Constructive ideas to make level bombers useful

[Easyscor]

Interesting thread Karnak,

As much as I despise the roulette wheel bombsight, you've shown there may be alternative solutions  and the point is taken.
 
Until those are developed, I will continue to support the new bombsight but advocate a closer correlation between skill level in tracking and the results.

[Shiva]

I agree we could use large targets for the bombers but thats a problem for a terrain Builder. The terrain editer is available to everyone. I admit I dont have the patience to be a bomber pilot its boring. But it was in real life.

Yes, you can put nine factories down in a little 3x3 square. Then you have a triple-size factory area with buildings scattered across it as sparsely as they are now. And you expect us to believe that that really does anything? Look at the 'port' --  eight buildings and eleven AAA emplacements scattered across the entire port area, with structures covering maybe 1% of the port area. Stringing a bunch of them together isn't going to improve the target for strategic bombers; we want ports like this:



Or a single, isolated factory (this is a methanol plant under construction in Monroe, Wisconsin. Compare the building sizes to the automobiles and railroad track, and then compare them to the sizes and density of buildings in a factory block in AH:



Or this shot of a strike against the marshaling yards in Fulda,  19 Mar 1945 as the bombs start to hit:



...and go off:



Give us targets worth hitting, and we'll be satisfied.

[Wotan]

i made a long reply to your "points" karnak but the bbs crashed.

Even in the images shiva posted you may have lotsa things to blow up but what do you want that to do in the main once they are blown up?

whats of such "worth" in those images that you feel we need them  in ah? A few more structures to blow up?

Stop supplies? limit aircraft? limit fuel? basically reduce onesided ability to log on and have fun?

BS.....

Real life bombing only effected german industry over a long period of time  with many many sorties and many many large formations. The german peak production year was 1944.

So what is it you want? A few extra structures to go boom? You yourself said you hit every target you went after with the current buff model.

Define "useful". The main aint ww2. The majority of folks enjoy fighter to fighter aircraft. Should the minority of bomber pilots/squads in the main determin how when and where the rest of us want to fly?

again BS.

If the point is , maybe not for you if you hit all your targets, to give a large area so folks can hit stuff then I say bs again. Folks are bombing in the main some folks hit stuff. If you arent practice and ask and learn from the guys who are.

Heres the only other alternative  I se is something like this. It would take basically redoing ah so a few bomber pilots feel "useful"

How about something like production figures to determin the rest. They have no real meaning accept to trigger a reset. Base capture could still be in effect. Deny the nme the air bases necessary to defend production facilities. if over all production fall below xx then it signals one countries surrender. Have train stations and rail junctions that keep the supplies rolling. Assign certain ares of the map as  "resource" areas. If your country owns them then you get an increase in that "resource" (iron ore, oil, etc). You get the point.


It would give the strat guys something to do and give some "point" for bombing.  I am sure you can work out the details of such a concept and offer a viable alternative.


I like ah as is.

[Mino]

Copied from another thread.

My take is this:

IMO it is the target structure, not the new bomb model that is kind of goofy.

What is a VH? It is a tent.
What is a FH or a BH? It is a wooden building.
What is a city building? It is a wooden building.

I think the only hardened targets in the game are the Shore Batteries

So lets say:


To kill a tent is 3k bombs

To kill a FH or a BH is 3k bombs

To kill a city building is one 100 pound bomb or a couple passes with 50 cals

To kill a SB is 3k bombs

This wacky system is how AH progresses as a strategy game. This worked very well with the old LGB bombing model. IMO it does not work very well the new bombing model.

The new bombing model is just one of the coolest things to hit AH. I just feel that to make it reach its full potential, the target damage model also needs to be changed.

IE: More targets!

There just needs to be many more ground targets that make buff raids a neccessity. For example; a small field would have 12 FH's, 12 BH's, 4 VH's etc....

Build the structure damage model so that 100 or 500 pound bombs will destroy these buildings. Make it so that an accurate bomb run leaves destruction in its path, but does not destroy the field. To destroy the field you will need multiple bomber flights, then JABO to finish it off.

Be cool!

[Shiva]

Just as an addendum to my last post (which I am surprised to see actually made it up; the host stopped responding while I was trying to post it), the bright flash in the last picture is the loaded ammunition train exploding; it took out half the yard.

As for the rest, let's do it one step at a time; we can start by filling up the target areas with structures that more realistically represent what would be there, with realistic amounts of damage required to destroy them -- at fields, instead of one VH, have a cluster of four or five, groups of BH and FH, with scattered revetments around the field, enough ammo bunkers and fuel tanks to supply the planes launching from there, and enough FlAK to make jaboing the field a chancy proposition.

