Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Alfred

LoBaron,

Further to your post #88, some additional approaches which are not usually identified are:

1. Increase considerably the consumption of supply be 4E (by increasing logistic requirements, the tempo and weight of operations could be affected and the alleged ill effects suffered by the Japanese thereby mitigated)

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2. Increase considerably the VPs awarded for the destruction of 4E (currently 2 points per destroyed 4E, if increased to say 10 points per 4E, it would bring some compensation to Japanese players who play to win/not lose on VPs)

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3. Introduce a time delay for any air unit transferred before it becomes operational at the new airbase (would make concentration of multiple 4E units into a flying circus and their easy relocation to new sectors to sequentially supress Japanese airbases more difficult)

Alfred

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ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

ChezDaJez wrote:

"Brad has lost only 15 B-17s to air combat for the entire war despite near daily raids on my bases and shipping for the past few weeks. Ops losses account for 46 B-17s most likely due to lower their experience and higher fatigue from long range missions."

Chez' numbers are a little off... I have only lost 12 B17E's to A2A (though you can be sure that most of the 38 Ops losses were due to combat damage), but I've also lost 29 B17Ds to A2A combat (plus 10 more in Operational losses).

Where's the Any key?

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ORIGINAL: timtom

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ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

ChezDaJez wrote:

"Brad has lost only 15 B-17s to air combat for the entire war despite near daily raids on my bases and shipping for the past few weeks. Ops losses account for 46 B-17s most likely due to lower their experience and higher fatigue from long range missions."

Chez' numbers are a little off... I have only lost 12 B17E's to A2A (though you can be sure that most of the 38 Ops losses were due to combat damage), but I've also lost 29 B17Ds to A2A combat (plus 10 more in Operational losses).

In Appendix B of Fortress against the Sun, Gene Salecker notes the fates of all PTO B-17's by serial number. While aspects of Saleckers work is seriously dodgy, I view him as broadly trustworthy on the US side of the fence.

Anyhu, Salecker notes a total of 22 B-17's all makes shot down throughout, 9 listed as MIA and 8 "fate unknowns".

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ORIGINAL: oldman45
There were plenty of bombers for the AAC to use in the pacific. They were sitting on the West Coast and PH. They were used as patrol planes in the South Pacific. The players would be screaming bloody murder if they were forced to do this.

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ORIGINAL: Nemo121

With that said I want to point out a few errors in thinking in some of the latest posts....

1. If you send more B17s more will be lost....

Fighters have finite ammunition so far a given number of fighters ( y ) you will get ( y * ammo ) number of firing passes. Let's assume each fighter has enough ammo for 5 firing passes of 2 second each. Previously I did a few calculations using German documentation in which they had calculated the weight of firepower ( in Kg ) which was required to bring a B17 down ( on average ). They were then able to apply this to each of their fighters and eventually create planes like the Fw-190A8/R1 and others which could take down a bomber in a single 2 second firing pass. The Ki-43 IIIa, in comparison, needed 45 seconds of firing on target in order to achieve that same amount of "lead on target". This leaves aside the issue of cannons being more destructive than MG bullets on a weight for weight basis but I'm only making a very simple model for illustrative purposes here so bear with me.

If you have 100 Ki-43 IIIs vs 50 B-17s those 100 Ki43 IIIs will be able to generate 500 firing passes of 2 seconds each. That is 1,000 seconds of fire. Each Ki-43 needs 45 seconds of "on target" firing to down a B-17 so even without ANY defensive fire and PERFECT aim and co-ordination ( none of which was likely ) the Ki-43 IIIs will down a maximum of 22 B-17s. Once you start reducing the number of passes to account for inaccurate firing, fire which went into non-vital areas, Ki-43s damaged and forced out of the fight before they could fire all of their ammo and you quickly get into a real-world situation where 100 Ki-43 IIIs might only down 3 or 4 B-17s ( if that ) no matter how many firing passes they made ( with a large number of those B-17s being recorded as ops losses on the way home from the target area ).

