Hey Drongo!
nice to see you back in action.
***
Having not experienced any of these "uber" loss situations that other have complained about, I still feel that 2.11 has the air combat about right. I can understand Matrix's frustration here. Players keep harping about "historical" losses yet that was with tactics that were often far more conservative than what players (and the AI) do now.
For example, during the dark time in Australia and New Guniea, and during the first half of the Guadalacanal campaign, Allied FG's purposely
avoided clashing with Zeros as a matter of policy. The only exceptions were when they had positional advantage at which point they could open up a can of whompass on the long legged Zeros on more than one occasion.
Bombers of course were a different story....they were the priority and being on the defensive and if able to gain positional advantage to boom and zoom they could often get in a few licks on the bombers, enough to continue the attrition.
On the Japanese end of things.....they made mistakes in their deployment, commited piecemail at times and did not devote themselves to developing bases closer to the action in order to press home their attacks on PM and G both. Players in UV (and in WitP, besides benefiting from hindsight from the first historical go-around) have a far greater degree of control over their forces....they can organize em....tell em where to attack, when to attack and how to attack, simotaniously playing a Yamamoto, Nimitz, Halsey, Nagumo, Ghormoly, and Turner all at the same time.
Given this minute level of control, and a tendancy for agressive play since we the players dont have as much at stake as in real life, it should be no suprise that casualties can tend to be bloodier or differ from "historical"
Thats my take, that and my own experiences with 2.11 I have honestly not seen the uber losses caused by big furballs or large bomber attacks. The Japanese, in SC19 with their greatly augmented strength, did not "simply" make PM untendable in a day or even a week. It was a bloody battle of attrtion and fatique that lasted over a month. Yes the P-39's suffered but is this really a suprise? Historically the 39's avoided combat with Zeros unless at an advantage....there is no "setting" in UV to determine "tactics" as in Bombing the Reich or BoB, they're either on CAP or not. I could have duplicated real life somewhat by grounding the 39's or assigning them to ground or naval attack thus sparing them the losses, but I, the commander, chose to fly them up on CAP and the being outnumbered to boot....they suffered heavily over an extended time period.
My P-40's did far better (according to my intel.....i've only lost 34 since starting the new scenerio), partly because of smaller #'s but also because the 40's remain a much tougher adversary for the Zeros, and my faithful No's 75 and 76 RAAF squadrons hung in there for the battle of PM, often giving as good as they got or better.....but eventually the pace (and the greater enemy numbers) took their toll and i had to withdraw the two squadrons for heavy rebuilding around the cadre of surviving veterans. Soon they'll be back and the air-battle will recommence.
My carrier clashes so far have also not displayed any excessive uber-losses either.
Do i like the greater intensity? yes....said this before. For the first time in a campaign, i saw airpower play a decisive role in the isolation of a base. If it had been 2.0, i doubt even with SC19 that the Japanese-AI would have been able to shut down PM after a month and a half of careful and consistant sweeping and bombing, due to the lack of agressiveness characteristic of 2.0
I agree that 1.4 was better than 2.0 in terms of air combat...I think 2.1 is superior than 1.4 because it eliminates certain "Sure thing" tendancies that gamers could count on (such as the equal CAP vs Escort assured bomber survival tactic, or more annoyingly, the low escort vs heavy CAP routine where coupled with the fleeting attack routines, usually led to the bombers getting through unscathed.
The one area i do agree with completely, enough to post my own thread on the subject, was on the subject of bomber fire vs fighters....particularily B-17. I do feel bomber vs fighter in general is too accurate. I can accept the occasional bloody nose, particularily B-17 vs A6m.....the problem is that, it is 100% of the time. I had a similar exp last night. A 12 then 7 raid B-17 strike on a 3 IJN CV covered by 38 Zeros.
Thanks to 2.11, the B-17's paid a $ this time for attacking at 15,000 feet unescorted losing 3, possibly 4 with the same # damaged. But they reported 6 Zero kills themselves and 4 damaaged. The 7 that followed had 3 reported killed but took out 4 more Zeros in the process (uncomfirmed......FOW is on too)
Have no problem with gleeful B-17 gunners claiming Zeros to their hearts content....the problem is that even with FOW, a good % of these hits tend to be kills, leading to the bombers being pseudo fighters all in their own.
