Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: muckmaw on June 02, 2003, 11:17:40 AM
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Here is my understanding of the current Strat system in Aces High.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
The main objective of a Strategic mission is to disable to enemy countries ability to make war.
By launching a large mission of bomber, and destroying a Zone City, we eliminate the city's ability to resupply the HQ and the Zone Factories.
This mission would have to be followed up by a second mission to destroy the Zone's AAA, Fuel, Ammo, and Training facilities, thereby increasing the time greatly, that these systems are resupplied at the Airfield level.
A thrid Jabo/Heavy bomber mission would have to roll, to take out the specific targets at the airfield level. (Tactical mission)
Once these 3 missions are done, the enemy country should be incapacitated.
So why are we, the "Strat" players, not doing the above?
It seems to me, all 3 missions would have to be run concurrently, as city would be reupped by the time we were on mission 3.
Also, are not these targets easily and rather quickly resupplied by goons?
I ask these questions, as I want to learn more on the Strategic aspects of the game. I consider attacking fields, tactical missions.
The ongoing uproar of "Furballer" vs "Strat" had me thinking.
Some of THE BEST dogfight I have ever seen, centered around a large mass of Heavy bombers when their escorts duked it out with the interceptors.
I'd like to start planning and running more Strat missions, but need more info on whether or not it's even worth doing.
I think missions like these can benefit both camps, to some extent.
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Moving fields closer together is bad for the bomber, it means the suicide interceptor can re-up with greater frequency closer to the action and keep making their six o'clock suicide attacks on the buffs until they finally down them all, couple that with the ammount of jets in the arena's which was completely thrown out of balance by adding the 163 then you have a recipe for why bombers don't attack strat objects often despite HT saying in an interview some time ago that's what he'd like to see.
On the rare occassion where bombers have managed to get escort (most fighter squadrons talk the talk but don't walk the walk) it's been quite intense fighting for them, a rolling furball 4 sectors long until the jet's come along.
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The jets are unbalancing, and a real pain in the prettythang.
Rev, you don't fly knights, do you?
If you did, you could fly with my squad. We fly about 10 bomber formations on a mission, and have our own escort squad. We also run join ops with 2 other squads. Escorts have never been a problem.
The 20 ME-163's coming to intercept...that's a problem.
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I have never seen a good fight around fluffs unless you count fluffs horning in on a good fight.... in that case... the fight was good despite the fluffs.
lazs
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I've seen several, Lazs
We flew one just last week, on an HQ raid.
The Bish upped 190's and 163's.
We had escorts running the length of the bomber stream, even assigning escorts to cover the 2 flights that took damage and had lagged behind.
The extended furball was quite exhilierating. It was very intense.
I'll be putting one up tonight. I'll announce it over the country channel and you're more than welcome to fly escort.
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I used to fly knights but that was as a member of a Luftwaffe squad. I'll see if the guys in my squad fancy a change of scenery
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The reason nobody does it is simple,
It's a huge amount of work for very little gain.
So the fuel will take another 30minutes to come back up. You could spend the same resources you used porking the strat to simply shut down and take the field.
Strat works in the sense that it behaves in the way it's designed to.
But it doesn't work in the sense that outside of HQ, it has virtually no impact on gameplay.
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Muck
I was craving some buff time so I upped some Bostons Saturday night. Had no less than 9 Me163s on me and 3 262s. With the limited range of fire the top turrent gives and the sheer number of high speed cannon-passes I was taking, I was pasted in a flash
Thought I'd try again, a bit further away, more alt but a B17 this time. Just 2 163s this time and 4 262s. Managed to get a few pings before going down :)
Last sortie of the eve was a Lancaster. No super planes that time but had a yak clobber the lead Lanc, and all the damage carried over to the other planes (guns)
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Muckmaw: I think there has to be a greater reward in the current strat system for damaging factories and alike.
But first, you got to get rid of that resupply option for the M3 and C-47. Let the game resupply your field. Downtimes should be downtimes but players resuppling in masses has wrecked incentive to do any strat runs like HQ raids.
If player resupply is gone, then change other strat items. Destroy the fuel factory, ALL bases are reduced to 50% fuel. Destroy the train station, resupply times decrease by 50%. Destroy the HQ, resupply is turned off and sector counters are dead with only field dar. Etc. etc.
The key is to put a lot of benefit into destroying a strat target. That way there is a huge incentive for country 'generals' to organize a buff raid on a strategy target.
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Originally posted by Mister Fork
Muckmaw: I think there has to be a greater reward in the current strat system for damaging factories and alike.
