W-I-P: Storm Over the Pacifc

There was a progress for the ships by updating and adding more antiaircraft guns, electronics and better planes (especially for carriers) to the existing ships. In Storm over the Pacific (or how El Justo will call it), there can be a greater focus to this fact.:)

What you say is very true. Planes are their own units, so that isn't an issue.

For AA, the range of AA we are looking at using is from 0-5. (From Cold War testing, we know you start raising the AA value too high, it becomes too lethal, especially when stacked like naval units will likely be). I had thought about it, but essentially you would see a unit "upgrade" from what it is currently to generally the same numbers except for the AA value maybe going from say 2 to 3. I can also see some attack going up with the addition of better radar for the US, but I am not sure if that will be a big enough difference.

The other issue with such upgrades means the existing units have to have an upgrade. That can be extemely difficult to pull off with the Civ 3 engine and still not have it that the unit can be produced or to have say a Portland class CA morph into a Baltimore class.
 
El Justo,
have you ever thought on BLITZ for those short-range fighter-bombers and torpedo-bombers ?
Bringing that in to the equation adds a new view for the AI and human. Long-range heavy bombers have more punch, but the close support aircraft can hit twice with movement of 2.

It´s hard (impossible) to get real life difference in the work-load between close support dive-bombers and long-range medium and heavy bombers.
However a torpedo bomber with blitz and lethal sea give that aircraft a true punch vs ship.
Also with blitz those short range bombers will pack a good punch but you will need to get them up close on airfields or carriers.

Looking at your nice picture on values for aircraft I see that you have made the ROF and cost the main difference on these bombers. But I thought the ROF was just plain added on in the mind of the AI when selection to build was determined.

My issue on this is that the AI will use heavy-bombers on mass even on close support and just disregard the smaller ones like P-47.

Also the PBY catalina have a detect inv set on your scheme.
However those it really work with aircraft ???
I thought the game only permitted this on ships and landunits ...

Extra is not any aircraft having leathal land units. The close support once like the P-47 P-51.
Perhaps even giving the thought on having the dive-bombers Daunltess having lethal land and not sea.
The divebombers could then come in at the end finishing off those units that the bigger bombers earlier have soften up on land before the Marines hits the beaches.
Same with shipping. Dauntless attack to injure and then torpedos to sink the bugger.

A note on the lethal tag.

I am not a fan of lethal land; ever. (Exception, atomic weapons which have their own rules). Why? History shows that there are still survivors/defenders even after the heaviest of bombardments. This happen in WW1 after a position might be shelled for a week straight and it happen in the Pacific in WW2 after the Allies would bomb an island for a month and then shell it with battleships repeatedly. The Marines would come ashore and the Japanese would still offer heavy resistance. In game terms, I have played too many scenarios with lethal land and it just results in a less than satisfactory experience.

For lethal sea, Kly's theory is you hit a ship with enough shells or bombs, it will sink. A torpedo might speed things up, but it is not required. I find it ironic that you would specifically name the Dauntless not to have lethal sea bombardment when that very aircraft was the one that changed the entire war in the Pacific at the battle of Midway. If the US had to depend on torpedo planes in that battle, they would have been big time shafted. :lol:

One of the reasons not to go with a "lethal" flag is to keep a unit from being abused in a way not intended. If we had a way of doing it, B19-B24-B29 units would never bombard naval units because they were totally useless. The US tried, but they never hit anything except fish. The Japanese would watch the plane, see it drop bombs and then simply manuver out of the way. The next best thing we could do is not give them lethal sea like the regular carrier planes have. There are some other plane units that fall in this category (no lethal sea) but it is more of a case to note sea attack is not something they did on a regular basis.
 
Planes are their own units, so that isn't an issue.

This is the old traditional setting. :) Per example in my mod CCM I gave carriers a different setting by additionally providing them with a bombard rating according to the planes that are on board of these carriers. For me there isn´t such a big difference between a granate that is fired by a main gun and a bomb that is dropped by an aircraft, especially when the AI frequently has problems to equipe the carriers in a good way. The aircrafts are another form of a main gun (a medium to fire at the target). Half of the aircrafts on board of the carrier are slots for planes, the other half is always present with the carrier in form of a bombardement capacity. Combined with the blitz flag and different movement rules (lesser MV-points, but all-terrain-as-road-flag) this opened some interesting options for carriers.
 
