CHS Mod Proposal

[jwilkerson]

ORIGINAL: TheElf

Potential compromise. Not one to create more work for others [;)]I think I have a solution regarding Nik's A2A model. Before I present it however I think I have made a pretty good arguement as why we at the CHS should just flat out adopt his A2A work at a minimum, but.....

The compromise: If in fact we still have a large number of dissenters, I propose a CHS Ver. XX.Xb. "XX.X" of course being the standard CHS Mod as it is now. "b" being the sub-variant of the CHS which has the Nik mod incorporated. Given the CHS's exhustive OOB changes I think that it should be the platform from wich we all deviate or mod. At least all that OOB stuff will make it into whichever sub variant players choose to play. Theoretically we could have three parallel line of the CHS

Ver XX.X = the standard CHS
Ver XX.Xb = the CHS/Nik Mod
Ver XX.Xc = the CHS PRY mod

thoughts?

Well to be more specific, there are maybe two ways ( maybe more ) to do this.

(A) Base CHS database, with 3 scenarios.

(B) Base CHS database, with Nik variation database and Pry variation database.

There are problems with both and advantages of both ( of course)

(A) Problem with just one database is that we have to "merge" the differences between the databases, I think for the most part this would be fairly easy as regards Nik .. the changes Nik has made ( that I'm aware of anyway ) are heavy in the device area. And I'm not sure CHS has really been heavy here. CHS on the other hand has mostly changed OB and TOE and not sure Nik has made nearly as extensive a set of changes in the OB/TOE areas. On the other hand I know Pry has extensively changed ships at least in the tonnage area - but this change sounds good - and if it has been at all tested then I'd say we should try to pull that in as well. I'm not not as aware of what other changes Pry has made. Having three scenarios still allows some variation , though with the limits on slots it does really offer much. And finally after the merge, there is the overhead of coordinating changes between Pry, Nik CHS. The advantage is that we have one databaseand we can all benefit from having the good parts of all these mods in one system.

(B) The pro of multiple databases ( with CHS as base ) is that Nik and Pry are then free to make pretty much whatever changes they want, whenever they want. The downside is "sympathetic" upgrades. So when CHS changes, then Nik and Pry will be pressured to re-release there mods. Andrew knows something about this since he has to re-release the stock scenarios then run on his map periodically ( and I think he also was doing Pry scenarios ... the 130-139 series ... at one point ).

While Ideally I'd like the (A) solution. The (B) solution maybe more practical. But I'd try to get Nik, Pry and Andrew in a dialog about this - us "kibitzers" won't be able to resolve it for the principles.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: TheElf

Potential compromise. Not one to create more work for others [;)]I think I have a solution regarding Nik's A2A model. Before I present it however I think I have made a pretty good arguement as why we at the CHS should just flat out adopt his A2A work at a minimum, but.....

I am against any type of splintering of CHS.

There are some good reasons for taking Nik's mods and adding them to CHS:

- They are well researched.
- They are tested to a certain extent (including in actual PBEM play).
- They seem to correct a number of problems, which is what we are trying to do.

However there are a couple of things I really don't like (as I have mentioned before);

- They have to be used with a house rule limiting bomber altitude. I hate such house rules.
- The flak seems to be TOO effective in some circumstances.

The other problem is that if you just swap out Nik's aircraft stats with the ones in CHS, a lot of improvements that have been added to CHS (mainly by Lemurs) will be lost. There would need to be some reconciliation between the two lots of aircraft performance changes. If these things can be addressed then I would be more inclined to add Nik's mods, instead of just some of Nik's mods (which is the current plan).

Those are my opinions, anyway.

Andrew

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Andrew Brown

I am against any type of splintering of CHS.

- They have to be used with a house rule limiting bomber altitude. I hate such house rules.

Agree completely.

The other problem is that if you just swap out Nik's aircraft stats with the ones in CHS, a lot of improvements that have been added to CHS (mainly by Lemurs) will be lost. There would need to be some reconciliation between the two lots of aircraft performance changes.

Agree here also.

