W-I-P: Storm Over the Pacifc

The current plan is the light cruisers will be the smallest single ship in the game. Destroyers and escorts will be grouped together along with subs. The US will probably not have escorts in the game simply because they won't need them and this would be an effort to try to keep the overall number of units down a bit. (Escorts may be incorporated with some sort of transport unit, but that is a work in progress).

I will also likely represent the US CVE's as a group of ships to help cut down on numbers again. (over 100 saw service, but not all in the Pacific; regardless trying to represent/move around 50-60 escort carriers for the US player is not something I would enjoy doing and while a SoD of 50 something CVE's wrecking havoc across the Pacific may appeal to some for a short period of time, long term, I don't think it is the way to go). The US version would probably 3-4 while the Japanese might be represented either individually or in pairs.

Perhaps a "generic" Escort unit, upgradeable, ultimately until it has CVE capabilities?

-Oz
 
interesting remarks. thanks for sharing.

i've been quiet here in this thread. but i've managed to chip away. got all air units for japan and US into folders, text docs, editor. have a pre-lim list for commonwealth civs air units. have not gotten them into folders yet but should not take long as their list is much shorter than the US and Japanese lists. once commonwealth civs are done (ie British India, Australia, NZ), i'll pinpoint chinese republic air units. after that, it will be sea unit adds into folders, text, editor. this last part is a ways off though as Kly continues to move through the stuff.

i also managed to get all Industry buildings and Imperialism buildings into the folders, text, editor, and buildings large and small sheets. it's something like 60 buildings (c. 40 industry, 20 imperialism). next up for the buildings is the Pacific Islands buildings. iirc, there's 10 of them. after that, add in wonders, small wonders. after that, pre-place buildings on the map. a ways off though, probably after all unit additions are in and even tech tree completion.

so, in a nutshell, here's what i have to do before beta :

finish the air units, could probably get this done in one or two 'sittings'

finalize sea unit list. comprehensive and will take a while longer

add in rest of buildings, add wonders etc

construct tech tree. can probably be designed in a sitting or two. getting coordinates into editor though will be tedious

once all the above is complete, i can alpha/beta test it. really looking forward to trials on this one :)

Hi El J :)

Just curious -- what sorts of Wonders?

Best As Ever,

Oz
 
hi Oz :)

wonder stuff needs to be sorted out some more. there are a couple of game areas that need them and need to be fleshed out a little more. unit autoproduction, espionage ability, corruption reducer/2nd capital benefits, and some other things. i will probably have to preplace wonders...since AI does not have real good track record of building them while locked at war (among many other poor 'at war' builds). Klyden sugged to me a bit ago to maybe make separate biq files, ie civ specific and this would allow for human player only to build wonders (among some of other concise modifications to base biq). anyhow, as i'm sure you know :) by preplacing the wonders, it would allow for them to act as pre-req's for other buildings (and not a wonder, at least the to AI). and notably here, as a workaround for poor AI city builds while locked at war, ie regular buildings as opposed to wonders.

i haven't really gone over what attributes any of the planned 'wonders' may grant outside of unit autoproduction. sea units will be primary autopro'd units. we don't want piles of capital ships floating around.will definitely have some type of wonder, probably small wonder, which allows for vet ground, vet air, and vet sea. want to restrict ability to build vet units. a w-i-p though as i've never went with no broad access to vet sea units. we'll see :) and thanks for reading :D
 
as promised, some screens :

alpha Complete List US Air


alpha Complete List Japan Air


alpha Complete List Australia Air


of course, all a w-i-p. after all, we've gotta have something in there to start alpha/beta tests. right ? US air units are probably the most accurate of the bunch. by that i mean that me and Kly went back and forth some on them. and this sort of set the tone for the rest of the stats, ie other civs. as a reminder, range was calculate dividing the max combat radius by 75 which is the rough figure for the width in miles of each square. Aussie lineup not exact atm. condiering rolling all commonwealth aircraft into one lineup rather than individual lineups. most of the commonwealth stuff was similar with some exceptions. lend lease stuff was surely available to them all in one shape or another. anyhow, still trying to decide whether i want to save some time and roll commonwealth air lineup into One rather than 3 (Aussie, NZ, Br India).

