BUFFs - Understanding their use and modelling in-game.

[vicberg]

Geez...what's with the personal attacks?

Nemo, you may have left, but I doubt it, and if you read this, I'd like to point out what you originally posted...

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

I'd like to start this thread to continue a discussion 1EyedJacks and I have been having about B-17s in the early war, particularly as I'm seeing a different side of the same stick in my 1945 game. I'd like to invite anyone to contribute as 1EyedJacks in particular wants to build up a picture of others' experience with 4-engined bombers both commanding and opposing them.

So far, that what I believe most, if not everyone has done. Sure it's varied off point to this "glitch", but for the most part, it's stayed on exactly what you asked for. So, if you wanted a more focused discussion, such as "accuracy of the model", you should have made that clearer up front.

People are sharing their experiences.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: 1EyedJacks

This is an example of what frustrates me with the 4E bombers...
------------------------------------------------------
Night Air attack on Singapore , at 50,84

Weather in hex: Severe storms
Maybe I'm wrong but I think this is bogus. During the run those bombers are flying in formation @ a level altitude and they are not "jinking" or manuevering or trying to give their gunners better targets. The navigator is in control during the bombing run...

Does the part I bolded matter?

in a word....yes.

[SuluSea]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

Nope, leave the forts alone unless there is a willingness to address other issues in the game. Yes, I agree that my heavy bombers are a bit stronger and have more influence than they should in AE. However, as the Allied player I am dealing with-in no particular order:


The Japanese ability to train up great pilots in endless numbers.

This to me is why any deviation from the B-17 modelling however small is meaningless.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Well, as I see it the model could be improved upon.

If I were asked to come up with an improvement to the ops loss model ( which I haven't been and never will be. Not too popular with many of the developers [:D] ) there would be two options:

Don't sell yourself short. You are one of the most intelligent, fair, and thoughtful members of this forum.

[TheElf]

I recommend a Service rating of 5 for B-17C/D/E. I am on the fence about the F. The B-24 and B-29 are about right. Superfort is already at 5. This would go a long way towards reflecting the challenges that bomber units faced early in the war, and better represent the low op tempo of the Fortress.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: rtrapasso

ORIGINAL: Puhis

ORIGINAL: bigred

http://www.mishalov.com/zeamer-obit.html

Before we tinker w/ the b17 in game we should read this.

Well, if we read Saburo Sakai's book "Samurai", I'm pretty sure there was incident where Zeros spotted 5 B-17 trying to bomb Buna landing. Saburo shot down one B-17, other Zeros shot down 3 more. The last Fortress jettisoned bombs and fled. Never seen that in this game...

The problem with these reports are they from the pilots involved... for instance, there was a report (which is still in circulation) where an SBD pilot shot down something like 5 attacking IJN planes (Vals, Kates, etc.) The pilot got a medal and promoted to fighters.

Problem is, after the war, it was shown none of this happened. Stuff like this happened over and over again with pilots reporting multiple kills, and yet none them verified when enemy records were examined.

Sakai's book, while interesting, suffered from not having verification on a number of the incidents he claimed.

very true...reports like this when not run to ground by our esteemed players imbue them with a false sense of reality...[8|] one of the major challenges of being a dev on this forum.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: Wirraway_Ace

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

The issue with this aspect is, as always, the far reaching consequeces of even a minor change. Makes WitPAE one real ba***** to tweak.

I think SuluSea is spot on when he introduces a further aspect: op losses are not always, but sometimes, related to A2A, so its very difficult to get a clear picture
of the interactions. You simply cannot assume to what an op loss is originally related to (e.g. AC previeousely damaged in an engagement crashing on landing because of the damage).

I still would opt for the gun accuracy option to test.