Whatever El Justo did with the planes in AoI works pretty well. I've watched the Germans strafe the hell out of Stockholm for about 12 turns straight (with about 9 fighters). The British have also built up a sizable air force, that is until I got to it.

I'd think this would be integral to this scenario in particular, and SoE of course.
 
On lethal bombardment: play around with the Fire Rate, so even if the bombardment can be lethal, you need several bombing runs to make it work. That, and the fact that only one unit at a time can be killed, should be enough.
 
Whatever El Justo did with the planes in AoI works pretty well. I've watched the Germans strafe the hell out of Stockholm for about 12 turns straight (with about 9 fighters). The British have also built up a sizable air force, that is until I got to it..

Carriers are a different problem than normal airwarfare.
 
Carriers are a different problem than normal airwarfare.

I agree carriers are quite different. I have yet to see one in AoI (used that is). Then again, AoI is primarily focused on battleship type vessels.
 
I agree carriers are quite different. I have yet to see one in AoI (used that is). Then again, AoI is primarily focused on battleship type vessels.

El Justo and Clyden have experience in the settings of carriers from TCW - but there is always something to improve. I also have some experiences from SOE with carriers and the tendency of carrierplanes to rebase to land if possible and the problems for the AI to fill up the gaps in carrierplanes again.

It can also be a good thing to give carriers the king-flag to avoid the AI using carriers to defend stacks of destroyers and be sunk by an enemy destroyer while defending the stack.

In this scenario the performance of carriers is crucial.
 
This is sort of self-defeating to the intentions of this project, with its emphasis on individual unit representations, but one way around the AI reluctance to load units into other units is to use fleets instead of individual ships. Each type of fleet is made up of several ship types. So a carrier becomes a carrier task force, with it's own carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers. The stats of the fleet would be based upon the total of all the ships, with aircraft/missiles represented as Civinator described. You could also load aircraft on to the fleet, but it would still have the fighting affect of being a carrier task force whether you did or not. A far from ideal solution, but Civ programing being so poorly done, I was never able to get the AI to load adequately on other units to use the stock methods for carrier types. In fact, Civ is really a lousy platform for these kinds of simulations because the programing is so basic and limited and that a simulation has to be streamlined to the point it no longer satisfies. This is one of the reasons I stopped trying to adapt Civ to recent and modern scenarios.
 
A note on the lethal tag.

I am not a fan of lethal land; ever. (Exception, atomic weapons which have their own rules). Why? History shows that there are still survivors/defenders even after the heaviest of bombardments. This happen in WW1 after a position might be shelled for a week straight and it happen in the Pacific in WW2 after the Allies would bomb an island for a month and then shell it with battleships repeatedly. The Marines would come ashore and the Japanese would still offer heavy resistance. In game terms, I have played too many scenarios with lethal land and it just results in a less than satisfactory experience.

For lethal sea, Kly's theory is you hit a ship with enough shells or bombs, it will sink. A torpedo might speed things up, but it is not required. I find it ironic that you would specifically name the Dauntless not to have lethal sea bombardment when that very aircraft was the one that changed the entire war in the Pacific at the battle of Midway. If the US had to depend on torpedo planes in that battle, they would have been big time shafted. :lol:

One of the reasons not to go with a "lethal" flag is to keep a unit from being abused in a way not intended. If we had a way of doing it, B19-B24-B29 units would never bombard naval units because they were totally useless. The US tried, but they never hit anything except fish. The Japanese would watch the plane, see it drop bombs and then simply manuver out of the way. The next best thing we could do is not give them lethal sea like the regular carrier planes have. There are some other plane units that fall in this category (no lethal sea) but it is more of a case to note sea attack is not something they did on a regular basis.

I agree that lethal isn´t that fun on land units.
However the "Dauntless-issue" was more to get a grip on this games AI. It´s an issue facing what really happend vs. what the AI/Game programming does. Sadly sometimes very very different.
We can all agree that Lancasters and B-17 would in game be used in close support roles instead of P-47s if these heavy bombers pack a heavier load.
My thought was a little more directed towards this blitz thing for fighterbombers and leave the leathal kill out. Hope the Ai uses more P-47 attacks than B-17s.
Heavy bombers should be strictly strategic and used as such vs cities mostly. Heavies should perhaps have precision bombing and collateral.
So land lethal NO.... Let the infantry and armor clean up.

