State of the Air War in AE

[Commander Stormwolf]

Current model is broken anyway at end game

only because japan has massive ### of AC at endgame..
..IRL.. had very few... Shinano was sunk while empty [:'(]

[vicberg]

There isn't going to be a rewrite. Not this release of the game. Out of scope to think otherwise.

[vicberg]

only because japan has massive ### of AC at endgame..
..IRL.. had very few... Shinano was sunk while empty

According to FATR, and I can't verify his numbers one bit, Japan produced 50k of planes IRL in spite of the stranglehold. So I'm not sure planes are the issue. Qualified pilots is probably more to the point, but I highly doubt that it will be addressed. Plus it brings up age old issues of game balance (two players wanting to play a game because both sides actually have a chance) vs. historical (in which might as well quit sometime in 43 because historically Japan was done by then).

Not worth the discussion.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: vicberg


Not worth the discussion.

Precisely. [;)]

[CaptBeefheart]

Gents and Lady: Some excellent points and massive kudos to The Elf for bringing this up. I'm no aeronautical genius nor a historian, but I do like this game, the theater and genre and would like to see AE improve to an even higher level. Of the recent comments, Acepylut and Kull have made some excellent points that I'd like to support, although certainly there have been many other valid points made here. Here are some thoughts, such as they are:

Aviation Support: I don't think the answer to fixing large-scale air combats is to nerf this, since you could still get huge raids under properly engineered circumstances. Also, I would argue that as you scale up, fewer maintenance personnel are required to keep each aircraft flying, not the inverse, as it allows for more specialization. In the olden days I was responsible for managing flight test aircraft maintenance with an aircraft company and I'd bet a number of others on this forum have a lot more experience with that than me.

Raid Size: Big raids like the size we are talking about didn't appear over the target at once. As Acepylut said, probably the best way to deal with this is to limit the size of the packages as they come over. Kull also brought up a good point about hit-and-run CV raids, which would argue for limiting the size of strikes against mobile CV TFs (or any other non-stationary TFs) even more as well.

Greyjoy vs. Rader: These guys bought the game and had a great AAR going which undoubtedly piqued the interest of many people in this game. I would say their match was very positive in that it explored new territory and covered a lot of what-ifs. Thus, I think respect is due the two gentlemen and the issues they brought up are quite valid for the rest of us. Others have seen the 200-escort ablative armor effect and still others would like to see some improvement as their PBEMs reach into 1944. Their concerns are valid.

Anyway, just some comments and hope some sort of fix is achievable.

Cheers,
CC

[Grfin Zeppelin]

Well what can be done with the current resources ? A complete overhaul is out of the question it seems.

Can the service rating be increased ?
Is it possible to implement another stacking limit ?
Can it be prevented that ACs are transfered in a day and launch at the same ?
Is it possible to cut down large strikes into smaller packets ?
Can launching against just spoted naval targets be made more difficult ?
Is it possible to remove the 250 AV "and we can service the whole airforce" thingie ?


Thats a summary of course from suggestions here and all have their merit methinks but its pointless to discuss something if it cant be implemented hence my questions.

[Rob Brennan UK]

Looks like we have several separate and distinct issues to sort out/discuss ..

The 2000 plane raid is a co-ordination one and wont get sorted by increase in service rating if the attacker is well rested and waiting to bushwhack the enemy, Service rating will stop it happening 2 days running (useful for players who play multi day games). If the raid was reduced to say 20 x 100 plane raids would the result be any different ? given the CAP would be worn away the last 10 would most likely make it through intact regardless while the first 10 get slaughtered. This would encourage players to over-stack to get multiple raids deliberately to get the last planes in scot free.. this wont solve the problem.

