Enhancement request - aircraft

cptkremmen · Post by **cptkremmen** » Fri Sep 03, 2010 7:52 am

Thought of one very small area that i find annoying. Give it some thought....

a) Aircraft very rarely achieve anything, especially fighters, wi believe they were quite feared. You MIGHT make them slightly more effective. no big deal if not.
b) The annoying bit, the pilot seems to be stupid, he strafes exactly where he was told to strafe to the "inch" if the target has moved just a square or two surely even a below average pilot would be able to reacquire the target and shoot it. This strafing exactly where told makes sense for the big bombers, but is silly for fighters.

Orders "Please strafe an enemy tiger on the road, at the crossroads."
Pilot - Ah there was a tiger on the road but it was 50 yards away from the crossroads so i did not think you meant that one!

OK this is not a big deal, i still think the game is near perfect as it is, but I would ask you to think if there is any way fighters could be less rubbish....

Andy

Post by **IainMcNeil** » Fri Sep 03, 2010 7:55 am

Aircraft attack an area. They will look for an enemy target within 5 tiles - thats about 1-1.5 km of the target area. If the enemy is not in this area they will just hit the target you told them to do as they cant find anything to hit. Seems pretty realistic to me.

This is not true for high level bombers who just hit the coords you tell them because they cant see the situation on the ground.

MesaDon · Post by **MesaDon** » Fri Sep 03, 2010 3:45 pm

I lost a portee that was not in a direct line with the strafing attack along with a tank and anti-tank gun that were ... dang Stukas

MrsWargamer · Post by **MrsWargamer** » Fri Sep 03, 2010 4:01 pm

I don't want to sound too much the expert, but I do know this much, air support was not really able to actually distinguish yours from 'theirs' so easy. That's why the ground troops really had to go out of their way to say 'this is us'. Tiger tank, no I think they might be able to see there is a tank where you said to hit, but beyond that, you might be expecting an unrealistic amount.

MesaDon · Post by **MesaDon** » Fri Sep 03, 2010 4:53 pm

I have also accidently destroyed my own units getting the enemy unit within a couple hexes. Learned to be careful after that

cptkremmen · Post by **cptkremmen** » Fri Sep 03, 2010 7:10 pm

I tried to post a reply but the stupid thing deleted itself.... Grrr...

Fighters appear to run in north south rows, if there is a target 1 or 2 squares up or down this row then it appears to be attacked.

If however the tank has moved 1 square to east or west the plane just ignores it.

I am sure the intention was to track in 2 dimensions, but it only appears to track in one dimension....

Or it could just be me...

MesaDon · Post by **MesaDon** » Fri Sep 03, 2010 9:32 pm

MesaDon wrote:I lost a portee that was not in a direct line with the strafing attack along with a tank and anti-tank gun that were ... dang Stukas

to qoute myself the portee was one square out of the direct north south line. the three units damaged formed a "T"

SailingGuy · Post by **SailingGuy** » Sat Sep 04, 2010 4:10 am

MesaDon wrote:I lost a portee that was not in a direct line with the strafing attack along with a tank and anti-tank gun that were ... dang Stukas

I think the Portee was just suffering from heat exhaustion.

cptkremmen · Post by **cptkremmen** » Sat Sep 04, 2010 9:51 am

Does seem bad luck, 90% of the time i see fighters do nothing at all. Occassionally they suppress an infantry unit. Think I have only seen a tank destroyed once in 40+ games

LOGAN5 · Post by **LOGAN5** » Sat Sep 04, 2010 6:10 pm

I think it is fine the way it is, I have killed plenty of tanks but i only call in airstrikes on low moral units because i noticed i have rarely(if ever) killed a unit with 100+ moral in an airstrike

Merr · Post by **Merr** » Sat Sep 04, 2010 6:16 pm

cptkremmen wrote:Does seem bad luck, 90% of the time i see fighters do nothing at all. Occassionally they suppress an infantry unit. Think I have only seen a tank destroyed once in 40+ games

Those odds sound better than real world .... maybe they need to tone it down

Quote from the Osprey Campaign, Lorraine 1944 , p29 ....

