Suicide bombers and why

[LYNX]

I think this post was done in the wrong way, a post about suicide bombers on its own would have been fine. But to personnally pick on a squad and player isnt on at all and to call em W#%#%S. My 2 year old girl wouldnt have done such a thing.

Sorry you feel this is what I've done.  Your very much mistaken by the way.  Better set the record straight for you or anyone else lost in the fog of the boards.  Firstly no names of these 2 individuals, their separate squads or teams have been mentioned.  Taken great care to delete them from the screen shots if you care to observe.  Secondly the thread is about why, what & wherefore.  If you care to read each post you'll see I used 2 "NAMELESS" guys stats to illustrate a problem that Uptown casually referred to as squeekers.  I was merely pointing out it can be anyone and that some individuals are known to make this their main goal.  Purposefully or not they set what I consider to be a very poor standard. 

That's my opinion.  Others may vary.  PICTURES used for illustration purposes only
<...>

Just to clarify the opening screen shot further I'll address the following quote which was the first of a similar vain

from waystin2

Why did'nt the CV fighter cap get these guys?  Or was there one?  If they are going to present you easy targets, someone should have had them nailed way before they ever got to the carrier.  Change tactics and this behavior will stop.]

There was no cap. I was the only plane off the cv killing 10 PT boats from the enemy carrier we just shelled to the bottom.  They were in Chase of our cv.  There was one 5 inch gunner who's name I didn't get.  Films don't record gunners names by the way.  CV's were in an expanse of water 1 sector from our respective bases.
I called the gunner numerous times. Although I was close enough for vox he either didn't hear me for what ever reason or chose to ignore me.  If it was a new guy he probable couldn't hear me over the 5 inch with default sound / vox settings.

OK...every ones filled in with the screen shot picture but this particular incident has minimal bearing on the wider picture.  This practice of suiciding in heavies whether it be a CV's, FH's, VH's, Towns or some poor sods in GV's is EPADEMIC.  All sides do it.  Many types of players do.  It's absolutely skilless.

Many folks have brought this up before and it's not been addressed by the powers to be.  Only 1 conclusion for that in my mind.  What can I as an individual do about it.....nothing much.  I can set an example by never doing it or getting involved in these NOE suicide me Lance into a town or any kind of base or CV or bunch of GV's.  I can also refrain from any kind of applause.

What can you readers do about ?

[Yknurd]

I still think it's worthless to coad something to "fix" this.

You want to add some declination limiter to the plane...fine, don't need to actually dive on the CV, just fly level and drop right it.

Don't read this wrong, I lament the fact that people do this...but, coading it out is just as lame.

[FrodeMk3]

I would agree on one thing; Anything with a Bomb-bay stored weapon, would have to be level, or within a certain tolerance, to release. Otherwise, you'd have bombs' striking the front of the bomb-bay exiting the plane. Or hanging up on the internal racks'.

As for Hardening the CV, You guys' should all realize that currently, we have CV's that can take hits' from up to 8 1000# bombs' and still keep up flight operations, right? in this:

I don't think AH is out of whack with regard to CV hardness (lbs of explosive to sink).  Here's a section from a previous scenario writeup.  (Please let me know if there are errors in it, by the way -- always welcome to corrections.)

Ship hardness

Research on ship hardness of battleships is based on what it took to sink battleships at Pearl Harbor and what it took to sink US carriers throughout WWII. The battleship data is from http://plasma.nationalgeographic.com/pearlharbor/history/pearlharbor_facts.html , and the carrier data is from Wikipedia on various carriers. For carriers that weren't sunk, some of them survived mutliple attacks separated by time or by ability to repair some damage in between attacks. For those, I list only the estimated most-damaging attack that they survived and not all the attacks. The torpedo typically carried by the Japanese B5N "Kate" torpedo bomber was the type 91 torpedo, which typically had 529 lbs of explosive. The largest torpedo typically carried by Japanese submarines was the type 95 torpedo, which had 893 lbs of explosive. The most-common bomb carried by the Japanese D3A "Val" divebomber had 551 lbs of explosive.