[TheElf]

So what is the answer? I personally will not invest the time in playing another stock Scenario 15 PBEM game. I'd like to wait for the CHS, or whatever mod becomes the primary mod that everyone plays, to mature to the point that a restart isn't desired. I'd like that Mod to be the CHS.

I may not have invested as much time in it as some other awesome people around here have, but it is the only mod I have invested in. I haven't spent the last 6 months researching the exact look of every airplane in the CHS database, correcting each plane for scale and theater only to never play the CHS.

I want all these great things to be in one place so I can play it, and I can find other people who want to play it with me. History was history after all so how much longer are we going to be modding the base OOB? When can we finally say "Ok, its done."? When it is adding in Nik's mod or PRY's mod should be a one time application, should it not?

I understand that there were a lot of changes to the CHS aircraft database, and that those were well thought out by Lemurs! with minor inputs from a lot of people, I was one of them. And I understand that those changes could conflict with any work of Nik's that we adopt. I don't want that either, but how do we do this? Lemurs! is MIA. Is anyone else familiar enough with the CHS aircraft tweaks that can work with Nik to adopt his A2A changes at least?

I just want to see the CHS succeed after all the work everyone has put into it. I wasn't a big part of the databasing and OOB work, just a very small part. What contributions I can make have been made, and I will continue to do art for the CHS.

Jeez, now that I have said all that, does anyone who cares have a solution here? Are we going to give up on making the CHS the best starting point we can make it?

[Ron Saueracker]

The only two types of CHS variant I'd like to see are a respawn and non-respawn. All else should be static for simplicity sake. I don't see a big deal when it comes to adoping Nik's A2A approach to CHS. Whatever Lemurs has done can be used as the start point for Nik's approach, can't it? Nik simply has reduced the accuracy of weapons and added to the durability and armor values. So this is done universally to the CHS data just as Nik applied it to the stock data. What is the big deal?[8D] Am I missing something here?

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker
...I don't see a big deal when it comes to adoping Nik's A2A approach to CHS. Whatever Lemurs has done can be used as the start point for Nik's approach, can't it? Nik simply has reduced the accuracy of weapons and added to the durability and armor values. So this is done universally to the CHS data just as Nik applied it to the stock data. What is the big deal?[8D] Am I missing something here?

The general changes, such as those to durability and accuracy are very easy to add. The only problem is with the individual aircraft stat changes. I don't know how much of a clash there would be between Nik's changes and Lemurs' ones. Perhaps there is little or no overlap between the two, and they can be integrated fairly easily. The reason I mention this, though, is that I think that the two sets of changes SHOULD be intelligently integrated, rather than just doing a swap-out, and such a job will take some time. If someone wants to review the individual changes Lemus and Nik have made, as well as the latest contributions by worr (P-47 and P-38), then we are most of the way there. Any volunteers?

Regarding the other thing I don't like about Nik's mods - the altitude limit house rule. I believe that this is a side-efefct of his changes to eliminate the so called "flak gap". Since this is still a contentious issue, perhaps his AA height/range value changes can be left out, so that this will not be an issue (at least for me) either. They could also be partially implemented - something I have considered looking at.

If these things are done, then I don't see any other major problem with adding his changes, at least from my personal viewpoint. I have already added the durability changes to CHS, and I tested them as well out of curiosity - they work fine, with a proportional decrease in air-to-air losses.

So this CAN be done. And yes, I would like to finish modding CHS as well. It always seems that the mods take ten times longer than originally thought, because they grow to encompass so many things. This update is a big one because of the Japanese OOB/TO&E changes. But I would not like to play CHS without them - up till now most of the attention has been given to the Allies, and it is about time we balanced that out a little.

Hopefully we can all enjoy some CHS PBEM fairly soon (anyone want to play the Japanese vs my Allies?).

Andrew

[jwilkerson]

the altitude limit house rule

Might be too radical for some "purists" but one idea would be to cap, in the game the altitude at 25,000 for everything - just "hard code" the house rule - in the data. It can certainly be done.

