Airbase bombing and interception

[Beethoven1]

The purpose of this thread is to facilitate discussion of airbase bombing and of the question of to what degree and under what conditions it can be reliably intercepted, without distracting from other threads.

This topic arose around 2 weeks ago in this tech support thread - https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 7&t=387769

In my game with HLYA, as Soviets in early 1941, I did massive, concentrated, targeted bombing raids on HLYA's airbases, including 300+ air missions with many thousands of sorties, run repeatedly every day of the week with multiple different bombing missions set (with varying numbers of planes etc) for each targeted airbase. The result of this was the destruction of ~450 German fighters on the ground in a single turn, in exchange for high (but certainly acceptable) Soviet losses of about 800 planes. This seemed to me to be probably unbalanced and unintended, hence the reason for the creation of the tech support thread.

After lying dormant for a week or so in that tech support thread, this topic was revived by Loki in his AAR thread:

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 8#p5034338

As an aside, we tested HLYA/Beethoven's claim that air base bombing is OP. Its not, if the German fighters are on well supplied airbases they will intercept (and mine are basically assigned to GS and auto-intercept) and wipe out any Soviet attempt.

Naturally, I was interested to hear about Loki's tests, and requested that he post any screenshots of the results and saves from which the tests could be seen/verified/replicated. Loki has thus far provided no screenshots from his tests, nor any saves or additional details about the particular settings and numbers of planes etc involved in his tests.

But hopefully, if his game is PBEM, and if the Soviet player approves, perhaps it might be possible to share the save from before tests were run so that the tests can be seen and replicated, and we can see important details such as how many air missions were set up, how many planes were in range, how many missions/sorties flown, etc. And perhaps the Soviet player may also have some screenshots from when the tests were run which can be shared.

Another important point to note is that according to what Loki wrote in the quote above, the key to successfully defending against airfield bombing in his opinion is that the surrounding area, and not merely the airbase itself, must be well supplied, with well stocked depots. However, this would appear to be an unviable condition for Axis to fulfill in the early game, because lack of rail repair, depots, and the freight penalty makes this basically impossible. In HLYA's case, he had airfields with 100% supply, fuel, etc, but this was not enough in the face of the 300+ concentrated bombing missions. One would think that eventually the German fighters would run out of fuel, ammo, and (if nothing else) air miles in the face of a sufficiently large number of repeated bombing missions. If this is correct, it would imply that even if Loki is 100% correct that airbase bombing is not a problem when there are plenty of well stocked depots etc, it is nevertheless a significant problem for Axis in the early game, especially until the artificial freight penalty gets removed in 1942.

It is also obviously not viable to say that "Axis should not move up their air force in, to avoid bombing," because historically the Axis did move up the Luftwaffe and used it actively in 1941. If anything, they used it a lot more actively than HLYA has used it. HLYA basically only used fighters, whereas historically the Axis also used a lot of bombers and recon, which HLYA did not move up precisely because he does not have a bunch of excess supply/well stocked depots etc to be able to afford that.


With that background and context in mind, anyone who has tests/screenshots etc and/or is interested in substantive discussion about airbase bombing is welcome to post it here.

[xhoel]

Seems odd to me that the claim you made and very clearly showed in the thread is just being dismissed off hand. Like I already said in that thread, I think it is an exploit and an issue. The Soviets should be nowhere as good at launching such massive raids this early in the war. This was already discussed in another thread by Maly which talks about Soviet command structure at the time. AFAIK airbase bombings on large scale were practiced rarely and always in preparation for a major offensive. The LW was used extensively during 1941 even though there were maintenance and supply issues and yet the Soviets never were able to do what Beethoven did in his game. So yes, it is a problem.

I fully agree with what M60 said in that thread. When it comes to the air war, a bit more automatization and less options on mission types would actually make life easier for most players. I know that this probably wont happen any time soon but I really wish we can get a new Interdiction system in place. I really liked interdiction in WitE 1 where if the enemy had high enough recon on you and passed a check they could interdict that unit while it was on the move thus cutting down its MPs. Its a lot more dynamic and realistic as you dont really know which unit will get hit and at which point. Unlike the current system where you can clearly see where the interdiction has taken place. Just my 2 cents though.

