State of the Air War in AE

[jeffk3510]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf


Let us not ask how the results of 1000 plane japanese raids should be..


...let us ask instead when in history did japan ever launch a 1000 plane raid..




.. and where did they find the aluminum to build the numbers of AC we can in AE..

I would say by the end of the game, japan should have ships but no planes to put onto them
they can have tanks..or anything made of steel... but japan could only make about 120 kilotones of aluminum per year


the air model is excellent (thank you whoever fixed it since WITP, WITP was broken, AE is good)

please fix the production model too (and it is easy to do... 50 HI points for ships per 1 HI point for planes)

...but, in this game Japan can...and did in GJ and Rader's game... When you dont shut off Japans resources, as GreyJoy didnt...you will have these mega battles...thus, they need to be considered as well.

[Commander Stormwolf]

AE --> AC are cheap

IRL --> AC are expensive

in terms of types of materials at least..

.. trainers can be built of wood and steel but not zeroes

[btbw]

ORIGINAL: Commander Stormwolf


AE --> AC are cheap

IRL --> AC are expensive

in terms of types of materials at least..

.. trainers can be built of wood and steel but not zeroes

Me-262 and Mosquito, Ki-106 and Lagg-3.
Almost any WW2 a/c can have steel/wooden replica.

[Commander Stormwolf]

no.. steel/wood will cause major drop on performance

combine steel/wood with poor low-octane fuel and jap planes would be total junk

that's why they never used it in a first line plane..


nice to be USAAF, huge amounts of duralumin and high octane fuel [;)]

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: jeffk3510

...but, in this game Japan can...and did in GJ and Rader's game... When you dont shut off Japans resources, as GreyJoy didnt...you will have these mega battles...thus, they need to be considered as well.

Actually, I think any game if the allies come in close to the HI. Any IJ player is going to hundreds, if not a couple thousand kami's ready, almost independent of their expansion. But, yes, in rader's case with his HUGE expansion, he is in a position to put up many thousands of aircraft that historically did not happen. That is the point of the game though ... what if ...

[aoffen]

So.....lets set max stacking at a level 9 airfield of 450 aircraft which you need 450 AV to support. Try and mass 1000 plane co-ordinated raids with that restriction.
Regards
Andrew
edit Ooops... just realised I missed a bunch of posts so this post is a bit out of place. Apologies.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

ORIGINAL: castor troy




when we think about massed single or two day strikes against fleets the air support doesn't matter much, let not say nothing at all. Why? Because you can move in 1000 aircraft to airbases without any aviation support and have them strike the next day. While you need aviation support in real life to STRIKE (fueling, arming), you only need av support to "maintain" aircraft in the game, so launching those huge strikes for one or two days won't change. As long as an aircraft sits somewhere and isn't used you can fly it in the next day to strike. Usually it only takes one day to either wipe out a fleet, or not. Day two, three or four doesn't matter much.

This would only be influencing those fleet wipe outs if aviation support would be needed to launch strikes but as it stands now, only supply is needed to launch strikes.

Thats a really good observation! In fact its a damn great observation.

I wonder what happens if you bind the possible number of offensive sorties flown to the AV support?
Would this be possible?

It's also a false observation. The number of aircraft that fly is reduced if you have less air support than needed at a base. To the best of my knowledge the formula applied has not been revealed by the developers.

it isn't (unfortunately). Ok, it may be reduced, but the reduction is so low you don't notice if you want to fly those two thousand aircraft strike. There should be nearly NO aircraft flying without aviation support. At least this is what I am thinking about it, because who really is fueling and arming all those thousands of aircraft? The crews?

[LoBaron]

In fact there is an even easier solution than what I proposed on castor troy´s findings in post #194, if that one is too complex:

Simply reduce sortie percentage to a very low number if AV support is insufficient, to 5-10% of total a/c for example (instead of 75% as witpqs noted).

The issue I see here is theres a danger if you supercede AV by just a single plane, you get the penalty, and this is undesired. Hm. This would
mean 5000 plane stack results in 250 plane strike if AV is superceded.

