ReginaldBednar2
Posts: 10
Joined: 8/2/2019 Status: offline
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I have played 450 of 700 turns for the full campaign as Western Allies. The last date played is November 9, 1944. The scoring is as follows: Air Superiority or whatever it really is: 2 Industry Damage: 28 Terror: 25 To Win: 85 My goal is to elucidate the cheats used by the Axis AI, and it will be clear why there are no counter-measures for any of them! Item 1 The number of P-51B replacements is grossly undervalued. There where around 8,000 build over 18 built over 18 months, around 14.6 per day. The Pacific theatre apparently got P51C and P-51D models. So the true The actual replacement rate was around 14 per day, not the game 8 per day. In my game I ran out of P-51Bs, and still was not able to convert P-38s to P-51s. Apparently most of the P-38s in Europe where converted to P-51s. Item 2 Weather forecasting in the game is terrible. If weather recon planes are not to be modeled, a simpler estimated probability of good weather for a given target would be more useful. The weather plays a big part in the strategy of targets selected, since the industry of the Reich is constantly getting repaired, and if no bombing missions are flown one day the industry damage typically drops by 1 point! Item 3 The Russian over-running of Eastern Theatre industry is not historical, and lags the actual events. This seems very strange since the Western Theatre offensives are almost precise duplicates of the historical ones. The key offensive in the one in Poland Silesia, which is the equivalent of the Eastern Theatre Ruhr. It should fall in late January 1945 or early February 1945. In effect the air war is over at that time since this area was so vital to the Reich. This is true no matter how many super-jets are fielded. Item 4 When the bombing raids are very successful with lots of Luftwaffe fighter shots down, the games goes into a super FLAK versus fighter mode, where around 20 P-51s are shot down flying back to England! This is very embarrassing for such a detailed game. Can you imagine training the 88s to get even 1 maneuverable P-51? Clearly getting rid of the P-51s is a "play-balance" mechanism. Item 5 The PK for fighter combat is way too high, especially for the Luftwaffe pilots (training issue will be discussed shortly) One website has a USAAF set of plots showing from January 1943 to June 1944 the Luftwaffe lost 13,678 planes in combat and another 9872 planes in "non-combat", perhaps including those shot down in training flights. This totals 23,550 AC. Currently in the game, 28,126 Luftwaffe fighters have been shot down. This helps tremendously the AI tactic of jumping bombers which are stragglers, and helps poor pilots get more kills than they otherwise would have. Also, FLAK is way too lethal. I usually only strafe airbases one or two times a month, because more attackers over-all are shot down than planes on the ground! The AI is not as likely to stack super-FLAK groups together either like a player would. Item 6 For some reason statistically, one type of Allied fighter or bomber is picked on for most of the losses for a raid (we are talking about 1000 aircraft formations). The Luftwaffe shot down 100 B-17s one turn which were will escorted, and another time 30 P-51Ds were shot down. Other times 30 P-38s will be shot down. Another time 30 P-47s will be shot down. The key is the other fighters don't take hardly any losses at all! If the losses were all coming from one group, that would be a different story. If fact, one less group next time is not a big loss in overall capability, but taking losses across several groups is devastating. Item 7 This has been complained about by others. The Allied fighter flies on it own path home, dives over a site with balloons, and is shot down by FLAK or higher flying Luftwaffe aircraft. This item does not bother me as much as Luftwaffe aircraft following Allied fighters home and shooting them down one by one like bombers. Item 8 The Luftwaffe has a super supply of pilots with good PK. In my game, 10,203 Luftwaffe pilots were killed, and another 13,075 were wounded (28,126 aircraft lost). I understand in the actual campaign the Germans ran out of pilots who could survive a few combat missions. So this effect is very disappointing. The Germans are shooting more fighter down now than at any point in the campaign with FW-190D9 and ME-109K fighters. Ironically fewer bombers are being shot down, and the Luftwaffe lets the target be obliterated before attacking. Item 9 The recon data has two serious flaws. The first is that the types of aircraft on each airbase is not specified, just an exact count of the total planes. The second is that after 1 or two days the recon information drops the flak information. Item 10 Allied fighters and bombers which are damaged, even very badly damaged, have to fly all the way back to there originating base. Many aircraft are down between an available airfield and the home airfield. The Luftwaffe is much closer to their home bases, so a lot of their aircraft are saved, while many Allied aircraft crash. Also, many pilots would presumably not be killed. Please fill free to commit about this (player or programmer).
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