Limiting number of bombers to AV support (maybe fighters too) .. yeah this could help unless multiple airfields are packed out. IF they are however, the CV's have no good reason to approach multiple big airfields and the player gets what he deserves quite frankly. Does stop one huge base from launching a massive coordinated strike. This does imo help. No huge packages from single hexes (however big) but multiple hexes stay clear of. Recon planes will tell you rough numbers so players approaching full fields are risking a lot. However the defender can fly in huge numbers and surprise the attacker. This I think does need to be sorted , so the no transfer and fly same day idea works in this situation. Maybe a large number of planes transferring get damaged so no fly next day and if no AV support they cant fly at all. If there is AV support the fighters will be OK in a few days while bombers take longer (multiple engine ones anyway). This seems like a decent workable idea to me.

However it has been wisely stated that we should beware what we ask for and think it through. Easier said than done else the air model would already be perfect [;)]. We have 20/20 hindsight but foresight is lacking in our species. We aren't here to 'fix' the outlier games .. but to make the overall game better for the majority. Lets not overreact to extreme situations and wreck the good things about AE we love.

Ramble over ..

TTFN

[Kull]

ORIGINAL: Rob Brennan UK

However it has been wisely stated that we should beware what we ask for and think it through. Easier said than done else the air model would already be perfect [;)]. We have 20/20 hindsight but foresight is lacking in our species. We aren't here to 'fix' the outlier games .. but to make the overall game better for the majority. Lets not overreact to extreme situations and wreck the good things about AE we love.

My biggest concern as well - not much good to fix one problem by introducing others as yet unforseen. To me, the simplest single fix would be to institute significant coordination penalties on really large Air Raids (anything bigger than 200). There's basically no impact on the early game, and the AI is incapable of mounting raids of this size anyway, so the only real concern is a potentially unrealistic impact on the known "end-of-war" capability the US demonstrated by sending in several raids of 500+ aircraft (including a mind boggling 1000+ right at the very end). Even so, it's questionable whether those giant raids showed up in a single place at the same time, anyway. The sheer physics would argue otherwise, so there was probably a defacto coordination penalty that simply didn't show up in RL because Japanese opposition wasn't anywhere near the same size as we see in end-game AE situations. Odds are that 500 RL Tojos would have wreaked serious havoc on 500 RL low altitude B-29s on a firebombing run, no matter how well escorted. And the risk of facing that maybe-not-so-unrealistic situation is living with the known (and utterly unrealistic) ablative fighter effect.

[bigred]

Please Define:

RTS style players

Thanks

[bigred]

Does escort pilot skill effect the survivability of the pilot with an ablative escort mission? Would seem a more experienced pilot would have a higher return probability from the mission.

Radar quote: Ablative Escort five times more likely to get shot down...

sounds abnormal.

Thanks to Elf. I have read to page five. I bend towards Alfred points of View.

Alfred:
As I said above, taking into account the overall picture, the air combat module is close enough to be good enough. Assemble a new AE development team, give them the necessary resources and time to do the job, and then we can start to consider real changes to the air combat module. Until then skillful play is the order of the day. And accept that Grigsby die roll outcomes are a fact of life.

Alfred

Thanks,Bigred.

[witpqs]

There is no Escort pilot skill. There is Air, which AFAIK is offensive, Def, which is defensive, and Exp, which can factor into anything.

[bigred]

Sorry, let me rephrase. Does overall pilot skill effect the survivability of the pilot with an ablative escort mission?

[LoBaron]

For escorts, a high def skill lessens the impact of initiative bonus from CAP, high exp increases chances of getting home with battle damage.
If you mean all skills, including the non-A2A or plane handling relevant, then no.

Air skill is an offense skill, but this does not imply uselessness on escort missions.

A pilot needs the complete set to perform best, independent on which mission type he flies. The advantages are situation based not
neccesarily mission based.

Let me give you an example:

An escorted raid is intercepted. A fighter pilot on CAP bounces one of the escort fighters. The high def and exp enables the escort fighter
pilot to evade the attack, he turns the situation around with air skill - instead of getting shot down on first pass - he damages the attacking fighter
and so tilts the battle of numbers in his side´s favor.

Happens all the time in the combat animations.

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: bigred

Please Define:

RTS style players

Thanks

I think it's kinda like 'fascist'. It doesn't mean anything much beyond that poster doesn't like the person so labelled. [:D]

[denisonh]

+1

Especially in the early part of the war when CV ops to include CAP management were still developing.