But first, you got to get rid of that resupply option for the M3 and C-47. Let the game resupply your field. Downtimes should be downtimes but players resuppling in masses has wrecked incentive to do any strat runs like HQ raids.
If player resupply is gone, then change other strat items. Destroy the fuel factory, ALL bases are reduced to 50% fuel. Destroy the train station, resupply times decrease by 50%. Destroy the HQ, resupply is turned off and sector counters are dead with only field dar. Etc. etc.
The key is to put a lot of benefit into destroying a strat target. That way there is a huge incentive for country 'generals' to organize a buff raid on a strategy target.
]
EXACTLY!
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during the free month i went on one of them hq raids...after flying about 1 hour to get to hq i calibrated my bombsight about 3 seconds to late then immediatly got snuffed by 163's...
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The problem is that enemy buffs do not show up on radar until its too late (aka 1.5 sectors from friendly field and 25k), so no fighter other than maybe 109s and Me163 and 262's can get up there to stop HQ porking (which can be accomplished by just 3 people flying buff formations).
I think a better solution would be to make buffs appear on dot dar as triangles rather than dots when they go above 20k. That way a raid can be seen coming and give defenders enough warning to scramble the prop fighters for defense. I remember Zigrat's HQ defense missions when in the NDISLES map, we usually saw a mass of dots SW of 19 (CV dar would give dot dar) and knew they were coming. He had the time to get 12 of us up in the air, fly and position us for the buff attack, and then the fun began as 109s and p51's tangled it up there at 30k with the b17's. And this was before the buffs had formations. It was a blast when we DID get a warning. Many times we would fail to stop the buffs and 4 or 5 lancs got through and porked HQ (most of the times thanks to the escorts), and some other times we were able to stop the buffs altogether.
So IMO , the solution is to create rear-only buff-only bases at hi alt (10k alt) so buffs can launch and not waste time climbing, and 20k+ buff dot dar so defenders can scramble and have a shot at defending the strats.
'cause right now theres no way to know if the incoming mass of dots that pops up outta nowhere is just a furball gangbangfest at 10k, a NOE milkrun at 500ft or a 29k HQ run.
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Originally posted by Mister Fork
Muckmaw: I think there has to be a greater reward in the current strat system for damaging factories and alike.
But first, you got to get rid of that resupply option for the M3 and C-47. Let the game resupply your field. Downtimes should be downtimes but players resuppling in masses has wrecked incentive to do any strat runs like HQ raids.
If player resupply is gone, then change other strat items. Destroy the fuel factory, ALL bases are reduced to 50% fuel. Destroy the train station, resupply times decrease by 50%. Destroy the HQ, resupply is turned off and sector counters are dead with only field dar. Etc. etc.
The key is to put a lot of benefit into destroying a strat target. That way there is a huge incentive for country 'generals' to organize a buff raid on a strategy target.
Better yet lets just have a botton in the control tower, push it and all enemy fields are reduced to Hurri I's for 3 hours! :rolleyes:
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as to why it's not done in a manner to take full advantage of the strat system, i.e., a field is without an strat element for 5 hours instead of 2, it incredibly difficlut to get people to pull in one direction. also, the never ending quest that causes a new pilot to up from a hot field time after time thinking "this time i'll get that so & so."
your question, i think, goes to the heart of the furball v strat discussion. your layout, to my understanding is how the game should be played. why isn't it, i think the difficultly level pulling it off because you need, 2 to 3 to bomb city, 2 to 3 to bomb facility, then 4 to 6 to jabo effectively. don't quibble on the #'s, you get the point. that sort of mission requires timing something unheard or relatively so in aces high. at the least its a degree of ops precision that is rare.
all the skills necessary to pull off what you suggest fly in the face of the new pilots joy in getting off a field & looking for somone to nail. paitence isn't necessary to find an a2a con. not a landable set of kills, just to find one.
the new bombing system has made strat bombing more realistic, i.e. more difficlut compared to what we used to have. many deem the new system so difficlut that we see low level bombing & low flying 262's in a frequency we never had prior.
the hardest achievement is to get 6 to 20 people doing it. lol.
what a game it would be if strat bombing routinely targeted city & factories simulatenously followed a min later by a jabo raid. wow. that would be something to behold. sort of sounds like ww2 doesn't it?
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muck.. you and I have a different idea of what is a "good fight".
I do not consider climbing to 15K or so in late dee 9's or pee51's in order to attack escorted ack wagon fluffs a... fight... much less a furball.
