Aircraft / Commanders: Abilities

[Evie]

Which resulted in airplanes pulling further away from the front, ie, being scared off. You shoot down a few, the rest go away.

But that's only for the area within a few hundred kilometers of the front, and no amount of Patriots and S-400 has succeeded at stopping Mig-31s and Blackjacks from standing outside Patriot range all night lobbing Kinzhals and similar missiles in the general direction of Ukrainian power plants, factories and schoolyards full of children. Nor has it stopped Ukraine, once they had permission to do so, from sitting outside S-400 range lobbing Storm Shadows in the general direction of Russian military bases and factories - because both missiles out-range the S-400 and the Patriot, and when you're firing at a generally unmoving target, or a big and slow moving target (like a ship), it's a lot easier to hit them from very very far away than if you're firing at something small and fast. The same goes at sea, where anti-ship missiles generally travel just a little further than anti-air counterparts of the same generation, because the bigger and slower a target, the easier it is to hit from afar.

The Ukraine war hasn't really given us any good recent example of sea vs air, because, again, the Ukrainians realized they didn't actually *need* planes to hit Russian ship that wandered within missile range of the Ukrainian coast (see again: Moskva), and the Russians...well, mostly realized that they didn't actually have any Ukrainian ships to fire missiles at. The one example of actual shooting sea war in the missile age is the Falklands, and even that was hampered because Argentina started the war with only a whole *five* missiles in their possession ; still those five Exocet brought holy terror upon the Royal Navy and the UK spent the next several years trying their level best to keep Argentina from purchasing more.

As I said ; as far as realism goes, the recent development for planes vs ships hasn't been for ships to get better at fighting off planes ; it,s been for increasingly long ranged land-launched cruise missiles to render the planes increasinly unnecessary in getting the missile to its target.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Accurate Prediction: almost 20 years ago Van Crefeld, a military historian/analyst, wrote a book called The Age of Airpower. His conclusion in that work was that the age of manned aircraft was almost over, because so many other systems (land/sea-based missiles, satellite reconnaissance, etc) could do the same jobs that the manned aircraft did and do them much, much cheaper. And part of the cheaper was that the other systems did not risk very expensively-trained pilots and aircrew who were also likely to be a major political embarrassment if they wre killed or (worse) captured by the enemy.

The Ukraine has only affirmed his conclusions, and extended them to Main Battle Tanks. Whenever a weapons system, like surface combat ships, manned aircraft, or main battle tanks, have to spend major effort staying alive instead of attacking the enemy, that system is Obsolete. Looking at the increasingly long-range 'stand-off' tactics of Russian aircraft, the increasing complexity and even Rube Goldberg-like innovations to protect tanks and ships against super-cheap UAVs, I suspect that 'modern war' has reached a Singularity after which the tactical battlefield will change as much as it did in 1940 - 1941 when real combined arms armored and mechanized forces were introduced by the German Wehrmacht - nothing afterwards looked quite the same as it had before.

In game terms, that may mean that no game representing land-air-sea combat can be projected past about 2025 because we simply won't know what will happen - what the exact interactions and tactical capabilities of the resulting forces will be. All we can be fairly certain of is that the hoary old WWII/late 20th century combination of tanks, manned aircraft and manned surface combat ships will probably not be a major part of whatever new system emerges.

I might add, based on copious reading of science fiction stories and books going back to the 1950s, that I have found no science fiction writer who has accurately depicted or predicted combat advances either. They have either moved everything into space, where a whole new environment and physics imposes on the tactics, or they have simply assumed More Of The Same, which has turned out to be suicidally wrong in Ukraine.

 

[Evie]

I agree with the age of the manned combat aircraft being at its end - but it's not because ships are better at defending themselves against planes. Ships are even more vulnerable if anything.

It's just the uncrewed crafts (missiles and drones) have come into their own and no longer really need the piloted planes as training wheel/booster stage.

 

[Vincent_lacruz]

You should take into account that modern era is closer to WWI than WWII. In a way you can consider that the units are close to what existed at the start of WWII. Even then, aircarft were soon upgraded with far more efficient anti-ship weapons such as dropped torpedos that made those ship anti-air weapons obsolete (since they could drop it out of range)... Not counting bombers that could drop bombs above far from reach...

So during WWII, the only relevant air defence was other planes, hence the importance of air carriers in the Japan front.

When they add the 4th era (because we all expect one, right?^^), then it wouldn't be supprising to have air defence system integrated in ships (most likely corvettes/destroyers, to make them relevant, at least more than the modern era ones...). Because SAM systems became operationnal only after WWII (I found mai 1954 as the first inauguration), it would be strange to have anything like that on modern era ships.

