High-Altitude bombing way too effective

[Erkki]

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

Erkki

(tech isn't really the place for these kinds of talks, it hurts Harley trying to figure out what is going, issues and what not)

but so saying

not to be rude, but where are you getting your history info from ?

the 47 had one of the best roll rates of any plane made during the war, and at med to high alt, it was more then a match for either the 109 or the 190, it could easily out turn the 190, and was as good as the 109 in a turn, plus with it's better roll rate, besides, the fact that the Yanks, liked to skid there planes in a fight, which the LW trained there pilots not to do, also gives them a big edge

the biggest issue the 47 had, was at low alt, it was a poor climber, until the pattle blade came out, then it was dangerous at all alts

the B-17 could fly high (the 29 could fly even higher, a lot of late war work was done by the LW, to find something that could counter the 29 if it showed up)

the 110 could not, it didn't have the power, alt for the bombers is based on what the plane could do, the same with the fighters, I have many stats on the 110 that say it should only go to 26,000, some say up to 32,000, I went with the higher alt

I don't think you are thinking what happens at high alt, the bomber takes a lot of non combat damage if it flies high, and (other then for you)they have trouble hitting the target at high alt (luck or numbers, may give you a better chance)

Bombers take non-combat damage? I did not know that. Its not in the manual, and the game doesnt give the player any hint about it. Do other planes too?

About the other things... Your own sources? Now I dont mean to sound rude, the way the game is is not yours or harleys fault, but, apparently, you have the authority to change the game, at least to some extend.

For the second time you didnt answer my question, should or shouldnt bomb and fuel load affect service ceiling, if yes, should there be %-difference between fighters, Zerstörers, mediums and 4Es? And what do you mean with "skidding"? If you want to bleed all your energy in a skidding turn, go ahead, one of the quickest ways to get yourself killed in a dogfight.

If you re-read my post, I never said the P47 was a bad plane. But really, honestly, do you think that P47s, outnumbered 2:1 or 3:1, at altitude disadvantage, against equal pilots in equal or better planes, should be able to down 10-15 of the attackers and not sustain a single casualty? the P47s in this game have victory ratio of 10-15:1, against anything I can trow them with, and most of that 1 being landing kaputts and due to flak. If I could I would order my pilots to one-way kamikaze flights carrying SC500 bombs to known P47 bases. It is THAT assymmetric.

Typical combat with P47s. B17s at 17kft, P47s above them at 20kft, estimated 40-50 of them. I have two full Gruppen of Bf-109Gs and a single one of FW-190A5s, plus a staffel size unit of Bf-109G5s. A Gruppe of FW-190F8s is approaching further with D.520s. The fighters are scrambled when the bombers are less than 50 miles away, and they are going to meet above the bomber's target at 28kft. Bombers bomb, and fighters fight. After 5-10min half of my fighters have turned home due to lack of fuel(!), neither side has sustained casualties. Typically around this, the P47s start bouncing. 10-15 bounces on intact planes end in at least 8-12 kills. My reinforcements might be able to bounce a 47 or two, but this is useless, because 50% of time they only get damaged and fly home happy, or, the other 50%, they kill the bouncing plane(s). Today I managed to kill a single P47 in Italy after sacrificing all 4 planes of a schwarm sized unit, and attacking the max 10 P47s that were now in the deck by more than 40(!) fighters. My fighters in more than 90% of cases simply damage them.

Does anyone here think these results sound realistic to any degree? I hope my PBEM opponents can verify these results.

My own testing, using nothing but escorts(no sweeps) ended in 300 planes being shot by P47s, P38s and P51s. Two P47s were lost, one to flak, other in a landing kaputt(damaged by a 109), two P51Bs(one to a 109, another to flak) and 0 P38s. 5 bombers were lost to interceptors that got through, but B17s' gunners got 4 themselves. The amount of escort fighters and interceptors were, at least roughly, equal.

Please, if I have no idea about how the game works, please tell me and Rusty then? What kind of role do accuracy, penetration and range play? How significant is this in determining who hits whom and how badly? 4 MG151/20 cannons and 2 machine guns are more than twice as powerful as 8, let alone 6, heavy machine guns, but this game disagrees with me.

I wish I wouldnt have to say this, but anyone that has played WW2 flight sims to any degree knows the P47 is not a dogfighter, and the tactics it can use are limited to attacking once and running away at all but the very highest altitudes, and against all planes but the FW190 Antons. This even goes to the extremely biased games such as WarBirds and Aces High 2. Can anyone say that he feels very confident in a P47 vs. any FW190 or 109 in a dogfight? Because thats what the fight will be(or, optionally, P47s can run for it) if I pack 200 of my fighters above the P47s!

The planes in BTR get negative and positive bonuses at different altitudes. They affect the MVR rating. At what altitude is the shown MVR rating, or is it an average? What are these for different planes? I'm not the first to ask these, so, why should the players not about these, and how they work? Goes to pretty much everything in the game.