I think that is the real problem... the real missunderstanding. The furballers only have an hour or two to play and they want to fight other guys and they want to see a lot of planes but.. they want pretty even fights.
strat, by it's nature, is a steamroller or it is bad planning.. what you consider excieting (all the prep and anticipation) is boring to us.. Late war planes are pretty boring also. Missuns well done are missuns that are boring.
I hope that the new missun area will work out well for the building battlers and that the MA can then get back to what it has allways been... air combat between players.
We don't like to come on to get our AH fix for our 1-2 hours only to see that you can't take off from this field or.. this field only has 25% fuel or this field has 20 vultures over it and no ack... or fly 2 sectors to see that the red bar is nothing but a useless field full of osties and m16's.. The "war" is meaningless to us except for the fact that your "war" has made it difficult to find any fun place to fly to or from for our allottec couple of hours.
this does not endear you to us. We do not admire you for it.
lazs
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does not like green eggs and ham
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From my point of view, strat model is...hmmm....porked. I think mainly by 2 reasons: fluff guns are absolutely laughable (on the tough side, of course) and strat targets are too easy to destroy with jabos, let alone fluffs.
From my point of view, a strategic target ought to need a strategic hit to suffer any real damage. And by strategic hit I mean not less than 10 or so formations of hvy fluffs (B-17's or hvier).
Besides that, fluff guns should resemble, even by far, I mean, have some (even a light one) touch, aspect, to what they were in real life. I think everyone of us have seen that footage where german planes slowly approached allied bombers' 6, and mauled the buff very badly. Again the old dead horse: try to do it in AH.
If some resemblance to RL heavy bombers combat flying were implemented, bombers should overcome the risk of being anihilated by using hvy fighter escort. Should they let the interceptors pass and work comfortably (I mean they are able to gain buffs' 6) fluffs are toasted.
So, to make it short, make cities and manufacturing plants strategic targets, and the ones that allow a country to produce fuel, ord and even planes. Make them hard to destroy, requiring an awful lot of lbs. needed to lay them to rubble. Make fuel, ord, ack and hangar regeneration time much, and I say MUCH, shorter if strategic targets are intact. And, please, make AH fluff guns something that we can reckon when we see some WWII gun footage.
I don't engage buffs on a regular basis. And I attack them less and less. Makes no fun attacking a zillion guns magically convergingn on your plane, which fires up to absolutely aberrant ranges with incredibly unhistorical accuracy for what we pretend to be a "sim". While it looks like glass, gunner positions are not covered by glass, but for some alien-technology-armoured-transparent material, which basicly provides them with immunity against aircraft fire.
Only if fluff model is closer to what it was flying bombers in WWII I will find my respect for fluff drivers closer to the one I feel for hvy bomber crews in WWII. Currently I have zero respect for them. Well...maybe 0.5 in a 10 scale after the gunsight improvement. At the time being I see them only as annoying bugs in an otherwise...well, let's leave aside GV's :D... very good game.
OK OK OK....I will wait for AH2 :D
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Originally posted by lazs2
muck.. you and I have a different idea of what is a "good fight".
I do not consider climbing to 15K or so in late dee 9's or pee51's in order to attack escorted ack wagon fluffs a... fight... much less a furball.
I think that is the real problem... the real missunderstanding. The furballers only have an hour or two to play and they want to fight other guys and they want to see a lot of planes but.. they want pretty even fights.
strat, by it's nature, is a steamroller or it is bad planning.. what you consider excieting (all the prep and anticipation) is boring to us.. Late war planes are pretty boring also. Missuns well done are missuns that are boring.
I hope that the new missun area will work out well for the building battlers and that the MA can then get back to what it has allways been... air combat between players.
We don't like to come on to get our AH fix for our 1-2 hours only to see that you can't take off from this field or.. this field only has 25% fuel or this field has 20 vultures over it and no ack... or fly 2 sectors to see that the red bar is nothing but a useless field full of osties and m16's.. The "war" is meaningless to us except for the fact that your "war" has made it difficult to find any fun place to fly to or from for our allottec couple of hours.
this does not endear you to us. We do not admire you for it.
lazs
I'm not here to be endeared or admired. I'm here to have fun, same as you.
I was surprised to see you landing kills in a 109 last night. Obviously, you have no problem with that aircraft. Unusual to see you out of the FM2.
I only have 2 hours to play last night. I was able to plan and execute 1 mission, and fly a fighter sortie or 2. All in the mission had a great time. That's why we're here. Ans we're planning many more of these raids, as we are enjoying them immensly. Look for at least 3 tonight.