Good luck with the discussion!

[Jeff_Ahl]

I really liked interdiction in WitE 1 where if the enemy had high enough recon on you and passed a check they could interdict that unit while it was on the move thus cutting down its MPs. Its a lot more dynamic and realistic as you dont really know which unit will get hit and at which point. Unlike the current system where you can clearly see where the interdiction has taken place. Just my 2 cents though.

+1000

[K62_]

AFAIK airbase bombings on large scale were practiced rarely and always in preparation for a major offensive.

Any large raids against a small target (airfield, port, industry etc.) should have a preparation points system similar to amphibious invasions IMO. Obviously the Germans would be fully prepared on GC41 T1 but any subsequent uses would require the player to guess enemy aircraft location many turns in advance.

[Stamb]

playing as a Soviets, which means depots full of freight, same for airbases, there were also no GA interceptions
pretty sure supply it is not a problem

[ShaggyHiK]

This is a rather complex issue of balance, historicism, atmosphere, which has a lot of aspects. Firstly, players tend to tie their planes to the ground, they often don't fly at all. Which automatically breaks all the arguments that the Soviets should not be able to organize flights to airfields. In a real war, there were different situations and there were also successful Soviet raids on Luftwaffe airfields.

The game issue is as follows. You need to understand if SUP helps against such raids.

Active search and barrage in the air > than a passive sortie upon impact.

The second important addition. There is no tool in the game that allows you to simulate a strike on a used but empty airfield. You cannot lose planes that are already on a mission from bombings; they are not at the airfield.

There are no penalties for system raids, obviously the first raid of the day is more likely to be successful than the second. A raid on the first day will be more successful than a raid on day 2 and beyond. A raid in the first week will be more effective than in the next.

For the simple reason that your systematic actions lead to the systematic opposition of the enemy. I will wait for you. The space will be targeted by anti-aircraft guns, cover planes will be organized and interaction will be established.

Moreover, all this, of course, in conditions when Soviet aviation receives ideal conditions for the inactivity of German aviation.

And in my opinion this is a bad decision. Because a lot of things in this case need to be done from scratch, to balance, etc.

I would advise doing it differently and building a balance on other processes, first of all, to strengthen the German bombing of airfields. At the moment, the German raids on June 22 are an ultimatum, but leading nowhere.

Firstly, this is a misconception that the bombing took place only on June 22, 41. The German Air Force continued raids on airfields for most of the summer. And only the failures and the binding of the Luftwaffe to ground operations, the bombing of Moscow and other targets, forced the Luftwaffe to abandon such successful actions. At the same time, with the concentration of forces, the German Air Force could easily displace Soviet aviation in any area. And even in 44, although an order of magnitude less significant than in 41 or 42. Even in 1943, air superiority, although it was on the Soviet side, did not apply to areas where German aviation concentrated its efforts. There could have been a complete displacement of Soviet daytime aviation even in 43.

I myself am an adherent of active air warfare. There should not be any passive actions. Putting everything on the GS and letting it fly by itself is awful.

GS is the pinnacle of air warfare. Before the GS you must clear the airspace using other available options. Deprive enemy aviation of airfields and supplies by destroying it in the air or on the ground. Then proceed to such a difficult process, including in terms of losses, as ground support. In the most extreme case, you must have a serious superiority to perform the GS, and the enemy aircraft must not be able to actively engage in counteraction. And even then, any unfinished organized group of aircraft can bring such chaos and inflict losses that will be at least unpleasant for you. Speaking of a group in this case, it could be 40-80 aircraft. In the regiments of the full complement.

1v1 duel players. Want to eliminate complex air interactions.

Doing two moves in 1 is hard.

I'm a 4v4 player. And I love flying. This is exactly what I get satisfaction from. What I really want to do.

And I'm not satisfied with the gameplay, put everything on the GS, and let it fly by itself.

The aviation unit must be extensive, active, with the possibility for each side to make successful actions and achieve or not achieve success or be defeated.

[malyhin1517]

+1
While this game is not about air warfare. I'll be happy to play in the air war, when it is adequately done. In the meantime, I'm doing ground warfare with air support.

