Caging the Tiger~ Rader (J) vs. GreyJoy (A)

[Nemo121]

This is a general point about the game combat model and not ths PBEM in particular. Well, this is the logical end result of the current A2A combat model in 1944/1945.

Damian will confirm that I've shared a scenario with him in which up to 12 US CVs, 6 to 8 BBs and up to 40 CVEs/CVLs are sunk in a single day, despite a CAP of almost 2,000 fighters. Once you pt enough escorts with your bombers those bombers tend to get through with little to o interception. End result, an obliterated CV TF or airbase.

It is a pity that this is the way the model works in the late game but saying that in the technical thread just gets you attacked so I doub it is going to be addressed.

[aztez]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

This is a general point about the game combat model and not ths PBEM in particular. Well, this is the logical end result of the current A2A combat model in 1944/1945.

Damian will confirm that I've shared a scenario with him in which up to 12 US CVs, 6 to 8 BBs and up to 40 CVEs/CVLs are sunk in a single day, despite a CAP of almost 2,000 fighters. Once you pt enough escorts with your bombers those bombers tend to get through with little to o interception. End result, an obliterated CV TF or airbase.

It is a pity that this is the way the model works in the late game but saying that in the technical thread just gets you attacked so I doub it is going to be addressed.

Well said Nemo! I could not agree more ...it definately is serious "flaw" in this game.

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: pat.casey

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

With ridiculuous overstacking comes outsized risk. Good job makin' him pay, Rader.

Fair enough for the bombs that got through, but Radar's bomber losses seem absurdly low to me.
Against that much CAP he should have paid a much, much higher price to get the bombers through.

In looking more carefully at the replay, intercepts (or lack thereof) and losses, you may have a point there...

[desicat]

I posted this in GJ's AAR. I don't know if the air to air combat model is broken, but I do know what is happening over a single airfield in No Japan isn't possible.

"I'm not sure anything can be drawn from the combat model as 3000 fighters over an airfield is not practical.

Operating with dual runway ops and launching 4 a/c per minute it would take 750 minute to launch the cap - over 10 hours. If you launch 8 a/c per minute (1 a/c every 15 seconds from each runway) it would take 5 hours to launch the CAP. It is possible to take off in multiple a/c formations but it increases the taxi and start up times....continuous take-offs are limited by prop wash and wingtip vorticies after a period of time. This doesn't take into account a/c landing from lack of fuel or staging for takeoffs, fueling, and arming.....

Now try to set the landing patterns and approach avenues, formation rally points and altitudes, patrol areas and vector channels, this doesn't even consider the weather.

If one reads Galland's book "The First and the Last" he notes that most a/c are totally out of position during the defense and attack of bomber groups and the best pilots only engage in moments of combat.

So if you want to fix the combat model you first have to fix the number of aircraft available for the raids - on both sides.

Results of the first Schweinfurt raid from Wiki, so the numbers are approximated. This is tiny compared to what has been going on in this game, and it emptied the airfields across the European continent......

Strength
376 B-17s
268 P-47 sorties
191 Spitfire sorties

Approx. 400 Bf 109, Bf 110, Fw 190 and other fighters

Casualties and losses
60 bombers, 3 P-47s, and 2 Spitfires lost
58-95 bombers heavily damaged
7 KIA, 21 WIA, 557 MIA or POW 25-27 fighters"

[Grfin Zeppelin]

Many bases are split into smaller airfields. Hawaii for example has not just one BIG airfield. Same applies to other locations.

[desicat]

A copy of a post I made from GJ AAR concerning AF size:

Ok, it's a box rather than a hex, and it's right in the middle of 8th AF country, but that's just the ones that were spottable in five minutes from 20 miles up - I expect a bunch more will have deteriorated since then. Most of them are will-take-a-USAAF-Bomber-Group size, too, not little things...

