State of the Air War in AE

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: TheElf
again, personally I wouldn't stack all 20 CVs in a single hex. If they find you they'll have access to all your CVs at once. I would disperse them in several TFs across several Hexes. But I play differently than some. I understand that there is a point of diminishing returns in CAP, which is realistic btw, an FDO would lose his mind trying to coordinate the types of numbers that we seem to be talking about. They would be stepping all over each other.

Additionally I would never approach the HI, much like the US didn't IRL, until I had degraded his Air Force to a point that I felt comfortable taking the risk. And then I would probe in Force in several area, I would feint, and take my time trying to figure out where to make my move. I would NEVER barge into a well supplied complex of Large Interconnected AFs with high supply, masses of strikers, escorts, and HQ Bonuses. That is certifiable.

I'm thinking more of the impact on KB, when the Allied CV force finds them. They are still running around in 44 in my game. However they are going to get banjaxed by the 300 escort rule if they meet the Allies. It's gonna suck when the Dauntlesses aren't even engaged.

Granted if KB met that lot they should suffer but that doesn't mean the entire Allied strike package should in theory hit them totally scot free, either.

[CT Grognard]

I still maintain that one of the easiest ways to avoid the problems we have been seeing is to ramp up the coordination penalties once you go behind a certain size strike.
 
The game already provides for coordination penalties if a carrier task force has a total number of planes above a given number with a random variable.
 
Surely the same can be provided for airbases as well, similar to CVTFs, and you could make it related to the size of the airfield (assuming a high-level airbase means a great number of runways and greater centralised coordination abilities to form up massive strike formations). For example, and this is purely as an example that would need to be explored, but you could use something as follows:
 
IF Number of planes on strike > (Airbase size * 20 + RANDOM(Airbase size * 20)) THEN low coordination penalty applied
IF Number of planes on strike > (Airbase size * 40 + RANDOM(Airbase size * 40)) THEN moderate coordination penalty applied
IF Number of planes on strike > (Airbase size * 60 + RANDOM(Airbase size * 60)) THEN heavy coordination penalty applied
 
So, a safe strike size launching from a level 4 airbase would be 80 aircraft total - beyond that and there is a chance they might be uncoordinated.
From a level 10 airbase you would be able to launch 200 aircraft safely with no coordination penalties. But try to launch more than 600 planes from a level 10 airbase and the odds are your strike will be horribly uncoordinated and arrive over the target in three or four different packages.

[Jzanes]

I don't think the carrier dispersal strategy is the issue. The problem is that you can't defend your carriers no matter how you deploy them. At some point you are going to have to approach a hostile shore and I don't see how you can effectively suppress the entire japanese airforce when they have lots and lots of large airbases in escort fighter range of your landing zone. I understand that some of the bombers should get thru and sink some carriers but the way it is now, ALL the bombers will get thru and sink most or all of your carriers whether you have 4 in the hex or 20+. Maybe you can survive having one major carrier catastrophe during the war but the japanese player will do this to you time after time as you approach the home islands.

[EUBanana]

And "should you" is into the realm of house rules, which I didnt think was germane to this thread.

how much of this sort of thing should the Game be capable of supporting in order to satisfy the community? 1,000,000 plane combats? Where can I safely draw the line?

was what I was thinking of. The answer is, I think, it should be big enough to handle all the CVs that you get in the late war. That is really the maximum size air fight you are likely to see, and the results will be of above average importance as well, so surely getting that to work is the important bit.

If it means big coordination penalties so massed CVs are suboptimal and massed LBA is likewise stiffed, then fine. But that is IMHO the answer to your question. It's an issue in numerous games, probably every one which reaches 45 in fact.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: Jzanes

I don't think the carrier dispersal strategy is the issue. The problem is that you can't defend your carriers no matter how you deploy them. At some point you are going to have to approach a hostile shore and I don't see how you can effectively suppress the entire japanese airforce when they have lots and lots of large airbases in escort fighter range of your landing zone. I understand that some of the bombers should get thru and sink some carriers but the way it is now, ALL the bombers will get thru and sink most or all of your carriers whether you have 4 in the hex or 20+. Maybe you can survive having one major carrier catastrophe during the war but the japanese player will do this to you time after time as you approach the home islands.

Exactly so, though it's not even a hostile shore issue, it can happen in CV vs CV as well.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: CT Grognard

I still maintain that one of the easiest ways to avoid the problems we have been seeing is to ramp up the coordination penalties once you go behind a certain size strike.

I agree, though the CAP might need tweaking in that case, or it might end up like the WITP Cap Deflector Shield.

