High Altitude Sweep Rant

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

ORIGINAL: herwin

@TheElf


2. Look down with eyeballs is even less effective than look down with radar. Eyeballs can't pick up doppler. Sure, you can see canopy glint, but only at specific positions relative to the sun and without cloud cover.

According to Fire in the Sky and other works I'm sure, trained pilots had a knack for detecting the slightest movements some even at great distances.

There's an extensive literature on visual perception. It's nowhere near as good as you think, despite retinal mechanisms producing hyper-acuity. The biggest problem is that good vision is limited to an apex angle of about 15 degrees. To get broader coverage, the eye moves in saccades 5-50 times a second. To ensure that retinal neurones don't fatigue--which they do rapidly--the eye also vibrates from side to side a small amount at about 50 Hz. In operations research studies, we model visual target acquisition as 30 glimpses a second, each with an apex angle of 15 degrees. That's about 0.4% of the sphere around the observer 30 times a second. Head movements occur if the gaze shift is greater than about 20 degrees. To detect motion you have to be looking at it when it moves, and the motion during the fixation has to be large enough that the image moves on the retina. Motion against a non-co-moving background is detected by fixating on the background and observing the image movement.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: TheElf

ORIGINAL: herwin

Historically in WWII, a sweep consisted of two elements, one offensive and one defensive. An element on the deck was offensively tasked with attacking bases and aircraft launching and landing. A second element at altitude was defending the low element from enemy aircraft at medium altitude using energy tactics. Think of a correctly organised sweep as a sandwich with no filling--the middle of the air was a dangerous place to be.

this is a generalization. And as far as AE is concerned completely inaccurate.

The problem with your quoting Shaw is that you misinterpret what he is saying in several ways.

1. You state that "A Sweep consisted of one offensive and one defensive elements". This is not true. It may have been a variation of a sweep or bait tactic for a sweep, but even Shaw isn't saying THAT. Shaw said that a Sweep is offensive by it's nature owing to the offensive nature of the fighter. That means at the tactical level it is purely offensive. Operationally it may be used for defensive purposes, such as securing temporary air superiority against an enemy offensive so that ground forces may hold off an enemy or withdraw and consolidate.

2. You state that "Think of a correctly organised sweep as a sandwich with no filling--the middle of the air was a dangerous place to be.". Your generalization of Shaw here is not "correct" here either. Shaw was specifically describing a sweep over a land battle where Air superiority was desired for either and Offensive or a Defensive. The REASON he suggests high and low elements, specific to this situation was that hi-value targets such as enemy fighter/dive bombers were likely to be found at lower levels over the battle field. The High elements were to be in place in the event enemy Fighters were encountered so as to cover the lower elements. In both cases the high and low elements were offensive in nature, though offered mutual protection.

A sweep by design in it's purest form is an offensive tactic intended to maximize the offensive potential of the fighter over enemy Airspace to further the goals of the Commander. Simply to destroy enemy air power. Offensive fighter power is best utilized when approaching the enemy force with superior numbers, superior altitude, or superior SA (surprise). Only the latter (surprise) implies low altitude. Low altitude sweeps are useful when radar hampers effective high altitude sweeps or when the intent of the sweep is to hit the enemy during routine operations early in the day or during a typical recovery window after a large raid.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

ORIGINAL: herwin

@TheElf


2. Look down with eyeballs is even less effective than look down with radar. Eyeballs can't pick up doppler. Sure, you can see canopy glint, but only at specific positions relative to the sun and without cloud cover.

According to Fire in the Sky and other works I'm sure, trained pilots had a knack for detecting the slightest movements some even at great distances.

There's an extensive literature on visual perception. It's nowhere near as good as you think, despite retinal mechanisms producing hyper-acuity. The biggest problem is that good vision is limited to an apex angle of about 15 degrees. To get broader coverage, the eye moves in saccades 5-50 times a second. To ensure that retinal neurones don't fatigue--which they do rapidly--the eye also vibrates from side to side a small amount at about 50 Hz. In operations research studies, we model visual target acquisition as 30 glimpses a second, each with an apex angle of 15 degrees. That's about 0.4% of the sphere around the observer 30 times a second. Head movements occur if the gaze shift is greater than about 20 degrees. To detect motion you have to be looking at it when it moves, and the motion during the fixation has to be large enough that the image moves on the retina. Motion against a non-co-moving background is detected by fixating on the background and observing the image movement.

Holy crap...

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

ORIGINAL: herwin

@TheElf


2. Look down with eyeballs is even less effective than look down with radar. Eyeballs can't pick up doppler. Sure, you can see canopy glint, but only at specific positions relative to the sun and without cloud cover.