 

[chrisgatt7]

Which resulted in airplanes pulling further away from the front, ie, being scared off. You shoot down a few, the rest go away.

But that's only for the area within a few hundred kilometers of the front, and no amount of Patriots and S-400 has succeeded at stopping Mig-31s and Blackjacks from standing outside Patriot range all night lobbing Kinzhals and similar missiles in the general direction of Ukrainian power plants, factories and schoolyards full of children. Nor has it stopped Ukraine, once they had permission to do so, from sitting outside S-400 range lobbing Storm Shadows in the general direction of Russian military bases and factories - because both missiles out-range the S-400 and the Patriot, and when you're firing at a generally unmoving target, or a big and slow moving target (like a ship), it's a lot easier to hit them from very very far away than if you're firing at something small and fast. The same goes at sea, where anti-ship missiles generally travel just a little further than anti-air counterparts of the same generation, because the bigger and slower a target, the easier it is to hit from afar.

The Ukraine war hasn't really given us any good recent example of sea vs air, because, again, the Ukrainians realized they didn't actually *need* planes to hit Russian ship that wandered within missile range of the Ukrainian coast (see again: Moskva), and the Russians...well, mostly realized that they didn't actually have any Ukrainian ships to fire missiles at. The one example of actual shooting sea war in the missile age is the Falklands, and even that was hampered because Argentina started the war with only a whole *five* missiles in their possession ; still those five Exocet brought holy terror upon the Royal Navy and the UK spent the next several years trying their level best to keep Argentina from purchasing more.

As I said ; as far as realism goes, the recent development for planes vs ships hasn't been for ships to get better at fighting off planes ; it,s been for increasingly long ranged land-launched cruise missiles to render the planes increasinly unnecessary in getting the missile to its target.

This idea would be more closely related to Civ V cruise missiles. Traditional aircraft bombing has been stopped by SAMS

 

[Yzman]

How do I switch location if planes? Like can I move from commander to aircraft carrier? Not sure I understand the system.

 

[chrisgatt7]

How do I switch location if planes? Like can I move from commander to aircraft carrier? Not sure I understand the system.

Yes sir, their is an aircraft rebase button. If you watch the video I may have done it a couple of times. I I attached an Image for you.

 

[Evie]

This idea would be more closely related to Civ V cruise missiles. Traditional aircraft bombing has been stopped

Plane launching missiles are still plane attacks. Pretending that plane attacks are limited to traditional bombing is an argument without sense or reason. (The ones in the game now do, but the ones in the game now are ww2 planes, and they fight ww2 ships).

And even if we dismiss missiles attacks, SAM getting to that point is essentially a 2020s thing (and, when it comes to ships, it"s still theoretical): it's irrelevant for pretty much the entire modern, and most of any hypothetical fourth era as well. For 95% of their existence, planes still need other planes to keep them from sinking other ships.

For gameplay purposes, it"s brutally senseless to centre plane-ship combat mechanics on speculative analysis of the last couple years rather than the demonstrated actual experience of World War Two through to the Falklands - unless required for game balance/ai purposes.

 

[chrisgatt7]

Plane launching missiles are still plane attacks. Pretending that plane attacks are limited to traditional bombing is an argument without sense or reason. (The ones in the game now do, but the ones in the game now are ww2 planes, and they fight ww2 ships).

And even if we dismiss missiles attacks, SAM getting to that point is essentially a 2020s thing (and, when it comes to ships, it"s still theoretical): it's irrelevant for pretty much the entire modern, and most of any hypothetical fourth era as well. For 95% of their existence, planes still need other planes to keep them from sinking other ships.

For gameplay purposes, it"s brutally senseless to centre plane-ship combat mechanics on speculative analysis of the last couple years rather than the demonstrated actual experience of World War Two through to the Falklands - unless required for game balance/ai purposes.

I simply believe even in WW1-WW2 aircraft should not be able to attack/destroy ground units and Naval ships with impunity. Even if effects of Anti Aircraft fire are minimal. Example even if an Aircraft attacked a Battleship and lose 5% health I would deem it satisfactory. I do Not believe it should be powerful but simply a mechanic to assist Naval ships for the AI to counter user's destroying enemy units with ZERO resounding effect. I believe these Anti Air units should also gain adjacent bonus. Proper air defense encompasses Aircraft, ground based styeams and radar. Anti Air access and area denial is multi layered. Yea aircraft are the backbone of Air defense but ground/Naval based Anti air should supplement. One again it goes back to my main point. Would you think less of the game if it did have multilayered Air defense ? The answer is No. I however, do believe that do to the AI lacking basic principles of escorting ships with aircraft, defending important territory with aircraft, Anti-Air may supplement a struggling AI even if it is minimal.

