B-17/CAP test redux

[Tristanjohn]

Please, let's try to keep this thread on track.

If you have something personal to say, or wish to otherwise interject some aside not related to this test of B-17s and CAP, please do this somewhere else. This thread is intended to be solely related to tests of B-17s/B-24s ordered to bomb Milne Bay. If everyone behaves, some good progress along that line might be made and Erik won't have to close it down.

Thank you.

My first screenshot is somewhat off the mark, but as I run across anomalies I feel olbiged to post them in an effort to encourage the company to fix these problems.

Here we see a P-38 squadron that I split a turn or two ago with the intention of transferring it to Port Moresby, eventually with the idea to provide escorts for the B-17s ordered to bomb Milne Bay from Cooktown. As you can see, this squadron now has 81 pilots all of a sudden for just 24 P-38s. As far as I know this is an old issue. I'm not sure whether or not the company has tried to fix this or not. If so, it's still broken. If not, then it needs to be looked into. This is a serious problem.

At this juncture I can't recall when this pilot overflow happened. Probably the moment I split the squadron, but as I say I can't recall. I first noticed it during the turn indicated on the date of the graphic, which means a few minutes ago real time and immediately after I ran the Japanese turn in order to set fighters at Dobodura to sweep Port Moresby--this is the first turn I've revisited this test since last week or the week before when Joe turned it over to me.

Note: Erik, you can find this in the original files I emailed you. Those are the ones I'm working off.

[Tristanjohn]

Here's another unrelated problem which might or might not be of importance--that is, it might or might not point to a larger problem or in some way jeopardize game flow. (I believe it well might. I've reported any number of problems with loading transports and such. Other people in the forum have also reported such problems. These problems do exist, and I'm not the only one who sees it. Something in there is wrong, and it prevents the flow at times of normal game functions.)

In this example I've just finished loading 64 Dakotas onto this AK and the OPs counter raced all the way up to 2,093. This is the first time I've seen this particular bug; I have seen similar indications of a problem when it comes to loading transports. In this case the transport did successfully load the planes as you can see. At other times transports balk at that order. Whether the faulty OPs counter is related to that issue is impossible for me to say. It could be unrelated.

[Tristanjohn]

Okay, let's get to the B-17/CAP test itself.

The purpose of this test is to find out when, where and how B-17s/B-24s might fly from Cooktown to Milne Bay with orders to bomb something and be reasonably opposed by Japanese CAP (i.e., suffer reasonable casualties in the process). I intend to order the bombers to attack with and without fighter escorts. Also, I'll give both the escorts and defending CAP, to the best of my ability (as you'll see, this becomes problematical) some reasonable levels of morale and fatigue--no more of this 99/0 stuff, as Erik says that throws off the results. (Why it should do so, when both sides are at the same levels, I couldn't say. But we'll follow Erik's guidance on that.)

This is the result of the first Japanese sweep of Port Moresby in an effort to accumulate morale/fatigue hits so that the Japanese fighters on CAP don't butcher the Allied bombers again. We'll see about that.

I guess I ought to have shown different screens for the purpose of this result, but as it turns out this graphic is fairly representative of Japanese and Allied losses from the sweep. In any case, lower down I'll be showing actual squadrons and the effects of the sweep, so it will be clear what actually happened casualtywise.

[Erik Rutins]

Tristan,

You may have misunderstood my reply on the previous thread, because your posts above seem to indicate that I said that in large air battles, with certain different variables, the losses would not be too severe. What I said was that some of the variables decrease losses but large air battles are still too bloody and we can't change that on the code side without rewriting the model, which is a huge job with uncertain results that isn't going to happen.

Players need to take this fact of the current model into account when deciding how large a raid they want to conduct. If they meet up with a lot of CAP, particularly a lot of CAP with heavier fighters (like the Tony) that won't be warded off as easily, they will drop from the sky in large numbers. I'm not sure what purpose this thread will serve in providing information or an answer that wasn't already covered in the previous thead.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

To add to the previous, if you want to just post about bugs you've noticed in this thread, that's fine. But I don't see any benefit at this time to continuing the B-17 testing, which is really part of a larger issue that we've responded to.

Regards,

- Erik

[Rocco]

I've had this just happen to me today. I think you will note that the ops points used are equal to the load cost of the air group. My TF took off without loading any aircraft, so I sent it back to try again.

