RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (Full Version)

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Hard Sarge -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/9/2010 12:41:55 PM)

also, don't send too much airpower, the more planes attacking, the better the AA gets (one squadron may slip in and slip out with out much damage, but by the time the 2nd or 3rd squadron makes there runs, the AA is awake and fully manned)




Dobey455 -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/10/2010 7:08:50 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lanconic

That is not the only change...try this.....

Use the American escorts to strafe a LW airfield at say 5k
Now use the ME109 to do the same to say Biggin Hill.

I can tell you right now, there is no comparison. None at all.
And yet its the same mission, w the same tactics.

A bit odd I should say



Not really look at the fire power of a P-47 and compare to an early war 109. A Typhoon or Tempest should be equally deadly. Also look at the number of planes on a field, a single RAF sqn will have about 16 planes, give or take. The LW is organised into Gruppen of 36 plus in most cases.



vimconfused -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/23/2010 9:11:44 AM)

Extremely frustrated. You spend many hours building up the skill of your gruppen over many air to air engagements, then you lose them shot down trying to land or still on the ground. OK, I am not arguing against harsh reality, but it isn't much *fun* either is it?

So I'm still a newbie but I'd like to know how you can avoid losing so many men and so much materiel to a relatively small investment from the Allies. In my case three squadrons of RAF Mustangs have pretty much decimated two of my best gruppen, and I've lost several top aces too. So next time I'll keep a reserve gruppe to attack the enemy fighters hanging around over the neighbouring airfield, and I'm not arguing this isn't a valid tactic for the Allies. BUT if Allied fighters didn't even bother to escort bombers and spent their game strafing and patrolling my airfields the game would be over very quickly... and surely that can't be realistic.

What about the airfield AA? In my case I had piled a vast amount of flak into the particular airfield to defend against fighter attack and it did nothing. Fired once at the strafing planes but did nothing against those hanging around waiting to shoot down the landing aircraft. *Surely* if an Allied fighter is in range of shooting down landing aircraft its in range of the airfield flak. The airfield flak should be shooting all the time!

I've only just started the game, but this is by far the most frustrating part for me. I guess I can mitigate the effects a bit by even closer micromanagement, but it only takes a couple of squadrons to slip through to do disproportionate damage.



Tuk -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/23/2010 10:18:00 AM)

You'll find plenty more to frustrate you I'm sure. Try playing allies in a PBEM and you won't have a clue what's going on. Raid composition, altitude, clouds, accurate damage reports, even the types and sides of planes, all will be a mystery as 109s look like Wellingtons and Forts like Ju 88s. Then the replay will just crash in a busy night raid. Shocking and frankly shameful the game was ever released like this... and presumably twice.

As for the airfield flak, the longest range light flak only shoots to 7500' I think. Tried adding heavies? That should hit targets loitering.



vimconfused -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/23/2010 10:56:27 AM)

I guess I'll have to look forward to more frustrating things ;-)

The point about the flak was I don't think it was firing at the loitering a/c at all, and there is certainly a large amount of all types at the particular airfield.



Michael T -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/24/2010 2:46:54 AM)

My sentiments exactly Tuk. I am getting very tired of Matrix releasing half cooked games. EIA was the worst, then I struck TOW which wasn't much better. Now this. I really like the bones of the game, and appreciate the good work done by HS and others but way too many unresolved issues once again that should never have gotten past a play test in PBEM. Obviously the game was never tested in PBEM. The manual is a joke. I am looking forward to WITE but I fear another bug riddled half finished game.... 



Thales99 -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/24/2010 8:16:41 PM)

I'm happy with most aspects of the game, but I too got the impression that the ground strafing routine is producing unrealistic results while playing the BTR44 campaign on the German side.

As I wrote in another thread, I doubt that when studying biographies of German (or any nation's) fighter pilots you would find too many cases of "killed while being strafed on the ground". Yes, it happened, but not to a large percentage of the pilot cadre. Within the game I repeatedly experienced days where *more than half* of my pilot losses happened on the ground. And this after retreating all units as far east as feasible and stacking their airfields with AA.

I remember a single strafing attack on an airfield north of Hamburg causing 21 pilots KIA and 25 WIA (out of 2 gruppen). Please show me just one historical strafing attack during the bombing campaign that caused comparable pilot casualties.

