Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Vulcan on October 26, 2004, 04:51:46 AM
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But this beats em all:
From bmbm who's flying in WW2OL now:
Well, with something like 8000 hours in the virtual kockpit and countless attacks on bombers below the belt, I do speak from *some* experience. Whether you choose to believe it or to feel intimidated by it is of course your choice.
http://discussions.playnet.com/viewtopic.php?p=1793665#1793665
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Hey, I remember when I 1st installed AH a few years back that I was going to kick everyone's arse as well..."I AM TEH SH*TZ!!!".
I was quickly proven wrong, need I even say it :D
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This rant is more then you asked for but wth...
Sounds like most of the 'strat' players in AH.
The idea that folks should fly cap for an hour and 30 minutes being bored off their arse is just justifying the lameness that is 'strat'.
Even if folks were willing to spend time being bored flying defensive cap the attackers would pull the some BS 'fly across Europe NOE' (as if Europe was unpopulated; even the RAF Dambusters flying NOE at night took terrific losses). All these games should only allow bombs to be dropped from the bomb aimer’s position and only from the cockpit if they could historically.
The stupidity folks put in their games and call it 'strat' is mind boggling. This includes AH. Shifting the balance so that a gaggle of attention starved tards can effectively impact the fun of 100s of others just to placate those who prefer building battling over A2A combat is ridiculous. All the bombers sorties combined in ww2 did not have anything close to the effect that 'strat' players expect in these games. WWIIOL is just another half-assed war game with made up rules to suite the bbs signature generals.
The BS about 'never attack a bomber from the rear' is flight game nonsense.
Goering ordered a stop to head on attacks because only experten could even land hits. After the HO where do you end up? Pulling a 180 then trying to catch back up to the formation. With escorts you are effectively out of the fight. If you didn’t get any kills on your 1 pass then that was it.
The Sturmgruppen flew right up the arse of a Bomber formation killing one after another. If they could attack B17s and B24s this way a DB-7 should be np unless the plane is bugged like in wwiiol.
His 8000 hours in the 'virtual cockpit' was in WBs where they played lethality and buff tuff roulette. There's nothing intimidating about that.
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I've flown with bombom in WB and even in AH (albeit his stay here was a breif one), have known him to be a very precise pilot and a capable commander (in fact, there was this one strike on Rabaul where he ran the Betties, I the Zekes against a mess of RAAF Spit Vbs, and we completely destroyed the enemy,with our losses totalling one G4M ditching on the way back).
I find it amusing that the same arguments have been thrown back and forth now for what? 15 years? and nobody's showing signs of fatigue or being convinced.
I guess for every four-hour session of practicing exclusively loose deuces and double attacks, you guys spend at least two hours honing the same arguments (and updating the ol' horometer).
The problem is always the same one: while the arguments focus on horse***** such as damage models, ballistics and flight models, the real issue is the limitations of historical simulation, in this case a double supersoldier problem.
The classic supersoldier problem is that your game entities have no fear of death, and therefore will behave unrealistically to life-threatening situations.
This problem is further complicated by the fact that in an historical situation such as this, many of the players have a couple orders of magnitude more experience with employing the weapons system in combat than the soldiers they're supposed to be representing.
I have no doubt bmbm has 8000 virtual cockpit hours of combat flying WW2 mmp sims. That's 4 working years of shooting stuff down 9-5. Hans Rudel had 2530 sorties in WW2, probably a record, but most of those would have been under an hour.
Moreover, we've got access to more and better educational materials to train for stuff like deflection shooting.
So, given all this how do you make a bomber intercept believable? If you have gunner AI and make him realistically wild, you reward the unrealistically good pilots on the other side, and make flying bombers extremely unrewarding. If you make the gunners unrealistically good, so that fighter interceptors have to fly like experten, the experten whine that they've got to fly like experten.
And then there's the problem of bombing accuracy. High-level bombing is not very accurate; and, in terms of crew and material per pound of explosive delivered, is much more expensive then a good ol' fashioned JABO run. F/Bs can also fight back, and fly reasonably fast. The historical choice for level bombing had a lot to do with survivability: dive bombing a target could have success, but you were likely to encounter appalling loss rates from AAA and fighters preying on low-level a/c. But in a game, AAA is lethal to one side only, and it costs a lot of resources to simulate it in historically convincing numbers. If you make the AAA superlethal, then dogfights become exercises in ack-dragging. If not, then it's much simpler to just divebomb a target.