What you consider exciting...chasing each other's tails on the deck, live, die, land, repeat, is boring to me. I can only do it so much and then have to move on.
A mission that is planned and executed to the letter is the greatest achievement for a strategic player.
I'm sorry if "My war" is interferring with your fun. I sincerely am. But this is how AH was designed. If HT did not want us bombing airfields and strat targets..well, we would'nt have bombers.
The only thing I can tell you is to keep talking to HT about how you think the game should be played. If you're right, he'll listen.
Continue on with the "Move the fields closer" and "Harden the Fuel and Hangars" mantra. If HT thinks it's a good plan, we know he'll run with it.
Meanwhile, until there is a change in programming, I'm going to continue planning and executing missions as I and my kind enjoy, with no regard for your idea of fun. Sorry, but I'm sure you understand.
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Pepe-
Can you produce some documentation as to the effective range of Heavy Bomber's defensive guns?
I mean, something more that what you've seen on TV?
I'm sure HTC would consider making changes to the defensive aramament if there was documentation produced.
And once again, I can live without the repect, admiration, or love of some guys I've never met, who don't share the same ideas of an enjoyable game, and have no bearing on my life aside from a video game.
Trust me, I'll survive.
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muck.. see the challenge thread..
I have no problem with you ruining my fun... other fighters do it all the time. I just don't want you to do it to easily and without any skill or effort involved and I don't want to be forced to play your way..
Your "missun" meant nothing in the scheme of things.. For me... 2 hours to capture a meaningless field is silly.. for me... logging on onlyu to find that the arena is porked with no radar or no fuel or whatever is a waste of time.
lazs
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Originally posted by muckmaw
Pepe-
Can you produce some documentation as to the effective range of Heavy Bomber's defensive guns?
I mean, something more that what you've seen on TV?
I'm sure HTC would consider making changes to the defensive aramament if there was documentation produced.
Does the name Tony Williams ring a bell? ;)
And once again, I can live without the repect, admiration, or love of some guys I've never met, who don't share the same ideas of an enjoyable game, and have no bearing on my life aside from a video game.
Hopefully you will keep on like that. Otherwise would be insane. :D
Trust me, I'll survive.
I don't have any doubt about it...after all you fly fluffs :D
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methinks HTC just needs to model the gunner's themselves. Its really,really, really hard to kill a gunner, even a P38 shooting 4 50 cals and a 20mm into the very TAIL of a bomber from dead 6 wont kill the tail gunner unless you pour half your ammo into it....and even that is rare.
the turbolaser issue is another matter. Ive found that since HTC added the checks so the buffs didnt shoot guns through the plane's fuselage (aka top turret and ball turret shooting dead 6), the turbolaser lethality has gone down a bit.
If memory serves me right, buff guns use the same 50 cal as the M3 and M16.. but i've yet to be shot down by a single ping from an m16/m3 at d1.4, yet I can fully expect a bomber to ping me once and instantly whack me out of the sky, regardless of whether im flying above it, under it, in front of it (and flying parallel) or behind it. Heck a few nights ago i shot down a LANCASTER with my A20's top turret at d1.3 with my being in his very low 6.. fired a short burst and saw like 5 or 6 hit sprites spread through the left wing all the way to the tail section. Lancs 2 left engines smoked and it lost a piece of its tail. What fighter can claim to be able to do the same? Nuts I tell ya.
As Pepe, I rarely bother attacking buffs anymore unless im in a 262, which can hit a buff and smack it off the sky in 1 hit before it can track you with its guns.
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Originally posted by Pepe
Does the name Tony Williams ring a bell? ;)
And once again, I can live without the repect, admiration, or love of some guys I've never met, who don't share the same ideas of an enjoyable game, and have no bearing on my life aside from a video game.
Hopefully you will keep on like that. Otherwise would be insane. :D
Trust me, I'll survive.
I don't have any doubt about it...after all you fly fluffs :D
Actually, Tony Williams does not ring a bell.
Could you enlighten me, please?
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Tony is some dweeb that trolls these forums. He reeks of gun oil, speaks proper english, has some sort of diploma and has written children's books on the subject of nerf weaponry.
;) :D
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Well let me play devils advocate here a bit....and yes, my bias is that I do like the buffs. I like fighters too but I like the bomber mission.
