Matrix Games Forums

I have a question to the matrix team:
Are Airpatrols, that start in continental bases more effective than those from islands?
Are there search factors?
Reason of question:
When a base is on the Australian coast, eg Brisbane und you let patrol 20 planes those 20 planes should search only sea hexes, a sub patrol over the inner desert is not so effective.
A planegroup with a search range of 15 (r^2+pi= 15*15*3.14=)searches an area of 706. This means 706 hexes must be searched by 20 planes, if base is an island-> about 35 area per plane.
When the base is in Brisbane the search area would be halfed resulting in a 353 area and in 17 area per plane.
This means the subspotting chance should be twice that of an island.

good point frank!

Hello...

No. They are no more effective. In reality, they would be. Nor is the player given the option to only look in the direction from which the enemy would probably be coming.

Originally posted by Frank:
I have a question to the matrix team:
Are Airpatrols, that start in continental bases more effective than those from islands?
Are there search factors?
Reason of question:
When a base is on the Australian coast, eg Brisbane und you let patrol 20 planes those 20 planes should search only sea hexes, a sub patrol over the inner desert is not so effective.
A planegroup with a search range of 15 (r^2+pi= 15*15*3.14=)searches an area of 706. This means 706 hexes must be searched by 20 planes, if base is an island-> about 35 area per plane.
When the base is in Brisbane the search area would be halfed resulting in a 353 area and in 17 area per plane.
This means the subspotting chance should be twice that of an island.

To accomplish what you are suggesting, each of the 200 or so bases would require seperate routines, since some are on land and some on large islands and some small islands and some small islands would only need to search in a 30 to 45 degree arc and some would be mutually supporting and so forth.

In games of this scale, searches are not specific. In a game of a smaller scale, where the player can assign search missions, manually, he can set ocean arcs only.

Thanks for Your input...

Michael Wood

Carrier Strike is at the scale where such considerations are appropriate. Pacific War is not.

If we were to get to that level of detail (and perhaps War in the Pacific does), there are many issues I would want to see resolved first. For instance, effective DD ranges are grossly overstated in the game (2000 miles in a week without refuleing isn't on, except in emergencies, for stability reasons). Engineers cannot be assigned missions. They build airfields until AF are maxed out, and then build ports. IN many cases in the real war, it was the reverse. UNits cannot fortify with the aid of engineers, in spite of examples where units dug themselves in pretty well in fairly short order (and other units, eg the USA on Bataan, did not for various reasons). And so forth.

The game is strategic, however. It has limits based on the scale of the game and the scope of what it is simulating. I'm pretty happy with the choices made so far (other than the armor production, and Matrix gave me the means of fixing that for free, along with everything else).

Doug

It is important to search for tunneling subs over land.

I do not see what is so complicated about the search algorithm. Have the search effectivness increased by the aomount of the circle that is excluded. Ie no water hexes. Maybe in SAJ?