PLEASE FIX AIR COMBAT!

[Erik Rutins]

I know the original poster and many of those who have replied have read our earlier comments on this. I don't want to appear unsympathetic to new posters, but I have say that we've commented on this pretty definitively and at length, multiple times. You may not like the answer, but we've certainly made the effort to reply and to see if this could be addressed.

You need only look over the detailed patch notes since v1.00 to see how many changes other than bug fixes have been made, based on requests on this forum. In addition, many balance changes and tweaks to the combat systems based on player feedback have been made.

We've said several times that the air model does give unrealistic results in very large battles. We spent several weeks looking through the code at various times to see if there was an "easy" change to this. Some changes were made. The upshot is that the designers and programmers feel that changing how the air model to "fix" this will effectively mean redoing the entire air model, which is likely a multi-month proposition given development and testing. The air model works well for historical battles and for battles of small to medium size. Very large battles get very bloody and differences in quality of aircraft and pilots (especially on the order of a 20-30 point difference in experience) tend to exacerbate that.

While I may have a different answer for you in the future, right now the only answer I have is it's advised that experienced players take it into account when planning very large air battles. The focus of our future WitP efforts is on fixing bugs rather than addressing areas where there are flaws in the designed models. In a game this size, with the amount of freedom you have, you will eventually find a combination where the model(s) don't perform perfectly. In a game where these units were all represented by counters that were removed with a single good die roll, this wouldn't be a problem for most, but when you see each plane and pilot, results like these do stand out.

Please take the increased lethality of very large scale air combat into account in your games. If you want a very bloody air war, large raids and large air combats are the way to go. Otherwise, keep it to more historical numbers and the results will come out better.

Regards,

- Erik

[el cid again]

I might suggest though that the .50 cal and 20mm be given a range of 2 rather than one. It seems to me that both weapons had an effect in A2A that was along the line of an order of magnitude greater than the .30 cal/7.7mm.

This is both right and wrong. It needs to be divided for that reason.
The 20 mm is indeed much more deadly in air to air combat - two close orders of magnitude more deadly - which is almost the order of magnitude suggested by Spence. My proposal - cube root of projectile weight - would make it 7 on a scale where .30 cal is 1.

But the .50 is quite different. There was intense debate about wether the British or Americans were right in the decision to focus on .30 cal (British) or .50 cal (US). The combat record suggests the British may have been right - but it is so close that it may be more correct to say both were right.
Certainly 8 30s were very effective - and quite comparable to 4 50s. [Exact comparison is not possible since the same plane does not come both ways]. In my system, a 50 is rated as effect of 2 while a 30 is effect of 1 - so 8 30s = 4 50s = an aggregate effect of 8 - same same - which duplicates the historical record as good as simulation permits.

And ALL these weapons were sighted for similar ranges - generally 500 to 800 yards/meters - with the extreme cases being 850-900 yards/meters. There is even a 40mm cannon with a range of only 150 meters (Japanese for Ki-44II). On the other hand, it appears that 37 mm weapons typically were effective at 1000 yards/meters and sometimes 1100 or even 1200 meters. Thus it might be justifiable to give 37 mm weapons a range of 2 in our system. In that case, the 57 mm probably should be a 3. 40 mm do not exist at present - but would be a case by case thing - the one Japanese case being only a 1 but some others would be 2. A 75mm might be 4 or more, but the accuracy rating would be so low as to be very bad (that is, the rate of fire is very low). In game terms, cannon are not created equal: while all cannon have a lot more punch than any MG, some of them have such low rates of fire the "accuracy" value is terrible (e.g. 4) - while others have comparable rates of fire to MGs so they would have comparable "accuracy" (e.g. 27). Thus it may be some planes with some models of slow firing cannon might be worse off than planes with only MGs. But planes with fast firing cannon are ALWAYS better off than those with only MGs. Range was only a factor for certain weapons - the Ki-45 had a 37 mm to gain a range advantage - and this makes sense given the characteristics of the weapon. Similarly, the Ki-102b had a 57mm to conduct stand off attacks on B-29s - and it was probably more sensible than the 75mm conversions of Ki-67. The Ki-102 had the performance to get the gun into position and the weapon was not so powerful as to destroy the airframe when it was used. It may be this model will work very well for such weapons.

The other thing we can do is add some rockets. Soviet planes in particular, and late war planes, have air to air rockets with punch to ranges of 2 or 3.

[mc3744]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

No matter how "good" the Allied player is, with PDU on and a good training programm, the Japanese player has to be real "bad" when he loses air superiority over Burma or China. AGAIN, with PDU on and TRAINING. Without PDU (means nearly no Tojos and Tonies) the Japanese has no chance.

