RE: 8MP Air War Review (Full Version)

All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Gary Grigsby's War in the East Series >> After Action Reports



Message

Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/23/2019 3:39:22 PM)

Phase I Turns 2+: Bombing the Finns - Right Idea Wrong Target

EwaldvonKleist caused an international outcry and was condemned at the League of Nations for his bombing of the then neutral Finland. But he had me worried. If had started by bombing the Finnish fighters we would have had a problem. A tactic I have seen used in other games is for the Soviet air forces to concentrate on attacking the Finnish air force in the early turns. They can do this from airbases which the Luftwaffe is prohibited from attacking. On turn 2 we already had a Luftwaffe base at Koenigsberg for shipping to Finland and some airgroups to transfer there to protect the West of Finland. But the Soviet air force could fighter sweep the frozen Finnish air force bases in the German no fly zone, and if the Finnish air force wanted to support advancing Finnish ground forces they would have to do it on their own. In effect the Soviet air force could avoid a big air war with the Luftwaffe and concentrate on an airwar with just the Finnish air force - which they would win and use to build kills, morale and experience for the Soviet air forces in the early turns. Luckily for us they did not bomb the Finnish air force but instead ground bombed the Finns - much to my relief.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/6B2902D474594E42B7354EF129994730.jpg[/image]



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/23/2019 4:12:09 PM)

Phase I Turns 2+: Soviet Airbase Placement - Aggressive Too Soon

The analogy was given to me once that airbase placement is a bit like tennis. When you want to be aggressive and move in for the kill - move to the net. Otherwise keep well back. For all the early turns Soviet airbase placement was highly aggressive - they brought them to within a few hexes of the front-line (net) - but without the air force that could deliver on this. They should have kept to the golden rule that when you are on the back-foot, move backwards.

The picture below shows a typical example from turn 11. Even though, in air terms, the Axis are the ones being offensive in the air war from the deployment of the air bases you would think the reverse is true.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/73496F4B5D67470BAC50B97305D4827E.jpg[/image]

Amazingly the German Ju87B, which only has a radius of 11 hexes (or range 16 with a staging base) is actually bombing the airbase of an Il-4 air group which has a radius of 102 hexes. If an Il-4 airgroup used a staging base it could even fly missions from 153 hexes away! In these early turns the Axis air forces were prioritising the destruction of modern fighters, reconnaissance and these very long range bombers above all else. Normally the Il-4s and DB-3Bs get moved to the Urals on turn 1 and spend the rest of the game raining death and destruction from airbases in the Urals you cannot even get close to. That is why it is important to destroy as many as you can when you can - especially on turn 1. Yet here on turn 11 we find them just a few hexes from the front-lines?



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/23/2019 5:05:02 PM)

Phase I Turns 2+: Soviet National Reserve - Used Too Little?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Hortlund
We will not send the airforce to the national reserve.


I remember the Soviet team commenting a lot on not sending air groups to national reserve and saying this was the main reason for doing badly in the air war at the start. But initially the Soviet AAR was not accessible to the Axis team so it was only much later that I came to see this comment.

I have been given the number of airgroups that were in the national reserve at the start of the first dozen Soviet turns (in brackets are the number of these air groups that were arrivals that turn and were not sent from the map to NR according to scenario data)

1 - 22 (11)
2 - 69 (1)
3 - 74 (1)
4 - 52
5 - 39 (1)
6 - 44
7 - 46
8 - 46
9 - 57
10 - 64
11 - 150
12 - 177

Soviet team players will have seen the full data and perhaps can give more context. But at least it can be seen that, whatever may have been said, it was not literally true that no airgroups were sent to the National Reserve. Reserving lots of airgroups on turn 1 would have resulted in a large number of them appearing at the start of turn 2 in the NR so perhaps that is quite a low number. But at least to me the number of airgroups sent to national reserve each turn on these figures could be described to be low, but not extraordinarily low. So I would still contend that the relative Axis success in the air war in the early turns owes more to innovative use of Kabuki dancing and staging bases by the Axis side than low use of National Reserve rotation by the Soviet side?



M60A3TTS -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/24/2019 5:22:38 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Telemecus

Phase I Turns 2+: Soviet National Reserve - Used Too Little?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Hortlund
We will not send the airforce to the national reserve.


I remember the Soviet team commenting a lot on not sending air groups to national reserve and saying this was the main reason for doing badly in the air war at the start. But intially the Soviet AAR was not accessible to the Axis team so it was only much later that I came to see this comment.

I have been given the number of airgroups that were in the national reserve at the start of the first dozen Soviet turns (in brackets are the number of these air groups that were arrivals that turn and were not sent from the map to NR according to scenario data)

1 - 22 (11)
2 - 69 (1)
3 - 74 (1)
4 - 52
5 - 39 (1)
6 - 44
7 - 46
8 - 46
9 - 57
10 - 64
11 - 150
12 - 177

Soviet team players will have seen the full data and perhaps can give more context. But at least it can be seen that, whatever may have been said, it was not literally true that no airgroups were sent to the National Reserve. Reserving lots of airgroups on turn 1 would have resulted in a large number of them appearing at the start of turn 2 in the NR so perhaps that is quite a low number. But at least to me the number of airgroups sent to national reserve each turn on these figures could be described to be low, but not extraordinarily low. So I would still contend that the relative Axis success in the air war in the early turns owes more to innovative use of Kabuki dancing and staging bases by the Axis side than low use of National Reserve rotation by the Soviet side?


I do not have turn 1, but turns 2 and 3 can be examples to show what you are missing.

Here are the 69 units of the National Reserve sorted by lowest morale. You can see no units under 40. Therefore they would in my mind all be eligible for deployment.

[image]https://i.imgur.com/nb7kVFM.jpg[/image]

Here is the VVS at the start of turn 2 sorted by lowest morale.

[image]https://i.imgur.com/J5qkVEX.jpg[/image]

Here is the VVS with all air units with morale of less than 30 sent to the NR. 208 remain after sending 77 to the NR.

[image]https://i.imgur.com/xYcYaNm.jpg[/image]

Now, if I deployed the 69 units eligible in the NR, it would be empty and await arrival of the 77 units I sent it. Numbers wise, it's close to what data you show.

Here are the 74 air groups in the NR at the start of turn 3. To be clear, these are not the ones I sent there, but the ones in the turn that came back from the Axis team long ago.

