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Did some editing and testing today to see if there is some work-around to lower loss rates. As I knew from previous editing of GG's game, nothing is clear-cut or simply as it might seem when looking at the data. Of course both Harley and Hard Sarge have mentioned this long ago. Nevertheless the urge to tinker cannot be denied...

I used the intro BTR scenario and set an unescorted raid to Hannover. Goal was to work with only the B-17F and see the results. Note that I am aware that using 10 sample missions is not statistically valid, but is enough to see trends worth further exploring.

First the control sample, B-17 Losses/Luftwaffe Losses
144-44
148-43
164-41
178-37
121-51
148-48
150-36
141-43
143-54
149-38

1486 B-17s lost.

Now, looking for a quick and easy "fix" I thought I would increase the armor level. I used '3' for the B-17.

98-47 Hey, this looks great!
then...
166-68
148-46
135-60
149-41
forget this - there's not any trend worth pursuing. It dawned on me that most of the German planes are armed with 20mm with a penetration of 3. Maybe that was the reason for no real change - although that first result shows how different things can occur to skew results.

Okay, let's make the armor 4 so the 20mm can't penetrate. While I'm at it I'll drop all the .50 cal guns on the B-17 to see if that will lower the LW losses. I think the bomber guns are inherently overrated because their accuracy rating is the same as if the guns were mounted on fighters. The .30 cal isn't much less so, but has shorter range and less bang for the buck. Mostly it's an easy fix.

Results where:
100-66
80-39
142-44
143-38
124-45
69-49
140-43
106-43
116-41
137-58

1157 B-17's lost. Thats 23% less than the control. Oh, BTW the Allied sortie count is always 488 sorties. So even with this modification the loss/sortie rate is 23.7% . Doesn't look like dropping the .50 cal guns to .30 cal did anything - actually higher 435 losses in the control group vs 466 losses against the .30 cal armed B-17s. Of course one would expect the German losses to go up because not as many US bombers are getting knocked down, ie there are more bombers left to shoot back. But I thought the .30 would wash-out that effect. Not really a large enough sample to know.

Seeing that adjusting the armor isn't going to do what I am looking for (cutting the overall loss by at least 50% from the control group) I decide to edit the durability rate. I drop the armor level back to 1 so as to not skew the results. I double the durability from 65 to 130.

94-44
76-43
87-40
89-40
93-48
90-53
93-50
81-43
86-40
92-42

891 B-17 losses, about 41% less than the control group. In simplistic terms you might think that doubling durability would cut losses in half, but I'm sure GG has some other stuff going on under the hood, eg critical hits, etc. The B-17s remained armed with .30 cals, and German losses are 443 which seem statistically probable with the other test.

Some my line of thinking is to try double the durability of ALL the planes and see what happends. Probably end up increasing the armor on the bombers later. Also think a *new* .50 cal weapon is needed that has greatly reduced accuracy to recreate the difficulty of tracking even with powered turrets, not mention hand-held weapons.

I know it sounds like a great idea, but the code is set to use certain normatative values for things like critical hits, damage effectiveness and the like. By exceeding these normatative values you will skew events like critical hits, rocket attacks, crash landings. I cant (not wont!) tell what the effect will be, but I don't think it's wise.

Hi Nik. I think it's a great idea what you are trying to do, but maybe changing aircraft armor values or durability would screw up too many other things (like Harley said). What I did was halve most aircraft gun accuracy stats with a hex editor, and got some interesting results. First turn test results in the 1943 long campaign. See below:


unmodded escorted bombing mission Hannover:







modded gun accuracy values escorted bombing mission Hannover:







unmodded:

Allied Aircraft lost- 122
Axis Aircraft lost- 41



Modded Gun Accuracy -50%:

Allied Aircraft lost- 70
Axis Aircraft lost- 29


Basically, by reducing most of the aircraft gun accuracy stats
by 50%, I reduced aircraft kills by about 40-45%. I'm not sure these results are historically accurate, but I have to admit that the number of aircraft being lost in the stock game does seem way too high. While playing the modded game, B-17's were much, much more likely to be damaged rather than shot down, due to the lower accuracy of the 20mm cannons.

How will that affect the AC replacement rate routines ? Especially for the Germans ? In the stock game, dispite the ahistorical losses, the Allies will never run out of AC.

I think the germans got affected by loss of pilots and loss of fuel a lot more then loosing planes. Somebody correct me if I am wrong!

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

I think the germans got affected by loss of pilots and loss of fuel a lot more then loosing planes. Somebody correct me if I am wrong!

You are correct!

HS - I am well aware of the dangers of hex-editing.  As I've mentioned before, I've been hacking GG's games since 1993.  Since IMO the game is already broken because of the ahistorical loss rate, I figure I can't do much more harm.  Only testing will tell.  Not to mention I am not forcing this down anyone's throat.

