Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Ian R

ORIGINAL: AW1Steve


Naval Search works for the average plane (unless of course you've highly trained the crew in ASW

I agree this works well in the (stock) game. Its easier to leave the aircraft on naval search, because they hardly ever hit any subs anyway, and send a group of small ASW vessels to sit on them when you find them near a port. Another point is that simply putting escorts with your cargo TFs means the subs will come to them.

I also have reason to believe that no matter how you try to mod aircraft weapons, they still hardly ever get a sinking hit.

Some mods (e.g. mine) have some tweaks to late war aircraft (allied in my case) that you'd think might make the ASW mission better. My Privateers have good radar, and "ASW" weapons including FIDO, etc. The ASW weapons are modeled as more accurate versions of GP bombs, because they have to be modeled as GP bombs so that they work within the parameters of the game's systems. So these are also restricted to ASW missions (using the device filters) and can't be loaded for city bombing etc.

According to the ops reports in my testing, my ASW guys were regularly hitting IJN subs late war, but a lot of it is no doubt FOW misinformation. I opened up the IJ turn at one point and had a look at the sunk list - leaving aside many Ha boat* losses recorded as foundered, hit obstruction, marine or operational casualty, the losses seemed to be about 65% depth charges (which I think includes some boats forced to surface and then finished off with gunfire), about 30+% aerial bombs, and maybe 5% to other things including other subs' torpedoes, and in only 2 cases surface gunfire.

Judging by the location information most of the bomb losses were from port attacks. There were quite a few 500lb GP bomb hits said to cause at sea sinkings, but I think some of these were trying to limp away from places like Truk, Manilla, and Takao after the port was heavily bombed.

Not one reported sinking from a FIDO hit [:(], Squid or Hedgehog. However, my "600lb ASW bomb", which is actually an aircraft delivered depth charge and only carried by patrol types on ASW loadout, bagged a half dozen boats at sea. Or maybe not - they may have been caught repairing afterwards by a port strike.

My conclusion was that even with the tweaked stuff I put in, patrolling aircraft still get very few hits causing sinkings. There is a possibility they are getting hits that sufficiently damage subs to send them home for repairs, but no easy way to extract that information.


Edit: * One Ha boat was reported as "abandoned" at Adelaide. Never ever knew it was there.

ORIGINAL: Ian R

(because its a weapon designed to not need to actually hit its target).

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

I've been reading this thread but in and out (meaning not every post in detail), so I might have missed you saying you are already doing this.

A weapon categorized as "ASW" is one thing, but the detailed aircraft configuration codes they made available allow you to specify certain weapons for certain missions. Are you using that configuration to put your (I'll call it) ASW intended bomb on planes when they fly the ASW mission?

I remember JWE & Co. backing away from making load-outs with the mission specific codes because they felt that opinions varied too much and I imagine such usage did during the war too, so arriving at a baseline might have never achieved anything close to consensus.

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

I've been reading this thread but in and out (meaning not every post in detail), so I might have missed you saying you are already doing this.

A weapon categorized as "ASW" is one thing, but the detailed aircraft configuration codes they made available allow you to specify certain weapons for certain missions. Are you using that configuration to put your (I'll call it) ASW intended bomb on planes when they fly the ASW mission?

I remember JWE & Co. backing away from making load-outs with the mission specific codes because they felt that opinions varied too much and I imagine such usage did during the war too, so arriving at a baseline might have never achieved anything close to consensus.

On a more esoteric level, the Aircraft Info screen does not have enough room to show a variety of loadouts for a variety of missions. It seems to show only a normal and reduced loadout of bombs and MGs. Putting ASW weapons and rockets in the generic "bombs" category would allow for much simpler algorithm programming for air attacks. The designers were under time constraints and trying to keep the number of parameters under control.

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

I've been reading this thread but in and out (meaning not every post in detail), so I might have missed you saying you are already doing this.

A weapon categorized as "ASW" is one thing, but the detailed aircraft configuration codes they made available allow you to specify certain weapons for certain missions. Are you using that configuration to put your (I'll call it) ASW intended bomb on planes when they fly the ASW mission?

I remember JWE & Co. backing away from making load-outs with the mission specific codes because they felt that opinions varied too much and I imagine such usage did during the war too, so arriving at a baseline might have never achieved anything close to consensus.

ORIGINAL: witpqs

Either JWE or the Elf explained a long time ago that daily turn sequence structure does NOT have an ASW weapons phase at the stage where patrol aircraft prosecute submarine targets. That was I think an artefact not only from vanilla WITP, but possibly from the original Pacwar dos game. So, putting a weapon categorised as "ASW" on an aircraft is like putting an ashtray on a motorbike.

I've been reading this thread but in and out (meaning not every post in detail), so I might have missed you saying you are already doing this.

A weapon categorized as "ASW" is one thing, but the detailed aircraft configuration codes they made available allow you to specify certain weapons for certain missions. Are you using that configuration to put your (I'll call it) ASW intended bomb on planes when they fly the ASW mission?

I remember JWE & Co. backing away from making load-outs with the mission specific codes because they felt that opinions varied too much and I imagine such usage did during the war too, so arriving at a baseline might have never achieved anything close to consensus.