All aircraft were improved. Why?

[FNG]

hogg, you have summed it up superbly.

cheers.

[JJKettunen]

ORIGINAL: hogg

Are we trying to be too mathematical about this?[&:]

To my limited mind, once an aircraft fires/drops a munition at an armoured target, on of five things are going to happen....

1) Nothing, a flat miss
2) Paintwork and fender damage
3) The crew get a bit twitchy, and hide under cover, scratching their butts, wondering what to do (light to medium suppression)
4) The crew abandon the tank on the grounds that their tank will continue to attract airborne death (Heavy suppresion/abandonment/mission kill)
5) Large hole made in tank (hard kill)

Now the tanks opponent would love a 4) or a 5), but will live with a 3).

First hand accounts of actual airstrikes tend to be from 3)'s and 4)'s (unless witnessing someone else getting a g 5))

Bomb damage assesment after the event will only count evidence of 5)'s. They are not going to be able to count/assess 3)'s.


Surely, then, when we assess the results of an airstrike in spwaw, we need to blend bomb damage assesments with first hand accounts, to get the right proportion of 1) to 5)'s?

Now run a few tests with the current OOB, and you will notice that Tac Bombers produce disproportionate amount of results 4) and 5). 'Nuff said.

[Charles2222]

Has anyone ever noticed whether the propensity of hard objects being hit relates to the number of the same in the hex? I never gave it concrete study, but if the assertion can be made that hitting the individual target aimed for, AND destroying it, was lower than it is gamewise, then one would assume something of a attack the hex, rather than attack the object approach, and, if that is what's going on in the game, I ought to have seen, particularly in heavy cover, the hitting of one hard object almost being described as miraculous. And yet, from many of the posts I've seen (prior to V8.0), it appears the AC attack just as well in heavy cover as in light, on single hard objects as in many hard objects.

[hogg]

ORIGINAL: Keke

Now run a few tests with the current OOB, and you will notice that Tac Bombers produce disproportionate amount of results 4) and 5). 'Nuff said.

With respect, old boy, [&o] it is the word 'disproportionate' that I am addressing. I am not arguing from any particular side on this debate, just trying to focus the debate onto the facts.

Disproportionate based on what?

Certainly, 5)'s (hard kills) can be easily determined - I suspect that there are sufficient bomb damage assessment studies from the second world war that will allow us to put a rough figure on hard kills/weapons fired. If that shows that the game is producing too many hard kills, then I would favour a lowering of the lethality.

However, how do we quantify 4)'s (abandonment/mission kill)?

How many macho tankers are going to officially admit "When the typhoons turned up, I wet my pants, abandoned the tank, hid till they went away, then got back in the tank and drove off"?

Accepting this, it makes any baseline figure highly suspect, and the word disproportionate somewhat misleading.


I am no expert on this, and would accept anyone's more knowledgable view on the matter.

If there are too many hard kills, perhaps the way forward is to make the weapons less accurate (giving more suppression/splash damage), but keep the same pen rates, so that when a direct hit is achieved, an hard kill is still possible?


Cheers,

Hogg.

[Charles2222]

Hogg: (I'm not the one you were last talking to) What he says is true. Suppose you believe the KILL ratio is 20% of sorties. Well, of course, ingame, it's more like 60-70%. OTOH, have you ever seen a tank abandoned via airstrike? You only see it 'after' the strike, and only if there's a great deal more suppression than one plane usually creates. So there you have it: Kills are too high, while abandonments are pretty close to nill.

[JJKettunen]

ORIGINAL: hogg

Disproportionate based on what?

Did you even read the quotes I posted? Or do you believe that British operational research teams were just bunch of dumbasses? [;)]

[hogg]

Dear Keke,

Yes, I read your quotes with considerable interest - thanks for posting them!

To quote my earlier post:-

"Certainly, 5)'s (hard kills) can be easily determined - I suspect that there are sufficient bomb damage assessment studies from the second world war that will allow us to put a rough figure on hard kills/weapons fired. If that shows that the game is producing too many hard kills, then I would favour a lowering of the lethality."