Rocco

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

Here's another unrelated problem which might or might not be of importance--that is, it might or might not point to a larger problem or in some way jeopardize game flow. (I believe it well might. I've reported any number of problems with loading transports and such. Other people in the forum have also reported such problems. These problems do exist, and I'm not the only one who sees it. Something in there is wrong, and it prevents the flow at times of normal game functions.)

In this example I've just finished loading 64 Dakotas onto this AK and the OPs counter raced all the way up to 2,093. This is the first time I've seen this particular bug; I have seen similar indications of a problem when it comes to loading transports. In this case the transport did successfully load the planes as you can see. At other times transports balk at that order. Whether the faulty OPs counter is related to that issue is impossible for me to say. It could be unrelated.

[Tristanjohn]

Here are the results of the sweep of Port Moresby.

In all I ordered 72 Tonys and 54 A6M2s to sweep Port Moresby from Dobodura. All of these Japanese planes complied with this order. They all started out with 99 morale and 0 fatigue. At Port Moresby there is a collection of various aircraft, to include Spitfires, Hurricanes, Kittyhawks and Tomahawks. There were a few more Allied fighters than Japanese fighers, but not so many more as to render that a huge factor, plus I didn't know how many of the Allied planes would actually respond to their CAP orders, so I let them all fly and hoped for the best. The Allied fighters also started this turn with 99 morale and 0 fatigue.

Below we see the first Tony Sentai I opened up after the sweep. As we can see, it was fairly chewed up by the defending Allied fighters at Port Moresby. What I noticed immediately was that the Sentai was filled up again, even after having sustained 32 casualties (32 kills, either over Port Moresby or in attempting land back at Dobodura, as we can see only four of the original pilots are still with the Sentai).

I next noticed the morale and fatigue levels.

Morale, as we can see, is 71. Pretty high I'd say for a Sentai that just got all but wiped out. And the fatigue is just 5. (This is an old issue, too. And this experiment appears to confirm that fatigue in the game is only concerned with how many hexes a plane flies to and from to complete its mission. There is apparently no concern afforded the concept of "battle fatigue," only distance flown to and from. A mistake I think, but that's another argument.)

Conclusion: replacements are taken immediately, and this is a serious problem. The air model runs too fast. This is one very good example of why it runs to fast. There is no way in the world that a Sentai based at Dobodura could possibly refresh itself to the tune of 32 Tonys and 32 new pilots overnight. Yet this is how the game models it.

This needs to be changed. Then the air model would begin to slow done. Anything that slows down the game's underlying models must be viewed as something good. The game runs too fast. There's nothing in the game that runs too slow, everything runs too fast.

[String]

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn


Conclusion: replacements are taken immediately, and this is a serious problem. The air model runs too fast. This is one very good example of why it runs to fast. There is no way in the world that a Sentai based at Dobodura could possibly refresh itself to the tune of 32 Tonys and 32 new pilots overnight. Yet this is how the game models it.

This needs to be changed. Then the air model would begin to slow done. Anything that slows down the game's underlying models must be viewed as something good. The game runs too fast. There's nothing in the game that runs too slow, everything runs too fast.

What a conclusion, inveting the bike?

Anyway, it will take atleast 4-5 days for all of those planes to repair and draw pilots, which will be 30 exp rookies. So no, the air model ain't too fast, well atleast the replacement model isn't.

[denisonh]

Good observation about aircraft replacement.

Replcement flows to units would be adequate for "reasonable" combat losses and OP losses. A unit having 50% of it's strength available for immediate replacement seems unrealistic and most certainly a contributing factor to overly large air combat and pace of operations.

It seems reasonable to place a cap on the number of aircraft allowed to be replaced on a dialy basis to a percentage of the units overall strength (5% for example) unless the aircraft is at a location where there are aircraft factories (or the aircraft is upgrading).

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

Here are the results of the sweep of Port Moresby.

In all I ordered 72 Tonys and 54 A6M2s to sweep Port Moresby from Dobodura. All of these Japanese planes complied with this order. They all started out with 99 morale and 0 fatigue. At Port Moresby there is a collection of various aircraft, to include Spitfires, Hurricanes, Kittyhawks and Tomahawks. There were a few more Allied fighters than Japanese fighers, but not so many more as to render that a huge factor, plus I didn't know how many of the Allied planes would actually respond to their CAP orders, so I let them all fly and hoped for the best. The Allied fighters also started this turn with 99 morale and 0 fatigue.

Below we see the first Tony Sentai I opened up after the sweep. As we can see, it was fairly chewed up by the defending Allied fighters at Port Moresby. What I noticed immediately was that the Sentai was filled up again, even after having sustained 32 casualties (32 kills, either over Port Moresby or in attempting land back at Dobodura, as we can see only four of the original pilots are still with the Sentai).

