Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Yeager on September 08, 2001, 04:54:00 PM
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Pyro,
Is there anything you can do to make the suicide attacks on the CV more difficult.
This has been a primary feature of AH gameplay since the inclusion of CVs into the game.
I can live with it (and have) but I wonder if it is on your list of problems to think about or if you even consider it a problem.
Thnx,
Yeager
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uhmmm i think suicide attacks on a carrier were in real life too?? divine wind??
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Didn't torpedo and dive bombers have horrendous losses against CVs in WW2?
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mm, true...but...IMO it kills gameplay in MA
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Didn't torpedo and dive bombers have horrendous losses against CVs in WW2?
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Yes funked, I know this and you know I know this and I know you know I know this that you know.
Anyhoo....
a single gameboy grabbing for three minutes in a P38 flys over the CV and drops down through the ack, drops his bombs 1k up, blows up and kills a CV that took hours to get into a meaningful position.
I simply wonder if anything can or should be done to affect this particular play.
Y
[ 09-08-2001: Message edited by: Yeager ]
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you can do what they did in real life yeager, cap the fleet with hellkitties
with 2 dedicated defensive fighters over a carrier, who maintain discipline and only engage threats to the fleet the fleet will be very hard to kill
the reason suicide attacks work is because everyone is busy furballing at 1k feet so someone who grabs to 7k feet they have an easy time of it.
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A carrier receiving 2 1k bombs plus several rocket hits would be in *serious* trouble.
Zigrat is correct, if a CV has no CAP it should be easy pickings. Even a buff can nail it if no cap is above it.
BTW, all it takes is 1 person in the 5" guns firing at the diving kamikaze jabo to kill it. 1 or 2 shots and that plane is history.
Considering the huge amount of planes a CV launches, unlimited PT's and LVT's, that thing is a floating factory/airfield/vbase and has much more ack and flack protection than any other field and has the plus of having a CA guns to nail whatever it can point its guns at.
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but how are u going to get people to do a cap? even getting 5 people to do a bomber mission is a hasle much less get people to fly around the ship watching for bombers
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yes this CAP argument is BS, its like defending a goon, there is virtually no point in trying!! the lone fighter dives through the scort/cap, and blasts his ass. Same deal with a CV, if the guy is gonna die anyways what does he care if there is cap? who is gonna fly at 20k above the fleet at all times? oh yeah and when cap dives chasin that guy... who is intercepting that next lone ranger with 2 1k's?
A concession is needed
SKurj
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Toughening up the CV would do no good either. The same old kamikaze will either bring friends or simply up as many times as required to pop the CV.
CAPs dont work if they stay OVER the CV (which is what most people think when the word CAP comes up). a single fighter CAP'ing a cv 1 sector away from it is quite capable of smacking any heavy fighter otw to cv. Any fighter has to get to 10k and carry a LOT of ord to do anything..that means either P-38 (which wont go past 300 mph when heavy) or P-47 (same speed limit). Even a seafire is capable of killing such inbound planes.
Having time getting people organized into CAP'ing? Well, hey, you DO have an airfield that not only MOVES, but has a LOT of AAA, and is basically an attack platform. If you dont want to lose it, protect it. Not willing to protect it, you lose it. Otherwise whatever field is under a cv attack would be at its mercy.
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CAP doesn't mean you wait right over the CV waiting for something to come by. It LITERALLY means what it is abbreviated for: "Combat Air Patrol". Same with guarding and escorting goons and buffs.
You fly within certain radius of the CV and see if there is a suspicious single dot which floats around high above the usual CV furball. Chances are, you'll find out its a single P-38L or a P-47D-30. You see him, you attack him before he comes near the CV. That's what i call CAP.
If only two~three people stop to think before engaging into a vulched sea-side base in a low F4U-1C or Seafire, looking for easy kills, one-man kamikazes are most of the times, easily prevented.
It's def. not about gameplay, rather, "immersion" and "thinking tactics".
There's a vulched field, defenses down. Do I have to go there? Yes, I might get easy kills, and feel real superior with the "look of an armada behind me( :) quoted from you-know-who)", but In my case, I usually grab a high alt fighter like P-51 or 109G10 and patrol around our CV. I like doing it, and I've always advocated the use of cooperative fighter power.
You don't need 8~10 fighters over bashed field with ack and VH down. 3~4 is enough, and I always suggest the rest grab alt and fly CAP nearest nmy base.
