City attack: Suggestion for Mouseover and Target Selection

[LoBaron]

Hello everybody!

It is now late ´44 in our PBEM, and we thoroughly enjoy it. The force relations are obvious, the war is won, the invasion of the Japanese home islands is on the distant horizon, and the playing field has changed completely.
For the Allies it is dominated by mop up operations, logistical challenges, planning for attacks against the last big Japanese strongholds.

It is also dominated by the strategic bombing campaign against Honshu originating from bases in the Kuriles and Hokkaido. I truly respect the fighting spirit of our opponent, Mike (Offenseman), who always tries to come up with new ideas how to fight back, and still enjoys stemming against the tide. Late game is a cat-and-mouse game on its own, and it is FUN.

This brings me to the most annoying element of our current game:

As soon as the DL hits the roof over Japanese bases (which is as we all know an easy feat to accomplish), a simple mouseover enables me to not only see the damage done to factories – which arguably is realistic – but also what exactly they are producing.
While I agree that it should be possible to distinguish between, for example, an HI plant or and engine factory, I have difficulties to accept any rationale explaining why I would be able to distinguish between – as an example - a Ha-33 and a Ha-34 plant. This, combined with the hindsight advantage of which power plant is used for what airframe, makes focusing on specific plants much too easy.

My personal opinion is that the maximum a mouseover should show, and the maximum information displayed on target selection in city attack mode, should be the information displayed at medium detection levels, which only shows the industry type, and not the specific model produced.
engine factory
aircraft factory
HI
oil
….
This would be enough to focus the strat bombing campaign on specific types of industry without revealing too much, and IMHO unrealistic and unfair, intel.

Michaelm, would in theory such a change be possible? And if yes would you consider it?

[PaxMondo]

+1

Nice idea.

[Yaab]

I think the tooltip should at least give the information about the kind of the factory i.e. Fighter Factory, Bomber Factory, Transport Factory etc.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Hello everybody!

It is now late ´44 in our PBEM, and we thoroughly enjoy it. The force relations are obvious, the war is won, the invasion of the Japanese home islands is on the distant horizon, and the playing field has changed completely.
For the Allies it is dominated by mop up operations, logistical challenges, planning for attacks against the last big Japanese strongholds.

It is also dominated by the strategic bombing campaign against Honshu originating from bases in the Kuriles and Hokkaido. I truly respect the fighting spirit of our opponent, Mike (Offenseman), who always tries to come up with new ideas how to fight back, and still enjoys stemming against the tide. Late game is a cat-and-mouse game on its own, and it is FUN.

This brings me to the most annoying element of our current game:

As soon as the DL hits the roof over Japanese bases (which is as we all know an easy feat to accomplish), a simple mouseover enables me to not only see the damage done to factories – which arguably is realistic – but also what exactly they are producing.
While I agree that it should be possible to distinguish between, for example, an HI plant or and engine factory, I have difficulties to accept any rationale explaining why I would be able to distinguish between – as an example - a Ha-33 and a Ha-34 plant. This, combined with the hindsight advantage of which power plant is used for what airframe, makes focusing on specific plants much too easy.

My personal opinion is that the maximum a mouseover should show, and the maximum information displayed on target selection in city attack mode, should be the information displayed at medium detection levels, which only shows the industry type, and not the specific model produced.
engine factory
aircraft factory
HI
oil
….
This would be enough to focus the strat bombing campaign on specific types of industry without revealing too much, and IMHO unrealistic and unfair, intel.

Michaelm, would in theory such a change be possible? And if yes would you consider it?

I'm not so sure that the change is realistic... Yes, I agree in principle to a point. But I am pretty sure that the Allies (or just the USA??) did know a fair amount about what factory was producing what planes, for one thing. We need some folks with good knowledge of the history on this to chime in. [8D]

[Spidery]

Attacks were directed, at least in Germany, against factories making parts needed for the better aircraft (e.g. ball-bearing factories).

The Japanese built simple planes, such as the Willow, not just because they were cheap but also they didn't use rare resources. As the game does not give a way to direct attacks against specific resources it seems being able to direct against specific end-products is a reasonable abstraction.