Task Group/CV Improvements

[Bullethead]

I want the commander of a task group to be able to do NOTHING else while driving the boats.  This will prevent him from flying off and getting into an air battle, while leaving the TG stuck on course and unable to dodge dweeb level bombers.  It would also prevent somebody from hiding a TG and leaving it to wander off into a corner while he flies planes elsewhere, never giving the TG another thought.

As compensation for this, the TG commander gets realtime controls, just like in any other ride.  IOW, he moves his joystick and the boats turn right then.  None of this having to fight with waypoints on the map and path crossing land while bombs are falling.  Put the commander's POV up on top of the bridge of the flagship so he's looking ahead and has a good view in most directions.

To go along with the controls, the TG commander also needs some sort of damage list for the ships of the TG that he can call up like we can in other rides.  Maybe instead of listing all the components of each ship, just have silouhettes of the ships and color broken parts red, and show some fraction of the whole thing blue as it gets close to sinking.

The thing with having players of higher rank seize control of TGs is bad, IMHO.  Most times this happens, the new CO doesn't ask and doesn't say anything, he just busts up whatever the original skipper was doing and does his own thing.  I'd like to see this completely abolished.  With the skipper being unable to do anything else while driving the boats, I doubt anybody would hold onto a TG beyond a given battle.  However, to keep folks from running CVs on separate, unmanned computers, you might want to put in some sort of time limit on how long 1 person can be in command, or require some active inputs periodically--if there are none, the skipper gets punted.

It would also be very nice to have an on-screen indicator for all the gunners in the TG showing whether or not somebody has control of the TG.  Many times they start gunning while somebody's in command, but that commander leaves or gives up command, and when the TG needs to turn, the gunners are yelling at the commander to do something, but there's nobody driving the boat.  If they knew nobody was in command, one of them could jump to the wheel and save the fleet.

Either bring back tracers for the 8" guns or give each 8" gunner his own color of shell splashes.  There's got to be some way of telling whose splashes are whose in a big naval battle with all the guns firing.  At present, the only way to know when your shells splash is to make a time-of-flight table and use a stopwatch, and even then you're not sure.  The result has been to limit the effective range of naval gunfire to basically point blank, where you don't have to worry about finding the range.  The important thing is for the gunner to be able to distinguish his shell splashes from all the others, so either let him see his shells fall with the old-style tracer, or give him a colored splash.  If you go with the colors, then you need to let each gunner know in advance what color is his.

We need better sights for the 8" and shore battery guns, too.  I think all 8" gunners should have the option of going into a rangefinder mode, kinda like how buffers go into bombsight.  While in the rangefinder mode, he tracks the target keeping his pipper on it, and perhaps trying to keep 2 images superimposed or 2 halves of the image in line.  As he does this, his guns start tracking the target as well, and fire when he pulls the trigger.  The longer he keeps tracking the target, and the better he is at keeping the pipper/images lined up, the more accurate he gets over time.  Kinda like calibrating a bombsight.  However, it would have some way of putting in feedback, so when he sees his splashes (and knows they're his), he can quickly type in a correction based on the splashes.  Perhaps this rangefinder could get damaged, leaving the gunner with the system we have now.

Greatly reduce the effect of near misses on ships.  Bombs and shells really need to be CLOSE to do any damage.  Right now, it's possible to sink 2 DEs with 1 big Stuka bomb dropped 1/2way between them, not to mention how Lancs can smother whole TGs with 14x1000s.  It's ridiculous.

The armored parts of ships don't seem to really have any armor.  I mean, planes can strafe 8" gun turrets right off CAs, despite them having thicker armor than Tiger tanks.

[Larry]

Agree

[Oleg]

Originally posted by Bullethead
Either bring back tracers for the 8" guns or give each 8" gunner his own color of shell splashes.  There's got to be some way of telling whose splashes are whose in a big naval battle with all the guns firing.

