Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: DicedT

It's October '42, and I have a gaggle of P-38, P-40 and Hurricane squadrons in Burma. They are being shot out of the sky by Oscars, Tojos and a few Zeroes. I've tried flying at high altitudes. I've tried flying everyone at high altitude. I've tried flying the P-38s and Hurricane IICs at 30,000 feet, and the P-40s and Hurricane IIBs at 10,000 or 15,000 feet. Same results. The P-38s bounce the Oscars, and then the Oscars get on the tail of the P-38s and shoot them down. I won't even describe what happens to P-39s.

quote:

ORIGINAL: LoBaron



Noone is saying that a player benefits by seperating tactical implications from strategic ones and vice versa.
But to answer a post theres no problem to limit an answer to a smaller focus.

The OP came to the conclusion that allied fighters are underrated in A2A combat.

quote:

ORIGINAL: DicedT

It's October '42, and I have a gaggle of P-38, P-40 and Hurricane squadrons in Burma. They are being shot out of the sky by Oscars, Tojos and a few Zeroes. I've tried flying at high altitudes. I've tried flying everyone at high altitude. I've tried flying the P-38s and Hurricane IICs at 30,000 feet, and the P-40s and Hurricane IIBs at 10,000 or 15,000 feet. Same results. The P-38s bounce the Oscars, and then the Oscars get on the tail of the P-38s and shoot them down. I won't even describe what happens to P-39s.

I wonder how to answer this misassumption by citing strategy.

setting CAP alt, assigning commanders, coordinating airstrikes, performance of AC and their respective advantages and disadvantages to other AC,... -> tactics

concentration of forces, managing supplies, airbase facilities and size, availability of reserves, assigning units to different theatres of operations,... -> strategy

You need both for a good game, no need to point anyones nose to the obvious.

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You need both for a good game, no need to point anyones nose to the obvious.

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ORIGINAL: DicedT

Lobaron, I'm askng you a simple question: Have you, or have you not, seen evidence that Allied fighters are able to utilize their advantages in aerial combat? Japanese fighters are able to utilize their superior maneuverability in WITP. But have you seen P-38s use their superior speed to attack, break off, and reattack Oscars? Or dive on Oscars and then zoom back up into the fight? The most I see is a message that a P-40 is diving away, but it doesn't seem to come back into the fight.

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ORIGINAL: Nemo121

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You need both for a good game, no need to point anyones nose to the obvious.

With the discourse here the obvious appears to be exceedingly non-obvious to many....

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ORIGINAL: HansBolter

What all those who defend game designs that give huge advantages to the almighty "experienced" Japanese pilots seem to overlook time and time again is the simple equation that if the Japanese lost all those skilled pilots leading to the demise of Japan, it was those very same "underrated by every dev" inexperinced Allied pilots who shot down these same seemingly invincible Japanese "experienced" pilots.

If the experienced Allied pilots didn't come along until the Japanese had nothing but inexperienced pilots left than it couldn't have been anyone else but the inexperienced Allied pilots who shot down the experienced Japanese pilots. Not quite as invincible as the myth would seem to portray them to have been.

Any game that cannot model the experienced pilots being vanquished by the inexperienced pilots fails as a proper model.

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ORIGINAL: DicedT

Amazing that we've had two big patches to fix major flaws like artillery Death Stars and pilot experience. But any suggestion that the air combat model might be flawed brings on innuendo that the player must be at fault.

For the first time, I understand the meaning of "fanboy".

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ORIGINAL: DicedT

Some of you seem to feel a need to blame the player, just like the automakers who built defective cars and then claimed it was the driver's fault.

I can't say for sure that my tactics aren't the problem, though I have tried various techniques such as layering fighters. But I find it interesting that some of you recommend swamping the Japanese with Allied fighters, which makes you wonder why the Allies needed P-39s and P-47s when they should have built hordes of cheaper P-40s for an aerial human wave assault. Given expanded Japanese aircraft production and Allied replacement rates of 30 Hurricanes and P-38s a month, I'll be curious to see how the Allies swamp the opposition.