I next noticed the morale and fatigue levels.

Morale, as we can see, is 71. Pretty high I'd say for a Sentai that just got all but wiped out. And the fatigue is just 5. (This is an old issue, too. And this experiment appears to confirm that fatigue in the game is only concerned with how many hexes a plane flies to and from to complete its mission. There is apparently no concern afforded the concept of "battle fatigue," only distance flown to and from. A mistake I think, but that's another argument.)

Conclusion: replacements are taken immediately, and this is a serious problem. The air model runs too fast. This is one very good example of why it runs to fast. There is no way in the world that a Sentai based at Dobodura could possibly refresh itself to the tune of 32 Tonys and 32 new pilots overnight. Yet this is how the game models it.

This needs to be changed. Then the air model would begin to slow done. Anything that slows down the game's underlying models must be viewed as something good. The game runs too fast. There's nothing in the game that runs too slow, everything runs too fast.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Tristan,

You may have misunderstood my reply on the previous thread, because your posts above seem to indicate that I said that in large air battles, with certain different variables, the losses would not be too severe. What I said was that some of the variables decrease losses but large air battles are still too bloody and we can't change that on the code side without rewriting the model, which is a huge job with uncertain results that isn't going to happen.

Players need to take this fact of the current model into account when deciding how large a raid they want to conduct. If they meet up with a lot of CAP, particularly a lot of CAP with heavier fighters (like the Tony) that won't be warded off as easily, they will drop from the sky in large numbers. I'm not sure what purpose this thread will serve in providing information or an answer that wasn't already covered in the previous thead.

Regards,

- Erik

Maybe I did misunderstand you before, Erik. I don't wish to sound contentious, but I'd like to be sure I do undertand you this time for sure.

As I understand it, you're saying 1) it's a case of the strength of CAP primarily, not how many bombers are in the attack force, and 2) if the Japanese put up enough CAP heavy bombers (this to include B-29s I presume, but I don't know) will get slaughtered to one degree or another.

Do I have that right? (Before I thought it was a function of both CAP strength and bomber strength, but I guess I read you wrong on that score. If it's just CAP strength, then I don't have to mess with bomber strength. That's good. It will make the test easier to run.)

Anyway, if I have it right now, the implication is that this part of the game can't be reasonably played without a houserule that limits the amount of CAP the Japanese player can oppose Allied heavy bombers with, and how players might possibly arrive at that with re to what's "fair" is beyond me at the moment. But I'm more than willing to listen to suggestions. (There's also the question of how much CAP the Japanese player could oppose Allied medium bombers with. At least I'd guess there is. But I'd be happy to conduct that test next if you ask, and then we'll know for sure.)

Back to heavies.

How shall Allied heavy-bomber attacks be conducted against targets in, say, the SRA or over Japan? Do the Allies limit themselves to so many bombers and the Japanese limit themselves to so much CAP? I'd guess so. (Even though you suggest that the number of heavies doesn't affect air-to-air results, the number of heavies would affect damage to the target from bombs dropped. So we need to find a happy medium there, where enough bombers fly and are met with the right number of CAP fighters and the right amount of damage is done to the target. At least I see it that way.)

In that case, what are the numbers that work? At the moment I don't know. Do you? If so, please tell me.

The purpose of this test is to try and find those numbers, for whatever that's worth. I thought I stated that clearly enough in the third post of this thread. If I didn't state it clearly enough, mea culpa. But that's why I'm here doing this work. It has to be done by someone or no one will know what they're doing in the game when it comes to bombing. (If we don't know what those numbers are, how could anyone devise a decent hourserule to cover this system failure?)

I could be missing something critical here. If so, what is it?

[madflava13]

Why are we beating around the bush on this issue again and again? The Devs have spoken - This issue comes from how the A2A model was designed. To make changes at this point would require a redesign of the model.

As has been stated over and over again, no new changes are going to be made to this game at this point, only bug fixes as bugs are found. This is not a bug, it's the model working as designed. Maybe the model is wrong, but we're stuck with it... So let's drop this damn line of bitching and move on. If you don't like it, don't play the game, or make house rules around it - its not changing.

We have more important issues to deal with, like the poor bastard who's playing drunk at all hours of the night! [;)]

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: String

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn


Conclusion: replacements are taken immediately, and this is a serious problem. The air model runs too fast. This is one very good example of why it runs to fast. There is no way in the world that a Sentai based at Dobodura could possibly refresh itself to the tune of 32 Tonys and 32 new pilots overnight. Yet this is how the game models it.

