Eagle Day VS WiTW

[CaptainFalcon]

I always heard Gary Grigbsy's War In The West had a very deep Air Warfare system. With this game being partly a GG's game, I wonder how air warfare stands out from WiTW.


Knowing that GG often imports mechanics to his newer games:

* Is the Air War in this game fully modeled/imported to Witw, thus I wont get many new things in this if im going to buy Witw ?

* Or, is the air war and mechanics in this game totally a different beast that WitW simplified ?

[warshipbuilder]

Yeah this is totally different than WitW. WitW is a ground war with a strategic bombing element which is pretty basic. ED/BTR is a tactical/strategic bombing game and is much more complex.

[Saturn V]

ORIGINAL: warshipbuilder

WitW is a ground war with a strategic bombing element which is pretty basic.

True, but WitW does offer some advantages. The ability to select from a range of loadouts for bombers and fighter-bombers, with each of those loadout affecting the aircraft's performance differently, is very nice. It also offers many more aircraft types and variants. (I would say though that having only five loadouts in WitW is limiting — some aircraft need more than that to better reflect the historical options available. In regards to EDBTR, looking at the lone available loadout for each specific type of bomber model, the loadouts are, well, very strange.)

[Denniss]

I would actually love to add more loadouts to certain aircraft but the game engine of WitW does not support more than 5.
Some of these 5 are lost as I had to add long range loadout variants.
So no extreme loadouts such as max bombs for very short range ops like in normandy or extreme range loadouts to hit targets in poland. or something like day ops loadout for lancasters etc.

[warshipbuilder]

the loadouts are, well, very strange.)

It's on the to-do list to be looked over for possible changes.

[simovitch]

EDBTR automatically modifies the loadouts based on the range of mission, but that's about it. But isn't WITW weekly turns or something like that? EDBTR is minute by minute, hour by hour.

I own WITE but I might pick up WITW during the sale to see what its all about.

[Saturn V]

ORIGINAL: Denniss

I would actually love to add more loadouts to certain aircraft but the game engine of WitW does not support more than 5.
Some of these 5 are lost as I had to add long range loadout variants.
So no extreme loadouts such as max bombs for very short range ops like in normandy or extreme range loadouts to hit targets in poland. or something like day ops loadout for lancasters etc.

If you look at the CSV exports, each of the five loadouts can have up to ten devices each. But no aircraft loadout in WitW uses more than five devices, so those other five device slots are wasted. It would have been great to instead have had ten loadouts with each capable of holding up to five devices. That'd be the same total amount of slots but offering more loadouts per aircraft.

I'd argue too for some changes to the aircraft variants in WitW. The B-17F should really be split into two versions, one without the 'Tokyo tanks' in the wings and one with them, rather than this being handled as loadouts. The Lancaster B.II is also missing; it ought to be included given that it equipped six Bomber Command squadrons, some of them for long periods. Some bomb types are missing for the USAAF: there's no 100-lb incendiary loadout, even though that was the fourth most frequently used bomb type over Germany. Similarly, there's no 120-lb frag cluster (six 20-lb fragmentation bombs), when in reality that was the fifth-most frequently used bomb type.

(According to official USAAF statistics, the bomb types used against Germany, 1943-45, by percentage of total dropped: 500 lb GP, 36.5%; 100 lb GP, 18.0%; 250 lb GP, 12.5%; 100 lb incendiary, 9.5%; 120 lb frag cluster, 8.9%; 1000 lb GP, 6.7%; 440 lb incendiary cluster, 3.2%; 260 lb frag, 2.4%; 2000 lb GP, 0.6%; 500 lb incendiary, 0.4%; 500 lb SAP, 0.4%; 1000 lb SAP, 0.2%. A myriad of other types filled out the remainder of bombs used.)

Fortunately, the database in WitW is relatively easily modified, so at some point I'm going to make these changes myself for its air-only campaigns. (I'd also like to do an air-only campaign for the game with an earlier Jan. 21, 1943, start.)

ORIGINAL: warshipbuilder

the loadouts are, well, very strange.)

It's on the to-do list to be looked over for possible changes.

That's good to hear. Earlier this year I spent quite some time going through the ORBs for a number of Bomber Command squadrons recording the actual bomb load carried on each mission. I did the same for a couple of USAAF bomb groups.

ORIGINAL: simovitch

EDBTR automatically modifies the loadouts based on the range of mission, but that's about it.

Ah, that might explain why the loadouts listed in the in-game database looked strange to me; perhaps it's showing everything lumped together rather than as discrete loads. Do you know exactly how the game decides on a particular load and the specifications for that load? There's no such info in the game manual. (That's the kind of small detail I find important and wish the manual would include.)

On a similar note, how exactly do the RCM aircraft work for the Allies? There's nothing in the manual describing the way such aircraft should be used and the effects they produce during a mission.

ORIGINAL: simovitch]But isn't WITW weekly turns or something like that? EDBTR is minute by minute, hour by hour.

Yes, WitW uses one-week-long turns. I picked up the game, along with the Operation Torch expansion, earlier this year when both were on sale on Steam.