B-17/CAP test redux

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B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

In all, four Sentai/Daitai of Tonys/Zeros were beaten up pretty badly sweeping Port Moresby. So, my attempt to give them "some fatigue" didn't work out so well.

I ran across this anomaly and thought I'd share it with you.

What we see is one of the five Japanese fighter formations ordered to sweep Port Moresby the day after. While all four of this Sentai's flying mates were chewed up, this formation refused to fly.

It has, I notice, lost one plane to operational damage (how is a mystery as it didn't fly) and has also somehow picked up 2 points of fatigue. Again, how and why is a mystery.

Actually, losing a plane to operational reasons is not out of the realm of possibility, whether it flew or not. It was normal, as far as I know, to wake up in the tropics, or England for that matter, and discover that one plane or the other refused to run properly. My point is that this is not the norm for the game. I wish more operational damage of this kind was the norm. I've asked for it. It would be warmly welcomed here, as this would realistically slow the game down. But this is not the norm of the game. Normally, parked planes stay the way they were when they were parked, until they're used for something. In this case we get one plane down and two points of fatigue out of nowhere. That sparks my interest.

No matter, this "democratic" process of who flies and who doesn't fly has always bothered me. The formation in question has a better-than-decent leader and had perfect morale (99) and fatigue (0) scores when it received its order to sweep Port Moresby. There's no good reason for it not to have flown as ordered. I know the game runs too fast and we want to slow it down, but this is not the way to do it.




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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

TJ, you plan on testing the bomber vs fighter change in 1.57?

You should notice a fairly nice increase in the effects of the combat box formation at shooting down fighters.

If you want, Ray, sure. At the moment I have the time.

I haven't looked at the beta version at all yet. What's going on? Has the air-to-air model received attention that would materially (and favorably) affect this issue? If so, what might I expect?


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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Erik Rutins »

One relatively minor tweak which should not significantly affect the results in the large battles you will be testing, but has some benefits in small and medium battles. It was a side effect of the night Mike spent looking into this to see if something could be adjusted without rewriting the system.

I would agree though that if you are going to test you should update to v1.57 (and v1.60 when it comes out). You can continue to use the same save files after you upgrade.

Regards,

- Erik
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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

ORIGINAL: madflava13

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

ORIGINAL: madflava13

Why are we beating around the bush on this issue again and again? The Devs have spoken - This issue comes from how the A2A model was designed. To make changes at this point would require a redesign of the model.

As has been stated over and over again, no new changes are going to be made to this game at this point, only bug fixes as bugs are found. This is not a bug, it's the model working as designed. Maybe the model is wrong, but we're stuck with it... So let's drop this damn line of bitching and move on. If you don't like it, don't play the game, or make house rules around it - its not changing.

We have more important issues to deal with, like the poor bastard who's playing drunk at all hours of the night! [;)]

I'm not beating around the bush at all. I'm addressing the problem directly.

Nobody will be able to conduct bombing operations with even a hint of reality unless we know what the numbers are with re to fighter CAP vis-a-vis the total destruction of the incoming bombers.

Is your notion of "playing this game and having fun" to simply suspend Allied heavy-bomber operations? Just do away with that aspect of the air model altogether? That would be okay with you? You're right with that?

Speaking for myself, I'd rather know what the level of CAP is where the slaughter begins. Then we can instruct (in the form of a houserule) Japanese players not to exceed that threshold of CAP. This will (might) allow the Allies to make some use of their heavy bombers, other than to merely park them someplace for the entire game, or use them solely for search and ASW work.




TJ,
You're right, you're addressing it directly. "Beating around the bush" was a poor choice of phrase on my part. My point though is that this is not going to change. We've heard that the game is basically locked in to a final form here as far as the developers are concerned. I just think that railing against the system is pointless here, since the system is beyond the point of change.

And maybe I'm just the luckiest guy in the forums, but so far in the games I've played I have yet to see all these gamebreaking bugs, ahistorical results and end of the world occurrences that everyone seems to be complaining about these days. The game runs pretty damn well for me, the results seem pretty close to what I'd expect, and I've had a lot of fun with it so far. But then again, I don't set myself up for really weird results by doing really weird things with my units either...

Let's try this again.

I am not "railing."

Have you any idea what that word means? Webster's Third gives two definitions, and of these the second is obsolete and is (was) used to imply a scoffing or jesting manner. Certainly that's not what you had in mind.

The primary definition of "to rail" is: to revile or scold in harsh, insolent or vituperative language: utter reproaches, abuse, or angry complaints . Etc.