This needs to be changed. Then the air model would begin to slow done. Anything that slows down the game's underlying models must be viewed as something good. The game runs too fast. There's nothing in the game that runs too slow, everything runs too fast.

What a conclusion, inveting the bike?

Anyway, it will take atleast 4-5 days for all of those planes to repair and draw pilots, which will be 30 exp rookies. So no, the air model ain't too fast, well atleast the replacement model isn't.

In this particular case you happen to be correct about the quality of the pilots, as both the IJA and IJN pilot pools (which arguably shouldn't be there to begin with) are exhausted, so the replacement pilots for these planes are in the 20s and 30s. Effectively the Japanese fighter formations which took losses over Port Moresby in this test (all but one Sentai--I'll get to that in a moment) are wrecked for the foreseeable future. However, that would not be the case if the Japanese pools of trained pilots were not exhausted.

I'm just trying to say this this "shortcut" is not good news. It's bad news. It's one of the many reasons the game runs too fast. If we fix this stuff, or as much of it as we can, the game will begin to slow down. If we could slow the game down, some of these problems would either go away or at least not adversely affect play results to such a worrisome degree. In other words, if we slow the game down we improve the game.

[moses]

To slow down air combat you should really look at air transfers and not aircraft replacement.

Air replacements: Worst case is an air unit gets totally wiped out and therefore takes a massive morale hit before 16 new planes show up the next day. What you have essentially done is fly in a totally new squadren which will be ineffective until you let it sit a week to recover morale. Now one could argue that there should be a delay of several days and no morale hit (since its a totally new group of flyers) but the effect is about the same.

Air transfers: Sending a squadren of heavy bombers to a base previously occupied only by fighters and having it conduct offensive operations that same day is suspect. It could be done IRL with prior planning but could not normally be done on impulse as is possible in the game. This speeds the game up greatly as you can capture a base and fly in 100 aircraft the next day.

POSSIBLE CHANGE? Any transfer damages 30-40% of the planes. (In all cases damage should be viewed as the airbase trying to get its act together to deal with the new squadren and not actual damage to the aircraft. This is very simple and would slow things down a bit.

Actually I'm just bored as my PBEM partners are unavailable today. So don't take as critisism but just chatter/discussion and who knows someone may like the idea

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: denisonh

Good observation about aircraft replacement.

Replcement flows to units would be adequate for "reasonable" combat losses and OP losses. A unit having 50% of it's strength available for immediate replacement seems unrealistic and most certainly a contributing factor to overly large air combat and pace of operations.

It seems reasonable to place a cap on the number of aircraft allowed to be replaced on a dialy basis to a percentage of the units overall strength (5% for example) unless the aircraft is at a location where there are aircraft factories (or the aircraft is upgrading).

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

Here are the results of the sweep of Port Moresby.

In all I ordered 72 Tonys and 54 A6M2s to sweep Port Moresby from Dobodura. All of these Japanese planes complied with this order. They all started out with 99 morale and 0 fatigue. At Port Moresby there is a collection of various aircraft, to include Spitfires, Hurricanes, Kittyhawks and Tomahawks. There were a few more Allied fighters than Japanese fighers, but not so many more as to render that a huge factor, plus I didn't know how many of the Allied planes would actually respond to their CAP orders, so I let them all fly and hoped for the best. The Allied fighters also started this turn with 99 morale and 0 fatigue.

Below we see the first Tony Sentai I opened up after the sweep. As we can see, it was fairly chewed up by the defending Allied fighters at Port Moresby. What I noticed immediately was that the Sentai was filled up again, even after having sustained 32 casualties (32 kills, either over Port Moresby or in attempting land back at Dobodura, as we can see only four of the original pilots are still with the Sentai).

I next noticed the morale and fatigue levels.

Morale, as we can see, is 71. Pretty high I'd say for a Sentai that just got all but wiped out. And the fatigue is just 5. (This is an old issue, too. And this experiment appears to confirm that fatigue in the game is only concerned with how many hexes a plane flies to and from to complete its mission. There is apparently no concern afforded the concept of "battle fatigue," only distance flown to and from. A mistake I think, but that's another argument.)

Conclusion: replacements are taken immediately, and this is a serious problem. The air model runs too fast. This is one very good example of why it runs to fast. There is no way in the world that a Sentai based at Dobodura could possibly refresh itself to the tune of 32 Tonys and 32 new pilots overnight. Yet this is how the game models it.

