Air op bugs/problems..

[ollittm]

Some of the anomalies I've seen in Wir 3.0:

You cannot train transports.

Many small units are better intercepting than equal number of planes in one big group.

Interceptors always suffer 1 casualty for each interception event.

Escort/CAP is a major pain right now. Why not remove halving strength from escort? Or stop player from changing escort mission to CAP after planes have flown? (ugo/igo problem :p )

You cannot reassign TRaining units to Cap or Escort after they've been transferred. So they remain vulnerable for 1 week.

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I was not aware of the upraded Dornier/Heinekel variants .. Didn't they see much action or was the Ju-88A just overall much more important?

At least the upgraded heinekel with a HUGE bombload (wrt other axis equipment) would seem a major interdiction asset!

Old story about blue plane, black plane, invisible plane?

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by ollittm:
You cannot train transports.

That's not a bug. Gary Grigsby did this deliberately. Transports do get experience while flying Air Transport missions, but when you think about it, how much training does anyone need to haul cargo?

Many small units are better intercepting than equal number of planes in one big group.

That's a change from the old game. Experience now is MUCH more important. Small but experienced fighter groups can defeat larger, but inexperienced, units.

Interceptors always suffer 1 casualty for each interception event.

I'm not seeing this. Have a save game from v3.0 which shows this?

Escort/CAP is a major pain right now. Why not remove halving strength from escort?

Just leave them as Escorts all the time. They seem to intercept better on Escort than CAP anyway. This will be looked into (again).

You cannot reassign TRaining units to Cap or Escort after they've been transferred. So they remain vulnerable for 1 week.

Set them to CAP/Escort before you move them. Once an air unit moves you can't do anything with them. That behavior is not a bug.

I was not aware of the upraded Dornier/Heinekel variants

I'm not knowledgeable about this. Do you have some statistics which compare these later versions to the original plane in the game? If they are a significant change, then we may consider adding them, but no promises since we are now focusing on bug-fixing. Since adding a new plane type doesn't require messing with the game, just modifying the scenario file, I'll send anything you give me to the WiR beta-test group, or you can talk with RickyB, he probably has more knowledge on the aircraft than I do.

[ollittm]

That's not a bug. Gary Grigsby did this deliberately. Transports do get experience while flying Air Transport missions, but when you think about it, how much training does anyone need to haul cargo?

Well, flying cargo to frontline units becomes a dangerous job during winter -41.. As the escorts are ineffective keeping fighters out of the way of transports, those Ju-52s take high losses. Replacements lowers the experience even more and leads to worse losses.

Experience now is MUCH more important. Small but experienced fighter groups can defeat larger, but inexperienced, units.

Yeah, but I meant that big, experienced units are not much more effective interceptors than small units with equal equipment/experience. If I have a group of 120 Bf-109Fs intercepting some 100 russian planes, I'd expect it to be total carnage. Instead they get away with 10-20 losses.

Kills simply do not scale properly when the count of planes goes up, other things being equal.

quote:
Interceptors always suffer 1 casualty for each interception event.
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I'm not seeing this. Have a save game from v3.0 which shows this?

Oh, sure. It happens every time. Every air op that's intercepted sees that behavior. If the info-box says the bombers suffer x losses and interceptors none, next interception phase sees -1 fighters none the less. And if escorts take down 5 fighters, it really means 6. You should see it better with medium delay..


quote:
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I was not aware of the upraded Dornier/Heinekel variants

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I'm not knowledgeable about this. Do you have some statistics which compare these later versions to the original plane in the game? If they are a significant change, then


I was talking about the Do-217 and He-177 variants which are already in the game. Did He-177 really have three times the bombload of Ju-88 and/or He-111? It seems a little excessive.

..

One minor nag - In report file the availability dates are often incorrect..

[PMCN]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ollittm:


Kills simply do not scale properly when the count of planes goes up, other things being equal.

This is very true. What is worse is when 100 interceptors engage 5 planes and 2 are shot down??? When the number of attackers is 10 times the number of bombers there should be none getting thru.


Oh, sure. It happens every time. Every air op that's intercepted sees that behavior. If the info-box says the bombers suffer x losses and interceptors none, next interception phase sees -1 fighters none the less. And if escorts take down 5 fighters, it really means 6. You should see it better with medium delay..

They aren't lost this just simulates a lack of readiness I think. The interceptors loose 1 plane per interception as an effective interception force. I think (but don't know) that this is intentional.


I was talking about the Do-217 and He-177 variants which are already in the game. Did He-177 really have three times the bombload of Ju-88 and/or He-111? It seems a little excessive.