The effectiveness of close-air support in World War II remains controversial. Both the Allies and the Germans tended to exaggerate it's power; the US air force in its post-war struggle to become a serparate service, the Germans as an excuse for poor battlefield performance. Wartime and post-war operational studies have concluded that the ability of fighter-bombers to knock out tanks on the battlefield was greatly exaggerated. In post-battle survey after the Ardennes fighting in 1945 of a XIX TAC sector, it was found that aircraft had knocked out about six armored vehicles of the 90 claimed. The munitions of the day - unguided rockets,bombs, and heavy machine-guns - were not sufficiently accurate or sufficiently powerful to destroy many tanks. On the other hand, fighter-bombers had an enormous psychological impact, bolstering the morale of GIs and terrifying the average German soldier. ...

... The most effective employment of close-air support was to attack supply columns, storage areas, and other soft targets. ...

Deadmeat1471 · Post by **Deadmeat1471** » Sun Sep 05, 2010 6:19 am

To be honest strafing with fighters was only really against soft targets like Merr says, using a fighter against armor is a waste. Best target for plane would be infantry or truck, but its interdiction not combat support mostly. Other planes ive found to be effective, so

gib10 · Post by **gib10** » Tue Sep 07, 2010 4:06 pm

The question that begs to be asked as the real problem is why where fighters put in this game as air support to begin with. Bombers or Tac-bombers are the only correct choice here since there not a convoy to strafe!

Tac bombers do need to be more effective along with arty in my opinion. It will be more fun and useful if they were immediate(no delay - at least for air sup).

Arty rarely does anything as it is now so needs beefing up i think. Artillery was known as "the killer" so I'd like any game to represent that.

Direwolf1 · Post by **Direwolf1** » Tue Sep 07, 2010 5:13 pm

Or...in regards to fighters. Rather than selecting them and having them make strafing runs, perhaps when they are selected they could provide "air cover" for a few turns. So, when you're pushing through open ground the fighters provide air cover if your opponent select a bomber run then he is notified that there is x% chance that the bomber will be interdicted and lost for the remainder of the scenario. Would be REALLY nice to see a bomber making a run and then seeing a fighter interdict and shoot it down.

food for thought...

cheers,
DW

Sleet · Post by **Sleet** » Tue Sep 07, 2010 8:07 pm

I like the current format and usability of air support and artillery. It takes some risk and guessing on 'where and when' to call the strikes. Which is quite realistic IMHO.
As well, having fighters is fine, use them on soft targets rather than tanks.
Had my ME262 take out a Hellcat which was quite nice. Stukas are quite excellent doing the tactical bombing. Perhaps the only 'realistic' part was my Stuka was shot down 2 times (to my sorrow and my opponents joy - did finally get his AA) and still came back for more same # of turns later (but that is a separate thread I recall).
I don't see any need to change.

LOGAN5 · Post by **LOGAN5** » Tue Sep 07, 2010 8:57 pm

Bombing anything that is not an immediate threat feels like a waste, killing a truck 1/2 way across the map is a waste really. Imagine your infantry gets suppressed the next round you would wish you still had that airstrike to suppress the unit that is within range of assaulting it. I don't feel it is a waste to call in a strike on a Panther and drop his moral by 10 or 20, that might be the extra push you needed to suppress him next round and go in for the kill..

Artillery seems fine to me also.. I like that you have to plan ahead otherwise it would change the whole game and everyone would be scared to engage first because they know artillery will be dropping next turn right on their heads.

cptkremmen · Post by **cptkremmen** » Wed Sep 08, 2010 8:19 am

Fair comments, if most people are happy then I would deffinitely support leaving it alone.

Whilst I would prefer typhoons with rockets to machine gun armed fighters, I don't really mind

gib10 · Post by **gib10** » Fri Sep 10, 2010 3:31 pm

One thing I just thought of - any way to decide the approach vector of the aircraft? Most maps its always left to right or vice versa. It would be nice to choose the starting square and then have an arrow indicating the strafe line. that way if the situation warranted it, a North-South line of attack could be chosen or even diagonal.

sg225 · Post by **sg225** » Mon Sep 13, 2010 2:12 am

The aircraft are essentially useless. Normally they would devastate tanks. This game needs a lot of adjustment. Its way too hard

Post by **pipfromslitherine** » Tue Sep 14, 2010 12:30 am

As per the comments in the thread, the actual impact of air power in WW2 wasn't quite that direct. We didn't want air attacks to be 'pew pew' ways to punch holes at will in the enemy.

Other than a few specific missions, being too hard hasn't been something we've heard a lot of. What specifically is most troubling you? I'm no expert, but it seems key things to remember are that infantry are toast in the open, and that you need to treat the german armour with quite some respect - you can't duke it out with them toe to toe.

Cheers

Pip