Please quote what I wrote again and highlight in bold letters where I "reviled" or "scolded" anyone or anything in "harsh," "insolent" or "vituperative" language. Also please point out my "utter reproach, abuse and/or angry complaint" of and/or to same.

     (wherespasternaksiwhenyouneedhim...hemutttered)

Now I've tried to explain (at least twice now, once to Erik and once to you--this is the second explanation to you within twenty minutes or so) that my purpose is to find the CAP threshold which Eriks implies exists where fighters no longer butcher heavy-bombers.

Can't you see the value in that? (I've explained that, too.) If not, why not?

Don't you want to know what that threshold is? Don't you need to know what that threshold is? Or would you prefer to throw all the Allied heavy bombers out the WitP window?

And none of this has anything to do with using assets ahistorically. It has everything to do with the way the models were designed.

And if you can't "see" this stuff for yourself that's fine. I must tell you, though, that that doesn't surprise me one bit. But it's there nevertheless and "we" have been talking about it and other related matters now for some three years. Where have you been?

Finally, this thread, per the notice at the top of it, is intended only to test B-17s/B-24s versus Japanese CAP. The purpose of this test is to find the threshold of CAP where heavy bombers aren't taken apart as if they were made of toothpicks. I asked as nicely as possible for anyone who doesn't wish to particpate in the thread in a cooperative manner to not post at all, but rather to do so somewhere else.

Would you kindly do so before Erik feels obliged to lock this thread up, too?

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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

One relatively minor tweak which should not significantly affect the results in the large battles you will be testing, but has some benefits in small and medium battles. It was a side effect of the night Mike spent looking into this to see if something could be adjusted without rewriting the system.

I would agree though that if you are going to test you should update to v1.57 (and v1.60 when it comes out). You can continue to use the same save files after you upgrade.

Regards,

- Erik

I guess you mean by "tweak" the change in the beta version.

Could you describe it (for a lay person--I don't know how to program so keep it simple)?

I will use the new version, but I'd rather wait until it's ready for use. How long will that be? Or do you wish me to run the test now so we can see what the results are? Or do you already know those results? If so, what are they and I can save myself the work.

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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Erik Rutins »

Tristan,
ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn
I guess you mean by "tweak" the change in the beta version.

Could you describe it (for a lay person--I don't know how to program so keep it simple)?

I will use the new version, but I'd rather wait until it's ready for use. How long will that be? Or do you wish me to run the test now so we can see what the results are? Or do you already know those results? If so, what are they and I can save myself the work.

v1.57 is safe to use, it will likely be the v1.60 release patch. I didn't program the change, but here is my understanding. The minor change should help bombers in large groups flying against CAP, more against lighter armed/non-durable fighters (and thus not aimed at the Tony). In more reasonably sized battles, this should cause a few more fighters to break off, perhaps a few more to be damaged and cause fewer bombers to be lost as a result. Based on my testing and in my PBEM, which has been on v1.57 for several turns, it's had some effect for my raids of say 30 bombers against 20 CAP, etc.

This is not, based on my testing, near enough to overcome the large scale combat lethality increase that affects every type of plane once lots of planes are involved. I don't know where the exact threshhold is, but I would _guess_ that it's somewhere around 75-100 aircraft based on my testing, might be more. There's no one line of code there that says "crank up the lethality at this point", it's just how the overall air model ends up working and my understanding is that it is a _huge_ piece of code in total. If you can find the threshhold, if a clear one exists given the variability built into the engine, I'd be interested to know where it is.

Regards,

- Erik
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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Mr.Frag »

It translates to this:

Bombers will use their guns more to drive off fighters. (aka Combat Box inplemented)
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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

TJ, you plan on testing the bomber vs fighter change in 1.57?

You should notice a fairly nice increase in the effects of the combat box formation at shooting down fighters.

I should have asked this before: when you say "box" I understand that to mean that when a formation of bombers (say, a wing) reaches a certain number (four B-17s could fly in a sort of "box" formation, but surely you mean more than that) then there's a new qualifier for bombers. That sounds good. What is this number? We need to know that. And does the qualifier go up and down (slide) according to how many bombers are in the the box formation? Does the box formation become a better or worse formation due to leader values? (Probably not, as we don't have "formation" leaders, but for all I know you've taken an average of present squadron/group leaders and used that. And in that case I wouldn't complain.)

I need hard information, Ray. Testing blind isn't my style.


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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Mr.Frag »

Try it, you have the exact same information everyone else has. What you will find is that while the fighters still bring down bombers, the bombers are returning the favour now.

This doesn't deal with the blood letting exponential factors, but it does even the tables a lot more.
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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Tristan,
ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn
I guess you mean by "tweak" the change in the beta version.