According to Fire in the Sky and other works I'm sure, trained pilots had a knack for detecting the slightest movements some even at great distances.

There's an extensive literature on visual perception. It's nowhere near as good as you think, despite retinal mechanisms producing hyper-acuity. The biggest problem is that good vision is limited to an apex angle of about 15 degrees. To get broader coverage, the eye moves in saccades 5-50 times a second. To ensure that retinal neurones don't fatigue--which they do rapidly--the eye also vibrates from side to side a small amount at about 50 Hz. In operations research studies, we model visual target acquisition as 30 glimpses a second, each with an apex angle of 15 degrees. That's about 0.4% of the sphere around the observer 30 times a second. Head movements occur if the gaze shift is greater than about 20 degrees. To detect motion you have to be looking at it when it moves, and the motion during the fixation has to be large enough that the image moves on the retina. Motion against a non-co-moving background is detected by fixating on the background and observing the image movement.

Harry,
Have you ever seen an airplane flying in the sky? Seriously...

[Terminus]

Of course he hasn't. He's only written it down in a notebook he's since displaced...[8|]

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

excellent explanation. The problem (if you want to call it problem) in the game is that you can reverse this result easily with using the exact same two units but have the Zeroes 50ft higher than the Hurricanes. 20:0 kill rates aren´t the norm, but having my P-38 constantly achieving something like 10:1 is the norm for me. I guess with the Zeroes 50ft higher than the Hurricanes you wouldn´t get a 20:0 for the Zeroes but the difference to the 20:0 for the Hurricanes would be enormous. I would bet the Zeroes would come out as the winner.

So you are saying it is problematic for one side to be victorious on one turn then suffer a defeat on the next?

And that is the problem with the game. The real life explanation is a nice read and surely correct, applied to the game... well, a better advise would be to say: "just get your fighters 50ft higher than your enemies". But it´s like you´ve said, it´s gaming the system. But the main reason for the 20:0 was the dive. My P-38 at best get a 1:1 against Tojos, Zekes, Oscars, Tonies, Jacks if you don´t get the dive, with the dive, say good bye to the Japanese. And yes, give the Tojos, Zekes, Oscars,... the dive and say good bye to the P-38.

It's gaming the system because everyone knows that none of these Aircraft routinely flew at the max ceiling. If you do it, and you achieve the sort of results you are seeing you should immediately take a shower because you are the problem and you should feel dirty. You are demanding historically accurate results from a tactic that was not historical. YOU and your OPPONENT have the power to be reasonable about employing your Air Forces. And when you don't you blame the code. Well, the code was written to replicate real world Air combat in WWII in 3 dimensions as closely as we could in the time and within the scope we were given. What you have now is the result of that. The funny thing is I have posted many ways to play within the code, within reason, and I continue to see the same people raise the same complaints about their OWN gameplay. I have no control over your gameplay.

One more thing is of course to say it´s gaming the system while on the other hand to say it´s working and giving a real life explanation. Not all but a hell a lot people ended up in the spiral going up and up and up and up until everyone ended up at the fighters ceiling because these people thought the dive is all they want. So it seems there must be something behind the dive being so powerful (uber IMO when you change a 10:1 into a 1:1 for example). And most often you get the never ending dive, which is what leads to these massacres. No problem with a bounce when higher fighters take out two or three suprised enemies, taking out whole squadrons with a never ending dive seems a bit out of whack.

When flown using reasonable/historical altitudes, or if you are ignorant of this aspect of Air combat, at altitudes approximating an Aircraft's critical altitude, the code will give you the results you are looking for. One of you will still get an advantage, and the other will have to stack up as many pluses in the plus category, and as few Minuses in the minus category to overcome the initial advantages of each engagement. Pretty simple.

If you can get permission for me to explore coding the ignorance out of players, by all means have Joe contact me...[:D]

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Of course he hasn't. He's only written it down in a notebook he's since displaced...[8|]

I only ask because I have. And even without a contrail. While Harry is right that look up can be easier than look down, to say that on a VFR day finding an enemy formation (as most air forces were prone to operate in) is impossible or even difficult to detect from 30k' is by no means accurate. There are environmental factors that affect both, sure. Is it hard to get tally of a single green and brown painted betty over a Jungle canopy at dusk, with 95% humidity and a setting sun casting long shadows from low hanging scattered towering cumulonimbus clouds? Sure.

