The design decision

[Chiteng]

Originally posted by Mogami
Hi, Yes please. I'd love to see the replay where unescorted B-17's come in and sink your IJN CV (or even score a hit or two.)(at sea)

I didnt say CV Mogami. AND you already have seen the AAR files I posted since you commented on them.

[Chiteng]

Originally posted by Snigbert
I know you get dumped on a lot - I've been guilty of it as well. Can you post a zip file of a turn with one of the B-17 strikes you talk about? Or Kido Butai getting creamed by LBA? I mean we've all beaten this stuff to death, and we're all pretty settled into our respective camps. I'd just like to settle it once and for all and move on. So if you have a save game or a screen shot from a strike that shows what you're talking about, I would really like to see it. I think it might help swing more people to your point of view or at least get everyone to simmer down a bit if they could see it with their own eyes...

Hi, Yes please. I'd love to see the replay where unescorted B-17's come in and sink your IJN CV (or even score a hit or two.)(at sea)

Be careful, I asked Chiteng for evidence and he accused me of being a liar...evidently he has made this information clearly available to us all and if you dont see it you're lying.

You claimed I was the only one complaining about B-17s.
I have not seen your retraction. However I HAVE seen other posters copying and pasting the posts you refuse to read.
If its isnt lying, then what is it?

[Ron Saueracker]

Originally posted by Chiteng
You claimed I was the only one complaining about B-17s.
I have not seen your retraction. However I HAVE seen other posters copying and pasting the posts you refuse to read.
If its isnt lying, then what is it?

Jesus, Chiteng! Can't you be a little less inflamatory? No wonder you think people are attacking you.

[Chiteng]

Originally posted by Ron Saueracker
Jesus, Chiteng! Can't you be a little less inflamatory? No wonder you think people are attacking you.

That is nothing compared to the bile tossed at me, and for far less.

[crsutton]

Everybody has their pet gripes. I have made a few of my own over the past year or so. (Don't get me started on naval bombardment again). However, as the game stands, I am satisfied for the moment and am enjoying it. I would rather the folks at Matrix focus on the new game. Obviously, time is a precious resource. I would rather that resouce go into
WITP.

I think I can live with UV as it is for a while. Perhaps some of the faults will be retro-fixed after WitP comes our. Perhaps not. Perhaps we will not be as concerned once we have the new game.

If you really want to hear some whining, go over and visit the official forum page for Forgotten Battles- IL2 Sturmovik. You will be blown away but the bickering and bile there. We don't need it here.

[TIMJOT]

Originally posted by Chiteng
I didnt say CV Mogami. AND you already have seen the AAR files I posted since you commented on them.

Chiteng,

The only AAR I've seen is the one you posted that had 9 B-17s get a single hit on a single Maru. That result is totally within the HISTORICAL reality. I can give the dates, names of the ships and squadrons involved if you wish.

Is there another AAR that demonstrates your point, that I missed?

Regards

[Nikademus]

Originally posted by Mr.Frag
I really think this issue would go away if two things in UV were fixed:

1) Fatigue rates for CAP were downgraded to make CAP sustainable instead of the current good for a few turns max.

2) Disablement for AA units was quartered so units didn't become completely worthless when subjected to daily LBA.

As it sits now, UV is just silly in these regards. We already know this has been partially fixed in WitP as it is quite obviously a problem, be we don't have WitP yet, so we continue to suffer from this abuse in UV.

Not much point picking on Chiteng as to a certain extent he is quite right, he just singles out the B-17 specifically when it is more of a general problem with players abilities to impose extremes in UV that were not historically possible like basing 200+ LBAs at a single base to ensure rediculous levels of suppression, etc). This is not England where aircraft took off from 30 separate airfields to form up for a raid on Germany. This is the Pacific where it took an hour to get 12 aircraft up from a single base. UV's abstraction of time into two phases steals the reality of this from us and makes such silly things possible.

Mogami's AARs while being a good indicator of what things are like show one thing clearly (please note Mogami doesn't send his LBA in at 100/1000 feet), use of planes historically result in historical results. If Mogami cared to switch to the silly tactics that others use such as mass carpet bombing at low altitudes, he would see Chiteng's issues, but he plays the game without exploiting it's obvious weakness.

Good post Herr Frag, particularily insightful regarding the difference between player styles Like the Mog-ster, i too tend to prefer non exploitive tactics, so no mass 1000/100k raids for me either

Too your list I'll add one that has not been mentioned recently at least

3) Aircraft repair/servicability rates.

