RHS AAA

[1EyedJacks]

Is there a way to reduce the accuracy of AAA without reducing the damage done to a plane if a shell actually hits it? In three seperate starts with GoodBoyLaddie (two with Suprise on for 1st turn) I've lost about 1 in 5 of attacking TBs and DBs @ PH (and about 1 in 4 in the opening turn when Suprise was off). I don't doubt that a 40mm Boffer puts out a lot of rounds or that a 40mm shell will put a might nice hole in a Kate or Val - I just think that maybe the accuracy is a little too high.

Just curious - how do other players feel about the AAA losses in RHS?

[goodboyladdie]

I do not think there were a great many Bofors guns on those ships or in the LCUs. These results were achieved by 0.5 inch and 1.1 inch machine guns and 3 inch AA guns in the main I believe. You should try it from the Allied side - 75% losses to shipboard AAA if the attack profile (DB and TB [or FB later]) means you have to end up at 2000ft or lower!

Is there a list of fixes for the new version? We just ended the last one because TKs and AOs are too expensive to build...

I will do a restart as my good friend and esteemed opponent wants to try again, but to be honest Cid you have to start listening because all people are seeing is RHS AARs continually being restarted and some gripes (P-38s, Uber Flak, low allied replacement pilot experience and short-legged cruisers as examples) are echoed by more than one person, despite the fact that it is normally only one that is trying to chase answers out of you. It's potentially the very best mod available. I love the "feel" of it and the beautiful and intricate map.

[el cid again]

RHS deliberately turned AAA way up - because it is way too ineffective

BUT at PH it is deliberately disabled for many units - land and sea

the thing you need to do is fly above the AAA - if you get down and dirty - you WILL get hurt - I promise

there are almost no - or no - 40 mm present though -

[1EyedJacks]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

RHS deliberately turned AAA way up - because it is way too ineffective

BUT at PH it is deliberately disabled for many units - land and sea

the thing you need to do is fly above the AAA - if you get down and dirty - you WILL get hurt - I promise

there are almost no - or no - 40 mm present though -

TBs and DBs have to drop low to deliver their loads...

If RHS turned AAA way up then maybe we need to throttle back some on the accuracy? At this rate the life expectancy of a TB or DB pilot in the Japanese Navy at the start of the war is 4-5 missions - is that realistic?

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: 1EyedJacks

Just curious - how do other players feel about the AAA losses in RHS?

I can say that for the PH attack losses are typically close to 3 times historical for the game starts I've done.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: 1EyedJacks

ORIGINAL: el cid again

RHS deliberately turned AAA way up - because it is way too ineffective

BUT at PH it is deliberately disabled for many units - land and sea

the thing you need to do is fly above the AAA - if you get down and dirty - you WILL get hurt - I promise

there are almost no - or no - 40 mm present though -

TBs and DBs have to drop low to deliver their loads...

If RHS turned AAA way up then maybe we need to throttle back some on the accuracy? At this rate the life expectancy of a TB or DB pilot in the Japanese Navy at the start of the war is 4-5 missions - is that realistic?

The problems were:

many devices had zero ceiling

many ships or units had no warning

we eliminated both these issues by giving all DP and AA weapons ceilings - and warning devices to most

BUT we got rid of max ceilings - in favor of effective ceilings -

AND we let bombers have a reasonable ceiling - so you can fly over a typical US Mark 2 AA gun early in the war

Dive bombers get hit twice - but YOU decide how bad the first time is - come in below 13000 feet and you will eat medium AA guns (37mm or 40 mm) on the initial roll - never mind the second roll.

Torpedo bombers - well they take their chances.

But we got PH AA reduced by disabling most light AA weapons - and many heavy ones - so that if you attack at appropriate altitudes you take appropriate casualties. Disregard altitude - you will take it on the chin - and that is both historical and intentional. You may not disregard effective AA altitude with impunity in RHS - even at PH (where many are disabled). At Clark if you come in at 23,000 feet you will not take any AA casualties (the ceiling of the 3 inch guns being 22600 feet - by fuse limitation). IRL Japan came in at 25,000 feet at Clark.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: 1EyedJacks

Just curious - how do other players feel about the AAA losses in RHS?

