Axis orders for Frame 2 - problem

[daddog]

Sorry Flossy but........I can't believe you (or others) cannot close a forum room with a password and send the password to all AXIS or ALLIES squad CO's whom could enter only their respective forum room.

She received her information from me and I received it from Ronni at HTC.  For “whatever” reason they can’t configure this BB for password protection because they would rather go with the ability to enable and disable by log in ID’s.  I don’t understand it, but we have asked this before and that is what I was told.

As flossy said we would have to change passwords at the very least each TOD. Squads are added and removed all the time. Guests are in and out. It would be difficult to say the least.  Also note that “no one” has moderator privileges on any forums. HTC watches it all. After a year of this and it having worked via e-mails I don’t see a reason to change it.  If everyone was having problems with e-mail then we would have to look at an alternative, but it was an issue with just a couple of players.

Take it up with HTC if you want to. We already did and received an answer.

[clouds]

RGR daddog but it seems to me not all have an efficient mail system installed so......................do something plz...................

Anyway I'm thinking about that couple of players that every month is paying the bill to HTC YahooOOOooOoooooo......

[Esme]

Originally posted by clouds
Hey Esme only 350 Kb for 7 graphic pages in jpeg and 6 textual pages in total no more than 1.5 minutes in downloading.

Really? Under what ideal conditions? :-) Ah! See? You're ASSUMING things, m'dear. Only thing it's safe to assume is (a) I have a PC and connection sufficiently good to be able to play AH and (b) I have email.  Otherwise it's best to keep things simple and small. Plain text works fine damned near every time, little else does.

Wotan's idea is fine providing
(a) you can create web pages (I can't, yet)
(b) people can get through to the web site at the time they try to look (net congestion can still cause problems)

I have done my best to be positive about your efforts Clouds, but I am getting a mite irritated about your presuming to tell me what I should be doing with my email system. There's nothing wrong with my email system (aside from it's running on a Windoze (ptui!) machine). Your emails didnt reach most of us in good time and didnt reach Ammo at all - thats not MY systems fault is it? But it COULD be due to an ISP or two somewhere baulking at a HTML email with half a dozen attachments.  Then again it MIGHT just be that an ISP somewhere out there on the net just went screwy with emails of all kinds and didnt pass any of em on for hours.

We don't know and probably never will. But your email took a lot longer than 1.5 minutes to download each time and having several copies arrive in quick succession didnt make my system any happier either. Hence my polite request to future CO's to try to avoid HTML emails and that amount of attachments.  Now let's leave it at that please eh?

Esme

[Dinger]

It sounds like Clouds put a lot of work into the mission, and that's praiseworthy.  Researching targets, flying the routes -- all that planning helps for a successful mission.

But let's tell a story about Richard Nixon.

Tricky Dick was a big football fan.  I mean, a BIG football fan.  And one time he even designed a play (anyone remember which team? Baltimore?).  When the team tried to run it, it failed miserably  -- I mean it was catastrophic.
The play design was classic tricky Dick -- plenty of deception, lots of movement, intricate maneuvers.
The problem was that the players were not capable of understanding the play and executing it to the level of precision required.

the moral of the story?
Keep the level of complexity as close to the highest level possible at which you can guarantee 100% success.
That translates to: KISS.
.html emails are wonderful things, and a lot of attachments and images look great.  But you can't guarantee that everyone down the line is going to be able to receive it.

I for one would like to see the Axis mission plan.  I'm curious what they were actually trying to do.  From my perspective (over malta), it looked like one of those Kung Fu movies where 200 bad guys attack the hero one by one from different directions.
What was the plan, and what happened?

I'm not trying to be harsh; I just appreciate it when a CO puts a lot of work into a mission, and I assume that that person will want to do better next time.

[Esme]

:-} Well put Dinger.

What happened was the RAF bounced us (the main Ju88 group) before we were halfway to target which wrecked the plan completely. There was a major running battle with Spitfires chewing our Ju88s to opieces by inches. How Douwe and I survived as many attacks as we did I'll never know (still havent had chance to watch the film yet). I don't know about the rest but the 2 of 4 surviving KG2 Ju88s decided - with hindsight unwisely - to press on with an attack.

I was by then a gunner in one of my pilots planes. The sky over Malta seemed empty except for us we moved in flak started up as expected then suddenly there were verdamnte Spitfeuers all over the sky again! Have you chaps been buying cloaking devices from the Romulans?! ;-)

We dived for the deck but didnt have enough altitude to run far enough fast enough. We put up a fairly good fight I thought but ended up in the drink about halfway between Malta and Sicily.

With insufficient numbers of escorts and so few Ju88s compared to the number of enemy fighters we didnt have a great deal of chance.

I'm afraid I do think that this scenario is rather badly unbalanced to favour the RAF.  Still fun to fly in though but it isnt giving much feeling of refighting history.