Could you describe it (for a lay person--I don't know how to program so keep it simple)?

I will use the new version, but I'd rather wait until it's ready for use. How long will that be? Or do you wish me to run the test now so we can see what the results are? Or do you already know those results? If so, what are they and I can save myself the work.

v1.57 is safe to use, it will likely be the v1.60 release patch. I didn't program the change, but here is my understanding. The minor change should help bombers in large groups flying against CAP, more against lighter armed/non-durable fighters (and thus not aimed at the Tony). In more reasonably sized battles, this should cause a few more fighters to break off, perhaps a few more to be damaged and cause fewer bombers to be lost as a result. Based on my testing and in my PBEM, which has been on v1.57 for several turns, it's had some effect for my raids of say 30 bombers against 20 CAP, etc.

This is not, based on my testing, near enough to overcome the large scale combat lethality increase that affects every type of plane once lots of planes are involved. I don't know where the exact threshhold is, but I would _guess_ that it's somewhere around 75-100 aircraft based on my testing, might be more. There's no one line of code there that says "crank up the lethality at this point", it's just how the overall air model ends up working and my understanding is that it is a _huge_ piece of code in total. If you can find the threshhold, if a clear one exists given the variability built into the engine, I'd be interested to know where it is.

Regards,

- Erik

Okay, that helps.

Any information re how the box formation works with re to numbers of bombers in the formation and/or leaders (per my question to Ray)?

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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by mogami »

Hi, If you pay attention to your own screen shots you will note the group only has 4 pilots.
Their morale is 71 (I guess they are happy to still be alive.)
However the morale and fatigue for the group will not update for another turn. You have to draw pilots and they will arrive with around 15 fatigue (but the squadron display will not update nor will the morale or the experiance till you run the turn.
Also all replacement aircraft arrive damaged. And only if the group is within HQ range and has supply. Because they recieved replacements on the following replacement cycle it only means that
1. Aircraft were in pool
2. Group was in range of HQ
3. group has supply
in other words they had aircraft in crates that the mechanics will now begin to assemble. (Good staff work)
How long was the group down before it had 36 ready AC? That is what you need to measure for speed of operations.
What is the size of the airfield the Japanese are using I couldn't find where you posted that along with air HQ and support assigned.

However if the IJA pool is empty that Sentai is a total wreck for the next 6 months (when AC repaired group should relocate to safe base and begin training)
When reporting results of tests only the intell screen reports matter. Pilot and group kill totals are FOW influenced.
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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Erik Rutins »

ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn
I should have asked this before: when you say "box" I understand that to mean that when a formation of bombers (say, a wing) reaches a certain number (four B-17s could fly in a sort of "box" formation, but surely you mean more than that) then there's a new qualifier for bombers. That sounds good. What is this number? We need to know that. And does the qualifier go up and down (slide) according to how many bombers are in the the box formation? Does the box formation become a better or worse formation due to leader values? (Probably not, as we don't have "formation" leaders, but for all I know you've taken an average of present squadron/group leaders and used that. And in that case I wouldn't complain.)

I need hard information, Ray. Testing blind isn't my style.

It's often hard, even when we have Mike or Gary, to explain the code that clearly. All I can tell you is that Mike spent a night looking things over and this tweak was a side effect which appears in my testing to have had some effect as we described.

We're advising that you test with what will be the new official version at this point. We can't explain the tweak precisely without taking Mike away from work that we need him to be doing, but if your results are based on v1.57 then they will also be valid for v1.60 and thus more useful for people once that comes out (which should be within a few days). Just use the new version and don't worry about the exact details, is my suggestion.

Regards,

- Erik
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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by bradfordkay »

Tris, I noticed that in the early stages of this thread, you mentioned that the replacement rates were quite skewed, getting an entirely new group of a/c and pilots the next day. However, when I look at your screenshot of the 144th Sentai, I see a lot of new aircraft, but only four pilots listed. This seems to be the reason for the experience level remaining quite high, thoug I would agree that morale should have taken a larger hit. Are the other 30 some odd pilots hiding somewhere, because I certainly do not see them on that screenshot.
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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, If you pay attention to your own screen shots you will note the group only has 4 pilots.
Their morale is 71 (I guess they are happy to still be alive.)
However the morale and fatigue for the group will not update for another turn. You have to draw pilots and they will arrive with around 15 fatigue (but the squadron display will not update nor will the morale or the experiance till you run the turn.
Also all replacement aircraft arrive damaged. And only if the group is within HQ range and has supply. Because they recieved replacements on the following replacement cycle it only means that
1. Aircraft were in pool
2. Group was in range of HQ
3. group has supply
in other words they had aircraft in crates that the mechanics will now begin to assemble. (Good staff work)
How long was the group down before it had 36 ready AC? That is what you need to measure for speed of operations.
What is the size of the airfield the Japanese are using I couldn't find where you posted that along with air HQ and support assigned.

