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FatR -> RE: AFB Beware (11/15/2011 7:34:05 PM)
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I got answers from people I was talking above, Russian historians Eugen Pinak and Vladimir Sidorenko - they are okay with using their ship concepts/art for modding purposes (well, to be honest I already borrowed a number of ideas regarding IJN from them). I'll sort the needed art and post it tomorrow, hopefully.
One more note before continuing - I fell I'm not entirely confident in my knowledge of air combat's workings. I'm finding that mere testing miss a lot of things that can be discovered by a devious opponent (like bombers defensive fire being super effective in night combat, as noted above - I, when toying with Downfall, subscribed to the common logic of setting planes with weaker armament to night missions, while using your best-armed planes for them is actually more effective). So, feedback will be much appreciated.
That said, the air proposal part 1: our main fighter plane.
I must admit, I personally like Ki-43, and reading histories of a number of fighter sentais gives me a feeling this plane tends to be underrated. In game terms, it is also highly useful early on, when it can fly above any Allied fighter. However, both in AE and RL it is pretty much a dead end design that becomes inadequate very fast, thanks to impossibility of fitting more than a pair 12.7 MGs into it without completely screwing its stability. So, my engine proposal was already written with a way of justifying its elimination in mind.
Now, A6M is inferior to Ki-43 in some aspects, for example high-speed maneurability, or, later, protection. However it is far better at actually shooting down things, and has a room for improvement there. Also, A6M is available much earlier (Nakajima backed off from the new naval fighter competition, considering requirements impossible, and Ki-43 was built significantly later), which makes its adoption by the army when the need for a long-range fighter becomes obvious a bit more plausbile, at least if we assume a better Army/Navy cooperation. As a side note, A6M2 was initially adopted as a land fighter, with carrier operation equipment and folding wingtips only appearing later. Name it, say, Ki-41. Nakajima will be given the task of producing this design for the Army (most of A6Ms already were built on Nakajima factories in RL), as a compensation. And with Sakai being kept in production only for the sake of already-existing planes, they won't have an immediately avaiable alternative anyway.
Well, technically speaking, here our paths can diverge. Assuming cooperation levels closer to historical, Nakajima can start designing a Ki-43-like air superiority fighter based on Ha-33 here. This will eventually lead to a Frank Lite (in RL they tried to install Ha-33 engine on Ki-84 airframe late in the war, by the way). This is not ideal, though, as this fighter almost certainly will not be available at all by December 1941, and we will still have duplication of effort.
Note, that until about early 1943, maybe late 1942 in this alternative, Mitsubishi Kinsei has only around 100 more hps of max power compared to Nakajima Sakae, and initial examples of high-power Kinsei engines (used on Ki-46-III) suffered from unreliability. Serious advantage over Sakae will start to appear only later in the war. And speaking of powerplants - Mitsubishi Zuisei (Ha-31), the engine installed on Zero prototypes, was initially rejected for being underpowered, but by spring of 1941 it was heavily modified and actually exceeded the current version of Sakae in power. To illustrate, going from twin Zuisei 14s, more advanced than Zuisei 12, installed on A6M1, to twin Zuisei 21s, allowed Ki-46 Dinah gain 64 km/h of top speed. If we don't want to deviate too far from historical engine availability dates, we can start a war with A6M1s (about one hex less range than very fuel-effective Sakae, otherwise basically as A6M2), then replace them with the Ha-33-powered model A6M2a in autumn of 1942 (fuel tanks as on A6M3a to compensate for a more powerful engine, range on the same level as A6M1 at best, more speed, all-wing guns), then basically build successive designs along A6M5-A6M8 line, probably introducing improved protection and armament earlier than RL, due to more powerful engine to lift all that. Just one line of models this time. As about Ki-41/army Zeros, I'm inclined to keep them closely mirroring the development for the Navy. Not sure if Nakajima engineers have any ideas applicable to Zero or might be willing to share them (wing fuel tank racks in style of Ki-43 come to mind, but Zero has guns in roughly the same place).
No J2M this time as well. Production of 621 aircraft from December 1942 to the war's end is just not acceptable. Yes in the game it is possible to build throngs of them, but then we have to accept one of the two ahistoricalities - either give it only 612 km/h up until the end of war, or give it more realistic 650-670 km/h (results of tests by TAIC on 92 octane fuel, which was available to Japanese) and watch the Allied airforce burn due to facing thousands of Corsair equals, while Allies themselves still have quite limited numbers of such planes. I'd prefer not to. I vote for sacrificing it to allow us developing A7M as fast as possible again. Share the result with the Army again - although by that time IJAAF should have its own planes, relatively adequate for end-war scenarios (later on that), so it might be not strictly necessary. But with the assumed level of cooperation (and no Ki-84 anywhere), IJAAF will probably want this fighter (name it, say, Ki-82).
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