In the end, the LW pilots whine without realizing how good they've got it. And the bulletin boards echo with the cries of the posters' fathers. And people waive their joysticks around as if that should impress us. And buff drivers _always_ get screwed.
Oh and batz, germany lost WW2.
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Oh and batz, germany lost WW2.
What's that got to do with anything?
Bombers didn't beat Germany ground forces did. The cumulative impact of the bomber war in Europe didn't reach its expected potential until late in the war (late 44-45). By that time the Red Army was already in position to finish off Germany.
However, this has nothing to do with my point.
The bomber gunners in WWIIOL aren't the same as AH or WBs; they are much harder to aim with. In my time in wwiiol I was never even pinged by a bomber's defensive gun. The problem is that you can dump all your ammo into to a DB-7 from dead 6 and it flies on.
My point was how games model 'strat'. Not about how bombers get modeled. The reasons bomber guns get 'tweaked' and DMs get ‘manipulated’ is because the bomber guy complains about how useless bombers are with out such tweaks. The same way they whine for 'strat'.
Due to the way these games model 'strat' it encourages 'strat' folks to grab a bomber and dive bomb, err glide bomb. The way these games model 'strat' is to give a few of these types of players the ability to impact the fun of 100s of others.
When folks point out how stupid that is the 'building battlers' make stupid replies like 'why don't you fly around for an hour + defending' etc...
The buff pilot doesn't get screwed, he only thinks he does. He thinks his one little bomber ought to be able impact every one else. Limit his impact and he cries about how pointless bombers are.
You don't make 'bomber intercept' believable until you make 'strat' believable. Blowing up a couple or 3 factories, or as in the case of AH 1 building, is not believable; it's silly.
FYI
Its not hard to plan a strategy in a 2/3 hour event for bombers. Everyone knows exactly how much fuel the other guy has. Every knows you need to hit target XX by XX time to be able to rtb before the frame ends.
Send in fighters to keep the enemy cap down and bring the bombers in as late as possible.
The only time in events where Bombers get mauled is when the defender can stay beyond the range of the initial sweeps and escort. Then they get mauled.
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If Bmbm says it, believe it.
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well, yeah, there is the other matter that WW2, like all wars, wasn't fought in the manner most efficient for the machinery -- the biggest impact the multiengined bombers had was in luring those krauts up in their vaunted sturmgruppen so they'd lose the battle of attitrion. As a result of the inefficiency of means, the strat makers have to figure out some BS social engineering method to make it work. That's why mission-based stuff is more successful. "strat" just doesn't work if you only model half the story; and yes, in PvP, all strat is punitive. If you destroy an enemy base, and the other side loses all his first-line fighters, or if you destroy an enemy factory and get a better tech fighter, the effect is the same: someone gets their bellybutton kicked more easily.
So sure, play something mission-based if you want to relieve the glory days of the Reich. An artificial environment like WW2OL or AH is only gonna make you frustrated.
As for the situation in question, it wasn't an "end of frame" rush -- the distances to the target were too great for that. Betties were at FL 20 and 18; Zekes at 22k; route to IP was a slight dogleg, but we timed it so the Zekes and betties arrived over the target at the same time. Zekes came in from NNE of target and showed up on scopes 1 minute before betties from WNW. One squadron of spits moved to intercept the first spike, the other stayed in reserve over target. Zekes were strictly controlled to maintain alt discipline. By the time they figured out the bombers were somewhere else, they had been beat down and chased away. A few made it into the boxes, but their attacks were hasty enough that they didn't have a good angle.
While AH always had a better sim than WB, the WB had a scenario design team that often knew what they were doing, and could create events where tactics beyond "buzzer bombrushes" were necessary.
Anyway, it's just one example among many.
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You can still attack from the rear, just can't fly a straight line.
Then again, every game I've ever played had concessions made to beef up the bomber's defense.
Laser type gunning ability, extended range on the guns, golden bbs, or uber-AI. Then there's the ever present range finders.
When I'm just playing the game, I'll attack a bomber... but if I'm doing one of those wars where your pilot's life matters, I *MAY* attack a bomber because they typically just need one round and it always goes somewhere vital.
-SW
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Originally posted by Wotan
This rant is more then you asked for but wth...
Sounds like most of the 'strat' players in AH.
The idea that folks should fly cap for an hour and 30 minutes being bored off their arse is just justifying the lameness that is 'strat'.
Even if folks were willing to spend time being bored flying defensive cap the attackers would pull the some BS 'fly across Europe NOE' (as if Europe was unpopulated; even the RAF Dambusters flying NOE at night took terrific losses). All these games should only allow bombs to be dropped from the bomb aimer’s position and only from the cockpit if they could historically.