I still believe the problem is with the ACC rating of the individual guns. For waist gunners in particular there should be hit for ACC because they have to slew these weapons around via muscle power and have little if anything to aid their Mk-1 Eyeballs, not to mention the adreneline rush will tend to result in alot of ammo being sprayed for little gain. (kind of similar to an unguided light AA mount for that matter)
Mike has kindly posted details on how the bomber gunner vs fighter system works (as opposed to PacWar's old "cannon rating") I agree it sounds like a much more detailed and better system. It seems to work well for the average bomber or the ligthly armed bomber but things seem to go out of wack when the more porcupined varients come into play.
The thing to do now is to produce some test results, which i notice that Cap and Gown has started doing while this post was in the process of being created. Maybe these results will convince Matrix to at least take another look at it. Not gonna cry historical this or historical that anymore, just look at the test results and i think it will show that B-17's are consisitanly able to be employed as pseudo fighters, along with certain medium bombers to a lesser degree. Such an oddity makes the debut of long range fighters (like P-38) and the whole idea of advancing on a major airbase (to put it within escort range for bombing attacks) seem somewhat moot in UV right now.
One last comment on the losses. Player tactics can and will have an impact on the degree of brutality. While the game engine does not allow you to dictate tactics (and why should it, we have enough to keep track of?) you "can" control when and where your airforces fight. I could have abandoned PM in SC19, thus preserving my strength while awaiting the inevitable reinforcements, but i chose to fight and the fact that after a month of ever increasingly powerful sweeps and attacks by mass Zeros gutted my few available FG's only fills me with glee, because it shows that airpower can make a decisive impact without having to lean on risky surface bombardment sorties (though they help too....the AI has hit me with a few and the base supply has been PLASTERED)
There were other tactics i could have tried.....i could have put CAP on a low level, say 30%, just to contest the attacks, cause a little disruption and maybe bag a bomber or two (signifigant since even in SC19, long ranged IJN Bombers dont grow on trees), while trying to minimize my own losses. Instead, i did the pre-2.1 thing and put em all on 90 or even 100% CAP. So i could hardly be suprised that after a month + of combat, my FG's were cadres.
I might also point out that we, the players have alot more aircraft to work with than what was historical in terms of operational. From what i've read, the SWPAC theatre was murder on both machines as well as men......an airforce would be lucky that have 50% of it's machines operable at any one time even in a decent logistical situation. I can understand though why this is not represented in the game though....players would be jumping up and down complaining about why their bombers and fighters arn't repairing.
On the naval front ironically....i've been far more coservative with my carriers. I could have chosen a bloody 3 on 3 CV battle SE of PM, but chose not to risk it because at this point i could see no evidience of an AI invasion force, so the risk seemed pointless....i knew the CV's would eventuallly have to leave adn they did. Course this didnt' stop me from foolishly trying to send in a six DD fast transport to PM.....it got completely destroyed....since such a thing never happened in the real war, should it be considered excessive? It was my own **** bloody orders that put them there in the first place.
The only real bug i ran into via 2.1 was the missing pilot allocation issue....fixed in 2.11 I'm paying close attention to AA right now too but until i have more concrete info, i'm keeping the jaw shut....played a few turns last night....AA seemed fine.....ironically that example i posted on the bug forum....with undamaged CL's and DD's not firing at all, the same badly damaged TF got attacked again and this time the flak was flying. odd that.
Since the word "Historical" has been thrown around a bit since 2.1, i will close with an amusing note.
One reason i was conservative with my carriers was the impending arrival of CV Saratoga. I sent her off as soon as she arrived with a heavy escort to join her sisters lurking in Australia. On Day 1 out from Normura.....she got torpedoed by a &*(*P! I-boat and had to abort the mission back to Normura with 30% SYS damage
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!
You cant get any more "historical" than that
:rolleyes: :p