Certainly 'smaller' air battles (by small I mean several hundred a/c so not that small!) seem to work fine.

[CT Grognard]

Again, there are existing chances of uncoordination for CVTFs coded in the game.

For an Allied CVTF in 1944 or later and a Japanese CVTF at any time, if the number of aircraft in that CVTF is greater than 200 + RANDOM(200), the chances of uncoordination is doubled.

Therefore the optimal number of aircraft in a CVTF is 300 and under - e.g. five or four carriers - since it allows the greatest chance to get big strikes with less uncoordination.

This chance of uncoordination should dissuade players creating a Death Star.

It's the uncoordination penalties that need to be looked at, in my opinion.

If the uncoordination becomes an issue (as was intended) once you pass 300 planes in the CVTF, then the "300 firing passes only" issue becomes a non-issue.

It will force players to use their carriers in a historic fashion - i.e. several task forces over several hexes.

[CT Grognard]

Allow me to qualify my previous post.

As long as uncoordination becomes an issue beyond a certain size strike, whether it emanates from a CVTF or a land base, then the "300 firing passes only" becomes a non-issue.

[TheElf]

I think what is being lost here is that, while they have successfully explored the frontier of lunacy in terms of over stacking and uncovered the limits of computer processing power vis a vis AE, GJ and Rader did so by cramming an unrealistic number of aircraft into a relatively small space. In all likelihood, and I am guessing it sounds like they overcame all the little controls we put in place to break up Uber Air Battles in a unique set of circumstances that existed in their game.

What you are all advocating is hard coding essentially. We are talking about rewriting code for the game to accommodate gameplay that is aberrant. I admit that there are situations where large numbers of A/C come together regardless of how you play, and that others have begun to experience the same effects, but should we as developers risk making a change that could have 2nd and 3rd order effects on the rest of those that haven't seen this sort of thing in their game?

Development/support of this product is essentially over save for Michaelm's gracious charity. I can't just go in with a scalpel and start monkeying around with the code. Do I have ideas? yes. But it isn't my call.

Until something changes you all as players have to understand the limitations and try to live within them. That is the only way.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: TheElf
What you are all advocating is hard coding essentially. We are talking about rewriting code for the game to accommodate gameplay that is aberrant.

I don't think it's really all that aberrant. Given how strikes from land bases can coordinate from multiple bases with some frequency I think it would actually require the player to directly intervene, by deliberately standing some bases down, for it to work out. If you have all of Japan set to naval/rest, then it will happen if something sails by.

And for CVs, I don't think massing your CVs is particularly aberrant either. Splitting them up is a conscious choice after all, the natural thing to do is add newcomers to 'the fleet'. The weirdness there is knowing about the hardcoded limit and tailoring your CV fleet size accordingly, which as it involves knowing what's going on under the hood to an extent seems the weird and contrived option to me.

[denisonh]

One thing that I think is understated is historically the Admirals operating CV TFs on both sides had a tremendous respect for land based air, to such an extent that they would not hang around unless it was adequatley neutralized. Reading about the Marianias and Phillipines invasions and the amount of focus on finding and neutralizing enemy air assets was the number one priority. If there was more than they could deal with adequately, they would have delayed or tried a different tact.

So much of the War in the Pacific was about getting bases for LBA. The risk to CVs is huge and they are vulnerable.

If your strategy does not revolve around the supremacy of LBA and the vulnerability of CV based air, you are a taking more risk than historical and could very well suffer the ahistrical consequences.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: EUBanana

ORIGINAL: TheElf
As I just stated in Grey Joy's AAR how much of this sort of thing should the Game be capable of supporting in order to satisfy the community? 1,000,000 plane combats? Where can I safely draw the line?

Well, it should be able to handle the full Allied CV strength at a minimum I would say. If you assume that no Allied CVs are lost up until March 44, that probably is something of a maximum CV force that the game will have to handle. It's probably headed towards 2500 aircraft if you include all the Brits, of which roughly half will be fighters, and half again most likely escorts. This is plenty sufficient to break the existing setup based on Greyjoys tests, and could in theory happen in the most conservative of games.

I guess in '45, even more likely to happen.

And borked results regarding CVs will provoke a hell of a lot more wailing and gnashing of teeth then ones involving an unsinkable airfield. [:'(]

I agree. Unfortunately the basic premise of combat in WitP is a two phase approach. Whereas in RL combats in the "AM" is you will could take place across several hours and be widely seperated by lulls and such, in WitP the whole 6 hours of the combat phase happens all at once. Normally this isn't an issue, but when we get into the realm of ludicrous speed, and all the little checks and balances we installed to break Uber combat down are somehow overcome, we get radical, unpredictable results.

