Gameplay.

[DmdNexus]

Maverick,

Additionally to your points of realism.

1. Planes should occasionally suffer from mechanical failure while in flight.

2. Gun jams and misfires should be modeled.

3. Bomb mis fires and mis release should be modeled.

4. Damaged controls don't knock off entire controls at a time, instead, control cables jam, and control surfaces get stuck in deflected positions which cause loss of flight control.

5. Excessive damage to wing surfaces should affect lift and control forces.

6. No inflight look down radar - aka clipboard. Instead, a voice GCI controller will vector pilots to the target - then it's up to the pilots to establish visual contact.

7. Friendly fire should be on.  Occasionally friendly ack should fire on friendly planes. This happened many times during WWII. An entire paratroop squadron was killed during the invasion of Sicily as a result of friendly fire.

8. The Brits had strict ROE concerning establishing visual ID before firing, that required getting close and sometimes loosing the advantage of surprise.

9. In the early part of the BoB, the Brits were employing the Vic, Welded wing, and Big Wing theory of aerial combat.  The LW was employing the finger four formation, which was a far superior tactic.  Therefore to be realistic, those flying Allies have to employ realistic tactics.

10. In the early war years, the Axis had superior numbers and with many seasoned vets. So most of the newbies should be flying as Allies.

11. 1 life per account.

12. Mission and squadrons are pre-assigned - players must fly the mission assigned and obey orders or their accounts are deleted (aka court martialed and shot)

13. Several planes suffered from fuel starvation while inverted - spitfire I believe is one of them - this should be modeled.

14. After the enigma machine was stolen, the allies knew of all German air raids - so all German attacks are given to the Allies.

15. When the purple code was broken, all Japanese attacks were known - again all Japanese attacks will be given to the Allies.

16. Fog, rain, snow, sleet, storms, lightening - all wheather should be modeled. These have an affect on flight performance.

17. Japanese plane performance should suffer from poorer fuel quality.

18. Get rid of auto climb, auto speed, and combat trim - no such animals in the real planes.

19. 4 Radios are out

20. Model variable pitch props for those planes which had them.

21. Make the instrumentation correct for each model. Get rid of the digital ammo counters.

22. Model barametric pressure, thermals, high and low pressure zones, jet stream, turbulance, down drafts, wind sheer, etc.

23. Turn on friendly mid-air collisions.

24. Model bird strikes too!

25. Model IAS not TGS

26. Model true and magnetic north - as well as magnetic lines. Through in sun spots on ocassions just to screw everything up.

27. No more mission editor, clibboard map, or waypoint plots... you have to know where you are by time in flight, speed, compass heading, stars, and dead reckoning.

28. No more Ctrl-D to check damage - if you can't see it from your cockpit - hmmm the landing gear may be down, or it may not be. Hopefully, you'll have a buddy near by who can do a belly check.

Ok let's go play realism.

Don't forget to set your altimeter and compass before take off!

Sounds like lots of fun.

Nexus

[ 06-11-2001: Message edited by: DmdNexus ]

[Karnak]

DmdNexus,

#13 affected early Spits, MkIs, MkIIs, some MkVs and a few MkIXs, Hurricane MkIs and early A6M2 Zeroes.

#17 is modeled already.

#20, all aircraft currently in AH had constant speed propellers.

And you left out:

29. Due to the intensely rigorous training of pre-war Japanese pilots, 1 of every 2 top ranked pilots must fly for the Japanese during the early war.

30. The Japanese have no radios until late 1943 due to weight considerations and the fact (according to Saburo Sakai) that spoken words were not intelligible over the early radios.

 

[DmdNexus]

Hehe I'm sure there's a thousand details I did not mention..

ok here are more!

31. No more private, country, and squad radio channels. All channels are short wave radio and can be heard by all tuned to the same frequency.

32 Radio quality should be degrade to reflect throat and/or oxy mask mics, ionosphere bounce and solar magnetic interference.

33. Ground stations and ships can triangulate radio signals and figure out the speakers location, course, and speed. But no doubt many of you will just simply announce this information over the radio as you chatter with your squadies. If you do pass this info over radio - you will be court martialed. If you are in a buff, the senior officer (not commiting the offense) on board will no doubt shoot you immediately with his colt 45.