I'll admit I don't understand the reason for the house rule - so I'm just making a suggestion from the sidelines - which btw is actually one Scholl made way back when we were talking about Tony's and B17s and uber air battles ...


Also if this has anything to do with "eliminating the flak gap" then I'm not sure I agree with elimination of the flak gap. But of course that depends on exactly what we are talking about here - so we'd have to start by defining our terms. And this turns into a long discussion. So for now I'll just say - there is a way to force 25,000 max altitude, whether we want to do it may be another issue.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Exactly a point I argued and was hammered on in return months ago. Effective altitude instead of max altitude needs to be used for AA. For instance, the 40mm Bofors ammo auto destructed between 4500-5000 meters (US) horizontal at tracer burnout, thus even though the gun can theoritically shoot further, its ammo won't, unless one is shooting AP. Vertical range appears to be approx 75% of hrizontal. When a book I have on order on artillery and AA gun ballistics calculation arrives I will have a mathematical basis to calculate this.

It is very strange, but AAA is actually more effective in altitude than in range. IF a target is at great altitude, but not much range, getting a shell to a predicted future point on the target's course (assuming it stays on course) is not as hard as if the target is at low altitude, but longer range. At longer ranges, the shell actually rises above a direct line from gun to impact point, and then falls back to meet the line just at that point. Calculating this is not as easy as when you have a much shorter lateral range. In the extreme case - a strait up shot - there is zero lateral range - zero lateral movement of the target - and no calculation is required at all - any and every shot from the gun must and will hit the target at some point along its trajectory, provided only the target is not above the maximum altitude the gun can reach. The greater the horizontal range, and the greater the horizontal movement of the target (bearing drift), the more difficult the fire control problem becomes.

Even so, fire control is well understood, and it is possible to achieve first shot kills with AAA. My first ship had four gun mountings - 3 inch 50s in twin mountings - and the gunnery chief ran competitions between the mount crews - with rewards like liberty for the winning crew. He forbade shooting more than one round per tube - so he could tell for sure if your first shot was a hit - on the logic that "if you solved the fire control problem correctly the first shot SHOULD hit." In a typical shooting session it was NORMAL for ALL the mountings to hit on the first shot most of the time. We scored the misses to tell who won! Of course, those were very skilled crews, but it shows what can be done with what was basically WWII era predictors and fine AA guns. The ship was USS Francis Marion (APA-249) - the very last traditional APA ever built, by the way.

From what I understand and have observed the flight time of a shell decreases faster the more verticle it goes. Just examine the max altitude a gun can fire as opposed to the max horizontal range. There are significant differences. I did not say that the ability to hit anything changed, just that for the 40mm example there was a max range you could expect to hit anything simply because of the fusing/auto detonate feature and that that max range was shorter in the verticle than in the horizontal. AAA fire in WWII was more about disrupting and damaging aircraft than actually shooting them down, thus soft kills over hard kills. Only until the advent of the late war guided missile (i.e. kamikaze) did it become important to actually hard kill the target far enough away that it would miss even if it went ballistic (read dead pilot). Indeed it took quite a few rounds to shoot down an aircraft from AAA guns.

For major caliber AA guns the timed fuzed shells did not have an impact detonator. The fuze could be set from .8 to 30 seconds on .2 second intervals. Thus at the very least there will be a min range and a max range that the gun/shell combo will be effective, somewhere between a little more than .8 to 30 seconds of flight time! Thus what I want to figure is the distance a shell can go at various angles during the time this time. this will be the absolute max and min an air target can be engaged. Thus for insatnce if an aa gun had an inital velocity of 3000fps then the round would be a little further than 2400 feet before it could explode.

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

the altitude limit house rule

Might be too radical for some "purists" but one idea would be to cap, in the game the altitude at 25,000 for everything - just "hard code" the house rule - in the data. It can certainly be done.

I'll admit I don't understand the reason for the house rule - so I'm just making a suggestion from the sidelines - which btw is actually one Scholl made way back when we were talking about Tony's and B17s and uber air battles ...


