High Altitude Sweep Rant

[LoBaron]

Thats BS. [;)]

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: 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.

Unfortunately, there are very few. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when I was doing relevant systems analysis, I read most of the available literature and reports. If you look at the professional simulation codes of the time, you'll discover the models in AE are a great improvement.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: 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.

that´s true. Experience is a very important factor. I ran a couple of dozen turns with a test game when I wanted to test coordination results. With the normal experiences you´ve got in your PBEMs you end up with the coordination you are used to. Gave my replacement pilots experiences of 75+ and thought I would be watching a WITP replay in terms of coordination. Weeks later I took the same save to go on trying to figure out some things in fighter vs fighter (means sweeps vs Cap) and saw completely different results than in my PBEM and AI game. Heck, I thought that was great until I realized that was the scen with the super high experienced pilots. Now I´ve looked at my ongoing PBEM and found out that bomber pilots with more than 200 missions still lurked around in the low to mid 60, PBY pilots with 400 missions haven´t reached 70 and some fighter pilots that started out really high and got 10+ kills were above 70 but you could count them on two hands.

So in a PBEM (and it shouldn´t be much different in an AI game) you just won´t get your pilots into exp levels needed to see them actually matter it seems. Don´t know how many bombing runs a bomber crew needs to reach 75, it seems 200 are not enough. And it´s a bit hard to have all your fighter pilots with 25 kills to have "decent" experience. Experience and def skill works! You can get def skill to 70 with training, no problem at all. Getting a skill 70 trained pilot with 45 experience to the needed 75 is like lottery.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Thats BS. [;)]

it definetely is BS, but I guess that would be a personal insult, at least it could be interpreted by the official member of the gun club that way if you call the design BS.

mhm, like most of what is said here and in the other threads I have plastered my walls with in my "laugh my ass off room". When I look at the posts about pre Cap flak that was borked while "some" people insisted how well it is designed and how well it was working. Thanks to michaelm to have caught yet another bug. But I´m beating a dead horse here, eh? You sure want to read your comments or some "official" comments in these threads. I guess the one post of michaelm in the techforum about it being bugged must have put a nice colour in some users´ faces. But hey, that´s the internet, noone could see you. [:'(]

Everytime such a thread like this one here pops up I am thinking about: pre Cap flak... pre Cap flak... pre Cap flak... pre Cap flak... and every single time it puts a smile on my face... would that be your Compiegne? [:D]

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: 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.

what he says...

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: 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.

I bet we both wouldn´t have much of a complaint in our game if we only would have results without the dive.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: 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.

Sorry CT. Just thought it wouldn´t be neccesary to go into detail of what exactly is BS on your post.
To avoid misunderstandings I highlighted the sensational BS, the rest is just wrong conclusions from
the sensational stuff... [:D]

You know what? You´re a funny guy.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: 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.

Thanks for the response. I hear echoes of USAF Air Doctrine. My background was primarily USMC with some USN fleet air defense. Doctrine is good--military forces fight according to doctrine, but different air forces have different doctrines. The USMC was (and I suppose still is) a close support airforce, with interdiction and offensive sweep missions not high priority.

I find myself on the right wing of my research community because I insist that the details matter and understanding the details is needed before, rather than after more strategic analysis. On the other hand, the details can't be understood except in the context of some theory. So I am constantly building ramshackle theories and working out ways of testing them. According to WWII OR studies, the Japanese controlled the engagement in the South Pacific during 1942-43. They were on the defensive, and unless they were willing to fly, there was no fight. According to various sources, they were willing to fly to defend their bases, to engage high value ship targets, and to support the land battle. That meant we had air superiority except where they were willing to challenge us. To destroy their air power, we had to engage them over the battlefield (LRCAP against ground support, I suppose) and over their bases (sweeps against CAP in game terms). The stratosphere tactics we see players using in the game were apparently not a good match to the situation. That suggests the theory we are using to understand what was happening is deficient in some way.

