castor troy
Posts: 14330
Joined: 8/23/2004
From: Austria
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Feinder
Airbal is the relative air strength at given location. Postive is favorable to you. Negative is favorable to the enemy. All types of AC project airbal. Some type project more than others (per plan). All project at range: so squadron of PBYs project a smaller total airbal for a longer range than a squadron of F4Fs which only project their airbal to a range of 4. That airbal number is the composite of every AC within range of the hex. Which is a LOT of AC, when you consider that Bettys project airbal out to 20 or whatever their max range is. Now those Bettys probably won't ever do anything at a range of 20, but they still project their airbal.
There's a big squawk over whether it's "fair" or not. I'm of the opinion of "fair" because it's available to both players, and frankly, it's a lot of work to make it useful. If there is any advantage for the Allies, if they so choose to be anal enough to worry about airbal, it perhaps gives some help toward the woefully inadaquate SigInt reports.
Either way, it's completely moot, because it's going away in AE (as I understand it).
You'll have to take my word for it, that I tested airbal extensively, and that I that I figured out the algorithm. Frankly, it was an amusing evening, and even when you know all the 11 herbs and spices, I have better things to do with my PBEM game than to get all knotted up over air-bal (even in my rare game as Japan).
My old Post about the "feel" of airbal (I rather liked it's metaphore, so I'll share it again) -
Airbal, is just like any other intel. The more you put into, the more you get out of it. Furthermore, AirBal is not a bug or an exploit. The exact same data is available to both players, if they so choose to do anythign with it.
A good example is Sigint. It's usually just a bunch of coords. If you look at it once a week, it tells you nothing. But if you take the time (and effort) to keep up with it, it's useful.
(* raises "wanker" hand *)
I equate airbal to noise. It's also a lot more "realistic" than many other things in this game. Tampa International is a busy airport, much more so than Trinity Corporate near my home. There's a lot more noise at TIA (both litterally, and more applicably, in air-traffic chatter).
An example, if you're hosting a party, the noise level in the room is fairly static. It might be loud, but it's constant. Maybe Fred with his big mouth shows up at the party. You can tell about where he is, because he's got a bigger mouth than anybody else. Maybe he brings his girlfriend, who also has a big mouth. If they're together, they make so much noise it's hard to tell them apart, but you know where they are. You can tell when the go outside, altho it's impossible to tell exactly where they are outside; but you know they're -not- in the room with you, because it's -not- loud.
You hear a loud crash in the kitchen, so somebody goes in to clean it up. The kitchen stays louder for a while. You don't necessarily know what dropped, or who specifically is in the kitchen. But you can hear the voices talking as long as they're there. Fred & girlfriend enter the kitchen, and now the kitchen is REALLY loud. One of them leaves. You don't know WHO left, but you know the kitchen is a little quieter. But you also know that whoever it was, went outside, because the noise in your room is still "normal".
If you stay at the party all night, you see where people like to stand. One couch is comfortable, another is not. You can tell who likes to play together. You see that nobody likes Fred, so he roams around constantly, increasing the volume of whatever room he's in. His girlfriend is angry, and as been making out with Bill out on the porch since since the crash in the kitchen. Fred discovers his GF with Bill, so he chases Bill with a stapler (Fred is also drunk). You're surprised and don't know what's coming, but it's loud and you have one second to get out of the way.
But if you just walk into the party an look around, all you see is somebody passed out on a couch, a drunk guy waving a stapler at another, and a couple smooching on the porch. You don't know the whole story, and everything almost seems normal.
It's not voo-doo magic. It's an algorithm.
-F-
if airbalance number would be fair then the world would be flat... the reason why it´s not fair is the fact that the Allied player always is one round ahead the Japanese, no matter if airbalance numbers or in fact getting recon of aircraft transfers just done during the Japanese´s orders phase. So it can´t be anymore unfair as this has nothing to do with the better Allied intel they had in real life, it was just bad design or programming. It´s changed in AE though.
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