I can say that for the PH attack losses are typically close to 3 times historical for the game starts I've done.

Nevertheless - they are calibrated for historical proportions. You must not attack with more planes or in different profiles if you want historical data exactly. If you change things - well you change things.

[witpqs]

I am talking about the AI controlling Japan, so it's whatever altitudes and other attack parameters you programmed in for Japan's first turn. [:)]

[okami]

Cid I have to agree with everyone else on this one. At PH I attacked with 59 Vals at 25000ft and 72 Kates at 16000ft. I lost 10 Vals and 28 Kates. They lost what 21 aircraft at PH and they attacked with many more than I used. Please explain how if all these devices are disabled I could take proportionally more loses? And I have run the attack many times and still take the same number of loses. Maybe the accuracy is to high.

[Mistmatz]

Maybe the numbers are correct but surprise is not factored in well enough in the PH strike.

Even with surprise set to on it might be that land and ship based AA is not effected (enough), just airgroups not flying etc.

I usually don't check the combat replay in detail but maybe if we knew what kills so many planes the team could work on it. If it's vessels it's going to be difficult I assume but it should be possible to disable even more devices in LCU's to keep losses low. On the other hand this might then lead to a house rule not to strike over and over again as the disablements need some time to recover and thus take away the element of surprise.

Just a thought.

[goodboyladdie]

It's not just a PH attack problem...

[Historiker]

ORIGINAL: goodboyladdie

It's not just a PH attack problem...

and again one, where historical correct data is more important than what this data then has as impact on the game... [8|]

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

I am talking about the AI controlling Japan, so it's whatever altitudes and other attack parameters you programmed in for Japan's first turn. [:)]

Well - if you really let AI control Japan - it has a mind of its own. It "thinks" 6000 feet is bombing altitude for example - and this is going to be bad for AAA losses. I cannot change that. WITP is not really suitable to play vs a computer (sorry about that) - and RHS never tried to change that. We did create two scenarios for computer players (AIO and CAIO) - but they are not going to be "historical" - and they are really meant as practice games - so you can learn the game without embarassing yourself. No matter what they are going to crash and burn late in 1944 - period. And no matter what they are going to waste 85% of Japan's sealift capacity - can Japan do well on 15% (probably less)? Expecting much of computer games is - well - a misunderstanding of WITP as is. I don't really program the AI. It is what it is. I sometimes try to program it - in AIO and CAIO - but only at the margins. These are Johnny Come Lately scenarios - I am still developing them - and I just did more to help them a bit. But in the end I am not going to get where anyone wants AI to be. It is not structurally possible.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: okami

Cid I have to agree with everyone else on this one. At PH I attacked with 59 Vals at 25000ft and 72 Kates at 16000ft. I lost 10 Vals and 28 Kates. They lost what 21 aircraft at PH and they attacked with many more than I used. Please explain how if all these devices are disabled I could take proportionally more loses? And I have run the attack many times and still take the same number of loses. Maybe the accuracy is to high.

I don't know the situation enough to comment technically. I ran a historical model using one scenario as base - CVO - and I modified the AAA until it was in the right range. It does not always yield the same result - the variance is significant - so I did a statistical number of runs.

But I SUSPECT you are setting altitudes wrong. It is easier for me - I have the ceilings of the AA devices memorized (not just in game terms - but IRL - I pretty much know them all - after a lifetime of study). If you come in too low - you are going to get hurt - and that is the point. AAA is supposed to make you come in higher - and accept less bombing accuracy as a result.

I calibrated using two attacks: Clark AFB for horizontal bombers - and Pearh Harbor for naval bombers. [Oops - it was AFB when I was there. But AAF in WWII.]

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Mistmatz

Maybe the numbers are correct but surprise is not factored in well enough in the PH strike.