You could also implement a soft limit:
0 - 10% overstack: 75% of sorties
10 - 50% overstack: 40% of sorties
> 50%: 10% of sorties

[treespider]

Been away for awhile...

In regards to the AV restrictions being bandied about...much like the Genie in the bottle be careful in what you wish for and try to think of all the implications before asking.

My first question would be - what impact would the restrictions have on the Japanese expansion in the 1st six months of the game? This period is crucial to an enjoyable and interesting mid- and end-game.

I like LoBaron's graduated penalty...however perhaps a refinement and tweaking of the repair and readying of returning aircraft would also be in order. Such that as a player attempts to conduct extended operations from a base with insufficient aircraft fewer and fewer planes are restored to a state of readiness for follow-up ops and remain "damaged".

Not sure of the damage routines but if I were king for a day in addition to the current routines ... all aircraft would accumulate a variable amount of damage dependent on range to target and # of engines and weather of 1-4 points on a 10 point scale at the conclusion of an air mission, irregardless of other accumulated damage...this damage would represent simple wear and tear. At the end of the mission 1 point of AV could restore 3 points of damage to the aircraft with the expenditure of supply. Any aircraft with 1 or more points of damage would not fly.

As such a single engine aircraft flying say 1-2 hexes in the AM in rain would accumulate 1 pt for range, 1 pt for engine, 1 pt for weather...3 pts of damage. It returns to base if the base has sufficient AV the 3 pts of damage are restored assuming sufficient supply is available and the aircraft is returned to readiness.

A twin engine aircraft flying say 10 hexes in clear would accumulate say 3 pts for range and 2 pts for engine and 0 for weather...5 pts total. If AV is present 3 points restored, aircraft would still have 1 point of damage and would be unavailable for PM strikes.

Remember this "damage" is in addition to damage received in A2A and from AAA. So our twin engine aircraft from above gets shot up during the raid, delivers its cargo and ends up ditching on return because of the wear and tear damage added at the end of mission would exceed allowable damage.

So in the case of the 2000 plane raid I would allow them to fly the initial raid...however upon return the 250 AV would only be able to repair 250... leaving 1750 on the ground damaged.


Anyhow... my 2 cents from the peanut gallery...you may resume your normal programming.

[castor troy]

which wouldn't solve the problem of the 2000 aircraft strike in a day though and we are at start again. All that is needed is that single day. Reducing the total number of aircraft striking in a single day should be the goal IMO. Or limiting the size of the strikes.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: castor troy
it isn't (unfortunately). Ok, it may be reduced, but the reduction is so low you don't notice if you want to fly those two thousand aircraft strike. There should be nearly NO aircraft flying without aviation support. At least this is what I am thinking about it, because who really is fueling and arming all those thousands of aircraft? The crews?

This is also why bypassing bases isn't all that good. You can fly strikes for at least a day or two off of an empty rock if need be. Some Lilies on a one way trip can do damage.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

which wouldn't solve the problem of the 2000 aircraft strike in a day though and we are at start again. All that is needed is that single day. Reducing the total number of aircraft striking in a single day should be the goal IMO. Or limiting the size of the strikes.

So what is the problem?

Is it that 2000 aircraft are striking in a day?

Or is it that there are too many leakers from a 2000 a/c strike which would go towards A2A resolution?

So if a player has 2000AV at a base should he not be allowed to launch 2000 a/c?

Or is it too much coordination?

[LoBaron]

I am with you on this, treespider.

The main question needs to be: what do we want to achieve?

My personal view is that the goal should be to reduce the ability of the player to force extreme number of sorties per strike
to a level, so the end of the scale where the code gets troubles is as difficult to reach as possible, except if you use bad play
on a strategic level (e.g. exposing one contested area on purpose to concentrate on another contested area).

Currently the problem is, that in case you got high concentration of aviation support in one area and need to react to a threat
in another area, you only need to relocate an extreme number of planes to this area and accept a 25% penalty on
alpha strikes.

With the proposed changes you would need to relocate the aviation support as well.

As long as on player does not play into the hand of the other this forces dispersion of aviation support to ensure you can react on
all fronts to an occuring threat.