Additionally I can't control with code a couple of players who avoid CV combat or A2A combat at all until 1945 and have put all their time and energy into Aircraft production and have their "midway" in 1945 with the full strengh of the Combined fleet and the US Fleet. And that isn't likely to happen in EVERY game. But when it does, should we change the gut s of the game to accommodate the players who feel their game was borked?

[AcePylut]

ORIGINAL: Jzanes

I don't think the carrier dispersal strategy is the issue. The problem is that you can't defend your carriers no matter how you deploy them. At some point you are going to have to approach a hostile shore and I don't see how you can effectively suppress the entire japanese airforce when they have lots and lots of large airbases in escort fighter range of your landing zone. I understand that some of the bombers should get thru and sink some carriers but the way it is now, ALL the bombers will get thru and sink most or all of your carriers whether you have 4 in the hex or 20+. Maybe you can survive having one major carrier catastrophe during the war but the japanese player will do this to you time after time as you approach the home islands.

tm.asp?m=3018547

Walked right up to 1 hex from Kyushu with all my carriers - Japan attacked - all my carriers walked back to Okinawa with a cve or two taking a bomb hit.

Dispersal is the key to survival. Agree with ELF.... if you approach the homelands, better have your CV's spread over multiple hexes and better have plenty of pickets out in front of the CV's.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: Jzanes

I don't think the carrier dispersal strategy is the issue. The problem is that you can't defend your carriers no matter how you deploy them. At some point you are going to have to approach a hostile shore and I don't see how you can effectively suppress the entire japanese airforce when they have lots and lots of large airbases in escort fighter range of your landing zone. I understand that some of the bombers should get thru and sink some carriers but the way it is now, ALL the bombers will get thru and sink most or all of your carriers whether you have 4 in the hex or 20+. Maybe you can survive having one major carrier catastrophe during the war but the japanese player will do this to you time after time as you approach the home islands.

I find this statement funny, because historically this community as a collective understands that as Japan you can't win. Now apparently that rational has gone the way of the Dodo and it's the Allies who can't win.

[Jzanes]

ORIGINAL: TheElf

I think what is being lost here is that, while they have successfully explored the frontier of lunacy in terms of over stacking and uncovered the limits of computer processing power vis a vis AE, GJ and Rader did so by cramming an unrealistic number of aircraft into a relatively small space. In all likelihood, and I am guessing it sounds like they overcame all the little controls we put in place to break up Uber Air Battles in a unique set of circumstances that existed in their game.

What you are all advocating is hard coding essentially. We are talking about rewriting code for the game to accommodate gameplay that is aberrant. I admit that there are situations where large numbers of A/C come together regardless of how you play, and that others have begun to experience the same effects, but should we as developers risk making a change that could have 2nd and 3rd order effects on the rest of those that haven't seen this sort of thing in their game?

Development/support of this product is essentially over save for Michaelm's gracious charity. I can't just go in with a scalpel and start monkeying around with the code. Do I have ideas? yes. But it isn't my call.

Until something changes you all as players have to understand the limitations and try to live within them. That is the only way.

I don't think the GJ/Rader result is all that aberrant. I think everyone reaches a point where the forces on both sides are massive and the battlefield becomes very very congested as the allies vector in on the home islands. You don't have to "cram" planes into a single base to run into this problem. Dispersing your aircraft over a large # of airfields will lead to the same end result. It's just too easy to get the "golden" # of escorts you need to overcome any CAP. Changing service ratings, coordination penalties, overstacking penalties, etc. isn't gonna fix this issue. IMHO the coding for combat itself needs to be reviewed.

Anyways, add my game as a datapoint in support of reviewing the current "firing passes" coding. Could someone at least go into the code and see what kind of results you get when you fiddle with the numbers? IMHO without some change, late war games are going to be getting abandoned on a regular basis.

[Jzanes]

ORIGINAL: TheElf

ORIGINAL: Jzanes

I don't think the carrier dispersal strategy is the issue. The problem is that you can't defend your carriers no matter how you deploy them. At some point you are going to have to approach a hostile shore and I don't see how you can effectively suppress the entire japanese airforce when they have lots and lots of large airbases in escort fighter range of your landing zone. I understand that some of the bombers should get thru and sink some carriers but the way it is now, ALL the bombers will get thru and sink most or all of your carriers whether you have 4 in the hex or 20+. Maybe you can survive having one major carrier catastrophe during the war but the japanese player will do this to you time after time as you approach the home islands.

I find this statement funny, because historically this community as a collective understands that as Japan you can't win. Now apparently that rational has gone the way of the Dodo and it's the Allies who can't win.