I dont think it was possible to say which splash correspond to which shot in RL if many guns shoot in one target.

Originally posted by Bullethead
Greatly reduce the effect of near misses on ships.  Bombs and shells really need to be CLOSE to do any damage.  Right now, it's possible to sink 2 DEs with 1 big Stuka bomb dropped 1/2way between them, not to mention how Lancs can smother whole TGs with 14x1000s.  It's ridiculous.

I never hear or read about capital ships sinked or heavy damaged by "near miss". All that it can do is numbers of small hole below water-line. Only direct hits must damage ships. Current situation is just absurd. Level bombers never was any effective against ships, dive bombers, top-mast bombers and torpedo bombers was.

[Krusty]

Doolittle proved before the war even started that even the mightiest of the feared German Dreadnaughts could be sunk by dropping bombs NEAR it, caving in the hull from under the waterline. Theses were 1k bombs if I recall.

[Oleg]

Originally posted by Krusty
Doolittle proved before the war even started that even the mightiest of the feared German Dreadnaughts could be sunk by dropping bombs NEAR it, caving in the hull from under the waterline. Theses were 1k bombs if I recall.

Any links?

In Corall Sea "Lexington" got two torpedo hits in one side and remains afloat. Do you want to said two torpedo hits do less damage than one 1k bomb near miss?

[Hornet33]

Originally posted by Oleg
Level bombers never was any effective against ships, dive bombers, top-mast bombers and torpedo bombers was.

Ever hear of the 917 squadron?? The "Dam Busters"?? They sunk the German Battleship Turpitz on a high altitude level bombing mission in Lancasters. Of course they used tallboy bombs to do it but they scored several direct hits and a bunch of near misses, that rupured the hull plating.
USAAF/USN pilots scored several kills on U-Boats using B-24's and other various medium range bombers.

[Oleg]

Originally posted by Hornet33
Ever hear of the 917 squadron?? The "Dam Busters"?? They sunk the German Battleship Turpitz on a high altitude level bombing mission in Lancasters. Of course they used tallboy bombs to do it but they scored several direct hits and a bunch of near misses, that rupured the hull plating.

617 squadron you mean?

Tirpitz was at anchor when attacked. And did you count how many bombs was dropped to Tirpitz by level-bombers during all operations agains it until it was disabled?

Originally posted by Hornet33
USAAF/USN pilots scored several kills on U-Boats using B-24's and other various medium range bombers.

Subs is another story, bombers used deep charges and drop them from low alt.

[Simaril]

Originally posted by Krusty
Doolittle proved before the war even started that even the mightiest of the feared German Dreadnaughts could be sunk by dropping bombs NEAR it, caving in the hull from under the waterline. Theses were 1k bombs if I recall.

True -- but it was Billy Mitchell, not Doolitle.

The climax of the demonstrations took place on July 21, when the navy brought out the German ship Ostfriedland, a great ship that had been the pride of the German fleet during the war. The vessel was considered unsinkable, and it probably would have been if Mitchell had adhered to the rules. But instead, he had personally overseen the design of a number of 2,000-pound (907-kilogram) bombs, knowing that smaller bombs would not be successful. Martin twin-engine MB-2 bombers dropped six of these bombs in rapid succession. Two scored direct hits and the others landed close enough for the ship’s hull plates to rip open from the force of the explosion. Twenty-one minutes after the test began, the Ostfriedland plunged to the bottom of the ocean. The final plane dropped its bombs into the foam rising from the sinking ship.

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Air_Power/mitchell_tests/AP14.htm



Oleg, torpedos rely on the explosive power of the warhead itself, directed at a very small area of armor plate. Near miss bomb explosions send a massive shockwave, using water density to transmit the explosion energy across a broad band of hull. So, its LESS likely to penetrate than a torpedo, but  MORE likely to dislocate sections of steel from surrounding structures.






Level bombing vs ships IS too efficient in AH, but its largely because of the laser bombsight. IRL, attempts to level bomb maneuvering ships from altitude were almost always failures; despite prewar expectations, B17s were found to be essentially useless in this mission.