[image]https://i.imgur.com/Tv8y01V.jpg[/image]

Now if you compare the first image with the last, you see the issue. THESE ARE THE SAME AIR UNITS SITTING IN THE RESERVE WEEKS 2 AND 3. The beaten down air units in the field did not come out and the combat ready units did not go back in. This went on week after week in the early stages of the war until the morale of some Soviet air units was down to 10. As I have said before in another thread, this was not some accident, nor some dumb move. It was the way the former Soviet C-in-C wanted the air campaign to be conducted despite the objections of other team players. That was his prerogative, but it had an impact that the Soviet side has been living with to this day.




EwaldvonKleist -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/24/2019 12:15:37 PM)

Having been there at the time, I agree with M60s comments and can add more. There was no air strategy or micromanagement. It was explicitly forbidden for front commanders to touch the air force. I think the reason for the latter measure were foreign-policy related [:D]



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/24/2019 1:50:07 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist
It was explicitly forbidden for front commanders to touch the air force. I think the reason for the latter measure were foreign-policy related [:D]


First it was bombing neutral neighbours, then it was the U2VS - you do know how to annoy superiors with air power![:D]



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/24/2019 5:16:54 PM)

Phase II Turns 7+: Spinning the Airbases

Conventionally at the time I saw many other Axis air offensives peter out in these turns for logistical reasons. The amount of fuel, ammo and other supplies and support an airbase gets depends on two factors

Closeness to West X Number of Aircraft

An airbase with many aircraft - particularly heavy aircraft - during the logistics phase will mean that airbase gets a lot more supply. As airbases move east, they start to get lower supplies due to the distance from rail and the rail supply modifier. Players typically react to this by moving airgroups off the airbase as there are not enough supplies for them. But this only makes it worse in the next logistics phase - as the airbase has fewer aircraft it will get even fewer supplies. I have seen this vicious cycle now in several games.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/FE25760C2F654CE7A067DAA58579CE91.jpg[/image]

There are two ways to break this cycle
i) Disconnect the number of aircraft on an airbase during the logistics phase from the number used during the action phase: At the start of every turn as air commander I spent a long period of time getting airgroups OFF airbases so that only a fraction of those that started on an airbase for that turn remained on it during that turn. Similarly at the end of the turn I spent a long period getting airgroups ON to airbases so that when the turn went through the Axis logistics phase far more fuel and ammo went to the airbase. Typically I did this by sending a lot of aircraft to the National Reserve at the start of the turn and calling back all airgroups from the National Reserve at the end of the turn. In many cases I was calling airgroups out of reserve at the end of one turn only to put them right back in at the start of the next - but that still helped logistically. Ju88D-1 recon groups, of which we have more than we can ever use, typically bring in quite a lot of fuel to an airbase - far more than they would even need for a turn if they were being used. Thus the rotation in and out of National Reserve has an important logistical effect as well as one for airgroups morale etc. But this can also be done by rotating airgroups to rear area airbases not meant for action (for example to recover from fatigue in the current bugged patch). To give some idea of scale if the supply modifiers meant that your airgroups were only getting half the supplies they needed then you would need to halve the number of aircraft on an airbase at the start of your action turn, and then double the number of aircraft at the end. In effect this would mean one third of your aircraft could be going into National Reserve at the start of the turn, one third would be called back out of National Reserve at the end of the turn, and the air war during your turn would only be conducted by a third of your air groups. This sounds low to many - but I have found it is better to have a third of your air force fully supplied and at the best morale than a larger airforce with less.
ii) Rotate airbases between front-lines and the rear: Fill up airbases with fuel and ammo using heavy aircraft in the rear/near rail then move them forward to be the airbases for your forward airgroups. Meanwhile forward airbases that have run dry of fuel and ammo get pulled back to complete the cycle. This in effect removes the distance from rail and easterly rail supply modifiers between the rear and forward airbases. Typically during these turns in 8MP our airbases were being filled up in logistics phases about 20 hexes to the west and closer to rail than where they would eventually be used for action. Those last 20 hexes were supplied not by generic vehicles moving supplies from the railhead to the airbase during the logistics phase with all its penalties, but by moving the airbase with the fuel already organically in it during the action phase and without any penalties.

These logistical rotations and cycles were described in this diagram below from post 259. The cycles of airgroups in and out of national reserve and of the Kabuki dance are well known. But I believe the rotation of airbases between the front and rear - shown in green on the diagram is just as important and was the key reason for Axis success in these turns. Far from petering out it meant the Axis air offensive was able to sustain itself and even accelerate. Sadly no one has yet to coin a name for it as they have with the Kabuki - any suggestions?

[image]local://upfiles/53894/88F39DEE641743768781812507D77B02.jpg[/image]



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/24/2019 5:31:25 PM)

Phase II Turns 7+: Playing the doctrine

Although the Soviet pools would have at first contained plenty of aircraft in the pools, the replacement inefficiencies meant they were not getting to the airgroups faster than we were destroying them. And we were starting to notice that the complements of ready aircraft at the start of the turn were looking distinctly low. The diagram below shows how this interacts with the air doctrine. Airgroups with complements of ready aircraft below the percentage required to fly will not see any of their aircraft fly at all during the turn. Usually there are lots of fighter airgroups with some margin above the air doctrine required to fly so that there will continue to be some fighter cover even after losses.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/40C62D78ED5D4BD1B9C41033C107BC50.jpg[/image]

But what we were starting to see in our opponents airgroups were lots of fighter airgroups with very low complements to fly. If their air doctrine was high enough I knew many of those fighter airgroups would not fly at all, and many others could be made to not fly with a little helping hand from us. Once I knew that the Soviet percentage required to fly air doctrine was 50% and seeing the state of their fighter air groups the game was on. A complete change in the air offensive took place. Instead of flying escorted bombing missions on enemy airfields, the norm from now on was to fly fighter sweeps to stop all enemy fighters flying and then bomb their airfields in broad daylight without interception or escort. Posts 868 to 878 describing the air war in turn 54 provide a step by step description in how this can be done.