While I agree, Ideally there would be a formation cohesion test that affects the accuracy of bomber defensive armaments; for all I know of the code, there already is. This should apply to all bomber formations, not just HBs. The example of what happened to Sakai when he "pounced" on a formation of TBFs comes to mind.

bomber defense is a collective measure that factors several things into opposing attacking fighter rolls. Obviously the more bombers you have the higher that collective measure. However we did put a cap in place to represent that not ALL bombers of a 100 plane formation fx would be firing at the same fighter.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: 1EyedJacks

These are the two day-raids for 5.22.42

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Singapore , at 50,84

Weather in hex: Heavy rain

Raid detected at 40 NM, estimated altitude 14,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 12 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 33
Ki-43-Ib Oscar x 18
Ki-43-Ic Oscar x 10
Ki-45 KAIa Nick x 11 Roughly 70/30 Fighter/Bomber with a little over 40 of those fighters armed with a 20mm gun.



Allied aircraft
B-17E Fortress x 29


Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 10 damaged
A6M2 Zero: 2 destroyed on ground
Ki-43-Ib Oscar: 1 destroyed
Ki-43-Ib Oscar: 1 destroyed on ground
Ki-43-Ic Oscar: 1 destroyed, 9 damaged
Ki-43-Ic Oscar: 1 destroyed on ground
Ki-45 KAIa Nick: 3 damaged
Ki-45 KAIa Nick: 1 destroyed on ground
G3M2 Nell: 1 destroyed on ground

Allied aircraft losses
B-17E Fortress: 1 destroyed, 25 damaged

Japanese ground losses:
5 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled



Airbase hits 4
Airbase supply hits 2
Runway hits 35

Aircraft Attacking:
4 x B-17E Fortress bombing from 8000 feet
Airfield Attack: 8 x 500 lb GP Bomb
5 x B-17E Fortress bombing from 8000 feet
Airfield Attack: 8 x 500 lb GP Bomb
6 x B-17E Fortress bombing from 8000 feet
Airfield Attack: 8 x 500 lb GP Bomb
5 x B-17E Fortress bombing from 8000 feet
Airfield Attack: 8 x 500 lb GP Bomb
3 x B-17E Fortress bombing from 8000 feet
Airfield Attack: 8 x 500 lb GP Bomb
5 x B-17E Fortress bombing from 8000 feet
Airfield Attack: 8 x 500 lb GP Bomb

CAP engaged:
Tainan Ku S-1 with A6M2 Zero (33 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
33 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 15000
Raid is overhead
84th I.F.Chutai with Ki-43-Ic Oscar (1 airborne, 3 on standby, 0 scrambling)
1 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 15000 , scrambling fighters to 14000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 7 minutes
77th Sentai Det A with Ki-43-Ic Oscar (1 airborne, 2 on standby, 0 scrambling)
1 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 8000 , scrambling fighters to 12000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 6 minutes
77th Sentai Det B with Ki-43-Ic Oscar (1 airborne, 2 on standby, 0 scrambling)
1 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 9000 , scrambling fighters to 10000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 6 minutes
260th Sentai with Ki-43-Ib Oscar (6 airborne, 12 on standby, 0 scrambling)
6 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 8000 , scrambling fighters between 1000 and 8000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 5 minutes
264th Sentai with Ki-45 KAIa Nick (3 airborne, 8 on standby, 0 scrambling)
3 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 20000 , scrambling fighters between 6000 and 20000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 10 minutes
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Singapore , at 50,84

Weather in hex: Heavy rain

Raid detected at 40 NM, estimated altitude 12,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 12 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 20
Ki-43-Ib Oscar x 9
Ki-43-Ic Oscar x 4
Ki-45 KAIa Nick x 8



Allied aircraft
B-17E Fortress x 9


Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 1 destroyed on ground
Ki-43-Ic Oscar: 4 damaged
Ki-45 KAIa Nick: 1 destroyed, 1 damaged