[loki100]

Some views and data.

First, that you could see enemy airbase redeployments in the logistics log is undesirable. But its not as critical as it may seem, as you actually recon by bombing (a trick widely used by those with experience in WiTW). Second, I agree the VVS' capacity for complex operations is overstated in 1941.

Anyway, we went back to an August turn and my opponent committed 3 full armies (one is probably his best equipped on the map). Given the wider map area, it was pretty easy to guess where my fighters were, especially as I heavily concentrate on key sectors.

This uses a turn from August so clear weather. 3 Soviet Air Armies (1, 6 and 14) all did nothing but GA-airbase on the Minsk sector. Roughly 1,500 Soviet bombers and a matching number of fighters.

Set to 15k

If you've played WiTW you will know the routine discards empty bases (or those with no remainig targets), so essentially you can supplement your recon by bombing.

Here's D1 for 1AA (the core formation)



And the end of week bombing losses. Something like 1/3 Soviet pilots who took part dead, they've lost over 40% of their bombers and destroyed 66 German planes on the ground.



Going back to my save for the turn I had around 200 planes at the targetted air bases.

So that hurts a bit – but remember by this stage my choke point is pilots not planes.



Key, even on D7 I was still intercepting the raids

So what does this tell us. That placed in a network of well supplied depots, the LW doesn't end sat on the ground getting bombed. This is key, I was able to pull in replacement freight every time the AI committed my airforce (we didn't change my old settings so its basically all auto-GS). This is the point I was making, its not enough just to have supply at the airbase, the airbase has to be placed in a region with decent supply.

That enough bombers did hit my airbases to hurt, but in 1943 I don't struggle for replacement planes (unlike in mid-1941).

More generally, there is clearly a risk and trade off in how fast you push the LW fighters up in 1941. Too slow and the VVS has a free hit, faster and you can maybe catch out a Soviet player who is expecting substantial numerical superiority - but of course there are trade offs and risks.

[Beethoven1]

Some views and data.

Based on your screenshots and description, it appears to me that the issue is probably the sheer scale of the bombing raids I used, as compared to an apparently smaller scale of raids that the Soviet player set up in your test.

In this screenshot from your post, the top number 1010:1742 is number of sorties (MIS:ESC). The number 26 at the top is also the # of missions:



The screenshot also has multiple "locations" bombed all under that one single ground attack directive. It bombs airfields in Minsk, but also Berezino, Zhodzina, etc. So from that it looks like rather than setting up multiple air directives attacking different airfields (and also multiple ones for each airfield), there was simply one air directive with a big box covering multiple airfields.

So it appears what we have here is 1 of the 3 air armies did only 26 bombing missions, spread around on different airfields rather than concentrated, and

It is possible of course that this air army did additional bombing missions that you are no showing in that screenshot, but if so, I obviously have no way to know from reading your post, since you do not mention the numbers of overall missions and sorties actually flown, and since you do not post a save, so we can't see the settings and also can't try out altering the settings.


By contrast, here is a screenshot from when I was doing my airbase bombing. Without it even being completely done, I had 15.5k sorties, as compared to the 1010:1742 from your test:



I don't know exactly how many missions/sorties the other 2 air armies ran, again, because you don't say, but it appears likely that I flew considerably more sorties and missions than the Soviet player did in your test.


A second point of comparison also seems to indicate that I likely ran a lot more sorties/missions. Here are the air losses that you posted:



That is 1119 losses total, but only 57 of those are operational losses.

Now compare to my losses when I bombed HLYA's airbases.



829 total, but 311 were operational. You can notice from this that despite my bombing being very successful at destroying HLYA's fighters, I did in fact get intercepted and did end up taking a fairly similar number of losses. But the more important thing to notice is that I took 311 operational losses, compared to just 57 in your test. In general, operational losses should be more or less proportional to air miles flown (it was also 100% clear weather), so this is an indication that I probably flew something in the range of 6x as many air miles bombing airfields as occurred in your test. If I flew 6x as many air miles, I probably flew something up to 6x as many sorties as well (maybe a bit less, since I had more longer range level bombers).