and some long awaited building lineups :)

Industry sector of map, ie US and Japan


Imperialism sector, ie all areas not in US or Japan nor in the Pacific


Resource based, ie resource must be within city radius


i did not update the spreadsheet with values for the buildings. they're in the editor though. call it laziness :p for the most part, it's production based. part is anti-corruption, some +gold and +science mixed in. some war weariness reducers also although a w-i-p as to the effects of WW. not a big fan of it in game but will feel my way through (as with some other finite gameplay stuff) as we move on with alpha testing. considering limiting culture spread. not sure how i want to approach it, whether to be radical with it or to just tame it down some. will know more later and would adjust it all if warranted :D
 
Just to give some insight on some of the reasoning behind the aircraft values and how we tried to translate them into Civ 3 terms.

Attack is a combination of manuverability and speed. (IE, how easy is it to get your gun sights on the enemy). In addition, offensive armament also plays a role. Defense is also a combination of manuverability and speed to a point (more manuverable, than speed when compared to attack) along with a measure of toughness for a aircraft. Hps represent a larger part of how tough a plane is and those with armor plate and self sealing tanks were generally given a better value.

While doing some investigating on this subject for El Justo, the little light sort of went on. Early in the war, the Zero was extremely dominate for a number of reasons. It had the advantage of speed in climb, level flight and manuverability over the most common planes in the Allied inventory to start the war. As the war went along, the Japanese failed to really develop reliable higher horsepower engines while the Americans went from having 1000-1200 hp engines to engines over 2000 hp. The Zero first lost its advantage of speed in level flight and then lost its advantage of climb rate. The only thing it had going for it was manuverability, but it could not really pick a fight on its terms.

A look at the armament of both sides is also very interesting. The Japanese relied on small caliber machine guns (mostly 7.7mm with 2375 fps at 500 rpm and a effective range of close to 600 yards) and 20mm cannon firing explosive shells. (1970 fps). The standard US aircraft gun was the M2 Browning heavy machine gun. (750-850 rpm at 2950 fps and a effective range of 2000 yards).

Japanese planes were very lightweight (about half the weight of most of their American counter parts) and happen to be susceptible to the very armament their planes carried (explosive shells). American planes were very heavy and carried self sealing tanks and armor plate. US aircraft armament could deal with just about anything that crossed its path, but would have been effective in punching through most armor, etc.

As it was, the Japanse 20mm shells had a hard time with US planes because of the armor plate. The plate would stop most of the fragments and the 7.7 was too low of velocity, lacked range, etc to be able to do much with the armor plate. This is why US aircraft losses later in the war were low and while a lot of pilots got home, there were a fair number of them injured not by bullets but by shell fragments from 20mm cannon shells that happen to miss some of the armor plate (mostly to legs, etc).

It may be noted that a lot of the Japanese aircraft on a "base" are inferior to their American counterparts. One of the important advantages the Japanse had at the start of the war is the fact their pilot corps was among the best trained in the war and most had flying time in combat conditions in China. The extra hps of being vet and elite will help substain the Japanese early, but as time goes along, like the real conflict, the Japanese will not be able to replace their elite aircraft formations and will likely suffer as a result.
 
those are great remarks old buddy :) thanks for sharing.

once the US air stats were in, the rest sort of filled in, with some exceptions of course.

not sure whether anyone wants to help in physical construction of SoP but thought i'd put it out there :

i could use some help with civilopedia construction. i have not done any work with it outside of setting up the PRTO stuff. i mean, the entries are there but they are blank. all of them. so if anyone has the desire to even do a section of so, please let me know. i have put it off mainly to focus my limited energies on compiling all game elements.

there are a few sets of unit gfx that i had to use place holders for, aircraft for sure. so any interested unit makers...i have a list :) there will be sea units we need also. do not have the list though but i promised it for Delta_Strife once it's ready. there may be some ground/foot units also. i am not super concerned about getting replacements for place holder gfx. but it would be nice.
 