 

[Evie]

Realistic enough, but given how it would,have essentially no game impact, the simplification of "ships need planes formprotection" work well enough. Adding game calcuations withmlittle impact purely for realism is not a greatmuse of design resource.

 

[chrisgatt7]

Realistic enough, but given how it would,have essentially no game impact, the simplification of "ships need planes formprotection" work well enough. Adding game calcuations withmlittle impact purely for realism is not a greatmuse of design resource.

Well if you were a developer at Firaxis, and I said to implement Anti air for Ground and Naval Units because our AI cant figure out Air Defense with aircraft how would you implement it ? I agree it should not be over power and it should not be able to replace air cover.

 

[Evie]

If the purpose is to help the AI (assuming the helpmis actually needed_ then we"ll need an unrealistically efficient airmdefenses - attackers must suffer significant damages.

But then, I"d first try to make the AI keep most surface ships closer to air cover.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

To chime in a bit about air versus ground defense, even the professionals get it wrong.

Take Dive Bombing, which is now explicitly modeled in a Civ game.
The technique of diving to aim the entire plane at a ground target was first, apparently, experimented with by the Royal Flying Corps (British) during WWI starting in 1915, but none of the early biplanes were equipped with dive brakes for really accurate and steady dives, so the suspicion is that most of the attacks were shallow dives to get closer to the target - more like 'fighter-bomber' than 'dive bomber' attacks. Furthermore, when aircraft flew closer than about 500 feet from the ground they suffered heavy casualties and damage from ground fire - 500 feet was well within the accurate range of even light machineguns.

In fact, casualties were so high that at the end of the war the Royal Air Force stopped all experimentation and practice of dive bombing, because the accuracy was not considered worth the expected losses.*

This, of course, was not the conclusion of the German Luftwaffe, which adopted dive-bombing after Ernst Udet had two American dive-bomber biplanes bought and tested in Germany. The Ju-87 Stuka they developed was very effective in Spain and in 1940 and 1941 when Germany had almost complete air superiority. But the heavy dive brakes required for accurate dive bombing also made any dive bomber relatively slow and in the Battle of Britain against British Hurricanes and Spitfires the Ju-87s were massacred and had to be quickly withdrawn from the battle. Over Tunisia in early 1943 they also had to be withdrawn, not because the Allies gained air superiority, but because they discovered that US troops were distressingly well supplied with .50 (12.7mm) machineguns on ring mounts on most of their trucks, and the .50 caliber could literally shred a Ju-87 as it came in low and slow pulling out of its dive. As the British had assumed 22 years earlier, casualties were prohibitive when using the technique over a well-equipped enemy ground force.

The problem with modeling all of this air/counter-air in the game is that it is needless complication. IF the game needs attrition to air units (and I confess, in 3 games of Civ VII played into the Modern Age I have yet to use aircraft - the game, like Civ VI, generally ends before they come into play at all) then a simple calculation of attacks similar to ordinary combat with the aircraft, perhaps, having various degrees of modifiers against ground units - horse cavalry were notoriously vulnerable to strafing aircraft, Heavy Bombers relatively inaccurate at trying to hit small dug-in targets on the ground - but there is no need to encumber the unit mix and terrain with separate antiaircraft units and a separate game of air-antiair combat.

* = The Royal Navy started experiments with dive bombing against ships in the early 1920s, because ships were relatively small, fast-moving targets that level bombing couldn't hit at all and they needed something to launch from their brand new aircraft carriers that could attack ships with munitions smaller than torpedoes, which were considered too big and bulky to be carried and stored safely on the carriers. - another miscalculation, as it turned out.

 

[chrisgatt7]

 

[Evie]

That's stats for land-based defenses against strategic bombers, and have no bearing on the fact that, historically, it is perfectly accurate for ships to lose very badly when attacked from the air, for pretty much the entire 20th century, AA or no AA.

Yes, in a perfectly realistic simulation the planes would take some damage in the process, but the damage would pretty much never be enough to reverse the results. In a simplified simulation (which most games are), representing ship vs planes as "ships take a lot of damage" is a perfectly appropriate simplification.

For a ready example, let's look at the Battle of San Carlos in the Falklands War, which is essentially the only extended air attack on a sea force after the end of World War II. The battle was fought over five days. (21-25 may), and involved British who had some (but limited) carrier planes protection, and, after the second day of the battle, who were able to set up a ground-based anti-air battery on the nearby shore. We have a sortie-by-sortie list of how the battle played out, which shows that though over the five days battle the Argentinian lost near a quarter of the 90 planes they engaged (22 planes), at least 12 of those losses were confirmed as being from fighter cover, and two more from land-based SAM, with only a whooping *four* confirmed losses from ship-borne air defenses.