So this looks like I simply bombed much more, and in a more concentrated and repeated manner than in your tests.



In addition to how your Soviet player set up the tests, part of the issue may also be that he has more shorter range tactical bombers (IL-2s etc), whereas I had more longer range level bombers. I suspect that even if he has nominally a lot of bombers in his air armies, many of them may simply not have the range from their airfields to bomb airfields behind your lines, and so they may simply have sat there and not participated.

One final point to note is that the results that you posted also look fairly similar to the results I had in the southern part of my bombing. I bombed Odessa and one Romanian port on the coast, but I had a lot fewer planes there in the south than I did in the center around Orsha/Vitebsk/Polotsk/Velikie Luki (where HLYA suffered the bulk of his losses). In the south, my bombers did get intercepted and most of them shot down near Odessa. They did destroy a small number of fighters, but nothing comparable to what happened in the center/north where I had a lot more planes.

All of this seems to suggest that if you bomb with only a comparatively small number of planes, they can be intercepted and dealt with reasonably - as in your test and also as occurred with me in the south near Odessa. However, if you save up your air force, make sure they have plenty of airfields in range, and then suddenly do many thousands of sorties/hundreds of missions all at once in a concentrated manner, then the sheer number of planes can overwhelm the defenders and result in large numbers of planes getting destroyed on the ground. The latter is what happened when I did it.



All of this would be easier to say for sure if we could see directly the save and could modify the air directives/air doctrine settings/etc used by the Soviet player, and could check on basic things like how many planes are in range for bombing etc. I suspect that if we had a save and could change the settings, we could probably destroy all of your fighters with a sufficiently large and concentrated Soviet strike. Even if in theory you had infinite supply/ammo/fuel/etc, in principle eventually - if I understand correctly, anyway - your intercepting fighters should run out of air miles, and at that point, if Soviets still had planes to conduct additional sorties, then your fighters would be destroyed on the ground.

If you are nevertheless reluctant to share the save to allow careful and reproducible tests, as an alternative, maybe Joel could send you the save he pulled from the server of my/HLYA's game. Then your Soviet player could see the settings that we used and copy them more directly, and make sure that there is a sufficiently large scale of airfield bombing, for a more relevant test. If I had the save, I would happily send it/upload it myself, but I don't since it is from a server game.

[Beethoven1]

Also, as regards supply and re-supply, HLYA had 12k freight at Daugavpils.



He also had nearly 10k trucks in pool, which I think would have been available to deliver resupply to his airbases:



So he may actually have been able to resupply - but it just depends on if Daugavpils for example is close enough to Vitebsk (and Orsha/Velikie Luki/Polotsk).

For unit resupply, according to the manual anyway, the range is within 30 hexes or 75 motorized MP for units. If the airbase resupply uses the same range as unit resupply, then I think that would have been in range:

[ShaggyHiK]

What I would pay attention to is that the German player was not able to conduct successful raids on the USSR air bases at least in patch 39.

That is, with the concentration of similar efforts. The German player is not able to destroy Soviet aircraft at airfields. As part of the balance of the system, it's much more dangerous for the USSR to make such active raids if enemy aircraft can respond and preempt your attacks by striking first or responding with similar actions.

Loki's example is also not correct for the game period. The balance in 42-43 years may change, new aircraft have a greater range, speed and other initial data for calculating formulas, which makes its own adjustments, as well as the fact that the supply in the game conditions of 41 and 42 years, especially 43 years, is completely at a different level. Many more railways have been built. Warehouses are full. Industry bonuses start boosting production. In general, what is true for 43 is not true for 41 years.

[ShaggyHiK]

Probably also contributing to the worse state of the German Air Force in '41 is the supply penalty debuff on the German army, it probably shouldn't affect the Luftwaffe as much.

[loki100]

...I don't know exactly how many missions/sorties the other 2 air armies ran, again, because you don't say, but it appears likely that I flew considerably more sorties and missions than the Soviet player did in your test.


A second point of comparison also seems to indicate that I likely ran a lot more sorties/missions. Here are the air losses that you posted:

....