I'm hearing how potent the buff guns are. I'm truly not seeing it. The buff's Im flying are largely the Boston and Lancaster. The Lanc has the tail gun, and the nose and top turrents are much smaller caliber. The Boston just has the top turrent and as any good fighter guy knows, it cant fire dead six since its tail is its way. So to kill a Boston, just line up on its 6. Lancs, will, attack from directly underneath and hit a wingtip. Poof. Further, the gun convergence on the buffs seems to be very very short. Spray from afar and you kill the buff.
We also have to be a better bomber now...sync'ing up the sight and such which is till quite a fine art. I miss most of the time, thus the larger bombloads I take (Lancs and 18 500s).
I guess I'm not uderstanding is this...if we have a strat system, let's honor it. If bombers are supposed to have an impact on cities, fuel, etc...then so be it. But right now, a bombing raid, if it makes it through the hordes of Spits and La7s that dominate the arena, is quickly undone by a resupply. I mean, why bother?
Surely the furballers are giddy right now, the bomber threat has pretty much been nixxed. All the bombers I'm seeing are dweeby NOE things...just a lame effort to sneak as many eggs as possible onto a field. A turbo Jabo.
I haven't seen too many of the big missions people used to up, say the MAW, 332nd or others...I recall big missions of 10+ bombers to hit 1 or 2 fields or a strat target. No one seems to do that stuff anymore
Muck, you have some good points. I don't have the answers but do agree that bufsquealing is fun, if rewarding. Knowing the base you dropped will be back up before you land makes it all seem like a waste of time.
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Originally posted by muckmaw
Actually, Tony Williams does not ring a bell.
Could you enlighten me, please?
Wow! .... Do you actually read the board? :eek:
Ok...just in the remote case you are not kidding, you can check his web page (http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk/). You might also make a BBS search. Watchout, there is so much light it could make you blind! ;)
Cheers,
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Thanks for the link.
I do recall trying to muddle through all that once before...a long time ago, but I did not know the authors name.
Perhaps we should forward that page over to HTC. Maybe they don't know about it either. Of course, I'd be pretty surprised if they did not. May be worth a shot to further your position.
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Muck,
I think this has been said, showed, thrown to, whined about, put, presented or whatever form of communication used more than a thousand times with all kind of proofs in order to have HT "fixing" (I'm using the quotation marks in order to relieve some of the stress the word "fix" seems to put in the system when talking about buff gunnery) buff guns, mainly the aspects relating to lethality and accuracy. Wich relates mainly to guns convergence and absence of "flexible mount" effects (recoil, vibration, lack of stability) modelled.
I firmly believe that we are talking about a straight gameplay concession here. Buffs were dead meat to interceptors in WWII. Both in the sense of being killed with ease and in the sense of Bombers not able to kill their aggressors.
IIRC, and very briefly, 8thAF daylight raids were just on the brisk of stopping just by the attrition rate, and it was only when long range escorts, mainly P-47's and P-51's were ready, their job was possible again.
Finally, and just as I think you felt offended about my "respect" commentary, you have to think of it as "game" respect. I wouldn't be so....stupid? as to judge someone else on such serious terms based only on an online game experience. ;)
If that's how you felt, I'm sorry, and please accept my appologies. Didn't mean any disrispect on a personal sense.
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No disrespect taken, and no need to apologize, though I appreciate yor sensitivity. It is quite refreshing on any BBS.
You are probably quite right about it being a game concession.
Perhaps it was done to help simulate the escorts that should be in any mission, but for lackof organization, are not.
The only one who can answer this is Dale.
Do you recall what the loss rate was on the 8th during the peak of operations?
Is that rate similar to the loss rate on a properly, and historically run Buff mission here?
(Those are not rhetorical questions...I'm really asking.)
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Originally posted by lazs2
muck.. see the challenge thread..
I have no problem with you ruining my fun
hmmm didn't think it was possible for furballers to have fun diminished since all they need "is a place."
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no much. the 8th AF had to have below 5% losses per mission or it would lose the attrittion contest.
In AH its exponentially higher, definetely. Not many people bother to land their buffs.
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There were approximately 7000 losses between B17's and B24's alone. Of them, more than 4000 lost in combat, the rest written off due to combat damage or accident. 2500 returned to the U.S. after the war. And bear in mind that this figures comprise the whole campaign. The first phase, where bombers flew alone, with little or no cover was an absolute carnage.
Any bomber in WWII left alone with no escort was pretty much a sitting duck, except, perhaps, Ar234. Boxes and formations improved the survivability of hvy bombers, but not enough, by far, to give them a fair chance of returning after an unescorted raid over enemy territory.
