The Betty's are too much...

[Mr.Frag]

Mdiehl, for game purposes, ships that are in a TF are not considered to be in the port when calculating whether it is a base attack or a naval attack.

This particular Cairns attack happens from time to time when all the dice happen to roll the wrong way. It can be completely prevented by flying LRCAP over the TF instead of assuming the Base local CAP will protect the TF in the same hex.

[mdiehl]

The air combat was displayed as a 25 (more or less) fighter interception of a 20 (more or less) Betties with an air combat in the hex. The targeted ships were in port, docked, not in a TF, although that should not be germane in a hex with radar. The work around may prove helpful when a TF moves into a port and I want it covered so I thank you for the tip. The problem remains, however, that the sim generated the result thrice. The Betties are most definitely NOT fragile enough.

Had similar results with a CV battle. Sixteen F4Fs intercepted 6 Zekes and almost a score each of Vals and Kates. No Zekes shot down, lots of Vals and Kates "damaged" but they still managed to torp everything in sight. Japanese strike a/c in general need to be made more fragile to reflect their hyper vulnerability to flak, bullets in the gas tank etc.

I came out "OK" from the CV battle, but what irks me is that I HAD the Japanese. Git in the first strike and did some damage. Bounced the first incoming strike. Intercepted the second incoming strike STRONGLY and saw the in bound strike skate through the CAP terminally damaging Wasp, severely damaging Saratoga, and putting a few stray bullets into Enterprise. From a strategic POV no big deal because I scragged Zuikaku pretty badly (this was last evening.. new game), shot up Sho's strike groups, and traded Wasp for Junyo.

On an another note I enjoyed the first naval combats. Invaded Lunga per history, got intercepted by a surface combat per history, lost two CAs and several DDs but these prevented the Japanese TF from nailing my AKs and APs. Two days later it was Hiei and Kirishima and Co vs. North Carolina and Co. Lost two CAs but messed up everything in the Japanese TF, and got 10 big gun hits on Hiei (who escaped the next day because rain at Lunga). One week later, it was North Carolina and friends vs. Kongo and Haruna and friends, except on this occasion NC ate a torp. After that, NC retired to Luganville and, I presume, Kongo and Haruna joined Hiei and Kirishima on the road to the navy yard. Again, after the big combat (with Haruna limping away very slowly) rain grounded my SBDs at Lunga. Ah well, I'm gonna do Hard Road Ahead again several times until I master the piddling mechanics of the TF loading interface.

[Damien Thorn]

[QUOTE=mdiehl Japanese strike a/c in general need to be made more fragile to reflect their hyper vulnerability to flak, bullets in the gas tank etc.
[/QUOTE]

I couldn't disagree more. Japanese planes are already too vulnerable to flak, espicially B5Ns. Losing even a couple of pilots is not worth much if you only damage enemy ships. Those ships just go back for repairs and come back stronger than ever. The ace pilot will never be replaced. I cringe whenever I lose a good pilot.
If flak losses were any higher then after September or October of 42 (The FIRST year of the war), you would find Japanese players that were ready to start Kamikaze missions because the pilots wouldn't be good for anything else.

If you want to turn the Japanese planes into paper you will be able to do so with the WitP editor.

[mdiehl]

Sorry Damien. That's just the way it historically WAS. Unescorted Japanese bomber strikes were ripped to teeny tiny shreddos by even very small CAPs and flak. If you launch an unescorted Betty strike on a TF that has CAP, or against a land target with a functioning airbase, you should EXPECT to lose almost every plane you send, every time you try it. I'm not talking about "game balance" here, I am talking about game realism.

I don't have a problem with the Japanese running out of decent Betty pilots if they use them in foolish ways. The Betty was a very fast airplane for its category with a high cruising speed, despite being driven only by two mediocre-thrust radial engines. It had outstanding range. It had large wings for an a/c in its class, which gave it excellent lift and low wing loading. It achieved its outstanding speed and range characteristics by sacrificing structural strength (maximized strength through a tubular construction that is almost 'unibody' in its cleverness, but still not enough to really last against hits), defensive armament for the most part) and any pretense at the slightest shred of armor or damage protection (well, they got around to putting fire extinguishers in the engines). As a result, they were very easily destroyed by very brief bursts of heavy calibre MG fire, longer bursts of rifle caliber fire, or near misses from flak that every other combatant's strike A/C would have shrugged off.

