Ok, (picks up Mookies torch). Q&A time.

[Hans]

Question:  How are the bombers being handled this time?  No, not the actual aircraft flight performance figures or otto or such, but dropping the bombs.

Will dropping the entire load onto a single target be normal now?  Will there be any inherant inaccuracies built into the bombsights to prevent too accurate bombing.

If I had to suggest anything, I would have several large targets that don't just prefer, but REQUIRE several tons of bombs to hit in the space of 10 seconds to destroy them.

The new mantra I want everyone to repeat 100 times:  No WW2 bomber at 20k+ ever hit a single man with a single bomb.  Please treat port/city/factory/refinery targets as a single, tough-as-nails target instead of a dozen smaller pieces to be bombed individually.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

This "clip board user interface" thingy?  How is this going to work?  I read between the lines on the webpage that we may (heavily on the "may") get the ability to walk around as a single pilot at the airfield.  We will get from the tower to hangers by moving around as an unhorsed pilot (hangers do the plane arming), then walk to the flightline to mount up.  This is very interesting.  Not only is this extremely immersive (name on sim that has this first person interface), but may even solve the kamikaze base defenders (takeoff, shoot, die, takeoff, shoot die).  Your repetative takeoff ability is slowed down and you may even get straffed as a scrambling pilot trying to get to the flighline.

...Or I am completely wrong?

Hans, former bomber commander of JG-51, CO of the Mercenaries.

[Downtown]

I think, and this is very general, that mookie was saying something along the lines of.

For example a post from Pyro along the lines of.

Pyro "Well our first crack at putting this sim/game together we came up with a list of 100 things to do.  We have resolved 88 of them with 12 remaining, unfortunately one of them is a real squeak, and we just can't release the beta until it is solved.

We are working on this issue foremost, and need to get the other 11 in-line, but they should be easy once we crack this one tough nut.  I'm not making any promises, and don't try to misquote, but the sarcastic two weeks, is just about right.

Sarcastic two weeks being greater that 14 days, but less than 21.

Honest guys were working on it.  We want your money.

Something Wonderful is About to happen." would be nice.

Now if I was Pyro, or being paid to by Pyro to answer questions, like you have asked above, and I wanted to wet your appetite but not provide too much info, I would say.

Pyro or PRMan "The first person immersion of selecting load out and pre-flight information gathering will set this Sim/Game well above its contemporary peers.  We are still writing the code, and Alpha testing, and can't provide you to much direct information, we ask for your patience, and understand your concerns."

Now I wouldn't deign myself as HTC's mouth piece.

And I really want a whole lot more specific information.

So I won't ask too many direct questions.

Yes, I have asked for a couple of Planes.
Yes, I really like the early war stuph.
And would be satisfied with the answer of.

Once we are through with the Beta Testing, and Release the Sim/Game to the general public, feeling that it has reached a plateau of Playability, we will begin to add new aircraft from the 1939 through Early 1942 era.

But alas, I haven't even heard that.

Sometime a while back, HTC announced how the Basic Strategy will work.

Buffers will have to be involved.

Hopefully Buffs will be added at a pace Equal too, or greater than the Sports Jobs.

If you have, Spit IX's, F190D, and P-51Ds, you are ready to hunt Buff.

So a post about what Bombers we have to have will be posted tonight.

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"I could feel the 20MM Cannon impacting behind me so I made myself small behind the pilot armor" Charlie Bond AVG


[This message has been edited by Downtown (edited 09-11-1999).]

[hitech]

Hans:
  Bomb sight.
    Iv'e been writing the bomb sight this week. Ill be putting in a few item's that will make it harder to be accurate but we can't just go by real life accuracy. Simple fact that one or 2 plane buf raids never happend in real life but in the arena we must allow for this event. So the balancing of ordnance lethality v hardness and accuracy is done realitive to game play only.


The clip board interface.
   It does move you around the world, between buildings and in and out of your plane in a First person type view. But you move at a very accelerated rate and your body is not seen in the arena.


Downtown;
  The first beta will contain
   P51d
   109g10
   spit9
   b17g

   Possibles on first beta or shortly after beta starts are
  c47
  la5.

Development of more planes will continue as fast as we can make them.

HiTech

[Mookie]

High Tech...

You're a stand up guy...

I felt bad after I made my last post on the other thread yesterday, and got up dejectedly from my computer and went into town to take my mind off of things...I left the computer logged on, and when I woke up this morning I was still logged on...I was pleasantly surprised when for the heck of it I refreshed the page and found all of this great new info on the board.