What was it at the battle of Mortain? 7 confirmed kills out of 101 lost vehicles? Then I certainly agree with you that the lethality should be reduced to the 7% range.

[:)]


The other point I was making was about suppression:-

Again, permit me to quote my earlier post:-

"How many macho tankers are going to officially admit "When the typhoons turned up, I wet my pants, abandoned the tank, hid till they went away, then got back in the tank and drove off"?

Accepting this, it makes any baseline figure highly suspect, and the word disproportionate somewhat misleading."

Taking on board what charles_22 wrote, his experience shows that heavy suppression/abandonment is less common in the game than it should be.


And that was the nub of my argument - we can quantify hard kills (lets go with your 7/101 figure, for arguments sake!), but how do we quantify suppression/abandoment?

Hard kills and mission kills are two seperate things, and we should get both right.

To recap, it is easy to get the hard kill figure right, but it is more difficult to get the suppression rate right, as there is no easy way to quantify it. And, no, I don't have an answer for either!!![:D]


My apologies if my earlier post was badly worded and caused confusion!




Cheers,

Hogg.

[Frank W.]

AFAIK the main effect of air in the battles was supression on armor !

also if you read battle reports from the german side in normandy than
you will see that air had a great effect - NOT only in killing, but
in delaying (!) which means vehicles of all sorts could not move
on streets by daylight...so most of the german good armor troops
could not reach the front in time to fight the invasion as it was
still possible to throw the allies back in the sea. but this effect
can be hardly moddeled in the game as it is a tactical sim.

this leads as to the thought that rommel was perhaps right
with his planned strategy to deploy the tank as near as possible to the beaches....the allies were lucky in this case that most
other german commanders like rundstedt opposed rommel in this question....off topic probably [;)]

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Frank W.

AFAIK the main effect of air in the battles was supression on armor !

also if you read battle reports from the german side in normandy than
you will see that air had a great effect - NOT only in killing, but
in delaying (!) which means vehicles of all sorts could not move
on streets by daylight...so most of the german good armor troops
could not reach the front in time to fight the invasion as it was
still possible to throw the allies back in the sea. but this effect
can be hardly moddeled in the game as it is a tactical sim.

this leads as to the thought that rommel was perhaps right
with his planned strategy to deploy the tank as near as possible to the beaches....the allies were lucky in this case that most
other german commanders like rundstedt opposed rommel in this question....off topic probably [;)]

Of course that may be partly due to inter-service rivalry, and considering how non-existent the Luftwaffe in the role of ground support was for so long in the West, it sure would make them not look so bad if they were losing ground and AFV's to blame it on enemy air. Of course, as well, it also made sense for them to travel at night since they weren't controlling the sky. I don't think the Eastern Front ever got so bad that they decided they had to travel at night. You're also probably talking quite a difference in the range of the planes between the East and West. I'm not sure it was very common for the West to put drop tanks on strictly ground support fighters, but I've never heard of the USSR doing that. Perhaps they did, but the USSR's ground support was of much shorter range, as they weren't so interested in going further to the enemy rear than 100 miles, since there was plenty to shoot at on the front. The Western Allies had to fly quite a distance before they even had the possibility of encountering intercepts or ground targets.

[RockinHarry]

While personally I agree to beefing up some dive bombers hit accuracy by increasing FC and RnF, this at the same time worsens another issue that not yet have been dealt with generally. It´s the „overkill“ factor of aircraft HE weapons against dug in infantry, like bombs in particular! It´s not just me driving nuts, it goes amongst most of the community!

First of all some snip from the SPWAW game manual (p106):

[font="Verdana"]• Warhead - An important number used to determine suppression from HE hits (the formula is warhead plus random number, plus some modifiers. If the number is greater than 9, it can affect units in an adjacent hex. It is also a key in determining the chance of damaging and killing tanks. It also “knock down cover” protecting infantry.[/font]

This explains at part why aircraft bombs kill lots of infantry upto 2 hexes away from the initial impact hex! 2 hexes is 100 yards or 90 meters. We also know this nice little feature as „splash“ damage. Well, this can´t be toned down by „artillery vs. Soft“ setting in „Preferences“ screen, as this obviously also lessenes effectiveness off all other artillery, which is partly weak anyways.

