Slitherine

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The majority of Jap forces at the beginning of the war were just as green as the forces they were fighting.

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ORIGINAL: ADavidB
I must be the only regular Allied player and occasional Japanese player who likes PDU.

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ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

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ORIGINAL: ADavidB
I must be the only regular Allied player and occasional Japanese player who likes PDU.

When we started our game PDU’s had just been implemented and like so many others we decided to use the new feature. It wasn’t common knowledge that the system could be so heavily abused until many months (real time) afterwards and by then we were too far in to restart. Personally I will never use PDU’s again, simply because of the abuse factor.

I suspect had I started upgrading 2E bombers to 4E bombers months ago, I would have a very different situation. But I’m a stickler for history and I wanted to use those 2E bombers. But I’ve learned my lesson, 4E bombers will appear by the hundreds shortly and I hope to visit some pain on my opponent very soon.

With that said though, I still wish there was a way to fix air combat. No matter what all the defenders of the model are saying in this thread, it’s broken because it’s too bloody period. Historically groups were kept in the front lines for months on end and flew missions every day.

Only the player who has air superiority can do this currently. The other player is forced to withdraw groups after only 1 or 2 days fighting. Had air units taken those kind of losses historically, even the massive US production would not have been able to keep up with all the air frames falling from the skies.

Has anyone tried simply quadrupling durability or something? Anything that can drastically reduce kills would be a good thing in my book.

Jim

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ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

Has anyone tried simply quadrupling durability or something? Anything that can drastically reduce kills would be a good thing in my book.

Jim

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ORIGINAL: treespider
I'm curious....in your game :

How many sorties have been flown?
How many planes have been shot down?
How many operational losses?

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ORIGINAL: Raverdave

Air combat is fine....it is the LCU combat that needs to be fixed.

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ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

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ORIGINAL: String

Anyway, I'm not the least bit surprised that 100 superior fighters wiped out 50 inferior, elderly fighters.

If the air combat took place in a wrestling ring.

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ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

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ORIGINAL: Raverdave

Air combat is fine....it is the LCU combat that needs to be fixed.

Air combat is fine? That's a joke, right?

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ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

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ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
Once you get P38s ( with trained up pilots ) you will rule the skies ...

But there's the rub, I don't want to "rule the skies" later in the game because of a broken game model. I want a tough dogged attrition battle that will last for months. I want to see air groups left in the front lines for months on end and not see 100% of their planes wiped out in 1 friggin day.

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How long did the Cactus Air Force fight at Guadalcanal against desperate odds before being pulled out? Four months at least I think. Had results like we see in WitP been the norm in WWII, the Cactus Air Force would have been decimated in 1 or 2 days.

I don't want tips on how to play within the broken model, I want the model fixed. Being decimated in a few days or decimating my opponent in return later isn't fun, it's frustrating in the extreme.

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If we all cry out for a fix, perhaps it will be addressed some day. Yes land combat needs help too, but the air combat routines are more important I think since it affects the naval campaign in a more direct manor.

(hesaid...lookingaroundtoseewhoelsemightbeinthebuilding)

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ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

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ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

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ORIGINAL: jwilkerson
Once you get P38s ( with trained up pilots ) you will rule the skies ...

But there's the rub, I don't want to "rule the skies" later in the game because of a broken game model. I want a tough dogged attrition battle that will last for months. I want to see air groups left in the front lines for months on end and not see 100% of their planes wiped out in 1 friggin day.

How long did the Cactus Air Force fight at Guadalcanal against desperate odds before being pulled out? Four months at least I think. Had results like we see in WitP been the norm in WWII, the Cactus Air Force would have been decimated in 1 or 2 days.

I don't want tips on how to play within the broken model, I want the model fixed. Being decimated in a few days or decimating my opponent in return later isn't fun, it's frustrating in the extreme.

If we all cry out for a fix, perhaps it will be addressed some day. Yes land combat needs help too, but the air combat routines are more important I think since it affects the naval campaign in a more direct manor.

Jim

ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! The arguement that "it all balances out in the long run" stinks. Just because both sides get to take advantage of the crumby system does not make it less crumby. Whomever mentioned it is correct that the system simply falls apart as the numbers rise. Had the odds been 20 Mohawks to 40 Tony's you would have probably seen a more acceptable result---evidently 2by3 never bothered to test the system with larger numbers. Which is silly as they gave both sides too many aircraft which suffer far too little attrition---and player's being player's they will mass the biggest numbers they can manage.

If they can't fix the upper end of the combat results program, you would think they could at least put a "splitter" mechanism into the process that would chop both sides in to 50 plane chunks to keep the combats from reaching the upper "luniatic fringe" of results.