It also prevents stationing stood down squadrons on a 60AV airfield, wait for all planes to be ready, and then be able to launch a single
huge alpha strike to overwhelm, because the AV is the limiting factor (by more than the current 25%).


This would reduce a high percentage of the massive airbattle occurances I think, or at least make strategies supporting those concentrations
less attractive.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: castor troy
Or is it that there are too many leakers from a 2000 a/c strike which would go towards A2A resolution?

They aren't really leakers, its due to fighters taking the fall for them. I think the issue there is complex though, and the fighters taking the fall for them issue only happens in huge battles.

Or is it too much coordination?

Yup, IMO.

The system is fine for smaller battles, so enforcing a series of smaller battles in preference to one ginormous one seems to be the most logical way of dealing with it.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: treespider

ORIGINAL: castor troy

which wouldn't solve the problem of the 2000 aircraft strike in a day though and we are at start again. All that is needed is that single day. Reducing the total number of aircraft striking in a single day should be the goal IMO. Or limiting the size of the strikes.

So what is the problem?

Is it that 2000 aircraft are striking in a day?

Or is it that there are too many leakers from a 2000 a/c strike which would go towards A2A resolution?

So if a player has 2000AV at a base should he not be allowed to launch 2000 a/c?

Or is it too much coordination?

IMO, the strike size. At some point there is this one or two strikes that are big enough to wipe out any Allied carrier fleet. Needless to say the same happens to the Japanese too and even easier. Having aircraft not fly that don't have aviation support would aim at the strike sizes, no fuel, no bombs, no bullets, no aircraft participating in a strike.

[janh]

Increasing need for AV support to reduce mission sizes and op-tempo is one thing I would support, but it sounds not sufficient alone.

For one, high densities of planes on an "airfield", even if it is a level 9 complex", should incur penalties in participating even if an equally high number of AV were available. The amount of AV needed to get a number of planes in the air should not scale linearly with AV, but there should be a natural limit. Think of the efficiency of managing projects: one is straight forward, two and each one already gets less than 50% attention, and if you distribute your attention between 50 every day, you wont get much done for any of them. I guess the same would be true for organizing your AV, the ordering, stocking and distribution of spare parts, etc. And should be true for putting two dozen divisions in a hex in china, or 1000 planes on a base in Burma. There are natural limits to force efficiency, base sizes etc. Say for example maybe 100 AV can handle still 100 planes, but 500AV should only be able to handle some 400 planes or so?
The catch with addressing land bases and LBA AV needs is of course it will dis-balance it in respect to naval air...

ORIGINAL: LoBaron
It also prevents stationing stood down squadrons on a 60AV airfield, wait for all planes to be ready, and then be able to launch a single huge alpha strike to overwhelm, because the AV is the limiting factor (by more than the current 25%).

Per se, that wouldn't sound wrong: If it took 2-3 days to "repair and ready" planes, I would imagine a based stacked with fueled and armed planes in preparation -- resulting in increased danger to attacks, which is left to the dice in any case.

This gets back to Treespiders point, in fact: perhaps, if damages to planes aside from combat damage were a bit higher, more time would be needed until the next mission (or suffer reduced flight size). This would affect their 2nd operation cycle. Now, for the 1st mission after transfer, how about the penalties for the transfer missions? If these were higher also, you couldn't shuttle squadrons in and have them immediately ready the next day without plenty of AV?

Aside from that, I still have a bit of a bad aftertaste from some of the large CV battles with LBA support in the AARs, in which CAP efficiency seemed to be rather "strange". I don't say weak, since CAP usually takes down a lot of escorts, while escorts in turn often do not do much damage to CAP. One of the PzB vs Andy Mac contest comes to mind, in the DEI, which may in fact have been a totally fine outcome, but given the recent discussion of ablative armor and the 200 passes limit, leaves a bit of an aftertaste. At least the former factor seems to also be effective even for smaller strikes (...safe your Oscars for the day...). Maybe I just lack a bit of believe in the air model in a few situations, because I lack the details to fully understand all of it, for e.g. what this pass limit is to represent. As with so many things, I am certain the AE team must have also conceived that detail very well...

