As version 1.09 will likely see radical changes to bombing and level bombers, I wanted to get peoples opinions and ideas on how we’d like to see such things as bomb-aiming, formation keeping, and defensive guns handled. The only things we know for sure at this point are a) that some (but not necessarily all) bombers will now be launched in groups of four, with a single pilot controlling all four; and b) that dispersion will be added to the fall of bombs. As with most tidbits released by HTC regarding future changes to Aces High, these have generated a plethora of additional questions. Setting aside the question of what purpose those bombers will have in the MA (which has been discussed ad nausea in other posts), let’s get some ideas out there for HTC to consider.
First, I’d like to see the option of launching either as a flight of four or as a single aircraft. The player would select this before hitting a spawn button. The reason for this is that there are mission profiles that call for low-level flights and attack profiles, which would be impractical for a flight of four aircraft in a tight formation. The Ju-88 also needs this option, since it is designed to either level bomb or dive bomb. It would be very difficult to program a group of four planes making dive-bombing attacks, and the other planes would be wasted anyway.
Next, how should formation integrity be handled? By this I mean how good should the AI wingman be at maintaining formation, especially during violent evasives. What happens when one of the AI wingmen’s aircraft is damaged and can’t keep up? It seems to me that if an AI plane gets to far from it’s human controlled flight leader (whether due to damage or violent evasive action by the flight leader), it should probably disappear and be counted as lost. Taking violent evasive action should cause the formation to loose integrity (to drift apart), and perhaps even present the risk of collisions between the planes in a flight. This would provide incentive to players to keep control inputs gentle, relying on the formation’s defensive firepower to avoid destruction (as they should).
This brings us to the question of how defensive guns should be handled. Except for ground and ship based anti-aircraft guns, HTC has studiously avoided A/I controlled armament. Should AI gunners be allowed on the AI aircraft, or should all guns in a flight be slaved to a single human gunner (similar to how multiple guns on a single bomber are currently able to track to a human gunner’s aim point)? Should there be allowed more than one human gunner per flight (i.e. one human gunner per AI aircraft)? If all guns in a flight are slaved to a single human player, it would seem necessary to reduce the lethality of them. If you only allow one human gunner per flight, but don’t slave all guns in a flight to that gunner, then you negate half the motivation for having multiple bombers per human pilot. The decrease in level bombing accuracy must be balance by a reasonable ability to reach the target.
Lastly, what changes should be made to the bombsite? The complaint has been made (rightly so, in my opinion) that little skill is currently required to hit targets from even extremely high altitude. Dispersion will make it harder to hit, but the effect will be random, and still not be appreciably influenced by the bombardier’s skill. Bombing with the Norden (or any other bombsite of the era) should require the same level of practice and experience as deflection shooting. Wind was a major factor in level bombing, for example. Should wind effects be included in the ballistics equation? Part of the skill of course will be learning exactly where to place the aim-point to get the best effect from a particular size of bomb and from a particular release altitude. So perhaps the current Norden won’t need to be changed. Any thoughts?
Guess that’ll do to get the discussions rolling. Let’s hear from all the buffers and would-be buffers.
