New DBB A/C files - first impressions

[ny59giants]

Like Mr Kane, who is my second opponent, using the new air data there will be an adjustment period. In my game vs Olorin (Nick) we have just reached '44 and both the new air data and our HR on altitude restrictions have changed. From our brief A2A battles the P-47s is an uber-fighter while the P-38s, especially the J model, have done very well. I have not faced the Jack yet as its performance was not good enough for Olorin to build them then. He has reported doing so now.

In my game vs Mr Kane we are playing RA and have updated to the latest air data from Symon. There have been few A2A combat as of March '42. IMO, we both will bring in things learned from our '44 games to this game and adjust tactics and plane usage accordingly. I believe that Symon has presented the best data that he can find on airframe performance and like any change, their will be adjustments made.

[LoBaron]

MrKane, just to avoid misunderstandings: I am aware that GJ is a very experienced and capable player, and from all I read in his AAR you are a very capable player as well. For sure I did not want to leave the impression that there are players with more experience required to judge the new plane stats objectively. Your and his opinion and experience matters as much as anybody elses, and sharing your impressions on the changes is highly apprechiated.

I was rather referring to the point in the game where you implemented the change, which needs to be kept in mind when forming opinions about how the new plane stats influence the air war in your game.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

High exp/high skill pilots perform too good ingame in relation to how easy they are trained ingame. In my opinion, and I am happy to see JWE agrees with us here, the premier reason was major, very early, patch, which increased training speed by an order of magnitude. I never understood this decision, and I believe it was simply implemented without much consideration, to satisfy a vocal crowd that did not fully grasp the implications of that change. This practically opened the door to retort pilots with 60/70/70 stats throughout the whole war with all obvious consequences. If there was one single thing I could make undone in WitP AE, it would be that ancient patch.

That was a good discussion.

The original decision you mention, to make pilots train up faster, was (very early after release as you mention and) before I was doing much with pilot training. I'm not sure that I would reverse that decision. I suspect that doing so would more strongly favor the Japanese as - within the game system - the Japanese player inherently has a greater ability to grow and harvest skilled and experienced pilots.

Instead, I think a modification of the formulae that apply Exp and skills, so that there is a (steeper) diminishment of returns above a certain level, say experience and skills above 70.

As LoBaron said, I understand that this is quite possibly off limits at this stage of development, but I strongly suspect it is the real issue at hand. It goes beyond air to air; it affects hits on ships and subs and air bases and ports and cities/factories/manpower and troops on the ground. A number of these things are items of contention among players.

[Symon]

You're ok Bill. There is much truth to what people are saying. We (US, Britain, even the Sovs) did a lot of airframe and engine testing in 1946 just to see what could be possible to do with them. Wright-Pat did do its testing with AN48 (100/115) grade. But the specs came from contemporary wartime documentation.

Japanese engines had their share of teething problems, but how does one model that? We did find some very bizarre things when we looked at the vast fields of planes after the war. There are comments that they all seemed to have superchargers and even carburation that was one-off to each plane. Ducting, ports, intakes, were all different. Type-13 supercharger parts were lathe turned to fit and stuck onto type-33s, etc.. Woof !!

I think Japan simply could not make sufficient spare parts (particularly not of rare and getting rarer specialty strategic metals) and if they had them, they couldn’t get them to where they had to go. Poor Sushi Hamachi had to make do with whatever he could find in the parts shed and beat it with a hammer till it would fit.

Maybe that’s why certain planes did such a sterling job when in the Home Islands and barfed when they were out-deployed for more than a few weeks. This might even be the genesis of the myth that Japanese planes were tested with “new” motors and “special” superchargers. I’m sure our guys went “whoa! what a roach!” and rebuilt things to spec before they would allow anybody to take the thing off the ground.

So, Japan had some issues. But they were the kind of issues that cannot be realistically modeled. I think it unfair to universally and forever penalize an entire weapon system for deficiencies in maintenance and logistic support. And don’t forget that skilled mechanics and factory technicians were drafted into the IJA as private soldiers (cannon fodder) without regard to their usefulness to the sinews of war and over the violent objections of the IJN. Skilled mechanics were drafted as privates; rice farmers were trained as mechanics. Go figure.

[Symon]

I think GJ and Mr Kane are doing a great thing. I appreciate their input and want more. Seems the biggest witch is how this new stuff impacts the game balance. I’ll get philosophical for just a bit, but I want it understood that I am not commenting on mechanics, or player choices, or any of that stuff. Player choices are different and often violently held. Ain’t gonna stick Mr Winky in that fan. This is personal observation and preference only.

It seems that much of the issue revolves around side issues dealing with the production/logistics system. Under the old specs, a Japanese player needed to raise a gazillion pilots, and change all his factories and all of his airgroups to specific models in order to have any hope of confronting the Allied 1944/45 buzz-saw. What that meant was there was kind of a sweet spot in 1942/43 where things worked ok, but got a little outré afterwards.