Battleship; Damage Taken; Result
 
California (BB-44); 2 torpedo hits; 1 bomb hit; sunk
Maryland (BB-46); 2 bomb hits
Oklahoma (BB-37); 5 torpedo hits;  sunk
Tennessee (BB-43); 2 bomb hits
West Virginia (BB-48); 6 torpedo hits; 2 bomb hits; sunk
Arizona (BB-39); 1 torpedo hit; 8 bomb hits; sunk
Pennsylvania (BB-38); 2 bomb hits
Nevada (BB-36)  1 torpedo hit; 6 bomb hits
Utah (BB-31); 2 torpedo hits; sunk

Carrier Damage Taken Result
Lexington (CV-2) 2 torpedoes; 3 bombs sunk
Saratoga (CV-3) 6 bombs  
Yorktown (CV-5) 2 torpedoes; 3 bombs sunk
Enterprise (CV-6) 3 bombs  
Wasp (CV-7) 2 torpedoes sunk
Hornet (CV-8) 3 torpedoes; 5 bombs sunk
Essex (CV-9) kamikaze  
Yorktown (CV-10) 1 bomb  
Intrepid (CV-11) 1 torpedo  
Franklin (CV-13) kamikaze  

It just says' what it took to sink them. When you read many of those ships' histories, flight ops' ended within the first hit or two. Our CV is modelled on the Essex-class fleet CV's used by the U.S. Navy during WWII. They were constructed with Wooden Flight decks. One 500#, or even a 250# bomb, has the ability to put one outta action. And they did not rebuild a replacement in 15 minutes, either.

So lets' ask ourselves. What's more gamey? The bombers' we have in the game? Or the CV's?

[Greebo]

Someone, I think it was HT, once proposed an idea that any bombs or rockets that hit a target would cause an explosion as normal but would only register damage to that target 5 or 10 seconds later. If the dropping plane died in that 5 or 10 seconds, no damage would be done to the target. Seemed like a good solution to Kamikazes to me, although an exception should be made for torpedoes.

[Rich46yo]

                      For the record I occasionally joke about the "suicide mission" Ive just been on. They are one of two types. Last night was one in that I had upped a corsair, was going into a heavily defended base against ords to defend my CV, and had to choose between fighting 10 cons, or, attacking the ords with rockets and probably dieing anyways. I chose the ords and got killed trying to escape. The 2nd time I do them is when I upp an LA-7 from a nearby base, and head into a base the other side is taking over, and try and kill the goon or enemy troops.

                     Tho my intent is to survive the fact is both types of flights are against very short odds and I know the chances of making it back to a base are fairly small, "tho I sometimes do". And frankly nor do I much care if my little cartoon airplane gets shot down, and anyone who really does probably spends a little to much time in the game.

                    One thing Ive never done tho is Lanc stuka or even fly the bombers in anything but historically correct fashion. So now you know what I mean when I say "suicide" my own-self. I remember when I was new to the game I was in 17s when I saw enemt 17s maneuvering above me. I thought he was going to drop bombs on me so I just got out from under him, reported his heading/alt on comm, and just forgot about him. Well a minute later I saw tracers going past me and when I looked back here was a 17 with drones dive strafing me like a P-47 and with about 15 0.50s shooting. Man I said to myself that is some cheesy crap. I didn't say anything to the guy but I thought that was really lame.

                  I'd like to see the CVs hardened and this Lancstuka thing fixed. If it aint a dive bomber it shouldn't be able to be used as one.

[hubsonfire]

That might work, but at the same time, we trade one lack or realism for another, in the name of gameplay. Not sure that's a step up, so much as a step sideways.I'd much prefer to see HTC limit the damage that small cannons and MGs can do to the CVs, add realistic limitations on ord release (to be fair, for all aircraft, not just heavies), remove (or heavily perk) drones, and add more ships to the fleet (this idea I really like, as it seems like the simplest implimentation).

The main gripe I have, is that a single player can come screaming in with a formation, and make a single 350mph pass on the fleet, and kill a fight. They changed the airfield layout so this would stop, so why not try it with the fleets?

[bobtom]

Not sure what all the hullaballoo is about here.

I've only been playing for a couple years, but still don,t see the huge life altering problem with the Divebombing buffs.

I can honestly say that I've witnessed this once, maybe twice.

Certainly not enough for me to rant about on these BBs.

If somebody wants to divebomb with Lancs, god bless em, It doesn't affect me at all.

I have seen quite a few bomb and bails.

But why should that bother me?

I,ll laugh and move on.

Has it become such a HUGE daily,hourly,problem as to cause such an uproar in here?

I doubt it. But yet here it is.

By the sounds of this post I should be ducking and running from the torrential downpour of suicide buffs.

But if it wasn't this, it would be the ever present HOs,LA7,Spawncamping drivel that litter these BBs.

I read through these posts and was absolutley floored at the outrage caused by such inconsequencial incidents.

But I guess if ya can't think of anything better to talk about-------




Movin on,

Boner

I agree completely and utterly.

This game isn't life and if it is to some of you well then do something with your life.   To everyone gamey or not

[Bronk]

<--- wonders if the tardlets in question have posted in thread?