Esme

[Dinger]

Although if we were being strictly competitive here I wouldn't provide some feedback, since the goal is to provide a fun experience for everybody, here's my opinion on what's been going on.  Feel free to ignore it.

The Ju-88 with all those bombs is in overload condition.  If the scenario design requires you to do so, ignore it and concentrate on having fun.  The only difference between dropping 1000 kg and 2000 kg on the target is in scoring and added vulnerability of the bomber.

The problem is that Ju88 climbs slowly, especially under a heavy load.  Rate of climb is related to rate of acceleration.  The Ju-88's primary defense is its high speed.
In short, if you get the ju-88s to alt, and at max speed, and run to target (when interceptors spot you, head straight to target.  THere's no point in giving us extra time to shoot at you) at high speed, you give bandits at best a single shot at a fast target.  After that, they're playing a long game of catch up against a FAST target.  If there are 109s around, they won't get that second shot.

The bombers we encountered were all at a low altitude, were scattered across the sky, were heading at an angle away from the target.  They were slow, probably still on climbout.
Last sunday we didn't seen any groups of bombers in tight formation.  We got to send a half-dozen spitfires on each Ju-88 we ran across, in series.

[Esme]

Dinger will you accept an IOU for now? ;-)

Thank you - someone else who appreciates that flying bombers to best effect isnt just a case of filling them full of bombs and just enough fuel to get there and back.  I was amazed when I signed up for AH to not find it choc-full of specialist US bomber groups including at least a couple of seriously professional (in approach) ones.

Compared to  other games AH has the possibility of being something akin to buff pilot heaven in scenario games.  But so few seem bothered about buffs and so many seem convinced that a fine plane like the Ju88 is doomed from takeoff when in fact a good part of the problem is how theyre used.  Don't fly 'em like fighters guys especially not BEFORE they've dropped their bombs! If they don't do well the way you fly 'em learn how they need to be flown in order to do better!

I'll say it again; if anyone wants help with planning Ju88 raids I have good to excellent climb data for fuel burn rates of 1 and 1.5 with which timed routes can be accurately planned. And Dinger is perfectly correct that carrying 3000kg of bombs and more than about 50% fuel constitutes an overload consition. They usually carried a maximum of 2000kgs and sometimes less.  

And whilst I won't give all my units hard-won experience away gratis I AM happy help with the basics and to point people in the right direction towards more effective bomber ops (at least in scenario play. General arena play is a whole nother matter and just messing around so far as I'm concerned).

I don't pretend to know it all when it comes to this subject and I'm CERTAINLY not infallible but I can say with certainty that if you want to do better with bombers in scenario games you need to study and practice with them at a unit level as well as individually - just like with fighters.  

Esme

[AndyH]

Dinger is correct to point out the speed of the JU88 as its best defence, when WOD practiced before the event we found that our biggest problem was to keep up with the buffs, especially in Hurricanes.

If the balance in the arena is not what was expected from the CMs why don’t you swap one of the squads over from RAF to LW, this would obviously need to be done before next frames orders are posted. You would also need to trust that squad not to take part in any discussion of tactics used by their side in previous frames.

[clouds]

Ok Esme.
Probably .......oops SECURELY I made some mistake that enficiated the mission but, I think all was due to:
1) our poor pilots number against RAF pilots number,
2) 3°Stormo  expected 15 to 20 pilots instead of only 7!!!! but this is a VACATION period here in Italy (sea and girls are calling !!! and hormones begins to mooooooove)
so another mistake was to send Fariz to CAP over P82 instead to CAP over Malta (it would be better if CAPing over Malta were made by the most numerous pilots instead than by the few ones)

Anyway if you could tell me your problem with e-mail in time I intead to write only "ORDERS NOT RECEIVED YET" then I could send you e-mails in separate fashion (one for text and the other for graphics)  

I'm writing form Italy then I thought (maybe making another mistake), if I'm able to receive html e-mails then the others could be able to do the same at least like me if not better

I'm sorry if I semt to you presuming how to manage your e-mail
but like you don't know who I'm so I don't know who you'r (professionally speaking) so I don't know your ability in problems relating to PCs. The next time tell me what is your problem and I'll try to help you in time (hoping you'll do the same with me if necessary)

I'm sorry for my bad English.  

Bye

[clouds]

Dinger you could say to GA if the orders he got were confusing or hard to understand or other.
Maybe they could been but..........GA said "A4 flattened" so I think, if I can understand that orders SECURELY some guys more expert than me could do the same.

Anyway I think graphics helps more than 100 wrote pages.

[clouds]

May I show up the other 2 map pages or do you think it is better don't do it ?????