[Grfin Zeppelin]

ORIGINAL: janh

I Say for example maybe 100 AV can handle still 100 planes, but 500AV should only be able to handle some 400 planes or so?

Why ? I mean 100 soldiers can handle 100 rifles and 500 can handle 500 rifles or not ? 1 AV is the ground crew required to handle a 1 engined plane, thats straightforward to me so 2 AV still can service lets say three planes but suboptimal of course. Ah maybe I missed something but I dont understand this point.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: Gräfin Zeppelin

ORIGINAL: janh
I Say for example maybe 100 AV can handle still 100 planes, but 500AV should only be able to handle some 400 planes or so?

Why ? I mean 100 soldiers can handle 100 rifles and 500 can handle 500 rifles or not ? 1 AV is the ground crew required to handle a 1 engined plane, thats straightforward to me so 2 AV still can service lets say three planes but suboptimal of course. Ah maybe I missed something but I dont understand this point.

What I mean is some sort of overhead, a limit above which efficiency decreases. Yes, 500 men can still handle 500 rifles, but if you want all of them to storm a small complex, that may not be most "force efficient". 50 men perhaps could have achieved, the same, 500 are better, but they are not 10x better.
Think of optimal frontages for a unit, say a division. There is a range where it is efficiently working, then there is too narrow , or too wide. Hope you get what I mean.

[AcePylut]

Here’s what I think is the “issue” with the Air Combat model, and one that probably can’t be changed wihtout an air-model re-write.
The issue: Strike Detection and Interception

Example: Today in my Downfall game, I flew a sweep mission to Tokyo with P51’s based out of Iwo. I flew a sweep mission to Chiba (1 hex SE of Tokyo) with P38’s from Iwo.
Japan had all bases capped. My sweep to Tokyo went in first and blasted the IJ multitudes of Zero’s. My sweep mission to Chiba went in second and didn’t fare as well against Chiba – as Chiba had Georges and Shindens.
In effect, my first sweep flew “past” the cap over Chiba and hit Tokyo, when in reality, the IJ would be intercepting the P51’s long before Tokyo.

Example 2: I have a CV fleet at Iwo, and 2 hexes north of the CV fleet I have a first line of pickets. 4 hexes north of the CV fleet I have a 2nd line of pickets. All my pickets have radar. Lets say the IJ sorties against my CV fleet. This strike would be detected 4 hexes + “picket radar range modifier” away from the CVs. My fighters would/should begin flying towards this strike pretty quickly – they should intercept “not” in the CV hex, but at least a hex or maybe 2 away. This air battle should have numerous intercepts/combats at hexes away from the CV before the strike package can even “think” about launching torps at my CV’s. But it doesn’t – the strike misses all the pickets and their detection and only whats “in” the CV’s hex matters.


Now, this is an issue that I don’t see being changed. This would make the air combat model a “tactical” level game, when we’re playing a strategic level game.

So how do address the model?

A workaround could be exponentially increasing coordination penalties as the number of air groups assigned to a target increases. This would “break up” the massive strike into a much more realistic “3-4 air groups here, attack 3-4 air groups there” as would occur during a massive raid, for the simple fact that in a 1000 plane raid, those escorts on the “west side” of the formation would probably never make it to the “east side” of the formation to attack CAP coming from the East (and vice versa).

I think we can all agree that the air model works pretty well at “smaller numbers” (i.e. before ablative escorts come into play), so the solution would be to make the air combat model stick to the smaller numbers. I find it much more realistic and could address the issue.

The key in the coordination penalty is to *increase* it based on # of groups assigned to a target. Now, that “# of strikes assigned to a target” is determined by the player (in setting port/ground attacks to a single hex) or the computer (when it decides to sortie 5 Netty Groups and 10 Zero groups to a CV fleet).

Of course, it’ll work until someone finds a way to break “this” model and then were back at square one of the “Uber Cap” vs “Ablative Escort” argument.

[Captain Cruft]

I'm absolutely fine with the air model the way it is. Of course there are numerous imperfections, but they are the same for both sides. Nothing even approaches a game-breaker IMO. The sub problem is far worse.

The map consists of more than two uber-hexes duking it out against each other. If what you are doing doesn't work try something different somewhere else.