[crsutton]

Well, the bettys are pretty deadly. However, if you are playing #17 or #19, you have to bear in mind that you are playing unhistorical scenarios where there are plenty of bettys and the quality of the Japanese pilots is very high. You have to expect them to pound you.

In reality, the Japanese rarely had more than 60 bettys operational in the South Pacific at any one time and pilot quality degraded very fast with losses.

The good news is they are easy to shoot down and suffer high operational losses. Don't panic, build up your morale and air strength and eventually you will be able to deal with them.

Historically, after the first few months of the war, the bettys and nells did not have much effect. The were not very good bombers and were just too easily shot down to make them effective torpedo bombers. As allied AA prowess increased, level torpedo bombing by the Japanese became almost suicidal. After 1942, there were very few sucessful Japanes torpedo attacks.

[Mr.Frag]

Just to throw a twist in this, realize that AA power is under valued here. You should be loosing more aircraft to AA then to anything else.

The flight profile on the "gas can" torpedo bombers made them probably the easiest AA target ever flown in any war due to the combination of no armor, no sealing fuel tanks, large profile, slow speed, and lots of other silly things I'm forgetting right now. One has to give credit to the guys who actually flew them as it was quite obviously a one way trip.

[Damien Thorn]

Sorry Damien. That's just the way it historically WAS. I'm not talking about "game balance" here, I am talking about game realism.

OK, I agree that the planes were light and they should suffer badly to CAP if inescorted. That's realism, as you've said. "Game balance", however, demands that the player be able to do something, like escort those bombers, to help ensure their survivability. I don't have a problem with the bombers suffering badly to CAP. I have a problem with them suffering badly to flak. You see, against flak, there is NOTHING the player can do, change, control, or set to change the situation. It is not a matter of using the planes incorrectly (like launching an unescorted raid), it's just a matter of using them AT ALL. Nothing gives a feeling of hopelessness like getting wiped out and knowing there is nothing you can do about it.
If I lose a lot of planes because of my stupidity, I can live with it. If I lose a lot because the game says "90% of your plaes will get shot down by flak" then I do have a problem with that.
I guess I prefer the romantic notion of "knights of the sky" in WW1 where individual aces battled against each other and the skill of the pilot decided who won the day. Even by the third year of that war, 1917, that was changing to numbers mattering more than individual skill. Still, if one had to model WW1 air-to-air combat, I think it would be a more fun game if skill mattered MUCH more than numbers.
Just my opinion.

[mdiehl]

I've not seen the huge flak loss rates that you speak of. I hope that the addition of VT fuzed shells will increase my flak kill rate. There shouldn't be alot that a player can do about it. But that's WW2 reality. By 1944 the Japanese had to send lots of a/c in strikes, or send them at night, to have a hope of a relatively decent success rate.

[Mr.Frag]

I've not seen the huge flak loss rates that you speak of. I hope that the addition of VT fuzed shells will increase my flak kill rate. There shouldn't be alot that a player can do about it. But that's WW2 reality. By 1944 the Japanese had to send lots of a/c in strikes, or send them at night, to have a hope of a relatively decent success rate.

It's abstracted in UV to a greater extent then in WitP Mdiehl. Sending your ships back to Pearl gets them two sets of AA upgrades. First round guts the .5 & 1.1's replacing them with 20mm/40mm, second round adds more 20mm/40mm. You will see a DD go from an AA strength of about 200 to almost 600 after the second upgrade. It makes for a huge difference in effectiveness, but it is rather generic. In WitP, ship classes are tracked through multiple upgrades (weapons/radar/asw/etc) in detail instead of just a generic routine. Only CV's are tracked in UV.

I think AA was toned down in UV simply because it is not *fun* as you may have noticed from some of the posters in this thread.

Even the much vaulted B-17's with their infinite durability got their butts kicked over Germany at extreme altitudes. I just can not imagine the carnage that would have happened had one of the thousand plane raids come in at 6000 feet. We all know the results of the only large low level attack of heavy bombers, massive losses! It was never attempted again.

If you dig back through the threads, you'll find a post about one of my tests where I relocated every single AA gun that Japan owns to Lae and then proceeded to close the base completely with B-25/26's with marginal losses. I'd venture to say that AA is probably running about 25% of it's real effectiveness at best on BOTH sides.