Given that normally Axis air offensives peter out in these turns it is not irrational not to send aircraft to the National Reserve at this point. Indeed bringing "all hands on deck" whatever the morale or experience could be a good idea to tip the balance at a critical point. With the different logistical set up this petering out did not happen. Instead when fighter groups started to be sent to the National reserve in greater numbers, Soviet air losses actually then got larger as there were even fewer fighter air groups to provide that thicket of fighter cover before it was suppressed by us. By trying to hold back the flood, it made it worse when the dam did break.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/24/2019 5:36:57 PM)

Phase II Turns 7+: The Great Game

One particular example has remained in my mind from turn 11. It was not the most successful or the most important - but being based in the Crimea it is an easy example to show. Reconnaissance found only one hex with airbases in the Crimea at Fraydorf with an impressive array of bombers and 21 ready fighters to defend them. No other airbase was in range to provide fighter cover for that hex. But we knew the percentage required to fly of their air doctrine was 50% - so already all of the aircraft in one of the two fighter airgroups we knew would not fly at all (32IAP-ChF). The other airgroup (9IAP-ChF) would stop flying as soon as it lost 3 fighters. Using reconnaissance we found a suitable fighter sweep target - placed at the maximum range for their fighters and minimum for ours where no other airgroup would also be involved. This was in the south of the Ukraine just to the north of Crimea. On the very first fighter sweep 9IAP-ChF intercepted, just as we anticipated, and lost exactly the 3 fighters we needed it to lose in combat. Even if it had lost less in combat, in all likelihood it would still have had three fewer ready aircraft and we could have readily checked this on the airbase as the ready aircraft numbers are automatically updated. With this task accomplished we knew there was no fighter cover left in the Crimea - and our bombers were free to get to work bombing with impunity in broad daylight without needing escorts.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/9F6F55EC339B41188CE69CED445C8D44.jpg[/image]

I do think this was a bad deployment of the Soviet air force. The safety of hundreds of aircraft should never be reliant on not just losing three fighters.

My estimate in this time is that 95% of the fighter interceptions that could have flown and should have flown did not because of Soviet air doctrine. And so 95% of our success must be put down to that. By leaving their air doctrine so high and for so long the Soviet side effectively grounded their own fighters while still leaving them in place on the map to be bombed.

Although this was not possible everywhere every turn, there were always enough places on the map where fighter cover could be eliminated to keep all of our bombers busy. Soviet aircraft losses as a result went up sharply. This mechanical process of first confirming our opponents air doctrine, eliminating fighter cover from parts of enemy territory and bombing with abandon was the great game played repeatedly over many turns.



Crackaces -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/24/2019 5:51:44 PM)

If you look at Telemecus’ diagrams with the pictures and arrows pointing to the scene of the crime .. one does not need to inquire further why my first reaction was “this is a crazy Kabuki Dance!”

However, the edge iIs enormous in terms of having aircraft, bases with fuel and supplies, and the ability to project air power into the battlespace. The details here I continually try to grasp. These details are the difference between German air power is inconsequential all the way to being a dominate force that needs to be nerfed by home rules. The designers did well in that at least the game keeps growing with community learning. I do know that I would have never understood any of this as a newbie and this the power of a team game.

It does take special players that want to learn the game rather than win.



TunganNinja -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/24/2019 10:19:23 PM)

The depth of knowledge for the air war rules is truly impressive in these posts. Thank you for stating your thoughts on the air war so clearly. It's like night and day between treating the air war as a sideshow and playing the air war passionately. I struggled to understand how the Kabuki Dance worked, even after reading HYLA's very thoughtful explanations in previous threads. You went beyond a simple explanation and even included other topics around air rules into the discussion. It certainly paid dividends for me.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 9:12:39 AM)

Phase II Turns 7+: The Great Night Bombing Debate

At this time there started what I call the 'Great Night Bombing Debate'. See http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4371349&mpage=3

Although the screenshots are no longer available there, I can remember they were of 8MP Axis bombing raids destroying many fighters with no Soviet fighters mounting any interception. Rather like others you will see here. This was given as proof that night bombing was overpowered. Some argued that it was not. I posted a number of times that these were not night bombing raids but day bombing raids - I should know because I clicked on the mouse to make them happen. And yet this seemed to make no difference - the debate continued with my bombing raids given as evidence. While the debate went on about effectiveness or not of night bombing, it seemed nobody could even consider the possibility that it was not actually night bombing. I can only assume there was some cognitive dissonance that meant it was impossible to consider anything else. Ultimately in that thread Morvael agreed to nerf night bombing and did so in a subsequent patch. So night bombing was made less powerful on the basis of screenshots of my 8MP day bombing.

I think it would be fair if the battle reports did actually say if the bombing was in the daytime or night and not leave it to fog of war. In the real thing they did know what time of day it was when they got bombed.

The inability of Soviet fighters to intercept was of course down to air doctrine - and just a little helping hand from our fighters. Were there other reasons given for fighters not intercepting?



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 9:15:42 AM)

Phase II Turns 7+: Spam Recon

I have frequently been amazed at all the smoke and light to be generated by Spam Recon. I use it a lot, but do not credit it as more than a useful local tool - never as something of global importance. But I can understand when you look at the battle reports on the map it is a feature that stands out prominently. One member of the Soviet 8MP team was once describing the use of spam recon by the Axis 8MP side on turn 1 - which astonished me as it had not happened!

Here for the record is the first example of spam recon on turn 7 - about 300 more recon missions than normal were flown that turn. And in this case I am referring to recon missions flown which would not have taken place if they were just for raising detection levels of on map units below.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/F1CF7DB770AF4DDAA5DD4877E5C76B51.jpg[/image]

Contrary to what is often said flying that many reconnaissance missions in one area DOES provide extra information. Indeed probably the most useful information we wanted every turn - the percentage required to fly air doctrine of our opponents. That is not to say the fatiguing of enemy aircraft was not significant - and I would try to double this up where possible. Indeed I selected the location of each recon mission to do as many things as possible, so if I could raise detection levels of on-map units at the same time or do other tasks as well I would. In two other team games I was astonished each time to see spam recon used by others on an industrial scale. In one case the air commander turned the message level to zero and kept pressing the AI recon button to scatter gun recon. On both occasions they actually generated over 1000 battle reports BEFORE anyone else even had a go - causing no ends of problems for others (see http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4323500 ). My own view is that any fatigue generated for enemy airgroups will eventually be recovered from, but the extra kills, morale and experience you give to an enemy airforce will not - you are just training them up.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 9:17:59 AM)

Phase II Turns 7+: What Spam Recon Can and Cannot Do

quote:

EwaldvonKleist
I recall several occations where it helped to fatigue Soviet fighters to the point where they did not respond to attacks....


Having launched many hundreds or maybe even thousands of recon missions in this game, each one by selecting the target hex deliberately and then watching the battle report, I feel I can say from experience - Soviet fighters NEVER fail to respond to attacks in clear weather so long as they have enough ready aircraft and are on a base with fuel and ammo. Fatigued airgroups might not be the first airgroup to be chosen by the AI to respond - but if they are the only one they will. The two corollaries of this are

i) Fatigue will NEVER stop fighters from flying
ii) During your opponents action phase there is no "milometer" on your air groups as there is for your air groups during your action phase.