Just for the sake of argument.
Why should the AI select the (presume) later developed Helldiver instead of the (at that time I presume) Avenger.

The Avenger have longer range, higher bombing and cost less. I can understand that the Dauntless upgrades to the Helldiver, but beside this the Helldiver is inferior to the Avenger.

I throw in my earlier ideas on lethal sea on Torpedo bombers and lower bombing. They come in last and finish off the ships. The dive-bomber might then have blitz to give them something extra.
I know that divebombers could finish off ships too in RL, but in gameterms one might look at the old Swordfishes at Taranto and such. IMHO the torpedo-bombers should have something that is special to them and make them worth while creating.

In this case the torpedo-bombers like Avengers are better than dive-bombers, so why create any dive-bombers at all. After all they also have the same resources and all.

Please explain the thoughts on the issue (a hard nut to crack) on Dive-bombers and torpedo-bombers. Heck, even the issue on landbased strike aircraft contra carrier based.

Whatever.
Would just be very happy to learn your thoughts gents, since RL really might be bended to get the game to work. I understand that a lot of calculating with real bomb-values and the issues explained about movement, speed and climbing-rates, however a valuable parameter as how the game works is important enough not to be forgotten.

I do respect the great work behind these values and looking at the AoI they are hard to question, so don´t take this as bad critic gents.
 
no harm you old Grognard :)

yes, there is a design question about torpedo and dive bombers. i guess in a nutshell, the torpedo bombers, from a payload and maneuverability [lack of] pov, should have a lower overall rof compared to dive bombers who seemed to me to be more precision oriented, could be more evasive and the airframes more rugged. payload was somehwat limited but more precise. i plugged in the 'blitz' tag for the dive bombers for the alpha run.

i'll admit there's no perfect way to tackle all this witout leaving in some redundancy issues and the like. so we like constructive dialogueon it all :D
 
some further discussion on the air units :

air unit builds and spawns will vary from civ to civ. and there's some reasoning behind it :)

the map is basically divided into 3 distinct regions : Industry, Imperialism, Pacific Islands. each region will allow for a certain set of air units to be built there (or spawned; more on that later). by this i mean that some form of fighter and some form of bomber will be able to be built in each of the 3 regions. with that said, here are some comments for each civ and their air unit builds :

US : the most advantageous and complex of the bunch. Japan isn't far behind in terms of total available units. but there is a qualatative edge tot he american aircraft.

land based american fighters will be able to be built with the Imperialism resource. this sets the stage for construction of them in Australia, ie the 4 american 'cities' in Queensland. Hawaii, Alaska, Panama and Cuba round of their starting Imperialism locations. and then there's the possibility of the US taking ground on the map, like in New Guinea or the Philippines or China or any of the other Imperialism locales. rationale for having Imperialism as the req'd resource for the US's top fighters is to put them right on the front lines, immediately. consider the USAAF fighters as 'ordered & delivered' to these far flung locations :) call it a built-in advantage based on industrial capacity, logistical capacities etc. of course, the one glaring issue with Imperialism as the req'd resource is that it seems that the USAAF fighters can't be built in the US. well, they'll be spawned by a building (ie not a wonder), likely called something like "P-38 Lightning Contract" [or something to this effect]. now, this "Contract" building will require a host of other improvements, starting with Electricity Co which is required for Factory, which will be req'd for Mfg Plant, which will be required for Aircraft Mfg Plant which will be required for the "P-38 Lighting Contract". that was a mouthful :D anyhow, these "contract buildings" will spawn the respective units every so often (haven't developed spawn rate but probably between every 4-10 turns). Aluminum, of course, will be required within city radius to build the Aircraft Mfg Plant. so this limits the number of cities in US that can build these "contract buildings". Mfg Plant is only buildable with the Industry resource. so in the end, there are 3, 4, or 5 spots on map in US with Aluminum.

