C-22

[Hard Sarge]

okay, for your freese ray, I can still make it happen

it wasn't that easy, but I can do it

during the course of a true bombing raid set up, I think it would be very HARD to do

but now, I think the hassle is what do you expect to happen

yes it looks funny, maybe get a Icon change when two units are locked in combat ?

(my hassle, and I think JC's when we looked at it, is, they are locked in combat, there is fighting going on, this system, not every attack is reported, only the ones that do something)

that is also why, you may see planes that do not show they are flying at the speed you think they should be

so again, What do you think should happen

another area, I complained a lot about, is the cruise speeds, the 109 has a higher Cruise speed then most early Allied fighters, so, once the 109 breaks off, it is safe, as it is faster then the Allied fighters, it can kick up to full speed to chase, the Allied won't
(one reason for Staggers, and Outriggers and some of the other little tricks I worked out)

[Hard Sarge]

Back in the day HS, I could recreate this bug at will (and probably could here today, only, as I said, I don't have the sufficient patches to get it to the point where it appears), and JC just told me he didn't have enough gripes about it to waste his time on it (which you just basically did as well)


just so you know, I did a lot of testing on this, it was not a we/I didn't care

I also did a lot of inside the game testing (with what little we had to work with, but Harley was a champ and I was able to track and follow each fighter caught in the fight, the Fuel burn was speeded up, so the game seen them as in combat, Fat level were raising as if in combat, so over all, everything showed they were in combat, like they should of been, the hassle being, very little damage was being done in the middle of the fight, most times, you only seen damage when one side ran out of gas, but sometimes, you would get small groups breaking off and fighting)

you were able to do this with coastal fighter units ?, your good, I had to have fighters off of bases deeper in, to have a chance

oh and by the way, just to nitpick, that should be, your JG bases, not your FG bases

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

okay, for your freese ray, I can still make it happen

it wasn't that easy, but I can do it

during the course of a true bombing raid set up, I think it would be very HARD to do

but now, I think the hassle is what do you expect to happen

yes it looks funny, maybe get a Icon change when two units are locked in combat ?

(my hassle, and I think JC's when we looked at it, is, they are locked in combat, there is fighting going on, this system, not every attack is reported, only the ones that do something)

that is also why, you may see planes that do not show they are flying at the speed you think they should be

so again, What do you think should happen

another area, I complained a lot about, is the cruise speeds, the 109 has a higher Cruise speed then most early Allied fighters, so, once the 109 breaks off, it is safe, as it is faster then the Allied fighters, it can kick up to full speed to chase, the Allied won't
(one reason for Staggers, and Outriggers and some of the other little tricks I worked out)

Sorry HS, but EVERY time they engage they don't fight and sit there for over an hour often enough. They freeze, they don't fight. Only when runs out of fule is there a spat and usually at the expense of the one that broke off (usually Germans as I said). What should happen? They should act as any other FG's of course (fighter groups). The Allies go on towards the airfield and the germans try to keep up and interdict. As a pain as it is to describe, you may have noticed that 99% of the FG raids made by the Allies, in the same space by the Germans (assuming they're not recon planes with a quicker cruise speed than the German craft have on closing speed) will result in a fight within two hexes. That is, assuming the Germans are going to full speed within 50 miles, as post-1.5 they used to. Apart from the goofy freeze-ray I have "never" had a single raid that did not result in a fight within two hexes (or 20 minutes of gametime if you will) if the German planes were keeping up. You know how it is. They're in the same hex, the German planne is going faster, You've put them within the same altitude, especially if you've selected them to direct attack, and they will. Just try attacking from something other than head-on, and you will see what normal looks like. but, as I say, head-on just can't be helped when you're trying ot determine where they're rading and at the least minute figure it out.

When I say FG, btw, I was referring to the generic multinational term for the sort of groups that were typically on the coastal airfields. you might want to see that other thread for things I didn't repeat here, as I just saw both of these posts of yours, here, and responded.