You're right--I'm oversimplifying--but most of the engagements in 1942-43 we're trying to model with a sweep were low altitude. I suppose high altitude sweeps will come into their own in 1944-45, but historically that's because the details changed and the details mattered. In 1944-45, Japanese interceptors had to climb to intercept the heavy bombers, and the P-51D came into its own, but in 1942-43 we see a low-altitude ground support and base attack war with the defenders trying to protect assets on the ground from low altitude attack. At 25,000 feet, you can't even see the aircraft you're trying to defend against!

So does the game have the mechanisms to encourage operations at the appropriate altitude during the appropriate period, or do we need to use house rules?

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: JWE

ORIGINAL: herwin
Care to raise the level of discourse a bit?

I hope I will be able to do so. You have my email, in any case.

Reading books and trolling the internet does not signify. Now you are supposed to be an expert and understand all this stuff, so I have to go to sailboat design. Hydrodynamics and aerodynamics differ by Reynolds numbers, but the physics (and the mechanics) is basically the same, in broad. Think you have gotten tangled up in your internet shorts and have lost sight of practicality.

Just think about the America’s Cup boat, Mariner. Brit Chance knows more about dynamics than I do, or you ever will, but it bit the big willy. Then off to Schnackenberg and Ooassenen that understood some of the old NACA shapes. And if you really want to get gnarly, how about Gregor Dimitrovich Simchij? Worked for Mikoyan Gurevich and developed a really cool rig for Galitsyn when he won the Olympics.

No, don’t think your books, or your internet sites, tell the story. Think you should do the Spanish thing and leave the ring.

OK.

I suspect underlying this whole thing is USAF versus USMC air doctrine. Perhaps we can bring in Soviet military doctrine, too!

Cheers,

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: TheElf




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



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.



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.

Sorry CT. Just thought it wouldn´t be neccesary to go into detail of what exactly is BS on your post.
To avoid misunderstandings I highlighted the sensational BS, the rest is just wrong conclusions from
the sensational stuff... [:D]

You know what? You´re a funny guy.

hope you´re never going to be any tester for anything. you would be a great novel writer though... fairy tales for 1-3yo by LoBaron. guess there would also be a chance to do a command & conquer manual. unfortunetely, you aren´t funny [:(]

we also could discuss the now working pre Cap flak, that would be fun for sure... or you can just ignore it...

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: castor troy
hope you´re never going to be any tester for anything. you would be a great novel writer though... fairy tales for 1-3yo by LoBaron. guess there would also be a chance to do a command & conquer manual. unfortunetely, you aren´t funny [:(]

we also could discuss the now working pre Cap flak, that would be fun for sure... or you can just ignore it...

Ok, just in case I have missed your point: So if I write fairy tails for 3 year olds or a command & conquer manual
this makes your op less BS? Or are we now discussing out of context? [:)]

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

ORIGINAL: castor troy
hope you´re never going to be any tester for anything. you would be a great novel writer though... fairy tales for 1-3yo by LoBaron. guess there would also be a chance to do a command & conquer manual. unfortunetely, you aren´t funny [:(]

we also could discuss the now working pre Cap flak, that would be fun for sure... or you can just ignore it...

Ok, just in case I have missed your point: So if I write fairy tails for 3 year olds or a command & conquer manual
this makes your op less BS? Or are we now discussing out of context? [:)]

we are always out of context because what you write here and sell as gospel is not what the game is doing. Same as the pre flak gospel BS and that was proved wrong by michaelm who got the balls to actually say "ok, here is something wrong". YOU never miss the point and are spot on. [&o] That´s why michaelm is around, to actually look at what is happening if people provide him with saves to look at. And he obviously also doesn´t refrain from saying something is wrong if another dev insists on "it´s wad". I of course agree that in the dive or sweep issue (however you want to call it) it´s not a bug, it´s the design and noone here on the forum will ever get tired to say "it´s right" or "it´s wrong". You may not believe it, but I´ve ever been fine with it since the day I saw the statement "it´s an exploit and people are gaming the system". That´s it for me as this is telling me, there is something wrong.