What we are trying to do with the new specs is reduce the dependency of game performance on the choice of switches; trying to make the sweet spot wider and sweeter for “nominal” play. That’s not to say that people can’t take advantage of this with PDU and R&D switches, but those switches are intended to define “outside the box” conditions, so being outside the box means one may have to learn some new rules.

Just my $.02 and a bit of Babes philosophy. Take it for what it’s worth [8D]. JWE

[Symon]

One last little bit is the technical bit. Perhaps, just perhaps, I can get out the potato peeler and skin back the Jack somewhat. Jack was a point-defense interceptor rocket. It had speed, climb, but doo-doo for maneuver. Seems the maneuver program gives it a bit more than it should have. And the early versions could lose a touch of speed. … See, I’m reasonable.

Mr George is another matter. People (Hawks, Evans, Santos, etc..) been on this guy for ages. There’s a N1K2 that has been around since forever and gone from place-to-place and has had every cubic millimeter measured. We even have an equivalent NACA section for the wing. The existing plane wasn’t tested, but an exact centimeter scale model was run through wind tunnel testing to refine the drag coefficients. The plane was exceptional in many respects; perhaps some of them were accidental, but nevertheless …

Many people thing the stats are a bit conservative, but the game engine has its foibles. Given a well maintained engine, that performs to spec, it’s not hard to see how a Sentai of experienced pilots could rape a bunch of F6Fs. And the pilots, themselves, reported that they had nothing to fear from US Hellcats. Apocrypha, yes, but it comes from somewhere.

Anyway, I like Mr George where he is. Perhaps Jacks to open is a teensy bit much. Call any vegetable … and the chances are good … that the vegetable will respond to you.

Ciao. JWE

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: Symon

You're ok Bill. There is much truth to what people are saying. We (US, Britain, even the Sovs) did a lot of airframe and engine testing in 1946 just to see what could be possible to do with them. Wright-Pat did do its testing with AN48 (100/115) grade. But the specs came from contemporary wartime documentation.

Post war the investigation teams were interested in learning all the tricks the enemy used so they could be incorporated into the next generation of their own aircraft.

I did read an account of US war time testing of something captured and they used better fuel than what the enemy was using and got performance curves much better than what the enemy was seeing. When that intel was passed on to pilots in the field they had exaggerated ideas about what the enemy aircraft could do, but in wartime conditions, that is probably a good thing. It's much safer to assume your enemy is more capable than he is than underestimate.

Japanese engines had their share of teething problems, but how does one model that? We did find some very bizarre things when we looked at the vast fields of planes after the war. There are comments that they all seemed to have superchargers and even carburation that was one-off to each plane. Ducting, ports, intakes, were all different. Type-13 supercharger parts were lathe turned to fit and stuck onto type-33s, etc.. Woof !!

We do have the service rating, which is an abstraction, but it was used to make the early P-38s maintenance dogs to prevent the US from getting a super fighter in 1942. Anyone who has tried to deploy P-38Es in game has found they spend a lot of time under repair and not a lot of time in the fight.

The British did a lot of hand fitting with their aircraft too. I read an account of a factory rep for a US aircraft maker who was sent to England to train British mechanics on US aircraft. The British mechanics showed up with a bunch of chisels and files. The factory rep was confused why and the British mechanics were amazed that spare parts just fit without any field work.

Bill Dunn who was an Eagle Squadron pilot before transferring to the USAAF had a comparison of all the aircraft he flew as an appendix in his book. He said that the rolls Royce Merlins ran far smoother than the Packard Merlins because the RR Merlins were hand built and the Packard engines were mass manufactured with looser tolerances. As a consequence he said the Mustang vibrated more. The Spitfire and Hurricane purred by comparison.

That hand building had consequences in the field though.

I think Japan simply could not make sufficient spare parts (particularly not of rare and getting rarer specialty strategic metals) and if they had them, they couldn’t get them to where they had to go. Poor Sushi Hamachi had to make do with whatever he could find in the parts shed and beat it with a hammer till it would fit.

Maybe that’s why certain planes did such a sterling job when in the Home Islands and barfed when they were out-deployed for more than a few weeks. This might even be the genesis of the myth that Japanese planes were tested with “new” motors and “special” superchargers. I’m sure our guys went “whoa! what a roach!” and rebuilt things to spec before they would allow anybody to take the thing off the ground.

Both sides did their share of field improvisation to keep planes flying. I think the US was probably better than anyone else at capturing field born ideas that were good and incorporating them. A lot of Pappy Gunn's ideas became factory standard or options at some point.

After the first year and a half of war, the US didn't have to rely on field improv as much, but the Japanese were more and more forced to use it.

