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Rchrd -> Here's a rant for you (4/18/2001 6:51:00 AM)
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Gentlemen;
I eagerly looked forward to the new screenshots for Uncommon Valor, a game I am looking forward to. One of the screenshots was for aircraft listings and I was horrified. It looked exactly like the one from Twelve O’clock high, Bombing the Reich. I bought that game about two years ago and waited and waited for a chance to play it. In January of this year I took six weeks off to do just that. I played every day and got eighty+ turns into the game. I was having a blast until a few problems began to surface. The first was that a group of allied bombers crossed the coast of France with a fighter escort. I sent a gruppe of german fighters to intercept the escort and try to strip it away from the bombers. Their doctrine was set for “bounce fighters”. Their orders were to intercept the fighters. Four minutes later I sent another gruppe with an advantage of altitude and position. Four minutes later I sent another gruppe. At the end I had sent 200 fighters to intercept 30 escorts and not one plane was attacked. The allied formation bombed it’s target and returned home unmolested. Every one of the intercepting fighters disobeyed their doctrine and their orders. This happened time and again. This is a court martial offense and if I could have shot a few of my pilots I would have. I was cheating in this game by previewing the raids and my units and pilots experience and morale were in the high 80’s and nineties. But that’s not he worst of it. Air combat between fighter sweeps and intercepters had nothing (apparantly) to do with who had the best planes or the best pilots but who leaves the fight first. A group of Spitfires,say, would leave England on a fighter sweep to an airbase inside Germany. They would fly all the way across Belgium and, ideally, be intercepted within 50 miles of the airbase by a gruppe of Focke Wulfs that had just taken off moments before. The Spitfires should be close to limit of their range. But what would happen is that the Focke Wulfs would intercept the Spitfires, pin them in place, and then you wait. There would very rarely actually be any combat, although everything I’ve read suggests that the issue in air combat is decided in the first few minutes. The two groups would just loiter in place, evidently manuevering for position, until one side or the other attempted to disengage. It would always be the Focke Wulfs who disengaged first. When they tried to exit the fight the spitfires would massacre them. The rules say that an intercepting unit within 50 miles of it’s target formation accelerates to maximum speed and doubles it’s fuel consumption. But not so for the fighters on the sweep. When I clicked on one of these melees it showed that the Focke Wulfs were at 408 mph and the spitfires were plodding along at their cruising speed of 280 mph, and they were “jumping” my planes as they tried to withdraw. That’s not the way air combat works. The faster aircraft should always be able to disengage at will and during the melee both sides should be at top speed. In Italy, if one of those big 48 plane groups of P-38’s came in on a fighter sweep or a bombing mission, I would have to send one gruppe up to intercept them and pin them down. I would have to send another gruppe to cover the withdrawal of the first gruppe. Ten miutes later I would send another gruppe to cover the withdrawal of the second gruppe. This would go on and on (with little, or most often, no actual fighting) until the P-38’s finally had to return to base. If I was lucky enough to have inserted the last Gruppe just before the P-38’s turned for home then I would shoot down a bunch of them. It would usually take six Gruppes of german fighters operating in shifts to oppose one single fighter group of P-47’s or P-38’s. It was obvious that when the P-51d’s were introduced into the campaign (with their four hour endurance) I wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance. It ruined the game for me. Come play a game with me and I guarantee that within twenty minutes you'll be pulling your hair out in frustration. If the air combat aspect of Uncommon is played out the same way, I don’t want the game. Please say you will fix it.
Thanks for listening, Richard.
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