Now, put those 100 Ki-43 IIIs vs 500 B-17s and those Ki-43 IIIs, even in the face of no defensive fire, will still only be able, with perfect aim and co-ordination, be able to down 22 B-17s. Bomber raids scale such that once you meet the maximum available enemy fighter force you can add more and more bombers without incurring any additional losses - with the end result that losses per sortie begins to fall. This "saturation of the defences" thinking lay behind the Bomber Command strategy in WW2 in which they accepted that German night fighters etc could deal with x bombers per hour and destroy them and they focussed on sending as many bombers through as possible so that "x per hour" was a loss rate which was acceptable to them. Overall losses remained the same but losses per sortie fell.

The various bomber command/ air theatres are very interesting to study from a statistical perspective. They really brought maths into warfare in a big way in terms of allowing the maths to impact actual real-world deployments.

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ORIGINAL: LoBaron

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ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown

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ORIGINAL: LoBaron

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ORIGINAL: cap_and_gown
No, the only problem I am really seeing is that the 4E's fly too much. Instead of a service rating of 4, which is, I admit already high, perhaps they should have a service rating of 5.

Service rating could help but I think that it produces an ahistorical downtime of bombers. As you said it is high already.

Just thought of another solution: If this is doable with the code, why not make something similar as AF overstacking penalty for 4E´s for air support also?
If you need, for example, 3 air support for every heavy bomber instead of 1 this could severely reduce the potential strike size and also
better reflect the higher maintenance cost for the big planes.

This will not fly (so to speak). As I understand it, if you have 250 aviation support, you can fly unlimited number of planes from that airfield (subject to stacking and administrative limits). For the allies, that is extremely easy. (For the Japanese it is practically impossible )

I thought there was only a fly-everything bonuscard for lvl 10 airfields. I wonder what the reason was for implementing no-limit AS when it reaches 250.
Why not simply get rid of that unlimited thing? Worst thing that can happen is you have to stand down a couple of squads if you got so much you don´t know what to do with it.
That might aditionally help convincing the player to distribute his forces.

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Changing how the fighters work to deal with the bombers

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ORIGINAL: PresterJohn

The suggestion that Japanese airframe production is overpowered has been asserted, but not evidenced. The only discussion i have seen seemed to show if anything Japanese airframes were being underproduced. The distribution is different but thats to be expected. Its also a red herring and irrelevant to whether the 4e bomber model works well. Allowing the Japanese control over airframe production but not the Allies is a game design decision.

I think the argument that bomber turrets should not be as accurate as fighter guns is a very good one, logical and in line with history. A careful tweak here could result in more historic results throughout the war and encourage more realistic use of the aircraft.

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ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

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ORIGINAL: PresterJohn

The suggestion that Japanese airframe production is overpowered has been asserted, but not evidenced. The only discussion i have seen seemed to show if anything Japanese airframes were being underproduced. The distribution is different but thats to be expected. Its also a red herring and irrelevant to whether the 4e bomber model works well. Allowing the Japanese control over airframe production but not the Allies is a game design decision.

I think the argument that bomber turrets should not be as accurate as fighter guns is a very good one, logical and in line with history. A careful tweak here could result in more historic results throughout the war and encourage more realistic use of the aircraft.

To your first point, airframe production numbers have been posted, but not broken out are trainers, artillery spotters, etc., which numbered in the thousands. But more importantly, and a point continually ignored by the "historical" wing of the forum, is that the airframes burn supply, not av gas, in the game, while historical ground crews' attempts to insert boiled rice into gas tnaks was a perennial operational failure. Supply can be produced in the game through LI with no oil or fuel inputs. It can be hand-waved into existence, and then carried even by submarines to where the planes are. It is as ahistoric a mechanic as exists in the game, yet there is contstant willful ignoring of this fact. Japan's historic air forces weren't grounded due to lack of airframes; thousands were found at the surrender. They weren't grounded by lack of men; thousands of ill-trained "pilots" were found at the surrender. (Ill-trained due to lack of fuel to accumulate flight hours.) The air forces were gounded by lack of fuel. And this constraint is not present in the game. It is what allows the Japanese player to overwhelm the Allied air effort at every stage of the game. It is supremely ahistoric.