However, low level bombing by medium bombers became a mainstay in the destruciton of the Japanese merchant marine. B25s were used at near mastheight level, and "skip bombing" was deliberately practiced -- bombs were dropped at high speed, low to the water and in line with the ships so they would actually skip a couple times before hitting the vessels like missiles!

[Oleg]

Thank for link.

Originally posted by Simaril
Oleg, torpedos rely on the explosive power of the warhead itself, directed at a very small area of armor plate. Near miss bomb explosions send a massive shockwave, using water density to transmit the explosion energy across a broad band of hull. So, its LESS likely to penetrate than a torpedo, but  MORE likely to dislocate sections of steel from surrounding structures.

Not just less likely, but almost impossible to penetrate in comparison with torpedo.
That is main reason why torpedos sunk many ships while "near misses" almost none.

Back to Tirpitz. It was bombed with 12,000lb Tallboys and was it sunk by near misses? No. Most damage was done by bombs that hit.

[Bullethead]

Oleg said:

I dont think it was possible to say which splash correspond to which shot in RL if many guns shoot in one target.

Determining who made which splash in a large engagement was, indeed, a problem in real life.  However, it was recognized as such around 1900, as soon as ships first got the ability to shoot far enough for this to become a real issue.  Thereafter, many solutions were developed, and by WW1 most of them were used in combination to make splash ownership determination pretty easy.  Some of these real-world solutions, and how they work or not in AH, are listed here:

1.  Each ship engages its opposite number, so only 1 is shooting at any target.
Doesn't work in AH because usually there's only 1 CA per TG.   Because each turret is controlled by a different player, this is like 3 real-world ships shooting at the same target.  Thus, in AH we have a problem that usually was avoided in real life.

2.  Ships knew the time of flight of their shells so knew when to watch for their splashes.
In real life, gunnery officers had time-of-flight tables for any given range, always layed their guns for a specific range, looked up the ToF for that range in the table, and then had a timer that started when the guns fired.  We have none of this info in AH.  I have tried making a table myself, firing offline with a stopwatch, but have found this unworkable online.  The main reason is that we don't shoot at a specific range, we tweak our point of aim based on what we thought were our previous splashes.  Plus, often you forget to look at the range readout before you shoot, or it's some number you don't have a time value for.  So again, AH players are laboring under an unrealistic disadvantage.

3.  Ships firing at the same target fired at different, pre-arranged time intervals.
This meant only 1 ship's shells landed at any given time, so there was no question of whose was whose.  This method also requires a ToF table and an accurate timer, so for the reasons given above, is unworkable in AH.  This is even assuming that all the different players in all the different guns somehow can be made to agree to this type of discipline, which is never going to happen.  Once again, AH players are screwed compared to real life.

4.  Different ships made splashes of different colors.
AP shells had a blunt penetrating cap to bite into the armor, covered by a sharply pointed nosecone for good aerodynmics.  The nosecose was light, soft metal, and simply squashed on impact, doing nothing to penetrate the armor.  The void space between the nosecone and the penetrating cap, however, was filled with dye, with each ship in the squadron having a different color.  When the shell hit the water, the nosecone squashed, the dye came out, and colored the rising column of water.  This enabled ships to tell their own splashes even if shells from several ships landed at once.  This is not present in AH at all, so again we have an unrealistic disadvantage.  In AH1, we had tracers on the 8" shells that accomplished the same thing as colored splashes, by showing you when your shells arrived.  So if we can't have colored splashes, we should at least get the old tracers back.

NOTE:  A huge amount of ingenuity and R&D went into the design of shells, not only for penetration and explosive effect, but also for splash-making.  This was because seeing splashes was, before radar, the only real way they had of correcting their aim.  Thus, shells were designed to give tall, solid, highly visible splash columns regardless of their angle of entry.  But they also knew this was pointless if they couldn't tell whose splash was whose, so they spent an equal amount of time finding ways to distinguish that.  I've just touched on a few of the major methods.