Then I must be VERY VERY good [:D] [:D] [:D]

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: mc3744

ORIGINAL: castor troy

No matter how "good" the Allied player is, with PDU on and a good training programm, the Japanese player has to be real "bad" when he loses air superiority over Burma or China. AGAIN, with PDU on and TRAINING. Without PDU (means nearly no Tojos and Tonies) the Japanese has no chance.

Then I must be VERY VERY good [:D] [:D] [:D]

You must be Sir! [:)] In my games with PDU on I had NEVER a problem dealing with incoming strikes over Burma in 42, when enough Tonies were around. And it doesn´t take that long to bleed the one or two P38 groups in India. After that 4E bombers come in unescorted and get shot down or are breaking off their attack because of a morale hit.

Perhaps we can do a game in the future, as we would be in the same time zone also and most times I need an Allied opponent. [:D]

[mc3744]

Sounds good to me [:)]

You are up for my next match [;)]

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I know the original poster and many of those who have replied have read our earlier comments on this. I don't want to appear unsympathetic to new posters, but I have say that we've commented on this pretty definitively and at length, multiple times. You may not like the answer, but we've certainly made the effort to reply and to see if this could be addressed.

You need only look over the detailed patch notes since v1.00 to see how many changes other than bug fixes have been made, based on requests on this forum. In addition, many balance changes and tweaks to the combat systems based on player feedback have been made.

We've said several times that the air model does give unrealistic results in very large battles. We spent several weeks looking through the code at various times to see if there was an "easy" change to this. Some changes were made. The upshot is that the designers and programmers feel that changing how the air model to "fix" this will effectively mean redoing the entire air model, which is likely a multi-month proposition given development and testing. The air model works well for historical battles and for battles of small to medium size. Very large battles get very bloody and differences in quality of aircraft and pilots (especially on the order of a 20-30 point difference in experience) tend to exacerbate that.

While I may have a different answer for you in the future, right now the only answer I have is it's advised that experienced players take it into account when planning very large air battles. The focus of our future WitP efforts is on fixing bugs rather than addressing areas where there are flaws in the designed models. In a game this size, with the amount of freedom you have, you will eventually find a combination where the model(s) don't perform perfectly. In a game where these units were all represented by counters that were removed with a single good die roll, this wouldn't be a problem for most, but when you see each plane and pilot, results like these do stand out.

Please take the increased lethality of very large scale air combat into account in your games. If you want a very bloody air war, large raids and large air combats are the way to go. Otherwise, keep it to more historical numbers and the results will come out better.

Regards,

- Erik

How difficult would it be to have the strike split (when astrike splits for multiple LCUs) AFTER CAP resolution? I'm no programmer but it seems like a basic and simple fix to some of the problems. Seeing as this effects CV battles and A2A basically impacts just about every combat in the game this is surely a must.

How difficult would it be to sever the 1:1.25 supply to resources ratio? Seems like another simple tweak that would go along way to fixing this. Please eveyone for little effort.

You guys fixed ASW, why not at least some of the simple things for air to air and supply?

[moses]

While I may have a different answer for you in the future,

Ron- There you go.

I think everyones opinion has been heard. They know its out there. What more is to be gained.

If one of them think of a simple easy fix I'm sure they'll get around to it one of these days. If not it won't happen.

But he's correct that

you will eventually find a combination where the model(s) don't perform perfectly

If they "fixed" air combat we would just find another combination that "breaks" the game[:D]

I'll shut up now. (I'm kidding myself here--I really can't shut up. [:D][:D] I'll settle for staying away from this issue for a little while anyway.[;)])

[niceguy2005]

ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

I am going insane with the friggin air combat routines in this game. Below is the latest air combat in Burma in my game, over the last 5 to 6 game days I have suffered similar results every day. This one is made even more ridiculous because every single fighter was a confirmed air to air kill according to the air losses display. My groups were in the mid 50 to mid 60 range in average experience (my best pilots in the groups were high 70’s) with zero fatigue and a 100% intercept for my defending CAP during this raid.

Granted I should have lost the battle but not ONE enemy plane was shot down. NOT ONE!

This is nuts, PLEASE fix the broken air combat routines in this game. I have lost upwards of 300 fighters in a week to about a total of 10 enemy planes shot down. This is pathetic and I assume the same thing will happen to the Japanese when the better US planes arrive. Air combat is far too bloody and far too one sided, PLEASE fix it.