how often do you think has my opponent changed his fighters´ altitude to all possible combinations? Hundreds of times. I did the same. You sure think it would have helped him against 39-42000ft sweeps? No, but hey, we all agreed that this is gaming the system. All you can do is agree on everyone on the same alt and then the one who gets radar help or has plain luck ends up a couple of feet higher which is going to be enouh. Tojo vs Corsair is a good example, the Corsair can go a couple of feet higher... that´s enough for the dive.

[Yakface]

ORIGINAL: Yakface

ORIGINAL: TheElf

ORIGINAL: mbatch729

Ok, been away from the forums for a while, but understand from my opponent that there is debate going on about high altitude sweeps. Below is a typical result from our game. And even though the results say 12 lost, it was actually 20. His high altitude sweeps are KILLING my fighters. The below group average experience was 77. I've had similar results against groups that have 85-90 experience. Plenty of air support/supplies/etc at the bases. I'm to the point of grounding all my fighters. No point in putting up CAP...

Morning Air attack on Magwe , at 57,47
Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 38 NM, estimated altitude 39,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 9 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 21
Allied aircraft
Hurricane IIb Trop x 16
Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 12 destroyed
Aircraft Attacking:
6 x Hurricane IIb Trop sweeping at 36000 feet *
CAP engaged:
Kanoya Ku S-1 with A6M2 Zero (21 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
21 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 32810
Raid is overhead

yup, your opponent is gamin the system.

Firstly, I want to express my thanks by all who worked on AE and specifically to you, Elf, for the much improved air model which has done a lot to make results less all-or-nothing nature of aircombat in WITP.

However I need to ask - if this sweeps at 36K ft is gaming the system then what altitude is not: 35K? 30K? 20K? Players have no way of knowing. If you leave it to people to pick then they are inevitably try to get the advantage and will leapfrog up the altitude bands until things are maxed out. Are we best to place a global max altitude across all aircraft or one based on maneuvre bands?

IMHO the only real solution would be to adjust the system to deal approriately with high altitude sweeps and reflect why all combat didn't revert to the highest altitude. I am not sufficiently knowledgeable to suggest what the the changes ought to be other than noting that the dive should not be the be-all and end-all of combat as it seems to be in my games.

I've reposted as my question above as it seems to have been lost in the melee.

1. Players could CHOOSE to fly fighters at realistic altitudes.

2. I could hard code each Aircraft's most typical flight profile and completely remove you from the problem.

With respect, suggestion 1 is of no use. I don't know where the boundary of appropriate and gamey height lies.

So my opponent flies his Cap at 25K feet and I put mine at 26K. Hey - it's only 1000 ft higher - can't really be considered more gamey than 25K feet.....

So he puts his at 27K next time - cos it's only 1000 ft higher...etc etc until we max out.

We need some direction as to where the model breaks down and some specifics about the HR's needed to patch.

One last question - why is it gamey to fly at maximum altitude - I appreciate that it wasn't done - oxygen, fatigue and all that - but in game terms what advantage does it give.

If the reason it is gamey is that it gives 'the dive' to the plane with the highest ceiling and 'the dive' is powerful enough that if one side always gets it then the effect is unfair.....then isn't the fix to deal with 'the dive'?

If that's not it then why is flying Hurricaines at 36K feet 'gaming the system'?

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

we are always out of context because what you write here and sell as gospel is not what the game is doing. Same as the pre flak gospel BS and that was proved wrong by michaelm who got the balls to actually say "ok, here is something wrong". YOU never miss the point and are spot on. [&o] That´s why michaelm is around, to actually look at what is happening if people provide him with saves to look at. And he obviously also doesn´t refrain from saying something is wrong if another dev insists on "it´s wad".

