The Power of Air Superiority

[DeletedUser1769703214]

Thanks. At least, I cannot fall prey to bad habits from WITE-1!

You play WITW, so I bet you have some The funny thing is I actually bought two copies of WITW & Torch DLC and never have played them, I guess you would consider that a bad habit on my part ;-P

[MarkShot]

HLYA,

What you said is any game get old against the AI ...

I played a game 1830-PC (on the surface about the railroads, but really focused on business, personal wealth, and stock trading).

It had the best AI, I ever played against. How do I know? The game took about 1 hour to play. I played around 1000 games over 3 years everyday on the hardest level. Hardest meant no cheating or buffs; but different techniques by the AI. There was only a single random operation in the entire game: seating position (turn order) decided at game creation. It took 3 years to reach a decisive victory level of 80% in my games --- 3 YEARS!

Why would a 30 year CGA DOS game be so good? The designers were peers of Sid Meier ... Bruce Shelley and Francis Tresham; and Sid was a regular player. They played countless hours of the board game, and finally they ported to the PC. They were beyond just good programmers, but the best players in the world. It showed in the AI the created that ran in 640K.

Why the story? Yes, if you do play anything enough, balance will shift. House rules can help along with some randomness, but we could call this HLYA's Law - Familiarity Creates Balance Issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1830:_The ... ber_Barons

[Joch1955]

On whether WITE2 is worth it, having also played WITE1 and WITW, at a macro level WITE2 does a very good job of putting you in the shoes of German or Soviet leaders. You quickly realize that you do not have enough men to attack/defend everywhere and logistics and weather become a major concern in any offensive.

Now these are extremely complex games which track everything down to individual tanks, airplanes, pilots, etc. so it is understandable that at a micro level, tweaking is sometimes required so that the results match up with what actually happened in the war. You saw the same thing in WITE1 and WITW, near constant tweaking of the game based on feedback from players. At one point, you just have to dive in and play the game in its current state. Having played WITE2 on and off for over a year now, the overall feel of the game has not changed despite the numerous patches which have come out.

Now more specifically on the Air War, the current system is very elegant and an improvement on WITE1 and WITW imho. It gives you a lot of flexibility while minimizing player workload. With minimal input, (i.e. setting the proper stance/follow HQ), the AI will do a decent job of managing the entire Air War for you or you can micromanage as little or as much as you want. Now on a micro level, there are always adjustments that can be made and we have seen many to for example flak effectiveness and operational losses.

Now on the specific issue of this thread, the specific air combat results may be a bit of an outlier, but the results are not out whack with what you would expect in the summer of 1941. It was not unusual for LW fighter pilots to get an average of one kill per sortie which is what most of the early rounds show and many LW aces often got multiple kills per sortie. I think the highest was 5 in one sortie?

[malyhin1517]

Soviet aces also often received several kills in one sortie. The official record belongs to the Soviet ace Alexander Gorovets. On July 6, 1943, on the second day of the Battle of Kursk, Alexander Gorovets was part of the La-5 group, which flew out on patrol in the Vladimirovka-Kochetovka-Zorinsky Dvory-Olkhovatka area, led by the commander of the 88th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment. Soviet fighters collided with a large group (according to various sources, 20 or up to 50) of German Ju-87 dive bombers. In the air battle that took place (and possibly in other clashes with enemy aircraft during this sortie), Soviet pilots scored nine air victories, including five over Ju-87s, three over Bf-109s and one over Hs-126. Their losses amounted to one aircraft that did not return to base - it was the plane of Lieutenant Gorovets [3].

According to the official version[4], Gorovets broke away from the group and fought alone (presumably due to the failure of the radio station on his plane). During this engagement, he shot down nine Ju-87s, including one by ramming, and was himself shot down by four German fighters while returning to base. As the authors of the book “Aviation in the Battle of the Orel-Kursk Bulge” [3] (Moscow, 2004) note, this version is based on the testimony of unnamed ground units that observed the battle of a lone Soviet aircraft with a group of German aircraft and then discovered the wreckage of nine German aircraft (not specified, nine Ju-87s or nine aircraft of different types; it is also unclear whether they were shot down in one battle or in different ones) on a limited plot of land, which is why the version arose that they were all shot down by Gorovets. It is noted that on July 6, the pilots of the 8th Guards Fighter Aviation Division alone, in which Gorovets served, announced the destruction of 16-18 Ju-87s (excluding 9 victories subsequently recorded by Gorovets), while, according to German data, it operated in In this area, the 4th Air Fleet lost 10 Ju-87s shot down and damaged in a day. The testimonies of captured German pilots also do not confirm the official version of the feat. Given these circumstances, the authors of the book express doubts about how many planes Gorovets actually shot down.

Alexander Gorovets is the only Soviet pilot to have so many aerial victories in one battle[5]. In other countries, several pilots achieved a similar result, in particular, Erich Rudorffer (Luftwaffe, 13 air victories in one sortie) and David McCampbell (US Navy, 9 air victories in one battle). However, the data on repeated episodes of numerous victories in one battle by Rudorfer are also not confirmed by information about the losses of the enemy - both the Allied aviation and the Red Army Air Force.

[MarkShot]

Malyhin,

I agree that GG's model of the air war strikes the perfect balance for games of this scope.

Additionally, I originally thought GG would be TSB chess with hexes. But through the use of a number mechanisms like:

* Air intercept
* Air superiority
* Air support
* Reserve combat

GG has made a TBS game transcend some of the most offensive limitations of TBS games.

I you like air you should try EDBTR available here. I got for only $10 USD on his 40th anniversary. It is very well done considering the age. There is a volunteer team with license to code as they see fit to improve. (I was invited, but I keep my distance from Matrix these days by mutual agreement.)

Now, what makes this game so unique.

* In Battle of Britain, the Germans are the attackers.

* In Bombing the Reich, the Allies are the attackers.

Attackers play the game in traditional GG fashion planning air ops for the day. But for defenders it is a real time game. I have never seen such an implementation. (Also, GG has done pure WEGO if you have looked at WITP-AE.)

GG is extremely versatile in his ability to model and build software systems upon his concepts. He is the Sid Meier of War Gaming.