That is 1119 losses total, but only 57 of those are operational losses.

...

Sigh:



He has almost no operational losses simply as I shot his planes down over target, few escaped damaged, so virtually nothing gets recorded as an operational loss.

And no, my opponent is not going to allow me to post his save, giving me his password, on an open forum.

The point is you claim that GA-airbase is universally a problem, I don't see it. I can see how in your game your opponent got a real shoeing. But if he really had 500+ fighters up around Orsha on T5 then he was taking a hell of a chance. I had a look back in my game to around then and I had a weak picket screen of fighters covering the front, I guess I could have lost a lot to an air offensive but it wouldn't have stripped out the core of my fighter assets for the rest of 1941. As ever, its a matter of choices, gambles and consequences.

[Mehring]

I really liked interdiction in WitE 1 where if the enemy had high enough recon on you and passed a check they could interdict that unit while it was on the move thus cutting down its MPs. Its a lot more dynamic and realistic as you dont really know which unit will get hit and at which point. Unlike the current system where you can clearly see where the interdiction has taken place. Just my 2 cents though.

+1000

+1001

[Beethoven1]

Sigh:

Sorry, but I don't understand why there is any reason to "sigh" here. We are just trying to have a friendly and hopefully productive and fact-based discussion about some aspects of game mechanics. If you are right, then you will have been right on the internet about a computer game. If I am right, then I will have been right on the internet about a computer game. It's pretty low stakes.

Thanks for that, it provides some information that I did not see in your previous posts. If you posted it earlier and I overlooked it, feel free to let me know and I will try to read more carefully next time, but I didn't see it. However, I looked again and don't see it in your previous posts. So if your sigh is meant to indicate that you already posted this information and I overlooked it previously, then as far as I can see, I did not overlook it previously. But again, if I am wrong, feel free to correct me. I do make mistakes, and when I do, I am happy to admit them.

So, the screenshot says that the Soviets flew 4508 sorties. This means that my bombing of HLYA's airfields was about 3-4 times more sorties, so it was considerably larger in scale. This seems to support the hypothesis I was proposing that the effectiveness of my airfield bombing may have been a result (at least partly) of its sheer scale, overwhelming the intercepting fighters.

He has almost no operational losses simply as I shot his planes down over target, few escaped damaged, so virtually nothing gets recorded as an operational loss.

As far as I can see, this likewise seems to support my hypothesis. You mentioned earlier that the losses were about 1/3 of the total # of planes in the 3 air armies:

This uses a turn from August so clear weather. 3 Soviet Air Armies (1, 6 and 14) all did nothing but GA-airbase on the Minsk sector. Roughly 1,500 Soviet bombers and a matching number of fighters.

...

And the end of week bombing losses. Something like 1/3 Soviet pilots who took part dead, they've lost over 40% of their bombers and destroyed 66 German planes on the ground.

And if you look at the losses, you can see that there were 455 Soviet level bombers shot down, but only 209 tactical bombers. Yet, since this is the late game, as we know, more of the Soviet bombers are tactical bombers (IL-2s and U-2s etc) as compared to in early 1941. So the fact that losses were higher among level bombers than tactical bombers suggests that likely a lot of the tactical bombers in particular may have been out of range and did not fly at all.

So, your results seem consistent with the hypothesis that only some of the planes flew (likely at least partly due to range issues and/or settings), but of the ones that did fly, nearly all of them were shot down. That is because if all of the planes had flown, but only some had been shot down, then you would have taken more operational losses - because some of the planes that were not shot down by enemy fighters would have crashed on the way home.

If so, then that would imply that if more planes had been able to participate, that things may have been different. Specifically, the interceptors may have been overwhelmed if there were more separate missions and more sorties, as occurred in my game.

So this supports exactly the point I was making, as far as I can tell.

And no, my opponent is not going to allow me to post his save, giving me his password, on an open forum.

If your objective is to facilitate careful and reproducible tests, there are other ways we could go about that which do not necessarily need to involve the Soviet player sharing his password with you, or plastering his password on the forum for all and sundry to see if that is not what he (or you) wants. If you are interested in reproducible tests, I am sure we could figure out how to do this in an amenable and productive way. We have no shortage of communication tools available which could be utilized, including PMs, discord messages, and email. Passwords etc do not need to be public to have reproducibility.

