Battle of Britain WWII Air War Scenario

[Ambreville]

Yes, but I was just saying that the picture is that of a Polish one.

Here... Happy now?

 

[Seven05]

Looks like Gary, IN

 

[Ambreville]

Looks like Gary, IN

As MONK would say, LOL... out loud!

 

[Agent327]

Yeah? Considering most German cities were pretty much reduced to rubble by the end of WWII, I would not think what I described to be that far from reality.

Bombing the enemy into submission worked only with Japan. It didn't work with Germany, it didn't work in Vietnam. The sad fact is the common people had to suffer for what the military couldn't do. The "Air War", as it was euphemistically called, was actually state-sanctioned terrorism against the pople of another nation. (One reason given - with hindsight no less - was that they "ran out" of military targets, wheras the German military industry kept producing to the bitter end.) And people getting bombed don't submit: they become bitter and angry. Short of nuking a city, it is very impractical to try and destroy a city by concentional means - and even Hiroshima and Nagasaki had survivors...

(That kid in the picture was one of the survivors; the battered city folk kept on living in their bombed out cities - they didn't flee to the country side en masse; having little choice, they just stayed put.)

 

[Ambreville]

The point here is that you can bomb a city enough so that it loses its ability to participate in the war effort in term of its industrial/military capacity. That's all that matters here. This IS historical and it did work in Europe. If a city cannot produce aircraft or AA (or infantry, tanks, cannons, research, money, etc) it has no further value, and certainly as far as an Air Mod is considered, it is "destroyed" which is just a game's mechanics.

 

[Agent327]

The point here is that you can bomb a city enough so that it loses its ability to participate in the war effort in term of its industrial/military capacity. That's all that matters here. This IS historical and it did work in Europe.

In-game maybe, in the real world never. (Germany ran a deficit in terms of war production because of combat losses, which, from 1943 on, they couldn't replace. This is mainly because of production capacity and inefficiency, not air bombardment. That is a simple case of math: the peace time production of the USA alone already outstripped that of Germany at war time production.) And hey, I didn't raise this point, you did; I just wanted to point out it isn't historically accurate (not in WW II - otherwise, why would there have been a post-war discussion of dismembering Germany's industry-, not in Vietnam, not in Iraq, where the Iraqi army was taken out as a fighting force, not the production capacity). Anyway, I'll rest my case. If you want to use it as a game-mechanism, that's fine by me.

 

[Ambreville]

In-game maybe, in the real world never. (Germany ran a deficit in terms of war production because of combat losses, which, from 1943 on, they couldn't replace. This is mainly because of production capacity and inefficiency, not air bombardment. (...)

You can definitely put your case to rest because it's wrong. The bottom line is that air bombardment was indeed able to disrupt aircraft production and industrial capacity significantly. Just read books about German WWII aerospace to understand how bad the situation had gotten for the Germans to be able to produce aircraft. I'm not talking about the obvious disparity in resource and capacity with the US, a major extra nail in the Nazi coffin for sure. I'm talking about bombs and chaos. Collateral damage, loss of life, and dwindling industrial capacity were a very real consequence, ensuing political talks notwithstanding. I guess at this point we should simply agree to disagree then.

 

[Agent327]

I'd say it's worth a historical case-study, but this is not the place for it. Anyway: any chance of an update in the foreseeable future?

 

[Gaius Octavius]

I can easily ground aircraft if you have no oil.

On a side note (as Ambreville knows already), I did an SDK mod of Jeckel's Python code which does this. Basically, if you have no oil, all mechanized units are frozen until you acquire a source again. This can change halfway through the turn if you should suddenly get a supply.

What I am looking to do in the near future is to finish out Duke176's oil counter, so that you have real reserves of oil that get depleted based on your activity. This makes missions and movement all the more strategic.

 

[Ambreville]

I'd say it's worth a historical case-study, but this is not the place for it. Anyway: any chance of an update in the foreseeable future?

Actually, case studies have been done. If you ever get the urge to study German WWII aerospace in more depth, there's a book by William Green (Copyright 1990 Galahad Books) that presents a very good introduction. It helps understand circumstances under which German aircraft manufacturers operated. I'm not sure you can still find it, but if you locate a copy, definitely borrow it/have a glance. Regarding bombing vs aircraft manufacturing, what it concluded was that Allied bombing per se did not "destroy" German aircraft manufacturing, but caused it to scatter from 27 well-known industrial centers to about 300 sub-par locations (either camouflaged, underground, or "secret"). Although technically the "Reich" could still produce aircraft, logistical and qualitative problems caused by these relocations and subdivisions substantially disrupted the ability to make new aircraft available to air units. It also made it quite tough to design and test new models. Running out of parts, fuel, trained pilots (which I have tried to emulate in this scenario as well), has greatly reduced the ability of WWII German industry to cope with the war effort, which is the point of this mod.