Allied aircraft losses
B-17E Fortress: 6 damaged



Airbase hits 2
Runway hits 2

Aircraft Attacking:
6 x B-17E Fortress bombing from 8000 feet
Airfield Attack: 8 x 500 lb GP Bomb
3 x B-17E Fortress bombing from 8000 feet
Airfield Attack: 8 x 500 lb GP Bomb

CAP engaged:
Tainan Ku S-1 with A6M2 Zero (0 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
20 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact.
Group patrol altitude is 15000 , scrambling fighters to 8000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 250 minutes
77th Sentai Det A with Ki-43-Ic Oscar (1 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
1 plane(s) intercepting now.
Group patrol altitude is 8000
Raid is overhead
77th Sentai Det B with Ki-43-Ic Oscar (1 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
1 plane(s) intercepting now.
1 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact.
Group patrol altitude is 9000 , scrambling fighters to 8000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 56 minutes
264th Sentai with Ki-45 KAIa Nick (0 airborne, 4 on standby, 0 scrambling)
4 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact.
Group patrol altitude is 20000 , scrambling fighters between 8000 and 9000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 30 minutes
84th I.F.Chutai with Ki-43-Ic Oscar (0 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
1 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact.
Group patrol altitude is 15000 , scrambling fighters to 8000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 24 minutes
260th Sentai with Ki-43-Ib Oscar (0 airborne, 0 on standby, 0 scrambling)
9 plane(s) not yet engaged, 0 being recalled, 0 out of immediate contact.
Group patrol altitude is 8000 , scrambling fighters to 8000.
Time for all group planes to reach interception is 61 minutes

Notes:
@ Singapore: Serviceable/Maint/Damage/Reserve - these are the fighter units assigned Day Ops. I'm unsure if any fighter groups assigned Night Ops missions would have scrambled but some aircarft from those units could be in the ground losses...
12 Oscar-Ic now 6/0/2/0
10 Oscar-Ic now 3/0/5/0
12 Oscar-Ic now 6/0/4/0
27 Oscar-Ib now 14/0/8/0
31 NickKAIa now 14/0/12/0
45 A6M2 Zero now 28/0/3/1

Just as an FYI some of these units had aircraft in the shop from the day B4. Also airfield was pummeled. All fighters set @ 80/20 CAP/Rest. Moral is taking a beating on a few of my air groups - more then usual - probably due to the pummeling of the base by the 4E bombers?

There was some AAA activity but I didn't see any 4E go down. I think Flak damage message came up 5 times during the 1st attack.

not for nuthin, but this raid resulted in 7% losses. I count this as one uncoordinated raid. I am also of course assuming this was the only B-17 activity...

[SuluSea]

I always enjoy reading your posts Elf and appreciate your contributions to this game.
 
Just wondering about some of the shot down fighters people see and how the aggressiveness of the leader of the fighter unit and how that plays into pressing home the attack in the face of heavy defense by the HBs. Am I off base in thinking this?
 
Thanks!

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: oldman45

In all the games that I have played I have never seen that many fighters shot down by 4E bombers. I have had my bombers damaged and spending a lot of time being repaired, which is what I expect.

Part of the problem with PBEM is players will launch huge raids which seldom happened especially early in the war. That throws off the combat tables. The 20mm's on the Zero's are not that effective. It was proven in Europe that the slow firing 20mm did not work well in air-air combat. The changes you are talking about will change how the engine handles air combat and more 4E will be lost than should be. Find a good used bookstore and see if you can locate the Army Airforces in WWII. Its a multi-volumn set but it has after action reports and I found it to be rather informative. Pretty dry reading but you will see that the heavy bombers had very high survivablity against the Oscars and Zero's.

There are a couple of other things that tend to occur. I have said this before, though I'd be hard pressed to find the post (it may actually be on the ole WitP Forum). Optempo is a huge factor. Players tend to think they should be able to mount daily raids with their 4E, and they often try to. This is an inaccurate use of 4E. In reality it took a lot of time to get the paucity of 4E aircraft early in the war, particularly the B-17s into the air. And when they did it was frequently several days if not a week between raids. They just didn't have the maintenance available. This and the utter lack of proper maritime patrol assets meant that even when they had aircraft their duties were not limited to the closure of IJ AFs.

