Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

Did the AT unit participate in the attack and did it evaporate? (it seems to be absent from the second screenshot) If so, this is how OPART has always worked.

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ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

I hesitate to argue with a months-old memory of what might have been, but my guess is that the unit was actually participating in the attack, evaporated and then its absence allowed a retreat path for the artillery unit to take. I've seen that case many times, but I've NEVER seen a case where a non-participating unit suddenly got overrun during its own turn, by a retreating enemy unit.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Maybe it should happen, though. It might be a change for the better.

As it is, it's 'we're surrounded and running out of ammo, general, what can we do?'

'Hmmm. Panzers to the right of us, panzers to the left of us. There is that reserve field bakery company holding the door closed behind us...but it's not participating in the attack. Damn!!!'

As I understand it, the program has the defender look at all the attacking stacks and attack the weakest. How hard would it be to get it to look at all adjacent stacks and attack the weakest?

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ORIGINAL: Boonierat

Could it be possible to prevent a unit of splitting in 3 when its airlifted from one friendly-controlled airfield to another? its annoying having to recombine them almost every time

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Also, I'm probably gonna start beating the proverbial dead horse again but is there any particular reason why limiting air units to 3/hex max has never been changed?

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Maybe it should happen, though. It might be a change for the better.

As it is, it's 'we're surrounded and running out of ammo, general, what can we do?'

'Hmmm. Panzers to the right of us, panzers to the left of us. There is that reserve field bakery company holding the door closed behind us...but it's not participating in the attack. Damn!!!'

As I understand it, the program has the defender look at all the attacking stacks and attack the weakest. How hard would it be to get it to look at all adjacent stacks and attack the weakest?

I don't think the item in bold is true yet. Regardless, this is in the wishlist (7.19).

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright
What does this '(7.19)' refer to? The thread only has five pages, and it only goes back to August 2007.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Anyway, I'm quite sure defenders will attack the weakest attacking stack already. At any rate, that AT unit popping is pretty typical. One of the first things I learned...

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ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

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ORIGINAL: rhinobones

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit
. . . i'm at 6N 124E

Looked it up, nice place to launch satellites into synchronous orbit. That probably explains some of the experimenting . . . the elephants too.

Regards, RhinoBones

I'd love to retire in a place like that.

quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..could AA-units participate as defence in Airfield Attacks ?

..Airforces across the world park them on airfields for this purpose, it seems odd they are no use in toaw..

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..could AA-units participate as defence in Airfield Attacks ?

..Airforces across the world park them on airfields for this purpose, it seems odd they are no use in toaw..

I wonder if they defend against bridge attacks now.

...kind of comic if they can't. AA would now be wildly effective -- except in two of its primary roles.

Anyway, someday someone has got to accept that the primary way in which AA exerts an effect is not to shoot down aircraft. It's to reduce the effectiveness of their attacks.

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ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..could AA-units participate as defence in Airfield Attacks ?

..Airforces across the world park them on airfields for this purpose, it seems odd they are no use in toaw..

I wonder if they defend against bridge attacks now.

...kind of comic if they can't. AA would now be wildly effective -- except in two of its primary roles.

Anyway, someday someone has got to accept that the primary way in which AA exerts an effect is not to shoot down aircraft. It's to reduce the effectiveness of their attacks.

..as far as i can see they do a good job in attacks on a hex and thats all..

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
3. Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage....

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ORIGINAL: Erik Nygaard

I often put AA units in separate formations with their own icon colour combination (= own airforce) and on internal support.

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ORIGINAL: Erik Nygaard

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
3. Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage....

I often put AA units in separate formations with their own icon colour combination (= own airforce) and on internal support.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright
2. An AA effect that would divide the attacking strength of the aircraft in a given combat by the value of the AA present. This should probably not be linear: even a few flak guns would reduce the effectiveness of attacking aircraft as compared to their effectiveness if the target has no AA strength at all. Offhand, I'd about double the effectiveness of aircraft given no flak -- but have it rather rapidly fall to about half of its present value given even modest quantities of flak. The effect should -- if anything -- be increased for bridge attacks. No AA guns at a bridge, and bombing it is a training exercise. A couple of batteries and it becomes pretty hard to just concentrate on coming in low and straight and hitting that bridge dead-on. Flak should also affect the effectiveness of interdiction strikes and -- of course -- affect the effectiveness of airfield attacks.