However if the IJA pool is empty that Sentai is a total wreck for the next 6 months (when AC repaired group should relocate to safe base and begin training)
When reporting results of tests only the intell screen reports matter. Pilot and group kill totals are FOW influenced.

I understand that. Why must you respond as if I just bought this game and didn't read the manual and don't have any ingame experience?

I don't find that real helpful, Russ.

When bombers come back from missions and they've been torn up the survivors have high fatigue and low morales, and this is before they get plane/pilot replacements and the screens "update." Same for fighters. They return from a pastring with low morale and high fatigue. That's how the game works normally. Or did. Was this altered for v1.5? If so, why? The game's already running too fast. We don't need to encourage it to run faster yet.

In the example of this thread, not only did the first Sentai return with suspicious morale/fatigue numbers, but the other Sentai did as well, and both Daitais of Zeros returned frsh as daisies into the bargain.

The second Sentai that flew:










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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Mr.Frag »

Tj, a sweep mission at a range of 2 is not going to drive up fatigue. You might not remember, but fighter / search type fatigue was lowered across the board to keep player frustrations of having to go through every single air group and stand them down every other turn.
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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Tj, a sweep mission at a range of 2 is not going to drive up fatigue. You might not remember, but fighter / search type fatigue was lowered across the board to keep player frustrations of having to go through every single air group and stand them down every other turn.


I understand that, Ray. And I mentioned my concern about only figuring in fatigue as a function of distance flown (as opposed to "combat fatigue") somewhere above. It's one thing to tone down the accumlation of fatigue for flying CAP when no one challenges you. That's routine duty. It's quite another thing to make it so fighters don't accumulate fatigue when they're not only engaged in actual combat, but very heavy combat--with astronomical losses at that.

And we haven't gotten to morale yet. This fatigue business has nothing to do with that, does it? Shouldn't morale at least drop severely after an air formation is nearly wiped out? Didn't it before? Am I dreaming?

I don't believe this.

I'm not sure what's happening anymore with the game. That's how peciuliar it has become. I do know (I think I remember) that before when fighters got mauled they suffered severe morale and fatigue hits even if the battle was over their own base. Now I see fighter formations taking no morale hits at all to speak of over their own base (with the Allied fighters in mind), and fighters that have to travel two hexes (the Japanese) not taking all that much, either, even though they've been run through the ringer. But good.

What percentage of Japanese losses are we talking about here? In aggregate 126 fighters swept Port Moresby. The intelligence screen says the losses are 95 air-to-air and 1 operational. Something's wrong there, too (as I've mentioned before) because a hand tally gives a total of 97 Japanese planes missing for one reason or the other.

Anyway, that comes to a loss percentage of all kinds of 77% (rounded up). That's an incredible loss figure.

That loss percentage alone ought to set off all the bells--it's like the Marianas Turkey Shoot. That these losses don't seem to affect the morale of the surviving pilots ought to set the bells off again. The end-of-day morale of the Allied fighters should also set off some bells.

Somehow I don't hear the bells.

If that's the way it's supposed to be I say it's wrong. Not that anyone will listen to me, but that ain't right, not by a long shot.


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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, If you pay attention to your own screen shots you will note the group only has 4 pilots.
Their morale is 71 (I guess they are happy to still be alive.)
However the morale and fatigue for the group will not update for another turn. You have to draw pilots and they will arrive with around 15 fatigue (but the squadron display will not update nor will the morale or the experiance till you run the turn.
Also all replacement aircraft arrive damaged. And only if the group is within HQ range and has supply. Because they recieved replacements on the following replacement cycle it only means that
1. Aircraft were in pool
2. Group was in range of HQ
3. group has supply
in other words they had aircraft in crates that the mechanics will now begin to assemble. (Good staff work)
How long was the group down before it had 36 ready AC? That is what you need to measure for speed of operations.
What is the size of the airfield the Japanese are using I couldn't find where you posted that along with air HQ and support assigned.

However if the IJA pool is empty that Sentai is a total wreck for the next 6 months (when AC repaired group should relocate to safe base and begin training)
When reporting results of tests only the intell screen reports matter. Pilot and group kill totals are FOW influenced.

I understand that. Why must you respond as if I just bought this game and didn't read the manual and don't have any ingame experience?

I don't find that real helpful, Russ.