Most players do not play this game with any real sense of the Air War. Most are still learning as they play. Castor Troy is a perfect example of this.

[TheElf]

ORIGINAL: SuluSea

I always enjoy reading your posts Elf and appreciate your contributions to this game.

Just wondering about some of the shot down fighters people see and how the aggressiveness of the leader of the fighter unit and how that plays into pressing home the attack in the face of heavy defense by the HBs. Am I off base in thinking this?

Thanks!

See my post above. I have to sort through reasonable observations by reasonable players, and also the unreasonable observations from unreasonable players. Sometimes it is difficult to tell what is a true problem with the game, or just poor uninformed play stemming from high expectations.

Have 4E bombers have always been overpowered...? Probably. But not to the extent that I think some people on this thread might think. On one had I see reports that decry the routine as being broken, and the next post I see someone say, "I haven't seen that". So I have to filter through it all.

I think 4E bombers could be toned down a bit, both in terms of their availability (Op Tempo), and their lethality against CAP. How much? I really don't know. I am looking at it though.

Aggressive Fighter leaders will have the effect of exposing their unit to more 4E bomber defense than an non aggressive one. The desired effect of collective bomber defense is to see more fighters turn away due to effective fire than to see them shot down. In reality way more enemy fighters were claimed by bomber gunners than were ever shot down. It's a fact. It was also a morale issue. You WANTED your gunners to believe they were effective...

[ChezDaJez]

I think 4E bombers could be toned down a bit, both in terms of their availability (Op Tempo), and their lethality against CAP. How much? I really don't know. I am looking at it though.

Aggressive Fighter leaders will have the effect of exposing their unit to more 4E bomber defense than an non aggressive one. The desired effect of collective bomber defense is to see more fighters turn away due to effective fire than to see them shot down. In reality way more enemy fighters were claimed by bomber gunners than were ever shot down. It's a fact. It was also a morale issue. You WANTED your gunners to believe they were effective...

I agree that the availability of 4Es for missions is probably a bit too high. The 8th AF in Britain seldom had an availability rate exceeding 60-70% and that was with good airfields and good spare parts availability.

In terms of effectiveness vs CAP, Emmanual Gustin has conducted some pretty good studies. Mush of his work is derive from the European theater but it is also germane to other theaters. I've quoted some of his work below:

Even the best all-round armament was never enough. Deep penetrations in German territory turned out to be extremely costly. The most famous examples are the attacks on Regensburg and Schweinfurt: The first attack, on 17 August, resulted in the loss of 60 bombers out of a force of 363. Some consolation was found in the claims by the gunners, which amounted to a total of 228 enemy fighters shot down; even after careful evaluation of claims the 8th AF estimated the German losses to be between 148 and 100. In fact the Luftwaffe had lost only 25 fighters. A repeat attack on 14 October gave a confirmation, if any was necessary: 65 more B-17s were lost. The initial claim of enemy fighters downed was even higher than in the first attack, 288; but even the official figure of 104 was way above the real German loss: 35. (See Note 3.)

The infamous attacks on Schweinfurt were not unique. They were merely the most serious in a long series of disasters for the 8th AAF. In 1943, it was clearly losing the battle with the German fighter defenses.