I mean, realistically in the Hakodate situation you'd have a large number (10? 20? who knows) of airfields spread out along the southwestern peninsula of Hokkaido - it's not a big airfield, then 45 miles, then a big airfield, then 45 miles etc. Hokkaido is not as flat as Cambridgeshire, but then there's likely to be rather less consideration for whoever's on the land already in this sort of situation...



This is a good post but having been to the area in question the topography doesn't support the airfield density that you propose. I can see possibly a few more makeshift airfields but nothing that could support the density of a/c that are being put into play. This doesn't even discuss the fuel and ammo storage issues that makeshift fields have to deal with. Operating in the weather in the tropics is a different question entirely from operating in Norther Japan.........

[Chickenboy]

BANZAI!!!

[Chickenboy]

BANZAI!!!

[Chickenboy]

BANZAI!!!

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

... so I doub it is going to be addressed.

I disagree (about working in this, not the attacks [;)] ). I think that Michael is working on this along with other "appropriate" consultants. I'm not one of them, appropriately, as I have admittedly no specific expertise in air combat modeling to offer. But I do think this is being at least looked at pretty hard.

There are 4 or 5 AAR's now with data coming in on this and I beleive it now evident that this is not an AFB/JFB issue, but rather something that is distorting late war air results. we'll have to give them a few weeks though ...

[krupp_88mm]

escorts are not sponges, this needs to change so that cap attacks bombers, or at least set your planes a priority fighters or bombers, and the escort fighters need to have priority set hunt interceptors or guard bombers

gary grigsbys eagle day to bombing the Reich did a pretty good job extrapolating this system, i hope its possible to borrow some of the ideas it uses for this game even though its turn based

[Crackaces]

escorts are not sponges, this needs to change so that cap attacks bombers, or at least set your planes a priority fighters or bombers, and the escort fighters need to have priority set hunt interceptors or guard bombers

This concept has been around since AH Luftwaffe. Luftwaffe gave the attcker an option although .. attack the escorts or the bombers. If you attack straight for the bombers the escorts get a free first shot and then the interceptors took thier toll .. otherwise escort vs. interceptor battles with eliminating all escorts before bomber losses.

I thought this was a cool way to handle this from a game standpoint in that decisions were made given probablites and consequinces taken.

[pat.casey]

ORIGINAL: Crackaces

escorts are not sponges, this needs to change so that cap attacks bombers, or at least set your planes a priority fighters or bombers, and the escort fighters need to have priority set hunt interceptors or guard bombers

This concept has been around since AH Luftwaffe. Luftwaffe gave the attcker an option although .. attack the escorts or the bombers. If you attack straight for the bombers the escorts get a free first shot and then the interceptors took thier toll .. otherwise escort vs. interceptor battles with eliminating all escorts before bomber losses.

I thought this was a cool way to handle this from a game standpoint in that decisions were made given probablites and consequinces taken.

Historically it was usually a mix though.

You'd have your single engine interceptors mix it up with the escorts, then have your larger, cannon armed, often twin engined, destroyer squadrons vector into the bombers.

You didn't actually need to kill off the escort to get the destroyers through, just keep them busy enough worrying about their own engagement that they wouldn't spilt off and chase your destroyer squadrons that went after the bombers.

In a sense, historical bomber interception was really a pair of escorted strike packages.

The attacker was escorting his bombers to a city.
The defender was escorting his destroyers to the bomber formation.

[crsutton]

Of course one solution then creates another problem. Facing massive numbers of Japanese defenders as we find in both scen 1 and 2, if the issue is fixed and massive CAP will kill lots of bombers, then the Allied player will just run out of airplanes soon enough. Not to say this does not need lots of work or that it is not welcome but there has to be a complete examination of the factors and a complete rework is needed. Flak needs to work, realistic limits on bases and air attacks, realistic results for combat and so on. It is a bigger problem than just fixing one aspect of air combat. Don't expect a quick fix or at least one that works well.

