Limiting the impact of suicide jabos

[Wotan]

I am of the belief that if folks want to talk off and kill themselves then who am I to stop them. However, their impact over the rest of the arena should be limited.

Some have suggested scoring tweaks, a "death penalty" etc. I dont dont agree with any of this.

However, like a lot of other folks I would like something to be done it help limit the impact of these types of attacks.

1. increase the damage value of the hangers. HT has said he would like the hangers to be destroyed with 3000lbs of ord. If he upped this to 3500lbs, beyond what 1 fighter could destroy alone.

This wont solve the problem because these suicide raiders come in packs.

2. Barrage balloons. I dont know all that would be involved in modelling barrage balloons and their cables. This wont stop high angle jabos but it will prevent the lo angle deack runs. It will stop 1 or 2 guys from immediatly deacking a field. Balloons of course will be killable.

3. add more ack per field and scatter them so they arent in a straight line (like on the small fields).

I dont think ack lethality to is high. I think its fine the way it is. Some may argue for more ack with a toned down lethality. I dont care either way. But it should not be nerfed. Instead of lethality adjustments maybe reduce its accurracy somewhat.

On a side note ht has said larger towns are on the way and I would suggest this as well.

Add a map room to both the town and the field. Make them both capturable but only enable flight when both the town and the field are captured. Have a vh attached to the town, or possibly 1 at the town 1 at the field.

This would help get rid of the milkrunning on the larger maps.

I dont fly Navy planes but maybe some one can suggest away to better protect the fleets that wont end up making them unkillable (8000lbs is good enough). Also keep in mind no one will fly bar cap. Its boring and you wont get anyone to waste their time doing it. You cant limit how close a fleet gets to shore because of the lvts. Lockig flight will just lead to arguements.

We all know about the high ranked guy that would switch sides and take a fleet and wont release it. Imagine some body locking flight and never letting anyone take off.

[J_A_B]

I liked the idea of perking the 1K bombs; they were less common than the 500 pound GP bombs anyhow.   If a flight of suicide Tiffies had 500-pounders instead of 1K bombs, that'd reduce their effectiveness almost by half.

Plus it'd give us something useful to use those bomber perks on since the 234 is a waste.

As for milkrunning, something that slowed down the landgrab somewhat in AW is before you could capture a base, you had a level 60% of the structures (destroy the field)--you couldn't capture an undamaged base as you can in AH and also had to protect it from recapture attempts since a destroyed base was extremely vulnerable.  Once you captured the field, you had to wait for it to become operational again before you could use it, so the AH-style "base hopping" didn't work.  Such a system might work well in AH.

J_A_B

[Revvin]

Some have suggested scoring tweaks, a "death penalty" etc. I dont dont agree with any of this.

Me neither, if they are suiciding anyway they've already proved they don't care about score.

1. increase the damage value of the hangers. HT has said he would like the hangers to be destroyed with 3000lbs of ord. If he upped this to 3500lbs, beyond what 1 fighter could destroy alone.

This is'nt the answer, like you said the packs would just become bigger to compensate and the ord required to destroy a hangar is already unrealistically high.

2. Barrage balloons. I dont know all that would be involved in modelling barrage balloons and their cables. This wont stop high angle jabos but it will prevent the lo angle deack runs. It will stop 1 or 2 guys from immediatly deacking a field. Balloons of course will be killable.

Might work but then if undefended would last all of a minute to a fighter shooting them down.

3. add more ack per field and scatter them so they arent in a straight line (like on the small fields).

Yes more ack at the fields would probably help. Although VH's with a measly 15 min rebuild time means Ostwind's and M16's can be deployed.

I dont think ack lethality to is high. I think its fine the way it is.

I don't think it's too high either but the way it works can be odd sometimes as it appears to have better luck when you zip past it at high speed and vast angles but when you fly straight at the ack it can often miss

Hitech has said he want's to encourage jabo's to attack fields and leave bombers to hit strat targets so I guess this problem may get worse if unchecked. More targets at a field is the way to go, bombers did hit fields so why should'nt they be used too, particularly on large airfields.

