Matrix Games Forums

Hello All.
Something I remembered today, I wish I'd thought of it months ago. It's why Aircraft try to fly as high as practicable.
Air Density.
Most people realise it drops off rapidly with altitude.
Many peolpe also know that Piston Engine performance also falls off rapidly with Altitude, becaus of lack of air for the engine to breathe.
Whay I remembered today was another phenomena associated with aircraft performance.
Groundspeed.
When an Aircraft climbs higer, it's Airspeed stays the same, because the ratio of Thrust/Drag dosn't change with decreasing air Density.
What does happen though is that the aircraft actually moves faster relative to the ground, because as the Air density decreases, the aircraft must travel faster in order to pass thorugh the same quantity of air in a given timeframe.
What this means in game terms is, the Higher you set your crusing altitude, the further and faster you can go.
Now I'm sure that this effect isn't modeled in UV or WitP, Because if it was, then a B-17 should be able to Bomb Rabaul from Townsville if set for a cruising altitude of 17'000 ft+.
As a quick guide,
A Cruising Altidude of ~10,000 ft should net a ~10% increase in range.
A Cruising Altitude of ~15,000 ft should net a ~15% increase in range.
A Cruising Altitude of ~20,000 ft should net a ~20% increase in Range.
A Cruising altitude of ~25,000 ft should net a ~25% increase in range.
If this was implemented in UV and WitP, it would give a nice contrast to setting bomber altitude to the default 1000 ft.
(Well , I always set all my veteran level bomber aircraft to 1000 ft, as it give the best combat results.)

It is my understanding that the altitudes you set refer to the altitude of your flight during execution of the mission and not the transit time to and from the target.

Depending on the mission the the setting may have no effect. I think I remeber reading that basically your escort altitude has no effect because the escorts are assumed to be "...a few thousand feet above the bombers." (quote IIRCC) And dive bombers climb/dive to 1,000 just prior to attack regardless of the altitude setting (except skip bombers I guess).

So... I would hope that these calculations on increased range would already be in UV.

Crikey!

I sure hope that I don't have to start remembering optimal flying altitudes to maximise the cruise speed and then choose another altitude to control the attack altitude

No, seriously. I'm starting to feel that the altitude button is causing a lot of hassle. Its a great feature, but it causes so much misconseptions and micromanagement, that one has to ask if its worth it.

Maybe the level of effort button suggested elsewhere would fix this problem. By choosing low, medium or high setting player could control with one button the following aspects.

Fatigue, attack altitude and CAP or escort levels:

Set effort to 'Low' and planes don't attack unless a good unprotected target is right under their nose and even in that case, they attack at such an altitude that their losses to flak are rare.

With 'Low Effort', losses should be no more than one or two planes per mission and fatigue should not climb above 5. The planes would also turn away from fights at the first hint of trouble. Fighter squadrons scramble only if radar, or a spotter sees an imminent attack coming. In this case fighters try to take off with Maximum effort). If incoming attack is not spotted, too bad. Huge losses. Also the current 'Cap %) button could be changed to a button with three settings: Cap, Escort, Both. This would govern wheter fighter effort goes to escorting or protecting, or between the two. AI would make the reguired arrangements automatically and divide the planes for resting, CAP and escort.

Set effort to 'Medium' and the bomber planes attack at lower altitude and fly missions to longer distaces -but not to their extended range. Fatigue should not go beyond 20 and planes should not lose more than 10% to flak or CAP. They would turn away from fights if situation gets too hot. Fighters would patrol regularly with any #of planes they can maintain CAP without going over 20 with fatigue. Bombers would be escorted normally, thus occasionally fighter pilot fatigue would go above 30. This would be compensated by lowering the CAP for few days so that fatigue level goes down to 20 again. All available fighters would scramble if an imminent attack is spotted.

Set effort to maximum and planes fly like maniacs. Fatigue can go up to 40 and planes strafe, skip bomb, fly to murderous CAP and accept losses up to 50%-70%. They would not turn easily away from fights, even when it seems like suicide. Morale goes down and fatigue goes up, untill base commander automatically stands his squadron down when he has less than 3 operational planes or pilot morale is below x and average fatigue above 45. 100% operational planes are available to be ordered to CAP, bomber escort, or to a compromise between the two. Planes would only land to refuel, rearm and change tired pilot to a bit less tired pilot. Nights would be the time the planes are fixed and then at earlies dawn they go up again.

Stuff ups could of course happen. Commander who is set to Medium effort, believes that the target is unprotected and sends his level bombers in at altitude of 10000ft. However, the target has a heavy flak and fighter cover. Many bombers are lost and men are tired, bad luck. However, this should be extremely rare with low effort as planes are basically grounded unless a damaged submarine or a lonely unescorted troopship is spotted right under nose.

With this type of system we might be able to avoid lot of the problems we have now with micromanagement.