[jwilkerson]

First I want to apologize to Radar if he feels we are hi-jacking his AAR ... but he himself seems to be engaged in this multi-page discussion ... so I'll risk a second post ...

ORIGINAL: rader
Seriously guys, I am convinced the air to air combat system is a bit screwy, at least for large raids.

I agree ... but I would add ... it always has been this way ...
When we first started the project that became AE ... airbase stacking ... and changing the results curve of the large air battles were key priorities ... but at the same time ... the team agreed that complete re-writes of any major sections of code were "out of scope" and this including the air combat model. We did increase over-stacking penalties to the extent that the intensity of public complaints got one of our playtesters banned!
We also wanted to remove the phenomena where by a certain number of fighers was sufficient to wipe out large numbers of 4EB ... to wit this thread:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=871580
But, we did not chuck the air combat model and start over again ... so there are still edges out there which if crossed will cause problems.
I'm only surprised that people who have played the game for years are surprised to find this out! [:)]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121
It is a pity that this is the way the model works in the late game but saying that in the technical thread just gets you attacked so I doub it is going to be addressed.

Can you point me to a post where you got attacked for discussing this matter? I looked, I saw a recent thread by Rader on a related topic .. but did not see anyone (including Nemo) get attacked for it ... perhaps I missed it ...

ORIGINAL: crsutton
Of course one solution then creates another problem. Facing massive numbers of Japanese defenders as we find in both scen 1 and 2, if the issue is fixed and massive CAP will kill lots of bombers, then the Allied player will just run out of airplanes soon enough. Not to say this does not need lots of work or that it is not welcome but there has to be a complete examination of the factors and a complete rework is needed. Flak needs to work, realistic limits on bases and air attacks, realistic results for combat and so on. It is a bigger problem than just fixing one aspect of air combat. Don't expect a quick fix or at least one that works well.

Triple Bingo for you ... sounds like you've dug into the code and worked on this already ... as this is how those of us who have feel !!! [:)][:)][:)]
Most "simple fixes" lead to more unintended consequences ... and so on ... much care is needed ... as I said ... we were already trying to fix "massive CAP will kill lots of bombers ... so the above link ...

[AcePylut]

The fix really is really in the questions that must be asked:

1) Did 2000 fighters all jump 2000 aircraft at once? Did Allied AirGroup1 (24 P51s) on the west side of the formation, in 'reality', have a chance to fly through 2000 attacking Japanese planes and attack Japanese AirGroup1 (24 A6M2) on the other side?

No... Allied AirGroup1 would fight against whatever Japs were on the west side of the formation... i.e. Japanese AirGroup2 (24 A6M7).

The 'fix' is to break up the attacks so you don't have 1 massive 2000 plane raid, but instead, a bunch of separate combats. That's really what would have happened. Many of the groups involved in CAP, Sweep, Escort, would never see some of the enemy airgroups in a battle this size.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

First I want to apologize to Radar if he feels we are hi-jacking his AAR ... but he himself seems to be engaged in this multi-page discussion ... so I'll risk a second post ...

ORIGINAL: rader
Seriously guys, I am convinced the air to air combat system is a bit screwy, at least for large raids.

I agree ... but I would add ... it always has been this way ...
When we first started the project that became AE ... airbase stacking ... and changing the results curve of the large air battles were key priorities ... but at the same time ... the team agreed that complete re-writes of any major sections of code were "out of scope" and this including the air combat model. We did increase over-stacking penalties to the extent that the intensity of public complaints got one of our playtesters banned!
We also wanted to remove the phenomena where by a certain number of fighers was sufficient to wipe out large numbers of 4EB ... to wit this thread:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=871580
But, we did not chuck the air combat model and start over again ... so there are still edges out there which if crossed will cause problems.
I'm only surprised that people who have played the game for years are surprised to find this out! [:)]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121
It is a pity that this is the way the model works in the late game but saying that in the technical thread just gets you attacked so I doub it is going to be addressed.

