Suggestions for future patches

[StkNRdr]

I have been playing mostly as the Germans in BoB and I have a few things that I thinks would be helpful.

1. Bomber missions are timed to arrive over target in a certain order. Weather can cause problems forming up, etc. If mission 2 is scheduled to arrive after mission 1, but mission 1 is delayed due to weather, mission 2 goes in anyway. The missions may be coming from different areas. There should be a way of grouping missions so they are dependent on one another and go in the scheduled order. If mission 1 is delayed, all dependent missions should be delayed the same amount of time so the timing of the raids is not affected.

2. In the Review Mission section, when you go into modify and see the fighter escort listed on the right side, it doesn't indicate which are close versus high (a C or H would do nicely). This could be helpful when setting delay from that screen.

3. Also when the Show All Paths in on, when you move the cursor over a target box on the map the target info pop up box appears. It would be helpful to also see information of any raids schedule for that target (mission #, #bombers, # fighters, etc.) as well as the target info.

4. Fighter sweeps should have "doctrines" similar to the defensive fighters, including whether to attack ground targets of opportunity.

5. In the replay of missions, it would be helpful to turn on/off weather. (currently, the Stop/Continue appears not to work).

6. Also in replay, it would be nice to have the boxes available instead of the plane icons.

7. In the Action Reports it would be helpful to Show Paths of the missions as they actually happened (by bomber, fighter sweep, recon, all, etc.).

8. Also in the Action Reports having the TOT available would be helpful for sorting the missions by how they actually occurred, for comparison to how they were planned.

9. It has been mentioned about the ability of saving and recalling raids, I think this would be very helpful and second the motion.

Food for thought.

StkNRdr

[pejsek]

I would like to have more information in the game:

In the Aircraft Replacements screen, there should be start date, end date and number of a/c received each turn (each other turn in BoB) for the attacking side. The defending side should get the same information for a/c received not from factories.

In the Weapons Database, there should be information about aircraft performance at different altitude.
There should be also a screen about electronic systems.

It would be nice to be able to specify how many aircraft will fly a Night Intruder mission, not just 1 a/c or half of available in the squadron.

[Eratuin]

Don´t know if this was already mentioned.

I would like to have a "research progress percentage", where you can see how the research/developement process for each plane in developement is going on.

e.g.

ME 262A 35 %
ME 262B 8 %

and so on...

COuld be included in aircraft replacements...

[JapLance]

In BTR Bomber group selection screen there's a column that indicates groups with navigational radars:



Could the same be done to BOB indicating bomber groups with navigational aids (Knickebein)?. I thought that only Kgr100 had them, but I've just realised that in my current game after two weeks two more groups have received that aid, and I just noticed by chance while looking the full OOB (they had an * next to them)



Thanks

[Wayn Reinbold]

New post

A problem I have encountered is
if I select recall command "R" key
and
I accidently left mouse click on the stategic map
then
All of the aircraft flying on the entire map are recalled to base, there appears minimal chance of undoing this command (see below)

ONLY aircraft that had been assigned to attack an enemy formation can have the recall order counter-manded. One does this by going into the raid number then the recall list, and the german player can undo the recall command, but only for axis formations on this list.

Can you restrict this command to the tactical map (larger map) rather than the stategic map !

[Have]

I play the game in windowed mode and do a lot of task switching hopping back and forth from the game and other applications. Currently the game freezes and stops updating the game loop in code when the game window is out of focus. In addition the game usually don't update itself correctly immediately after regaining focus.

Could you possibly fix this somehow? Perhaps you could keep the game running when the game window itself is out of focus? I've done some game programming myself and it is usually a pretty trivial task. Just don't stop updating and rendering the game when the out of focus event is received etc.

[Cav Trooper]

1. Bomber missions are timed to arrive over target in a certain order. Weather can cause problems forming up, etc. If mission 2 is scheduled to arrive after mission 1, but mission 1 is delayed due to weather, mission 2 goes in anyway. The missions may be coming from different areas. There should be a way of grouping missions so they are dependent on one another and go in the scheduled order. If mission 1 is delayed, all dependent missions should be delayed the same amount of time so the timing of the raids is not affected.

