the bombers without having even seen one of the escorts. And even if 20 escorts could draw away 50 of the Cap fighters then there would still be 50 attacking the bombers as if there wouldn´t be an escort. And then I still wouldn´t think those 50 fighters would shoot down 100 Dutch bombers. Especially not if there would be 200 bombers (4 times the fighters, as in my example).

I´m exagerating once more so don´t take everything as if it would be atomic science please, perhaps you get what I mean. No doubt escorted raids are the way to go, I´m not stupid. This is not the discussion, the discussion (at least for me) is that I have my doubts that 21 Zeroes would take down 50 Dutch bombers over the target. But, as said a dozen times already is my oppinion.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

Castor is definitely the most negative poster on the forum. I have not seen a single post from him that does not criticize the AE and apparently he still plays it a lot. [:'(] Lot of issues, lot of issues...[:D]

I don't see anything wrong with those obsolete Dutch bombers getting massacred. Everything in mission calculations was against them, exp, plane quality, lack of fighter escort etc. If they had been B-25s with average pilots, I'd have hoped for some chance for bomb hits...but still, unescorted light bomber raid against enemy's No.1 fighter teams is not recommended. [8D]

yeah, I´m sure one of the most or the most negative poster on the forum. I´m also one of the most active players and one that is looking at the game most carefully when playing it. I guess I´m not a that bad player either, even if this combat report makes it look completely different. [:D] I´m not doing unescorted raids when I tend to know that there´s Cap over the target, I´m not crazy. In this case I did NOT expect Cap as I wouldn´t have thought my opponent would be bold enough to send mini KB´s Cap over to a base 120 miles away when I´ve got 100 bombers sitting on Java. He told me there was some LRCAP and the rest was leaking Cap. So Kudos to my opponent for shredding this attack. He deserves the Kudos and I deserve my bombers being shred.

I´m spending a lot of time with this game, this includes the hours and hours on this forum, the hours and hours of doing AARs and the hours and hours of actually playing the game of course. All this together makes this game a too big part of my life anyway but that´s probably also the reason why I bring up such a post to start with this thread.

Of course when I start out with something like "Santa Clause and Buggs Bunny meet up..." and then post the actual combat report afterwards to then even more complain how ridicoulos everything is, this is of course pissing The Elf off and I´m not surprised about it as this can be seen as offensive from my part and he´s of course correct that I should take a deep breath before posting in such a manner. I really appreciate all the work that was put into WITP, the mods of it and AE of course. Therefore I of course see the reason why people get offended as it´s their "baby".

It would have been better for me to just say: is this correct, is this realistic? For me, there´s no doubt that 50 bombers shot down (even Dutch ones) are too many, especially with all the explanations (and therefore expectations from my part) I´ve got. LRCAP and leaking Cap alone should make it less bloody as I (we) were told that this makes Cap worse. In this particular case, I would have expected a slaughter, the slaughter to me would be 30 bombers shot down. Not 60% of the total bomber numbers on Java by not even two dozen Zeroes. The Zeroes had 20mm cannons with 60 shots each IIRC. And they carried 7.7mm MGs, not a that frightening weapon, not even for the Dutch bombers. The Claudes only carry those baby guns, just as the bombers carry obsolete defensive weapons. Most people seem to disagree but except saying they disagree they don´t prove it either. Yes, most bombers were escorted in real life, but also many times they weren´t. And how many times did the defender outnumber the escort and how many times fighters actually got through to the bombers? BoB anyone? If there are enough fighters to deal efficiently with the escort than there are enough fighters left to take on the bombers just as if there wouldn´t be an escort. But does that mean that we now read about incidents when bombers were shot down at such a rate? No IMO. There´s no doubt that The Elf is the expert about air war, in comparison I´m a 1 year old learning to speak. It´s not like that I haven´t read any books though. Many or most of the books that we all here see as gospel have been read by me too. And with all I´ve read I miss those incidents when slaughters (what was seen as slaughters) turned out to be something like has been seen in this example. No matter how obsolete one of the sides were.

Again, to me a slaughter and an acceptable result would have been around 30 bombers shot down. 50? Sure not. But that´s my oppinion. Have I expressed my oppinion in a wrong way? Sure, take my apologies please. Have I changed my mind? No, for me it´s definetely too much. We´re not even talking about write offs, they were all shot down. And look at the intel screen, those are the actual losses, not what the cr makes you think.