[Esme]

Clouds m'dear - I never had a problem with your orders in general. I actually didnt get a chance to review ALL of them but the ones for the bomber units seemed entirely reasonable to me.  Ive said elsewhere that I think the major problem has been lack of numbers on the Axis side and you may remember I expressed surprise that the CMs felt the RAF needed any cannon-armed Hurricanes.

The ONLY criticism I had of your orders were as follows:
1. the propsed climb setting for the Ju88s was not good and the loadout for the Ju88s could have been lighter.
2. the orders being sent as HTML rather than plain text and with so many JPEGS some actually unecessary altogether and some necessary only to some units
3. the time at which we received the orders.

Now then 1. isnt a criticism of you in particular because so far as I can tell in my admittedly limited experience as yet in AH you actually did better than average for the AH community as a whole.  I liked the route it showed some real thought and the stuff regarding loadout and climb rate I can put down to your inexperience with planning for bombers. You made a damned good effort so far as I'm concerned Clouds.

My criticisms regarding the delivery of the orders you already know about. (shrugs) - as it happens we were unlucky in that the RAF intercepted us before we got halfway to Malta and some of us (myself included) probably deserve a telling-off for deciding to press on with planes in ones or twos rather than RTB and hope for better luck on a second sortie.  Which is why we ended up getting wiped out rather than simply sustaining heavy losses. NOT your fault.  Maybe the fighters could have been disposed a bit better? (shrugs) Hindsight is a wonderful thing we cant always get it right.  I think you did OK.

With regard to the Internet England may have quite a lot of users but in some respects we are still a bit backward in what the average home user is offered and can afford. And as I said I RECEIVED your HTML email OK; it just didnt save out as text.  But I didnt WANT to receive HTML email particularly (durned if I can recall switching that on must go put that right soon) and I particularly didnt want to receive multiple cpies of JPEGS some of which were uneceesary for me to receive anyway.  But dont worry about it m'dear. I'm certainly not angry with you over it I just got a bit exasperated at the time. All water under the bridge now eh? :-)

Many thanks for your offer of help and of course if I can be of help to yourself I'd be happy to as well. Unless its something to do with flying bombers I very much doubt I could though as I'm not as technically minded as most flight-simmers when it comes to PCs :-}  

And don't you DARE apologise for your English until my Italian is better than your English!  Heck Im not sure if I tried I could put an entire sentence together in Italian and even then I'd probably get confused and use a Spanish word by accident!

Take care and my apologies for not bringing a couple of Ju88s back home. I think I COULD have but stupidly pressed on and so lost the lot.

S!  Esme

[clouds]

WOW      esme I haven't yet any report on what's happened during every flyght but if some group CO's have returned back its group while surrounded by enemy figthers, then I must CONSIDER that CO GREAT!!!!

The imponderability is allways present in every situation of the real life, no matter how good is your plan to achieve an objective, something can (and often  it does) get worse and all goes to squeakes  (I don't know if I gave you the sense but I hope so).
During 1st frame 3°Stormo suffered 50% losses due problems in take off and landing. the second of wich it could be avoided quitly.

Anyway I think it is the Situational Awarenes of every CO to extablish what it is better to do and what is not in a certain moment in a certain situation, so I made a mistake you made your and..........I hope someothers have made the right thing and so saving our bottoms

During 1st frame Ju88 had the same ordnance and fuel loadout of my planned, so on that I based my planning. Of course I could make Bombers loadout 50% of what they had but, during my test of bombers racetrack, I figured it out that it could be necessary at least 55~65 minutes to execute the entire racetrack so no more time for the second racetrack it could be available.

Last but not least, I had not too much time to build my plan and publish it in a password protected page of our 3°Stormo site because, although I'm a programmer, I feel not very good with html's till now.

Anyway thx to you esme and to all the other AXIS pilots, it was a pleasure for me to met you all and flew with yours.

And a special thx to my friend GA and its VIKINGS.

Next time (if ever it will be) I'll pay attention to my errors done and most of all I'll not send you any html ESME!!!

[Esme]

LOL! S! Clouds! :-)  I'm not  quite sure what you meant with that first paragraph but the rest is very clear and aye I agree!

I'm generally careful and methodical both in my planning and execution of flights for my unit but every now and then I have moments of idiocy where on the spur of the moment I go and do something that gets me killed when I could have done something safer.  At one point I actually orderd my XO in WB to tell me off if I started talking about doing something rash because I got myself killed by my own stupidity three times in five frames (luckily the rest of the unit weren't affected). That's also incidentally partly why I don't always lead my unit in the air (the most important reason is to give others experience of leading but whilst Im one of the best we have at flight planning Im capable but not the best at leading whilst actually airborne).

Many thanks to you Clouds for being patient with my irritability and for CO'ing us in Frame 2.  And I like your sense of humour! :-)

S!

Esme

[clouds]