Is production a "red herring" as you asset? I argue not. It is fundamental to the issue and to game balance. At this point, 1.5 years into the game's lifespan, there are still numerious calls to micro-change some small, tactical area of the game and not enough atttention to the game's balance overall, which is the sum of all of those tactical trade-offs.

Many of them rest on the fundamental, inherited design decision to not give the Allies variable production. Unlike Nemo, I would argue that this, while a worthy goal, cannot be simply spliced onto the existing game without a massive unbalancing against the Japanese player's interests. The entire underlying economic model would need to be rethought. In particular, CONUS Resorces and Oil are infinite and untouchable by the Japanese player. In reality, strategic resources such as steel and aluminum were scarce and rationed in the US by war production boards. Current in-game granularity in the area of Resources is insufficient to restrain any Allied variable production effort and prevent them running amok in further ahistoric fashion.

Your second point masks Nemo's contention up-thread that he is referring to waist-gunners, not B-17 or other model's turrets. The tail gunner, ball gunner, or especially top gunner in a B-17 had a substantially stable platform to fire from and good visibility across his firing arc not possessed by the two waist gunners. Were they as accurate as a fighter's guns? I don't know; I haven't seen stats. But on a gun-for gun basis (2 barrels versus 4, 6, or 8 on a fighter), when gunner workload is factored in (the pilot has a lot more to be doing at the point of firing than the bomber gunner) I'm not so sure the fighter is superior.

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ORIGINAL: Nemo121

Bullwinkle,

Well, the fighter had a far easier target also. They could choose how to make the attack and minimise lateral movement across their line of fire ( which was a real killer for accuracy ). B-17 gunners often had to fire on targets moving diagonally through their engagement envelope ( human brains are TERRIBLE at targetting things moving diagonally. We are great at things coming directly at us, ok with things going laterally but terrible at things coming diagonally in a single plane and even worse when things move diagonally in two planes ( as a fighter coming in from the left rear quarter of the plan in a diving attack ( 8 o'clock high ) ) would be doing.Throw in the fact that the gunner could also be moving laterally relative to the target's diagonality in three planes and it all combines to make certain types of firing solutions for certain approach MUCH more difficult to compute when you are the gunner than when you are the fighter.

For a whole variety of reasons many firing solutions for fighter planes attacking bombers were much easier than for the bomber crews firing back. One cannot say that the solution was equally difficult for both sides. It just doesn't work that way.


Of course for some approaches the bombers had easier firing solutions than the fighters but with relatively experienced and trained pilots the fighters were able to choose to come in along vectors which either minimised their exposure to fire or maximised the difficulty of the firing solution required of those aiming the defensive fire.


FOr the above reasons ( as well as issues of historical loss rates to bomber fire vs what we see in-game ) I think that a good case can be made for stating that a bomber crewman in a turret couldn't achieve the same accuracy as a fighter pilot using the same weapon closing in on him. That's an "on average, all other things being equal" statement though of course.

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ORIGINAL: PresterJohn

So total airframe production is within historical bounds but distribution of builds is different then? Supply is an abstract, a neccessary one to make the game playable, its also produced more effeciently with HI which does use fuel i believe. Whilst i'm sure you are right that including avaiation fuel as another resource would make the game more "accurate" it again is irrelevant as its not going to happen and even if included Japanese players would just make sure enough was produced as it would be an obvious critical resource. It might not add anything to the game.

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ORIGINAL: timtom

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ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

ChezDaJez wrote:

"Brad has lost only 15 B-17s to air combat for the entire war despite near daily raids on my bases and shipping for the past few weeks. Ops losses account for 46 B-17s most likely due to lower their experience and higher fatigue from long range missions."

Chez' numbers are a little off... I have only lost 12 B17E's to A2A (though you can be sure that most of the 38 Ops losses were due to combat damage), but I've also lost 29 B17Ds to A2A combat (plus 10 more in Operational losses).

In Appendix B of Fortress against the Sun, Gene Salecker notes the fates of all PTO B-17's by serial number. While aspects of Saleckers work is seriously dodgy, I view him as broadly trustworthy on the US side of the fence.

Anyhu, Salecker notes a total of 22 B-17's all makes shot down throughout, 9 listed as MIA and 8 "fate unknowns".