As said El Justo done a great job in AoI, both in aircraft and powerful ships. But the WW2 era is much more complicated and I´m not sure how the AI will handle the many types of aircraft.
Then I´m much more sure that El Justo and his team have tested out all variants and will produce a killer of a scenario.

My two cent was only to question and discuss the possibility of using blitz in the first case, lethal land could be left out.

BUT then what makes the two very important bombers (torpedo & dive) on carriers differ.
Both the Dauntless and Avenger should be used by the AI. Will it ?
And hey don´t forget that torpedo attacks could be lethal like Taranto and the old Swordfish, so don´t sell torpedo attacks short.

Then surely the AI would probably never understand to send in several dive-bombers to soften up the ship until the torpedo swings in for the final kill.

Me for one would use this as I would landforces, with several artillery pounding the enemy units until they are red. Then the infantry or panzer goes in for the kill.
I thought it sounded good, but I might be totally wrong :whew:
 
thanks for all the comments folks :) the carrier issues with the game engine are something that needs to be addressed, for sure. we experienced problems with TCW where the AI just wouldn't use the aircraft properly. and we've been aware of this. i think we'll try and flesh it out some more once we start to test. sort of like 'seeing is believing' or something like that :D
 
For the 4 engine heavies in this game, El Justo and I have been chatting on it and looking into it a lot. For one thing, 4 engine heavies didn't play a big role in the Pacific early simply because there wasn't a lot that fit their mission profile of strategic bombing. What 4 engine assets were in the Pacific were mostly based out of Australia for most of the first part and mid part of the war. As a result, 4 engine heavy production will likely be very restricted (auto producers).

When the B29 became available, it was decided to use it in the Pacific, but even then, the first operational mission wasn't flown until April of 1944 and the first mission against Japan itself was not until June 1944 and all these attacks were out of China/India. B17 and B24 missions were mostly to soften up islands for invasion and most of these came in the Solomans and I don't think we are talking about a large number of aircraft.

The idea we are working with is to limit the 4 engine heavy fleet to avoid players building stacks of 4 engine heavies and just bombing whatever they want to oblivion. Players will have to think carefully where they will deploy and use their 4 engine air fleet. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of the Civ 3 engine to restrict what airfields they can be used off of, etc.
 
Hey EJ and Klyden, the work you've done so far on the aircraft stats looks good. I know that you guys have lots of experience in this area and I'm sure testing will help to identify the best set-up. A few things I thought of from what I have seen in testing that may be food for thought. In the WW2 era, I like having the heavy bombers with a long range, of course, solid defense, high firepower but very low rate of fire. I found this helps makes them more dangerous as strategic bombers and less dangerous against dug-in troops and ships. No lethal flags for either, of course. Like what was mentioned here, I've also like giving the dive-bombers/fighter bombers a double move with blitz, which makes them very dangerous, but also increases the danger of being intercepted or shot down. And of course, a higher ROF and lower bombard than the big ones.

One big adjustment that I thought worked well was a healthy operational range. In WW2 Global, the aircraft were carefully crafted to have ranges reflecting their real-life capabilities but the game suffered as a result. A larger range means more interceptions and air battles and much better results with the AI forward deploying their aircraft, especially across the Pacific. In an early build before adding the 'tactical only' flag to the carriers, the AI would continually refill its carriers with B-17s and B-24s when the starting carrier aircraft were shot down. Of course, the AI still likes to put carriers 'on station' and bombard a particular city into dust until it captures it or the fleet is destroyed.

Glad to hear the progress and looking forward like everyone else how it turns out.
 
those are great remarks :) thanks for sharing.

like Kly noted, we want to try and limit the instances where the big 4 engine bombers (and to some degree, the big 2 engine ones) are blasting away at stacks of ships. some of the 2 engine american bombers were active in anti-shipping roles but they were mostly against transports and/or part of the Tokyo Express. but for the most part, these big bombers flew at high altitudes and the 'hit' percentage was pretty low, even with the super-advanced norden sites in many US bombers at the time. there were some low level b-29 attacks but that was more an exception. so i sort of looked at the 'intended' altitude range for a particular aircraft when formulating the stats.

it's a neat idea to set the big bombers at high bombardment and lower rof. i mean, it makes sense. i'll be sure to stash this alternative when testing. by that i mean that i'm not fully sold on my method of lower bombardment value and higher rof. my rationale for that is the accuracy of the bombs, from extreme altitudes, was pretty poor in reality but the rate of fire (ie payload capacity in this instance) was far better than smaller attack aircraft and f/b's. anyhow, it's all a wip and we will adjust some, i think, on the fly once we start testing.