If you or the Soviet player still is not interested in any of those sorts of options, we could probably figure out how to use another save instead. This would be less ideal since it would not be as close to your tests, but for example, I know you have saves from the late game of your previous games. Maybe we could find one of those from your previous Germany game which has a similar situation at roughly a similar date, and set things up to have an appropriate test bed in that. Then we could better test and draw well-supported conclusions from that. Or if need be, we could probably use your previous Soviet single player saves with appropriate set up.

The point is you claim that GA-airbase is universally a problem, I don't see it.

By contrast, I don't think I ever claimed that GA-airbase is universally a problem. As far as I can tell, you are putting words into my mouth. What I did say was e.g. this:

HLYA and I have agreed to the following plan going forward regarding the air war (feel free to correct anything, maybe I am forgetting something again):

A) I will cancel all the airbase bombing missions that I had set up.

- reasoning: it seems pretty clearly unbalanced/broken, at least as it worked out.

I did say that "it" (airbase bombing) "seems pretty clearly unbalanced/broken." However, notice, that I added on an important caveat - "at least as it worked out." Hence, contrary to your suggestion, I was making no universal claim that airbase bombing is necessarily broken in all contexts, but merely the more modest claim that in this particular context (mass raids destroying 450 German fighters in July '41) it seemed pretty clearly unbalanced/broken.

The reason I added that caveat was precisely because I wanted to make clear that I was open minded about the possibility that evidence could come up that airbase bombing might be just fine in certain other contexts, or maybe with other limitations imposed on it.

Likewise in my post in the tech support thread, all I said was:

Overall, it seems to me that this airfield bombing was probably too effective to be realistic.

That is similarly a very modest and non-universal claim.

I do think it is possible (and also quite plausible) that airfield bombing is a generalized problem, but I don't think I have ever said that I know that to be the case. Indeed, that is precisely the reason why I keep asking you if we can maybe facilitate some careful, controlled, reproducible, and verifiable tests - so that we can check if your particular test is in fact good evidence against that possibility or not.

If anything, as far as I can see, you are the only one here who is confident enough that you think you know for sure that you are right without doing further tests - otherwise you would agree to my proposal that we should conduct some additional tests. But maybe that's not the case. If so, then rather than continuing like this, why don't we figure out how to test it appropriately?

I can see how in your game your opponent got a real shoeing.

I don't see any particular relevance of that comment, other than as a cheap side shot against my opponent. If you have personal issues against my opponent, that is something you can make your own peace with as you see fit, but it is not relevant to the game mechanics. Ideally it would be nice if we could keep discussion focused substantively on that.

But if he really had 500+ fighters up around Orsha on T5 then he was taking a hell of a chance.

First of all, there were not 500+ fighters around Orsha. There were more like 160 at Orsha and 120 at Vitebsk. The next closest ones (not really in the same area) were about 80 at Vitebsk. So you could say there were up to ~300 around Orsha (the VVS was of course also concentrated in the center).

Secondly, I am sure if you think for just a moment about it, you will agree that the Luftwaffe should absolutely be able to bring planes to places lie Orsha on turn 5 - including not only fighters but also bombers, because that is precisely what they did historically.

Apparently, the LW moved up enough planes to be able to bomb Moscow with 195 planes on July 21, 1941, and also to have tactical air support as well as fighter cover (https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=75471). Whereas all that Germany had here was fighter cover, without bombers or even recon.

If Axis can't use the Luftwaffe to a similar extent that they were able to use it historically, then there is an obvious problem insofar as the game is meant to be more or less a simulation of what was possible historically.

I had a look back in my game to around then and I had a weak picket screen of fighters covering the front, I guess I could have lost a lot to an air offensive but it wouldn't have stripped out the core of my fighter assets for the rest of 1941. As ever, its a matter of choices, gambles and consequences.

"As ever, its a matter of choices, gambles and consequences."

Wait. Hold on a minute, right there.

No. Not "as ever."