No, the allies can win for sure. They just can't expect to use their carriers w/o having them slaughtered. The same applies to the KB. It's just that in late war games, the allied carriers will usually be the ones to enter "exposed" waters.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: AcePylut

ORIGINAL: Jzanes

I don't think the carrier dispersal strategy is the issue. The problem is that you can't defend your carriers no matter how you deploy them. At some point you are going to have to approach a hostile shore and I don't see how you can effectively suppress the entire japanese airforce when they have lots and lots of large airbases in escort fighter range of your landing zone. I understand that some of the bombers should get thru and sink some carriers but the way it is now, ALL the bombers will get thru and sink most or all of your carriers whether you have 4 in the hex or 20+. Maybe you can survive having one major carrier catastrophe during the war but the japanese player will do this to you time after time as you approach the home islands.

tm.asp?m=3018547

Walked right up to 1 hex from Kyushu with all my carriers - Japan attacked - all my carriers walked back to Okinawa with a cve or two taking a bomb hit.

Dispersal is the key to survival. Agree with ELF.... if you approach the homelands, better have your CV's spread over multiple hexes and better have plenty of pickets out in front of the CV's.

Yes, this is what I am preaching for ages now.

The key trigger here is that as soon as you disperse, the attacker disperses as well. As long as the number of planes involved does not completely hit the roof
you will get plausible results this way.

It does not apply to base attacks as well because there you are able to select a specific target. But here dispersal has the effect of minimizing losses.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: Jzanes

ORIGINAL: TheElf

I think what is being lost here is that, while they have successfully explored the frontier of lunacy in terms of over stacking and uncovered the limits of computer processing power vis a vis AE, GJ and Rader did so by cramming an unrealistic number of aircraft into a relatively small space. In all likelihood, and I am guessing it sounds like they overcame all the little controls we put in place to break up Uber Air Battles in a unique set of circumstances that existed in their game.

What you are all advocating is hard coding essentially. We are talking about rewriting code for the game to accommodate gameplay that is aberrant. I admit that there are situations where large numbers of A/C come together regardless of how you play, and that others have begun to experience the same effects, but should we as developers risk making a change that could have 2nd and 3rd order effects on the rest of those that haven't seen this sort of thing in their game?

Development/support of this product is essentially over save for Michaelm's gracious charity. I can't just go in with a scalpel and start monkeying around with the code. Do I have ideas? yes. But it isn't my call.

Until something changes you all as players have to understand the limitations and try to live within them. That is the only way.

I don't think the GJ/Rader result is all that aberrant. I think everyone reaches a point where the forces on both sides are massive and the battlefield becomes very very congested as the allies vector in on the home islands. You don't have to "cram" planes into a single base to run into this problem. Dispersing your aircraft over a large # of airfields will lead to the same end result. It's just too easy to get the "golden" # of escorts you need to overcome any CAP. Changing service ratings, coordination penalties, overstacking penalties, etc. isn't gonna fix this issue. IMHO the coding for combat itself needs to be reviewed.

Anyways, add my game as a datapoint in support of reviewing the current "firing passes" coding. Could someone at least go into the code and see what kind of results you get when you fiddle with the numbers? IMHO without some change, late war games are going to be getting abandoned on a regular basis.

two part test...

1. you are absolutely right. It is too easy to get the golden number of escorts. What is wrong with that?

2. The 8th Air Force found the same equation. Riddle me this: how many 8th Air Force Raids were turned back. How many times did they not hit their target (where weather didn't prevent it)?

So answer # 2 and then Answer #1

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: TheElf
Additionally I can't control with code a couple of players who avoid CV combat or A2A combat at all until 1945 and have put all their time and energy into Aircraft production and have their "midway" in 1945 with the full strengh of the Combined fleet and the US Fleet. And that isn't likely to happen in EVERY game. But when it does, should we change the gut s of the game to accommodate the players who feel their game was borked?

Well maybe "borked" is a strong word as people seem to be homing in on it, but... you asked for a maximum size which needs handling. I agree you can't necessarily code for air combat of arbitrary size. But a maximum size would presumably be the above scenario. It's a little contrived, but not very contrived, and seems like a reasonable max to shoot for to me.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: TheElf
1. you are absolutely right. It is too easy to get the golden number of escorts. What is wrong with that?

I don't think magical cut off points have much place in reality. It's a very "hard" limit too, very noticeable when you have hit it, as Greyjoy discovered in his tests. I dont' really see why CAP should be mystically limited to 300 passes - especially given the aforementioned note that it might possibly represent six hours of air combat.