Even with surprise set to on it might be that land and ship based AA is not effected (enough), just airgroups not flying etc.

I usually don't check the combat replay in detail but maybe if we knew what kills so many planes the team could work on it. If it's vessels it's going to be difficult I assume but it should be possible to disable even more devices in LCU's to keep losses low. On the other hand this might then lead to a house rule not to strike over and over again as the disablements need some time to recover and thus take away the element of surprise.

Just a thought.

I found land based AAA was a significant problem - so in RHS many land units begin with disabled AAA devices - just as some ships do. To this extent I "force suprise" regardless of game setting. There was an ex BB with significant AA value - but wholly unmanned - so all devices are disabled on it. It WAS a target IRL - and is in RHS to draw enemy fire - as IRL. But it won't shoot back effectively for several days.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: goodboyladdie

It's not just a PH attack problem...

Let me be clear here: gamers are never going to like realistic AAA. It is bloody awful. And far more so for players with a style of "ignore the AAA - go in at the altitude for most effective bombing." It is far worse in WITP - because before RHS many nominal AAA and DP guns never fired at all. [Zero ceiling settings mean no shooting at all; no warning devices meant that in many cases even with a ceiling; sound detector 10% detection probability meant that 90% of the time a sound detector didn't change the detection issue either] So players used to stock are going to see really major changes - AAA goes from very little worked - to almost always works.

I am an AAW guy - and my first ship ONLY had guns - so guns is where I began. I am one of the few modern advocates of guns - even for anti missile work (and IDF has prooved it works very well indeed). My first ship's gunnery chief had a standard: "hit the target with the first round, or you have not solved the fire control problem properly; if you don't solve it properly, it does not matter how much you shoot". He rewarded gun crews with extra liberty (and other extra legal things, like beer) - running four of them in competition (the best - or every perfect one - got the prize). But he would only let them fire "one round per tube." Later - assigned to work up ships to stop missiles - I picked ships with more than one gun mount - so I could do the same thing - as a backup if other things fail. Real world AAA is deadly - and it is deadly no matter how you aim it (radar, visual, pattern shooting, name it). We consistently took most of our losses to AAA - in V ietnam - and vs Japan too. MOST losses to enemy action are AAA losses.

[witpqs]

How about using the actual historical altitudes for the Pearl Harbor attack and seeing what results that yields?

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

How about using the actual historical altitudes for the Pearl Harbor attack and seeing what results that yields?

How about listening: I have done that. When this came up (8 months or so ago) I found that indeed losses were running higher than they did - by about 100% - sometimes more. I "calibrated" and adjusted - until in the test scenarios - it was in the right range.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Historiker

ORIGINAL: goodboyladdie

It's not just a PH attack problem...

and again one, where historical correct data is more important than what this data then has as impact on the game... [8|]

There is a big problem in games: players almost always do better than history - and on both sides. The decision paradigm is too easy for players - too much is automatically going to work - and players have way too much 20-20 hindsight. In order to get historical losses one must do exactly the right things - and the enemy must cooperate with you! I can do this in a canned test - but not in a real game.

Note however that RHS is moving you in the right direction: AAA is more of the threat it should be (and NOT YET as much as it should be) - and it is more technically precise - so you have the option of avoiding it - IF you want to. It is no longer possible for AAA to work at theoretical - or even above full theoretical - ceiling. I changed AAA in both directions: it is both more likely to fire - and unable to fire where it could not reach.

A big problem is there is not nearly enough AAA in the game. There is in 1941, but we lack the slots to give you all the AAA that should be added. But RHS made heroic efforts to get it in - and there is more of it than in any other mod.

[witpqs]

It hasn't been in the right range for a long time. That is what people are trying to communicate to you. Similarly when I tried to communicate that several models of planes were not producing, you took shots at the messenger. You've done a lot of great things in RHS, but to be useful it must actually work for folks, and I know that is what you want. Thanks for all your hard work and contribution.