That being said, Deckard777's approach may very well be a better way of approaching the problem.  Or perhaps some middle ground between the two approaches.

I don't think the replacement quantities are an issue - they seem about right for both sides.  Neither side had any shortage of aircraft.  With fewer losses there will be just more in the pools.  As noted, whether the LW has the fuel or pilots to man them is the issue.  As for the Allies, they had 10's of thousands of pilots and aircraft sitting in reserve at the end of the war.

Just a guess here, but I'm thinking the game probably has to allow higher kills to give the Germans any chance of winning.
As already stated the Allies will never run out of AC in their pools, so if they also take about half as many losses (which would be around historical) then it will be all the german player can do just trying to hurt the allied heavies enough to ground them for a day or two.

In this game the goal of the allies is to bomb industry, the goal of the LW is to kill A/C, so to my mind anything which makes it harder to kill A/C simply makes the German's job harder in comparison to the allies.

ORIGINAL: Nicholas Bell

HS - I am well aware of the dangers of hex-editing. As I've mentioned before, I've been hacking GG's games since 1993.

Didn't you do your USAAF alternates (which are still on my hard drive!), even earlier than that? (A2 War Forever! *grin*)

Once a patch makes the game playable here, I'd love to give any alternates you come up with a try!

Why not simply turn all allied bombers into B29?
Then see if you can actually use them>?
I have done it....they still got tired too fast.

ORIGINAL: Dobey

In this game the goal of the allies is to bomb industry, the goal of the LW is to kill A/C, so to my mind anything which makes it harder to kill A/C simply makes the German's job harder in comparison to the allies.

Dobey, isnt the axis goal - prevent as much damage to Luftwaffe, groundforces, urban area and industry as possible?

Surviving doesnt mean shoot down aircraft although it helps. Its about intercepting the right raids, breaking up bomber formations!

Didn't you do your USAAF alternates (which are still on my hard drive!), even earlier than that? (A2 War Forever! *grin*)
Once a patch makes the game playable here, I'd love to give any alternates you come up with a try!

Nah, I did the editor and mod for the PC Apple emulator version about ten years ago.  I'm with you on waiting for the patch - I'm not going to go crazy on any mods until it's out and we can see what changes are made.  Not sure if my comments are hurtin' or helping in that regard.  [;)]

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

ORIGINAL: Dobey

In this game the goal of the allies is to bomb industry, the goal of the LW is to kill A/C, so to my mind anything which makes it harder to kill A/C simply makes the German's job harder in comparison to the allies.

Dobey, isnt the axis goal - prevent as much damage to Luftwaffe, groundforces, urban area and industry as possible?

Surviving doesnt mean shoot down aircraft although it helps. Its about intercepting the right raids, breaking up bomber formations!

Well yes, but the idea that "The bomber will always get through" is generally true. When the allied heavies launch the target is as good as destroyed, or at least damaged
You want to prevent allied bombers hitting their targets, but in the short term all you can do is make them pay a price for hitting their targets. Unless you are playing an inexperienced player or the AI the allies will rarely launch with such low morale or small numbers that you can destroy or turn back the whole force. You need to inflict heavy losses on a consistent basis to keep the Allies grounded and when you get to that point you are protecting your targets by stopping the allies from flying.

The allies do also need to destroy the LW, but if their losses are far less then aggressively bombing the A/C industry is an alternative to shooting them down. And I would argue that if the allies in Aug 43% have their loss rate halved, then in a sense the affect for them is the same is winning air superiority anyway as the early part of the game is the struggle to get the LW down to the point where you can bomber further in for far fewer losses.

ORIGINAL: Dobey

Just a guess here, but I'm thinking the game probably has to allow higher kills to give the Germans any chance of winning.

That speaks to whether the program is supposed to be a "game" or a "wargame." In a game yes, both sides should have a roughly even chance of "winning." In a wargame a "win" for one side is often really just avoiding a catastrophic loss. Or even just prolonging the time it takes to lose, beyond historical dates could be considered a "win" in a true wargame.

My bet is that this is supposed to be, and/or intended to be a wargame, as were the vast majority of Grigsby's games since the early 80's. I'd also bet that Nick believes the same is attempting to get the program to behave as such. And that is why I'd like to be privy to any of his edits, once a patch makes the game playable here.

I concur with your comments, E.  With everything I am reading here in the forum, it looks like Harley and HS have a lot of "game changers" going into the patch.  Maybe the only real editor we will need will be for scenario creation.  [:)]

ORIGINAL: Nicholas Bell

I concur with your comments, E. With everything I am reading here in the forum, it looks like Harley and HS have a lot of "game changers" going into the patch. Maybe the only real editor we will need will be for scenario creation. [:)]

I'd hoped for an emergency patch to get the performance to at least match the original (the original runs better on my machine than the one updated for modern windoze/machines). So I haven't played enough of the new game to really comment on actual content, beyond generically.