Also if this has anything to do with "eliminating the flak gap" then I'm not sure I agree with elimination of the flak gap. But of course that depends on exactly what we are talking about here - so we'd have to start by defining our terms. And this turns into a long discussion. So for now I'll just say - there is a way to force 25,000 max altitude, whether we want to do it may be another issue.

You might have a point here. The B17 and B24 bombed from altitudes way below 30k (although above 20k) for several reasons. The primary was the lack of cabin pressurization that made it extremely difficult for adequate oxygen flow. The extreme cold temperature at altitides above 30k would cause high rates of mechanical and equipement failure as well as being well above the level of sustained human endurance. Finally, the fully laden bombers could not effeciently higher.

[jwilkerson]

Well I wasn't trying to justify it from a real world perspective - but just offering up a way to implement a house rule in the data. But yes there were certainly problems with flying at 30,000+ ...

[akdreemer]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

Well I wasn't trying to justify it from a real world perspective - but just offering up a way to implement a house rule in the data. But yes there were certainly problems with flying at 30,000+ ...

So are you saying that the lack of historical/real world data is a better reason to do something? I had not thought about the altitude limitation until I re-read some of the air war books and especially Westermann's book on German Flak, then it all made sense to me and it dawned on me that Nik had some veracity in the 25k limit, but for the wrong reasons.

[jwilkerson]

ORIGINAL: AlaskanWarrior

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

Well I wasn't trying to justify it from a real world perspective - but just offering up a way to implement a house rule in the data. But yes there were certainly problems with flying at 30,000+ ...

So are you saying that the lack of historical/real world data is a better reason to do something? I had not thought about the altitude limitation until I re-read some of the air war books and especially Westermann's book on German Flak, then it all made sense to me and it dawned on me that Nik had some veracity in the 25k limit, but for the wrong reasons.

Ha, ha - nope certainly not.

I have no idea why "they" want to do this. Andrew was opposed to some of Nik's changes because they required a house rule that limited bombing missions to ( under ) 25,000 feet. I was merely trying to propose a way to make it not be a house rule. Sometimes, unfortunately, we have to "curb" realilty to fit into the engine.

[TheElf]

I made the point in another thread today that I think it is silly anyone should be opposed to Nik's mandatory house rule as it relates to his AAA tweak. The plain fact is that most Heavy Bombers(notice I didn't say all) in the Pacific flew their missions at altitudes something less than 25K' anyway.

So essentially the arguement that the AAA tweak should not be incorporated could possibly deprive everyone of a tweak that is in fact a mostly good thing in order to give some the ability to do something that is mostly ahistorical. Ironic.

Besides, what will you accomplish by flying at 30,000 feet anyway that you can't accompish at 25K'?

I've already said that I don't have an opinion on Nik's AAA thing unless someone can make a good arguement for or against. Mostly because I haven't researched it. I DO think AAA is a little underpowered though. Most combat losses (not ops)in the Second world war were from AAA. That isn't the case in my game.

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: AlaskanWarrior
The B17 and B24 bombed from altitudes way below 30k (although above 20k) for several reasons. The primary was the lack of cabin pressurization that made it extremely difficult for adequate oxygen flow. The extreme cold temperature at altitides above 30k would cause high rates of mechanical and equipement failure as well as being well above the level of sustained human endurance. Finally, the fully laden bombers could not effeciently higher.

You make some good points. If it is true that in nearly all cases heavy bombers did not operate above the mid 20,000s of feet, then I would not be opposed to reducing their max altitude to these levels in the game (to "bend" reality as jwilkerson commented). I believe there were exceptions though, such as the B-29; were there any others? I am no expert on things to do with aircraft, so I am not sure.

Andrew

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: AlaskanWarrior
Exactly a point I argued and was hammered on in return months ago. Effective altitude instead of max altitude needs to be used for AA. For instance, the 40mm Bofors ammo auto destructed between 4500-5000 meters (US) horizontal at tracer burnout, thus even though the gun can theoritically shoot further, its ammo won't, unless one is shooting AP. Vertical range appears to be approx 75% of hrizontal. When a book I have on order on artillery and AA gun ballistics calculation arrives I will have a mathematical basis to calculate this.