But Getting tally of that same betty over a harbour or approaching a TF over blue water on a crisp morning is easy. Throw in some white caps and paint it white, maybe a little harder, but whatever.

Formations are easier to detect, particularly if you have a trained eye, and you have planned your mission and are familiar with local operations and have trended out typical enemy routines. Perhaps you sweep the Same AF complex over the course of a week and have spotters reporting intel on typical enemy routines. you are going to know where to look, and barring an overcast or even a thick broken layer between you and the enemy you CAN spot them.

I have personally detected a single F-16 at 20 miles against a hazy desert background. Did I do that all the time, no. But I did it. There were things working my favor. I knew where to look, and the environmental conditions (Dry Arid air, Haze was low level target was above the haze) at the time were helpful.

[Terminus]

I know, Ian. Even a died-in-the-wool Army puke like me knows enough to know that...

[vicberg]

Elf,

Let's bring this back to game mechanics...this is a game and the air component is not a combat simulation. I have one question: Is there a chance that the defender can evade the bounce either via plane manuverability and/or pilot quality? If so, then the results are fine by me.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: vicberg

Elf,

Let's bring this back to game mechanics...this is a game and the air component is not a combat simulation. I have one question: Is there a chance that the defender can evade the bounce either via plane manuverability and/or pilot quality? If so, then the results are fine by me.

yes there is. And a myriad of factors can also lead to a reversal of fortune. A savvy leader with an experienced unit and some other superior factors (MVR, Speed, Radar) might turn a bad initial position into a kill. It just depends.

[tigercub]

i just hope that experienced is the most inportant factor in air combat!

Tigercub!

[Sardaukar]

ORIGINAL: vicberg

Elf,

Let's bring this back to game mechanics...this is a game and the air component is not a combat simulation. I have one question: Is there a chance that the defender can evade the bounce either via plane manuverability and/or pilot quality? If so, then the results are fine by me.

Yes, I have tested it a bit. Especially pilot experience can do wonders. When I increased pilot experience of unit in altitude disadvantage, they started to win more than lose. And as The Elf said, there are lots of other factors, pilot skills, planes, leaders, etc.

[jomni]

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar
Yes, I have tested it a bit. Especially pilot experience can do wonders. When I increased pilot experience of unit in altitude disadvantage, they started to win more than lose. And as The Elf said, there are lots of other factors, pilot skills, planes, leaders, etc.

Good to hear.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: herwin
OK, I see your issue.

no.....actually you don't. Its one thing to debate history, quite another to try to tell a professional his business. A military man, retired or current does not make him or her a history expert by default, but trying to lecture Ian on the nuts and bolts of fighter combat is akin to me trying to tell a career Fire Fighter how best to tackle a blaze in a four story building. Oh but i read a book........ [8|]

So please raise the level of discourse. I rely on Shaw since he's consistent with other sources, many of which I no longer have access to. Criticise his model of sweeps and his discussion of altitude management in WWII.

There is no need as Ian hit the nail on the hand quite succinctly..... which was that your view was very generalistic and therefore not applicible in a wide swath of situations. You cemented this further by your admission that these "other sources" have been divorced from you for quite some time, leaving you "relying on Shaw" as you put it.....aka sounding like a man who recently read a singular book on the subject, making very generalistic declarations in an authoritive manner.


I stand by what i said. You need to read more books on the subject of WWII air combat.

[crsutton]

ORIGINAL: vicberg

Elf,

Let's bring this back to game mechanics...this is a game and the air component is not a combat simulation. I have one question: Is there a chance that the defender can evade the bounce either via plane manuverability and/or pilot quality? If so, then the results are fine by me.

I recently had about 20 corsairs tangle with about 30 sweeping zeros. I accidently set the corsairs to 10,000 ft instead of the agreed upon 29,000 cap that my opponent and I had agreed to. Many times when a zero dived, the corsair (a far superior plane) evaded. I suppose that the superior speed was a factor. So yes, there are factors that will get a superior plane out of trouble. However, the zeros kept diving, and diving and diving. In the end it was a fairly even battle with both sides losing about three or four planes. The constantly diving zeros vs the better corsair. I have no doubt that if it was a flight of P40s at 10,000 ft my losses would have been severe.

After a year of play and about 600 turns I can say that the air mechanics work very well-exceptionally well. It is really a beautiful design and is miles ahead of WITP. So much that I doubt I could go back to WITP. That said, there is only one real flaw that I can see. And that is the dive. It is not wrong or bad. It just happens too much and throws all other aspects of the air game totally out of whack. Personally I think that if there was a fix for it, then vitually all other aspects of the air game will fall neatly into place.