Reconnaisance however can have two effects on intercepting aircraft

i) Lower their subsequent performance

As I love "theory" graphs with absolutely no scales on the axes here is one

[image]local://upfiles/53894/9F54EF3E43BE41BA9106ADC9B88F2893.jpg[/image]

Fatigue may well be the intermediate variable in this effect - but whatever it is, the more miles an airgroup has flown the less effective it is in combat. I have noticed that just getting a fighter group to fly its first miles, however few, in a turn will mean a noticeable reduction in performance in its next combat. Flying a recon mission to be intercepted by an enemy airgroup is then a small price to pay before flying against it with other combat aircraft for battle. But the effect is a diminishing one. Flying the next recon missions against an enemy fighter group will rarely give noticeable differences.

ii) Lower their airgroups ready complement

This only happens occasionally, but just flying missions will lead to enemy fighters moving from ready to unready status. It may only be that an elastic band holding part of the dashboard in place has snapped or something minor - but the program will say that aircraft is no longer ready but is instead perhaps reserved and will no longer fly missions that turn. Normally this effect is rare - but in this game with a high requirement to fly air doctrine relative to the complements of airgroups it has often meant an airgroup only needs to lose one ready status aircraft for the whole airgroup to stop flying ....



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 9:20:29 AM)

Phase II Turns 7+: An Example Tactic of Spam Recon

Below is one example of where I have used "Spam Recon" as a deliberate part of combat with fighter air groups. Here is an example of two enemy airbases, one of which has many aircraft above its air doctrine and one of which does not. The red hexagons describe the areas they will intercept in. There is only one fighter sweep target which both airgroups will intercept in. But ideally I would like a fighter sweep to concentrate on the airgroup with many aircraft to see if I can reduce it to where it will no longer fly. Having both airgroups intercepting at the same time will halve the effectiveness of the airgroup I want my fighters to concentrate on. So by flying a large volume of recon missions in the area only the low complement fighter group will intercept in there is a chance I can reduce its complement of ready aircraft by just the one I need for it to stop flying. Once this is done I can fighter sweep knowing the whole force will be borne by only the other enemy fighter group. And if successful I can bomb both with impunity. The spam recon alone would just lead to a trained up enemy air force next turn. Only in combination with other air operations can spam recon be effective. Almost always it was to deal with that last one awkward fighter. Only in this tactical sense has "spam recon" been a feature in this game.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/1481A0DB588D4F72AA4DCA081535F1D4.jpg[/image]

Whether you see this as a valid tactic is open to debate. There are historical parallels. But it is open to everybody to ask for house rules to avoid this. The only point I would stress though is not to over emphasise what recon can do. The Axis have an abundance of recon which can be used not only to raise detection levels of ground units, but identify where enemy fighters will and will not intercept, what is your opponents air doctrine and a lot of other useful information. And yes it can be used to reduce the combat effectiveness and numbers of ready aircraft in enemy fighter groups but never on a large scale.

That said we found towards the end of the summer 1941 campaign a bedraggled and decimated Soviet air force withdraw to out of reach of our fighter sweeps. So for a couple of turns virtually the whole job of grounding the Soviet fighters was down to flying an unusually large amount of spam recon. In these two turns it could be said to have been of strategic use. But it was still only possible because so few Soviet fighter air groups were on the map. And almost all of them were either not flying because of their air doctrine, or would stop flying if they lost only one or two fighters from ready status. And if they were in range it still would have been a better job for our fighters.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 11:56:24 AM)

Phase II Turns 7+: Fighting the fighters in detail

quote:

Telemecus, post 57
Plane for plane the Luftwaffe can beat the Soviet Air Forces, but sheer weight of numbers of Soviet production can overwhelm the Axis. But if the Axis can segment the air war in to different air wars, it may be able to win some of them.....


My original intention was to segment the air war into different air wars and see if I could win some of them in detail. The segmentation was by air range. I knew with staging bases I could keep my air bases out of range of all enemy fighters, or choose only to engage with the longest ranged ones.

The diagram below shows a typical example of a Soviet fighter base set up in these turns - fighters of all models were typically placed together in the same air base. This meant that any air action near the air base would have to face a fierce thicket of all fighters acting in unison. But further out as shorter range fighters could not reach the action longer range fighters were on their own. At the furthest reaches only their longest range fighter at the start of the game, the MiGG-3, would engage. And so this is where I chose to engage the Soviet air force. The early turns of the air war in 8MP was not so much the Axis against the Red air force as the Axis against the MiG-3. Choosing locations out of range of other fighters but just in range of the MiG-3 meant that, whatever the global superiority of Soviet fighter numbers, in virtually every battle report you will see we had a local superiority of Axis fighter numbers. You can see the early spike in MiG-3 losses relative to other types, which only trailed off when there just started to be few of them left. When the MiG-3s became scarce we then moved on to the next longest range fighter, the LaGG-3 to target them and destroy them in detail and so on. Ironically long range, which is normally an advantage, came to be a handicap in this game.

The second part of the diagram below shows the typical Soviet deployment I would have expected for fighters. Bases are staggered backwards with the longest range fighters on the bases further back and the shortest range ones further forward. The aim is to provide the maximum overlap for fighter cover when you are closest to the enemy front. Indeed I would normally recommend the use of the MiG-3 as for the rearmost air defence - in particular from strategic bombing. There is a lot of Soviet Union to defend and that is where you do want long range fighters for the job. While it is the privilege of whoever is on the offensive to choose their point of attack and arrange for local superiority of numbers, nevertheless the onus on the defender should be to provide as few weak points and fraying edges as possible. In fighter cover terms this means there should be the maximum of overlap of fighter coverage - and where fighter cover cannot overlap they should avoid areas that could be used for fighter sweeps or include important targets such as airbases.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/F02DC0ABF26A4129AD41CD53C78E1D7F.jpg[/image]

Post 860 for the air war in turn 53 shows an example of where fighter coverage did not overlap as a weakness we could exploit in the attack. But the significant thing was finding a weakness like that was big news in turn 53. This was merely routine in the early turns.

After the game started in v1.10 later versions included giving players the ability to limit the air range of an airgroup on an individual basis. So air groups with long range models need not necessarily intercept at the longest distances anymore. But the principles remain the same - it is just now you need to use our old friend the Axis recon to work out where each enemy fighter group will or will not fly to first.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 12:53:54 PM)

Phase II Turns 7+: Bombing aircraft factories

The first aircraft factories we bombed were actually the Il-2 factories in Voronezh on turn 5. These were evacuated on turn 8, and not just 1 point of the factory but I think correctly the whole lot. In v1.10 that we started the game on just 1% of damage caused the factory to stop expanding and this lower capacity level was then frozen until turn 25 by its evacuation. This meant that a total of over 1000 Il-2s were never built. Other players have commented that by the end of the game they have a huge surplus of the aircraft - to which I usually answer exactly, at the end of the game! The beginning of the game is when you most need them - and that is where we have taken them away from. However our success in suppressing the Soviet fighter force ultimately meant that most Soviet bombers could not be used much in the game so far anyway - so this action made no difference here.