land based american bombers : heavies in continental US and the mediums and strike with Imperialism. B17 and B24 will be able to be built (and not spawned) but only in US. B29 and B36 will be spawned via "contract buildings", same building sequence, will require Aircraft Mfg Plant etc.

cv fighters : exclusively a Pacific Islands build. always had issues with getting AI to 'replenish' its carrier forces. so here goes with a cheap price tag.

torpedo bombers & dive bombers : same as cv fighters

the Japanese air lineup and build availability differs some from the US and its enemies. in almost all instances, Aluminum & Oil will be required in order to build the non-naval aircraft. iow, the army air force will require resources in order to sustain and replenish. sounds reasonable for the japanese position imo. after all, the quest for resources was the impetus for their east asia sphere push.

so Japanese land based fighters will be able to be built in areas that have access to both Aluminum and Oil. there are plenty of spots on the map where this is present. so at the beginning at least, Japan will have some spots to grow their army air force.

don't be misled by the name 'land based bombers' for the Japanese. this list includes naval aircraft but their land based models. so they were rolled in with the army types. Pacific Islands will be for the naval ones and the Alum/Oil combo for army types. the what-if G10 will be spawned.

all the Zero models will require the PacIslands resource. same for their torpedo and dive bombers.

not sure yet how to handle the Commonwealth air builds, whether to set them in a model that is like the US one (based off of the 3 map regions) or to go with a Japanese model (requiring the Alum/Oil combo). the spreadsheet shots show the US model but not sold on it yet for them.

hope this spells out how the air units will be presented in our little project :D
 
no harm you old Grognard :)

yes, there is a design question about torpedo and dive bombers. i guess in a nutshell, the torpedo bombers, from a payload and maneuverability [lack of] pov, should have a lower overall rof compared to dive bombers who seemed to me to be more precision oriented, could be more evasive and the airframes more rugged. payload was somehwat limited but more precise. i plugged in the 'blitz' tag for the dive bombers for the alpha run.

i'll admit there's no perfect way to tackle all this witout leaving in some redundancy issues and the like. so we like constructive dialogueon it all :D

You got a point in that divebombers should actually have better Defence than torpedo-bombers. As mentioned like the Swordfish and the Devastator should be next to useless in defending any against any fighter that could be launched to defend the fleet or city.
So a "normal" attack on an enemy fleet should be sending in the best divebombers to attract the first fighters from the defending carrier. Even some strike fighters might be "sacrificed" in strafing to draw out the those defenders. The rest of the divebombers will then weaken the ships and finally the slow torpedos finish the job.

Dauntless and Helldiver is better "rugged" planes and that´s what I reacted on in the stats. The should be more different in some more ways like defence.
Like you say higher ROF on divebomber and better defense which will bring out my point on the final lethal kill and sinking of the ship by the slow, low flying torpedobomber as a final coup-de-grace.
 
yes, i agree in principle :) nice range and the 'blitz' flag make the dive bombers stand out, no ? torpedo bombers were on the outs with the USN. so they suffer in terms of stats. i guess this goes along with your sentiment, too ? it's all rather complex, isn't it ? :lol:
 
It seems that there are several games like WWII Global and SOE that already have pieces of the civilopedia puzzle. With some editing, a master civilopedia covering all the major WW2 units with a common format would be a great resource for all WW2 mods. This could be divided up as a group project once a format was decided upon.
 
easier said than done :) all of them are different formats. by that i mean hyperlinks etc won't match up. other details too. i guess i'm a stickler...i was envisioning something like what we did for AoI. perhaps not on such a grand scale but the layout would be similar.
 
The big reason US torpedo planes played less and less of a role as a torpedo carrier as the war went along was because the torpedo they were using wasn't getting the job done in a number of ways.

The biggest issue they had was the top speed on the torpedo was a whopping 33 knots and that with a range of 6300 yards resulted in a pretty ineffective weapon against warships.