34. Breaking radio silence is a court martial offense - punishable by firing squad.

35. B17s and B26s must salvo their entire load (area bombing) when the lead bomber drops - no more surgical bombing! Surgical bombing was NOT a tactic used by the Allies in WWII. Except for certain British raids against Damns and power plants in Germany.

Nexus

[ 06-11-2001: Message edited by: DmdNexus ]

[hazed-]

blimey once you get them going they go  on and on dont they!

getting a little too realistic with no radios for japs etc.far too much to worry about if you ask me.

[Toad]

Originally posted by hazed-:
getting a little too realistic

"Selective Realism" rears its head again.

[DmdNexus]

36. All non-secure radio communications from American ship and Marine units operating in the South Pacific will be spoken in Navejo.

37. Carrier Deck roll and pitch needs to modeled.

38. No bomber will sortie solo (except when the atomic bomb is dropped) - a full squadron must be mustered before any area bombing can be conducted.

39. A full crew is required to sortie a bomber - that includes a navigator.

Nexus

[ 06-11-2001: Message edited by: DmdNexus ]

[hazed-]

its an opinion toad.I just want to see a more realistic/complicated war zone.I dont want the really fiddley stuff myself.

if this means im not a realism fan youd better tell every other sim ive played that they are far too easy.The career path thing mav mentions sounds great to me but when dmd got past no.9 i started to think hmmm i dont want to have to fly with no auto pilot for hours?,newbies all allied?forced to fly how they did not fly like it through choice? all got a bit too much but the first few ideas were ok by me.
I didnt mean i disagreed with all of it, just thought they were getting carried away     like many have said before its all about balance.I think if AH was new to me now this idea would appeal to me but ive played B172 the mighty eight and i realised then that im not really into the full blown stuff like real starts etc but i loved the inaccurate bombs (meant a hit was hard)and the damage to the plane etc.

im a gamer/realist hybrid  

[ 06-11-2001: Message edited by: hazed- ]

[ 06-12-2001: Message edited by: hazed- ]

[DeeZCamp]

Sounds like allot of good ideas (except for the 1 life per account thing ) comeon now that would be dumb and you know it    AS for effects of physical flight variable by weather factors, this is highly needed. The only question inturn to this would lie with,... How do you graphically represent this?...  Now i can sense the sarcasim... but i truely think that many of the points (the great list   ) are good valid ideas that can and should be implemented.

One of my major concerns about this realistic rant i have is due to the downfall of an overall realistic representation of war. Aces high is becoming the sort of Flying First person action shooter (quake like in short terms).. even with  respect to the many Squads i see (and yes I salute those that are taking an organized effort to act in teams or play out the game in a realistic or more realistic fashion) I still see many un-historical/realistic setups occuring every night.  It is very boring having no real goals other than to have 40 of your other country go and raid a base or even for that matter 10 of them to go and try to kill that 1 single con that happend to be trying to escape.

I think that The realistic adaptations that have been thought of would really change the way the shoot-em up types would learn to fight in a realistic way.  I like the ideas of hi G loading and the way that it would affect your ability (speed) of viewing around your aircraft (mentioned in other posts).. I also like the Malfunctions that could be implmented as well.  


   Last but not certainly least... ICONS... ICONS need to be taken away.. from ENEMY TARGETS. IF anything,.. A logical,.. and from an ACM point of View ( icons should be OFF for ENEMY PLANES only when those PLANES are within A 3k RANGE).. THe purpose of this would be to allow for REALISTIC Situational awareness when you are within Aerial combat perimeters. AT this SMALL range the enemy con that you are fighting will actually be able to use the Camoflauge that is on the aircraft as well as aircraft plainform to mask thier position.. or AT LEAST make it harder to find. THIS would like i have said before, INCReASE the realistic SA required within a dogfight. (the ability to see a con as well as the range identification is absolutely fake) I feel that THE PILOT should be the determiner of when to shoot/ as well as angles/distance/ or the positional geometry of the enemy con.  

AS for ALLIED fighters (anyone that is IN your same COUNTRY will be seen just as they are now (VISIBLE to 6k and in GREEN ICONS ).  I dont see how their could be any logical argument here against this, It would represent the most realistic tradeoff between gameplay and ACM/SA requirements.

Anyway as always what do you all think?  

[DmdNexus]

Hazed,

My point exactly... where is the realism and gameplay line drawn.

Yes I went overboard with the details - to make a point.

Leave any detail out and it's selective realism.

Ergo...AH is simply a game and it will always be a game and never a true realistic simulator.