Can you point me to a post where you got attacked for discussing this matter? I looked, I saw a recent thread by Rader on a related topic .. but did not see anyone (including Nemo) get attacked for it ... perhaps I missed it ...

ORIGINAL: crsutton
Of course one solution then creates another problem. Facing massive numbers of Japanese defenders as we find in both scen 1 and 2, if the issue is fixed and massive CAP will kill lots of bombers, then the Allied player will just run out of airplanes soon enough. Not to say this does not need lots of work or that it is not welcome but there has to be a complete examination of the factors and a complete rework is needed. Flak needs to work, realistic limits on bases and air attacks, realistic results for combat and so on. It is a bigger problem than just fixing one aspect of air combat. Don't expect a quick fix or at least one that works well.

Triple Bingo for you ... sounds like you've dug into the code and worked on this already ... as this is how those of us who have feel !!! [:)][:)][:)]
Most "simple fixes" lead to more unintended consequences ... and so on ... much care is needed ... as I said ... we were already trying to fix "massive CAP will kill lots of bombers ... so the above link ...

Thanks for the response. I appreciate that you and others are following the discussion. But I am an old guy and about the only code that I have had any direct experience with is my gym locker from high school. (Am I the only one who still has gym locker nightmares?) [;)]

[Cribtop]

I think there's value to AcePylut's suggestion, not sure if it's possible under the code. Also, beware hosing co-ordination to the point that the smaller early to mid war combat doesn't get borked (i.e. Unintended consequences).

@JEWilkerson - thanks for participating in this discussion! Would it be possible to scrap or raise to effectively infinite the limit on attack passes and instead key number of passes to units of time available before the strike arrives at the target?

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
I agree ... but I would add ... it always has been this way ...
When we first started the project that became AE ... airbase stacking ... and changing the results curve of the large air battles were key priorities ... but at the same time ... the team agreed that complete re-writes of any major sections of code were "out of scope" and this including the air combat model. We did increase over-stacking penalties to the extent that the intensity of public complaints got one of our playtesters banned!
We also wanted to remove the phenomena where by a certain number of fighers was sufficient to wipe out large numbers of 4EB ... to wit this thread:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=871580
But, we did not chuck the air combat model and start over again ... so there are still edges out there which if crossed will cause problems.
I'm only surprised that people who have played the game for years are surprised to find this out! [:)]

ORIGINAL: crsutton
Of course one solution then creates another problem. Facing massive numbers of Japanese defenders as we find in both scen 1 and 2, if the issue is fixed and massive CAP will kill lots of bombers, then the Allied player will just run out of airplanes soon enough. Not to say this does not need lots of work or that it is not welcome but there has to be a complete examination of the factors and a complete rework is needed. Flak needs to work, realistic limits on bases and air attacks, realistic results for combat and so on. It is a bigger problem than just fixing one aspect of air combat. Don't expect a quick fix or at least one that works well.

Triple Bingo for you ... sounds like you've dug into the code and worked on this already ... as this is how those of us who have feel !!! [:)][:)][:)]
Most "simple fixes" lead to more unintended consequences ... and so on ... much care is needed ... as I said ... we were already trying to fix "massive CAP will kill lots of bombers ... so the above link ...

jw,

Thanks for stopping in, greatly appreciated.

Let me pose this question to you: given your experience and insight: what House Rules would you propose to address this for the time being? How do you play around this?

Assuming that you are able to suggest some HR's, is there any direction for Michael to pursue to mitigate this issue?

Thanks!!

[Captain Cruft]

Just my opinion, but reading the runes I'm really not sure that there is any intention to address this. It's too difficult to do it properly without taking the thing back into Alpha, if you can even apply that status here.

As LoBaron has pointed out, there are "work-arounds" i.e. don't put your entire force in a single hex. Spread out, use the whole map ... Simples.