This needs to be changed. Then the air model would begin to slow done. Anything that slows down the game's underlying models must be viewed as something good. The game runs too fast. There's nothing in the game that runs too slow, everything runs too fast.

Even if the unit in question was sitting right outside the plane factory's doors it couldn't re-equip itself overnight. Replacement pilots don't sleep in these replacement planes and awake at the sound of a bell.

The pilots are one place, the replacement planes are another place.

Combat results need to be sent back to the home islands.

Some bureaucrat sitting comfortably behind a wooden desk with a sandwich in his hand is not terribly interested in raising his blood pressure each time a piece of paper floats in and requests new planes and new pilots. Eventually he'll get around to it, though.

Then he sends yet another piece of paper to another bureaucrat someplace else, who then does his thing, and like that.

One fine day the replacement planes are wedded to the replacement pilots, and when orders are cut the new pilots start ferrying their new planes toward wherever, in this case Dobodura.

None of what I've described above happens overnight.

And we're not talking about 50% casualties here but 94% (rounded down).

And it isn't (wasn't) just this squadron but five squadrons (Sentai and Daitai) at Dobodura which all received new planes and new pilots overnight.

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: moses

To slow down air combat you should really look at air transfers and not aircraft replacement.

I look at everything.

Air replacements: Worst case is an air unit gets totally wiped out and therefore takes a massive morale hit before 16 new planes show up the next day. What you have essentially done is fly in a totally new squadren which will be ineffective until you let it sit a week to recover morale. Now one could argue that there should be a delay of several days and no morale hit (since its a totally new group of flyers) but the effect is about the same.

First of all this squadron (Sentai) doesn't have to "recover morale." It suffered 94% casualties and its morale sits at a quite comfortable (and equally operational--my cutoff for using planes is 70 morale, though in an emergency I'll use anything available, of course) 71 the day after.

The replacement pilots ferried in in this case will be essentially useless, as the IJA (and IJN for what it's worth) pool of trained pilots is/was empty. So we don't have to worry about this squadron (Sentai) for some time.

Air transfers: Sending a squadren of heavy bombers to a base previously occupied only by fighters and having it conduct offensive operations that same day is suspect. It could be done IRL with prior planning but could not normally be done on impulse as is possible in the game. This speeds the game up greatly as you can capture a base and fly in 100 aircraft the next day.

POSSIBLE CHANGE? Any transfer damages 30-40% of the planes. (In all cases damage should be viewed as the airbase trying to get its act together to deal with the new squadren and not actual damage to the aircraft. This is very simple and would slow things down a bit.

Actually I'm just bored as my PBEM partners are unavailable today. So don't take as critisism but just chatter/discussion and who knows someone may like the idea

I won't address your suggested fix for transfrers and then further operations the same day as this would require time to get it right. Just picking some percentage of damaged aircraft out of thin air isn't likely to give us the desired result.

I agree staging seems to be "suspect" within the context of this game, but only for the reason the entire game is already running at warp speed and needs to be slowed down. However, both sides were known to stage planes throughout the war. For instance, the Japanese used Buin for basing/staging fighters; the Allies used any number of intermediate bases all over the Pacific for refueling (staging) their fighters and bombers. This was not a rare occurrence, it happened often.

So, we see that staging is not ahistoric. It does add to the speed of the model, though. Not a good thing.

The use of bases, the game's very concept of bases and the way these are maintained and supplied . . . there I have to agree (I've beat this to death, haven't I?) with you. But what else is new?

What's right in terms of game play? I don't know.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn
As I understand it, you're saying 1) it's a case of the strength of CAP primarily, not how many bombers are in the attack force, and 2) if the Japanese put up enough CAP heavy bombers (this to include B-29s I presume, but I don't know) will get slaughtered to one degree or another.

More accurate to say it's a function of the total planes involved, though of course a bad CAP to Bomber ratio will make things worse. I don't have the formulas, but my own testing confirmed this and that's the understanding of the team at this point as well.

Anyway, if I have it right now, the implication is that this part of the game can't be reasonably played without a houserule that limits the amount of CAP the Japanese player can oppose Allied heavy bombers with, and how players might possibly arrive at that with re to what's "fair" is beyond me at the moment. But I'm more than willing to listen to suggestions. (There's also the question of how much CAP the Japanese player could oppose Allied medium bombers with. At least I'd guess there is. But I'd be happy to conduct that test next if you ask, and then we'll know for sure.)