.... It also “knock down cover” protecting infantry....

This might explain why dug in infantry is so much affected! I personally don´t think that a 250kg (500lb) bomb f.e flattens trenches or foxholes with ist occupants 50 to 100 yards away! Not far from my home (5 Minutes walking), there is some forest that still is littered with dozens of bomb craters, caused in WW2 by US or Brit bombers probably dropping 500lb bombs. (Note: this is one of the types still unearthed nowadays in germany most frequently). The craters caused by these bombs are mostly 5 to 8 meters in diameter and 2-4 meters deep, dependent upon type of ground/soil. Off cause there´s also lots of shrapnel, but not in a way to affect any grunts that most likely take cover in their trenches and foxholes anyways! You might be unlucky to get some bigger piece of sharpnel falling on your head from above, but then your helmet should safe you from most harm.

I figured out, even a „warhead“ size below 9 (6-9) still causes considerable collateral damage in neighbouring hexes! I guess this is caused due to aircraft ordnance using slightly different pieces of code and modifiers than artillery shells f.e.
However, I figured out that using a warhead of 5-6 tones down „splash/collateral“ damage to reasonable amounts, while still preserving the weapons deadlyness in the initial impact hex! (warhead reduced, all other stats like HE kill keep the same)

As said earlier, if weapon sound changes oddly due to changed warhead sizes, we can always assign dedicated sounds individually in the OOBs.

[Frank W.]

i agree that air splash damage is too high[:(]

[FNG]

Just making some completely uninformed guesses here:

Is the heavy splash damage associated with air-launched ordnance an attempt to model within the confines of the software the extreme psychological effects of airstrikes?

Was there a deliberate design decision made to increase the effectiveness of the weapons involved because there is no mechanism to cause a more severe type of suppression, that could potentially put a unit out of action for an entire battle?

From the sources I have have read from all nationalities, I would infer that an effective airstrike has a good chance of rendering a target unfit for combat operations for quite some time (in game terms, until after the current battle) and as SPWaW does not model this, the PBI just get greased.

My primary source for air having greater psychological effects on infantry is again Blackburn - there are repeated references to troops suffering extreme 'battle fatigue' after being airstruck, even to the extent that entire companies would be far more prone to break in future because of the residual effects.

[robot]

Let me tell you what an airstrike can do to you. It can make you knash your teeth so hard it breaks them. It makes you piss all over your self. It can burst your ear drums. If you have your head strap on, it can tear your head off. And this is when the impact area is 150 yds away. If you dont believe in God you soon will. Because you sure as heck do a lot of praying. If you happen to be in the impact area you no longer will be after it hits. If it is a frag type, the air becomes a whistling nightmare. Concussion alone can kill you.

[FlashfyreSP]

After some testing, I reached the conclusion that the splash damage occuring in-game is not 'realistic' by even the most elementary physics. For example:

A 50kg bomb contains approx. 24kgs of 'filling', or explosives. Drop this one and watch it damage units up to 2 hexes away. That's 100+ meters, factoring in variable drop points in a hex. Which, to put it in terms some of you will appreciate, a grunt laying down in the endzone of an NFL stadium has a good chance of being wounded/killed by this bomb exploding at the OTHER endzone.

I don't claim to be an expert on explosives, or bombs, but I think this one weapon has less 'stuff' than some of these suicide bombers have worn, and those explosions have had a smaller blast radius.

This trend continues as the bomb size gets bigger.

Personally, I have reduced the warhead sizes of all the aircraft bombs in all my OOBs by about 20%. They still cause damage, but a handful of small bombs won't wipe out an entire company of troops, deployed along a 6-hex front.[:@]