Good to know UBER Cap is gone

[oldman45]

Lets put things into perspective, looking at some of the specs for the plane, it had 3 rifle caliber mg's, I couldn't find anywhere that stated it had self sealing fuel tanks. Those planes were jumped by very experienced pilots, and everything was in their favor. The results "feel" right. I doubt that there are any historical events in the Pacific that can be used as an example to compare it with.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Frank

Castor, I see 45 Zeros in your reports. Can you verify they were all the same or is it possible, that MiniKB could have managed these numbers by permanently replacing them??

http://books.google.de/books?id=IzJUlCp ... q=&f=false

As for destroying lots of enemy aircraft with little losses on one day in little missions, just follow the link above.
Unprepared Soviet pilots and planes were lost in masses to German fighters in the beginning days of barbarossa.

Don´t forget the extremely heavy losses of the Brits when attacking the panzerships on monday, 18th december 1939. And that were quite stable Wellingtons getting the stick, loosing more than 60% of their number. 44 attacking bombers, 34 shot down (offical German numbers)Brits say 15 lost of 22.
This is quite in the range of the losses your forces suffered.
So, it isn´t that unrealistic loosing heavily when using unescorted bombers.

In this example, how many German fighters were involved? Only 25% of the number of attacking bombers?

It´s not a question to me of the total number of losses, it´s the question about how many ac involved on each side and how many bombers then were shot down.

[chesmart]

UberCap is gone I learnt it the hard way when I tried to raid japan with carriers. 200 F-6f and 100 F-4UD did not help a cv tf against strikes from Osaka, I was lucky that the AA got what leaked through. 5 essex class carriers in for repairs between 100-300 days plus 2 BBs heavily damaged.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: sven6345789

actually, if you use your fighters as bombers, approaching at 6000 feet, giving the japanese both the maneuver advantage and the height-advantage, what do you expect?
i mean really[8|]

Those are bombers, and really slow, obsolete ones at that. They went in unescorted and the realistic thing happened.

[crsutton]

I got no problem with it. You are talking hopelessly obsolete bombers unescorted with green to average aircrews against the best of the best. Ok, I do agree in that I would like to see more bombers abort the mission and survive. That is more realistic.

I don't know what you are doing wrong but I am only losing about 5-6 cats a month to operational losses. Search or asw no higher than 40% and I rest them if the morale drops below 80. I don't train and search at the same time but rotate units out of the line and then train them at 100%. One thing is there are very few training losses. Not very historical in itself but I dont mind. I am concerned that when I have more groups arrive that op losses will go higher, as there will be more planes in the air. Very pitiful replacement rate to deal with. Early in the war, I don't like to expend my heavies so I keep them out of the fight. They are all training in ASW and air search as well. They will not do as well as the cats but are a useful suppliment to the PBYs and allow me to rest them. The heavies are jacks of all trades in the early going so it does not hurt to have well rounded crews.

[TheElf]

Castor,
As previous posters have stated, the B-10 (or Martin Model 139) was well obsolete by 1941. It entered service in the US in '34 but was desinged in '32. Aside from being the first all metal monoplane Bomber to serve in the USAAC, it also pioneered the first Powered gun turret. It won the Collier Trophy in '32 as a cutting edge design. Nearly 10 years before your little rough up.

The A6m2 by comparison was just entering service a year or so before the out break of WWII in the pacific and was by all accounts the F-22 Raptor of '39-'41 (without the supercruise).

Seeing as how there were no precedents set by which we can measure your incident, we have to interpolate the likely outcomes. From what little info you've provided I'd say you had the odds stacked against you. The zeke alone in weight of fire, outguns your bombers (2x20mm + 2x7.7mm vs. 3x.30cal), and that assumes that all 3 guns of the Martin can be brought to bear at the same time....which they can't. You managed to hang them out to dry with no Escort, so even the Claudes have little to worry about...

If you look at each individual combat, the odds are near 1:1 in the early offing and then taper slightly, but assuming each Zeke or Claude (piloted by crack IJN pilots) can get a run in, I'd say you came off somewhat lightly! What is more remarkable is that you actually got 35 Dutch bombers to formate and coordinate an attack! Even more so remarkable that you would think to TRY!!! Even MORE remarkable is that you got results on 3 of 4 of these raids!!!!!