Normally I try to anticipate strafing attempts early enough and scramble all planes, which works out well. Sometimes the raid is already too close and I know that I have to sit it out. However, there is no way to tell your pilots to stay safe, even if enough time is remaining - all planes are automatically modelled to be manned and each plane hit on the ground may result in a pilot KIA.

Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with the aircraft losses, but the amount of pilot casualties just seems wrong to me.



Derfel -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/24/2010 9:21:08 PM)

I think you should use a game exploit to combat a game exploit:

When the attack come in the airfield, change aicraft model, then zero pilots should be killed.
However you will have a group that will not take part in this day combat and will need 2 -3 days of rest to get the aircraft made ready and refuelled.

Talk to your opponent and get him to abstain from straffing your airfields to death or use this exploit above.

Just keep in mind a game should be fun for both parts.



Nicholas Bell -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/25/2010 3:16:47 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Derfel

I think you should use a game exploit to combat a game exploit:

When the attack come in the airfield, change aicraft model, then zero pilots should be killed.
However you will have a group that will not take part in this day combat and will need 2 -3 days of rest to get the aircraft made ready and refuelled.

Talk to your opponent and get him to abstain from straffing your airfields to death or use this exploit above.



I don't see how you can do this - how do you access the squadron to change its aircraft type during the reaction phase?

The only sure way to avoid the problem is not to be caught on the ground. Harley did mention many months ago about considering making it possible for units to stand down so pilots would not be in the planes (and the planes could not fly). This would not solve the problem of losing most of a gruppe if caught on alert and still on the ground. Like shooting down planes in the landing pattern, I think the results are too extreme and the code could use some fine-tuning.




Derfel -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/25/2010 3:48:15 PM)

You do it by going into Campaign Summary, find your unit and change aircraft type in the detail view.


You can indeed consider it alike to stand down a unit. Just use it with care as it is an exploit of the code and your opponent wouldn't like it at all [;)] However an AI does not cry foul!
So IF you are going to use it against a human opponent please get acceptance first!



Nicholas Bell -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/25/2010 4:39:58 PM)

You know, I never realized you could get the detailed unit review through the OOB summary. Well, that certainly is a method of getting your units to stand down and jump into the trenches. [:D]



Hard Sarge -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/25/2010 5:18:02 PM)

you do know that if the aircraft is not flyable, it does not have a pilot in it ?

hmmm, Harley was talking about making sure that explot was cut out, quess he didn't get to it




Tuk -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (2/25/2010 7:51:05 PM)

I hope he does get round to it but that some provision is made to reduce pilot deaths on the ground too. Countering gameyness with gameyness tends to multiply the bad rather than cancel one out with the other.



Rusty1961 -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (3/6/2010 6:51:10 AM)

Agreed. They need to change this so we don't lose that many German pilots while being straffed.



Hard Sarge -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (3/6/2010 12:38:11 PM)

Harley has already lowered the loses

if the pilots are locked into there planes, they take the chance of getting killed/wounded if they are in the planes when they get attacked, don't leave them on the ground

if you are at cockpit readyness, shame on you, if they are still sitting there

take them off of cockpit readyness, or take off



Nicholas Bell -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (3/6/2010 1:40:13 PM)

quote:

take them off of cockpit readyness, or take off


Except there is no way to take them off cockpit readiness in the game - other than Derfel's workaround.

Currently the only "legal" way to get a unit to stand down is to move them in the planning phase to some airfield far, far away <g> so they do not become fatigued because they go on alert status.  This is counter-productive however, because when you move the unit back to the front, you have to wait for the planes to become available.  Furthermore, as one or two do become ready, they are manned and the pilots start gaining fatigue again because their alert status goes up.

Not that the Allied player needs anymore help, but it makes sense even on no-fly days to fly a non-aggressive sweep or two just to keep the Axis on alert and accumulating fatigue.



fbs -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (3/14/2010 1:57:50 AM)

Just found a similar technique today, and when I came to post I found it is already being discussed here.

Just park a lot of fighters on top of the German bases, say 400 through 1-2 hours. Set them to sweep somewhere, with a patrol point on top of the enemy airfields, to prevent them falling into enemy flak. Then entice the enemy fighters to fly somewhere, and watch them fall like flies when trying to land.