In return for their AA killing four planes (and, it is true, damaging a couple others), the Royal Navy task force at San Carlos lost one destroyer, two frigates, and saw eight additional ships damaged, on top of a large number of bombs that hit but did not explode. Had even a few of those exploded, the British themselves esti

Now, to the British's credits, it is true that the warship did what they were there for, which is: keep the air attacks away from the transports so they can complete the landing. In that, despite losing a significant number of ships, the British absolutely did succeed.

A few days later, a second though smaller battle played out at Bluff's Cove when the ARgentinian attacked a handful of British landing ships (well provided in AA defenses) and (separately) a British frigate. Of nine attacking planes, three were lost, but again, out of those three, three were shot down by British carrier planes. The AA on both the frigate and the transports failed. Miserably, costing the British the sinking of one landing ship, heavy damage to another, the destruction of a landing barge, and heavy damage to a frigate.

So, as late as the early 1980s, the contest isn't even close: Planes beat ships. Badly.

(And those weren't state of the art warplanes against obsolescent warships - it was 20-30 years old plane designs against warships that by and large were less than a decade old!)

 

[chrisgatt7]

That's stats for land-based defenses against strategic bombers, and have no bearing on the fact that, historically, it is perfectly accurate for ships to lose very badly when attacked from the air, for pretty much the entire 20th century, AA or no AA.

Yes, in a perfectly realistic simulation the planes would take some damage in the process, but the damage would pretty much never be enough to reverse the results. In a simplified simulation (which most games are), representing ship vs planes as "ships take a lot of damage" is a perfectly appropriate simplification.

For a ready example, let's look at the Battle of San Carlos in the Falklands War, which is essentially the only extended air attack on a sea force after the end of World War II. The battle was fought over five days. (21-25 may), and involved British who had some (but limited) carrier planes protection, and, after the second day of the battle, who were able to set up a ground-based anti-air battery on the nearby shore. We have a sortie-by-sortie list of how the battle played out, which shows that though over the five days battle the Argentinian lost near a quarter of the 90 planes they engaged (22 planes), at least 12 of those losses were confirmed as being from fighter cover, and two more from land-based SAM, with only a whooping *four* confirmed losses from ship-borne air defenses.

In return for their AA killing four planes (and, it is true, damaging a couple others), the Royal Navy task force at San Carlos lost one destroyer, two frigates, and saw eight additional ships damaged, on top of a large number of bombs that hit but did not explode. Had even a few of those exploded, the British themselves esti

Now, to the British's credits, it is true that the warship did what they were there for, which is: keep the air attacks away from the transports so they can complete the landing. In that, despite losing a significant number of ships, the British absolutely did succeed.

A few days later, a second though smaller battle played out at Bluff's Cove when the ARgentinian attacked a handful of British landing ships (well provided in AA defenses) and (separately) a British frigate. Of nine attacking planes, three were lost, but again, out of those three, three were shot down by British carrier planes. The AA on both the frigate and the transports failed. Miserably, costing the British the sinking of one landing ship, heavy damage to another, the destruction of a landing barge, and heavy damage to a frigate.

This is planes vs ship in the late cold war, and the result is unambiguous: planes kill ships, ships just aren't very good at killing planes.

The whole point is not to allow impunity ... even if damage is minimal. Aircraft should not have impunity over anything. If I remember correctly in CIV 5 air units would take damage after every attack.

 

[Evie]

I already agreed that would be realistic.

The point is, is it worth taking the time to make your computer do an extra calculation every time your planes do an attack just so they can take a minimal amount of damage that has little to no game impact? Or is it acceptable to simplify away that minimal damage and stick with the expected main result which is: plane attack ship, ship loses. How badly do we need the simulation to be exact, to the point of including elements that have no gameplay impact?

I'm of the opinion that, at this time, the simplification is perfectly good enough, unless it's proven through long, detailed analysis that lack of air defense is severly hampering the AI (not just that the AI loses ship to air power), and the AI cannot be programmed to keep air units to protect their ships.

 

[chrisgatt7]

I already agreed that would be realistic.

The point is, is it worth taking the time to make your computer do an extra calculation every time your planes do an attack just so they can take a minimal amount of damage that has little to no game impact? Or is it acceptable to simplify away that minimal damage and stick with the expected main result which is: plane attack ship, ship loses. How badly do we need the simulation to be exact, to the point of including elements that have no gameplay impact?

I'm of the opinion that, at this time, the simplification is perfectly good enough, unless it's proven through long, detailed analysis that lack of air defense is severly hampering the AI (not just that the AI loses ship to air power), and the AI cannot be programmed to keep air units to protect their ships.

The computer has been doing the calculation in every other civ game