What's not been talked about so far is a way to stop the suicide fighters that up from anattacked field and throw themselves at the con's knowing if they can at least down one then that plane has a longer flight time where the suicide defender can re-up in seconds. It's more realistic to have waves of fighters attacking a field (imagine the suicide bomber as a new pilot) than it is for a field to continually spawn fighters when after the first few wave or two of attackers there would not be a plane left to defend that field. The rebuild time of the hangars is also too short. I have my own thoughts on how to perhaps stop this this but it would give furballers and embolism.

[AvidMC]

How about a score multiplier that increases each time you land a consecutive successful sortie. For example, land one sortie with kills and get normal points. Land a second consecutive sortie and points are multiplied by 2, third consecutive sortie and points multiply by 3 etc... Once you die your start back at a normal multiplier. This may give the needed incentive for folks to live through a mission and not suicide run. Granted you will still have the dweeb factor and some folks won't care and do it anyway, but at least there is a penalty for folks that do and a reward for those that don't.

Your thought??

Avid

[Innominate]

I'm no expert about how real CV's were built and attacked, so please bear with me.  This may come out overly gamey anyways, but it seems to solve the provlem of kamakazi jabos.  Did WW2 CV's have armored flight decks?

Anyways, change the way damage affects a CV.  Introduce AP bombs for the divebombers, and probably the TBM.

GP bombs would do half damage to a CV, requiring 16000lb's.
AP Bombs would do double damage, meaning four SBD's could kill a CV.
Torpedos would also do double damage, requiring only two torpedo hits.

This makes defending a carrier, as well as realisticly attacking it somewhat more likely.  The divebombers and torpedo bombers are fairly easily dealt with by fighters flying CAP, lacking the speed to just blaze through any CAP.




As for airfields, I've never reallly seen suicide jabos, besides the occasional(okay common) p38 that compresses and digs a hole in the ground.  That said, base capture is too easy, and its too easy for jabos to kill targets at a field and get out alive.  All it takes to capture a field is a coordinated flight of p38s, 1 per hangar.

What I'd like to see is ack moved into 2-5 "banks" (depending on the field size)  Each bank would be a dense pack of ack, dense enough that a bomber could carpetbomb an entire bank at once, or a jabo flinging bombs/rockets at it could take a good chunk out.

Ack lethality would be turned UP so that instead of "BS" one ping ack kills, just about every hit from the ack is a one ping kill.  This requires the ack to be killed before a decent attack can even begin, and also helps eliminate lamers suiciding through the ack in hopes of shooting someone trying to takeoff/land.


Then again, there isnt much thought put into these ideas, just brainstorming, so there may be major flaws.

[J_A_B]

British CV's had armored flightdecks.  American carriers did not.   Essex-class carriers proved quite vulnerableto Kamnikaze tactics--although none of them were sunk, several of our big flattops were put out of action.  We also lost a light carrier (Princeton) because of the aftermath of a Kamikaze attack although it probably could have been saved.

J_A_B

[weaselsan]

Why not set a time limit of say 10 seconds before an object is destroyed. If you die before that limit no damage will occur.

[Innominate]

Originally posted by J_A_B
British CV's had armored flightdecks.  American carriers did not.   Essex-class carriers proved quite vulnerableto Kamnikaze tactics--although none of them were sunk, several of our big flattops were put out of action.  We also lost a light carrier (Princeton) because of the aftermath of a Kamikaze attack although it probably could have been saved.

J_A_B

What about the japanese?

[J_A_B]

Japanese carriers lacked any useful armor.  If that wasn't bad enough, damage control wasn't very good and the crews were often somewhat sloppy with regards to safety precautions.  