A large factor that mostly goes under the radar in regards to the LBA issue in light of talk about B-17's , national bias, blah blah blah, is that one of the BIGGEST differences between UV and the real McCoy, are the aircraft repair rates and the ratio of servicable to unservicable aircraft.

SoPac theater was as mentioned in the past, MURDER on machines as well as men and most air units during the early/mid period days covered by the game would be lucky to have half their "paper" strength on hand at any one time for any one operation.

Add to that, planes that are damaged and do not end up "op losses" repair at very high rates, such that a couple days off and you have mostly, if not all your planes ready vs damaged. This allows allows a highly increased tempo of air ops and contributes to LBA's dominance. Lastly a nitpick i've had from day one is that damaging aircraft on the ground is all too rare. Its the opposite problem of the ground crew/footsoldier/flak issue which is reversed. Matrix put in a more realistic repair rate for 17's but players screamed. It messed with their neat tidy plans and thirst for 'action' so it was heavily muted to be all but useless again. The reality is, is that if you push your planes hard like your men (morale) you will quickly end up on the bad side of your chief mechanic when he tells you you've got 4 planes servicable out of 30 due to a variety of issues from bullet holes to the need to rebuild an engine. And a day or two is not going to fix it. Thats another reason why air units "rotated" frequently. To sustain an air op, you need to pace both your men and your machines.

LBA did dominate the SoPac theater.....it just didn't dominate it as fast or as serverely as UV allows via it's mechanics + Player exploits. CV's could dominate a land base being mobile platforms but they needed strength in preportion to the target and even then there was still a risk.

It remained a long fought war of attrition. Let me put it another way. In UV, players fight a campaign with PAPER strength LBA figures and the results obviously tend to look more impressive than real life. If players were forced to fly with ACTUAL Strength LBA it would not be as dominating or as quick paced as we see now

[Mr.Frag]

Yep, don't forget the average missions were over 30 hours, yet here we are flying them daily. Last I checked there was 24 hours in a day except of course where I work

Couple this with command and control problems with airfield towers causing it to take an hour to get 12 planes into the air and formed up and 1 1/2 hours to get them back down on the ground safely, and you start to see just how silly these 100+ plane raids really become.

Gary needs to add a Sick Call, where 20-30% of the bases support staff and pilots are randomly unavailable due to malaria effects on any given day.

Couple that to any storm throwing a random percentage of aircraft into damaged status.

Now add poor food quality to the mix and problems sleeping due to the wonderful climate (unless of course all USAF pilots came from the Bayoo (or whoever the heck you spell that)

[Snigbert]

I agree that these are legitimate issues that could be addressed in the game, but it is also adding more and more levels of complexity that have to be modelled and dealt with...adding to the micromanagement problems already existing.

Sure, malaria would probably have a certain percentage of people unable to fly at any given time. But malaria is already reflected in losses to ground units with the increased attrition rates.

Aircraft repair isnt realistically modeled, but pilot morale, fatigue, etc have their effect in keeping planes from flying continuous missions.

Suppose GG does address all of these minor issues, what unneccessary niceties will we nitpick him for next? Toilet paper in Brisbane is softer than toilet paper at Lunga, making Lunga pilots unable to fly as many long missions? Availability of beer and native women in Cairns gradually raising disruption levels of troops stationed there? Where does it stop ?!?!

[Mr.Frag]

Toilet paper in Brisbane is softer than toilet paper at Lunga, making Lunga pilots unable to fly as many long missions?

So thats why the Brits kept the place for so long eh?

Figures them criminals get the cream of the crop as always!

Seriously though, due to scales, abstraction needs to deal with *stuff*. Certain things were *abstracted*, certain things were not for a *fun factor*.

I personally think the *altitude* aspect should have been left abstracted as it opens up too many holes in the AI for player abuse. Bombers should fly at abstracted altitudes based on the detection information of the target, with some random oops tossed it (whoops! I didn't notice them 40mm AA guns until they shot at me at 100 feet).

I think it takes more away from the game then it adds value (fun factor).

[Snigbert]

I personally think the *altitude* aspect should have been left abstracted as it opens up too many holes in the AI for player abuse. Bombers should fly at abstracted altitudes based on the detection information of the target, with some random oops tossed it (whoops! I didn't notice them 40mm AA guns until they shot at me at 100 feet).

That's an interesting idea, and I dont see any adverse effect on game play. All of the missions planes can select have a more or less 'optimal' altitude to perform. It could be assumed all missions are going to be performed at their optimal altitude.