The He-177 is a 4 engined bomber, it is significantly larger than the Ju-88. Its bomb load was much higher. Though it was not used for that purpose much or maybe even at all. It didn't get much mention in my books anyway. I believe it was mostly used as a maritime patrol craft and to launch air to ground guided missiles. I believe it was initially intended to be a transport aircraft or something like that...sorry the books are on the other side of the atlantic so I can't check in more detail.

[ollittm]

Originally posted by Paul McNeely:
The He-177 is a 4 engined bomber, it is significantly larger than the Ju-88. Its bomb load was much higher. Though it was not used for that purpose much or maybe even at all. It didn't get much mention in my books anyway. I believe it was mostly used as a maritime patrol craft and to launch air to ground guided missiles. I believe it was initially intended to be a transport aircraft or something like that...sorry the books are on the other side of the atlantic so I can't check in more detail.

I see.
Small wonder I had not heard of that one. So I'm doing something seriously gamey when I went "shee-it" and converted my He-111 production to He-177 on the spot..

Maybe the production cost should be higher than it is? There has to be some valid reason why it was fairly rare..

Speaking of which. I can see why I cannot make minor allies change their production specs, but.. It's kind of old having tons of "mixed fighters" and "mixed bombers" in later -42 banging about in the inventory. Now if I could use them to train luftwaffe recruits or something..

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by Paul McNeely:
This is very true. What is worse is when 100 interceptors engage 5 planes and 2 are shot down??? When the number of attackers is 10 times the number of bombers there should be none getting thru.

Keep in mind the game is simulating air combat over a 7 day period. You don't literally see 100 planes chasing 5 planes in the sky. There is combat between pairs, patrols, fighter sweeps, or squadrons during that week. That is what the losses are meant to represent, casualties over a 7 day period. I'll bring this up on the mailing list: perhaps the level of casualties should be higher, percentage wise.

They aren't lost this just simulates a lack of readiness I think.

Doh! Why didn't I think to mention that. Yes, readiness falls for air groups as they fly one sortie after another during one combat phase. In situations where you have an armored unit fighting almost every move it makes, with some combat continuation when dealing with infantry in swamp areas for example, you'll quickly notice air groups getting smaller and smaller, and at some point in the fighting, they stop showing up at all because they've lost too much readiness.

The He-177 is a 4 engined bomber, it is significantly larger than the Ju-88. Its bomb load was much higher. Though it was not used for that purpose much or maybe even at all. It didn't get much mention in my books anyway. I believe it was mostly used as a maritime patrol craft and to launch air to ground guided missiles. I believe it was initially intended to be a transport aircraft or something like that...sorry the books are on the other side of the atlantic so I can't check in more detail.

If you can find some documentation on what bombers the Germans used in the east, I'd love to see it. Send it to me or RickyB.

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by ollittm:
Well, flying cargo to frontline units becomes a dangerous job during winter -41.. As the escorts are ineffective keeping fighters out of the way of transports, those Ju-52s take high losses. Replacements lowers the experience even more and leads to worse losses.

That's what historically happens isn't it? In bad weather bad things happen, like bombers/transports not able to join up with their fighter escort.

The transport air groups lose exp quickly if they start with few planes, but units that are at 100-120 planes don't seem to lose experience as long as they aren't taking losses from enemy fighters. Let the small groups build up to 100-120 and then give them milk runs (sortie to nearby unit, no chance of enemy interception) to see if their experience rises. Perhaps you shouldn't do this every turn, I'm not sure. Either every turn or every other turn, but their experience will go up even on milk runs.

[Christian Blex]

The Heinkel He 177 was a german attempt to build a real strategic bomber. It was a four engined plane, two of them linked together on each of the two propellers. It could deliver a huge payload over a fair distance.
However, it had sturtural problems and even worse, very unreliable engine which prevented mass production. It was mainly used in naval warfare in the west, although some saw action in the east in 1944.
The successor was the Heinkel He 277. It was very similar to the He 177 but it solved the engine problem with four seperate engines of a different type and four propellers. I think hardly 20 were build when bomber production was cancelled in 1944 due to need for fighters. Hope I get it all right, as my main references are not at hand right now.

[ollittm]

So the air group readiness drops for every single interception phase during one interception event? Hmm..

Anyway, here's a suggestion to air ops in general - It might work out in WIR-level of abstraction if the interceptors would reduce effectiveness of bombers even if they "get through" .. And the escorts would reduce effectiveness of interceptors' ability to disrupt bombing runs and to get bomber kills.