Thanks for understanding and making the effort to  appease us, (or me anyway.)

Some of the info you've imparted here is even more informative than I was hoping for...I thought asking for specific beta aircraft was beyond the realm of possibility.

"Downtown" hit the nail on the head here...Updates such as ones he's hypothesied are just what seem to be missing from the board...and what would keep things popping around here and wanting folks logging on everyday to see what's new.

Right now you guys are prolly so focused on getting this thing out the door, it may be difficult to remember we are all sitting on the ramp here drooling for details....Any kind of details. Details that you guys might not even think are very informative to us.

If it were at all possible for someone at AH to post a new topic, (so the info doesn't get buried in a thread somewhere,) every week or so about ANYTHING...even what you've been having for lunch, if no other info is available, I'm sure you would find this a happy bubbling place....and I for one wouldn't care how long it takes you to release the beta...I think we all just want to make sure it's the best you can make it in the time you've alloted for yourselves.

A little info goes a long way in fortifying our patience.

Thanks too to Hans who was tending the fire in my absence

Salute Gentlemen...

   

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Mookie
"Reach Out and Touch Someone"

[This message has been edited by Mookie (edited 09-12-1999).]

[Pyro]

Something Wonderful is About to happen." would be nice.
---------------------------------------

Please don't tell me that's the kind of stuff you want to hear.  



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Doug "Pyro" Balmos
HiTech Creations

[eagl]

Pyro you crack me up  

I have 2 thoughts on bombsight accuracy...

First, don't let the bombsight automagically set the target altitude.  Require the player to get some intel on the ground level altitude of the target.  In RL the height above target is just about the single most important calculation we make prior to dropping ordinance.  WB bombsight automatically calculates this, making literal pinpoint bombing trivial to achieve.  

Better yet, make the player input "height above target" instead of target altitude, requiring the player to also pick and hold a constant altitude.  Of course, this would require you guys to code in an altitude-hold mode into the autopilot...

Oh yes, adding bomb drag would be cool too.  In WB, the bombs have no drag so the bombs continue to travel at the same speed across the ground as when they were released.  This isn't right of course, and dramatically increases the chance that low flying fighters and bombers will frag themselves after dropping bombs because the bombs always hit exactly under the fighter or bomber.

Second, if you want to introduce "randomness" into the bombing without it actually being random, add some light winds that vary a little at different altitudes.  A knot or two would be enough to cause miss distances.

Of course, once you introduce realistic accuracy, realistic target hardness and bomb frag patterns would need to follow.  In WB right now, if you miss the radar by 20 ft even with a 1000lb bomb, it stays up.  That's not too realistic eh?  Anyhow, it seems to me that adding in more realistic accuracy would require more realistic ground target damage handling.  And of course, a bunker should still require a direct hit by a large weapon... This is realistic and is the reason we use LGB's and other PGM's in RL now.  Dumb weapons simply suck at taking down bunkers and other hardened point targets unless you drop hundreds of them at a time.

That's more than 2 things, but thats why I use a computer to add and subtract stuff for me  

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eagl <squealing Pigs> BYA
Oink Oink To War!!!

[indian]

Eagle planes can bomb them selfs that is why the airforce had those paddle looking things added for low level bombing. Bombing is hard enough as it is so lets not mess with it. You will always see more fighter pilots then bomber pilots online. Plus we dont have any weather to deal with that would change all aspect of the game. I do believe yuo want to play it this yeay right.

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Tommy (INDIAN) Toon

http://www.geocities.com/~tltoon

[glars]

I guess adding complexity to the buffer's role has to be balanced against how much of a disincentive it would be for a pilot to be a one-plane-raid.

If bombs were to have a randomness attached to their accuracy then maybe if field damage wasn't just a case of taking out individual targets but also allowing for being able to just get a pre-determined amount of ordnance tonnage inside an airfield's perimeter.

That would also allow attacks from all points of the compass instead of just along the maximum-targets-in-one-pass bomblines.

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Glars
RNZAF
  glarsmaps.warbirds.org]http://glarsmaps.warbirds.org]glarsmaps.warbirds.org  

[nastee]

OK let me get this right; Eagl you want me
( as a bomber pilot, because i a crappy fighter pilot ) you want me to fly around
check winds, check alt, line up, constanly change variations, ( not you saying )no otto
so i have to fight off fighters, drop my load , and get home in one piece. hehe sounds like a great challendge. I guess i'll have to learn to fly a fighter  
~nastee~
*Flying Aces* ( DoA )
<bomber attachment#

[eagl]

I thought this was the realism crowd, didn't realize it applied only to fighters eh?