I would like to disagree on this one. It was not uncommon for weather delays to have a major impact on the actual flying of the missions in real life. I would IMHO be a gamey change which would have an adverse impact on the game. In real life, missions like the Regensburg - Schweinfurt raid is a very good example why if you link one raid to another raid, separated by distance, and only launch them in "scheduled" order then you would steam roll the German / English defenses. Regensburg - Schwienfurt is a very good example of how a well planned raid went wrong due to the intangible aspect of weather. Three and half hours late, and the late group missed the opportunity to take advantage of the limited escorts available and history demonstrated the effects of that late departure. And again, IMHO, that we should leave the mechanics of the raid execution alone.

Second reason I don't think this should be considered, is if one group is delayed by one hour at one airfield due to weather, does that mean that the other 6 groups should sit or land again and wait for this one group to fly?? or if the 0900 group cancels or is delayed by weather or is canceled, does that mean because the "schedule of raids" is now messed up would that mean that my 1300 missions would not fly??? This would not be a very good change for the game.

Otherwise totally agree with the other suggestions, just not number 1...

[Antonin]

In the post-mission briefing screen, I would like to see aircraft losses expressed as a percentage of the raid force in addition to being expressed in numerical terms. All of the bomber campaign histories I have read use the raw number and the percent.

[Hard Sarge]

Tanker

you sound like me

but yes, I agree with your view, the Aug 17th raid is a very good one to look at, even more would be the Oct 14th raid, that one got so bad on take off, it really should of been aborted (one BG leader was so worried he was behind, that he wouldn't wait at each of the way points for the rest of the formations to form up, so in chasing them, he got ahead of them, once they finally spotted the rest of the formations, he turned around, to try and join them, but in crossing there path, screwed up the rest of the formations, a total furbar, bad part is, everybody involved thought they were doing the right thing)

Weather will and should screw up your well laid plans

[horustheking]

I'll admit I'm pretty lazy and had both the original games but I still never really looked into how the weather actually works, but what I've always wanted are daily forecasts, specifically estimated weather patterns at certain times, ie. where the weather is forecast at say noon, or 1500.

[Hexagon]

Add more information to the game, for example today i go unit by unit to know the number of airplanes shot down by my fighters (the total in the campaing screen includes not only AA casualties includes crash in the return travel well, add a fog here is interesting) and dont know what is the number of casualties by airplane type when and when i change it in an unit need to use paper to note the numbers pre-change.... and to the mission review add more information like planes destroyed in air/floor, damage and crash in landing.

Oooo something that i dont understand in the game, why allways 100% of planes take off??? where are the engine problems??? same for interceptors.


I think that with a little improvement in the screens and add more information could be great.

PD: a little question, are any plans to a expansion or add-on covering for example other fronts??? and change for this version the combat system where 2 players can send attacks and set orders for defenders... i think cover the north Africa campaign... or cover the WWI ... dream is free [:D]

[Michael T]

Could we get an ETA for each waypoint? This would be very useful. Currently I have to use a ruler and a calculator to figure out this kind of stuff. HPS DTR has this info.
 
Also with the replay rather than have the message settings that are currently available why not a check box for all the different kinds of messages displayed.
 
And how about replays that don't end before all the missions are done.

[Have]

Please add flight path history lines for the enemy formations to be used by the intercepting side. Currently enemy formations have direct lines to their home bases(?), which doesn't really provide that much useful information. Lines indicating their flight path history, perhaps logged minute by minute, would be much much more useful.

Also, please add more data to the aircraft replacements page. Currently it shows numbers for aircrafts produced in total and currently in pool. It would be useful to see change data from the previous day indicating the number produced aircrafts and aircrafts distributed to the units by the end of the day.

[BlindBat]

I second the ETA for the waypoints.

One other feature I would like to see would be to add a message log.
Instead (or perhaps in addition to) all the various messages appearing briefly in the middle of the screen, why not have a message log in the bottom of the window that tracks all the messages, timestamped as well.
I keep my eyes glued to the screen because I'd hate to miss the message that one of my top aces got shot down and killed, or one of my groups got savaged by the return escorts because I recalled them too late, etc etc.

[Hard Sarge]

I have wanted and asked about the ETA for a long time, but that is not on my side, so got to wait and see what the smart guy can do, but he got other things he is working on, but I would like the ETA

[Derfel]

A nice to have or a chrome feature
A purple heart/Verwundetenabzeichen depicted by every pilot returned to service would be some very nice chrome.