Yes, this is partially represented by air units heading home if they take too big losses.. But does the effectiveness go down if they don't?

IMHO highly experienced escorts with sufficient numbers (1:1 should be MORE than enough!) should be able to keep bomber effectiveness near-optimal.

Maybe a solution to the low kills would be interception during the return leg? Bombers are at their most vulnerable then, especially the "wounded" planes, no?

Galland found out when Luftwaffe was dealing with 8th air farce that you need a "critical mass" of interceptors before they become effective at all. Sending 30 fighters against a 200-plane formation is not going to do anything except waste men and machines.

[ollittm]

Originally posted by Christian:
However, it had sturtural problems and even worse, very unreliable engine which prevented mass production.

Ok, that suggests the production $ should be cranked up from what it is now. Right now you get _way_ higher bang-for-buck from He-177 than from Ju-88A.

WIR does not model aircraft reliability, does it?

By the way.. Does WIR permit date-based costs? Ju-88A should become relatively cheaper over time as they were produced in high numbers..

[ollittm]

Another suggestion:

CAP should be toned up. Defensive air ops give more "weight" to the fighter count as they can fly several sorties to each of the offensive operations.

This was demonstrated in Finnish air space as relatively few fighters (<100 operational) had inordinate "presence" as the planes were on CAP about as soon as they took off, but the Russians had to fly some ways from border to their targets.

[PMCN]

I can't look up more information on the He177 until I go back to NA for Christmas I'm afraid. But at that time I will have access to my book which covers a lot of information on battles, oobs, etc.

As far as interceptor numbers goes. What I think was being refered to was that if say you get 1 Me109 group of 100 planes intercepting a group of 3 I-15 fighter groups and 3 bomber groups, then assuming no losses to the german planes you will see 100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95 for numbers of intercepting Me109s as they go thru each wave of russian planes. I am not sure why this is but it definitly happens. I assumed this was a sort of internal readiness loss. This is different from the loss of readiness due to flying to support multiple combats in one turn. It is a loss from intercept to intercept (and also when you turn around to escorting your bombers) inside a single air battle.

On the topic of factory changes. There is a real problem with changing the factories. Most people do so, myself included, but I tend to make such changes small scale (a few factories) rather than overall optimisations. The trouble is the game does not limit factory growth...a factory producing 15 of something which costs 3 pts when coverted to producing something else which costs 9 pts drops down to 5 but then builds up to 15 again. It should stay at 5 since there should be a fixed output (cost of item * number of items) value for the factory. This leads to the historical situation where you have a choice between more of a cheeper to build but not as effective tank or plane and a more expensive to build (and hense few built per week) and more effective tank or plane. As things stand now there is no reason not to build the best that you can. This ruins the historical flavor of the game but that is a personal view...but I don't think this is something Arnaud can correct without more code changes than he probably wants to see or make

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Paul McNeely:
I can't look up more information on the He177 until I go back to NA for Christmas I'm afraid. But at that time I will have access to my book which covers a lot of information on battles, oobs, etc.

It sounds like, based on the other comments, that maybe the cost of the He177 should be boosted to 99 - that allows the set factories to still produce, but others cannot be switched to them. I am not positive how this would work in practice though.

As far as interceptor numbers goes. What I think was being refered to was that if say you get 1 Me109 group of 100 planes intercepting a group of 3 I-15 fighter groups and 3 bomber groups, then assuming no losses to the german planes you will see 100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95 for numbers of intercepting Me109s as they go thru each wave of russian planes...

Yeah, this has always been the behavior, but I don't know why. I always figured they may be treated as damaged planes from the battle but I am not sure.

On the topic of factory changes. There is a real problem with changing the factories. Most people do so, myself included, but I tend to make such changes small scale (a few factories) rather than overall optimisations. The trouble is the game does not limit factory growth...a factory producing 15 of something which costs 3 pts when coverted to producing something else which costs 9 pts drops down to 5 but then builds up to 15 again. It should stay at 5 since there should be a fixed output (cost of item * number of items) value for the factory. This leads to the historical situation where you have a choice between more of a cheeper to build but not as effective tank or plane and a more expensive to build (and hense few built per week) and more effective tank or plane. As things stand now there is no reason not to build the best that you can. This ruins the historical flavor of the game but that is a personal view...but I don't think this is something Arnaud can correct without more code changes than he probably wants to see or make

Until playtesting the game and asking Arnaud, I had no clue how the cost worked. You can take your initial part above though, get the factory back up to 15 (it would be very slow with a 9 cost item, but faster with the lower costs) and then change back to a lower cost, bumping the production level by double if you go from an 8 cost to a 4 cost piece of equipment. Arnaud talked some about this, but I would guess you are right that the reprogramming would be difficult as he never did anything about the situation.