I´ve played WITP for years, 99,5% of the time PBEM (this is no offense to AI players so don´t take it offensively please) and I guess by the time I switched over to AE I´ve known everything about WITP. I´ve got high expectations for AE and see it being a real improvement over AE. I am playing it now in a PBEM against Rainer79 where this cr is coming from. Will I stop playing? Sure not. Will I stop complaining? Sure not. I´ve always complained about IMO wrong things in WITP and many were changed (not only due to my complaints of course, I´m only one of many). Do I think AE has reached the line of possibilities WITP has reached sometime around the 1.8 patches? Sure not. I´ve got many complaints about AE and I´m sure many things will be corrected. Airwar, you won´t believe me after this thread I guess, is my smallest problem.

I´m ranting a lot, that´s true, doing this in real life about real life issues too. Perhaps I´m doing it in a wrong way at times, but I´m surely not one of those guys we in Austria call "Yes-sayers". No idea how that´s called in English or if you even know what I mean. Anyway, usually there´s some truth in what I´m ranting about and I´m not 100% off with my rants. Sometimes I´m also 100% on target I guess. In this case, many people disagree with me and I don´t have a problem with it. Some agree it seems.

Again, my apologies for how I´ve started the thread, but I still stand to my opinion that IMO the losses are too high.

cheers

Castor Troy I think the dev´s are very aware of the fact that you are probably one of the most active players/posters of this game/in this forum but
this is also the reason why your word has some weight here because exactly your long time experience with WitP.
I bet you enjoy the game more than you give it credit officially and it would at least be fair if your way of posting resembles that.

Everyone of us needs to vent sometimes if a turn gets ugly but in my opinion your way of doing this makes it hard for you to be understood the
way you mean it.
You combine a vent (which is ok as itself) with a rant about game machanics (which is also ok if you can base it on an issue you can reproduce at will
and happens on more than one very unlucky or poorly planned occasion) and make it look like a 15 year old is p***** because he was
clubbed by an orc in some roleplay game because he did not find the keyboard shortcut that draws the sword.
This is the reason why you often get such negative responses and tbh my reaction to a post started by you with a title as this one sometimes
makes me react like "oh no...not again....".

The average age in this forum is probably somewhere in the mid 30´s so you run into many guys that feel your way of posting is more childish than
constructive. Mostly this leads to responses that are influenced by the way you posted and not to the actuial content that most of the time
holds some truth.

As in this thread, if you had split it up into two separate ones, e.g. one here that is something like "Holly #%$$ I´m so pi'*"§ thos damn dutch bombers fall like flies"
and another in the war room titled "I just lost 75% planes on a bombing run, is this reasonable?" you may get the same satisfaction but a much less aggressive and
more constructive discussion.

That said, your expertize on the game and the dedication you put into it is obvious anyway.
I like reading your AAR and I often find that your rants often conatin some truth if I deduct the pure ranting content. [;)]

Cheer up fellow Austrian, I know you love to play AE. [:D]

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: dbfw190

so it's impossible to loose 75% of your raid under any circumstances?

Fighters vs fighters, when the fighters in question aren't obsolete flying tubs? Yeah, I think it is.

We're not talking about hacking down a vulnerable bomber formation, but a gigantic furball at altitudes between 5000 and 35000 feet. I doubt 75% of the fighters would even make proper contact let alone be shot down.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: dbfw190

so it's impossible to loose 75% of your raid under any circumstances?

Not impossible, but rare. Returning to the Dec18, 39 example 54% of the 22 2E bombers were shot directly out of the sky, but this was over a course of several hours, over a distance that would span at least 2 WitP-AE hexes with attacks by numerous planes of multiple staffels, unescorted, with the bombers unarmored and no self sealers and of course, no escort and facing large numbers of heavily armed Zerstorers. Losses were what i would term "heavy" (though in WitP terms it would be considered "light") yet at the same time they speak to the truer nature of WWII air warfare. It wasn't Star Wars. And this was the largest engagement up to that point.

[Ikazuchi0585]

@TheElf- Tha'ts not the conclusion I came to Eubanana said "but even so. 75% of the Allied airforce - we're talking a full month of production here - gone in a day. Fighters vs fighters. Whether they came in bits and bobs or not, thats simply not possible IMHO."
and i was questioning that.