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ORIGINAL: DicedT
As for experience, the advantage of second-generation Allied fighters was that they could give mass-produced pilots a fighting chance. A less-experienced pilot in a better airplane should be able to hold his own against a more experienced pilot in an inferior aircraft. It's as if WITP bought Axis propaganda about the Cult of the Ace. Sorry, experience may be the most important factor, but it's not the only one.

quote:

ORIGINAL: DicedT
In any event, I'm still waiting for someone to explain how the game models the dive-and-zoom tactics of Allied fighters. Has anyone seen messages that P-38s are diving, attacking, and then climbing back up altitude for another attac?

quote:

ORIGINAL: DicedT

It's October '42, and I have a gaggle of P-38, P-40 and Hurricane squadrons in Burma. They are being shot out of the sky by Oscars, Tojos and a few Zeroes. I've tried flying at high altitudes. I've tried flying everyone at high altitude. I've tried flying the P-38s and Hurricane IICs at 30,000 feet, and the P-40s and Hurricane IIBs at 10,000 or 15,000 feet. Same results. The P-38s bounce the Oscars, and then the Oscars get on the tail of the P-38s and shoot them down. I won't even describe what happens to P-39s.

I know the P-38 wasn't a wonder plane, but it should have some capability to fight Oscars. This concerns me a lot because the Allies do not receive many advanced fighter aircraft until 1944. Until then, the older aircraft - plus P-38s and Spitfires - are all they have. Looking at the aircraft data, Japanese aircraft are always more maneuverable, which seems to be the only factor in the WITP air combat model. Which makes me wonder how the Allied air forces managed to win in real life.

One thing I have noticed is that Allied fighters die like flies when flying offensive fighter sweeps or bomber escort. They don't do quite as badly when flying CAP. Yet even on CAP, P-38s, P-40s and Hurricanes can only bounce bounce Oscars once before the Oscars get on their tail. The WITP air combat model doesn't seem to factor in dive-and-zoom tactics by heavier, faster Allied fighters.

I love playing WITP, but there is something badly wrong with the air combat system.

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ORIGINAL: DicedT

What would really help is if we could say definitively say how the air combat model works. I love WITP, but like most Grigsby games, it seems like we have to watch the combat results and then try to deduce from them how the combat models work. 

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ORIGINAL: witpqs

Name that movie:

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I am not sure I agree with this and I am wondering if you could explain this a little more. Maybe its the wording but I believe the Allies achieved air superiority by;

1) A more robust training program that provided better "trained" pilots to the squadrons

2) Better planes that eventually overwhelmed their opponent.

3) Developing the Pratt and Whitney R2800 and Rolls Royce Merlin engines and using the Browning 50 caliber Mg.

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ORIGINAL: FatR

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I am not sure I agree with this and I am wondering if you could explain this a little more. Maybe its the wording but I believe the Allies achieved air superiority by;

1) A more robust training program that provided better "trained" pilots to the squadrons

2) Better planes that eventually overwhelmed their opponent.

3) Developing the Pratt and Whitney R2800 and Rolls Royce Merlin engines and using the Browning 50 caliber Mg.

Simply put, overall economic superiority of Allies and miscalculations on the part of Axis (primarily Germany, no realistically possible Japanese approach to their pilot training program had a chance of making a real difference, as opposing to delaying the inevitable by a few months) allowed Allies to put much more planes and trained pilots on the frontlines starting from late 1942. This wasn't achieved by lower training standards, compared to the enemy (wartime pilots on all sides lacked in comparison to pre-war veterans), but by greater overall size of training programs. This Allied superiority imposed the unacceptable rate of pilot attrition on Luftwaffe and IJN/IJA, so their pilot quality plummeted during 1944. Arrival of new Allied planes was an important factor but not the most important, in fact, the tide in Europe had turned decisively when Germans still had equal or better planes.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

LoBaron,
Within the air combat model there is no attempt to differentiate between energy fighters and manoeuvre fighters nor is there an attempt to allow for the different tactical doctrines employed by these two types of fighters. Thus there can be no interplay of the doctrines nor any attempt by energy fighters to "fight on their terms" nor on manoeuvre fighter to "fight on their terms".

Instead we have two highly biased "phases" to the fight. The initial phase is biased in terms of favouring speed differentials until the first pass is finished. Once that's done there's an absence of the extension phase for the energy fighter and the acceptance of a second phase of combat ( assuming the first phase doesn't result in a shoot-down ) in which manoeuvre differentials determine success. Obviously ( but I include this for some people who seem determined not to wish to conduct any personal interpretation ) pilot factors impact on all phases.


As such you miss out on one of the main features of A2A combat which was the attempt by Energy fighters to fight an energy battle while turners tried to fight a turning battle ( or where both sides got tired and decided to accept a series of head-on passes as a result of a failure of either to turn the battle into their "type" of fight ).


There's lots of talk about other stuff but I think most of the other stuff is minor detail stuff. The above is the largest current factor missing from the combat model which, if added, would significantly add to face validity, internal validity and yield type-specific results which were believable given the doctrinal underpinnings and technical/tactical characteristics of the planes involved.