 

[Ambreville]

I may release one tomorrow, Friday, if I can fix some immediate issues and other testing (getting some sleep would be good too). This won't include all of the SDK work Seven05 has offered to complete, the He219, or the new graphic interface which remains in Dutchking's capable hands. I've made many changes to the scenario since V.02. So, even without the new SDK coding (and some actual victory conditions for crying out loud!), I think an extra release would still be cool in the mean time.

 

[Agent327]

Cool indeed - hope you can fix it (without losing sleep over it), looking forward to it!

 

[Ambreville]

Question for you --> Dutchking

I looked at the bomb animation for the He177 and noticed that, when they are released, bombs drop from the aircraft and fly backward to the city of departure. Have you ever noticed that? Apparently the Ju88 that I think someone else did does the same thing. On the other hand, those falling from the He111 seem to behave correctly.

 

[Seven05]

Those would be the 'homing' bombs

The solution to your night fighters is to get unitclass & unitcombat bonuses working for air units (and promotions for air units, same thing really). I looked at that a bit last night and it shouldn't be a tough one do assuming you simply want to adjust the iAirCombat rating based on the modifier. This will also make the Combat promotions work for air units at the same time but only during air combat and not against ground targets unless you want that too. This also may as well include modifiers to air bombing abilities, collateral damage and the like since they're all so closely related. What I'll do for simplicities sake is just allow air units to use the existing values that can already be defined in the promotions. So 'strength' modifiers will affect iAirCombat and the existing city bombard and collateral changes will work for bombing missions, this way you can just edit the existing promotions or add new ones as you see fit.

I haven't looked at the rest of the code yet so I can't comment much on any of that.

 

[Ambreville]

This will also make the Combat promotions work for air units at the same time but only during air combat and not against ground targets unless you want that too.

Yes, I need the ground target modifiers as well, because if/when I expand this mod, these modifiers should come in handy -- besides, I do already have ground target modifiers in place as regards naval units and AA units in this mod.

This also may as well include modifiers to air bombing abilities, collateral damage and the like since they're all so closely related. What I'll do for simplicities sake is just allow air units to use the existing values that can already be defined in the promotions. So 'strength' modifiers will affect iAirCombat and the existing city bombard and collateral changes will work for bombing missions, this way you can just edit the existing promotions or add new ones as you see fit.

As well as the ability to promote the BombRate, correct?

 

[Ambreville]

I just ran into a problem with a new promo. It appears fine in the civilopedia, but when a unit reaches the prereqs for the new promo, it does not appear among those available for the unit. Argh!

Here's the situation. The Ace promo has two prereqs -- Combat 3 AND Fighter I. The latter is not normally available since it requires a blocked Tech. The reason for this is that Fighter I is given directly to single engine fighters as a free tech in the XML UnitInfos file (therefore cannot be earned). This is to help differentiate single engine fighters from heavier units able to carry certain equipment. I thought at first this might be the problem, so I unlocked Fighter I, but it made no difference and the Ace I promo still does not show up in play.

Anyone ran into this before??

The Ace promo is a true oddball. It allows air units to have multiple moves -- for example, rebase + fighter engagement + intercept. It doesn't work for all air missions as some of them, like recon, will end the fighter's move regardless. Still pretty cool.

Not sure if this is causing the problem with the promo not showing up when it should.

-------------------------------

Problem Fixed!

The multiple attacks tag was causing the problem, so I took it out. Apparently it does not have any effect on what I described above. So, all good now it would seem.

 

[Ambreville]

Version 03 is uploaded and available right here.

The list of changes is listed in Post #2.

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Still needed -- new SDK coding to provide mechanics to actually win the game
Bear in mind that the game balance (AI vs player) still needs work.

 

[Agent327]

Wow, goodie! (Will check this out ASAP!)

 

[dutchking]

Question for you --> Dutchking

I looked at the bomb animation for the He177 and noticed that, when they are released, bombs drop from the aircraft and fly backward to the city of departure. Have you ever noticed that? Apparently the Ju88 that I think someone else did does the same thing. On the other hand, those falling from the He111 seem to behave correctly.

The He-177 bomb animations are the same as the default bomber animations, take it up with firaxis, not me.

 

[Ambreville]

It's weird though. Some work fine, others not -- although I understand it's all the same coding repeated through and through. I wonder what else is causing this.