Ah ok thanks. Just wanted to be sure I can ignore it... [:)]

how often do you think has my opponent changed his fighters´ altitude to all possible combinations? Hundreds of times. You sure think it would have helped him against 39-42000ft sweeps? No, but hey, we all agreed that this is gaming the system. All you can do is agree on everyone on the same alt and then the one who gets radar help or has plain luck ends up a couple of feet higher which is going to be enouh.

So you think that Lightnings should not be able to dominate the early Japanese types if handled by a professional?
I get roughly 1:2 results against Lightnings with Zeroes when not outnumbered, but hey, maybe this is because I
know how to handle them...

Tojo vs Corsair is a good example, the Corsair can go a couple of feet higher... that´s enough for the dive.

And this tells you that something is broken? So a big heavy fighter with a mean top speed on a dive shouldn´t
wreck any opposition except the most determined, thought through and backed up with sufficient numbers of planes?

So you are basically complaining that life is not fair and sometimes your chance is no chance? [;)]

[ChezDaJez]

Thanks for the response. I hear echoes of USAF Air Doctrine. My background was primarily USMC with some USN fleet air defense. Doctrine is good--military forces fight according to doctrine, but different air forces have different doctrines. The USMC was (and I suppose still is) a close support airforce, with interdiction and offensive sweep missions not high priority.

I find myself on the right wing of my research community because I insist that the details matter and understanding the details is needed before, rather than after more strategic analysis. On the other hand, the details can't be understood except in the context of some theory. So I am constantly building ramshackle theories and working out ways of testing them. According to WWII OR studies, the Japanese controlled the engagement in the South Pacific during 1942-43. They were on the defensive, and unless they were willing to fly, there was no fight. According to various sources, they were willing to fly to defend their bases, to engage high value ship targets, and to support the land battle. That meant we had air superiority except where they were willing to challenge us. To destroy their air power, we had to engage them over the battlefield (LRCAP against ground support, I suppose) and over their bases (sweeps against CAP in game terms). The stratosphere tactics we see players using in the game were apparently not a good match to the situation. That suggests the theory we are using to understand what was happening is deficient in some way.

You're right--I'm oversimplifying--but most of the engagements in 1942-43 we're trying to model with a sweep were low altitude. I suppose high altitude sweeps will come into their own in 1944-45, but historically that's because the details changed and the details mattered. In 1944-45, Japanese interceptors had to climb to intercept the heavy bombers, and the P-51D came into its own, but in 1942-43 we see a low-altitude ground support and base attack war with the defenders trying to protect assets on the ground from low altitude attack. At 25,000 feet, you can't even see the aircraft you're trying to defend against!

So does the game have the mechanisms to encourage operations at the appropriate altitude during the appropriate period, or do we need to use house rules?

Herwin,

TheElf is a US Navy pilot flying F/A-18 aircraft from the deck of a carrier. You are trying to tell an experienced naval fighter pilot that he doesn't know what he is talking about when discussing visual detection ranges for aircraft. His life depends on knowing his visual abilities. I'm sorry but I have to side with him.

The problem is that you work on the theorectical side with zero actual aviation experience. If theory were perfect, then real world results would always replicate theory. But they don't always. Take aircraft design for example. Some designs greatly exceed their theorectical performance while others lag significantly behind. Theory may come close at times but the fact of the matter is that theory lags a significant distance behind real world experience.

One of the things that you have overlooked in regards to visual perception is that the eye is well suited to detecting contrast and movement. The primary field is quicker at detecting contrast than is the peripheral vision but peripheral vision is better at movement. A good example related to our topic would be that an A6M2 painted light gray would be much easier to detect BELOW you than he would be above you. The reason for this is simple. When this particular target is below you, it is moving against a constrasting background. Above you and he will tend to blend into the background. By the same token, an F4U Corsair painted dark blue would be easier to spot above you than below if he is against a background of water. Against a land backdrop, the probability of detection would fall somewhere in between. Motion and contrast are the primary visual detection aids.