In real life, all of the above methods also had a large number of people involved on the various tasks.  You have guys in rangefinders (which we don't have at all in AH) providing a continuously updated range estimate.  As they adjusted their range settings, and as the rangefinder rotated to stay on target, this provided data on the target's relative course and speed, which other people used to calculate how to lay the guns, both for range and leading the target.  Then you had another group of people with the timer watching for the splashes (spotters), and they took ranges and bearings off the splashes themselves, and fed that to the number-crunching guys, too, so they could correct the rangefinder's estimates.  It was a process of continual measurement with feedback thrown in.  

We have NONE of this in AH.  The single player has to do all these tasks himself, without benefit of any of the tools they had in real life.  No rangefinder.  No timer and no ToF table.  No colored splashes.  No accurate determination of the distance between the target and the splash.  No computer to crunch all the data.  What we have in AH is the same thing they had in Nelson's day, even up to about 1880.  Each individual gun is fired by eye.  It's not surprising, therefore, that AH naval battles happen at 1880s ranges, instead of realistic ranges for the WW2 era.  This is all that can be accomplished with the utter lack of fire control we have in the game.  When, about 1890-1900, they started making guns that could shoot as far as they did in WW2, they had to develop the fire control methods to be able to use that range.

The bottom line is, in AH we operate under huge disadvantages that they didn't have in real life.  We REALLY need some fire control aids in the game.

What I'd really like to see in AH is a gun interface similar to that used in those excellent naval games of the 80s and early 90s:  "Task Force 1942" and the "Great Naval Battles" series.  Your POV is looking through the rangefinder up on the superstructure, and you keep your sight aligned on the target horizontally, and try to keep the target focused or something similar to get the range.  You just keep doing this as you fire, and you don't worry about  spotting splashes at all.  As you track the target, the game adjusts your aim so your shells get closer and closer until they hit.  The longer you track, and the more accurately you keep the target centered, the sooner you hit and the more often you hit.  Kinda like how we calibrate bombsights now.  It worked great in those old games and I see no reason why it wouldn't work in AH.

[Bullethead]

Simaril said:

Oleg, torpedos rely on the explosive power of the warhead itself, directed at a very small area of armor plate. Near miss bomb explosions send a massive shockwave, using water density to transmit the explosion energy across a broad band of hull. So, its LESS likely to penetrate than a torpedo, but  MORE likely to dislocate sections of steel from surrounding structures.

That's true, but what I'm talking about is reducing the distance over which this effect occurs in the game.  We've got posts in other topics by naval damage control personnel complaining about the excessive near miss damage radius in the game, and they've given realworld stats to back it up.  IIRC, even a 1000# bomb landing more than a 100' away won't do anything of significance to a ship.  Sure, it might spring a seam or 2 in a small area, but such minor leaks are easily contained and plugged, or at least the pumps can easily keep up with them.  IOW, this would have zero game effect.  To stave in a ship's side--IOW, to do game damage leading to eventual sinking--the explosion must occur VERY close to the hull.

IIRC, in WW2 the typical 250# depthcharge had to be within like 20' of a sub to really do damage.  And this was down 100-300', where the water was more "solid" and the blast couldn't be dissipated up into the air, as it is with a bomb blast.




Level bombing vs ships IS too efficient in AH, but its largely because of the laser bombsight. IRL, attempts to level bomb maneuvering ships from altitude were almost always failures; despite prewar expectations, B17s were found to be essentially useless in this mission.

However, low level bombing by medium bombers became a mainstay in the destruciton of the Japanese merchant marine. B25s were used at near mastheight level, and "skip bombing" was deliberately practiced -- bombs were dropped at high speed, low to the water and in line with the ships so they would actually skip a couple times before hitting the vessels like missiles! [/B][/QUOTE]