Once we have the targets, then we can work on a better strategic model; it's a lot more work to pork a field's fuel, for example, if there are a dozen fuel tanks than if there are two. It's easier to make strategic targets affect the rest of the game less drastically if you've got more steps to go down between undamaged and destroyed.

Fixing the way the effects of bombing work isn't going to happen all at once; there's too much involved for that to happen -- changing the target structures, deciding what the tactical and strategic effects of bombing will be, implementing the changes on the host to keep track of it, and updating the map editor to be able to set up the  new system, updating old terrains so they work with the new model. But it needs to start somewhere. The old targets were designed to keep the old bombing from ruling the game; they don't work with the new bombing. So fix them first. The rest of it can come with time.

[Targo]

I'm on the other hand for strat that actually has impact on gameplay, I mean whats the point of even adding strat targets that have so little impact on the gameplay.

I would say make it big, make it difficult to destroy but let it have impact on airfield next to it.

Also I would like to see targets that could be destroyed ONLY by bombers,  I suppose its very simple to implement....just make ack's indestructable on those strat targets and make the target hard to destroy that would make it hard to destroy by any Jabo.

I'm for Strat targets (soort of small HQ's maybe ) that after destroying would disable like 75% of fuel or a random aircrafts/vehicles on one airfield.
For example when you destroy it  7 random Fighters, 4 random Bombers, 2 random GV's would be disabled on a certain field for like 20 minutes. It could be big and hard to kill but it would have atleast some effect on the field and whats the big deal when you would have to up a spit V instead of spit IX for couple sorties or change the airfield for couple minutes to fly your favourite plane.

soz for my bad English

[Shiva]

In addition to putting more structures at fields and cities/factories, creating some more variation in the existing building types would increase the utility of bombing.

For example, take the fighter hangars.  Expand them into three types. First are open revetments, which are protected from blast effects by the berm, but even a 100-lb bomb into the revetment would make it useless. The existing sheet-metal quonset-hut hangars would require 1,000 pounds of bombs to collapse the roof and make it useless. Bunker-style armored hangars would require, say, 3,000 pounds of bombs to destroy.

If you wanted to use hangar destruction as an impediment to the use of the airfield, it might be possible to do something like have destroyed hangars remove spawn points -- for example, if you had a medium field with five FHs, each FH destroyed would remove one randomly-chosen spawn point (hangar last), so that it becomes more inconvenient to take off as the hangars are downed, until you run out of spawn points with the destruction of the last hangar.

[Kweassa]

How about a new bomber-friendly field layout?

 It's IMO the easiest short-term solution we can get before we reconsider further changes to strat..I know the positions of FHs and BHs were changed once before, to stop super simple buffing with 1 Lancaster, 3 salvos per drop: in between the hangars and knocking two~three hangars with a single drop.

 How about we increase the number of field objects on a field, and rearrange them so about two formations(6 buffs) with perfectly coordinated flight paths can knock objects in a single pass? Knowing how hard it is to set a perfect flight path, this would effectively take about three average-skilled bomber pilots(9 buffs) to knock out a field. But the overall difficulty would be reduced a bit due to bomber-friendly layouts.

 Here is my design of a small air field. Yeah, I can imagine it'd be hell to the frame rates with smoke pouring out from 12 fuel tanks and 12 ammo bunkers, 4 BHs and 4 FHs.. but it really seems like a good temporary solution. Notice the FHs are bit off from the BHs in the axis of alignment, so only a perfectly aligned pass will kill the two FHs and two BHs in one pass. (Also, note that left two FHs are further apart so a single East-West pass will not kill all FHs) Fuel tanks are placed in two separate groups in a realistic manner so it'd be generally easier to kill fuels. Killing ammo dumps would be even easier.

 Overall, since there are more targets even in a small field, the JABO difficulty would go up a bit, it will need a lot more JABO pilots to kill everything even in a small field. But for the bombers, the difficulty will be a bit lower than before because the hangars are aligned symmetrically and straight in most cases.

 This in effect, might let bombers become a worthy alternative in attacking airfields.

[MoonJuice]

It's the manual calibration which is the pain in the bellybutton for me.

Fighters have Auto Trim - buffs should have auto calibration.

Keep the buffs the way they are, and eliminate the need to use the joy stick to calibrate the bomb sight.

Make it so that once you decide that you are on the right course, alt, and speed, you press U then the target on the map.

This will set the drop alt, speed, wind, and target alt all at once.