The Japanese at the battle of Midway demonstrated they had given a lot of thought on how to deal with torpedo bomber attacks. The target (carriers) would simply turn away from the torpedo bombers and show their stern to the torpedo planes as much as possible. This would force the torpedo bombers to circle around for a beam shot, taking time and giving the local CAP time to deal with the intruders. (A Devistator had a top speed of 206 mph and that was without a torpedo). With most warships up to the point they could outrun a US torpedo long enough for it to run out of steam, they were fairly useless.

The Japanese had a bit more success with their aerial torpedoes as they traveled at 42 knots. The Kate was also faster than a TBD as well and the US had not really given a lot of thought about defense tactics either while the Japanese had perfected several types of attacks (anvil attack with planes coming in from both directions at once on either beam being the most common).
 
one last note for now on the air units :

i did not delve into variants for almost all aircraft (Zero). if i did, we would have triple, quadruple the amount of air units :) i examined just about all of the variants and the stat concoctions, the american and allied ones in particular, are an amlagam of all the variants, in some form although not in all (say, souped-up g/a versions, rocket pods etc). engine performance, guns, airframe, payload increases. these were the main factors.

one small change to the Commonwealth air line : added in Tomahawk p-40 for them before the Kittyhawk and after the Hurricane. added in a few more intot he files tonight. gonna let all british aircraft able to be built outright but the american stuff, via lend-lease, will be spawned, probably in one spot, the capital. w-i-p atm. still not sure for resource req's for the british built aircraft. just Imperialism ? or Alum/Oil combo ? former would allow for widespread building of them. alum/oil would limit it or prevent it altogether in some instances.
 
Towards the end of WW2, the USN phased out dive bombers, but kept the torpedo bombers. Fighters took over most of the role which dive bombers played since they were much more survivable. But since fighters could not carry torpedoes, or level bomb very accurately, the torpedo bomber was kept on in small numbers.

World War II
A Carrier Air Group over battleships in 1940.

Typical air group composition aboard the Yorktown Class carriers, at the beginning of World War II, consisted of approximately 72 aircraft:

1 fighter squadron (VF) composed of 18 Grumman F4F Wildcats
1 bombing squadron (VB) composed of 18 Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers
1 scouting squadron (VS) composed of 18 Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bombers
1 torpedo squadron (VT) composed of 18 Douglas TBD Devastator, TBF or TBM torpedo bombers

During the course of the war in the Pacific the compositions of the air groups changed drastically. The scouting squadrons were disestablished by early 1943 and the number of fighter planes was increased continuously. Typically in 1943 an Essex class carrier carried 36 fighter planes, 36 bombers and 18 torpedo planes.[7]

By the end of WWII, a typical Essex air group was over 100 aircraft, consisting of :

1 squadrons of 18 F6F fighters
4 squadrons of 72 F4U fighter/bombers
1 squadron of 12 TBM Avenger torpedo bombers[8]

The Skyraider was developed to take over the role of both dive and torpedo bombers. As the USN had no naval opponents post WW2, the Skyraider functioned mostly as a ground attack aircraft in areas where the US had control of the air.

Korea and Cold War
CVG-9 aboard USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), 1953.

Carrier Air Groups typically had four fighter squadrons with 58 planes and an attack squadron of 14 planes.

2-3 jet fighter/fighter bomber squadrons flying the F9F Panther
1-2 piston fighter squadrons flying F4U Corsairs
1 attack squadron flying AD Skyraiders

The Corsairs were mostly used in a ground attack role.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_Air_Wing
 
cool. thanks for sharing. i always like looking at the composition of the air groups :thumbsup:

thought about adding skyraider into end game line for US but did not. just a tad too late although one could surely make a good case of 'what if'. however, gonna leave them out for now. US naval aircraft are buff as it is.
 
kamikazes will be in in some shape. not sure how to tailor the upgrade chain to represent them. but one way or another, they'll be in there, likely under the same settings as the stock WW2 in the Pacific (ie cruise missile). no to the rocket squadrons. just too few and not a big enough impact on the war imo. we probably have penalized Japan enough with their air units...to restrict their build queues. it will mostly boil down to whether they can hold onto their supplies of Alum/Oil. so if they lose some of these locations, then yes :) limitations to Japanese air unit builds later in the game :)
 
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