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ORIGINAL: Ideologue

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ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

Air losses should be reduced by a factor of 10 or more I think. Perhaps only allowing fighters enough ammo for 1 shot would do the trick. Currently it’s not uncommon to see dozens of aces made in a single engagement. While 5 kills in a single mission happened once in a blue moon during the actual war, it happens almost every other day in WitP.

I wouldn't go as far as to say the air combat model is totally broken, but ammo as well as opportunities to use it do seem to be awfully plentiful in every engagement.



In response to the point about "never seeing a Midway," it happens from time to time, as long as the Allied player masses his carriers and the Japanese player splits his. I stomped a 4-CV KB with two TFs of 2 CVs apiece, without loss, only heavy damage on one of the task forces (which is pretty much the "Midway model," if the second TF had had one CV by itself, ala Yorktown, I guess it would've been sunk).

I did eventually lose them on the way home, but that was because I was stupid and didn't take into account submarines.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Wrong, the air model is probably the part of WITP that is the closest of UV. The worst part of the two models is that every unit on CAP will intercept every incoming unit, even if it has fought allready ten raids this turn.

While this may be what you have seen, it is NOT true in the sense that other results are possible. I find multiple strikes work very well BECAUSE it is NOT true. The later strikes get through because the cap is gone - or almost gone. Typically, the SECOND strike faces EXTRA CAP - if there are more planes available and the field is still up - but after that the CAP seems to get "tired" - it becomes less effective. After about 5 strikes the CAP seems to die - if the strikes are big enough. Once I had a single Boomerang go up late in a strike series - he took on dozens of Zeros and even shot one down - I wanted to give him a medal - even though I was the Japanese! But my strike penetrated with all its bombers.

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Aircraft replacement rates can be addressed with the editor, at least. It would help immensely if Matrix would throw us a bone and also 1) limit stacking and 2) increase operational loss rates by a whole lot. Not holding my breath, of course, but that's what is called for in this particular case.

I wish you'd taken Matrix up on their offer to use you on the development team. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall had that hypothetical materialized. Or maybe just as good, be privy to the private correspondence between you and Ron during that period . . . then make book on which one of you got canned first, and for what lame excuse.

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ORIGINAL: TheElf

I agree with Joe Wilkerson. I think we all agree that smaller engagements are fine, large ones aren't. I have regular encounters in China and even in the S/SW Pacific where only one, two, or even three aircraft are shot down. Total. I also see my P-38s have a bad every now and again vs. Tonys and even A6M2s.

The difference is I try not to get into the typical WitP player's "keeping up with the Joneses" rut. I'm beginning to believe the cold war-style arms race in the sky's of WITP and human nature are really the culprits of the whacked A2A model. What I mean by this is players often see an A2A battle where they didn't get the upper hand and think; "Hmmm... next time I'll get him, I'll just send more aircraft..." the next turn the disappointed opponent thinks; "hmmmm...ok I see how it is, let's see him beat THIS..." and the Numerical advantage race is on.

The people I see posting the "This air model is broken!" threads tend to have retardedly large air battles where the already weak A2A system sees what the "bad man" is doing, puts on it's safety helmet, and proceeds to lick the inside window of the short bus in hopes the "bad man" will stop....

Yes, the system is weak. Yes it needs to be "fixed". Yes, there are too many 4E bombers. Yes it's too easy to close an airfield. Yes, the KB's CAP is impenetrable. Yes, large air battle result in lopsided results, BUT....

I've said it once. I've said it 100 times:

"Garbage in = Garbage out"
"Ahistorical use = Ahistorical results"

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I'll argue here that there has yet to be a game designed that can design human natures will to defy the rules out of it. There is always a loop hole, a cheat, a unimaginative tactic usually involving massing one thing or another in unimagined numbers and rolling over everything. Thus the state of the A2A model in WitP today....

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I'm not sure I'd actually want to increase the ops LOSSES.

Ops losses = victory points and dead pilots (which would further hamstring Japan). Somewhere I recall being called and "Allied Fanboy" but... never mind.

Anyway. I think maybe increasing Ops DAMAGES might be useful. Ops damages means you can't fly the whole squadron. You're also not losing pilots left and right. If you -do- overstack, you've now got a base full of damaged aircraft, just waiting to get pounded. However, if your opponent does nothing about it, it doesn't covert into VPs for him (or actual losses for you).

-F-

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ORIGINAL: Feinder

I'm not sure I'd actually want to increase the ops LOSSES.

Ops losses = victory points and dead pilots (which would further hamstring Japan). Somewhere I recall being called and "Allied Fanboy" but... never mind.