Every thing else stays the same as it is now: must stay on course, have to maintain same speed and alt, and the bombs disperse.

Build some error in to this so that drops are not always perfect.
The higher the buffs, the more dispersion in the bomb pattern.

[Karnak]

Wotan,

Yes, I listed many of those, but that was in the spirit of being comprehensive.  I specifically stated that aircraft could not be limited or nerfed for any side.  I shot down the global fuel reduction as being too harsh.  Lets take a look at your accusation and see which of them I argued in favor of.

Stop supplies?
Irrelevant.  It happens already and nobody notices.  That said, I think its a poor design.  It has the potential to really, really hurt a side if overwelming forces are used and maintained against a country, yet at the same time it has no effect if that massive number of players don't do it.

Limit aircraft?
This is a ludicrious idea and I specifically said that it was not a possibility in my post.

Limit fuel?
I did mention this, but I don't think this would be the way to go.  Its too powerful and has too detrimental an effect on the fighters.

Basically reduce onesided ability to log on and have fun?
No, this must be avoided, while finding a balance.  (You haven't flown Rooks recently, say within the last year, have you?)


No, my suggestion was to leave airfields laid out as they are to make them very Buff resistant.  A few players in bombers shouldn't be able to close an airfield and hurt other's fun.  I suggested that strategic target be rearanged to make them easier for buffs to have an effect on (yes, I hit my targets, but because I am dropping my loads historically, i.e. all in one pass, that means I blow up very, very few structures compared to 1.09).  In addition I suggested that there be strategic targets that governed the durability of field objects as a mechanism to represent reducing quality control from the bombed country's industry.  I think this would work well because the field layouts would still make bombers ineffective against them and a field with structures reduced to only 25% of full durability would still be fully operational from the point of view of the fighters.  The only time it would come into play is whan the Jabo aircraft, something the defending fighters can do something about, try to destroy the field.  This would only affect field objects, it would have absolutely no effect on the damage models of aircraft or vehicles.

This would allow the big bombers to work in tandem with the fighter-bombers, without having the big bombers directly porking the airfields.  It would have minimal impact on the players who simply wish to furball because the bases would operate at full capacity regardless of their durability level.  The idea is to use field object durabilty as a representaion of manufacturing quality.


Do you see how I tried to come up with an idea to give the level bombers a real role, while limiting their impact on the furball part of the game?

[Shiva]

Also I would like to see targets that could be destroyed ONLY by bombers, I suppose its very simple to implement....just make ack's indestructable on those strat targets and make the target hard to destroy that would make it hard to destroy by any Jabo.

Flakturm.



Four twin 128mm FlAK guns, twenty either 37mm FlAK 37 or 20mm FlAKvierling 38:

[Mino]

Karnak;

I like your idea about field organization.  This could also be carried over to factories ports, railyards, etc...  As you stated, it would be a very good interim fix.  

In any event, currently the major game stragety is capturing bases.  Level bombers need a significant role here.  Irrespective of actual history, the AH bombers need a role that is fun, requires skill, is accomplishable and actually makes a difference to the game strategy of capturing fields.

Good thread gents!

[lazs2]

hooligan is correct... everyone else has simply found a way to make gameplay more lopsided for longer amounts of time per reset.   I see a lot of formulas for sucdcessfully getting people to log off or to keep them from logging on... some are so good that they would keep new players from subscribing even when WB goes tits up.

lazs
Public Relations Officer for the Bk's

[Karnak]

lazs,

Please explain how my proposed system would create a lobsided environment for longer?  This is an honest question as I really don't see it.

[Easyscor]

Karnak wrote:

"I think this would work well because the field layouts would still make bombers ineffective against them and a field with structures reduced to only 25% of full durability would still be fully operational..."

At the risk of sounding like I support the furballers, I must point out that as soon as we bomber pilots see the durability of the hangers drop to 25%, needing only a 1K bomb to kill it, all our comrades will begin unloading on all the field hangers.  This would be no more balanced then the roulette bombsight we have now so I can't support it.

I try to think in terms of what changes are possible in the near term and what can we hope for in a later release.

Karnak, Rivven, Kweassa and yes even Wotan have convinced me there may be other alternative in the future but they would imply major changes to the current model for strat targets and tactical targets.  I don't think game play can wait for that to happen, at least as far as bombers go.  It will be interesting to see how many of the assigned bomber pilots show up for the upcoming Battle of Britain.  I think it will be very difficult for the Axis to accomplish the stated win conditions with the current bombsight model but what the heck, it'll still be a hoot.