First try in Italy, at a single location : 5 of my fighters lost, 70 enemies shot down (out of 84 that flew); no bomber was even attacked. I'd say Elmer could try harder to keep his fighters out of range of mine, specially when I can park 400 fighters on top of his airfields for 1-2 hours.



vimconfused -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (3/14/2010 8:03:39 AM)

2 February 1944. Today I had 3 pilots killed in action. Quite a modest number... except thatI didn't fly a single sortie today. They were lost to strafing even though the whole Luftwaffe was effectively stood down the whole day. Seems they spend their days off sitting in the cockpit waiting to be shot at. Dedicated chaps indeed.

I "only" lost 3 but it underlines the ridiculousness of the situation. If the Allies had applied their whole fighter and escort force to strafing today it could have been a slaughter, even though the pilots should have been down the beer keller! The idea that I can avoid this by never having my planes on the ground and/or rotating to other airfields is equally mad. As if I don't put enough hours into the game already!

Edit: Incidentally, the three pilots I lost all had 90+ experience, had flown 139 missions between them and had 9 kills. I also had 3 pilots wounded and lost 9 aircraft. Of course I could just as easily have lost my best or my worst pilots.



Golden Bear -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (3/24/2010 1:56:49 AM)

I don't know how to evaluate Nick's original complaint. First of all, I don't play HTH but have played oodles of SP BTR as Allied.

If I catch everything just right I can devastate a LW unit coming in to land. Usually, though, this only happens once and then a bunch of AA gets moved in and there are diminishing returns. The AI seems to do OK at covering AFs with AA. Also, FSs over AFs work better early and get progressively more difficult and costly as the AA builds up. It seems the LW side has a constant steady accumulation of AA and things get harder and harder for the Allied player because of this.

Thus, I am not certain that it is an exploit or an "earlier in game" and hit or miss kind of thing. As the Allied player I track AFs with LW aircraft on a piece of scratch paper. But I don't strafe every turn necessarily or at least I alternate targets. Getting a FG going to a well defended AF is as much a disaster to the Allied player as what Nick complains about for the LW player.

Given the give and take on this, according to my own observations, I think that it might actually be working out pretty well.

From pilot's reports and histories, the sweeps over AFs were an enormous strain for the LW. Always tough with alerts like this to figure out whether they are observer-side biased or whether there is balance.

Carlos



invernomuto -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (3/29/2010 8:39:54 AM)

My first experiences with sweeping missions aren't so great.
Yesterday I saw my spits strafing an airport in south italy.
3 Axis plane lost, but spits got mauled by AAs (5 Spits downed).  
Lesson learned: I'll stay away from AAs with my fighters...



Rainerle -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (3/29/2010 1:43:49 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

Harley has already lowered the loses

if the pilots are locked into there planes, they take the chance of getting killed/wounded if they are in the planes when they get attacked, don't leave them on the ground

if you are at cockpit readyness, shame on you, if they are still sitting there

take them off of cockpit readyness, or take off

But Hard Sarge, it takes 63 minutes for a NJG to take off, so no way to scramble them when a sweep heads their way. And all this time a NJG pilot is sitting in the plane because the plane is 'ready'?



morganbj -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (12/2/2010 7:01:22 PM)

So, if the German should pull his planes back to avoid the sweeps, why can't the British player do the same thing to avoid the 110's in BOB? It seems that the 110 is such a poor dog fighter that the Brit player could find a way to set a few traps and really take out a lot of 110's.



HansHafen -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (12/16/2010 1:44:15 AM)

Wouldn't the 110's get mauled if they were just hanging around England looking for a fight? I think they would only be effective at surprising aircraft taking off or landing, or hitting bombers. I imagine almost all Allied fighters would run circles around them in a dogfight. So, they couldn't really hang around waiting too long or allied fighters would come along. I'm not an air guy but I don't think the 110's were overpowering any Allied fighters iirc. (Correct me if I am wrong.)  Did the Germans do this in the war? How could it be a game changer here?



Erkki -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (12/17/2010 12:26:13 PM)

They shouldn't lose to RAF fighters any more than Mosquitos do to Luftwaffe in BTR. Because the flak doesnt fire at aircraft that attack planes in landing pattern, and because the aircraft in landing pattern dont evade, they would would sometime massacre the enemy, sometimes take huge losses themselves. Also the sweeping planes can do their attack from ceiling, without losing altitude, to completely avoid the flak.