I'm sure someone else in this BBS can explain the whole thing clearer than me.
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The Germans also upped the caliber of their guns so they could hit outside the range of the buff guns. Saw this on wings.
I agree it would be nice if the gun positions were modeled to be more accurately destroyed. But then I would like to see the ability to fill a buff with real players in all gun positions, like the AWIII days.
All in all if you don’t approach buffs the right way they are extremely lethal. But it is awesome to make two or three perfect passes on a formation, bullets all over you, and kill all three without a scratch. Takes patience and skill but is alot of fun.
I agree with Lazs, but I think the buffs bring a frustration that comes with war - getting your bellybutton kicked. If we just had a big furball arena I think it would be much like the first MATRIX unrealistic and over time boring. I think the many different aspects of this game are what makes it very close to real. I think the strat part of the game is critical and creates some excellent furballs.
Mars01 - MAW Blacksheep, XO
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Mars-
Are you going to be on tonight?
If 40 let's me run ops, we're going to be doing some heavy bombing, with escort as well as our usual ops.
Also, the buff missions are not nearly as long as some make them out to be.
Last night, we took 17's w/50% fuel to 15k. We launched from 45, south to I think it was 2 or 3 sectors, leveled at 15 K, and then fly another 1 1/2 sectors to target. We then flew home to 25.
Whats the distance on this?
I remember looking at my stats after the mission and realizing it only took 48 minutes from start to finish.
This is the kind of strat mission I enjoy.
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of course in the end its safer faster and a little more presice to take a bunch of fighters with 3k worth of bombs to do the dirty work...
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Originally posted by vorticon
of course in the end its safer faster and a little more presice to take a bunch of fighters with 3k worth of bombs to do the dirty work...
Of course it is, but it's all about fun, isn't it?
If all we ever did was JABO, this game would bore me to tears. Sometime you need to mix it up.
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"of course in the end its safer faster and a little more presice to take a bunch of fighters with 3k worth of bombs to do the dirty work..."
Safer? nawwwww ;)
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muck... 48 minutes watching paint dry is a VERY long time for me.
hap.. you need to work on the comprehension thing. Either that or simply hang out with beetle and be obtuse together.
lazs
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Muckmaw & All: As the Combat Theare Admin, there are a lot of settings I can change to enhance gamplay.
When discussing strat, there is a setting called "Playerresupplytime" that the admin can set with ranges fom 0-1440 minutes. That's the number of minutes of downtime a resupply box eliminates. Set it to zero or maybe even a lower value like 5 minutes, players can not resupply fields thus eliminating the resuppling dweebing that happens after a HQ raid.
As for radar, we often set the tower dar to higher and more realistic values. We have TOTAL control on distances, icons, and sector bars, flashing field distances for all player objects.
I don't think Dale or Doug need to re-invent the wheel, all I think they need to do is modify some settings to make AH more strategic.
Some items the MA can change:
1. Radar: fullfriendly mode. All friendly a/c are seen where ever they are. This is a realistic item as during WWII, a simple call into air controllers would tell you the location of other friendly craft.
2. Radar: distances - when an enemy aircraft appears on sector count and appears as an enemy dot on the scope (map) and the altitudes for both dot and sector pickups. Also settable are the distance a base/factory starts flashing. Make radar pickup ranges historically correct (I.e. 2 - 3 times the current values).
3. Object hardness and downtimes. We often set this value to longer or shorter ranges depending on the map. lenghten downtimes for other larger objects. Would a town building be historically replaced in 30 minutes? How about an aircraft hangar? Maybe 2-3 hours, but not 30 minutes.
4. Set the AAA setting to .7 from 1.0. Currently most field AAA will take you out with a single hit. We found in the CT that AAA at .7 makes dive bombing a field survivable, but not easy.
The question is would changing any of these values actually improve gameplay. I think reducing AAA to .7, double tower radar pickups, and reduce player resupply to 5 mintues would help.
I will make this point however, Dale and Doug have been doing this for YEARS and they know what makes this game works. Maybe AH2 incorporates a lot of these items into it?
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Hell Ya - Muck, I'll run escort,
I dig recreating situations, that turn into very realistic scenarios in this game.
I guess at times, that is what I like the most. I think it is great to be sitting above a well formed tight group of bombers and pick the enemy off. Bullets everywhere, you hear guns all around you shooting - it surreal.