******************

I know very well that this is not your fault, HS and Harley. But I want my money back. I wasted 50€, you know what that is in USD, to take part in a free betatest of a game that no one is interested in developing further. Why to even have the forums and ask for feedback if everything is all right, if the game is already perfect, if on changes are going to be made anyways?

By the way, heres some fancy rate-of-turn data, P47D10 vs. FW190A5ata1.42(later series, mid 43 onwards). Bf109 turns better. I hope it is needless to mention that FW190 has superior acceleration and rate of roll, better cockpit visibility, is more heavily armed, is smaller, equally armored, has higher ROC at low and med alts and is faster below 22,000ft. I dont say this is 100% correct, but it is close.




EDIT, notice I did this after joliverlay's post.



Source: http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/ ... 190a5.html

[joliverlay]

I've gotten no comments on my post so I will throw it out again. This is from a historian named Stephen L. McFarland according to an article by John T. Correll in magazine of the Air Force Association.

It reports claims that the USAAF reported each plane in a bomber group had a 1.2% chance of placing a bomb on target at 20,000 feet. At this altitude it was reported that it took 220 bombers to get a 90% chance of hitting the target at that altitude.

At 23,000 feet every 2 mph error in speed (because of wind)or 25 ft error in height causes the bombs to miss by 115 ft because of the 38 seconds required to impact. At higher altitude error increases.

In 1943 the circular error was 1,200 feet!

Basically the article says the 8th was having terrible accuracy problems at the altitudes at which they flew, which generally under 25k.

So I'm wondering if accuracy is not to high. (On the other hand the repair rates and retooling rates may also be high as well.)

[Hard Sarge]

Jay, the VIIIth was having trouble seeing the target, not hitting the target, when they got a clear veiw of it, they normally plastered it, even worse when they started dropping on radar

[Hard Sarge]

Erkki

you know, your posts are something, YES I know what I am saying, and yes, I am a HARD core Fightsimmer, the P-47 can out fight any of those planes, if you know what you are doing, learn how to fly, and it is a great plane

and yes, I did answer your question, you just don't want to read what I said

and odd that no body else is running into unkillable Allied fighters, you must be plotting them out perfectly

and, you do know that the top LW Ace claimed to of shot down 13 P-47s during the war (the 51 was only claimed 12 times for one pilot and the P-38 17 times)

if those were so lousy, you would think all of those LW Aces would of shot down more then a few

[Peter Fisla]

Not to get too much mixed up into this heated debate, however I do have official JG53 kill report and there is plenty of P-47s getting shotdown. Please feel free to PM me and I will send you the PDF file. I only have had the game for the past two days and only played so far twice the 1 day BRT campaign and in both cases only about 3 P-47s were shotdown from roughly 150 P-47s sent to escort bombers while I have sent about 200 fighters to meet the raids (about 150 109s and about 50 or so FW190s). This seems a bit odd...though I don't want to make further comments before playing a bit more.

[Nicholas Bell]

P-47 performance in online sims has nothing to do with history. Real pilots would not engage in turning battles. The P-47 historical record indicates it was superior. Allied pilot training, team tactics and numerical superiority more than made up for small performance differences. It should be noted that the P-47 units in BTR have excellent training and morale levels - "it's the man, not the machine." The results are well reflected in game. Furthermore, success breeds success - training levels and morale increase in-game when units destroy enemy aircraft.

It's a tough situation for the LW - as it was in reality. I've never read any LW pilot account where anyone said they were an "easy" kill. Hard Sarge's figures underscore that fact.

As far as the numbers of LW interceptors you are throwing at US raids, most are going after the bombers, so those that are dealing with the P-47's are outnumbered.

Here are unit stat's for my '43 campaign at 20 Nov 43. Note the 12th Airforce units are engaged in ground support and their losses are primarily from flak - and also include their time when they were equipped with P-39's and P-40's. I think the 8th FC units kill to loss ratio is historically correct. Note that their losses are almost entirely to air combat as I view their highly experienced pilots too valuable to lose to flak at this stage of the war. In any case, killing P-47s certainly is "do-able".

[Nikademus]

The history of Strategic bombing is one (in very general terms) of increasing altitudes in order to reduce the impact of fighters and flak at an increasing cost in accuracy. (BC started off at 10k!) Ultimately a balance was achieved and this seemed to hover around the mid 20k range. Logically, i think if the VIII found that 33k bombing was feasible, they would have done so, especially as it would negate the effects of flak and fighters almost completely.