i like the idea of blitz for dive bombers. will store that one too :)

been adding in Japanese land based fighters over the last week or so. had family in town the last several days and just now getting back into my regular grind :D so soon enough, probably this week, i will venture towards Japanese land based bombers. as an R&D note, i gotta say, American specs/performance on their fighter aircraft are almost universally better than their Japanese counterparts. yes, the turning/maneuvering of Japanese aircraft were legendary. but there were a ton of trade - offs compared to American aircraft. couple in the training of US air units and there is gonna be some disparity. so get ready for it when i get around to posting first round of Japanese fighter stats :groucho:
 
it's a neat idea to set the big bombers at high bombardment and lower rof.

Additionally strategic bombers (or in this scenario late big bombers like the B-29) could have the flags precision bombing and collateral damage. Both buildings in the CCM-screenshot attached were destroyed by the attack of a single strategic bomber with these settings.
Spoiler :

i like the idea of blitz for dive bombers. will store that one too :)

This is the setting of divebombers in CCM. Of course to work, the MV rate must be set to two (or higher). In my eyes a MV-rate of more than two makes these units too strong.
 
i think i set the big bombers for collateral damage and precision bombing. gonna toy with the idea of setting the precision bombing as a tech, aka fire bombing or low level incendiary bombing. something like that.

i think i set the self propelled arty pieces as blitz/2 moves. so maybe not such a bad idea for the dive bombers. will have to look at it real closely though once we start testing.
 
Big bombers should indeed be used first for strategic bopmbing like the fire bombing on Japan.
I do think in the assault on Okinawa and Iwo Jima (and other island attacks) these strategic bombers wasn´t used. So one should try making it the same in this scenario.

The issue on blitz for fighter-bombers spills over to this question....

Is blitz in any ways affecting Intercept issues.
As I understand a fighter on an airfield, town or carrier gets one shot at the first bomber trying to assault whatever. The defense values comes into play. Will blitz make this fighter available for even a second chance on the next bomber ???

If so this will indeed open up an aspect on having this play in concerning so many different planes to be handled. Certain fighters coukld perhaps have lower defense but the ability to defend twice.

I was thinking in terms that looking at US aircrafts you got straight upgrades on Wildcats to Hellcats to Bearcats. Now the F4 Corsair came along during the Hellcats and was used even in Korea. It had a more powerful attack than the Bearcat in bombing and it was used by the Us Marines. To make this more versatile in game perhaps the blitz could be used.
It´s a bit weaker than the Bearcat as in your stats, so there should be an idea to build it.
The Wildcat, Hellcats and Bearcats should upgradable, the F4 Corsair not in that "chain". Perhaps ???

The real question is IF blitz works in defense-intercept ??
 
not sure whether blitz works for intercept. my first thought is no but i just don't know.

been quiet for me the last week or so. drying out from that nasty storm. the eye of the hurricane hit about 25 miles southeast of where i live :eek: luckily, no damage at the homestead. we lost a few trees though. one snapped right in half as i was watching it. i knew it was coming down and something compelled me to stand there and watch ;) gotta bust out the chain saw. at least i'll have enough fire wood for a while.

the eye made landfall around dinner time monday night, an eery lull for about 2 hours, then rd 2 where the band of the storm just walloped us. this is when we lost most of the trees. round 1 was not so bad. it was when the outer band of the storm came rumbling through after dark. never have seen anything like it...the sustained wind gusts. trees swaying like toothpicks.

i live about 1 mile from the bay in front of Atlantic City and Brigantine. both of those cities got absolutely smashed. bay met the ocean. always our worst fears downashore. we were lucky where i live. i am about 15 feet above sea level and this prevented the surge waters from reaching my neighborhood. other parts of my town, the low lying parts, got wet. not like the barrier islands though.

only thing i really 'lost' in the storm was my modem for my pc. not sure what went wrong with it but it crapped out during one of the power outages.

anyhow, i'm alive and well :) just hoping my beaches and other favorite spots along the coast aren't decimated.
 
El-Justo said:
i'm alive and well
This is the greatest news for AoI and SoP. Wish you'll be the same (at least) or better (receives my vote) for many years more. Thank you for being with us.
 
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