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My questions may straddle Air and Land:

1. Have Allied strategic bombing processes against the HI been looked at so fire storms are possible with in-game plane quantities? Have the general strategic targetting/damage routines in the City-target menu been addressed at all?

2. Any new news on A-bomb employment, damage, etc?

3. Air-dropped mines--any changes to the no-CAP-attacks problem? (Unless my memory is slipping and this was in the last patch.)

Let me join others in saying this is a stunning expansion. Far more than I'd hoped for. The tiered pilot pools alone will make replacement decisions truly strategic. Stock-pile bodies or shore up the front-lines early? Decide if the resoureces used for the airframe are more important than a pipeline-level expended pilot who won't "grow up" to be experienced if you throw him into battle now? Lots of combos like that.

3 spelling erors

Can't possibly be that many[;)]

Hi all,

Ahh yes... one other important thing (apart from bombers bombing)... [:D]

Was there any attempt to make centerline weapons more deadly than other front mounted weapons (in WitP the machine gun and/or cannon was accurate the same regardless if it was mounted in wings or centerline - that was not the case in history and this was expecially bad in WitP for Japanese since many of their aircraft only had rather "poor" but still centerline mounted weapons)?


Leo "Apollo11"

Is it still possible for the allied player to bomb from Chunking all japanese occupied bases in China without CAP and not getting intercepted on the way in or out enemy teritory?
Will one attack on 6000ft by 100 bombers still be able to destroy a whole 60 - resoucre centre? A resource center could present more mines spread over a hex.
And will the heavy AA be able to hit something at 6000ft?
Will the allied have to pay PP to transfer their heavies to China? Else they can start their bombing campain early 42 and bomb everything to dust till middle 42. Just wondering that didn't happen in the war if it was possible.
Should it be possible to bomb all resource centers? I don't know how it was in the war, but as British, Dutch, Chinese i wouldn't be happy to see my occupied resources be destroyed if there is a chance to recapture it.
And maybe a "destroyed beyond repair" possibility if the bombing is very succesfull, like a collapsed mine.
A port 5 could maybe be reduced to port 3 and so on.

ORIGINAL: Brady

Thank You for taking the time to read that.

No Problem.

On to another topic...

Bomb's, The stock game is very generic in how it models ordance for all sides, has more atention been paid to this, for example their was no Japanese Army 50 kg weapon type, and the Army used the Japanese Navy 250 kg weapon type and their was no Japanese Army or Navy 500 kg weapon type.

Not as yet. OTS.

As noted above also their is not at present a mechanism to alow the Japanese to use larger bombs aganst war ships like the allied player, is this under consideration?, given it is a hard coding isue and one that can not be edited out, I thought perhaps it would be nice if we could make the suffering equile in this regard, espichaly given the lack of signafagant historical evidance to justify the inclushion of this for allies anyway.

OTS.

ORIGINAL: Snowman999

My questions may straddle Air and Land:

1. Have Allied strategic bombing processes against the HI been looked at so fire storms are possible with in-game plane quantities? Have the general strategic targetting/damage routines in the City-target menu been addressed at all?

OTS

2. Any new news on A-bomb employment, damage, etc?

OTS

3. Air-dropped mines--any changes to the no-CAP-attacks problem? (Unless my memory is slipping and this was in the last patch.)

OTS

Let me join others in saying this is a stunning expansion. Far more than I'd hoped for. The tiered pilot pools alone will make replacement decisions truly strategic. Stock-pile bodies or shore up the front-lines early? Decide if the resoureces used for the airframe are more important than a pipeline-level expended pilot who won't "grow up" to be experienced if you throw him into battle now? Lots of combos like that.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. Yes, making the whole system a bit more dynamic was the goal. Will take some serious testing to see how well we did.

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

Ahh yes... one other important thing (apart from bombers bombing)... [:D]

Was there any attempt to make centerline weapons more deadly than other front mounted weapons (in WitP the machine gun and/or cannon was accurate the same regardless if it was mounted in wings or centerline - that was not the case in history and this was expecially bad in WitP for Japanese since many of their aircraft only had rather "poor" but still centerline mounted weapons)?


Leo "Apollo11"

Yes. Accuracy is higher for fuselage mounted weaponry. This is an across the board change Allied and IJ. No fanboy-ism here!

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: TheElf

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Ahh yes... one other important thing (apart from bombers bombing)... [:D]

Was there any attempt to make centerline weapons more deadly than other front mounted weapons (in WitP the machine gun and/or cannon was accurate the same regardless if it was mounted in wings or centerline - that was not the case in history and this was expecially bad in WitP for Japanese since many of their aircraft only had rather "poor" but still centerline mounted weapons)?

Yes. Accuracy is higher for fuselage mounted weaponry. This is an across the board change Allied and IJ. No fanboy-ism here!

Great!

BTW, the Japanese aircraft will benefit this most since most numerous Allied fighters all had only wing mounted weapons... [;)]


Leo "Apollo11"

OTS-Fair enough, off to sacrafice some more chickens...[:)]
 
New Question:
 
 Bombing, a peave of mine has always been the comparative inabality of Japanese bombers and some comenwealth types to deploy their smaller but larger in number bombloads in the stock game, the result is that in atacking airfileds espichaly they are at a signafagant disavantage.
  It recently came to my atention that the size of the bomb does not matter when it comes to creating runway hits, so a B-17 per hit will do as much damage as a Betty, but the betty is stuck with a couple 250 kg bombs instead of a dozen 60 kg bombs it would use for such a sortie historicaly.
  So, while hiustoricaly Japanes bombers could and often did lay waste to allied airfields with bombing runs using the smaller ordance, in game they are not able to do so.
 