Anyway. I think maybe increasing Ops DAMAGES might be useful. Ops damages means you can't fly the whole squadron. You're also not losing pilots left and right. If you -do- overstack, you've now got a base full of damaged aircraft, just waiting to get pounded. However, if your opponent does nothing about it, it doesn't covert into VPs for him (or actual losses for you).

There is almost no aspect of this game system that came out of the box correct, or even close to correct.

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ORIGINAL: Jim D Burns

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ORIGINAL: Oleg Mastruko

So, excuse me for being too harsh, but you did two stupid things - didn't upgrade crap Mohawks to something better, and didn't carpet bomb Tony base - and you complain when you get clobbered?

I think this is yet another case of player not being a good player/strategist, or thinking he's "just being fair", and turning his anger on the system when things go bad.

Had you bothered to read and actually comprehend what I wrote you dimwit, you’d realize 250 other (better) fighters had already been destroyed to virtually no loss to the Tony’s in just a weeks time. But true to your simple minded base ignorant self you insult my intelligence and play ability for reasons that elude me.

The allies lack Japans unlimited production abilities and have to contend with empty aircraft pools for all of 1942 and most of 1943. I realize you have very little experience playing as the allies, but trust me had there been better airframes to use the Mohawks would be upgraded. But in fact they are one of my better airframes left with any kind of reserves in the pool at all.

So in conclusion I do not excuse your rude comments and ask that you refrain from further discourse with me as it appears you really have nothing constructive to add.

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ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

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The Turkey shoot was only a turkey shoot because the Japanese sent lots of small raids against the US instead of one large one. Had they sent all 500 planes at once I doubt history would be calling it a turkey shoot.

Correct ... and this goes back to the ability to launch that number of aircraft in one group simply didn't exist. This is not England with 100+ airfields all launching aircraft at once against a target.

Midway is a great example that it takes time to arm and refuel and launch aircraft. Even with multiple CV's (airfields), there is a FINITE rate that aircraft can be launched and recovered. You can't exceed this rate no matter how many aircraft you have parked there. The current model doesn't impose this type of control because it looks abstractly at a day of air activity.

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ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

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I wonder if anyone is reading this who can make the decision to have this fixed?

What exactly would you like done Ron?

Problem: Players use aircraft in quatities never seen in WW II

Solution: Forbid players from playing the way they want

It's human nature to stockpile and throw it all in at once. You can't fix human nature with code.

There are tons of restrictions in the code but they all fail because people just keep increasing the numbers until the restrictions are meaningless.

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ORIGINAL: el cid again

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Not true, Japan did throw 500 planes at the US in the Turkey shoot and there were 900 planes on the US side, so your argument is false. Large numbers of planes were used, it's the results the game produces when that happens that we have a problem with.

The Turkey shoot was only a turkey shoot because the Japanese sent lots of small raids against the US instead of one large one. Had they sent all 500 planes at once I doubt history would be calling it a turkey shoot.

Because the Turkey Shoot is the biggest Navy air combat in history - and because we suffered an operational defeat - (it was an overwhelming tactical victory IN SPITE of that operational defeat) - we study it a lot. It is fair to say you are about 90% confused about what happened.

Our commander THOUGHT he understood the Japanese situation, and the Japanese commander DID understand our situation. Hard to believe as it may be, the Japanese managed to get nine carriers UNDETECTED into strike range of our forces, and to launch a full strike. It was a properly organized strike which, at other times, even against us, would have inflicted severe damage. But several things went wrong for the Japanese. First of these was technical surprise - they were unable to compete with a new US Navy fighter plane. This was exaserbated by effective changes in organizing air defense. It had become cost prohibitive for ANY combination of aircraft to attack our ships in any conventional sense - even WE could not do it had somehow we needed to face a similar opponent. This organization was so well achieved that even the leakers which did penetrate the fighters were generally destroyed by the AAA defenses - with what - one exception? It does not matter what the Japanese had done formation wise - we were literally listening to the air controller (who was in the air and we let him live too) and responding to his tactical decisions. No possible combination would have mattered materially to the outcome. In 1945 the Japanese went over to "dribble attacks" and these WORKED - because we were NOT well organized to deal with such things. So your criticism is backwards - major strikes were going to be intercepted and cut up - period. We should really be ashamed of the Turkey Shoot - not because we lost - and not because we shot down so many planes - but because we were operationally outmaneuvered. No really competent commander should have allowed the enemy to achieve such a position - the risk of a success were too great as far as we knew. We should have had much better reconnaissance given our commitment of vulnerable and slow amphib forces to operations in the area. Serious professional analysis does not gloat over tactical success in the context of gross operational errors. We study this battle in order to learn how to get everything right - starting with insuring it is US who achieve launch position undetected by the enemy.

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ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

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ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

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I wonder if anyone is reading this who can make the decision to have this fixed?