If you do get around to revising the max AA altitudes, please let us know what changes you think should be made.

[el cid again]

Regarding the other thing I don't like about Nik's mods - the altitude limit house rule. I believe that this is a side-efefct of his changes to eliminate the so called "flak gap". Since this is still a contentious issue, perhaps his AA height/range value changes can be left out, so that this will not be an issue (at least for me) either. They could also be partially implemented - something I have considered looking at.

At the device level it looks to me like the AA situation is pretty awful. I see no altitude ratings for DP guns - and I do not see how they can function as AA guns without it - so I assume they do NOT function. THAT means (probably) ONLY dedicated AA guns act as AAA. Is there some sort of code reason that an AA gun cannot shoot at a surface target? If not, this can be fixed.

The other problem is that the engine may not be adjusting for effective range/altitude???? The actual values in the database were carefully done, and far better than for many data types - they seem to be from official tables - but they are MAXIMUM ratings - and that is often quite wrong. For example, some AA ammunition will self destruct at a certain distance (measured as time in AAA) - as a safety. [AAA is awful - almost all the damage done to Honolulu on Dec 7 1941 was from OUR AAA!!!] If the shells time out and explode while in the air, only the shrapnel comes down - and it is usually nothing like the explosive round going off! In any case, the chances of a hit beyond EFFECTIVE range/altitude is very low, and UNLESS that is modeled, you are going to be getting very ahistorical results. The Japanese bombers at Clark were 2000 to 4000 feet above the reach of US 75mm guns - and they were at 25000 feet. So UNLESS the game "knows" how to derive effective altitude from maximum altitude, it probably is making AAA way too effective.

There is also a strange anomoly in AAA. There is a gap - an altitude gap - between where heavy and light guns work well. Theoretically medium guns were to deal with that - but it turns out they didn't quite do it. Another strange anomoly is that LIGHT AAA is more effective against HEAVY bombers and HEAVY AAA is more effective against LIGHT bombers - but is that in the model??? I have never seen any trace of evidence it is. This latter is the only thing I don't think we can fix if it is not in the code. But the altitude gap - that we can fix.

[el cid again]

Might be too radical for some "purists" but one idea would be to cap, in the game the altitude at 25,000 for everything - just "hard code" the house rule - in the data. It can certainly be done.

I'll admit I don't understand the reason for the house rule - so I'm just making a suggestion from the sidelines - which btw is actually one Scholl made way back when we were talking about Tony's and B17s and uber air battles ...

I think this invalidates the model. Now I admit - I rarely go above 20,000 feet except to do recon. But I mostly play Japan. The Allies developed 40,000 foot bombers - and not to let them use them seems a bit pointless. Further, Japan fighters mostly cannot reach them - and that is exactly correct.

I do not understand the house rule either - there are good reasons to fly at lower altitudes - and players who don't will self penalize. But there are also good reasons to fly some planes up high - and the air combat model is very very good at dealing with top cover. So why the rule? What is the problem it attempts to fix???

[el cid again]

From what I understand and have observed the flight time of a shell decreases faster the more verticle it goes. Just examine the max altitude a gun can fire as opposed to the max horizontal range. There are significant differences. I did not say that the ability to hit anything changed, just that for the 40mm example there was a max range you could expect to hit anything simply because of the fusing/auto detonate feature and that that max range was shorter in the verticle than in the horizontal. AAA fire in WWII was more about disrupting and damaging aircraft than actually shooting them down, thus soft kills over hard kills. Only until the advent of the late war guided missile (i.e. kamikaze) did it become important to actually hard kill the target far enough away that it would miss even if it went ballistic (read dead pilot). Indeed it took quite a few rounds to shoot down an aircraft from AAA guns.

The acceleration due to gravity is constant - so UNLESS you run into the ground (i.e. you shoot horizontally and have little room to fall) your time in the air is pretty constant - at least for shots above 45 degrees. Gravity is not any more or less effective because of the angle of your shot.