Our bombing of the fighter and fighter bomber factories started in turn 7 by bombarding the MiG-3 factory which was soon evacuated before Moscow got overrun. Our bombing of the factory at Taganrog was short lived as the factory soon actually got overrun by our ground forces. Much more significant was our bombing of five other fighter bomber factories and the damage levels from bombing that can be seen in the chart below. This includes damage from the evacuation of the Yak-1 and LaGG-3 factories as arguably they were evacuated then because of the bombing. Posts in the AAR from those turns give precise details, but our estimates are that close to 2,200 total fighters and fighter bombers were never built because of this bombing. Over 1,500 of them were Yak-1s as their expansion was halted at an early stage and the lower capacity level was then frozen by an evacuation for many turns. The graph below shows damage levels over time that we attribute to bombing. All of this was avoidable.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/B6563245CD7B4414A3A2E9070AA0BED9.jpg[/image]



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 1:40:58 PM)

Phase II Turns 7+: Leaving Strat Bombing Too Long

Because factory damage is cumulative, but repair is only sequential there is a big difference between bombing low damage factories and high damage factories. The example in the diagram below shows why. Adding 1 % damage to a factory with no damage means the expected loss of production will only be 2% of one turn. Adding 1% of damage to a factory which already has 48% damage means an expected loss of production of 2% this turn, and also 2% of the next 16 turns - equivalent to 34% of one turn! This is compounded if the factory is expanding, particularly from early on. And in addition adding damage this turn also gains the option value of making future bombing damage more valuable as well.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/E40960D972E9480E97FAB350DA67ED7B.jpg[/image]

In short as damage levels climb the rewards for adding marginally more damage get higher and higher - and the resources and risks I was prepared to take to keep adding on this damage to the fighter factories grew. By turn 15 I was taking the calculated but high risk of unescorted daylight bombing of the Yak-1 factories which were intercepted - see post 223. When the fighters they did have were no longer able to defend their fighter bomber factories, they had gone past the point of no return.

Perhaps it is forgivable to not properly protect your fighter and fighter bomber factories against what was then the novelty of strategic bombing. Now I would say every player should consider at least some fighter cover for their industry from turn 1. But certainly if you find your fighter or Soviet fighter bomber factories being attacked you should then take that to be the first priority for your fighter cover from then on - ahead of the ground war or any other concerns - as without fighter factories you do not have any fighters at all. Nip it in the bud before the damage levels get high. If necessary move back every fighter group you have back to the Volga to defend your fighter factories although it probably would take less than that. I believe the Soviet side reacted too little and too late to the bombing of their fighter bomber factories. Whatever the disasters of early turns Soviet players can usually just sit on their hands knowing that Red Air Force 2.0 is being built for them and will arrive soon. In this game that air force was still born in the ruins of their factories at Gorky and Saratov. I contend this was the key reason for the continuing air dominance and air superiority of the Axis to a much later turn in this game.

Smaller point factories tend to receive far more damage than larger point factories for the same amount of bombers. So the above would show that bombing a village of 1 manpower point to get 10% damage is more effective than getting a city of 10 manpower points to 1% damage. Although the effect is the same that turn, the next turn the city is repaired while the village takes turns more to repair.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 3:50:56 PM)

Phase II Turns 7+: The fighter crunch

These developments spurred me to make the spreadsheet tracker for Soviet aircraft which you can see in post 891 This enabled us to forecast what would be possible given our air tactics at the time. And immediately we could see that there was the possibility, previously considered impossible by me and others, of suppressing the entire Soviet fighter force including all the I16 and I15 type fighters. As a result we stopped targeting bombers entirely and started targeting I type fighters as well as modern types.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/A19102FF1E464221BF309C82D6CC6F32.jpg[/image]

By turn 16 the Soviet problem of getting fighters into fighter groups was not just the inefficiencies of getting them from the pools to the airgroups. Overall there were not enough machines around to even half fill the airgroups they did have from the scenario, let alone any they did or would wanted to have created.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 4:43:18 PM)

Phase III Turns 15+: Defending Gorky

quote:

Telemecus, post 223
...having got past Moscow we now have Gorky in sight. Their interceptors are also badly depleted in dogfights over the Ivanovo airbases. Once our reconnaissance finds no more interceptions are being flown we return to daylight unescorted bombing - including the LaGG-3 factories at Gorky and Dzerzhinsk.


[image]https://i.imgur.com/rYnk4jE.png[/image]

Gorky has to be the most bombed place in this game. The screenshot from post 223 above describes the scene at the end of turn 15. The air doctrine of 50% meant we were again able to reduce fighter airgroups to single figures with fighter sweeps to make sure they stopped flying - and then bomb their airbases and our industrial targets with impunity. The airbase at Dzerhinsk was not bombed as we were bombing the fighter bomber factory in the same hex - so you can see many of the fighter groups still with just 9 ready aircraft from the fighter sweeps, the maximum they could have and not fly.

But operating at this extreme range still needed a bit of help from our opponents. Our fighters did not have the range to fly to Gorky. Our fighter sweeps to the south west of Gorky allowed us to suppress the Soviet fighters at Gorky because they flew to intercept us there. If instead the airbases had been moved back so that they still provided air cover to Gorky while not reaching out to where our fighter sweeps could, our bombing of Gorky would have been over. Instead we were able to repeat the same process several times more.
[image]local://upfiles/53894/E1B2AFEAE96F4E5A96F68CE1362B40A0.jpg[/image]
Another possibility would have been to use the airbase they had in the same hex as the LaGG-3 factory at Dzerzhinsk - and indeed as they did for a few turns. The two bombings per hex rule at least meant we would have had to choose whether to bomb the airbase or the factory - we could not do both twice. (A similar tactic is to place a fighter airbase in the same hex as Osinovets if the Axis are trying to cut off Leningrad by port bombing).

In later versions of the game players have been able to stop fighters intercepting far off enemy fighter sweeps by restricting the range to which they could fly. But the same was always possible on version 1.10 on which this game started just by thought into where to place airbases.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 5:58:09 PM)

Phase III Turns 15+: All Quiet on the Air Front

quote:

Telemecus Turn 17 Air AAR
During the Soviet logistics phase there was no partisan supply. During the Soviet action phase there was no interception, no airbase bombing, no ground bombing, no city bombing, no ground support, no reconnaissance and no air supply missions. During our action phase there is no interdiction, no interception and no ground support by the Soviets. Our recon air groups set out to conduct extensive reconnaissance of detected Soviet airbases to establish their dispositions.