What's funny (or perhaps not funny) is during WW2, the US scuttled more big carriers than the Japanese actually sank themselves--Lexington, Hornet, Princeton and maybe Wasp all survived the Japanese damage only to be sunk by the Navy (or in the case of the Hornet the Navy pumped several hundred 5-inch shells into it and shot a bunch of torpedos into it but the damn thing just wouldn't sink and so they just left it adrift and eventually the Japanese finished it off).    Eventually the Navy figured out that sinking its own carriers was pointless and they managed to save USS Franklin when it suffered severe damage from a Kamikaze.


J_A_B

[wulfie]

J_A_B:

Japanese CVs were as well protected as U.S. CVs.

The IJN crews weren't bad at damage control - it's that USN crews were *awesome* at damage control (and *nobody* was sloppy about *anything* in the IJN - a very highly trained force with very strict discipline).

The IJN CVs lost at Midway (the major example of IJN CVs being lost) were victims of timing and command decision - the CVs had to have fuel lines open because they were refueling strikes (commander's decision).

As everyone knows there was a great deal of 'unsecured' ord. on the hangar deck and above decks as well (again - rearming for a strike, commander's decision).

But this caused the IJN CVs to suffer massive damage from secondary fire and explosion that normally would not have taken place given the # and size of hits those CVs suffered.

Pressure was lost to fire hoses almost immediately on all striken IJN CVs (crewmen had to resort to lowering rope lines of buckets to the sea for water for fighting fires).

Carbon based gas extinguishing systems (present on all IJN CVs, very advanced damage control equipment for it's time - also present on USN CVs) were used but the extent of the fires and the massive unreachable damage (due to said fires) made such systems almost worthless.

Numerous IJN Sailors formed into 'do or die' units for special damage control missions - a very high % of them died during these tasks.

I'll post some translations of IJN battle logs dealing with damage control operations in a day or two if you want - pretty interesting stuff.

Mike/wulfie

[Voss]

You can't stop it, Wotan. I watched a dweeb yesterday make run after run after run in his P51. He came in NOE and dropped his eggs too low, so he exploded everytime. Still, it took him six runs to drop one hangar, but he didn't give up. You could have set your watch by him, too.

It's akin to the dweebs that make run after run on the CV's. You kill them high, they come in low. You kill them low, they come in high. Wash, rinse, repeat. Finally, they bring five guys and you can't kill them all, or one guy comes in low, the other high.

How about the guys that 'dance' their flak hulls, so they can get you to waste ammo while they try to get close enough to trash your panzer? Or, the guys that spawn fifty times near the town and drop five-hundred troops out? Or the PT's that spawn fifty times and fire torpedoes at every conceivable angle?

If they can do it, they will. It might be gamey, but I bet you can come up with a way to take advantage of their dweebiness, if you really, really try.

[Wotan]

I am afraid you are correct Voss

[Revvin]

It's just as dweeby to keep respawning at an airfield and throw yourself suicidally at any con in sight and then respawn seconds later to do it all over again.

[Wotan]

this aint an either/or discussion. I dont either of those.

[beet1e]

How about a score multiplier that increases each time you land a consecutive successful sortie. For example, land one sortie with kills and get normal points. Land a second consecutive sortie and points are multiplied by 2, third consecutive sortie and points multiply by 3 etc... Once you die your start back at a normal multiplier. This may give the needed incentive for folks to live through a mission and not suicide run. Granted you will still have the dweeb factor and some folks won't care and do it anyway, but at least there is a penalty for folks that do and a reward for those that don't.

Possibly a good idea, but assumes that people fly for score. On the big maps (and in some cases the small ones too), I simply can't carry enough fuel to RTB after killing a vehicle field, for example. In addition, there's the time factor. If one is to RTB, there's an increased risk of the field coming back to life before troops can be landed. If working with a very small group, the unfortunate result is that one person has to bail to get troops, or the first person to get killed performs that duty. I am not alone in being more motivated by field defence and field capture than by the scoreboard. Hmmm, I feel a new thread coming on...

BTW - what's this about the guy who switched sides to get control of the enemy CV?  I've heard about people flying simultaneously with two accounts, but hadn't realised that anyone would do that to exert control over the enemy. That's a bit underhand.