Wow. HS your description while sounding very similar to mine, is pretty different. That may be part of the problem why it looks like nothing to you in some ways, because you FG's are almost out of gas to get the intercept, mine have about an hour of gas left and so that sit there for so long definitely doing nothing. They're pretty easy to miss really, considering there's usually so much other things going on to get the cursor to jump elsewhere, but that's the very thing very conspicuous about it, as the cursor never goes there, though you're very concerned about it as gerry, and then only to have it go there when the gerry gets a real good thrashing because the Gerry ran low on petrol (now there's a Gerry term for ya - petrol).

[Hard Sarge]

okay found some of the old talks on this (our boards got raided and we lost tons of good old info)

Hmmmmmm
don't want to get into this too heavy
but do not see this much at all with the AI, it looks to be more Human player (Ai tends to take off and chase, while the human tends to get in front of the raid)

3 planes to block off 200 fighters ?, think you screwed up, you should of let them though, and then picked on them as they limped home, 200 fighters on a sweep are going to get slaughtered

who says the Allies are getting longer legs in the game ? the Spit V has better range (oops, wrong word) now, but nothing else, and if the bad guy is using the long ranged boys for sweeps, again, let the AA work them over, and use the planes in the air to attack the defenceless bombers

(if you really want to be nasty, plot your 3 plane patrol to the side of the oncomeing sweep, the sweep will move to engage the patrol, then move the patrol over a RR, then you can get the sweep to try for the RR Strafen loop bug)

hmmmm, again
they lock up, burn fuel and woe is me to the guy who runs out first, sounds like combat to me

I don't see this as a major hassle, the Dover sweep from the MED is more importent to me then this, but since I only see it a few times, it is not a major issue

and yes I have done many tests on it, and it is not so "just locked in space" as you guys claim, there is stuff going on, it just is not being reported

the best one I seen was 2 Squadrons of GB fighters and a Gruppen and Staffel of GE fighters got into a freese, and as they started to run out of gas, both sides ran out and broke for home, while the guys with gas left over stayed and protected there mates, ended up with 1 guy from each side, and I could almost see them wave to each other as they finally broke off and headed home

HARD_Sarge

Hi OB

Dooh ! Now I'm up against JC and HS combined

LOL wait dude, you not got Harley started in yet, at least I am the polite one

all I am saying, is that while some claim it to be a bug, I do not think it is so much a bug as oppose to how some of the lousy combat resorts work

if people are seeing this in there games and there games are being ruined because of this, I say shame on them, there are so many ways around this bug, that it is silly to even be complaining about it

(lol, one of the neat tricks is to send out a recon plane with them 200 fighters flying along with it, a real shock, when you try and bounce something that is not there)

still say, if someone wants to strafe a AF with 200 Fighters, let them come on in

and as for the tone or what not of my post, sorry that was not how it was intended, but look up the tests I ran on it, they are in the fourm, how many tests have people asked for me to run and how many have I done and posted, how many tests have I run for JC and Harley

oh well, my bad, didn't mean the tone to come across that way, I just didn't want to get into how and why and what I had seen during the tests, which I should of, since a number of people here may not of seen some of my testing before

okay over all, if it is a bug, it is a bug based on angles, if the angle is done right, a different form of combat will take place then what we normally expect to see (read Harley's posts on angle of attack) which the human can try and explot, while the AI does not, know how to explot it, it is the human that is causeing most of them, as they can change the angle and make it a normal combat or a danceing combat

which so saying, it is also the human that can plot the sweeps and raids to come in, and take away the chance to make the dance or not, and if the GE player wants to make the Dance, explot the results afterward

and if the Human is the GE and doing it to the AI and getting burned, again, shame on him

HARD_Shame_on_me_Sarge

will look to see if the Test Posts I did are still there, if it is a bug, maybe we can break it, if it is just how the game respounds, or reports, maybe we can get that changes to look better

(oops, I out of the loop here, this isn't JC's game anymore)

[pompack]

Just to dive into this a little bit, I find the frequency of occurance close to Charles experience but I don't even consider it to be a minor bug. Note that all examples are against the AI controling the Allies.

When the activity level drops off toward late morning, the AI tends to send out a LOT of sweeps and general fighter activity. I find it important to intercept every raid with at least three a/c if the raid track is capable of threatening an active base. I tend to get a "freeze" at least once a day and often two or three; the higher the cloud level, the more likely the "freeze". As HS stated, each such "freeze" has the apperance of a fight swirling around without accomplishing much. Like any intercept of a fighter sweep, if the initial contact looks dangerous, I scramble more fighters to join the furball. Whether the fight "freezes" or drifts toward a base, a large raid needs to be hit with more interceptors to protect the bases.