Why did the heavy bombers fail? Apparently the leaders of the 8th AF simply underestimated the difficulty of the task the gunners faced. There were some skeptics, such as Col. Claude E. Putnam, the commander of the 306th BG, who estimated in 1943 that only 10% of the gunners who could theoretically have fired at an enemy aircraft really did so, and that at least four gunners needed to fire to have a 50% probability to shoot an enemy aircraft down. The commander of the 308th shared his doubts, wondering whether the guns were not more a hazard than a protection.[35]

The attacking fighters were small targets in an often confusing battle, and it was not at all evident that gunners would see them, identify them, estimate their distance and speed, aim correctly, and fire at the right time. This looked good on paper, but in practice it was an almost impossible task. During WWII, the hit probability for fixed, forward-firing guns was estimated to be only about 2% for an average pilot; and the operation of flexible guns is far more complex. The German fighter pilots flew short missions; the gunners spent long hours in cold, draughty, and incredibly noisy aircraft, shaking in the turbulence created by the large bomber formations. The gunsights were often primitive: The powered turrets had some form of computing sight, but most hand-aimed guns had simple ring-and-bead sights. The field of view and fire from some positions, notably the radio room of the B-17 and the waist positions, was quite limited. Overall, the German fighters held a clear advantage.

Another factor was that the gunners were not trained well enough.[27] After the outbreak of war a large training program was created, but there was little experience in the field, little equipment, and it was very difficult to find and retain competent instructors. During the war some improvements were made, but as late as 1944 a War Department report admitted that some gunners simply didn't know how to operate their gun turrets! Operational units had priority for equipment, and gunnery training was sadly neglected: It was mid-1944 before enough aircraft were made available to gunnery schools and gun cameras became available for training purposes.

The assumption that the concentrated fire of a "combat box" would fend off fighters also had a fundamental flaw: It ignored that the fighters would react by concentrating their attacks. Initially the Luftwaffe went after the lower groups, but later it often attacked the lead group, because they knew that it contained the lead bombardier. The formation did offer significant protection to the bombers; indeed any bomber that left the formation became an easy kill. But it was not enough.

The exaggerated kill claims gave a false impression of the effectiveness of the defensive guns, and for this reason the 8th AF continued unescorted daylight attacks for far too long. The usual reason given for the excessively high claims is that any German aircraft shot down was claimed by multiple gunners, who had all fired in its direction. In addition, too often any puff of smoke from a German aircraft was interpreted as a sign of a fatal hit, while it often enough just indicated a rough handling of the throttle. The gunners had to do an impossible job in extremely dangerous conditions, and can hardly be blamed for compiling incorrect statistics.

Here is the link to the website I retrieved this from.

Bomber effectiveness vs CAP

I appreciate your knowledge and dedication to this forum. As a fighter pilot, you are probably the only one here who has ever had the chance to put guns on target whether IRL or in air-air practice. That gives you a unique insight into the difficulties associated with air combat.

Chez

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: TheElf

See my post above. I have to sort through reasonable observations by reasonable players, and also the unreasonable observations from unreasonable players. Sometimes it is difficult to tell what is a true problem with the game, or just poor uninformed play stemming from high expectations.

Have 4E bombers have always been overpowered...? Probably. But not to the extent that I think some people on this thread might think. On one had I see reports that decry the routine as being broken, and the next post I see someone say, "I haven't seen that". So I have to filter through it all.

I think 4E bombers could be toned down a bit, both in terms of their availability (Op Tempo), and their lethality against CAP. How much? I really don't know. I am looking at it though.

Aggressive Fighter leaders will have the effect of exposing their unit to more 4E bomber defense than an non aggressive one. The desired effect of collective bomber defense is to see more fighters turn away due to effective fire than to see them shot down. In reality way more enemy fighters were claimed by bomber gunners than were ever shot down. It's a fact. It was also a morale issue. You WANTED your gunners to believe they were effective...

I think one of the greatest roadblocks to getting this right in AE is that people continually try to use examples from the European Air War to justify their opinions. The two really aren't that similar.

In Europe, the Germans had radar coverage from the channel coast over most of SE England. They could watch the bomber raids forming up over their own bases, and have a good idea of the timing and direction of raids as soon as they began to move towards their targets. They had the bases and A/C available to intercept raids hundreds of miles from their targets, and maintain continuous attacks for several hours. This Air War was very extended and intense.