Not everything that happens in the game is always just a result of "choices" that players make, and "consequences" of those choices.

There are, sometimes (not always, but sometimes), some things in the game that are genuinely imbalanced, broken, and/or wrong.

Airbase bombing may or may not be one of them. But regardless of whether it is, you must acknowledge that it is at least possible that it could be more then just a mere matter of players making "choices" and "gambles" and suffering the "consequences" of them.



I try to be polite and friendly in my online interactions to the best of my ability, have a history of being so with you, and will continue doing so here. But I must also be frank here, because it is important that you should understand how this sort of comment from you reads and is interpreted by large numbers of players in the community.

It reads, in short, in much the same way that Marie Antoinette's "let them eat cake" read to the Great Unwashed French Masses in the 18th century.

It reads, in short, like careless, dismissive, arrogant, blithe, insouciant, dogmatic denialism.

That may or may not be your intent. But know that when you say things like that, that is how large numbers of players in the WITE2 community perceive it, rightly or wrongly.

So please pay careful attention to this and try to think seriously and honestly, and reflectively about what I am saying here, if for nothing else for your own good.

If I understand your implication correctly here, what you are trying to say here is that 450 LW fighters being destroyed on the ground in July '41 is "just one of those things." Everything is fine, nothing to see here, just move along. Shuffle shuffle.

In short, in your opinion, if I am understanding you correctly, it is "WAD" (and you also seem to be pretty confident of this without conducting additional tests which might or might not actually support your position). This is a common refrain that you have often expressed in the past, when someone brings up something that might be wrong or imbalanced with the game.

And on a purely technical level, it may be (and in the past, often has been) the case that some issue that a player brings up is in fact WAD. And on a technical level, whether that is the case is important to know for Joel/Gary/Pavel's purposes (especially in the tech support forum).

But more importantly, the further inference that you are often perceived as suggesting is that if something is WAD, then everything must be perfectly ok with regards to it.

This is the further inference that is simply not founded, as a matter of logic. Something may be working according to the design, but the design itself may be problematic or may not take into account certain factors which are only discovered after the design phase. Sometimes (again, not always, but sometimes) something is sufficiently problematic that the design itself must be adjusted in order for the greater vision of the design (a realistic, historical, and immersive game) to be born out.

One example where this has been the case in the past which I will pick out, just because it is such a clear case, is with how frail and weak German Panzer divisions were upon release. This is something that you defended for many months in multiple different threads. It was (apparently) working basically as designed, according to the dev understanding of the current design at the time. And yet, eventually there was a realization - sparked finally after countless repeated reports and threads from players - that the implementation of the design was bugged and was not achieving the desired vision. And so a change was made to the design, to make the rate of fire of AFVs depend on element experience. Further adjustments were (and will continue to be) subsequently made.

There are other examples. Things like operational losses, CPP, or what have you. In each of these sorts of cases, your tendency has been to deny that there is a problem - which is not unreasonable if indeed that was your genuine opinion. But the real problem is that you denied (or were perceived to deny) that it was possible there could be a problem. That it was WAD, and therefore all must be well. That is the part that many people react negatively to.



It is ok to have opinions. It is ok to disagree. But my sincere advice to you is to think about what I have said here, and to try to avoid saying (or implying) that everything or anything that happens in the game is merely a reflection of player choices and it couldn't be possible that something deeper was actually wrong. And likewise, I suggest that you try to avoid saying or implying that just because something is WAD, that means it is necessarily ok and necessarily ends the discussion.

But enough of that. I really don't want to be talking about that sort of thing, and I hope we can get back to substantive issues and discuss them in a reasoned manner. I hope that you will consider this and look at the substantive points I have raised regarding airfield bombing with a fresh set of eyes and open mind.

[ADB_Iceman]

I have been playing WITE 2 since it's inception and played WITE 1. One of the "old guard" so to speak. Beethoven is one of the more brilliant players who has spent countless hours not only trying to master the game, but really care that WITE 2 is successful. To arrogantly dismiss his feedback is not only rude but foolish.