Bottom line, I have always considered this to be shadow-boxing in the clouds and never considered it to be a bug, much less a game-breaker.

[USSMaine]

I don't think I've seen the freeze ray much in the later patches when playing the AI - still see it in PBEM once in a while and try not to abuse it when playing as Axis

[Hard Sarge]

it is still there, I could do it in a head to head test, very HARD from what I seen to take off from a coastal field to do it though, I was able to get planes from Tille to do it, and they froze it just in front of the base

[TaggedYa]

Sarge

This was long ago tested a found to be a bug. The discussion on the BTR board was dropped because JC had a cow anytime anything was mentioned that even hinted that someone was capable of looking into the executable and seeing what was up.

There is no combat. Fuel is consumed; fatigue is applied but no COMBAT takes place. No routine is called that can change the aircraft and if you can’t be damaged you ain’t in combat.

Now as to how important it is; that is another question. It is very important to me. It is by no means a game breaker. It would be hard to think of a game that didn’t have worse bugs. However, if there is access to the source code it would be ridiculous in the extreme to leave such a bug unfixed.

[Richrd]

I still subscribe to the view that the faster aircraft should be able to withdraw more or less at will.
My biggest beef is the following; A spitfire Sqdrn departs England for an airfield raid against a field just east of the Dutch-German border, at cruise speed and cruise fuel consumption. 50 Miles short of the target a German gruppe scrambles to intercept. According to the manual a german group with orders to intercept, when within 50 miles or so, increases it's speed, and it's fuel consumption, to max. The spitfires never, during the whole mission, increase speed or fuel use. The net result is that the relative endurance between the spits and Focke-wulfs is heavily biased towards the allies. This is especially irksome in Italy with those big 48 Plane P-47 groups. It seems that the P-47s can loiter for 8 hours and the Focke-wulfs have to be sent in every twenty minutes or so, to pin the Allied planes and, literally at the end of the day, slaughter them while they withdraw. This takes a lot of aircraft. I would like to see every fighter, at the latest when they fire, to operate under the same constraints.

[Charles2222]

who says the Allies are getting longer legs in the game ? the Spit V has better range (oops, wrong word) now, but nothing else, and if the bad guy is using the long ranged boys for sweeps, again, let the AA work them over, and use the planes in the air to attack the defenceless bombers

The long legs always seemed that way, whther they were or not, as, like I said, it almost always the Gerry breaking off. I think there was a problem somewhere where the P47's were going considerably longer than there duration (if that's the word) stated.

hmmmm, again
they lock up, burn fuel and woe is me to the guy who runs out first, sounds like combat to me

I don't see this as a major hassle, the Dover sweep from the MED is more importent to me then this, but since I only see it a few times, it is not a major issue

It is quite possible, for every day that flights come out of England, that I will see ol' freeze ray EVERY TURN. The AI just loves to conduct airfield raids. I've never seen either the RR bug or the Dover one, but then getting sick of FR can get you not very deep into the campaign. I actually don't think I ever saw my fighters break off and take after recon either, but then again that probably has a lot to do with my playing with a very limited amount of patroling.

and yes I have done many tests on it, and it is not so "just locked in space" as you guys claim, there is stuff going on, it just is not being reported

So how do explain that the raid doesn't continue to move along it's course like any other intercepted raid does???? Yeah, real normal. Until the petrol runs low for either of them, usually the early germans, the Allied flight neither heads back to England or progresses. Maybe it's just me, maybe all the raids are supposed to stop dead in it's tracks, have no combat from either party and then break off and get bounced once one runs out of petrol. Yeah, somehow the bombers, and many of the FG's can take attacks from the front and move right along, but it's the user's fault that he can't automatically figure out one such group from the other. Another poster had a larger scale observation of the freeze ray, as you undoubtably saw, but as for me all I saw it happend on were raids intercepted with the requisite angle that had an airfield as it's target. I didn't check the Allied side very much to make this an absolute given, but I hadn't ever seen FG's on escort duty, for example, which had done that when intercepted with approximately that angle.