As an example, right now I find the Allied medium bombers virtually useless. The problem is of course the height advantage of the CAP and the dive. To escort medium bombers now means death for the escorts and a good lot of the bombers. (perpetual dive) The only choice is to not escort and that of course means death to bombers. To be fair all Japanese bombers are in the exact same boat. If I decided to fly my bombers and escorts at 29,000 feet then the problem would be mitigated but of course I would not be hitting many targets.

The air war is almost perfect but the effect of the killer dive makes it almost completely wrong. Nerf the dive a bit and I don't think there will be much to complain about. My two cents.

[Sardaukar]

I have reduced fighters in escort quite drastically and use Sweep instead. In theory, this would go in first and reduce CAP so that bombers can get through. Sometimes it even works. [:D] LoBaron made this excellent air-coordination guide, which helps go get them actually to sweep ahead of bombers. This is often lot more effective than close escort. And you can have Escort too, they have lot better odds vs. reduced CAP.

[Rainer79]

ORIGINAL: crsutton
And that is the dive. It is not wrong or bad. It just happens too much and throws all other aspects of the air game totally out of whack. Personally I think that if there was a fix for it, then vitually all other aspects of the air game will fall neatly into place.

I totally agree (and thanks for posting this far more eloquently than I ever could). Kill rates after the dive phase is over are a lot better - only there doesn't tend to be much left on the lower side before that happens.

And I would like to third the request to Elf on a suggestion for a reasonable house rule to ameliorate this issue.

[LoBaron]

Strange thing that this type of discussion repeat itself every few months. [:D]


Just for those who don´t know Sardaukars tests, my old buried thread somewhere in the war room or like a summary
for what you can do against sweeps that come in high or what impacts fighter/fighter combat:

A single combat result does not tell you anything as long as you don´t view it in context of other combats or
draw the right conclusions from it. High losses against a sweeper can mean you got a bad day and the dice was against you.

THINK whom you are fighting against and what he will try to implement to maximize his results. And then do it also. There is
no single winning attribute to fighters, but if you know how to max every factor you can turn your fighter squad into this single winning
attribute. There are limited but numerous ammounts of things to consider, which basically are:

1) Number of planes. Naturally the more the better. Just don´t forget that there are points of diminishing return.

2) Airframe type. There are dedicated high altitude fighters, dedicated turn fighters, interceptors, escort fighters, different armaments, some multi purpose planes.
Read the plane stats. Or read books on the planes. Its easy to find out which is which with a bit of training. Use the types in their dedicated rolls for best success.

3) When on defensive: have radar available, try to work with mutually supporting bases, set the units for mission patterns that enable you to fight another day...

4) When on CAP: use split CAP techniques. Draw the sweepers down to You Favourit Alt and hit em with a small hammer from above if possible.

5) Get a training programme running that focuses on A2A, defensive AND Exp improvement. If you are outclassed by the driver and stay outclassed you
should only fight in concert with 1)

6) Get your high skill leaders into the frontline units. Leader dice rolls can have major impact on the battles.

7) If you think you will conctantly be outclassed and outnumbered: pull back. There is no such situation where stay and fight shows a brighter future than pulling
back except if you can´t or have to buy time to redistribute your forces.

8) If you have the numbers available and still lose, try to find the factors that could have negatively impacted the fight and change them. If you don´t find any, look harder.
If you still don´t find any, consider things you don´t see (like enemy pilot skill)

9) Try to make life hard for the attacker yourself. Sweep him, bomb him, hurt his supply lines.


TheElf did wonders with the old combat engine. Gaming the system is possible but even then the final outcome and the tendencies shown in the real war are reflected by the results
on the long run.

[herwin]

OK, to finish the material on visual perception. The fovea is about 100 cones across, or about 7 cones per degree. It perceives about 15 degrees or 1/4 radian. A WWII carrier aircraft was about 50 feet across or about 1/100 radian at one mile and flew at about 250 ft/sec or 1/20 radian per second at one mile. So a carrier aircraft subtended four cones at a mile and crossed 20 cones per second. A single glimpse of 1/30 second would see the plane move about 2/3 of a cone, which is noticeable.