[image]https://i.imgur.com/yrSe6xQ.jpg[/image]

This was wipe-out - every enemy airbase detection level is raised to 5, and there are no unfrozen Soviet air groups on the map. I have never seen this in the middle of a game before, and may never again. So it is worth displaying this glorious moment again.

Over the long winter and spring the Soviet air force made occasional sorties back to the map, occasionally trying to defend Gorky or run some recon but always with severe losses in return. The back of the Soviet air forces had been broken.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/25/2019 6:20:13 PM)

Phase III Turns 15+: Cashing in for the Ground War

quote:

ORIGINAL: EwaldvonKleist
The German Airforce is the I WIN BUTTON


The decision to concentrate so much of the air force on the air war did mean ground forces had less ground support than they might have had in other games. But with the Soviet air force gone it was time to cash in on the investment. Apart from never having to worry about partisan attacks cutting supplies, every critical battle was to receive full attention from all our dive bombers. An example from our final encirclement of Moscow shows how our ground commanders could call up air support without any disruption from enemy air forces.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/2CAC5DEC1E2D49258706CAA4715852EE.jpg[/image]

Although I would joke that the ground forces were there to protect my airbases, ultimately it is in the ground war that the air war has to be judged.

In ancient warfare battles would often start with the cavalry clashing on the wings. Whoever won that battle usually went on to win the whole battle even if they had a smaller army. Although cavalry was a weaker unit, you could get more of it more quickly to the crucial points in the battle. In WitE air power seems to have a similar role.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/26/2019 10:41:25 AM)

Phase III Turns 15+: Centralisation

[image]local://upfiles/53894/3175D5A608944F5BA972A348F224C6C4.jpg[/image]

The above graphic was used in post 269 to show the use of staging bases. But the flip side to this is the benefits to be accrued from centralisation. This became highly significant after the Soviet air forces left the map and the bombing campaign intensified. Practically every level bomber, and many other aircraft, were centralised into airbases on only 2 or 3 hexes next to each other. Staging bases extended their range so that they could reach practically everywhere on the map. As they were all in FliegerKorps VIII (commanded by Richtofen) which in turn was under Kesselring in Luftflotte 2 they had the best command chain possible. But having so many of the airgroups in a cluster of two of two or three hexes meant the HQ of Luftflotte 2, which can have a range penalty, was always at most 1 hex away so it never did. FliegerKorps VIII had the maximum 8 airbases it was allowed and Luftflotte 2 the full 16. The remaining 8 Luftwaffe bases in other commands were used for fighters in the extreme north and south and strategic defence in the rear , or were a high ID base left empty for use in the Kabuki dance.

The strategic bombing campaign had an important hierarchy of priorities - starting with the fighter bomber factories at Gorky in the North and Saratov in the South. If we had assigned airgroups to one set of airbases in the North to bomb Gorky and another in the South to Saratov we would have the bombing effectiveness of each halved. The pooling effect always meant we could allocate our best to our most important targets as we went down our list of hierarchies. This also included stochastic economies of scale - as one bad mission could always turn one of our freshest bomber groups with most ready aircraft into one of our worst it was easy to then swap round choices to whatever were the new best ones for any mission. We never had a situation where bombers went unsued in the North while having too few in the south or vice versa.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/97EE80E8871441C6BA6F2E70AB69FA69.jpg[/image]

When airbases of the same Luftflotte are close enough together, then any airgroup from any airbase in the Luftflotte can stage to any other airbase in the same Luftlotte and then fly on with other airgroups from the same Luftflotte to conduct air missions. Effectively any air group can fly from any airbase. Given this it does not really matter during your action phase which airbase an airgroup is on. Indeed it can be easier to think of an airgroup as belonging to a network (the Luftflotte) or think of the Luftflotte as a single mega airbase in its own right. Your first question when you want to conduct air missions is not which airgroups from which airbase you choose, but from which network.

Having almost all the Luftwaffe in a single network (Luftflotte 2) in these turns made the whole operation of the air war very simple to conduct.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/26/2019 11:14:17 AM)

Phase IV Turns 47+:

The Soviet air force finally came back to stay on turn 47. It is still not the powerhouse it would be in other games, but it is no longer the beaten force we had been playing. By our measures although the pools of fighters and fighter bombers are not abundant - at least there is no reason for most fighter/fighter bomber air groups to be half empty. For now the deployment is still of a handful of clusters of airbases far from the front-lines - the red air force is still trying to defend itself first and stay on the map.

On turn 48 we were able again to overwhelm the fighters in some places to get them to stop flying again. But this was using the sledgehammer to attack many fighter groups rather than the scalpel of a few at a time. Unfortunately on turn 48 we did not have the reserve force of bombers ready to then attack the undefended airfields that would have turned the air victory for us into a disaster for the Soviets. But it does show for a while yet the Axis air still has the potential to destroy our opponents in detail - it is just the details are not as small as they were. Eventually they will become too big individually to overcome.

Posts 273 and 596 to 606 detail how we managed our aircraft pools. By individually selecting upgrade and replacement settings for each airgroup (see attached spreadsheet) - and prioritising withdrawing airgroups for combat - we have reduced the number of aircraft inside airgroups when they withdraw and made sure that any that do are of the oldest models. The number of aircraft that have been converted/exported to less useful aircraft models and/or for less powerful allied airgroups has also been reduced. Over the course of the game this should mean there are between 1,000 and 2,000 more aircraft in the German air pools. The effect of this has not become apparent yet, but as the air war enters a more normal course the extra aircraft the Luftwaffe can count on as replacements will be an advantage.

A final word should be given on flak. This game was started in v1.10 where flak was not as powerful. The effectiveness of flak has been enhanced in recent versions to the extent that during our strategic bombing campaign, even when there was no opposition air force on the map, we were losing almost as many level bombers to flak as we produced each turn. But the game is still played on v1.10 data which gave far fewer flak guns to each flak unit. There is probably a whole new area of flak tactics and deployments still to be discovered and used in an WitE game. I salivate at the prospect. But that will be for someone else now to research and publish.

Attached is the airgroups planning spreadsheet to manage the Axis air force - this includes the upgrade and replacement settings for each airgroup every turn.