On the other hand there is nothing worse then escorting a group of bombers that are spread out all over the place and droping like flies, because we can't cover them. So keep em tight Muck!!! lol
I also dig formation flying, so just trying to hold good fighter formation otw to target is a blast for me. I love the peel off to fight. But I love to fly as much as I love to fight.
Especially after two hours this afternoon of just ACM and dog-fighting. (I take advantage when I can lol)
Anyway Air Combat is supposed to be hours of boredom, broken up by seconds of terror. 8) lol. At least thats what they said. I can hear laz gagging. lol
All
Mars01 MAW Blacksheep, XO
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Originally posted by lazs2
muck... 48 minutes watching paint dry is a VERY long time for me.
lazs
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Different strokes, Mr. Lazs.
No one is forcing you to play my way.
Happy furballing.
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Totally off-topic (and clearly bored at work) but wanted to try to correct a misconception. Feel free to ignore if you care to:
Pepe,
I am afraid I have to disagree with your conclusions. From all the things I have seen and heard from various sources (books, documentaries, biographies, and even first hand recounts) bomber guns were lethal as hell and were far from "sitting ducks" when approached from their 6s. Granted most of what I know is about the B-17 and not the other bombers in AH (and as such may not be accurate) but the 17 is the buff I see with the most frequency.
Anyways, prior to the B-17g the chin gunner/bombadier had a hand mountable machine gun much like the waist or cheek positions. The Luftwaffe pilots determined that rather than coming from the 6 o'clock position where there were up to 5 gun positions (three turrets w/ 2 guns each and 2 hand operated guns) that were able to fire upon them (depending on approach angle) and braving the hail of gunfire, approaching head-on from the nose where there were a maximum of 4 gun positions (2 turrets w/ 2 guns each and 2 single hand operated single gun positions) was far more effective. Furthermore, the cheek gun only covered a small portion of sky so if the right approach was made it could be avoided furthering the benefit from this manner of approach. The exploitation of this defensive weakness led to considerable losses and was not solved until the arrival of the G model with its power operated nose turret. At this point the Luftwaffe had to change tactics. This is one of the major sources of early-war bomber losses.
The second major source was the sheer availability of fighters in the area and the depth of defense that was available because of occupied Europe. Having this depth allowed the Luftwaffe to stage attacks all the way into the target and all the way out. Simple law of averages says that the more attacks you suffer the greater the chance of a sucessful one. This is illustrated in the fact that France was considered a "milk run". Think about it. France was the "front line" as it were prior to June '44. The highest concentration of fighters and the most skilled pilots would have been stationed here. Flak was setup the same way. Yet losses were lower enough for the pilots to consider it an "easy" target. Kinda contradictory based on your assumption. Also there were few resources in the European theater to wage war at this time. The U.S. was still ramping up its equipment and manpower and the effects of mobilization wouldn't be felt in Europe until mid '43.
The third major source is escort fighters, but their significance is not what you think it is. By the time effective escort fighters came along with the range for deep penetration raids (discounting the P-38 which had the range from the beginning of the offensive) Germany's defenses had been largely reduced. A wide array of strategic targets had been hit reducing the ability of Germany to wage war. Additionally, the second front had gotten into full swing reducing available defensive resources. The attack through Italy had taken place (if I remember correctly) and nullified that ally forcing another "almost-front". In other words it was a totally different war and the escort fighters were able to further compound this deteriating situation by adding further difficulty to the Luftwaffe's task.
Three other tidbits. 1) I coulnd't find the exact date, but if memory serves the P-51D (lauded as the premiere escort fighter) didn't enter front line service until late 43-early 44. By this time almost two years of night and day bomber raids had been going on destroying Germany's defensive infrastructre and fatiguing crews of both fighters and flak. 2) Final stats for the war indicate that the B-24 was credited with the most fighters kills of any aircraft in service with the B-17 in second. Not the escort fighters. 3) Bomber formations were changed in mid '43 after Curtis LeMay tested his theories with the Bomber group he was in command of. This alone resulted in a double digit percent reduction in losses (cannot remember exact percentage) because bombers were better able to overlap their fire zones.
I won't even go into the effects on the Luftwaffe of their losses in Russia, the experience gap that existed at the beginning of the bombing offensive, or how their best pilot's had had their luck run out (1% chance of death, run a few hundred sorties by the time we are talking about and what do you think the chances are). Nor will I go into the idea that many of the best American pilots rotated back to the States to training new pilots after their tour while the Germans had to fight to the end.
