Weather !!!

[Japan]

A Military Operation can be very hard to plan without a weather estimation for secral days.

IRL thay often had weather estimations, who often was pritty accurate... who lasted over sevral days. Will this be implemented in AE ???

[cantona2]

Well we already have the next day forecast so maybe they have included something like this

[Dili]

The ability to perform a forecast depends on means and resources available, place and historical data. D-day went ahead by a tiny margin.

[Nomad]

Ask ADM Halsey how good the weather forcast was. [:)]

[Nomad]

Stupid forum software - sorry about double post

[tocaff]

It would be nice to get a report that a storm was moving into an area that you inquire about.  If it's an accurate report or not is OK, but it'll give us as added something to work with.

[Japan]

I agree,   in the real world weather reports could be both in accurate, but also some accurate... like when a Coald or Warm Front is moving into a area with the oposite ect, so some obvies weather fenomens thay could predict pritty ok...

This is a Very important Strateagic Tool, as  how can you launch a Large Scale Operation, with only 24 hour weather forcast,   and a plain random guess on what it will be the 2nd day of the operation...  ??

[eloso]

After turn one there is a 80% chance of heavy precipitation in the top 3 quadrants on the map every day for the rest of the game. Australia remains mostly clear or partly cloudy. The SRA has a lot of precipitation. The other 4 quadrants are harder to predict.

It is hard to imagine that weather forecasting during the 1940s was accurate. There weren't any satellites and radar was extremely crude along with communication equipment. Even today, where I live, anything past 24 hours is highly suspect for accuracy.

I do think the weather system could be improved upon. It would be nice to have a toggle switch or a keyboard shortcut to display an overlay of clouds/storms while you are plotting your orders.

Avalon Hill's Flattop and Yaquinto game's CV had a pretty neat weather system that wouldn't be too difficult to program IMO. The map was divided into quadrants and each quadrant started with a number of cloud counters. The cloud cover was assumed to cover the hex and each adjacent hex. Each turn a die was rolled to see which direction the cloud moved. Any time a hex contained >= 2 overlapping cloud hexes resulted in a storm.

[Japan]

Well.. alot of weather of course was hard to predict.... but when you have Submarines or whatever in xxx raporting a Storm and wind direction xxx ect... it does not take a rocket sientict to calculate weather in the surroundings of it.
 
 
From WW1 thay have had pritty fair weather reports, some times for up to sevral day at the time: http://www.franksingleton.clara.net/nwp.html
 

[Japan]

So... how will Weather Prediction be in AE ???

[vettim89]

ORIGINAL: Japan

Well.. alot of weather of course was hard to predict.... but when you have Submarines or whatever in xxx raporting a Storm and wind direction xxx ect... it does not take a rocket sientict to calculate weather in the surroundings of it.


From WW1 thay have had pritty fair weather reports, some times for up to sevral day at the time: http://www.franksingleton.clara.net/nwp.html

Weather prediction until really about the 1970's was still mostly done by compiling data from weather stations and creating a "map view" based on an amalgam of all the available data. Satellites changed that far more than radar. Radar gives you a better assessment of local conditions which is why all commercial airliners have them. So in WWII in the Pacific the Japanese had the advantage in the NoPac as prevailing winds move weather from West to East. In the Southern Ocean the Allies would have the advantage assuming Oz and or NZ were held. In the tropics there is a counter current movment that makes it more unpredictable. Any one who watches hurricanes understands this as prevailing winds run east to west above the Equator but as the storm approaches the Tropic of Cancer the path becomes more unpredicatble as the storm interacts with extratropical air flow.

Tropical weather tends to be more stable with the exception of cyclones (hurricanes/typhoons) which are seasonal. While huge storm fronts are rare in the tropics, it tends to be moist. Locally heavy squalls are possible any day. Actually that could be better said almost EVERY day. Numerous battles involved one side or the other using these to their advantage. I guess my point would be that it probably is ok the way it is and should be further down the list of things to "fix" in AE

What does need fixed is Monsoon. The Monsoon season basically allowed both sides only six months out of the year to accomplish anything in Burma and SE India (four months of rain and two months to dry out). The fact that this is not modeled is a true shortcoming of the system.

more info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsoon

[AirGriff]

From the book "Fire in the Sky" it talks in detail about weather ops. It was very difficult to predict the weather out there. Most squadrons detailed 2 aircraft to fly weather missions, and on raids flew aircraft ahead of the group in 30 minute intervals to give weather reports. The 13th Air Force "only cancelled flights when the forecast was that the home base would be socked in on return."

The book quoted a meteorologist, "When we plotted our weather map we were working on information from about 100 stations in the entire Pacific at the time we were on Guadalcanal. In that area (Guadalcanal to Rabaul) we only had four or five weather stations. So in the Pacific it was harder to get a good picture. They gave us good instruments, but just didn't have enough weather stations. The stations were small, about a dozen men. It would have been a tough job no matter how many we had."

[vettim89]

If I remember correctly, the Japanese Air Defense ignored the Enola Gay because they assumed it was a weather plane

[JeffroK]

Go to 2-7 July entries
 
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/WhatsNew.html