I doubt Herman Goering and all his belief of the bombers always making it through would have sent 189 unescorted bombers to their potential death even if he showed more compentance at being head of the Luftwaffe. But even if he did order such a raid, the RAF would have been obliged to teach Herman a lesson. Just like the Japs taught Castor.

but just because a plane is obsolete, doesnt mean its not capable of inflicting a slaughter.
It's the man, not the machine. experienced pilots in obsolete planes can hold their own against superior fighters.. not indefinately, but long enough to make the pilot in the more superior craft to realize he's met his match.
Kinda the same instance with Airforces today, yes the US has f-15's and F-22's, that wouldn't mean jack if the US didnt have superior pilot training.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: mjk428

ORIGINAL: TheElf

I understand the importance of correcting the record. Which you did admirably. Then you took an unnecessary shot at the originator of the thread.

I'm sorry, not sure what you mean?

You gave a good and detailed explanation of why the results Castor Troy was so unhappy about were within the bounds of a realistic result. I completely understand why you don't want the claim "Uber CAP is back" to stand, especially if that's not the case.

Then you put this totally unnecessary cherry on top:

Next time take a deep breath and run this sort of thing through a sanity filter before posting like this...

Elf was spot on. This was not a one-post thing he was commenting on.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: mjk428

ORIGINAL: TheElf



I'm sorry, not sure what you mean?

You gave a good and detailed explanation of why the results Castor Troy was so unhappy about were within the bounds of a realistic result. I completely understand why you don't want the claim "Uber CAP is back" to stand, especially if that's not the case.

Then you put this totally unnecessary cherry on top:

Next time take a deep breath and run this sort of thing through a sanity filter before posting like this...

Elf was spot on. This was not a one-post thing he was commenting on.

well, sorry then, didn´t know I´ve been the most trolling a$$hole lately...[8|]

[castor troy]

Q-Ball don´t read this!







































This was taken out of Cuttlefish´s AAR in his game against Q-Ball:

On the plus side, however, no attacks meant that I had about 300 Zeros, including the ones based at Makassar, for defense. About half or a bit more of them flew, enough to shred the attacking Allied planes. The results were one-sided, to say the least. I shot down somewhere around 120 planes (the scoreboard said 125, the air losses screen said 131) at a cost of exactly 3 Zeros. Call it 55 bombers, mostly SBDs and a scattering of 2-and-4-engine bombers, plus about 65 fighters, Kittyhawks (the new K model) and Warhawks and Wildcats (mostly) and P-38s. Zounds!




comments? [&:] Please don´t shoot me and The Elf or anyone else, don´t take it offensively, but I do find it as strange as my result that lead me to put up this thread. No, I do find this result even more off to be honest. [:(]

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: witpqs


Elf was spot on. This was not a one-post thing he was commenting on.

well, sorry then, didn´t know I´ve been the most trolling a$$hole lately...[8|]

As you are proving right there, it's your approach that's the biggest problem.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: dbfw190
It's the man, not the machine. experienced pilots in obsolete planes can hold their own against superior fighters.. not indefinately, but long enough to make the pilot in the more superior craft to realize he's met his match.

This old chestnut really annoys me, so I'm going to actually challenge it, even though it's a slight tangent.

The Allied pilots in question were not useless!. This JFB conceit comes up all the time. They were in fact among the very best the Allies have in 1942 aside from naval aviators - experience and air skill 60-65. They may not have been spectacular, but they were competent.

I expect Japanese pilots to be better than Allied pilots, but I also expect them to be worn down in the course of the war until they are inferior. Question is - who does the wearing down? Answer - the guys who just got slaughtered. There's nobody else!

A loss ratio of 3 to 1, or 4 to 1, say, would at least inflict attrition upon the Japanese which I would say is realistic. But 30 to 1 - you cannot attritt the Japanese uberpilots with loss ratios like that. In such a scenario it is the Allies, not the Japanese, whose quality and numbers will plummet. Hell, within a few days of following that course there wouldn't be an Allied airforce left.

As for the situation in question, the background of this result - there were an equal number of Japanese planes operating from a very small airfield on CAP facing sweeping Allied fighters in somewhat superior numbers - so really, this is almost the best scenario possible as far as the Allies are concerned. It really doesn't get much better than this. I'm happy to accept that bad days and bad rolls mean bad results, I don't expect to win all the time after all even if the situation is favourable, but 30 to 1 is an absolutely crushing defeat, a wipeout which will have strategic implications, as well as being unrealistic to boot. 75% of a fighter formation shot down in one day? I don't buy it.