[FrodeMk3]

That might work, but at the same time, we trade one lack or realism for another, in the name of gameplay. Not sure that's a step up, so much as a step sideways.I'd much prefer to see HTC limit the damage that small cannons and MGs can do to the CVs, add realistic limitations on ord release (to be fair, for all aircraft, not just heavies), remove (or heavily perk) drones, and add more ships to the fleet (this idea I really like, as it seems like the simplest implimentation).

The main gripe I have, is that a single player can come screaming in with a formation, and make a single 350mph pass on the fleet, and kill a fight. They changed the airfield layout so this would stop, so why not try it with the fleets?

One other thing that could be done, and might help, would be to enlarge the Dar range/ring of the CV's, to give a defending fighter plenty of time to get up to alt. Maybe even double what it is now.

[Spikes]

This has squeaker written all over it. A 14 year old kid gets on country channel last night and says,"how do I play this game"

Did he get the alt-f4 barrage?

[Blammo]

I don't really like the idea of hardening the carrier.  Just insuring you will see more suicide lancs that you already do.

But how about increasing the size of the fleet?  Two flat tops and two cruisers with their escort.  Would should be a wall of flack to have to brave to get that CV down.  Or maybe the two flat tops and just the one cruiser.  Either way it would still would give more life to the fleet and would not call for any change but adding more ships.

[Hungry]

Lynx

First off (off topic for another day) sorry about Sunday as we were trying to take A4 I was about a minute away from releasing troops when I discoed, I tried to retrun to the arena as quickly as possible but the arena cap must have just changed and I got the dreaded Arena is full message.  Needless to say I logged in discust.

Second, I rarely fly buffs but I do attack bases quite abit and the reality of imersion gameplay in my opinion is that no matter what you do you should try and survive the sortie.  Thats my reason for disliking headons as much as I do, the imersion for me is in the planning the strategy the implementation of a ww2 flight sim combat not simply trying to point the nose at someone and pull the trigger which is what a dive bombing buff is essentially doing.  

And yes I fly recon missions and do escort buffs and I do fly cap over CV's.  I thank my lucky stars that when I started AW in 95 I was with guys who like myself flew for that little piece of ww2 history we got on each flight.  

To conclude its all up to HTC and what kind of game he wants.

[toonces3]

I pretty much agree with hub across the board.

A CV task force should be hard to kill.  Level bombers rarely hit CVs in WW2.  Torpedo planes, on the other hand, were greatly feared.

Hub is absolutely right- a single player can come in, dive bomb in his B-17s and kill the fight.  This is horribly gamey, and just something that is outside of the scope of reality.

I want to be clear, I'm not losing sleep over this, but I certainly think it's a legitimate gripe. 

One of the biggest problems with this game (in my opinion) is that there are so few incentives to preserve your virtual life.  Perks are one means to promote a survival instinct, score is another, but ultimately there's no PENALTY for dying. 

I'm not necessarily suggesting we institute a dying penalty in the sense that you have to sit in the tower for a minute, or anything that's going to make it less enjoyable for YOU to fly.  What I'm suggesting is that you do a penalty that doesn't REWARD you for dying.

Put a time limit on damage effects.  If you dive bomb a CV in your plane, or suicide a radar, and then auger 5 seconds later, the damage is removed.  Now you're not wasting MY time and ruining MY game, you're wasting your own time and your own game.

This isn't some dweeby coad thing.  This is a simple implement to encourage slightly less dweeby play that ultimately penalized other players, not the dweeby player.

Finally, again, for those that didn't read it, CVs didn't die easily to bombs.  It took torps to sink CVs.  I agree that this is hard to implement in game because of ack lethality.  So, for the sake of gameplay, I'd agree that CVs could be sunk by bombs provided there was a damage control delay tied to the survival of the level-bomber. 

Or don't implement anything.  But the whole suicide runs bomber thing, and the bomb and bail bombers really bug me from a gameplay perspective.

To put it another way, HTC has spent all this time, effort, and money to build a sim that touts great flight models etc, but then ridiculous things like being able to physically dive bomb in a B-17 is capable.  Why not go the extra yard and coad up the game so level bombers have to observe realistic parameters?  It's not like it's all that hard to hit a target with a bomber in this game.  2 seconds of calibration before droppping and it's point and shoot.

[Yknurd]

Finally, again, for those that didn't read it, CVs didn't die easily to bombs.  It took torps to sink CVs.  I agree that this is hard to implement in game because of ack lethality.  So, for the sake of gameplay, I'd agree that CVs could be sunk by bombs provided there was a damage control delay tied to the survival of the level-bomber. 

And CVs didn't have nobody at the 5 inchers.  Yeah, read that again, it made sense.


[edit] Why do people insist on having this thing coaded away.  Kill the ord at the field or something.  HTC has better things to do than monkey coad something that doesn't really impact everyone all the time.

[toonces3]

I don't understand your post, or your point yknurd.