The US culture by 1940 was the most mass manufacturing oriented in the world. There was a large body of institutional knowledge about how to do things on a mass scale and it was well utilized. Britain has a mix of mass manufacturing and boutique kind of manufacturing (like the RR engines). Japan had industrialized very quickly and were still building their economy when they got bogged down in China and the exigencies of war there bogged down everything.

The industrial revolution in Japan was less than a generation old when they went to war, in the US the men fighting the war had grandfathers who had worked in factories their whole lives. That tends to mold collective mindsets.

So, Japan had some issues. But they were the kind of issues that cannot be realistically modeled. I think it unfair to universally and forever penalize an entire weapon system for deficiencies in maintenance and logistic support. And don’t forget that skilled mechanics and factory technicians were drafted into the IJA as private soldiers (cannon fodder) without regard to their usefulness to the sinews of war and over the violent objections of the IJN. Skilled mechanics were drafted as privates; rice farmers were trained as mechanics. Go figure.

Japan was very poor at managing their manpower. The interservice rivalries tended to trump everything else. Other countries had their rivalries too, which caused problems, but usually someone pointing out there was a war on got people to back down from their games and more or less cooperate.

Japan also realized too late that the Allies emphasis on saving downed air crew at high risk to the rescuers actually helped the war effort. A lot of crews learned lessons from being shot down they both used themselves and taught others. It built up a tremendous pool of institutional knowledge that Japan lost whenever one of their experts were lost in combat.

Bill

[crsutton]

Taken on paper the Japanese planes were well designed and potentially deadly. But the game can't model certain factors that had an impact on the performance of Japanese fighters as a whole. Aside from the lack of parts and skilled maintenance, due to late war production difficulties any Japanese plane if pushed to the edge of the envelope has the potential for catastrophic structural failure of some sort. It is one of the difficult things to measure as it was hard to tell when a plane did not return because some unfortunate pilots pushed it too hard and the plane fell apart. Japanese pilots were human and in spite of the myths about them, not too different for any other human. I would expect that there would have been some hesitation on the part of pilots to push their planes fully in combat as a simple act of self preservation. This in itself would implement a sort of "human governor" on Japanese aircraft.

Aside from this there were tactical and doctrinal differences that cannot be measured. Simply put, the general lack of radios would have put Japanese pilots at a tactical disadvantage and made Allied fighters with no real qualitative edge much more deadly. And although it was more of a late war edge the ability of Allied ground direction using radar to alert and vector aircraft once again added a qualitative edge to Allied fighters at least when on the defensive. The question is how do you reflect these factors in game terms. I am speculating here but I would think that given the difficulties cited above it might probably have meant that the real average speed and performance of Japanese fighters was significantly less than what they were capable of. Of course, the Allies had to deal with some of these issues as well-especially at forward bases in the early years of the war. But overall, all things considered the Average Allied plane and pilot was going to perform at a much higher level than the average Japanese aircraft. For this reason, in game terms, rethinking the specs of the Japanese aircraft might be in order.

[Lecivius]

I'm going to toss an idea out there. Now bear in mind this is like a 12 year old popping up with a comment in an adult conversation at dinner.

Just from reading this. If the plane model is accurate, and the pilot experience scales in Japans favor during late war A2A, why don’t we leave the plane model alone and the Japanese pilot training model?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

I'm going to toss an idea out there. Now bear in mind this is like a 12 year old popping up with a comment in an adult conversation at dinner.

Just from reading this. If the plane model is accurate, and the pilot experience scales in Japans favor during late war A2A, why don’t we leave the plane model alone and the Japanese pilot training model?

'...and what the Japanese pilot training model?'

Do you mean reduce pilot training for just the Japanese? If it is reduced for both, I think that will have a comparatively harsher effect on the Allies.

[Symon]

Okay. Think GreyJoy and Mr Kane have valid points. Spent some time with outside folks and think I can dial in the Jacks a bit better.

Many thanks to GreyJoy and Mr Kane for raising "the law of unintended consequences" results from their game. I appreciate their input, understand the conditions, and will do my best to address their concerns. They are, after all, the consumer of all this stuff.

Ciao. JWE

[Lecivius]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: Lecivius

I'm going to toss an idea out there. Now bear in mind this is like a 12 year old popping up with a comment in an adult conversation at dinner.

Just from reading this. If the plane model is accurate, and the pilot experience scales in Japans favor during late war A2A, why don’t we leave the plane model alone and the Japanese pilot training model?

'...and what the Japanese pilot training model?'

Do you mean reduce pilot training for just the Japanese? If it is reduced for both, I think that will have a comparatively harsher effect on the Allies.

Dang, I swore I had a full sentence in there [:(] I meant to 'modify' the Japanese pilot training model. Scale down the experience level available year to year, or something along those lines.

In any event, Symon is looking at it. I'll go back to my corner now.