You made it easy on the japanese by congregating old, slow, poorly armored/armed, unescorted bombers in one place at the same time....flown by sub par dutch pilots...

In WitP this sort of meeting would be bloody indeed. None of the bombers would have gotten through and the thought that you might get hits and inflict damage to the IJ player would be laughable. Lucky for you this is AE. That you would post something like this and cry wolf ("it's broken, it's broken!") is disturbing. The problem isn't with the model. It's with the implementation of the model by the player. I can't code poor use of assets out of every player.

Next time take a deep breath and run this sort of thing through a sanity filter before posting like this...

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

people, I´m not saying there shouldn´t be a slaughter. All the books you´ve read, what were slaughters? How were the loss rates? A slaughter in this case would be 30 bombers lost, a slaughter for the Dutch that they probably couldn´t believe.

How many incidents can you bring up with all the thousands of examples you´ve all together read in all your books that saw two dozen fighters take down 50 bombers? No matter what bombers, no matter what fighters. How many?

Aircraft, in general are much harder to down than is often thought, even the unarmored ones. A typical skirmish in most early war situations yeilds on average 2 planes lost. Later in the war the average creeps up to around 3-4 due to greater firepower of the fighters. This isn't per raid, but skirmish. One has to remember that its not usual for every single plane to be able to make an attack, the larger the size of the escort/CAP. To cite a real world example, the British considered a loss of 4 planes by one squadron in one sortie to be "catastrophic" (as one is talking 25% of the roster lost in one battle in a typical active group of 12 pilot/crews per squadron) In WitP, it would be considered inconsequencial. The most extreme losses are exceptions to the rule and stand out...such as the Schwinfurt raid (60 heavy bombers over the course of the battle), or the Luftwaffe's bloodiest day over Britian (again around 60ish.....but thats from 1000's of sorties and dozens of targets) Total G4M losses over Guad did not exceed 100 planes for the entire campaign etc. Its hard to shoot down a plane!...and unless one has a FDO officer and plenty of time to vector, often an escort and CAP in full cannot always be in the thick of the action. The Sky is a big place but you can only stuff so many planes into one sector of it. Thats why bonafied Aces are a minority and pilots with actual kills are a minority and also, why ratio exchanges between nations tend to even out or be close over the course of a campaign. Consistant extreme losses are necessary to help tilt ratios in one side's favor or the other and it doesn't happen too often. A final point....ammunition is finite and sometimes it takes a large amount to bring a plane down...especially a bomber.

Its rare for any CAP or escort to each shoot down a plane....usually its a small preportion of the engaged CAP/Escort. However successful defense/attack is not soley based on kills. Thats perhaps the biggest distorition caused in a wargame. Players gauge success primarily or even only by kills. In real life...sucessful defense or attack includes disrupting attacks by fighters.....on bombers....driving off said bombers. (for example, causing a section of bombers to jettison bombs and flee as often occured in the Med or North Africa).

In terms of AE. You'll generally see less bloody results vs. Stock but certain situations can still lead to high losses....the best scenario is the one you posted. Unescorted unarmored bombers vs. CAP (either side) In Joe/Nik Game an errant unescorted G4M raid near Darwin received similar punishment (30+ bombers lost in one raid.) In my current AI game, AI sent in unescorted Sallys over Singapore vs. an average CAP of 12-18 Buffalo. result......40 Sallies lost in one day. Even unescorted, in RL the actual loss would have been a fraction but with a good deal of damage and i'm sure some or most portions of the attacks disrupted.

Next best scenario is armored but unescorted bombers below 4E durability. One can get some excessive losses there as well. After that....fighter sweeps. Rule of thumb for the game? Always escort bombers. Game in that general sense does successfully present players with the fobile of unescorted vs escorted raids.

[mjk428]

ORIGINAL: TheElf


Next time take a deep breath and run this sort of thing through a sanity filter before posting like this...