If when actually someone agrees with me, CVs are safe. If not? Oh well, it goes down as easily as the "Invincible" Yamato went down. Fleet ack is merciless against horizontal attacks like low Torpedo bombers, but quite helpless against attacks from above. Thus, the great Billy Mitchell foresaw the use of Carriers as main tactical unit rather than battleships.
That's why remeber him. :)
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yep. 1 or 2 fighters patrolling each sector near the cv are more than enough to kill any kamikaze. You even have bar dar and dot dar that makes your life easier.
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S!
The answer to this problem is very simple:
Make the small calibre Ack, (20mm and 40mm) on the ships as effective as it was historically.
If you look at the real life results of Japanese Kamikaze attacks, it usally took 100 aircraft attacking to get one suicide plane on target.
It should be a meatgrinder up close, (under 5,000 ft) for attacking aircraft, at least in late war situations.
Take a look at movies from the time of the Japanese Kamikazes coming in at the U.S. ships. The Flak explosions are so thick you can barely make out the aircraft.
In early war, when the numbers of AA mountings on ships were a lot less, then it was much easier to sink a vessel.
AH has it backwards. The large calibre heavy guns are deadly for someone at higher alts, but the small calibre stuff is not nearly as effective.
The other factor of course, is that CV's were very carefully placed so that they were not easily attacked. No operating at 5 miles off the coast as seems to be standard in AH. CV's would move into position, launch their planes, then retreat and come back to receive them.
Plus of course, they had dedicated CAP.
The other issue is bombs which didn't explode. Surprisingly, a huge number of armour piercing bombs either didn't explode, or went right through a ship and exploded in the sea underneath, thereby doing little or no damage. There should be some kind of percentage chance the bombs don't explode. (interestingly, the problem with bombs not exploding continued into modern times. Something like 1/3 of the Argentine standard bombs dropped during the Falklands War failed to explode when they hit their target or the sea)
The other point is that most ships took more weight of bombs than is modelled here.
Sure at Midway 20+ Dauntlesses sunk 3 Japanese Carriers in 5 minutes, but that was because the Japanese Commander had been stupid enough to order the aircraft re-armed, and told the crews to speed up the process by leaving the exchanged bombs on deck. The result was the large number of bombs lying about also exploded and the Carriers sunk lickedy split.
Japanese Carrier also had unarmoured flight decks, which meant they were very vulnerable. U.S. Carriers also were very lightly armoured.
British Carriers had armoured decks, and there are numerous cases of them taking 500 and 1000 lb bombs on the deck and having them not penetrate. The explosion on deck did damage to the people and aircraft up there, but didn't affect the seaworthiness of the Ship itself. Of course the armouring on the British Carriers also meant they couldn't carry as many Aircraft in their hangers.
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We don't even have AP bombs...
SKurj
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It'd be nice to have the option of selecting GP, AP or Incinerary Bombs as well as AP, HE, and Incinerary ammo.
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i think they should increae flak effectiveness, and ack on ships and bases. If u want to bomb a ship u can go by yourself and unless theres other planes in ur way theres very little chance off anything stopping u at untill ur 2k above carrier and already dropped ur bombs
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qqqqq, you wouldn't believe the fuss we had when the CV flak was in god-mode few versions ago :D.. Kaboom.. first ping.. and you are history. :) Anybody remember that ?
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<Small PUNT>
Didn't it just make you SICK to see those airliners hit the WTC towers?
Penalize suicide, Pyro! Please!
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cc Voss... nothing can stop someone like that..
SKurj
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The other element present at Midway was lack of CAP discipline. All the CAP went down to the deck to seal-club the torprons in their Devastators (if any of these sims ever GET a Devastator, I swear to fly at least one sortie a week in it to honor the heroes who went in straight and slow at Midway...huge S!). Nobody stayed high to watch for dive bombers.
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It used to take 6K to sink a CV, now it is 3K. For gameplay, I like 6K better.
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its 2k
SKurj
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what i think HTC was doing was making it so the torpedo actually sinks a ship being 2000lb.
I think any ship hit well with a torpedo should go down but with bombs dropped from the air it should be 4000lb or even 6000lb to make the level bombing as hard as it should be.
I think the real answer is less accurate bombing with larger blast radius.
As for the kamakazi bomber how about making heavy G dive bombs on aircraft that didnt dive bomb( eg b17 and lancs) cause bomb hook ups or better still explosions.
so if you crash dive then drop 6 bombs they explode on exit and kill you :)