 Question: Has this been looked at?
 

ORIGINAL: Bahnsteig

Is it still possible for the allied player to bomb from Chunking all japanese occupied bases in China without CAP and not getting intercepted on the way in or out enemy teritory?

Hard to say. It would depend on whether he had bombers in Chungking with the range to do so. All A/C have been reviewed for accurate ranges and stats.

Will one attack on 6000ft by 100 bombers still be able to destroy a whole 60 - resoucre centre? A resource center could present more mines spread over a hex.

I don't know. This would have to be tested specifically. We have not change the way ordnance works in Air to Ground attacks, so it may be SAIEW...

And will the heavy AA be able to hit something at 6000ft?

The Air Team did not change land-based AAA. See my previous post on what the land team may have done

Will the allied have to pay PP to transfer their heavies to China? Else they can start their bombing campain early 42 and bomb everything to dust till middle 42. Just wondering that didn't happen in the war if it was possible.

I'll let my OoB maven answer this one. Off the top though I think there are some movement restrictions on units in other commands...

Should it be possible to bomb all resource centers? I don't know how it was in the war, but as British, Dutch, Chinese i wouldn't be happy to see my occupied resources be destroyed if there is a chance to recapture it.

OTS, SAIEW.

And maybe a "destroyed beyond repair" possibility if the bombing is very succesfull, like a collapsed mine.
A port 5 could maybe be reduced to port 3 and so on.

OTS





[/quote]

ORIGINAL: Brady

OTS-Fair enough, off to sacrafice some more chickens...[:)]

New Question:

Bombing, a peave of mine has always been the comparative inabality of Japanese bombers and some comenwealth types to deploy their smaller but larger in number bombloads in the stock game, the result is that in atacking airfileds espichaly they are at a signafagant disavantage.
It recently came to my atention that the size of the bomb does not matter when it comes to creating runway hits, so a B-17 per hit will do as much damage as a Betty, but the betty is stuck with a couple 250 kg bombs instead of a dozen 60 kg bombs it would use for such a sortie historicaly.
So, while hiustoricaly Japanes bombers could and often did lay waste to allied airfields with bombing runs using the smaller ordance, in game they are not able to do so.

Question: Has this been looked at?

IE bomb loadout based on mission type...

ORIGINAL: Brady

OTS-Fair enough, off to sacrafice some more chickens...[:)]

New Question:

Bombing, a peave of mine has always been the comparative inabality of Japanese bombers and some comenwealth types to deploy their smaller but larger in number bombloads in the stock game, the result is that in atacking airfileds espichaly they are at a signafagant disavantage.
It recently came to my atention that the size of the bomb does not matter when it comes to creating runway hits, so a B-17 per hit will do as much damage as a Betty, but the betty is stuck with a couple 250 kg bombs instead of a dozen 60 kg bombs it would use for such a sortie historicaly.
So, while hiustoricaly Japanes bombers could and often did lay waste to allied airfields with bombing runs using the smaller ordance, in game they are not able to do so.

Question: Has this been looked at?

We are looking at some specialized loadouts for certain mission & A/C types. In particular are the Attack Bombers of the 5th AF.

Edit: this was one of those tweeners we had to sacrifice for bigger fish. Lots of ways to improve this, but it came down to higher priorities.

Ok, so it was looked at but shelved because of time constraints?
 
........
 
 Also what about lunch?:
 

 
 

ORIGINAL: Brady

Ok, so it was looked at but shelved because of time constraints?

........

Also what about lunch?:

http://www.oniva.com/upload/2131/402.jpg

Yes each Air phase will require the player to plan meals for his Aircrew if they are flying over 4 hexes. Menus are:

Rotten fish heads with weevils and rice

OR

Salted mystery meat and rusty canned pinapple water.

[:)]

Elf,

You mentioned that certain types of aircraft will operate differently at different altitudes. Will there be a way for the aerial-knowledge-deficient to know when they have a type of plane operating outside of their optimim altitude?

Night, is it the same as before, or have their been changes made?

ORIGINAL: Charbroiled
You mentioned that certain types of aircraft will operate differently at different altitudes. Will there be a way for the aerial-knowledge-deficient to know when they have a type of plane operating outside of their optimim altitude?

AE shows you the plane performance by altitude band right in the plane stats, FYI.

Expanded aircraft types

Something which always bugged me was the limited number of aircraft types. The classic example of this was the Mavis transports that started at Jaluit (in CHS). Since they were of type Transport if you moved them elsewhere you couldn't then move them back again since Jaluit was a size 0 airbase. The answer to this of would have been a new type called "Floatplane Transport" or some such with some subset or superset of Transport and Patrol attributes.

So have there been any additions or changes to aircraft types? I see we now have skill sets, which is BTW totally superb but applies to the airgroup and not to the fundamental capabilities of the aircraft.

Will there be any ballons in game?