As for the letter half of your comments on thsi same post I've quoted from, it doesn't look like the comments are to me, so I'll leave that alone.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

it is still there, I could do it in a head to head test, very HARD from what I seen to take off from a coastal field to do it though, I was able to get planes from Tille to do it, and they froze it just in front of the base

I'm not sure it being coastal in my case has anything to do with it, but I do provide as much facts as I can.

[Hard Sarge]

not saying Coastal bases have anything to do with it, I think it would be very HARD to get a JG based on a coastal base to do a freese ray, it don't have the time

the biggest thing I have on this, if it is a bug, you are making it, and there is no reason for you to do so, if you can launch the unit into the air to engage, you got time to put them on patrol, let he raid come in, and station the JG to the side of the raid, once the raid hits you base and gets ripped apart, then target it, the stagglers will be slaughtered, the number of losses the sweep is going to take if it numbers 200, is very high, even on a poorly defended base, they your patrol is going feast on the damaged planes flying home

(I am known as a Allied Expert on the game, but I do have a decent record on the GE side, I think the GE side is too easy, so play as Allied)

if Matrix remakes this game, maybe they can find what you are seeing and fix it, or change it, so it don't look like what you think it looks like

[Hard Sarge]

Taggedya

got to disagree, I was rereading those posts, it was not the subject that set JC off, it was your tone making the posts, you made a couple of crude statements about his skill and veiwpoint, after that, anything you posted was looked down on, LOL look at your latest post on the forum, you insulted him on his own fourm, asking for the lastest files

and no, the tests did not prove your point, I ran a lot of the tests, Harley also ran tests

with my tests, I was also able to look inside the game (so to speak) and see what the planes in the units locked up were doing, they were fighting

as has been reported before, if everything that happens in a turn, were reported with the game reports, that turn would take a day to play out, only what the game sees as importent reports are made, there are attacks after attacks, they do not get reported (36 P-47s attack 36 FW-190s and roll a 99, you don't get a report, they missed)

[TaggedYa]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

Taggedya

got to disagree, I was rereading those posts, it was not the subject that set JC off, it was your tone making the posts, you made a couple of crude statements about his skill and veiwpoint,

First, the posts you are referring to [the freeze ray v long range spit V thread I think] are not what I was referring to. The entire thread I am referring to was deleted by JC.

Next; My first post in that thread.

Is the freeze ray problem being addressed in the new OB incarnation? If not, giving a much greater endurance to Allied fighters could exacerbate the problem.

Currently, there is little you can do to protect your airfields and RR-yards from the longer ranged Allied fighters without "gaming" the freeze ray. If all Allied fighters now have greater endurance than any Axis fighters it will be necessary to time frozen fights and use relays to maintain the freeze. If you don't your groups that run out of gas first will take extreme losses as the released Allied fighters continue on to strafe the airfields and destroy your units on landing.

Quite frankly, I would trade all of the production, Historicity, radar interaction, and AI tweeks for just this one fix. I would think it is fixable because it didn't happen in the original game. And yes, I have been trying different combos of the earlier versions to find the latest one that dosn't do it.

JCs objection is the third paragraph of this post. You are entirely correct that after this post he was not in the least objective about anything I posted however my “tone” had nothing to do with it. I was below the salt because I did not consider his historical accuracy work to be more valuable than a program that worked right.

In fairness, I will state that the second sentence of that paragraph:

I would think it is fixable because it didn't happen in the original game.

was inaccurate. It has been found in all versions of exe and ob.

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge
after that, anything you posted was looked down on, LOL look at your latest post on the forum, you insulted him on his own fourm, asking for the lastest files

in a snit
in a state of agitation or irritation, as in He is in a snit over the guest list. It is also put as get in or into a snit, as in She tends to get in a snit every time things don't go her way. The origin of this expression is uncertain. [Colloquial; first half of 1900s]

Do you consider it an insult to imply that someone is “in a snit” or that they were once “in a snit”. Perhaps it is your contention that JC. was not agitated or irritated that he was not appreciated. I assure you that he was both agitated and irritated at me just because I would rather have the freeze ray fixed than have a change made in aircraft availability. I will refrain from quoting the relevant posts but they are still available in the above referenced thread.