Finally, I think I know the film you are refering to Pepe. The one where the plane is approaching from the 6 o'clock position of a B-17 peppering the left wing with cannons from VERY close range, right? Ever notice that the right wing cannot be seen and hence checked for damage, that the ball turret is facing straight down (the position needed for the gunner to get out) and not moving, the top turret is not moving, the tail gunner does not appear to be firing, AND (whew) no other B-17s can be seen meaning the B-17 is not in formation and now has holes in its defenses? That film is NOT of a functioning B-17. It is a film of a heavily damaged straggler probably just about to have its crew bail out.
Next post will be on topic, I promise :)
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I have not experienced the "laser beams" talked about here. I can hit all day long sometimes and have a fighter not go down. others one hit, one kill. This is exactly what I see when I am flying fighters. Sometimes you get a critical hit, other times you don't.
As for the example given about hitting lanc's from an A-20.. Maybe your gunnery was better (more stable platform, less target relative movement, etc)? Or perhaps you aimed at something other than the tail gunner like wing tips or fuel tanks or whatever?
You complain about a lack of realism but I haven't experienced it. If one fighter had come up on the 6 of a buff formation do you honestly think that every gunner would NOT be sighted in, exclusively, on it? Teh real tactics were to swarm from as many different points as possible with as many fighters as possible so as to reduce the ability of the gunners to focus on a given target.
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to bring up realism & buffing in ah is stupid. if i said it, i'm stupid.
flying bombers at 2k anyplace is stupid.
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Thks for the answer, Bubba :)
However, talking about this, Regensburg and Schweinfurt are the examples of unescorted buff raids.
August '43 raids (Regensburg and Schewinfurt) saw losses of 12 and 14%. This does not take into account write-offs, just planes shot down.
October '43 (Schweinfurt) saw losses of 25% of bombers. After this last one operation, the whole strategy was revamped.
From Juanuary 44 onwards P38's were assigned to escort duties and the whole objective of bomber raids switched from destroying military targets to provoke the answer of german fighters. In fact, destroying german fighters was a precondition for the bombardments to be effective.
German air defense peaked in February 44, but the fate was sealed. Allied air raids targeted Berlin to make german fighter defense engage, and have them destroyed by escorting fighters. Bombers alone can do very little to fighters, as it had previously been shown. Take a look at the statistics (http://www.au.af.mil/au/afhra/wwwroot/aafsd/aafsd_pdf/t159.pdf) of this period, and you will see that from march/april '44 onwards bombers losses are increasingly due to Flak, while the defense fighter's role is steadily decreasing.
After german air defense was destroyed, and only after that, B-17's and B-24's of 8th AF were allowed to pound hard Germany's industry. Even in this situation, the results were questionable, bearing in mind that Germany industrial output peaked in the second half of 1.944.
It is a personal opinion, but I think that aerial bombardment at those times was tremendously effective to break people's morale, but was quite inneffective when it came to effectively disrupt the weapons industry and war production.
Anyway, and back to the point, IMHO, World War II facts tend to prove that bombers were helpless against fighters and, especially, to interceptors, thus needed an escorting force with adequate proportions to answer to expected air opposition.
Of course, I am just a history aficionado, and ready to accept any correction of more qualified oppinions. :)
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bubba.. the bomber streams were long but the LW attacked in force and had superior numbers locally in most cases. 40 or more LW would attack a small group in the bomber stream.
lazs
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lw my hiney; they were a joke.
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Lazs, that was precisely the point I was making. They would attack with locally superior numbers on a specific portion of the formation, usually the low, rear formation known as "tail end charlie".
Pepe, precisely right about the formation. The first try was not up to snuff defensively. That is why they changed it to provide better protection. P-38s were used in the escort role prior to 44 as I remember, but either way they were removed from this role as soon as possible as they were not up to the task against LW fighters.
I agree that most of the bomber losses can be attributed to fighters. That was not what I was trying to say. My point was that bombers were not sitting ducks and it took extensive work and specific tactics to do so effectively. Fighters were better equipped to the task then shooting artillery shells 15-22k feet into the air and hoping you hit something. Shotgun at range vs. rifle.
I wish I could find a link to the table showing the confirmed kill stats by aircraft type, but the fact that bombers were in the 1st and 2nd place with a large seperation before the fighters in 3rd shows they were not sitting ducks. I realize this point looses some vailidty without a source to point to, but... Hopefully someone can find it.
Either way, I guess we just have to disagree on the "sitting duck" notion of heavy bombers.
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to disagree w/laz is to be correct.
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hap? never heard of you. do you play AH? Been reading these boards long?
lazs
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