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Ron Saueracker -> RE: Comprehensive Port bombing testing (98 B-29's vs. 50 ships in day and night)... (12/20/2004 6:59:17 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker
Conclusions? Here is mine.
I've said all along that ships in ports inWITP are like huge fat sows nested together in a big round target shape. Bombing,especially high level is too accurate, doubly so due to the damage model...no near misses, no non critical areas to hit. Ships are all spread all over the place and are often protected by torpedo nets, artificial moles, barrage balloons,camoflaged etc. Conversely, port hits are rarely scored in contrast to number of ships and multiple hits on ships.
Recommendation: cut bombing vs ships in port accuracy by 75% minimum. Increase chance for a port hit.
Not related to this thread but here goes. During development, it was decided to allow twin engine bombers and larger aircraft to torpedo ships in port (disbanded). I asked for this decision to be reversed because I know of not one single occurence of this happening during the war in any theatre (not talking roadsteads here,but ports). Nobody else could point one out after I challenged them to point out a single historical precedent. Yet it is still in. Pilots and bomber commanders knew that ports were too difficult an obstacle course to allow the long runs neccessary to launch from non 1E tactical bombers. granted,since there is no limit to port capacity for some unknown reason, I suppose it must be assumed that disbanding does not neccesarily mean tied up in a slip, stuck in a bay, resting in drydock, behind net defences,behind other ships etc. Many would be outside the main port in more vulnerable roadsteads. Do to this abstraction, some torp attacks could be allowed, but not at this extremely high probability. So,this being the case...
Recommendation: reduce the chance of 2E and 4E bombers using torps vs ships in ports by at least 75%.
Why is it so easy to A) damage a port and B) repair it? Further, considering we have no operational limit for ports, damage is almost meaningless.
Recommendation. Allow more port hits but have the hits do much less damage. Increase the repair time needed to repair ports. Perhaps limit/restrict disbandement in ports damaged beyond 50%. Limit/restrict docking beyond 75% damage. Maybe introduce an operations maximum for ports and have this effected by damage.
When targeting cities, ports, allow some chance for crossover hits as these facilities were not exactly seperated from each other by some invisible forcefield. In fact, they are basically the same thing, just a different side of the tracks.
To answer pry and others, the abstract nature of ports was and is understood. But the abstract nature is one sided regarding attacks. If you ALLOW port torpedo attacks, then you had also better ADD traditional port torpedo defences like anti torpedo nets, barrage balloons, increased flak accuracy etc and ADD higher penalties to the attacking pilots.
The way I see it, this dispute revolves around GG's AI design, which needs ports to allow disbandment. The AI can't handle ship capacities the way it's designed, and while capacities would pretty much alleviate players from disbanding 100 ships in your local kiddie pool, the AI would fiz, sput, smoke and die. Sooooooo............
Raise the bar on what size ports allow disbandment. It's size 3 now...go for size 6 or 7. What's the problem? With no capacity,a line needs to be drawn and size 3 is clearly too small as basically every ports can be made to allow didsbandment of thousands of ships.
Because it's abstracted and capacity means more than simply all ships are here at X, let's assume that some ships disbanded are in the actual port, some are waiting outside or are located at other lesser subsidiary ports in the area, while others are actually off map on other business (how else do we explain the massive supply and fuel increases every turn?. If we assume this, not all ships in a port should be targetable at all due to abstraction. Due to abstraction, less shipping would be vulnerable to torps than to bombs, so lower the probability of torpedo loadouts accordingly and raise it for bombs.
Raising the threshold from three to 6,7,8 whatever can't be difficult and won't screw the AI as it already has restrictions to deal with size 2 down. Changing the targeting for ports might be a little work, having to randomly determine which ships are NOT THERE. Changing loadout probability can't be too difficult either.
Let's rock and be done with it.
And if anyone uses the "60 mile hex" escape pod to help expalain away consumer questions/criticisms one more time, I'm really gonna freak!!!![sm=Christo_pull_hair.gif][sm=00000289.gif]
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