In this regard the game needs some development.



Turner -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (12/18/2010 5:56:06 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Erkki
In this regard the game needs some development.


Agreed. As long as the sweeps function this way it must be imho considered a exploit to sweep the Luftwaffe to death by a human player. Fighter sweeps were effective yes, but not to the extent possible in the game. So it must be considered a exploit unless done in some other manner to give the axis player a fighting chance.



lastdingo -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (9/28/2011 10:18:19 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Lanconic


quote:

ORIGINAL: HMSWarspite

I think you may be missing the point. Reading between the lines, the implication is that they break the game... maybe because of the 'planes wont divert issue'. Although I am surprised, because a guaranteed 110 cap over an airfield sounds like points on a stick to me:). Thus I suspect they took it out cos it is a game breaker...


That is not the only change...try this.....

Use the American escorts to strafe a LW airfield at say 5k
Now use the ME109 to do the same to say Biggin Hill.

I can tell you right now, there is no comparison. None at all.
And yet its the same mission, w the same tactics.

A bit odd I should say


I actually do it. My Lw ruined on average one major airfield complement (two to three squadrons) a day by staggering 109 patrols per day once I was finished with my industry demolishing plan.
The losses were minimal.

1. Recce all airfields in range
2. Choose a few (where many fighters have been spotted)
3. look at when they have sorties on the next day (and which type of aircraft), especially delay (in minutes) in comparison to your bomber waves.
4. Set up next day's bomber waves with moderate fighter escort (especially all 109E-1s).
5. Set up fighter sweeps (= permanent presence of about 30 fighters at IIRC about 7k ft).
6. Observe the massacre.
7. Have fun; once the reserves are depleted, Fighter Command ready fighters strength will drop quickly (for my primary industry targets were ball bearings and engines).

Sure, it takes about 200-300 fighter sorties, but you get about 20-30 kills/day including aircraft destroyed on the ground (+ aircraft damaged) for it. That's a very fine ratio.



lastdingo -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (9/28/2011 10:25:36 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: HansHafen

Wouldn't the 110's get mauled if they were just hanging around England looking for a fight? I think they would only be effective at surprising aircraft taking off or landing, or hitting bombers. I imagine almost all Allied fighters would run circles around them in a dogfight. So, they couldn't really hang around waiting too long or allied fighters would come along. I'm not an air guy but I don't think the 110's were overpowering any Allied fighters iirc. (Correct me if I am wrong.)  Did the Germans do this in the war? How could it be a game changer here?


I used them a lot to hit fighters on the ground in the original game.
It was the single best mission for 110Ds, for example.

Their endurance, sturdiness and firepower are way superior to 109s. Plus you can assign 109s on a higher altitude in a FS for cover.


The historical performance of the 110 wasn't so terribly bad as people today talk about it.

It was inefficient - you could get two 109s for one 110. That was the problem.

The average 110 pilot was better than the average 109 pilot, for many of the better ones were sent to the ZG.

110s could not be surprised (surprise = main killer in fighter-on-fighter combat), but in exchange they depended a lot on team support to survive (for they lacked defensive manoeuvrability).

Their offensive strength was fine. They were easier to see and thus a bit less likely to surprise the enemy, but their firepower was great and concentrated, their speed was good and they were steady gun platforms (easy aiming on a surprised0steady target).

In case of troubles they could fly in a circle. It wasn't until 1941/42 that fighter pilots in Europe figured out how to defeat a defensive ring of fighters (see Joachim Marseille), and the tactic against such a circle formation required great pilot skill.



lastdingo -> RE: Fighter Sweep - Program Exploit or Great Way to Wipe out the LW? (9/28/2011 10:27:37 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: invernomuto

My first experiences with sweeping missions aren't so great.
Yesterday I saw my spits strafing an airport in south italy.
3 Axis plane lost, but spits got mauled by AAs (5 Spits downed).
Lesson learned: I'll stay away from AAs with my fighters...



a) Don't. the exchange ratio is good. You get much more aircraft production.

b) Use sturdier fighters. P-40s, P-47s, Typhoons.



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