Next, even if we could agree that it was in fact insulting, I will not say behind someone’s back what I am willing to say out of his presence and I am of the opinion that he was indeed in a snit and would say it here so it would be hypocritical to not say it there.

I also don’t tend to think in terms of ownership on a forum. I thus accord the “owner” of the forum no deference that I wouldn’t accord to any other poster. In specific, once you have shown a willingness to take offence where it is plainly obvious that no offence was meant I am no longer concerned whether you are offended.

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge
and no, the tests did not prove your point, I ran a lot of the tests, Harley also ran tests

with my tests, I was also able to look inside the game (so to speak) and see what the planes in the units locked up were doing, they were fighting

No, please separate facts from opinion. According to your posts on the subject they were using fuel at an “in combat” rate. They were accumulating fatigue at an “in combat” rate. What you can’t say and I can is whether a combat routine was called. It wasn’t. No one has ever contended that the freeze ray stopped fatigue or that it stopped fuel consumption. Nor did anyone contend that fuel and fatigue did not reflect a combat situation. The problem is the routines to damage aircraft, to break up formations, and to move the fight are not being called. However, no matter how many saved games you parse you can’t see this. You have to watch as the program executes to see this.

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge
as has been reported before, if everything that happens in a turn, were reported with the game reports, that turn would take a day to play out, only what the game sees as importent reports are made, there are attacks after attacks, they do not get reported (36 P-47s attack 36 FW-190s and roll a 99, you don't get a report, they missed)

This is quite true. The fallacy is in the proposition that once a fight is circular no damage is ever possible. That would have to be the case as none ever occurs.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

not saying Coastal bases have anything to do with it, I think it would be very HARD to get a JG based on a coastal base to do a freese ray, it don't have the time

the biggest thing I have on this, if it is a bug, you are making it, and there is no reason for you to do so, if you can launch the unit into the air to engage, you got time to put them on patrol, let he raid come in, and station the JG to the side of the raid, once the raid hits you base and gets ripped apart, then target it, the stagglers will be slaughtered, the number of losses the sweep is going to take if it numbers 200, is very high, even on a poorly defended base, they your patrol is going feast on the damaged planes flying home

(I am known as a Allied Expert on the game, but I do have a decent record on the GE side, I think the GE side is too easy, so play as Allied)

if Matrix remakes this game, maybe they can find what you are seeing and fix it, or change it, so it don't look like what you think it looks like

Just one small clarification here. I was first trying to tell you that the general idea of trying to protect coastal airfields, not meaning 'just' coastal airfields, but also those immediately behind them, or to use a broader term, for any the AI Allies in the long early campaign are inclined to attack. Naturally the true coastal ones are the most difficult to put up some kind of defense for, but later in the turns, since the GE player may not have very many capable interceptors, since they might have been used heavily elsewhere earlier in the turn, he may also have this problem with deeper airfields. As I said before, I'm trying to be as accurate as possible. I did not at any time infer that I thought the coast had anything to do with the FR mechanics, but only that the GE player, because of the combination of AI FG attacks on his own airfields, and because of the difficulties encountered trying to defend them, that he has to resort in many cases to attack those a/c head-on.

Contrary to this, if for some reason I had enough strength left to go after an FG which was going home, particularly the less capable they were, because they were a threat to nothing, it is quite common in my case that head-ons were very rare. For one thing because attacking from the back, if you can manage it, is better if you have superior speed. Trying to interfere with FG's is compounded when you're also trying to defend a point on the map.

BTW, one last comment. On your idea of putting up a patrol..... that's not entirely dependable from what I saw. I didn't use patrols all that much to try intercepts, because for one thing because I was too used to these sort of things attacking the wrong group (assuming more than one raid in the same hex) and in the case of these one group pure FG attacks I saw too many go through (which can even happen with direct-attack intercept orders. Using bounce tactics could of course make it less likely to then intercept). In many cases the patrol point would have to be in the airfield hex or a hex or two away. If the group gets through, even if a chase begins it's very likely too late to get to them before the bombs are dropped. What I usually did was set a patrol to attain the altitude I wanted and then sent them to intercept. That was my general way of using all of my interceptors, be they going after fighters or bombers.