Also, for the other comments in the thread regarding small versus large fighter groups and the losses inflicted on the opponent, I think most of it plays out fairly historically, although only based on averages. 100 fighters against 5 planes would normally cause the 5 planes to run for home, possibly losing none, while losing everything other times. Thus, the max loss of 2 would be about right, based only on averages. Also, as Ed stated, the combat represents a week of fighting along a wide area, so it definitely isn't like the entire 100 planes would run into the 5 at once - looking at the totals is fairly meaningless based on the size of the game. Having more small air units is better in game terms than one large one, which I don't know if that is historical or not for our level of representation. You can keep shooting at the other air unit as long as its losses don't reach 25% or up around 20 in each individual combat, which will almost always cause the losing air unit to return to base without further combat.

[Svar]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by RickyB:

Until playtesting the game and asking Arnaud, I had no clue how the cost worked. You can take your initial part above though, get the factory back up to 15 (it would be very slow with a 9 cost item, but faster with the lower costs) and then change back to a lower cost, bumping the production level by double if you go from an 8 cost to a 4 cost piece of equipment. Arnaud talked some about this, but I would guess you are right that the reprogramming would be difficult as he never did anything about the situation.

Rick,

The situation you describe above was available in the old Second Front game but removed in the last SSI release of WIR. What now happens in versions 1.1 and 3.0 of WIR is a conversion of a cost 8 A/C factory (He-177) to a cost 4 A/C factory (FW-190) would be from a production rate of 15 to a production rate of 15 if a human does the conversion. The reverse would cause the production rate of a cost 4 factory to be cut in half if going to a cost 8 factory. Now if the AI does the conversion the cost times production rate product doesn't change. So if the computer upgrades a cost 4 tank to a cost 3 tank the production rate goes from 15 to 20 and that's where we got in trouble when we changed the cost and availity times for tanks. The only place where that presently occurs for the Germans is the conversion of the Pz-IIIj at cost 4 to Pz-IIIm at cost 3 but when that occurs the Pz-IIIm is immediately converted to the Stug-IIIg at cost 5 so no harm no foul. And no one needs to worry about not being able to produce Pz-IIIm tanks as the game starts to convert all the older Pz-III models to the Pz-IIIm anyway. I hope I didn't lose anyone with that long winded explanition.

Svar

[RickyB]

Originally posted by Svar:
The situation you describe above was available in the old Second Front game but removed in the last SSI release of WIR. What now happens in versions 1.1 and 3.0 of WIR is a conversion of a cost 8 A/C factory (He-177) to a cost 4 A/C factory (FW-190) would be from a production rate of 15 to a production rate of 15 if a human does the conversion. The reverse would cause the production rate of a cost 4 factory to be cut in half if going to a cost 8 factory. Now if the AI does the conversion the cost times production rate product doesn't change. So if the computer upgrades a cost 4 tank to a cost 3 tank the production rate goes from 15 to 20 and that's where we got in trouble when we changed the cost and availity times for tanks. The only place where that presently occurs for the Germans is the conversion of the Pz-IIIj at cost 4 to Pz-IIIm at cost 3 but when that occurs the Pz-IIIm is immediately converted to the Stug-IIIg at cost 5 so no harm no foul. And no one needs to worry about not being able to produce Pz-IIIm tanks as the game starts to convert all the older Pz-III models to the Pz-IIIm anyway. I hope I didn't lose anyone with that long winded explanition.

Svar

Thanks, Svar,

It is bad when the memory goes. I never mess too much with the factories myself, letting all but a couple do what they are set to do, and thought the problem with lower costs for new models applied to human changes also. Thanks for clearing that up for everyone!
:p

[Ed Cogburn]

Originally posted by ollittm:
So the air group readiness drops for every single interception phase during one interception event? Hmm..

Effectiveness goes down for every type air group for every sortie during that turn's ground combat, independent of whether they take losses in that sortie.

Anyway, here's a suggestion to air ops in general - It might work out in WIR-level of abstraction if the interceptors would reduce effectiveness of bombers even if they "get through" .. And the escorts would reduce effectiveness of interceptors' ability to disrupt bombing runs and to get bomber kills.

It would make more sense to simply increase the kill rate of normal air combat, rather than try something complex like this. Its not a bad idea, but I doubt Arnaud would want to do anything complex like this at this late stage in the project.