Mark
Posts: 54
Joined: 3/28/2001 From: USA, Miami Status: offline
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There can be many different approaches to a problem, and they might have different merits. The best – IMHO – is the one, that grows out of the already existing, established games of the great&only GG. The GG games, that I love, are: War in Russia (WiR), Pacific War (PW), Carrier Strike (CS), Battle of Britain (BoB), 12 o'Clock High – Bombing the Reich (TOH-BTR) Don't tell me that you don't love these :). In TOH-BTR and BoB, the guns have, besides range & penetration, also damage and accuracy (hit probability). In PW & CS, the guns have separate flak rating, which is EFFECTIVELY hit probability modified by range – that is, probability of a hit on a plane during the time, that a plane travels from max gun range to the point of dropping bombs/torps. IMO, the MINIMUM solution would be the following characteristics: 1. Range (exists). 2. Penetration (exists). 3. Damage (damage of a HE shell, used in bombardment of soft targets, like infantry) (exists in TOH-BTR & BoB). To Dunedain: Damage combines damage of 1 shell & fire rate into 1 number. 4. Accuracy against ground targets (hit probability when shooting at hard ground targets - ships, shore batteries, tanks, etc) When using AP shells – damage is halved, as in PW & CS. 5. Accuracy against aircraft (hit probability when shooting at airplanes). ALWAYS less than #4. On the reason, why Damage and Penetration ABSOLUTELY must be different, see the old discussion in PW forum here: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10870 If we take a gist of discussion – it's as follows: The world is 3-dimensional. So, for a given technological level: The DAMAGE of 1 shell is approximanely proportional to it's weight, slightly modified by shell velocity. The weight is roughly proportional to caliber cubed (Cal^3). The damage during a fixed amount of time is damage of 1 shell by fire rate. Fire RATE generally tends to decrease with caliber slightly faster, than inverse proportionally. That is, an 8in gun usually fires more than 2 times while 16in fires 1 time, but 1 16in shell weighs about 4 times the weight of 2 8in shells. Generally, damage is proportional to caliber squared (^2). Although the lower-calibre automatic guns have rather high damage – because of high fire rate. The PENETRATION of a shell is proportional to it's kinetic energy per unit of cross-section area. That is, it is rougly proportional to caliber, STRONGLY modified by barrel length. That is, 16in/50 cal gun penetrates about 2 times the armor that 8in/50 penetrates (provided shells have same technological level and the armor is of the same quality). The last (#5) parameter is like flak rating in PW & CS, but it is NOT a summation of hit probability during ALL attack run, but during, say, time it takes an average plane to fly 1000 yds. So: 1. Faster planes will get a bonus (less time under fire). 2. Torp-bombers w/longer range torps and fighters w/longer range guns on strafing runs (P-39 w/37mm gun) will also get a bonus – they turn away earlier.
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Best Regards, Mark.
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