Road to War - Historical

Dale said:

I know some people love the 39 maps, but in all honesty it was never my intent to make them the important part of the mod. It's "The Road to War" not "World War II".

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french civ fan said:

...36 maps give you more control over how your nation leads into WW2...what units do you want for example..and on a 36 map you can do it

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Dale said:

Your work to improve on RtW is fantastic.

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Dale said:

But what kiwitt has done is take my core and expand the realism to form a version of RtW that is pleasing for the hard-cores. For that, kiwitt gets a dip of my hat.

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snafusmith said:

Awesome, go for it!

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I sent a post on the open thread recommending Ship classes you might use. Unfortunately, the columns got scrambled by the text editor. I'll go back and see if I can edit the original post.

I'll also look over the aircraft types and see what might be reasonably representative of aircraft in service during the period.

In RTW, a different scale map is used for the Pacific. That almost forces the use of two different Units XML files in order to represent reasonable aircraft combat radius/ unit range in the Pacific and Europe maps.

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FNP said:

via email ...
With respect to naval units, I have no ideas yet on how you might fix ship ranges [if your goal is to be historically accurate] ... Atlantic ship convoys [either the fast or the slow convoys] could transit Halifax to Liverpool in a fortnight. A fast attack carrier force with underway replenishment could cross the Pacific in a fortnight. There is a playability mismatch between land units and sea units with respect to relative speed / range. .

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RTW type	Suggested Type
vanilla	
vanilla	
vanilla	
vanilla	
vanilla	
vanilla	
Bf 109	Bf 109
FW 190	FW 190
ME 262	ME P1101
CR 42	CR 42
G 55	G 55
Caproni	Re 2007
Hurricane	Hurricane
Spitfire	Spitfire
Meteor	Meteor
MS 406	MS 406
D 520	D 520
Brege 693	Mystere MD 454
P 40	P 40
P 51	P 51
FR 1 	F 86
I 153	I 16
IL 2	YAK 9
MiG 15	MIG 15
KI 27	KI 27
A6M	A6M
KI 84	KI 201
Hawk 75	I 16
I 16	P 40
Vultee	P 51
JU 87	JU 87
JU 88	JU 88
Ar 234	JU 390  / HO XVIIB
BA 88	BA 88
SM 79	SM 79
AR 234	AR 234
Wellington	Wellington
Lancaster	Lancaster
Mosquito	Canberra / Vulcan
Amiot 143	Amiot 143
Amiot 340	Amiot 354
Amiot 354	B17
B 18	B 18
B 17	B 17
B 29	B 29
TB 4	TB 4
IL 4	IL 4
TU 4	TU 4
KI 32	KI 32
G4M	G4M
Kikka	G8N1
TB 4	TB 4
IL 4	IL 4
B 17	B 17

Changes are reflected by highlighted cells in the spreadsheet roposed Aircraft

Types:

Changes that seemed reasonable were made to the basic RTW aircraft types.

The RUS figo I 153 was replaced by the I 16. The I 16 was the mainstay of the soviet AF at the outbreak of the war.fig1 IL-2 was replaced with a YAK-9. The IL-2 was a good ground attack a/c but a very poor fighter.

RTW used the MiG 15 as the Rus fig2, that would make the time frame in the 1950's. As a result, most of the fig2 fighters were changed to reflect MiG 15 counterpart fighters of the 1950's ... GE, IT, JAP were "what if" fighters that were either in design or in prototype stage by 1945. The German ME P1101 was in design and assuming axial flow engine development progressed, the aircraft would have been a counterpart of the MiG 15 and F 86.

Much the same logic was applied to the bom2 units. Axis bom2 units were either designs or prototypes by 1945. Areas highlighted yellow in the spreadsheet reflect a choice remaining to be made between two competing options. The GE fighter choice is the prototype single engine swept wing ME P1101. The P1101 was the "starting point" for Soviet and US single engine fighter designs and represents a logical next step for GE.

In the case of FR, there was very little difference between the Amiot 340 and 354 bomber types. The 354 was comparable to the rest of the bom1 types and was selected as the FR bom1 ... there was no follow on FR bomber so a B 17 was arbitrarily chosen as a fill in for bom2. FR never developed a requirement for long range strategic bombers, eventually deciding to utilise nuclear armed fighter-bombers as their aviation strategic deterrent.