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3. Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage. Most times, most places, AA units did not participate in ground combat. It should be possible to choose this option for one side but not the other. For example, it was rare for the British to employ their flak units in ground combat before 1944. The Germans, on the other hand, used them in this role extensively from the word go. Moreover, and regardless of doctrine, flak often simply wasn't in a position to participate in ground battles. For example, if we had a 20 km hex scenario that included the German Sedan crossing in 1940, there was a ton of flak in the Sedan hex on May 14. That doesn't mean it was up supporting Grossdeutschland, though. It was mostly several km from the line, guarding the pontoon bridge over the Meuse. So unless one side enjoys virtual air supremacy, it's fairly unrealistic to allow flak to use its full firepower in ground combat. Even if it's in the hex, a lot of the time it's not at the actual front.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

I'm sitting here testing various series of events numbered between 571 and 720 or so. Go to game, find a bug, go back to the editor and find (hopefully) the cause, go to game, find...

It would be GREAT if there was a way in the event editor to skip to a specific event -- or at least to skip to the last defined event. It's getting really tedious scrolling through six hundred events every fifteen minutes.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
2. An AA effect that would divide the attacking strength of the aircraft in a given combat by the value of the AA present. This should probably not be linear: even a few flak guns would reduce the effectiveness of attacking aircraft as compared to their effectiveness if the target has no AA strength at all. Offhand, I'd about double the effectiveness of aircraft given no flak -- but have it rather rapidly fall to about half of its present value given even modest quantities of flak. The effect should -- if anything -- be increased for bridge attacks. No AA guns at a bridge, and bombing it is a training exercise. A couple of batteries and it becomes pretty hard to just concentrate on coming in low and straight and hitting that bridge dead-on. Flak should also affect the effectiveness of interdiction strikes and -- of course -- affect the effectiveness of airfield attacks.

See item 8.12 in the wishlist. But it would seem to me that if a plane is sent to the "on hand" pool by Flak, then that's a similar effect, just less subtle. The planes weren't destroyed, they just didn't get to drop their bombs.

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3. Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage. Most times, most places, AA units did not participate in ground combat. It should be possible to choose this option for one side but not the other. For example, it was rare for the British to employ their flak units in ground combat before 1944. The Germans, on the other hand, used them in this role extensively from the word go. Moreover, and regardless of doctrine, flak often simply wasn't in a position to participate in ground battles. For example, if we had a 20 km hex scenario that included the German Sedan crossing in 1940, there was a ton of flak in the Sedan hex on May 14. That doesn't mean it was up supporting Grossdeutschland, though. It was mostly several km from the line, guarding the pontoon bridge over the Meuse. So unless one side enjoys virtual air supremacy, it's fairly unrealistic to allow flak to use its full firepower in ground combat. Even if it's in the hex, a lot of the time it's not at the actual front.

You can delete the Flak equipment's AP value in the equipment editor if you want.

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ORIGINAL: ColinWright

quote:

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
See item 8.12 in the wishlist. But it would seem to me that if a plane is sent to the "on hand" pool by Flak, then that's a similar effect, just less subtle. The planes weren't destroyed, they just didn't get to drop their bombs.

That's a pretty lame rationalization. This happens with all losses. What I'm talking about is that even if -- say -- only 5% percent of the planes on a sortie become OPART 'losses' due to flak, bombing effectiveness should drop by 50% or so.

An excellent example is those sorties against the British warships off Crete. Now, I haven;t been able to locate German losses to flak -- but they apparently weren't severe. Certainly nothing like what OPART III would produce. However, as long as the British were able to keep up their flak umbrella, their losses were fairly modest. Once they ran out of ammunition, though, they were promptly slaughtered.

Flak doesn't shoot down planes: it wrecks their aim. That's an overstatement -- but it's the gist of what needs to be simulated.

quote:

Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage.

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You can delete the Flak equipment's AP value in the equipment editor if you want.

Yeah -- and I do. Ideally, however, one shouldn't have to resort to the editor for what was in fact a common situation -- flak not being used at the front, either out of doctrinal rigidity or because it had better things to do.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

quote:

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
See item 8.12 in the wishlist. But it would seem to me that if a plane is sent to the "on hand" pool by Flak, then that's a similar effect, just less subtle. The planes weren't destroyed, they just didn't get to drop their bombs.

That's a pretty lame rationalization. This happens with all losses. What I'm talking about is that even if -- say -- only 5% percent of the planes on a sortie become OPART 'losses' due to flak, bombing effectiveness should drop by 50% or so.

An excellent example is those sorties against the British warships off Crete. Now, I haven;t been able to locate German losses to flak -- but they apparently weren't severe. Certainly nothing like what OPART III would produce. However, as long as the British were able to keep up their flak umbrella, their losses were fairly modest. Once they ran out of ammunition, though, they were promptly slaughtered.

Flak doesn't shoot down planes: it wrecks their aim. That's an overstatement -- but it's the gist of what needs to be simulated.