Telemecus -> RE: 8MP Air War Review (3/26/2019 11:15:47 AM)

[image]local://upfiles/53894/E25A8C389DDC47ECBA6BE174950DE70B.jpg[/image]



Telemecus -> 8MP Strat Bombing Review (3/26/2019 12:41:18 PM)

8MP Strat Bombing Review

aldiladeisogni1 was the first player I saw to use strategic bombing in the latest versions of the game. A fun example of this can be fund in the AAR of Stef78 versus Stelteck ( http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4280532 ). In 8MP we have turned the tables and it is the Axis using strategic bombing on the Soviets.

Strategic Bombing was not in the original plan for the Axis when we started this game. And to some extent it should never happen. Each side can and should redeploy forces and resources to deter it. The Soviet team never attempted to bomb Germany in this game - but while they could we kept three airbases with fighter groups to make sure they would pay for it. Given that fighters are a choke point for the Axis this is a real sacrifice to make in 1941. And there were 3 fewer Luftwaffe bases for the Kabuki dance and other logistical cycles.

[image]local://upfiles/53894/06DECDB641AC42FBAF33F6117BDBF2D3.jpg[/image]

Latest versions have made this easier by including extra fighter groups and bases at the west side of the map. But budding Soviet strat bombers may want to see how well covered is the Heinkel factory at Rostock - and there are a lot of villages in the East of Germany that can be attacked too. Germany always has a manpower problem - and village bombing can be very powerful ....

quote:

Telemecus, The early air war, http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4371349&mpage=3
the Soviet air force should not all be deployed on the front lines to attack the Axis armed forces but should be distributed around the Soviet Union to defend the motherland. This was the case historically. If a significant part of the soviet air forces had to be committed in the rear, the game would naturally be rebalanced from what was described earlier in this thread as a pro-Soviet stance. And if they did not you would be punished with the over powerful Axis strategic bombing described in the other thread. It seems to be that putting these two together would say the game data balance is fine, but players need to adapt their game plans accordingly and then the results will be more like they historically were.


I still feel some of the nerfs in the latest versions to the Soviet air force were unnecessary - the threat of strategic bombing even if never used was the natural re-balancing mechanism all should have used. And indeed this was the expected outcome when we started strategic bombing of the Soviet Union in 8MP - and it is still much to my astonishment that the Soviet air force, by and large, was not distributed to defend the Soviet Union.

So given that this game was actually going to punish the Soviet Union by strat bombing in response to not defending itself - the question was what targets do we select?

i) Fighter-Bomber and Fighter factories: These become our number one target - and I think an unqualified success. There was indeed a feedback loop as they became less able to defend these factories as the factories got more damaged because they could not build the replacement fighters to defend themselves.
ii) Il-2 factories: Because of the fighter imbalance in this game Il-2s would not have been used much however many they had. But in other circumstances this would still be a great target. They can have their expansion slowed from a very low starting level and see that capacity level frozen for many turns afterwards by their evacuation. In 8MP over 1,000 Il-2s were never built due to strategic bombing, and these are Il-2s at the start of the game when they are in shortage.
iii) Recon factories: The Soviet side does not make many recon aircraft in a turn, so the recon factory in Moscow could be a great target if it is not evacuated. In 8MP it was.
iv) Light Tanks: There has been some disagreement on how effective this was - but I am still in the camp saying it was effective. The Soviet side does have a shortage of light tanks early on. Showing that there are pools of light tanks later is not a counterargument - that is just a measure of how few units you could create. The only true measure of light tank shortage or abundance is how many the Soviets have by adding the numbers they have in their units and pool together. The other argument that light tanks are not very good anyway would then mean the Tank units the Soviets have are not very good - but they do become important even when they are mostly light tanks.
iv) Medium Tanks: This is more difficult to judge. Our opponents say there never was a medium tank shortage - although I do wonder if that was true at a brief point in the end of 1941. But to say there is not a shortage misses the point - the Soviet side can create tank units, or not, to use up any surplus of medium tanks they have. Fewer medium tanks would mean fewer tank units. The heaviest use of medium tanks comes later in the war. So we cannot know if the reduction in tank production now does mean they will have too few tanks later because we have not reached that point yet. But we do know from other games Soviet players can and do run out of medium tanks.
quote:

ORIGINAL: Stelteck, http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4280532
It is the famous turn where i lost more than 1000+ tanks. [:D]
Still i regret nothing !!![:'(]

v) Rocket artillery, SP flak and other AFVs: Some of these are also very vulnerable expanding factories. I still have no good measure of how useful Soviet rockets are and so how much they would be missed. But I do know that if there are fewer self propelled SUs, attaching non-motorised SUs to motorised units will hit the vehicle pool. And those armoured cars which appear in so many ToEs may not be the most important contributor to CV - but having a few percentage points of ToE missing in every unit permanently does make the struggle to keep units ready and not depleted harder. I suspect there are gems to be discovered here with more research. Certainly we have found it easy to make great losses in these categories with very little effort.
vi) Generic vehicles: For much of this game we have been targeting generic vehicle factories. In older versions of the game generic vehicles were a constraint. However seeing how much the lend lease vehicle deliveries have been increased in latest versions of the game I can understand why this might no longer be the case. Again what you have in the pools is not the issue here - it is how constrained you are from making all the motorised units you would like to have. I have seen some players say generic vehicles is always a problem for them, and others say it is not. So I still have no way of knowing if this is a a good target - or even a way of finding out in each game if it is.
vi) Heavy industry/supplies: This was our lowest priority target - we committed little to its bombing and destroyed only a little. In older versions of the game I was used to hearing that the constraint of the late Soviet war machine was supply. Our opponents say they have not been affected by supply shortages but that again misses the point. We have not yet got to the stage where the bombing of heavy industry now would mean they have fewer supplies later when they are constrained. However I think research by EwaldvonKleist has convincingly showed that supply in the latest versions of the game is no longer a constraint even in the late war. In particular industry can be re-evacuated as a means to stop supply going to industrial output which is by then in abundance.
vii) Arms factories were only targeted a couple of times and in the long war is not a constraint for the Soviet side. But there is a brief period at the end of 1941 when it is and the Soviets need them
viii) We did look a few times at resources - and in one AAR (TopEverest vs Admiral Kamikaze - the rematch) there was even an indication that resources could be a choke point. I did briefly wonder if there was an alternative Axis strategy for the ground war of instead going for the resource factories (mostly in the north) and bombing the ones you could not get to (resource factories only repair 1% per turn). However I have to thank EwaldvonKleist for putting me right on the updated manual multipliers and Crackaces for working out what could be had by a northern resource strategy. Resources in the latest versions would never be a good target for either a an alternative ground war or a bombing campaign. Occasionally it is worth questioning old orthodoxies to see if they are valid - but often old orthodoxies are and here they were.
ix) Manpower, Rail, etc. There are other targets we have not looked at until recently. With traditional choke points like heavy industry either not applicable or doubtful it does seem like manpower will be the only valid constraint for the Soviet Union after 1941. The problem with any strategic bombing of these non-moveable factories is to know where air power can genuinely add to what your ground forces will capture, and where will be redundant because they are areas your ground troops will capture.