The stupidity folks put in their games and call it 'strat' is mind boggling. This includes AH. Shifting the balance so that a gaggle of attention starved tards can effectively impact the fun of 100s of others just to placate those who prefer building battling over A2A combat is ridiculous. All the bombers sorties combined in ww2 did not have anything close to the effect that 'strat' players expect in these games. WWIIOL is just another half-assed war game with made up rules to suite the bbs signature generals.
The BS about 'never attack a bomber from the rear' is flight game nonsense.
Goering ordered a stop to head on attacks because only experten could even land hits. After the HO where do you end up? Pulling a 180 then trying to catch back up to the formation. With escorts you are effectively out of the fight. If you didn’t get any kills on your 1 pass then that was it.
The Sturmgruppen flew right up the arse of a Bomber formation killing one after another. If they could attack B17s and B24s this way a DB-7 should be np unless the plane is bugged like in wwiiol.
His 8000 hours in the 'virtual cockpit' was in WBs where they played lethality and buff tuff roulette. There's nothing intimidating about that.
You've obviously never played WW2OL.
First, flying cap isn't like AH. Sure, it may be boring, but with WW2OL there is a finite level of equipment and there are supply lines. Things actually have to moved to the front lines (by waiting for AI to do it or doing it manuallly). Flying strat ties up resources. You have to choose what missions are priority.
There also isn't really any radar in WW2OL. You don't have to fly NOE. You just have to hope you don't get caught. THEN, you have to bomb from the bombsight. There isn't any autopilot, so you'd better have your plane trimmed out well or a bomber with you. Unless you are flying a milk run to an undefended city, which is a waste of resources, (or have a good fighter presence where you are going) your chances of getting back alive aren't great.
Also, attacking many bombers in this game from the rear isn't a bad way to attack them. Sometimes it's the best. Unless you take a round in the forehead.
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Dont forget the deadly AI. Flying along by the town or AB and next thing you know
"Pilot 1 hit in the arms"
"Pilot 1 hit in the legs"
"Pilot 1 hit in the head"
"Pilot 1 hit in the torso"
Then black screen into the ground.........DOH!
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Great posts, Dinger and Batz.
I guess the answer is to have the buffs both historicaly inaccurate; and historicaly huge in number.
In AH terms; this would mean:
1) Formations only available if 3 or more players get together (enable formations with the mission editor only)
2) Force F6 drops if in a formation
3) Enable F3 drops if singleton.
This would give both the 8 th. airforce "giant mission" and the RAF "pathfinder/dambuster mythos.
That'll fix the current MA *****ing. As for strat; I agree it's the weakest part of any sim.
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well, yeah, there is the other matter that WW2, like all wars, wasn't fought in the manner most efficient for the machinery -- the biggest impact the multiengined bombers had was in luring those krauts up in their vaunted sturmgruppen so they'd lose the battle of attitrion.
Did you just type that out so you could use words like 'kraut' and 'vaunted sturmgruppen'?
As a result of the inefficiency of means, the strat makers have to figure out some BS social engineering method to make it work.
Don't make the assumptiion that 'strat' was designed based on some master plan. It just developed and was tweaked bit by bit. That's one of the reason's its just silly. Any number of fellas on this forum have made better suggestions for a 'strat' model that seem better planned then either AH or wwiiol.
Strat can be designed to reward a certain behavior and tactic and to discourage another.
That's why mission-based stuff is more successful. "strat" just doesn't work if you only model half the story; and yes, in PvP, all strat is punitive. If you destroy an enemy base, and the other side loses all his first-line fighters, or if you destroy an enemy factory and get a better tech fighter, the effect is the same: someone gets their bellybutton kicked more easily.
The reason missions and base rapes are 'efficient'' in AH is because of how the reset trigger is set. Change that trigger and player behavior will adapt. If you are looking for specific suggestions search the forum there have been many.
So sure, play something mission-based if you want to relieve the glory days of the Reich. An artificial environment like WW2OL or AH is only gonna make you frustrated.
Who said that? I dunno what's got your panties bunched, and don't really care but I am not Mandoble or Ram or Minus and any of that lwobble crap you are trying to insert into the thread certainly means nothing to me. Maybe you percieved my 1st reply as a criticism of your boy BmBm and it touched a nerve.
If so you will get over it...