In the Pacific, most raids came "out of the blue" from over the ocean. Radar might provide enough warning to scramble interceptors over the target itself, but there really wasn't much possibility of the kind of hours-long air combats that occurred over Europe---even when the targets were in Japan itself.

Add to this the fact that the Germans fielded a much more capable range of aircraft for this kind of fighting (stronger construction, armor plate, better armament) than the Japanese had available..., and comparisons are almost meaningless.

I think we would be better off ignoring all examples based on Europe and considering only the numbers and examples from Pacific fighting.

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: TheElf

ORIGINAL: Wirraway_Ace

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

The issue with this aspect is, as always, the far reaching consequeces of even a minor change. Makes WitPAE one real ba***** to tweak.

I think SuluSea is spot on when he introduces a further aspect: op losses are not always, but sometimes, related to A2A, so its very difficult to get a clear picture
of the interactions. You simply cannot assume to what an op loss is originally related to (e.g. AC previeousely damaged in an engagement crashing on landing because of the damage).

I still would opt for the gun accuracy option to test.

While I agree, Ideally there would be a formation cohesion test that affects the accuracy of bomber defensive armaments; for all I know of the code, there already is. This should apply to all bomber formations, not just HBs. The example of what happened to Sakai when he "pounced" on a formation of TBFs comes to mind.

bomber defense is a collective measure that factors several things into opposing attacking fighter rolls. Obviously the more bombers you have the higher that collective measure. However we did put a cap in place to represent that not ALL bombers of a 100 plane formation fx would be firing at the same fighter.

Thank you for the input. I was assuming something like this but without knowing the code you can never be sure.

FWIIW I agree with oldman that the use of massed heavy bomber formations against land targets early in the war, when Japanese AC are mainly armed with light caliber machine guns or
slow firing cannons, offset the results in a way that could be close to "historical".

[LoBaron]

ORIGINAL: TheElf
See my post above. I have to sort through reasonable observations by reasonable players, and also the unreasonable observations from unreasonable players. Sometimes it is difficult to tell what is a true problem with the game, or just poor uninformed play stemming from high expectations.

Have 4E bombers have always been overpowered...? Probably. But not to the extent that I think some people on this thread might think. On one had I see reports that decry the routine as being broken, and the next post I see someone say, "I haven't seen that". So I have to filter through it all.

I think 4E bombers could be toned down a bit, both in terms of their availability (Op Tempo), and their lethality against CAP. How much? I really don't know. I am looking at it though.

Aggressive Fighter leaders will have the effect of exposing their unit to more 4E bomber defense than an non aggressive one. The desired effect of collective bomber defense is to see more fighters turn away due to effective fire than to see them shot down. In reality way more enemy fighters were claimed by bomber gunners than were ever shot down. It's a fact. It was also a morale issue. You WANTED your gunners to believe they were effective...

Not sure if you already have an opinion on some tweak for reducing op tempo, or if you already identified problems that could make this impossible to implement:

1) kill the 250 aviation support cap - (if I understood this correct, above 250 the aviation support is calculated as unlimited (?)) - this could be neccesary to make point 2 effective

2) increase the required aviation support for heavy bombers. If 2-3 times the AS is needed to keep heavies under maintenance, repaired, and in the air, this would automatically reduce their operational tempo from
fields with low AS and increase the logistic investement needed for large bases to support regular heavy bomber raids.