How I was first introduced more than 10 years ago to GG games is by word of mouth and purchasing my first game and playing while interacting with players on the forum. It is the forum and the ability to interact that enables players to engage meaningfully who tell others and the community grows. I learned and bought more games, and I feel a meaningful part of the community.

There is the concept of how the software is designed and the vision of how users will use the applications, how users actually use the software, and what users really want. Matching design, how users use the applications, and user demand is the sweet spot. It takes interaction with the user base to understand needs and feasibility. Rudely dismissing those observations not aligned with your worldview and being a troll hurts the game and the Matrix community. That might not be your intention but over time this approach will be noted by more in the community. Then whatever contributions you have made will be overlooked for your attitude.

There is a problem .. whether it is worth fixing is a business decision.

[ncc1701e]

There is something else that I am finding strange in your air losses. Look at the number of German pilots killed.

448 fighters bombers destroyed, 435 on the ground, 9 in air combat and 4 in operational losses. One fighter bomber is one pilot. And there are 77 pilots killed. But, 9 + 4 = 13, assuming there is a 100% kill ratio.

What does it mean? Does the game considers pilots are sleeping in their planes while they are on the ground and gets killed for this?

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[FortTell]

Beethoven made a great research effort, with a desire to make the game better. Which is awesome that the game is interesting enough to warrant such attention to detail and realism.

[Joel Billings]

There are a number of issues brought up in this thread and that have been talked about in other related threads. We agree that the Soviet air force should not be able to take down the German fighter force as easily as done in the case shown. The good news is the problem with perfect info on where enemy air units have been moved has already been fixed, so it should be harder to know where to bomb.

In addition, my understanding is that if you set up an AD to bomb airbases, the computer will launch raids to empty airbases within the target box. Someone mentioned recon by bombing. Does this mean that as raids go out and bomb airbases, info about which enemy airbases have aircraft and which don’t is unveiled, and future missions will not go to those without aircraft? I don’t know the answer to this, so I’m asking in order to find out if this is an issue that should be tweaked.

As for the intensity of the airbase bombing ops by the Soviets, they do seem too high. It’s been pointed out that Soviet air units were assigned directly to the ground armies in the first months of the war, and thus were more focused on local ground support and interdiction and could not be coordinated in large numbers to airfield bombing (or anything in any one area). We’re aware of that, unfortunately it’s not possible to set up a different command structure in the game. We can take advantage of the introduction of Air Armies in 1942 to differentiate Soviet air abilities in the first year versus later on. Exactly how we would do that will require some thought, especially if it’s placing limits involving the interface on how much activity of certain kinds can take place. We’ve also planned on looking at the issue of interceptions during the air phase. We agree with the idea that surprise limits intercepts, while repeated similar missions makes being able to anticipate and intercept easier. Again, how to set up a system to deal with that is a difficult issue, likely not with an easy solution. In the next few months we should finally be able to look at this, but it will require saves and will be time consuming and hard to "get right".

I realize the case that started the conversation was from a server game. Pavel has asked for a save or saves with something similar, so he can run tests and use it to check the impact of any changes to the systems. Does anyone have anything that they could send us? If you have a similar situation in a server game, I can download the last 4-6 saves in any particular game. Most useful would be a save just before starting the Soviet air execution phase. Let me know if you have something on the server, or send any saves to 2by3@2by3games.com . It helps to have a save so we can see exactly what players are doing, otherwise we’re just guessing (and we can’t test the impact of changes).

One thing that may not be used sufficiently by the system is the air rating of the air command leader. The Soviet leaders at the start average a 4 compared to 7 for the main German leaders. We think this should be having an impact in the number of sorties, but maybe it’s not doing what we assume it’s doing. As part of any work on this we’ll look into how the leader rating is being used.

As for the real-time interdiction system in WitE1, it’s not coming back. We experimented with it in the early days of WitE2 and we rejected it. There were too many issues that came up with it so we went a different way. At this point, there’s no going back on that. That said, we are committed to continuing to improve the game as we can and as we get feedback and saves that help us do that. We appreciate players providing feedback, and specific tests and saves, that let us move forward. Let’s all focus on that and move forward together. Thanks.

[Jeff_Ahl]

Great that u are working hard with fixes and listening to the community!