As I said, there may be a case for a more subtle effect. But no one knows exactly what that effect should be. You haven't provided any hard data on that. And the effect that exists now (that I mentioned above) will be mixed in with it.

The bottom line is what kind of losses are effected on both the defenders and the air units under flak conditions. We need test scenarios that model known situations. (And, for the record, I've posted one on the development board - I can't really do that here).

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Make a designer option barring AA units from participating in ground battles or reducing their effectiveness in that role by some percentage.

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You can delete the Flak equipment's AP value in the equipment editor if you want.

Yeah -- and I do. Ideally, however, one shouldn't have to resort to the editor for what was in fact a common situation -- flak not being used at the front, either out of doctrinal rigidity or because it had better things to do.

Above you say it should be a designer option. Here you say it should be imposed by fiat. Which is it?

As I see it, it must be a designer option. And that's exactly what the equipment editor provides. Nothing else is required.

quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..British figures give 10% losses on bombing raids as heavy, from all causes..

..British estimates are for most of WW2 it takes 18,500 shells to down one bomber, divide confirmed AA kills by shells used (pre proximity fuse)

..given the deterrent option i'd say the toaw figures are in the right area, for everything except bridge attacks and airfield attacks. It can't be hard to program AA to know when its in a bridge/airfield hex, other unit types know where they are, why not AA ?..

..oh and 2 Swordfish downed at Tarranto, despite the available AA..

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
I'm not going through this again. To me, the problems with flak are roughly as obvious as sunrise. If you insist on denying them, knock yourself out. OPART III will be that much worse a game, but realistically, there's not much I can do about that.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..British figures give 10% losses on bombing raids as heavy, from all causes..

..British estimates are for most of WW2 it takes 18,500 shells to down one bomber, divide confirmed AA kills by shells used (pre proximity fuse)

..given the deterrent option i'd say the toaw figures are in the right area, for everything except bridge attacks and airfield attacks. It can't be hard to program AA to know when its in a bridge/airfield hex, other unit types know where they are, why not AA ?..

..oh and 2 Swordfish downed at Tarranto, despite the available AA..

There you go. TWO Swordfish downed at Taranto. OPART losses of four. Now, go ahead and set up some AA guns at 10% proficiency. See how few you'll need to shoot down down four. It'll be something like ten barrels. Say, maybe a fiftieth of the flak the Italians probably had, between the ships and the port defences.

See the Seelowe thread at TDG. The figures are way out of line. If one reran the 1940 strike on the Meuse bridges, for example, it wouldn't be a matter of a third of the strike aircraft being shot down between the fighters and the flak -- the fighter pilots can go get coffee. In OPART, the German flak would suffice to shoot down every attacking aircraft ten times over by itself -- and I don't think that's an exaggeration.

For the time being, I've divided the AA values by anywhere from three to five, and losses are still suspiciously heavy.

The essence of the problem is that OPART doesn't reflect the primary effect of flak -- it plays hell with the aim. So we get flak that either (a) has little value at all, or (b) achieves its effect in entirely the wrong way. Flak in OPART is never going to work right if it simply functions by shooting down planes.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..British figures give 10% losses on bombing raids as heavy, from all causes..

..British estimates are for most of WW2 it takes 18,500 shells to down one bomber, divide confirmed AA kills by shells used (pre proximity fuse)

..given the deterrent option i'd say the toaw figures are in the right area, for everything except bridge attacks and airfield attacks. It can't be hard to program AA to know when its in a bridge/airfield hex, other unit types know where they are, why not AA ?..

..oh and 2 Swordfish downed at Tarranto, despite the available AA..

There you go. TWO Swordfish downed at Taranto. OPART losses of four. Now, go ahead and set up some AA guns at 10% proficiency. See how few you'll need to shoot down down four. It'll be something like ten barrels. Say, maybe a fiftieth of the flak the Italians probably had, between the ships and the port defences.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..British figures give 10% losses on bombing raids as heavy, from all causes..

..British estimates are for most of WW2 it takes 18,500 shells to down one bomber, divide confirmed AA kills by shells used (pre proximity fuse)

..given the deterrent option i'd say the toaw figures are in the right area, for everything except bridge attacks and airfield attacks. It can't be hard to program AA to know when its in a bridge/airfield hex, other unit types know where they are, why not AA ?..

..oh and 2 Swordfish downed at Tarranto, despite the available AA..

There you go. TWO Swordfish downed at Taranto. OPART losses of four. Now, go ahead and set up some AA guns at 10% proficiency. See how few you'll need to shoot down down four. It'll be something like ten barrels. Say, maybe a fiftieth of the flak the Italians probably had, between the ships and the port defences.