In this example his Tony’s with maneuver ratings of 32 decimated my Mohawks with Maneuver ratings of 30. Yes the Tony’s are better aircraft but not by much, it is obvious experience is the decisive factor to such a degree it breaks all other considerations and decimates the losing side. His groups are in the 80’s according to a recent email he has sent, so a 20-30 point difference makes him invulnerable in air to air combat.

Jim

Day Air attack on Dacca , at 31,24

Japanese aircraft
Ki-61 KAIc Tony x 104
Ki-21 Sally x 56
Ki-49 Helen x 36

Allied aircraft
Mohawk IV x 48

Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-61 KAIc Tony: 1 damaged
Ki-49 Helen: 2 damaged

Allied aircraft losses
Mohawk IV: 48 destroyed
LB-30 Liberator: 5 destroyed
F-5A Lightning: 4 destroyed
B-17E Fortress: 2 destroyed


Allied ground losses:
32 casualties reported

Airbase hits 19
Airbase supply hits 2
Runway hits 74

Aircraft Attacking:
13 x Ki-21 Sally bombing at 6000 feet
6 x Ki-21 Sally bombing at 6000 feet
15 x Ki-49 Helen bombing at 6000 feet
10 x Ki-49 Helen bombing at 6000 feet
9 x Ki-21 Sally bombing at 6000 feet
6 x Ki-21 Sally bombing at 6000 feet
4 x Ki-49 Helen bombing at 6000 feet
8 x Ki-21 Sally bombing at 6000 feet
3 x Ki-21 Sally bombing at 6000 feet
3 x Ki-49 Helen bombing at 6000 feet
3 x Ki-49 Helen bombing at 6000 feet
3 x Ki-21 Sally bombing at 6000 feet
3 x Ki-21 Sally bombing at 6000 feet
1 x Ki-49 Helen bombing at 6000 feet
3 x Ki-21 Sally bombing at 6000 feet
2 x Ki-21 Sally bombing at 6000 feet

Tow things I see wrong with this.

1. Such massive air battles were extremely rare, in RL, but are common in WiTP.
2. Your fighters should have failed a morale check during the combat and bugged out.
3. OK your mohawks should have scored a handful of victories, but not many.

[Tom Hunter]

Raver you must be joking

Sneer I am not suprised that the Japanese won, but I don't think that 100 superior Japanese fighters could even find all 48 Mohawks, much less shoot them all down.


To prove ADavid B's point here is a battle I just fought with Mogami, the Zeros are all from KB and until now they had not taken any serious combat losses. The Allied fighter groups have XP in the 50s:

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 135

Allied aircraft
F4F-3 Wildcat x 12 bombing
F4F-4 Wildcat x 59 sweep at different altitudes
SBD Dauntless x 15 bombing
Kittyhawk I x 30 Sweep as above
Beaufort V-IX x 15 bombing
P-40E Warhawk x 23 Sweep as above
A-24 Dauntless x 16 bombing

Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 35 destroyed, 4 damaged

Allied aircraft losses
F4F-3 Wildcat: 11 destroyed
F4F-4 Wildcat: 59 destroyed
SBD Dauntless: 10 destroyed
Kittyhawk I: 21 destroyed
Beaufort V-IX: 13 destroyed
P-40E Warhawk: 22 destroyed
A-24 Dauntless: 14 destroyed

Some of the F4F4 pilots had ratings in the 70s which did not save them but did allow them to get some kills.

I have no complaints about the battle, I saw him coming, set up my attack and took my chances. But it is evidence, along with many other results we have seen in other games, that the air combat system is at least as badly broken as land combat and maybe worse.

Moses and I have the same observation about this, in large air battles a significant number of the total planes never actually fight the enemy so they cannot be shot down. But in WitP they do fight and they do get shot down.

Jim you need to bring more planes to the party, you will never win with inferior equipment at 1 to 2 odds. You may not win with superior equipment but at least it will be closer. It sucks, but its the way the game is built.

My Lunacy AAR is full of training raids and ambushes it took me months to get the upper hand in the CBI. I am not saying I did a perfect job by any strech of the imagination but I did pull it off eventually. Take a look maybe it would be helpful.

[Gen.Hoepner]

ORIGINAL: mc3744

Sounds good to me [:)]

You are up for my next match [;)]

My dear friend[:D]
Remember that our game still has the old replacement rates for the 4Es...which means you get hundreds of them very early in the game. Now with 15 B-17Es/month it's more difficult to keep the pace you had with me.
Anyway there's no way, imho, Japan can hold the air superiority against masses of 200/300 4Es striking at the same time 4 different theatres...even if they come unescorted. No way.

[bradfordkay]

Tom, I'm wondering why you had most of your fighters set on sweep, and none on escort?