ORIGINAL: Kull

This is a very interesting topic, and I applaud the majority for keeping it focused and non-emotional. Just one observation from many years immersed in reading the history of WW2, is that launching massive air strikes (multiple hundreds of planes) against naval targets spotted within a 24-hour time span simply didn't occur in this era. The Marianas battles might be the closest analogy, and even here the LBA Japanese attacks were extremely uncoordinated, with predictable results. As others have noted, what made Okinawa so dangerous to the Allies was the long term presence of the Naval assets just offshore. This allowed the Japanese plenty of time to prepare and coordinate their kamikaze strikes. Accordingly if a player parks a carrier fleet off the Home Islands, they all deserve to sink. But quick in-and-out raids should be almost impossible to counter.

Again, that's real life and we're talking about a game here. But the RL lesson is that coordinating large raids is hard as hell when you are dealing with a known target and have plenty of time to prepare. The coordination penalties should be enormous when you have one day to try and launch attacks against recently spotted Naval assets.

[bradfordkay]

"Can it be prevented that ACs are transfered in a day and launch at the same ? "


My understanding is that, starting with Uncommon Valor, aircraft were allowed to transfer and perform an attack mission in the same day in order to simulate the "staged" missions that actually occurred. By "staged missions" I mean missions where a bomber unit takes off from its home base, stops at a forward base to refuel, and then flies on to the target which was out of range from its home base.

I use a personal house rule to cover this (I do not ask my opponent to use it, so I have no idea if he does so): if a unit can make the transfer in about four hours or less at cruise speed, then it is allowed to perform other missions in the day it transfers. If it takes more time than that to make the transfer then the unit is grounded. I believe that it would be relatively tough to program this into the game, so it is something the players have to do on their own.

[Deimos]

People want a realistic simulation when turning on Japanese god-mode? trolololol.

[janh]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

"Can it be prevented that ACs are transfered in a day and launch at the same ? "

My understanding is that, starting with Uncommon Valor, aircraft were allowed to transfer and perform an attack mission in the same day in order to simulate the "staged" missions that actually occurred. By "staged missions" I mean missions where a bomber unit takes off from its home base, stops at a forward base to refuel, and then flies on to the target which was out of range from its home base.

I use a personal house rule to cover this (I do not ask my opponent to use it, so I have no idea if he does so): if a unit can make the transfer in about four hours or less at cruise speed, then it is allowed to perform other missions in the day it transfers. If it takes more time than that to make the transfer then the unit is grounded. I believe that it would be relatively tough to program this into the game, so it is something the players have to do on their own.

That would be a sensible mechanic, and doesn't actually sound like it would be too difficult to implement. Yet of course only the devs know. Hex range, cruise speed it is all there. just put it into a very simple rule/formula, and it may do. Above threshold, add a little damage to all airframes, so they need one turn with sufficient AV to ready.
AI you may have to except, though, but that may be a crook one can accept offering since AI won't do such staging attempts in first place anyways.

Still doesn't address the 2000 plane, or 8x200 flights-passes issue, or the poor performance of escort versus cap. Would be interesting to create a fully artificial test, unarmed bombers escorted by fighters with some stats, attacked by fighters with the same stats (not only the exps-array, but fat, and also the airframe's should be identical or of identical performance). I would be curious how escorts would fare under such circumstances if all other factors are evened out.

Also, how would the later war US raids on HI from Saipan look like in AE terms? Lots of separate, broken up attacks on the same targets, or big, single air combat events? How were those US bomber raids usually composed? Does it have any resemblance to the daylight raids in Europe, and how would those look like in AE game mechanics terms?

My guess is in both cases large raids would be broken up in packages of several dozends to hundred planes, with corresponding escorts (?).

[BigDuke66]

So almost 1,5 years later, did something change?

[Quixote]

ORIGINAL: BigDuke66

So almost 1,5 years later, did something change?

If you play with the Beta, then yes - something changed.

(If you don't play with the Beta, sorry. Not sure exactly how many more official patches we can really expect with a four year old game...)