I'm going to see if I can get my AAA thread moved here from the development board. I actually simulated Taranto (sort of). It's difficult because the ships were in port and it was at night. Hard to know just how to model those factors. Regardless, it didn't really work until the AD was up to 50.

quote:

ORIGINAL: JAMiAM

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

quote:

ORIGINAL: a white rabbit

..British figures give 10% losses on bombing raids as heavy, from all causes..

..British estimates are for most of WW2 it takes 18,500 shells to down one bomber, divide confirmed AA kills by shells used (pre proximity fuse)

..given the deterrent option i'd say the toaw figures are in the right area, for everything except bridge attacks and airfield attacks. It can't be hard to program AA to know when its in a bridge/airfield hex, other unit types know where they are, why not AA ?..

..oh and 2 Swordfish downed at Tarranto, despite the available AA..

There you go. TWO Swordfish downed at Taranto. OPART losses of four. Now, go ahead and set up some AA guns at 10% proficiency. See how few you'll need to shoot down down four. It'll be something like ten barrels. Say, maybe a fiftieth of the flak the Italians probably had, between the ships and the port defences.

See the Seelowe thread at TDG. The figures are way out of line. If one reran the 1940 strike on the Meuse bridges, for example, it wouldn't be a matter of a third of the strike aircraft being shot down between the fighters and the flak -- the fighter pilots can go get coffee. In OPART, the German flak would suffice to shoot down every attacking aircraft ten times over by itself -- and I don't think that's an exaggeration.

For the time being, I've divided the AA values by anywhere from three to five, and losses are still suspiciously heavy.

The essence of the problem is that OPART doesn't reflect the primary effect of flak -- it plays hell with the aim. So we get flak that either (a) has little value at all, or (b) achieves its effect in entirely the wrong way. Flak in OPART is never going to work right if it simply functions by shooting down planes.

Some things to keep in mind for this debate...

TOAW III does abstract the aiming issue that Colin raises, by the different proportion applied to "return to inventory:losses" in the disabled results for airframe equipment. That higher proportion of returned equipment, relative to other equipment, represents damaged airframes, as well as those pilots who drop their loads off target.

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Much testing needs to be done to get the numbers "right".

The "right" numbers are themselves in question. The cases being raised are, in themselves, statistical "outliers" which do not represent normal operations. The attack on Taranto achieved a good level of tactical surprise. Saying that the results, in losses to ships and or aircraft is somehow typical is like claiming that the Pearl Harbor attack was typical of WWII Pacific naval operations. How to model these eminently historical, but atypical tactical results in an operational game might generate an entire new subsection in the Wishlist.

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I don't think the results at Taranto are especially atypical. The message seems the same as that in the results obtained at the Sedan bridgehead and everywhere else I've looked: flak losses are way too heavy. Just set up the Schweinfurt raid or something. I'll bet the Germans won't need to put a fighter into the sky: I imagine the flak at Schweinfurt will blow all three hundred B-17's out of the sky.

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Further regarding the right numbers, the testing must be set up rigorously and take into account a variety of AA values, proficiency, readiness, environmental, attrition divider, and hex-scale (density) settings. They must take into account, losses and return to inventory. They must be run with enough repetition to generate a good base of results. Averages and the range of the data is important, as well as the distribution of the outliers. The funny thing is though, the test data would likely be more comprehensive than the historical results of the last century, and as above, interpretation of what should be considered a "good correlation" is subject to some debate.

Yeah. I'm certainly not arguing that numbers should just be pulled out of a hat. However, I'd insist that the results we're getting now are totally out to lunch: we've got nowhere to go but up.

Anyway, I see three approaches.

1. As you seem to imply currently happens, a gretly increased proportion of all 'losses' could be returned to the pool. 90%? 95%? The number would need to be researched.

2. Divide the attacking strength by the amount of flak in the target hex. As I discussed, the effect should not be linear: even a few flak pieces should seriously attenuate the effectiveness of bombers, or to put the same point differently, troops without any flak at all are really at the mercy of attacking aircraft.

3. If this is impossible, it should be practical to make the presence of any unit with a flak icon have the same effect on bombing effectiveness as clouds. Obviously, this would be a rough approximation, but it would be an improvement over the current situation, and the programming requirements would seem to be minimal.


< Message edited by ColinWright -- 10/4/2007 12:20:07 AM >

_____________________________

I am not Charlie Hebdo

(in reply to JAMiAM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: ColinWright
Are you stating that more aircraft are returned to the pool if losses are inflicted by flak than if by other aircraft? More than the half that is returned for losses suffered by other types of equipment?

It did just occur to me that if reducing the effectiveness of aircraft by the amount of flak in a hex imposed insuperable programming problems, that increasing the proportion of 'losses' returned to the pool might offer an alternative approach?