[Sneer]

ORIGINAL: Tom Hunter


Sneer I am not suprised that the Japanese won, but I don't think that 100 superior Japanese fighters could even find all 48 Mohawks, much less shoot them all down.

Sorry Tom but I have not taken part in this discussion by now
you must have missed this thread with another one or another person

but when I was called to talk
I think about september 39 in Poland where old fighters managed to score kills on few occasions in much better-equipped germen units

and yes battles are too one sided
if one side with older equipment managed to surprise enemy with alt advantage it certainly managed to take kills or even many kills in first round of battle - even nates vs spitfires should occasionally show heavy spitfire losses with similar exp in units

On the other hand it is game and we do not play historically so we get strange results that's all. I used to it
as well as get used to strange LCU combat ( especially out of base / out of retreat path combat / rail lines DS etc ) as well as totally wrong fire distribution in surface engagements and many others.

let's close this thread and play one more turn

[pauk]

ORIGINAL: Gen.Hoepner

Remember that our game still has the old replacement rates for the 4Es...which means you get hundreds of them very early in the game. Now with 15 B-17Es/month it's more difficult to keep the pace you had with me.

hm, i think it is 40 B-17 per month in the stock scenario. Are you referring to Nik mod perhaps?

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Gen.Hoepner


Anyway there's no way, imho, Japan can hold the air superiority against masses of 200/300 4Es striking at the same time 4 different theatres...even if they come unescorted. No way.

hmm, in my ongoing game against Wolfpack he sent about 150 B24 and B17 unescorted at a base with about 100 Tonies on CAP. He hasn´t done it very often after he faced my Tony daitais. [;)] And that´s the experience I made in other games also. There are far too many 4E bombers but with Tonies or better Jacks facing them when unescorted I never really had a problem and my opponents did cancel their attacks.

[ADavidB]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

ORIGINAL: Gen.Hoepner


Anyway there's no way, imho, Japan can hold the air superiority against masses of 200/300 4Es striking at the same time 4 different theatres...even if they come unescorted. No way.

hmm, in my ongoing game against Wolfpack he sent about 150 B24 and B17 unescorted at a base with about 100 Tonies on CAP. He hasn´t done it very often after he faced my Tony daitais. [;)] And that´s the experience I made in other games also. There are far too many 4E bombers but with Tonies or better Jacks facing them when unescorted I never really had a problem and my opponents did cancel their attacks.

You are 100% correct! The changes to the fighter and bomber models in v1.50 changed the air game for good. Prior to v1.50 those 150 4Es would have ripped through your Tonys like they weren't there and then plastered the base. From v1.50 onwards the Tonys are "Gods of the Skies" against unescorted 4E bombers. And no Allied player can afford to waste 4Es if he wants to have a hope of winning this game.

Tophat has repeated demonstrated in our v1.602 campaign that he can close a big airfield in two attacks by sending 50-60 crack Zeros/Tonys as Escorts and 70-100 Japanese twin-engine bombers. There is no fundamental difference between this result and an Allied player sending 60-70 crack P-40Bs (or better yet, crack P-38Gs) to escort 70-100 2E or 4E bombers. It's the same mechanism. Quantity wins.

The key to success is to keep your objective secret until you hit it so that your opponent can't shove 100+ crack fighters into it on CAP. If you can surprise a base and start to put it out of commission then you can finish it. That's what Tophat did to Sian and Hengchow, and what I've done to Mandalay.

The KB can do the same thing by sending out 300+ fighters and bombers, except most Japanese players don't like to chance their naval planes to land attacks.

So remember all, "what's good for the goose is good for the gander"...BOTH SIDES can attack with hundreds of planes at any one spot and overwhelm an unwary or unprepared opponent. Both sides have 1000s of planes that they can almost instantly mass at a given locations. That's just the way that the game is designed...

Dave Baranyi

[dtravel]

Throwing another two pennies onto the growing mountain.

There seems to be a consesus that very large A2A battles don't work the way we'd like. There also appears to be some agreement that there are too many very large A2A battles in most games.

Why are there "too many" VL A2A combats? Because players concentrate their forces much more than happened historically.

It has been suggested that reducing aircraft production/replacement rates will fix this. (Reducing supplies available to Japan falls under this.) Setting aside the fact that this would have a much greater effect on one side than the other, I do not agree. Reducing the replacement rates will make existing aircraft more valuable, therefore players will make additional efforts to "get the most" out of them. First step in doing that is to concentrate them so they can have a decisive effect.