Overall in this game target selection was an afterthought - partly because I never thought strategic bombing would be allowed to continue. My own inexperience with the Soviet side in later versions means I did not have a good sense of what were the most valuable targets to select - and those who did have better knowledge did not at first think hard on it as they did not see it as a serious prospect (yes I am thinking of you Stelteck!) And we have reviewed our targets for 1942 with new theories of what could pay handsome dividends. If I could play the game again I would not have gone for heavy industry but would have gone for arms factories in 1941 for example. Overall a more ruthless calculated systematic approach to strategic bombing target selection by the Axis side would have made the pain for the Soviet side many times worse. But that perhaps is for another game - and perhaps for someone like EwaldvonKleist to do the target selection [:)]



Telemecus -> What is Historical? (3/26/2019 2:25:30 PM)

What is Historical?

When this game was started it was desired to be a "Historical" game. Little did I know then how many different understandings of the term there are.

Indeed being historical is actually in the rule set of the game - and yet we could only identify one thing that was definitely meant to be prohibited by this rule, the stacking of HQs to manipulate retreat paths see post 640 here http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4250683&mpage=22

I consider myself to be a very historical player - my whole interest in the game is to play historical what-ifs. I am very comfortable with things like spam recon for instance because I do know of the historical parallels where this did happen. On the other hand I stopped air transporting security units to the front-lines ( see post 10 http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4601253 ) as for me I could not find historical parallels. This is not a moral injunction that it is wrong to do this, just personal aesthetic preference that because I cannot visualise it happening in real life, it loses the pleasure of historical role playing.

In conversation with EwaldvonKleist I am always surprised when he says he thinks I am not an historical player but rather a min-max type of player. This surprises me not least because I do not see min-maxing as being the opposite of historical - after all historically generals were trying to minimise their losses and maximise them for their opponent. For me the opposite of historical is competitive. That is those who are interested in how many wins and losses of games they get rather than the narrative of what history could have been inside a game. But perhaps the overall lesson of this is that historical is not a very useful linguistic term if it means different things to people communicating with each other.

quote:

John Maynard Keynes

Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back


Recently this game was seen by group of players who do not visit these forums. When seeing scenes like the one below from turn 2 of the game they asked “why do they keep triple stacking airbases?”

[image]local://upfiles/53894/DA4165AB8E95476785B29DB752FD244A.jpg[/image]

I explained it was for various reasons including the two bombing per hex rule which meant total bombing of the three airbases was minimised by stacking them together. I then mentioned this was typical of players calling themselves "historical" - which ended with the group in abject laughter. I know regular users here would not blink an eye lid seeing airbases stacked this way. But if you can think back to when you were just learning this game and had not imbued the paradigms of play style here, or at least use your imagination to do so. You should clearly see that this is not "historical" but just a way of using game mechanics like any other.

I am tempted to say that what people who say they are historical players here mean by historical is
quote:

All the game exploits used by the meta/paradigm in these forums when I learnt how to play the game, but none of the ones used since


In other words historical is just the aesthetic preference they have for some exploits and not for others. Indeed when I see some attack others morally for abusing the game system I usually see them as being hypocritical for this reason. Ultimately this understanding of historical is stultifying and it is anti innovation. It is about playing the game the same way as you played it before. If that is what you want you should say so - not dress it up with being about "history". But I accept for many who do not use this to attack others they do have a sense of “historical” play that is not just being cynical.

Another sincere definition I have seen for historical has been
quote:

means in the game are similar to means in history


I tend to view things as historical because they have the same results rather than the same means. Soaking attacks for example results in Axis positions being overrun as the soldiers literally ran out of bullets against mass human wave attacks as did happen in history. However clearly the means are different - in real life you did not have two units making “hasty” attacks before switching to another unit again. My problem with this understanding of historical is nothing in WitE ultimately can be historical - the means are always ultimately clicking on a mouse or hitting a keyboard which is never the means by which wars were fought (then)

In a literal sense nothing can be historical in a war game - because if it was it would not be a war game but a recreation or simulation. The minute any unit takes a slightly different path, or a die roll gives a slightly different result, you will already have diverged from what historically happened. You cannot have a war game unless you allow other things which were not historical to happen.

So my conclusion has come to be that “historical” is not useful term and should be avoided. Other terms such as “realistic” seem to share more common understandings. But ultimately you will have to spell out with examples and list the cases where things are or are not in the category you are describing.



Telemecus -> 8MP Glossary (3/26/2019 2:39:30 PM)

Since the game started a number of new terms have been coined for use - here for the reader unfamiliar with them is a glossary

Electric slide
attacking and moving or moving then attacking with the explicit purpose of extending a front vertical

Kabuki
moving airgroups to another location without moving them overground inside airbases

Ballet Russe
Kabuki using strategic movement of airbases

Allot
a lot

Open to debate
screwed up

Spam Recon
1 accurate historical representation of a tactic emulating a large number of air missions with the aim of decreasing opponent fighter performance or ready status
2 gamey exploit tactic of flying a large number of air missions with the aim of increasing opponent airgroups fatigue

Strat Bomb
strategic bombing when you are too lazy to use more than two vowels



Telemecus -> 8MP Quote of the Game (3/26/2019 2:44:17 PM)

Quote of the Game
[image]local://upfiles/53894/23E99AFFE4734A05ABDC384896F144D5.jpg[/image]
[Reproduced with permission]



Telemecus -> The Team Game[ (3/26/2019 3:13:31 PM)

The Team Game

When we started this team game many experienced players stayed away. They said it would never work. But I think we showed it can.

The common problem with WitE is the dropout rate. This is a mammoth game needing a huge commitment - which is why it is so dispiriting to see a game end after so much effort when your opponent cannot carry on. I believed the team game was a model that would overcome this problem as one person dropping out would no longer mean that side cannot carry on. And by a public AAR and open recruitment the game could be perpetuated for all those who do want to carry on. Indeed there would be no reason why the game could not carry on to the end, or that anyone in the starting line up needed to be there at the end either. Admittedly I have found that the public open nature of the team game can also help to propagate negativity to it as well. But I hope as an idea or concept it can be further developed and will be a feature of many games in the future.



Page: <<   < prev  30 31 [32] 33 34   next >   >>

Valid CSS!




Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition 2.4.5 ANSI
0.90625