When bombers come back from missions and they've been torn up the survivors have high fatigue and low morales, and this is before they get plane/pilot replacements and the screens "update." Same for fighters. They return from a pasting with low morale and high fatigue. That's how the game works normally. Or did. Was this altered for v1.5? If so, why? The game's already running too fast. We don't need to encourage it to run faster yet.

In the example of this thread, not only did the first Sentai return with suspicious morale/fatigue numbers, but the other Sentai did as well, and both Daitais of Zeros returned fresh as daisies into the bargain.

The second Sentai that flew:




Image
[/quote]




As you can see, this Sentai lost 25 planes and pilots and has even higher morale (80) with just 6 fatigue.

The two Zero Daitais that went on the sweep mission lost respectively 19 and 14 Zeros/pilots and have morale ratings of 99/92 and fatigue scores of 13/9 respectively. Must I post those screenshots, too, or will you take my word for it?

It's the same deal with the Allied fighters. The worst morale of any squadron that took part in the defense of Port Moresby is 95 for the AVG/B. It's fatgue is 3. All of the other Allied squadrons have morale no lower than 97, and most of them still sit at 99. For example, the Spitfire squadrons run (morale/fatigue) 99/6, 99/5, 99/4, 97/5. And so on, right on down the line.

I say something's wrong. If that's the way the model is supposed to operate now (with v1.5) then a mistake has been made and needs to be corrected ASAP. If this is not the way it's supposed to run (in other words, as before), then there's apparently a new bug at work, and that would need to be tracked down and killed.

I say let's not argue this stuff until the cows come home. I say let's fix these problems and be on our way.







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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

Tris, I noticed that in the early stages of this thread, you mentioned that the replacement rates were quite skewed, getting an entirely new group of a/c and pilots the next day.

Well, the replacement rates aren't "skewed." You need so many planes and pilots at a given spot on the map and eventually, if you've lived right and the creek don't rise you'll receive those planes and pilots, if they're available. Maybe. Hopefully.

It's the replacement "process" that's screwed up. No way this would or could happen overnight, or even over the period of a week or even two weeks for all I know. Maybe it would a take a month. Perhaps two months. Meanwhile, the game has it that the planes and pilots appear as if by magic and then . . . away you go! Sure, it'll take a few days to bring those planes on line, but that bears no relation whatosever to the real-time delay air formations would experience in the Pacific.

Just trust me on that. If you won't trust me, then you'll need to read some histories and see for yourself--I don't have the time or the inclination or the obligation at this juncture to find that material myself for you and then to transpose it to the screen and all that. But for what it's worth, I'm telling you that is not the way it worked in real life. Okay?
However, when I look at your screenshot of the 144th Sentai, I see a lot of new aircraft, but only four pilots listed. This seems to be the reason for the experience level remaining quite high, thoug I would agree that morale should have taken a larger hit. Are the other 30 some odd pilots hiding somewhere, because I certainly do not see them on that screenshot.

The pilots aren't hiding. I simply haven't asked for them yet, as you can see from the "Get New Pilot" toggle, I hope.

The planes appear automatically, you know, by "magic."

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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

Mistake.
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Tristanjohn
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RE: B-17/CAP test redux

Post by Tristanjohn »

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins
ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn
I should have asked this before: when you say "box" I understand that to mean that when a formation of bombers (say, a wing) reaches a certain number (four B-17s could fly in a sort of "box" formation, but surely you mean more than that) then there's a new qualifier for bombers. That sounds good. What is this number? We need to know that. And does the qualifier go up and down (slide) according to how many bombers are in the the box formation? Does the box formation become a better or worse formation due to leader values? (Probably not, as we don't have "formation" leaders, but for all I know you've taken an average of present squadron/group leaders and used that. And in that case I wouldn't complain.)

I need hard information, Ray. Testing blind isn't my style.

It's often hard, even when we have Mike or Gary, to explain the code that clearly. All I can tell you is that Mike spent a night looking things over and this tweak was a side effect which appears in my testing to have had some effect as we described.

We're advising that you test with what will be the new official version at this point. We can't explain the tweak precisely without taking Mike away from work that we need him to be doing, but if your results are based on v1.57 then they will also be valid for v1.60 and thus more useful for people once that comes out (which should be within a few days). Just use the new version and don't worry about the exact details, is my suggestion.

Regards,

- Erik

Okay, no problem. But when you and Mike have time, would you please ask him for an explanation that gamers might "take with them" into play? That's reasonable enough. You couldn't write a manual without that.



Regarding Frank Jack Fletcher: They should have named an oiler after him instead. -- Irrelevant
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