That was a great post until the end when you couldn't resist calling the guy crazy. Maybe you all need a "professional" filter?

[Ikazuchi0585]

I thought slow unescorted under-armed bombers usually get chewed up. There's no problem with that. Although i just got the game last week and I'm a complete Newb, nor did I have WITP;In all the hours I've spent playing AE, i haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe CAP is Uber. The worst raid I had involved 8 unescorted SBD's sent out in 2 raids against 17 Zero's. Needless to say, SBD's were decimated. With escorts, losses are fairly light.
It would have been different if those bombers had escorts and still suffered the same fate.
mjk428- he was implying what Castor said was crazy, not calling the guy crazy.

A newb's 2 cents.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

ORIGINAL: castor troy

people, I´m not saying there shouldn´t be a slaughter. All the books you´ve read, what were slaughters? How were the loss rates? A slaughter in this case would be 30 bombers lost, a slaughter for the Dutch that they probably couldn´t believe.

How many incidents can you bring up with all the thousands of examples you´ve all together read in all your books that saw two dozen fighters take down 50 bombers? No matter what bombers, no matter what fighters. How many?

Aircraft, in general are much harder to down than is often thought, even the unarmored ones. A typical skirmish in most early war situations yeilds on average 2 planes lost. Later in the war the average creeps up to around 3-4 due to greater firepower of the fighters. This isn't per raid, but skirmish. One has to remember that its not usual for every single plane to be able to make an attack, the larger the size of the escort/CAP. To cite a real world example, the British considered a loss of 4 planes by one squadron in one sortie to be "catastrophic" (as one is talking 25% of the roster lost in one battle in a typical active group of 12 pilot/crews per squadron) In WitP, it would be considered inconsequencial. The most extreme losses are exceptions to the rule and stand out...such as the Schwinfurt raid (60 heavy bombers over the course of the battle), or the Luftwaffe's bloodiest day over Britian (again around 60ish.....but thats from 1000's of sorties and dozens of targets) Total G4M losses over Guad did not exceed 100 planes for the entire campaign etc. Its hard to shoot down a plane!...and unless one has a FDO officer and plenty of time to vector, often an escort and CAP in full cannot always be in the thick of the action. The Sky is a big place but you can only stuff so many planes into one sector of it. Thats why bonafied Aces are a minority and pilots with actual kills are a minority and also, why ratio exchanges between nations tend to even out or be close over the course of a campaign. Consistant extreme losses are necessary to help tilt ratios in one side's favor or the other and it doesn't happen too often. A final point....ammunition is finite and sometimes it takes a large amount to bring a plane down...especially a bomber.

Its rare for any CAP or escort to each shoot down a plane....usually its a small preportion of the engaged CAP/Escort. However successful defense/attack is not soley based on kills. Thats perhaps the biggest distorition caused in a wargame. Players gauge success primarily or even only by kills. In real life...sucessful defense or attack includes disrupting attacks by fighters.....on bombers....driving off said bombers. (for example, causing a section of bombers to jettison bombs and flee as often occured in the Med or North Africa).

In terms of AE. You'll generally see less bloody results vs. Stock but certain situations can still lead to high losses....the best scenario is the one you posted. Unescorted unarmored bombers vs. CAP (either side) In Joe/Nik Game an errant unescorted G4M raid near Darwin received similar punishment (30+ bombers lost in one raid.) In my current AI game, AI sent in unescorted Sallys over Singapore vs. an average CAP of 12-18 Buffalo. result......40 Sallies lost in one day. Even unescorted, in RL the actual loss would have been a fraction but with a good deal of damage and i'm sure some or most portions of the attacks disrupted.

Next best scenario is armored but unescorted bombers below 4E durability. One can get some excessive losses there as well. After that....fighter sweeps. Rule of thumb for the game? Always escort bombers. Game in that general sense does successfully present players with the fobile of unescorted vs escorted raids.