That's really up to each player to decide, now that they have this info. Sometimes you will still have huge battles and they will be bloody. The game often has a few extra aircraft in the replacement pool to account for the tendency of players to play more actively than their historical counterparts and this will also help for the occasional unintended blood-letting.

The purpose of this test is to try and find those numbers, for whatever that's worth. I thought I stated that clearly enough in the third post of this thread. If I didn't state it clearly enough, mea culpa. But that's why I'm here doing this work. It has to be done by someone or no one will know what they're doing in the game when it comes to bombing. (If we don't know what those numbers are, how could anyone devise a decent hourserule to cover this system failure?)

Fair enough, I don't know how every permutation will work and I don't have time to figure it out. But thousands of players have been playing this game for a year. By and large, most come down on the side of Allied Heavy Bombers being quite effective indeed, so I'm assuming that there is not a bit problem here outside of occasional huge and bloody air battles with unescorted heavies and heavy Japanese fighters.

Regards,

- Erik

[Tristanjohn]

ORIGINAL: madflava13

Why are we beating around the bush on this issue again and again? The Devs have spoken - This issue comes from how the A2A model was designed. To make changes at this point would require a redesign of the model.

As has been stated over and over again, no new changes are going to be made to this game at this point, only bug fixes as bugs are found. This is not a bug, it's the model working as designed. Maybe the model is wrong, but we're stuck with it... So let's drop this damn line of bitching and move on. If you don't like it, don't play the game, or make house rules around it - its not changing.

We have more important issues to deal with, like the poor bastard who's playing drunk at all hours of the night! [;)]

I'm not beating around the bush at all. I'm addressing the problem directly.

Nobody will be able to conduct bombing operations with even a hint of reality unless we know what the numbers are with re to fighter CAP vis-a-vis the total destruction of the incoming bombers.

Is your notion of "playing this game and having fun" to simply suspend Allied heavy-bomber operations? Just do away with that aspect of the air model altogether? That would be okay with you? You're right with that?

Speaking for myself, I'd rather know what the level of CAP is where the slaughter begins. Then we can instruct (in the form of a houserule) Japanese players not to exceed that threshold of CAP. This will (might) allow the Allies to make some use of their heavy bombers, other than to merely park them someplace for the entire game, or use them solely for search and ASW work.

[Mr.Frag]

TJ, you plan on testing the bomber vs fighter change in 1.57?

You should notice a fairly nice increase in the effects of the combat box formation at shooting down fighters.

[madflava13]

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

ORIGINAL: madflava13

Why are we beating around the bush on this issue again and again? The Devs have spoken - This issue comes from how the A2A model was designed. To make changes at this point would require a redesign of the model.

As has been stated over and over again, no new changes are going to be made to this game at this point, only bug fixes as bugs are found. This is not a bug, it's the model working as designed. Maybe the model is wrong, but we're stuck with it... So let's drop this damn line of bitching and move on. If you don't like it, don't play the game, or make house rules around it - its not changing.

We have more important issues to deal with, like the poor bastard who's playing drunk at all hours of the night! [;)]

I'm not beating around the bush at all. I'm addressing the problem directly.

Nobody will be able to conduct bombing operations with even a hint of reality unless we know what the numbers are with re to fighter CAP vis-a-vis the total destruction of the incoming bombers.

Is your notion of "playing this game and having fun" to simply suspend Allied heavy-bomber operations? Just do away with that aspect of the air model altogether? That would be okay with you? You're right with that?

Speaking for myself, I'd rather know what the level of CAP is where the slaughter begins. Then we can instruct (in the form of a houserule) Japanese players not to exceed that threshold of CAP. This will (might) allow the Allies to make some use of their heavy bombers, other than to merely park them someplace for the entire game, or use them solely for search and ASW work.

TJ,
You're right, you're addressing it directly. "Beating around the bush" was a poor choice of phrase on my part. My point though is that this is not going to change. We've heard that the game is basically locked in to a final form here as far as the developers are concerned. I just think that railing against the system is pointless here, since the system is beyond the point of change.

And maybe I'm just the luckiest guy in the forums, but so far in the games I've played I have yet to see all these gamebreaking bugs, ahistorical results and end of the world occurrences that everyone seems to be complaining about these days. The game runs pretty damn well for me, the results seem pretty close to what I'd expect, and I've had a lot of fun with it so far. But then again, I don't set myself up for really weird results by doing really weird things with my units either...

[Halsey]

What! A bonus for the Allies?

Does GG know about this?[:D][:D][:D]