I agree totatly that adding more strats to the game will increase it's value and playability.

This horse done been whipped to death.

Nexus

[Toad]

"Anyway as always what do you all think?"

I think there are a lot of people posting on this subject that haven't spent much time looking at other aircraft in the air...and on the ground... at known distances.  

[Maverick]

Originally posted by Toad:
"Anyway as always what do you all think?"

I think there are a lot of people posting on this subject that haven't spent much time looking at other aircraft in the air...and on the ground... at known distances.  

Toad,

Ain't it amazing how hard it is to see even an airliner in the air from another plane??? many times the controller has told me a vector and distance to a 727 / 737 and I couldn't see it until it was within 5 miles. Now that is a big bird on a straight approach where I KNEW where to look and I still couldn't see it until very close with a closure rate of over 350 knots. (Their speed plus mine) Smaller planes the size of F16's and piston fighters would be very tough.

The idea of ground controlers directing you to a con, ONLY worked in Defensive ops in WW2. There were no directors on the continent to help allied pilots find cons in deep raids.

At any rate the "selective realism" aspect of the many requests for minutia have been shown enough.

Mav

[hazed-]

Isnt a computer simulation selective in its realism purely by BEING a computer simulation? if it was total realism id be sitting in the actual plane insead of nfront of my computer right?  
the arguement that if we go the realism way we 'have' to go the whole way seems silly to me.
all first person shooters were good fun ,then 'hidden and dangerous,Rogue Spear and others made them more realistic and it caught on! Suddenly counterstrike and others appeared, slightly more realistic but exponentialy more fun.The way i see it we should be trying to make the game 'feel' as real as possible without losing sight of the fun factor, thats why i want more to do without going down the heavy, and dare i say it, dull total realism road.

[Karnak]

Hazed-,

Like you I would like more strat effects and targets.

Like DmdNexus, I was posting "realism" requirements in an attempt to show how silly it would get.

Excessive realism would kill this sim/game.  It is a business after all.

[DmdNexus]

"[Game Play] Get rid of it.. focus only on realism... "

Back to topic....

The problem with this thread IT has no focus.

"Realism" is a general term here - apparently has different meanings depending upon who's talking.

What aspect of realism should this thread focus on...

Here are a few that come to mind...

FLIGHT MODEL REALISM:
Adding more flight parameters to control, i.e. alitmeter setting, prop pitch, carberator mixture, tracer selection (every 5 or 10 bullets), etc.
No auto climb
No auto speed
No radios in Japanese plans until 43.

DAMAGE MODEL REALISM:
mechanical failures, more damage characteristics (stuck control cables, broken canopies, gun miss fires, bomb dudes),

Model material hardness (nickle armor plating, steel, aluminum, cloth)

Model plane contruction and structural differences (aluminum honeycomb vs spar and stringer, hydrolic and control line placement, etc.

BATTEL FIELD REALISM:
add strategic targets: bridges, roads, factories, oil fields, damns, communications towers, dry docks, fortifications, power plants, storage depots, railroads, train stations, etc.
AI ground units (front lines)
Friendly fire from AI units.
Take away inflight radar or map showing GPS position
take away Icons
add Wheather effects
add Ship and truck convoys
take away private radios
limit Radar technology - it doesn't provide up to the second GPS information
(see my previous rants for more details)
Add roads that GV can travel on.
Add Trees that can hide in GVs.
Allow GVs to dig in and fortify.
Add fortifications around military bases with ground units stationed for defense.

STRATEGIC AI REALISM:
Bombing cities causes political unrest - possibily a coup or a call for surrender.
Destroying power plants lower factory production.
Destroying certain factories slows production of certain airplanes/tanks/ships, etc
Destroying convoys hinders resupply of bases.

Limit supplies at each bases: planes, ammo, fuel, etc. Each sortie takes from supply, if supply convoy is destroyed and supplies run out - there may be no planes left to fly, there may be no fuel for the planes, there may be no ammo, etc.

GAME PARADIGM:
Change from first person to role play (aka career path)
Limit the number of deaths per hour, day, week, account.
Change the "scoring" system.
Model a military rank structure and unit organization, a command and control of military operations.

Pick and choose what aspect of realism you want to talk about.

Nexus

[ 06-12-2001: Message edited by: DmdNexus ]

[Nethawk]

I'm glad you don't work for HTC!