There are examples for a single US fighter shooting down 5-6 Betties alone when they tried to attack the US CV´s in the Solomon Sea IIRC.
The usual reason for fighters not shooting down bombers was and is the escort. Unescorted Japanese bombers were as good as dead as soon they met fighter opposition.
Difference to the game is this did not really happen . The Japanese did not attack Singapore with unescorted Sallies in a couple of separate raids into a waiting Buffalo CAP.

The players tend to produce situations that would have never happened in RL.

No side ever contemplated in sending 80+ human beings in obsolete, slow, underarmed bombers unescorted into a heavily defended area with enough early warning for the
elite CAP to form up easily in time (except maybe some late war kamikaze attacks). I have no doubt that the RL result would have resembled the combat report.

If you play ahistoric you will get ahistoric results.

There are some examples of raids with brutal loss percentages in WWII and all were called turkey shoot or black whateverday and never repeated again in the same fashion.
Even so not one of them was as suicidal as the raid that is the reason for this thread.

I really have to agree with The Elf here.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

There are examples for a single US fighter shooting down 5-6 Betties alone when they tried to attack the US CV´s in the Solomon Sea IIRC.

Yes....one example. O'Hare's exceptional combat. These are exceptions to the general rule as mentioned. I wasn't implying that one never saw excessive casualties....but that on average this was not the case outside of the intial two months of Barbarossa (caused mainly by VVS tactics dicated from above), otherwise combat losses in WWII would have been far higher.

The usual reason for fighters not shooting down bombers was and is the escort. Unescorted Japanese bombers were as good as dead as soon they met fighter opposition.

Not in every bomber's case. Unarmored bombers are more vulnerable yes.....dead meat by default? no. It depends on the circumstances. Not every fighter can be in position and target every bomber and not every bomber targeted and hit will blow up or go down in a stream of flames.

Difference to the game is this did not really happen . The Japanese did not attack Singapore with unescorted Sallies in a couple of separate raids into a waiting Buffalo CAP.

That particular example never happened in real life. I was using it as a good example. 18 Buffalos each shooting down a big 2E bomber in RL is highly unlikely. If you'd like a real life example i can post several from Shores documenting a good sized interception that resulted in no losses at all for either side. The "Christmas" battle of Rangoon was a good example of highly inflated loss estimates and escorts seperated from their charges. Despite this losses were not extreme.

My main points being....Yes, Castor is right when he complains the losses are 'excessive' when compared to overall trend of WWII air combat.....and Elf is right in that the game will in general punish player tactics that are risky or error prone. The game will most certainly differentiate between an escorted and an unescorted raid regardless of the actual losses, which under such circumstances, can emulate Stock.

[John Lansford]

In my CG the AI keeps sending Bettys after my CA squadron at Darwin, sometimes with Zero escorts, sometimes without.  I've got 5 squadrons of fighters there, a mixed bag of P-40E/K's, P-39's and P-38's.  They almost never break through my CAP even when escorted, usually losing 2-8 bombers and 1-8 fighters, but every once in a while a few bombers manage to make an attack on the ships.  Most of the time the survivors abort and run for home.  So, while the Ubercap may no longer exist, the idea that "the bomber will always get through" is still only for those pilots with nerves of steel.

[LoBaron]

Nik mainly I agree with you, I simply tried to point out that these situations did occur in RL but every
decent PBEM player tries to reproduce them as often as possible, simply something that was not so
easy during WWII.

What I´m beginning to suspect is that many of those issues are related to players style.

John Lansfords example is good and what CT ran into was probably a 80+ exp, 80+ morale formation, 30 O´Hares so to speak.

The AI uses its bombers in a more "reckless" way, going in probably when a high number of pilots has a morale as low as 40 or 30
while a human play would consider a morale of 50 too low.
One more reason why CT´s 139WH-3s got slaughtered while the AI betties turned around in the face of opposition.
In RL morale in the aircombat squads probably quite low except for some crack formations and in game low morale also often leads to less casualties
because the guys simply turn back.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

Nik mainly I agree with you, I simply tried to point out that these situations did occur in RL but every
decent PBEM player tries to reproduce them as often as possible, simply something that was not so
easy during WWII.

What I´m beginning to suspect is that many of those issues are related to players style.