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background info for you guys:
- no stress model allows DB7s to dive bomb at high speeds
- the DB7 has a DM bug, it can take 88 rounds to the rear in the engines and not take damage
- WW2OL's 20mm DM (IMHO) is fubared and fails under FPS load
- the DB7 engines are modeled better than they were (runs indefinitely on a rating that irl ran at 5 mins max)
- the visual range in WW2OL is -up to- 3000m (their netcode can cause this to drop)
- the 88 AI sucks for damage, once again I believe due to fps related problems
Things are really bad at the moment, lotsa Axis players are talking about quiting, CRS seema bit slow on the "fix" (whatever they decide). The squad I play with used to have 30+ players on during its peak hours, now we're lucky if you get 10 between two squads.
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Originally posted by Vulcan
background info for you guys:
- no stress model allows DB7s to dive bomb at high speeds
- the DB7 has a DM bug, it can take 88 rounds to the rear in the engines and not take damage
- WW2OL's 20mm DM (IMHO) is fubared and fails under FPS load
- the DB7 engines are modeled better than they were (runs indefinitely on a rating that irl ran at 5 mins max)
- the visual range in WW2OL is -up to- 3000m (their netcode can cause this to drop)
- the 88 AI sucks for damage, once again I believe due to fps related problems
Things are really bad at the moment, lotsa Axis players are talking about quiting, CRS seema bit slow on the "fix" (whatever they decide). The squad I play with used to have 30+ players on during its peak hours, now we're lucky if you get 10 between two squads.
The Axis players are talking about quitting because we've kicked their butts two campaigns straight. The game itself is fine.
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I don't know crap about WWIIOL but -bmbm- is the man. He and daff founded the 56th FG.
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Axis won 4 straight then we win 2 and they get upset. Sounds like certain countrys here
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Originally posted by Dinger
So sure, play something mission-based if you want to relieve the glory days of the Reich. An artificial environment like WW2OL or AH is only gonna make you frustrated.
Why are you even trying to bring this up? I don't recall Batz or anyone else mentioning anything related to what you're trying to bring up.
ack-ack
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Originally posted by Martlet
The Axis players are talking about quitting because we've kicked their butts two campaigns straight. The game itself is fine.
lol, I guess you haven't seen that video of the Havoc taking multiple 88mm hits to the port engine and taxiing off. Yeah, nothing wrong with the game. HAHAHAHAHAHA
ack-ack
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Originally posted by Ack-Ack
lol, I guess you haven't seen that video of the Havoc taking multiple 88mm hits to the port engine and taxiing off. Yeah, nothing wrong with the game. HAHAHAHAHAHA
ack-ack
Sure I have. The wings were shot off. If you shoot a plane in the wing, what would you like to have happen?
Here's an idea. Shoot the pilot.
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Originally posted by Martlet
Sure I have. The wings were shot off. If you shoot a plane in the wing, what would you like to have happen?
Here's an idea. Shoot the pilot.
Actually no, they shot the ENGINES, the wings fell off, then after about 5-6 88 hits to the ENGINES the engines were restarted.
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That's not what I remember seeing.
Post the video again.
Even if that DID happen, I've seen odd things in every game I've played. It hardly means there's a modeling problem. I've had my havoc engines shot and caught on fire by smg's.
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In the video the 88 gunner was shooting only the rear engines, didnt even try for the fuselage or other parts of the aircraft.
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Meatwad here is what is supposed to happen.
88 shell hits an engine.
Entire plane disintergrates.
Not wing tip falls off and engine is left intact.
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I saw this video a few days ago and it was pretty dumb.
Whatever the politics of ww2ol may be when a plane repeatedly hit by either large caliber AP or HE in the back of the nacele that engine shold be gone and most likely the landing gear should be gone too..
So the modeling is clearly wrong. There can be no reasonable debate about that.
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Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
I saw this video a few days ago and it was pretty dumb.
Whatever the politics of ww2ol may be when a plane repeatedly hit by either large caliber AP or HE in the back of the nacele that engine shold be gone and most likely the landing gear should be gone too..
So the modeling is clearly wrong. There can be no reasonable debate about that.
One instance doesn't indicate bad modelling. It may indicate attempted realism in an unreal situation.
For example, AP rounds obviously react different than HE rounds. When you shoot at buildings or armor the difference is obvious.
What's an AP round do when it hits an object with less resistance?
Regardless, having few instances of fubared interactions doesn't make the game garbage. In most of the instances I've encountered, it's much more realistic than other games I've played. That's about all you can expect from a game. After all, it's just that. A game.