The next suggestion is "stacking limits", either via house rule or code changes. The problems with that are its not always historically accurate (someone has posted some numbers for B-29s in the Marianas several times IIRC showing that the already existing limit is too low). It also runs into problems with the fact that in a truely huge number of aircraft can be based within a single sixty mile diameter circle in much of the map. It also wouldn't really "fix" the perceived problem. Players would just spread the squadrons out a bit and still have them concentrate on a single target.

What is needed is some operational reason for the player to spread his aircraft throughout the Pacific. I don't know what it would be but if we are going to find it, we need to stop repeating the same suggestions over and over. Think outside the box, as the saying goes.

We concentrate aircraft because it is effective. There needs to be some countering, at least as important, reason NOT to if we really want it to stop.

[Oleg Mastruko]

ORIGINAL: dtravel

Throwing another two pennies onto the growing mountain.

There seems to be a consesus that very large A2A battles don't work the way we'd like. There also appears to be some agreement that there are too many very large A2A battles in most games.

Why are there "too many" VL A2A combats? Because players concentrate their forces much more than happened historically.

It has been suggested that reducing aircraft production/replacement rates will fix this.

Making PP rules more strict would also help, perhaps more than anything else. But not all players would like to se that so it would have to be made optional, or regulated by house rules.

Also, somewhat related to PP rules, airbase forces should be able to service only "their" aircraft. For Allies that means USN base forces should not be able to service B-25s or Australian aircraft, and for Japs Navy base units should not be able to service Army aircraft and vice versa.

But, have on mind many players are quite happy with "candyland" rules, they obviously don't post in threads like this - just remember the outcry from players asking for PDU rule to be introduced at the first place... Now that developers gave us the wanted PDU (BTW personally I never cried for PDU to be introduced), and now that most players use it, some players are still not satisfied, when they lose, ie when the rule(s) work against them. [;)]

O.

[dtravel]

Personally, the problem I have with tightening up deployment by HQ and Political Points is that the assignments and reinforcements (at least for the Allies) only make sense if the game proceeds nearly identical to real life. NorPac gets much of the forces it does because the Japanese captured some of the Aleutians. If they hadn't, many of those units would have been attached to other commands. SEAC/Indian forces don't change if the Japanese overrun half the sub-continent. Etc., etc., etc.

It might be the answer or part of it. Has anyone done a PBEM game with very strict deployment limits based on HQ? I don't just mean house rules like China Command forces can't march out of China. I mean things like deploying the carriers to fight the Battle of the Coral Sea requires both sides to pay the PP to transfer them to SoPac and the IJN equivalent? All units in a base MUST belong to the base's command and the base's command is strictly geographic based? Is the cost of changing air units assignments high enough to deter players?

(There is also the matter of how much do people spend replacing leaders lost to the digital ether. I suspect it could be enough in some cases to affect such a game.)

[1275psi]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

I know the original poster and many of those who have replied have read our earlier comments on this. I don't want to appear unsympathetic to new posters, but I have say that we've commented on this pretty definitively and at length, multiple times. You may not like the answer, but we've certainly made the effort to reply and to see if this could be addressed.

You need only look over the detailed patch notes since v1.00 to see how many changes other than bug fixes have been made, based on requests on this forum. In addition, many balance changes and tweaks to the combat systems based on player feedback have been made.

We've said several times that the air model does give unrealistic results in very large battles. We spent several weeks looking through the code at various times to see if there was an "easy" change to this. Some changes were made. The upshot is that the designers and programmers feel that changing how the air model to "fix" this will effectively mean redoing the entire air model, which is likely a multi-month proposition given development and testing. The air model works well for historical battles and for battles of small to medium size. Very large battles get very bloody and differences in quality of aircraft and pilots (especially on the order of a 20-30 point difference in experience) tend to exacerbate that.

While I may have a different answer for you in the future, right now the only answer I have is it's advised that experienced players take it into account when planning very large air battles. The focus of our future WitP efforts is on fixing bugs rather than addressing areas where there are flaws in the designed models. In a game this size, with the amount of freedom you have, you will eventually find a combination where the model(s) don't perform perfectly. In a game where these units were all represented by counters that were removed with a single good die roll, this wouldn't be a problem for most, but when you see each plane and pilot, results like these do stand out.

Please take the increased lethality of very large scale air combat into account in your games. If you want a very bloody air war, large raids and large air combats are the way to go. Otherwise, keep it to more historical numbers and the results will come out better.

Regards,

- Erik

This is why I am going to play with pretty tight stacking limits , and CAP limits from now on!!!

[John 3rd]

I think we all understand the game and have a good grasp of the weaknesses. The key seems to be finding a good opponent who understands the good and the bad aspects of the game, creating a decent set of house rules, and HOPE for eventual changes!