I am a retired naval aircrewman with nearly 9000 hours in P-3C Orions. My primary duty was that of senior acoustic sensor operator. My secondary duties included being a relief radar operator and visual observer. The P-3s I flew in were incapable of defending themselves against an air or surface threat. The advent of the Harpoon missile and defensive countermeasures helped alleviate that somewhat but the fact remains that a P-3 is a certain kill in the face of an air threat. Indeed, the original defensive air combat maneuvering manual for P-3s stated that consideration should be given to intentional ditching the face of enemy air opposition.

I flew patrols off the coast of Egypt during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and during search and rescue operations after the shoot down of KAL-007. In both cases, there was a lot of air traffic, none of it very friendly. Visual lookout was extremely important to us, if nothing more than to give us a reasonable chance to kiss our ass goodbye if they fired. Spotting them at a range sufficient enough to take defensive action was crucial. Off Egypt, I have spotted MIG-17s out to about 15 nm. This range was verified by our F-4 escort after I spotted them (there were two). The F-4s had to turn into them to get radar lock as the Migs approached from our 4 o'clock position. And I have seen hundreds of other fighter sized aircraft at about 10nm including watching Yak-38 Forgers landing on the Kiev in the Med when we were at 15000 feet 5 nm miles away. We were trained to use our peripheral vision for motion detection and to constantly move our eyes around and not fixate on any particular piece of ocean or sky. Fixation greatly increases fatigue and reduces peripheral vision. Fixation can cause a form of tunnel vision.

Next time you fly in an airliner, look down after you get to cruise altitude and tell me whether you can see cars on the freeway. I'll bet you can.

Chez

[LoBaron]

Yakface maxing out ceiling on every occasion is gaming the system because
the game does not model the drawbacks of this altitude (such as increased fatigue,
increased supply consumption, lower range).

So with the current model it is a pure advantage tool.

Still its far not as bad as some try to make it. The problem lies in the misinterpretation
of combat results that leads players to the upwards spiral until service ceiling is
reached, and the problem is most stay there even if it does not make sense.
If your ceiling is worse than your opponents´ ceiling and you go to maximum you in fact increase
the disadvantegous situation.
The discussion already has covered most of the tools that can be used against high alt sweeps, for
a short summary check post #118.

[Yakface]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Yakface maxing out ceiling on every occasion is gaming the system because
the game does not model the drawbacks of this altitude (such as increased fatigue,
increased supply consumption, lower range).

So with the current model it is a pure advantage tool.

Still its far not as bad as some try to make it. The problem lies in the misinterpretation
of combat results that leads players to the upwards spiral until service ceiling is
reached, and the problem is most stay there even if it does not make sense.
If your ceiling is worse than your opponents´ ceiling and you go to maximum you in fact increase
the disadvantegous situation.
The discussion already has covered most of the tools that can be used against high alt sweeps, for
a short summary check post #118.

So if I am understanding correctly - dive is too powerful to give to one side everytime on the basis of one plane stat without the penalties which should come along with flying at altitude. Thanks for answering that one for me.

I have previously read post 118 and most of the rest (skipped some of the more recent ones for which I think I can be forgiven)

However, it doesn't answer my question. 118 deals with how the defender minimises the effect of an enemy sweep coming in at higher altitudes, rather than what I was asking which is: what is a gamey height to be flying (ie where does the model break down) and suggestions for HR's to ensure we are working where the system is strong.

[herwin]

ORIGINAL: TheElf

ORIGINAL: herwin

ORIGINAL: SuluSea



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...

Yes [:'(]

However, there were WWII technical studies of visual aircraft detection in the TRW library, and human performance was remarkably poor. That gave me a clue. During my PhD research, I had to manually digitize high speed video camera data, and I learned that the detailed visual scene we think we perceive was mostly an illusion. The flying objects I was trying to track usually showed up as single bright pixels in an image with better resolution than the human fovea.