Another suggestion was to increase the maintenance cost for heavies even more. The question is whether this would keep the servicability in historical limits.
What could be an option is to increase the early models service rating only (D, E, and maybe the early B24 variants)

Edit: DOH, only now noted that you already commented on the service rating increase on the last page. [8|]
(which makes it even more understandable how difficult it must be to shuffle through the whole of this monster thread)

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: TheElf


Most players do not play this game with any real sense of the Air War. Most are still learning as they play. Castor Troy is a perfect example of this.

yeah, that´s probably the reason castor troy is noticing bugs halve a year before the air team leader, lol. Guess I don´t have to count them up? Was it you that said "I haven´t fired up the game for a long time" two weeks after release? There are so many loops totally off in regards to the air routines that got nothing to do with operational tempo at all. In the end, that´s then called "exploit" as it happened? At least that´s the time when I stopped bitching about it. But hey, why going further into this, you had enough "problems" during development and I´m only at best an annoyance. The time I wouldn´t care a permanent ban I probably should post some beta test discussions. They would probably be deleted in short time but at least some of the forum users could get some insight. Kind of a AE dev leak... nice read though. Probably one of the reasons I´m one of the most vocal (or the most?) about it.

[beppi]

Quite a strange thread and it lacks some systematic tests. There are a lot of assumptions and "i think or i see" statements.
Has anyone anytime conducted some systematic tests with bombers against fighters cause this would be quite interesting.

The only tests i every saw in the last year where from a German forum where they conducted some (usually a series of 10) tests between B17 (D/E/F) and A6M2, with 30 - 40 B17 against 40-50 A6M2 which resulted in a ratio of around 4-4,5 : 1 for the Zero in all tests. Alt had some influence exp was comparable (around 55 for both sides).

[LoBaron]

The discussion is only partially about the effect of heavies defensive armament on low performance Japanese fighters
as the root cause for the discussed situations could lie more in their early availability for massed strikes and the reasons
for that.

Not saying that the thread isnt strange, but this may be related to the personality of some posters... [;)]

[SuluSea]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

I think one of the greatest roadblocks to getting this right in AE is that people continually try to use examples from the European Air War to justify their opinions. The two really aren't that similar.

In Europe, the Germans had radar coverage from the channel coast over most of SE England. They could watch the bomber raids forming up over their own bases, and have a good idea of the timing and direction of raids as soon as they began to move towards their targets. They had the bases and A/C available to intercept raids hundreds of miles from their targets, and maintain continuous attacks for several hours. This Air War was very extended and intense.

In the Pacific, most raids came "out of the blue" from over the ocean. Radar might provide enough warning to scramble interceptors over the target itself, but there really wasn't much possibility of the kind of hours-long air combats that occurred over Europe---even when the targets were in Japan itself.

Add to this the fact that the Germans fielded a much more capable range of aircraft for this kind of fighting (stronger construction, armor plate, better armament) than the Japanese had available..., and comparisons are almost meaningless.

I think we would be better off ignoring all examples based on Europe and considering only the numbers and examples from Pacific fighting.

The voice of reason, I have to say I'm happy that Ian is looking into the 4E performance although I'd argue that all planes save the 38s are able to be used in a more up tempo manner, as mentioned earlier in the thread I do feel like an adjustment in fighters shot down could be made but the gap may not be as large as some may think. I still believe the Heavy Bomber modelling is close as to historical as one could expect.
Ask 10 players an opinion and you'll probably get 10 different answers, I will say I do find it humourous that some people that complain about the 4E performance insist on playing with PDUs on in which nothing about it is historical. Just an observation. [:)]

[Yakface]

Hi Ian (The Elf)

Can I ask, is there a fire routine that is specific to 4E bombers that 2E bombers do not use, or do they both use entirely the same code, the only difference being due to the amount of weapons and other aircraft stats.

The reason I ask is that I often see the first 10 or 20 messages of combat between fighter and 4E being entirely populated with the fighters being shot at and damaged - seemingly without making passes. I don't see the same thing (not just less - do't see it at all) when large numbers of 2E bombers are intercepted. I appreciate that 4E have much heavier armaments however at the moment the gulf between 4E (which seem to damage/shoot down large numbers of fighters) and 2E (which seem to shoot down nothing, ever) seems enormous.