This is true. Player tactics will directly impact the potential for excessive losses, hence part of my point was to emphasis that the game will punish players who don't adequately defend their raids, more so if the bombers are unarmored. In fairness to Castor's original complaint though, i agreed that in RL terms, yes....just because a raid is lightly or undefended won't equate to a "30 O'Hares" having 30 exceptional combats all at the same time producing 120 losses ([;)]...if one were to grant each pilot 4 bomber kills)

In some cases the tactics are beyond player control, such as my game vs. the AI. (apparantly the AI was either confused or 'tempted'/triggered by the presence of a naval TF evacing Singapore leading to the unescorted Sally bombing raid) Were I to sketch this in RL terms....18 Buffalos on CAP, even with radar aid i'd expect to down no more than 3 - 4 x Ki-21's. This is only in terms of a kill estimate. Being unescorted, its also likely the raid, either in part most likely, or in whole would have been thwarted/driven off. CAP's and bomber raids don't all fly around in one single formation....so in this case based on my readings you'd have elements of fighters nibbling away at elements of the raid here and there.

Game wise.....the unescorted bombers got hit again and again and again by the mass of 18 planes, reinforced by "scrambles" "elements of CAp arriving" causing more and more bombers to fall. Game wise....to prevent this you have to have fighters there to soak up these attacks. This is SAIEW. AE tones it down....but the essential game engine remains.

[Sardaukar]

Castor is definitely the most negative poster on the forum. I have not seen a single post from him that does not criticize the AE and apparently he still plays it a lot. [:'(] Lot of issues, lot of issues...[:D]
 
I don't see anything wrong with those obsolete Dutch bombers getting massacred. Everything in mission calculations was against them, exp, plane quality, lack of fighter escort etc. If they had been B-25s with average pilots, I'd have hoped for some chance for bomb hits...but still, unescorted light bomber raid against enemy's No.1 fighter teams is not recommended. [8D]

[mjk428]

ORIGINAL: dbfw190

mjk428- he was implying what Castor said was crazy, not calling the guy crazy.

So if I was to tell you to take a deep breath and run your post through an intelligence filter before pressing "OK", you wouldn't think I just called you stupid? OK. Either way, it's still a personal attack. I didn't see any personal attacks by Castor Troy so I don't think it was justified. Criticizing a product is not a personal attack.

If I say "The Jonas Bros stink", I'm not attacking them, I'm just saying I don't like their music. Although I certainly understand why they wouldn't like my opinion of their product. However, Castor Troy didn't even go that far. It's more like: "I bought the new Jonas Bros album and I couldn't stop playing it. However, the chorus on track 4 really gets on my nerves so I may stop listening."

edit:

For any devs feeling unloved. Be glad you didn't work on Rogue Warrior. Loser of this bet has to play it to completion.

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/701866/TheFeed.html

[KenchiSulla]

The outcome seems reasonable to me... and I am dutch! Hehehe.

Casualties like this happen.. and they actually DID happen during the war (I recall one account where Hans Joachim Marseille shot down 17 planes in one day (8 within 5 minuts)...

Try a WW2 flightsim and you'll find out (ofcourse a sim cant really match with real life) that some blokes are great shots (5-10 kills in a 90 minut sortie). Others, especially the poorly trained ones, only shoot holes in the air and crashland the plane on return....

Also, escorting them with Brewsters wouldnt really help you because... the Dutch are very poorly trained.... the IJN has some great aviators on those CVL's...

ps: as a sidenote, Castor Troy, chill on the drama... make a compliment at times because really... this game isnt that bad..

[crsutton]

Is it just me. I have yet to see a bomber actually shoot down a fighter in the game. Lots of damage but never a red destroyed. Anyone?

[Speedysteve]

Yesh i've a few that have. At least 2 B17's from Clark have shot down a fighter.

[John Lansford]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

Is it just me. I have yet to see a bomber actually shoot down a fighter in the game. Lots of damage but never a red destroyed. Anyone?

I've had some B-17's shoot down fighters. They're technically fighter/bombers but I had some Beaufighters shoot down fighters while they were on a naval attack mission, so I'd think that would count.