You might enjoy this paper.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Yakface

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Yakface maxing out ceiling on every occasion is gaming the system because
the game does not model the drawbacks of this altitude (such as increased fatigue,
increased supply consumption, lower range).

So with the current model it is a pure advantage tool.

Still its far not as bad as some try to make it. The problem lies in the misinterpretation
of combat results that leads players to the upwards spiral until service ceiling is
reached, and the problem is most stay there even if it does not make sense.
If your ceiling is worse than your opponents´ ceiling and you go to maximum you in fact increase
the disadvantegous situation.
The discussion already has covered most of the tools that can be used against high alt sweeps, for
a short summary check post #118.

So if I am understanding correctly - dive is too powerful to give to everytime on the basis of one plane stat without the penalties which should come along with flying at altitude. Thanks for answering that one for me.

I have previously read post 118 and most of the rest (skipped some of the more recent ones for which I think I can be forgiven)

However, it doesn't answer the question I was asking. 118 deals with how to minimise the effect of an enemy at superior altitude, rather than what I was asking which is, what is a gamey height to be flying (ie where does the model break down) and suggestions for HR's to ensure we are working where the system is strong.

No I don´t think the dive is too powerful. When defending you can offset its effect by separating
your CAP into different alt bands. This effect is also a result of game calculations and has not
really a counterpart in reality. When attacking you have to wait for sufficient numbers to do it anyway.

As I understand it, the idea of building in a system that affects AC range depending on alt or other factors
that would make vhigh alt a drawback was seen as increasing micromanagement too much and also resulted
in negative impacts on other situations which are currently modelled accurately (such as other long range missions
as search, recon, heavy bomber missions and so on).

If you want my personal opinion: no altitude is gamey. The high alt nerv is just developing just
when the player at disadvantage does not search for other solutions and plays into the hands of the
attacker.

[Yakface]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

ORIGINAL: Yakface

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Yakface maxing out ceiling on every occasion is gaming the system because
the game does not model the drawbacks of this altitude (such as increased fatigue,
increased supply consumption, lower range).

So with the current model it is a pure advantage tool.

Still its far not as bad as some try to make it. The problem lies in the misinterpretation
of combat results that leads players to the upwards spiral until service ceiling is
reached, and the problem is most stay there even if it does not make sense.
If your ceiling is worse than your opponents´ ceiling and you go to maximum you in fact increase
the disadvantegous situation.
The discussion already has covered most of the tools that can be used against high alt sweeps, for
a short summary check post #118.

So if I am understanding correctly - dive is too powerful to give to everytime on the basis of one plane stat without the penalties which should come along with flying at altitude. Thanks for answering that one for me.

I have previously read post 118 and most of the rest (skipped some of the more recent ones for which I think I can be forgiven)

However, it doesn't answer the question I was asking. 118 deals with how to minimise the effect of an enemy at superior altitude, rather than what I was asking which is, what is a gamey height to be flying (ie where does the model break down) and suggestions for HR's to ensure we are working where the system is strong.

No I don´t think the dive is too powerful. When defending you can offset its effect by separating
your CAP into different alt bands. This effect is also a result of game calculations and has not
really a counterpart in reality. When attacking you have to wait for sufficient numbers to do it anyway.

As I understand it, the idea of building in a system that affects AC range depending on alt or other factors
that would make vhigh alt a drawback was seen as increasing micromanagement too much and also resulted
in negative impacts on other situations which are currently modelled accurately (such as other long range missions
as search, recon, heavy bomber missions and so on).

If you want my personal opinion: no altitude is gamey. The high alt nerv is just developing just
when the player at disadvantage does not search for other solutions and plays into the hands of the
attacker.

I appreciate the answers LoBaron. However, as a player I've got to listen to the air model developer when he says - 'your opponent is gaming the system' by flying Hurri sweeps at 36K ft. I'm guessing only he can answer the question about what HR's are appropriate.