[Hard Sarge]

that would be interesting, not sure if we got the room, but interesting

(on the side, I thought the Ge Wound Badge was only for those who were wounded and put out of action (IE, a pilot who had a lost a leg, could later come back to his Gruppen and be a TO or something, but not a pilot, he would get a wound badge, but a pilot who was shot, and returned to duty would not ?)

[Derfel]

There were different grades for the medal:
Black 1-2 times wounded.
Silver 3-4 times wounded.
Gold 5+ times wounded or blind [8D]

During the course of the war about 2½ million was given in Black, 1 million in silver and ½ a million in gold.

Really a chrome thing to put in the game, but nice to see when your pilots return from the hospital.

[Hard Sarge]

thanks, I know some of the details, others... (thinking it is the Gold that had the part about being wounded too badly to come back)

I like the idea, not sure about the spacing needed, but I like the idea if it could be added

[vimconfused]

These suggestions are based on playing the 1943 long campaign on the German side. The Allied player may dispute my assessments!

I've so far played to February 1944 and it doesn't get any easier. Quite the opposite in fact with more and better allied fighters covering the skies... so many in fact that it seems there aren't enough meaningful missions to go round sometimes! So these ideas stem from my perception that its hard enough playing the Germans to begin with, the Allies don't really need any extra help!!! Therefore:

1. Reduce the effectiveness or incidence of German flak firing on German planes. I am not disputing that flak will often hit the wrong target, but that is a completely different scale of argument to the situation I am experiencing where my own flak is causing significantly more casualties to my aircraft than to the enemy. I am not talking about flak firing on aircraft attacking specific locations where it is based, but of the "random" attacks on aircraft flying overhead (and even aircraft landing at their own airfield).

Even the very many aircraft damaged is significant... they might later crash due to this or accumulate damage, or crash on landing or at best not be available for later sorties while under repair. At the moment it *seems* that flak does not distinguish between friend and enemy, sort of like flak land mines. If it does then the chance of attacking own aircraft needs to be sorted out because I cannot believe it is anything like as high as appears in the game.

Another option is some sort of "all clear" button where you could perhaps switch off all flak, and not inflict all those casualties on your own planes returning to bases long after the enemy have left your airspace! It's just wrong that I can control the actions of a single fighter (or hundreds of them), but I can't tell a single flak gun to stop firing!

2. Reduce the pursuit of single engine fighters by twin engine fighters. This is where your heavy twin engine interceptors get some suicidal impulse to chase after enemy fighters on their way home. This is quite a common occurrence and you can spend ages micromanaging your interceptions to pull individual TE fighters off pursuits, where they can't catch the aircraft their after and end up getting shot down by other fighters overtaking them! I can see a vague logic where SE fighters don't make their "bounce fighter" doctrine and end up attacking bombers, but I can't see any realism in TE fighters ignoring bombers in order to chase allied SE fighters! This happens all the time and wouldn't be surprised if this accounts for 10-20% of your effective bomber destroyers not being available for their proper mission at any one time. So please give me a button that automatically pulls TE fighters off raids that are only SE fighters, or better still code it so they don't do such stupid things in the first place!

3. Reduce the effectiveness and/or incidence of strafing. At the moment if the Allied AI completely gave up escorting bombers, attacking radar and all the other stuff it should historically do, and instead simply regularly strafed every airfield for a few weeks the Luftwaffe would be destroyed! Ace pilots get wiped out sitting around in their planes (even if they're not going on another sortie that day). So I'd like some kind of "stand down" procedure that doesn't involve moving the whole unit to a far off location, simply so they don't get the fatigue of being on short ground alert, and more importantly getting blown up in their aircraft that was not going anywhere. There is also a problem with hanging around over the airfield and shooting down planes as they land. I haven't experienced this much but it also seems a bit overdone from what people have said.

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I also concur with previous remarks about needing more production information. I think its well known, but I just wanted to add my request to know the "hidden stockpiles". For example, my Bf109G-6 production has gone on for weeks after I (thought that I) ended production. To me, changing the last "assembly" means ending production, but of course there may be many assemblies already produced that the game continues to add engines to... which in my case are the same engines that are far more important for the Bf110G-4/R7 which is "in production". I would therefore ideally like a facility to tell the AI not to supply engines to planes I no longer want (yeah, just add it to the 1,340 Bf109G-6s I already have in the pool and don't need.... yes, I really have that many due to inexperience and bad planning). If not under player control, then could the AI prioritise the distribution of engines by other means? You could use something like units in service, or assembly lines in production to allocate.