And from a larger scale, if this is a regular occurrence - and it does seem to be depressing regular - there can be no wearing down. Who is going to shoot down this Jap airforce of aces? Nobody. Nobody on the map can do it, so they'll be living till 1945 then, like Jedi Knights among the peons.

And as an aside, I think it's unrealistic bullshit, no matter how good the opposing pilots are. As someone said, it's not Star Wars, and we're not talking about vulnerable bombers, we're talking about a huge furball over 20,000 feet altitude differences without on board radars and with primitive or non existent direction from the ground. I'd expect fairly low casualties on both sides.

I'm not bothered too much as I realise that sending in fighters in varying altitudes is not a winning strategy in this game. Apparently Zeroes can go from 35k feet to 5k feet and back up to 15k feet all within one air phase without any problem at all. OK - lesson learned, I won't do that again, and this probably reflects as bad as a result as possible. Next time I'll stick to one altitude so my planes mass properly. The issue of massing is at least realistic.

75% casualties though is not. I'd expect Japanese pilots to survive a long time if a Fabian strategy was being pursued regarding their commitment, but packing everything you got as far forward as you can on a primitive airstrip right next to huge Allied airfields is not a Fabian strategy aimed at preserving pilot quality, it's exposing them to among the worst conditions imaginable.

Long tangent over.

Of course pilot quality is a factor, but it's one factor among many and not even necessarily the most important. I know mdiehl had some table which broke down just how valuable a mph of top speed, or a months flying experience, or a tighter turning circle or a heavier armament actually was. IIRC top speed was the #1 factor and pilot experience was pretty much equally important.

Equally important does not mean crushingly important, though. And as I said before I think an OOB filled with pilots of 90+ experience is totally whacked anyway, it's like saying that the entirety of an air force is staffed by the likes of Sailor Malan, Galland and the rest.

I've seen crazy stuff in this game due to that. In that thousand mile war game I was playing the Japs, and my Rufe squadron (Rufes ffs!) ripped Allied P40s and even B24s to little bits. I know why - because the entire Rufe squadron, we're talking 20+ pilots, had experience 90+. That must be the most badass float plane squadron in the history of the world. AVG eat your heart out, we're talking all-ace star team. That is an OOB issue, not an engine issue, far as I'm concerned. Do you really think that a Japanese floatplane squadron based in Ass End of Nowhere in 1943 was among the very best in the entire world, absolutely elite, top notch, every one of them. Cuz I don't.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: witpqs


Elf was spot on. This was not a one-post thing he was commenting on.

well, sorry then, didn´t know I´ve been the most trolling a$$hole lately...[8|]

As you are proving right there, it's your approach that's the biggest problem.

so?

[oldman45]

I have to disagree EUBanana, looking through the Army Airforce of WWII volume I and volume IV you see some trends which so far I have also seen in the game.

1) Vol I deals with the early war and tells of the struggles the Allies had fighting the Japanese AF. While I didn't see any single action where 75% of the attacking aircraft were shot down, it does show how the squadrons suffered extreme material and pilot shortages. In the DEI squadrons where wiped out (A/C not pilots) It also showed in 41/42 that while the Navy pilots could hold their own, the army struggled, they really didn't have the skills the Japanese pilots had.

2) Vol IV covers mid 42 and into 43. You see the changes, slow as they are, that the army gets better. A conclusion can be drawn that this is due to the slow erosion of IJN/IJA force quality, or the US Army was getting better pilots and equipment. I believe its a little of both.

I really see that the game doesn't do a bad job of representing this, at least in my games vs the AI. When you have two human players everything goes out the window. The human player can make choices that no military or political leader could. Some of the rants in these forums really don't make a lot of sense if you step back and think for a moment. Here is an example, the Army wanted more bombers to protect the Palmyra/Suva shipping lane. It took Washington DC to order PH to release some planes. A human player pays some PP and moves as many as he wants. A player decides to strip all the capital ships from the CBI and send them to fight in the South Pacific, want to guess the odds of that happening in R/L.

It just seems that sometimes we lose sight that this a game that tries to represent actions in the pacific and we mere mortals can break it when ever we want. Until the day comes we all have Cray super computers under our desks, we have to deal with this fine game and what ever pops up when we push the envelop.