However in the end, ultra high alt combat is largely an area of speculation as it was done very little. The P-47 side track is a perfect example. I've seen some outragious comments regarding the plane's abilities at 30+K, such as "it'll outmaneuver and outroll a 109 all over the place and wipe the walls with it" type comments. From my own research this appears to be based on nothing more than comments that for such a heavy and large aircraft, it was "suprisingly nimble" at ultra high alt (Miller: Masters of the Air). We know this was largely due to it's huge engine and efficient turbosupercharger. Being "suprisingly nimble" though doesn't translate into utter and total superiority nor does it mean that the same 47 tactics should not be employed (such as not getting into turning fights) I once asked some "experts" flat out what the turn rate comparisons were at such alts and got nada in reply. In the end few really know and such statements can be dismissed as fanboy bravado. (though i do think that these USAAF planes had an edge in high alt combat....but the word is "edge" not....TIE fighter vs. piston engine fighter)

USAAF/12oClock/BTR are all related and there's always been at least one exploit found. This is no fault of the designers or the current team. Players always find a way. Devs can't cover every contingency. (AE currently has a big flap going on about Coastal defense effectivness that mirrors some of the arguments here) USAAF (the game) as i mentioned had a low alt exploit due mainly to a bug. Is it a bug here? can't say, but given that "fixes" often impact other areas of the game its not a matter of a quick fix but requires some thought and testing.
It sounds like the acc modifyers may not be working as much as intended but thats just an impression.

Q for the devs: Does alt setting factor into range?

[AlterEgo]

a very controversial and fascinating discussion; I can't believe that it was 5 years ago.
I wished I had my current game-logic knowledge at that time.

[AlterEgo]

The code does a unit check to see how accurate the lead bomber is. This is based on skill, cloud, morale, smoke, altitude, if it has a norden or not.

Can someone explain me the meaning of "norden", please?
I never heard about it and I doesn't even know that it is an english word.

[nelmsm1]

They are talking about the Norden Bombsight. The USAAF claimed you could hit a pickle barrel from 20,000 ft but that was in Arizona in perfect conditions. Didn't get that too much in Northern Europe but it was still the best bombsight available at the time.

[AlterEgo]

That helped me out! Thanks for the quick answer, nelmsm!

[JeffroK]

Problem with the game is that they never made modding easy.
I'm a WITPAE fanboy, but spent many hours trawling info and tweaking numbers, others invested hours and we saw WITP grow from a "good game" to its current state of a bloody amazing game.

BTR didnt improve from its "vanilla" state

The above conversations could have been resolved by tweaking with bomb accuracy (something I did in WITPAE) or the manouvre settings at various altitudes of the P47, bf109 or Fw190.

But we had to live with the numbers set by the devs.

I have at least 10 books on WW2 Fighters, they have 11 different numbers on aircraft performance!!!

Keep up your work in the editor, and hope Matrix get a whiff and provide aid.

[soeren01]

This bombing accuracy was just a plain bug. A variable overflow of the variable that stored the altitude.

[Wijter]

During the Air combat phase in BtR I saw a negative altitude and flight level of planes, something like -29 thousand feet for bombers and fighters. It looks like a number overflow. Calculating bombing result or flight performance with negative values could have an unexpected result.

Unfortunately I do not have a save file or screenshot of this event, but I have seen it several times.

[simovitch]

ORIGINAL: Wijter

During the Air combat phase in BtR I saw a negative altitude and flight level of planes, something like -29 thousand feet for bombers and fighters. It looks like a number overflow. Calculating bombing result or flight performance with negative values could have an unexpected result.

Unfortunately I do not have a save file or screenshot of this event, but I have seen it several times.

Thanks, we will look into this one.

Edit:so it looks like Waynn tried to fix this data type bug back in 2006:

void BombTarget(i16_t flight)
{
// ww 10March2006ww changed alt to unsigned short int - like what is stored in flight data
// this will remove high altitude bug


It seems from reading the thread above that it resurfaced again after the Matrix release. Should be easy to spot.

[simovitch]

Update on this.
We looked into the code and don't see an issue with the variables - they were all fixed for the Matrix version. The point about bombing effectiveness/altitude is not only about accuracy. The allowable gross weight of the bomber (and climb/performance) is greatly impacted with respect to altitude.

I know bomb loads are reduced based on range in the game, but they should also be reduced by altitude. I'll look into this.

[simovitch]

Based on my findings the bombers can carry a maximum bombload and still reach the maximum altitudes set in the game data (which appears to be the "service altitude") albeit at reduced performance.

However there were indeed reasons that the bomber formations without pressurized cabins stayed at or below 25000'. Being a licensed pilot and a historian myself, I surmised the following:
1. Need to return to below altitude 10000' within 2 minutes if oxygen system is damaged. Otherwise crew suffers from hypoxia and passes out.
2. sub freezing temperatures can result in mechanical failures, increased carb or wing icing, and physical damage to crew if heat suits malfunction. Actually I experienced carb icing once on take off at 300' in 60 degree damp weather and lost almost all power. Luckily there was enough runway left to land. Caused by too much taxiing in that damp weather[:)]
3. Winds aloft are usually much more intense at higher altitudes, and depending on the time of year the jet stream can kick in at altitudes as low as 30000'. i.e. accuracy at higher altitudes is greatly reduced even more than just height above target.

So for the next patch we decided to reduce bombing accuracy as altitude increases above 25000 feet more or less, and increased the likelyhood of random damage due to high altitude flight.