At 5 miles (25000 feet), a carrier aircraft subtended 4/5th of a cone cell on the average and moved about 4/30th of a cone cell. That wasn't noticeable unless the eye was cued to look at and fixate on the image, perhaps by it being silhouetted against the sky. Looking down, good luck. Meanwhile, the eye was not looking at the remaining 99.2% of the visible hemisphere. Target detection and acquisition was a bear.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: TheElf

ORIGINAL: castor troy

excellent explanation. The problem (if you want to call it problem) in the game is that you can reverse this result easily with using the exact same two units but have the Zeroes 50ft higher than the Hurricanes. 20:0 kill rates aren´t the norm, but having my P-38 constantly achieving something like 10:1 is the norm for me. I guess with the Zeroes 50ft higher than the Hurricanes you wouldn´t get a 20:0 for the Zeroes but the difference to the 20:0 for the Hurricanes would be enormous. I would bet the Zeroes would come out as the winner.

So you are saying it is problematic for one side to be victorious on one turn then suffer a defeat on the next?

And that is the problem with the game. The real life explanation is a nice read and surely correct, applied to the game... well, a better advise would be to say: "just get your fighters 50ft higher than your enemies". But it´s like you´ve said, it´s gaming the system. But the main reason for the 20:0 was the dive. My P-38 at best get a 1:1 against Tojos, Zekes, Oscars, Tonies, Jacks if you don´t get the dive, with the dive, say good bye to the Japanese. And yes, give the Tojos, Zekes, Oscars,... the dive and say good bye to the P-38.

It's gaming the system because everyone knows that none of these Aircraft routinely flew at the max ceiling. If you do it, and you achieve the sort of results you are seeing you should immediately take a shower because you are the problem and you should feel dirty. You are demanding historically accurate results from a tactic that was not historical. YOU and your OPPONENT have the power to be reasonable about employing your Air Forces. And when you don't you blame the code. Well, the code was written to replicate real world Air combat in WWII in 3 dimensions as closely as we could in the time and within the scope we were given. What you have now is the result of that. The funny thing is I have posted many ways to play within the code, within reason, and I continue to see the same people raise the same complaints about their OWN gameplay. I have no control over your gameplay.

One more thing is of course to say it´s gaming the system while on the other hand to say it´s working and giving a real life explanation. Not all but a hell a lot people ended up in the spiral going up and up and up and up until everyone ended up at the fighters ceiling because these people thought the dive is all they want. So it seems there must be something behind the dive being so powerful (uber IMO when you change a 10:1 into a 1:1 for example). And most often you get the never ending dive, which is what leads to these massacres. No problem with a bounce when higher fighters take out two or three suprised enemies, taking out whole squadrons with a never ending dive seems a bit out of whack.

When flown using reasonable/historical altitudes, or if you are ignorant of this aspect of Air combat, at altitudes approximating an Aircraft's critical altitude, the code will give you the results you are looking for. One of you will still get an advantage, and the other will have to stack up as many pluses in the plus category, and as few Minuses in the minus category to overcome the initial advantages of each engagement. Pretty simple.

If you can get permission for me to explore coding the ignorance out of players, by all means have Joe contact me...[:D]

there is no historical accuracy either when you use the aircraft at historical alts because, like mentioned 127 times already, give one side a 50ft alt advantage and see them getting the never ending dive of 20 vs 15 aircraft and you get the same result from an engagement of aircraft at 10,000ft and 10,050ft like you get at 36,000ft and 36,050ft.

As you migth know, 99% of the players started at "reasonable" alts. Now they promptly found out "hey, all I need is to fly 10ft higher than the enemy". I would be glad to hear a house rule that limits one player to alt x and the other to x +10ft. The x+10ft wins and I guess you surely couldn´t say that if x alt was reasonable, x+10 FEET wouldn´t. It´s not the ignorance of players, it´s ignorance of a dev to take a couple of hours, actually fire up the game and look at what happens when one side got a 50ft, 100ft, 1000ft, 30000ft alt advantage. You would then soon find out that there is no difference (with "no" being an exegaration), all you need is an alt ADVANTAGE. And if you think that it would be ok to first see side A to win 10:0 due to 100ft alt advantage and the next time see side B to win 10:0 due to a 100ft alt advantage and you notice over time that the main reason for it are the 100ft (or whatever height) then I can´t help you anyway, no matter if a pilot or not. If you do that a couple of hundred times then (like people PLAYING (or testing???) the game) then you could also see that all the coding is nice, but the end result is the same, all you want to have is an alt advantage and that´s starting at 10ft. Of course we can keep on saying everything is fine for months, like we did with the "pre Cap flak threads". Ok, there came a patch that said there was an error. Oh well, how many posts and insults have been done on that one as all the complainers were called and the routine would be wad and working very well? Glad the attack bomber bug was nailed down in no time, otherwise we could discuss that one too until the 22 century. The bug was nailed, lets look at the design after the patch.