Seriously, bombing in RL is TOUGH.  My line of thought is along these lines:  Flying fighters is hard and dangerous, and it's not guaranteed that every time you pull the trigger you're gonna hit the other fighter, it's not guaranteed you're going to shoot anyone down, and it's not guaranteed that you're going to survive the sortie.

Why should bomber flying be any different?  Why should it be "guaranteed" that you're going to hit your target every time?  Why should flying a bomber be so unrealistically easy that the bomber guys get unheard of stats and, assuming they aren't shot down or jumped in the target area, always hit the target?

I'm in favor of adjusting the difficulty, bomb effects, and target types/hardness to balance gameplay, but in RL and historically, bombing was extremely difficult even for the crews that didn't get shot down.

Honestly, I'm suprised that people are afraid that a little skill might be required to accurately drop bombs.  Flying a fighter doesn't necessarily come naturally, dropping bombs doesn't either.  Or maybe I ought to  say "shouldn't".

Hell, I've been dropping bombs for the USAF for over 4 years.  It's still tough, and I still miss sometimes.  There are guys in WB that have maintained over 100% accuracy ratings for several TOD's.  Doesn't that strike some of you as odd?

Just my $.02 of course, because playability is probably more important than absolute historical accuracy and realism.  HTC has a finite amount of coding resources and in the end they'll have to balance what they want to do with what they reasonably CAN do.  



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eagl <squealing Pigs> BYA
Oink Oink To War!!!

[Mookie]

Gotta go with Eagl here guys...on both high alt bombing aspects, and programming bomb drag. That would make adjusting these factors at a later date to fit game playability a possibility.

I try to take any of Eagl's suggestions seriously...What we do for fun here with our with our simulators...he does for a job in real life.

This IMO makes him a valuble resource...and something we can't have enough of.

Unless he's on your six...Then one's too many of him.  

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Mookie
"Reach Out and Touch Someone"

[Pyro]

As an addendum to what HT notes, you also have to look at what motivates people to do things, i.e. what is worthwhile.  In a game like this, there are multiple challenges available.  Some challenges are related to interacting with the opposition as is the case with dogfighting or trying to defend yourself.   Other challenges are based on your skills alone such as being able to do what it takes to hit targets on the ground.

As a bomber pilot, you have a lot of challenges to get through to get your payload to the target.  Once you've arrived, there is a skillset that needs to be utilized to put those bombs on target.  If you've gone through all that, done everything right, and completely miss your target because we've accurately modeled bombing precision, what's the point and who's going to do it?  You're not going to be able put together a 1000 bomber raid to go bomb a factories.

The philosophy we take on the issue of bombing is that we do want to make it require skills that must be mastered.  But the proper execution of those skills should result in positive results, not just a crap shoot.  



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Doug "Pyro" Balmos
HiTech Creations

[eagl]

I agree pyro, the proper application of a skills set should result in success... up to a point.

Maybe there can be something that isn't all-or-nothing to measure bombing by?  For example, how about instead of an off/on damage set for ground targets, how about a series of states.  Full up, light damage, heavy damage, destroyed?

I suppose I'm asking for something to make it so that 100% success isn't always 100% guaranteed by simply following a laundry list of procedures.  Bombing just doesn't work that way in RL, the same way chanting "lead, lag, pure pursuit, in range, in plane, in lead deflection" during a dogfight doesn't always result in you shooting down your opponent  



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eagl <squealing Pigs> BYA
Oink Oink To War!!!

[indian]

eagl you must be someone who hates bombers, what you are asking for would require weather to be modeled. Do you want weather added to the sim. The way gunnery is modeled amy not be 100% accurate either. WWII was 15 years before my time some of those who flew combat could make their plane do things they wernt desinged to do. You probably want otto taken off the guns in all bombers also. In r/l as you say the bombers carried a navigator a bomberdier and two pilots not counting the gunners. Now you want one guy to fly a ungunned target drone to the target area and not beable to hit his target.

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Tommy (INDIAN) Toon

http://www.geocities.com/~tltoon

[Superfly]

Mookie, today for lunch I will be having a sandwich containing deli sliced chicken and hot pepper cheese with a Coke.  

Oh yes, I am also frantically modelling the C47A for the beta.

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John "SUPERFLY" Guytan - Art Director
HiTech Creations
"The Artist Formerly Known As MONKEY"