What exactly would you like done Ron?

Problem: Players use aircraft in quatities never seen in WW II (Whose fault is that? Design decision: verdict...fixable by reducing supply to reign in Japanese fantasy economy and change Allied replacements/starting pools in editor.)

Solution: Forbid players from playing the way they want. It's human nature to stockpile and throw it all in at once. You can't fix human nature with code.
(Exactly! Many players treat everything like a toy and have to game the system. But this can be addressed... Fischer Price the darn thing with limitations like stacking limits so that Midway can't be turned into SAC HQ by the tiny tots!)

There are tons of restrictions in the code but they all fail because people just keep increasing the numbers until the restrictions are meaningless. They would not be able to if the restrictions were well thought out and applied. Ever think the restrictions are not sufficient? All these problems stem from MAJOR design oversights, not minor ones. If the levels of supply were reduced to make wholesale gearing up of Japanese economy more "in tune with reality", stacking limits were assigned to atoll bases and applied to engines as opposed to airframes, AV support applied one per engine and not airframe, there was no +250 AV windfall (at AV support of 250 there is no limit to number of aircraft servicable!), perhaps we would be on to something.

"What exactly would you like done Ron?" As I've suggested previously...

A) Sever the supply from resources dynamic so the modders can fiddle with it and find the sweet spot. This should be easy enough and will please everyone from those who think no change is necessary (carry on then and stick to stock games) to those who do (CHS and others will mod this until the system feels right and anyone can then play a non stock version as well.

B) Deal with the CAP mechanics. For a few years now I've been suggesting strongly that CAP mechanics are a problem and that CAP is UBER but was told I was making it up. Now, I don't know of anyone who thinks CAP is OK given that everyone uses the phrase UBER CAP and there is a mod out there designed specifically to address this previously ficticious UBER CAP issue I was raising.

There are a number of things which contribute to this (unlimited ammo, durability, weapons effectiveness, no energency landings for LBA, suicidal tendencies of high morale pilots, no mechanism for disengaging due to odds etc, some of which are adequately dealt with through the editor and some which only code changes can address), but the basic design mechanics are the main culprit. We have any number of reasons why strikes are penalized, from unwarranted strike bonuses for the Japanese to requiring strikes to split for attacks on multiple targets before CAP resolution instead of after. We also have no restrictions on CAP, either design or historically warranted such as fighter direction bonuses for Allies to counterbalance the issue.

My suggestions again for issues not editor friendly...

-Have CAP phase come before the strikes split for multiple targets (ie currently, if a squadron targets a hex with multiple LCUs, many times this squadron will attack more than one LCU. Problem: the split comes before CAP resolution so each split has to run the CAP (which does not have to split to engage these multiple strike elements...an unfair mechanics driven advantage) Solution: have CAP phase occur before the strike split.

-Seeing as we have a strike coordination penalty for Allies and a bonus for Japanese (historically unwarranted vs naval targets mind you), and, since this was historically warranted, add a CAP bonus due to fighter direction improvements for Allies (have this increase over time due to technical improvements and operational prowess) and a CAP penalty for Japan due to lack of fighter direction short of visual sighting and pickets...add an AA penalty to Japanese Air Combat TFs to boot to simulate that the ships were spread out to assist in early warning and did contribute to AA defences on par with Allied Air Combat TFs)

- Make CAP less exact in terms of numbers. a 60 mile hex should not guarantee that whatever number of aircraft is airborne will be the same number of aircraft which attack strikes. Randomize this so that a variable percentage of CAP may intercept.

C) Add ammo capacity to aircraft (MGs and Cannon)

D) Have stacking limits assigned to atoll bases and applied to engines as opposed to airframes.

E) AV support applied one per engine and not airframe and remove the +250 AV windfall (at AV support of 250 there is no limit to number of aircraft servicable!)

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ORIGINAL: Feinder

While it's all very noble for us to say that we don't care about vps, they -are- in intrinsic part of every game. They determine the winner and the loser. While in my own PBEM games, we have agreed to play beyond an auto-victory, vps still hang over your head.

I will reitterate again however, the problem with increasing ops DESTROYED, is that it further attrits the Japanese pilot pool.

I'm all for as much historical realism as possible. If we can simulate the historical percentage of ops losses, so much the better. But I think that wiping out Japanese pilots in droves due to ops destroyed, will end up being a serious detriment to historical accuracy.

-F-

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ORIGINAL: Sneer

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ORIGINAL: Tristanjohn

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ORIGINAL: Raverdave

Air combat is fine....it is the LCU combat that needs to be fixed.

Air combat is fine? That's a joke, right?

I think he is serious
surface combat fire distribution and LCU cobat is worse than A2A

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Another design issue.