RTW use of a Mosquito for eng bom2 was a mistake. The Mosquito was a tactical attack aircraft and certainly not a step up from the Lancaster. The choice is between the 1950 vintage Canberra medium bomber or the strategic Vulcan bomber.

Chinese aircraft were more or less arbitrary for the entire period since China operated a widely varied collection of lend lease, loan, and volunteer manned aircraft manufactured by the Allies. Toward the end of WWII, China's airforce was more or less up to date. China did not manufacture their own aircraft. Choices for fighters and bombers reflect a representative cross section of the more modern aircraft.

Ranges:

The RTW European map scale is approximately 36 statute miles per square and the Pacific map is approximately 100 statute miles per square. Combat radius for all types was determined for both map scales and is reflected in the spreadsheet. Combat radius represents an average of published ranges for the aircraft. I did not use ferry range figures since they are not representative of a combat loaded aircraft. There is some confusion in the literature between statute and nautical miles so all figures are approximate. Given the use of mapboard squares in the game vice hex tiles, representing a radius range is only very approximate so I would not "quibble over a square here or there in combat radius.

Combat Capability:

Hate to get into debating technical aspects of various aircraft. Tactics, training, and experience are the real descriminators with respect to combat success, not technical specifications. I have considerable experience flying fighters, attack aircraft, a couple of bomber types, and patrol aircraft so I am familiar with the somewhat misguided endless debate regarding aircraft performance and aircraft comparisons.

However,that said,iAirRange,iCombatLimit,iAirCombat,iInterceptionProbability,iEvasionProbability,iCollateralDamage,
iCollateralDamageLimit,iCollateralDamageMaxUnits,iBombRate,andiBombardRate all need to be filled in along with selected promotions [your hat tip to the RAF]. I would think many of these should be adjusted not only to reflect capability but also to reflect playability issues.

iCombatLimit: I assume that combat limit applies to the amount of damage a unit is able to inflict???

Your use of "large" ground units such as divisions, corps, and armies means that damage capabilities must be modified accordingly ... air to ground attacks, fighter or bomber, could attrite such units but should never be able to eliminate them. On the other hand, air to air combat should reflect the high likelyhood of destruction. Air to surface vs naval targets must also reflect the high likelyhood of ship destruction. Also surface to air attacks should reflect the ability to destroy the aircraft.

iAirCombat:

I have edited the table to reflect an overall subjective opinion of capabilities. I have no formulas to offer, just experience in the "trade".

iIntercept Probability:

Should reflect the capabilities of each countries' air defense network. British should start out well ahead of the rest with GE in second place. Initially, US, FR, IT, RUS, and CHI were pretty far behind. Given the rapid proliferation of radar, It is it is reasonable to assume that by the fig2 / bom2 stage, the major protagonists / antagonists were pulling up even with the British air direction system. Exception ... Since the US fleet in the Pacific was dealing with a very significant air threat, they too learned very rapidly and had a good radar based naval air direction / defense system by 1943. That would imply that US navy units should have a good air defense capability by then.

iEvasionProbability:

This should probably reflect the "ruggedness" of aircraft construction and also performance advantage. Some types could take hits and survive and some could not. Generally, all Japanese designs favored less armor and non self sealing fuel tanks to reduce weight and increase performance. All were very vulnerable and caught fire easily. us B 17 and eng Wellington bombers top the list of rugged aircraft. Piston driven fighters are fairly equal except in one respect, those with air cooled engines were more survivable than those with liquid cooled engines ... one hit in the "glycol" and liquid cooled engines were done. As long as there was some oil left, most damaged air cooled engines continued to run.

Air cooled fighter engines: it CR 42,ger FW 190, jap KI 27 and A6M, rus/chi I 16.

Other notes. In spite of liquid cooling, The Hurricane and P 40 were both noted for their ability to sustain damage and still get home.

Turbine powered jet aircraft are all vulnerable to hits in the engine/s. The F86 and Mystere had axial flow engines which were slightly more vulnerable to combat damage than their centrifugal flow counterparts. However, the speed/ performance advantage also transfers directly to increased evasion probability. Both the F 86 and Mystere IV were faster than their counterparts.


However, after all this, I expect most "numbers" will have to be adjusted for playability.

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kiwitt said:

I may remove the "Blitz" promotion from ships. Giving ships massive movement distances, like proposed, would make them quite different to land units, but they would then also play quite a significant role.

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