It is true that light AAA is a "revenge weapon" - even if it kills the target it does not save you - the target got to release his weapon(s). And it is also true that AAA was a major contributor to attrition - but attrition warfare is notoriously inefficient. I prefer AAA as a direct strategy rather than as a cumulative one - and I was trained by USN to set it up to actually defend the target rather than just impose a mild cost in damage on the enemy. It is easier to do this with AAA than with fighters - and Japan was good at it. The majority of planes we lost to the enemy were due to AAA. Japan had simulators - sort of planetariums - for AAA gunners BEFORE the war - something we never even thought of. Japan developed some special guns too - we just found two eight inch singles at Singapore a couple years ago - nasty enough that our bombers avoided them - but they were long forgotten - and are not modeled anywhere I know of. A similar situation existed at several points in Japan - one of them defended by eight inch - and two or three others by six inch. Fortunately, the war ended before these systems came into wide use. But the best of all Japanese guns - the new 100mm / 60 - WAS in widespread use ashore. There was also a Japanese gun very like our post war 3 inch / 50 - only fortunately they didn't use it very much - because it was available EARLY in the war. [It appears on one cruiser type and was planned for the Ibuki carrier mod]. A good three inch long gun is able to bridge the "AAA gap" - and you do not need medium guns any more!

I was a USN AAW specialist, and I got to see some exotic air defenses in Viet Nam. They included pattern shots - taken when they could not aim at the target. As late as the 1982 Falklands war .30 cal guns were found useful in AAA too.

[el cid again]

You make some good points. If it is true that in nearly all cases heavy bombers did not operate above the mid 20,000s of feet, then I would not be opposed to reducing their max altitude to these levels in the game (to "bend" reality as jwilkerson commented). I believe there were exceptions though, such as the B-29; were there any others? I am no expert on things to do with aircraft, so I am not sure.

The B-29 was a principle exception - although it turned out to be more effective at low level - and unarmed! But there was more than one reason for not operating too high. For example, accuracy decreases as altitude increases. Another issue is clouds. It is not modeled well by WITP code, but 85% of Japan is socked in at any given time. It rendered our bombing concepts almost worthless - a Norden bombsight cannot help if you cannot see the target! Altitude DOES cause problems with oxygen and cold - above 10,000 feet US airmen were supposed to use oxygen. This is not always practical, depending on what you are trying to do! So there are compromises. Airmen had clothing for the cold - usually wool lined - and sailors will tell you wool is very good at dealing with cold. Another factor is fighters - they have a hard time getting to 20,000 feet fast - and often lose performance over a certain altitude. Once you are at a level the fighters either cannot reach, or must reach as nice slow targets, you don't need to go higher to gain an advantage!

[el cid again]

Besides, what will you accomplish by flying at 30,000 feet anyway that you can't accompish at 25K'?

I find that recon at 30,000 feet - sometimes I go a bit higher - I hate to be predictable - means almost certain survival for the recon planes.

I also find that there is no altitude above which top cover is not a good idea. That is, if the enemy fighers are at 15,000 feet I come in at 19,000 feet. If they are at 25,000 feet, I come in at 29,000 feet. [Not with everything - I put others at lower altitudes too - but I do MUCH better if SOME of my planes are 2-4000 feet above enemy highest - and there is NO limit to the altitude at which this is true]. I don't think this is ahistorical either.

I note that some planes are penalized in performace above certain altitudes - and I LIKE that. I think the idea of limiting missions to 25,000 feet is ahistorical, arbitrary, tactically unsound, and it might prevent the enemy from doing dumb things. [I usually cheer when AI or an enemy player comes in to bomb at 18,000 feet or above - I am not going to get hurt very bad - they want to come in high - let em.]

There are three classes of things you accomplish at high altitude:

1) You survive. That is never bad. You can forget about AAA as a serious issue and you mostly are not going to have a big problem with fighters either.

2) You gain advantages in air combat. That is not bad if there is air combat.

3) You confuse the enemy about where to put his fighters. And confusing the enemy is never a bad thing to do either.