AirPower from Uber to Reasonable

[Liam]

I'm sorry folks, but no amount of your arguments could ever settle the fact that Original SC Air Power was out of porportion. Come on now, Swordfish turned into F-15s. Ground Fighters turned into F-16 Fighter Bombers with Smartbombs. Bahhhhh tongue.gif

Be reasonable, breaking trench warfare in the future edition of SC should be done with the variety of Units available at our disposal and Aircraft should take their place as what they were historically. Not the numero uno deciding factor on the battlefield, cause they weren't. That's a WW2 fact, not fiction. Ask the Proffessionals!

When I build 12 fighters per average Barbarossa Length Scenario there is a problem, I may even dedicate up to 3 HQs just to my Fighter Squadrons and nothing else. Also invest 90% of my tech into Fighter technology. Something is apparently messed up tongue.gif lately Rambo has me on a kick too, using German Carriers to clear the Baltic, what a bunch of bull. Impossible historically.

Fighters, dive-bombers, and heavy bombers the primary air used during WW2 should be dictated as they were. They maybe influenced things a couple notches. They were very valuable for recon and for hitting the enemy behind the lines. They were the essence of Blitzkrieg in knocking down bridges/supply/key control points and hurting enemy morale but they were not solely unit destroyers. I'm not saying downgrade them into nothing, but I'm saying realistic folks. Some sort of limit on their capabitilies.

Air should be delegated to a more realistic role. Fighters in particular were specialized machines. I'd guess most fighter missions weren't even about killing ground troops but rather gaining air supremacy. That's why they have just a few Machine Guns and small 20 Cal cannons on board.

[jon_j_rambo]

Italians with useful infantry is unreasonable.

[Exel]

There's a reason why air supremacy was often so crucial. If you had it, you could bomb the enemy into pieces. Air power played a major role in the Tali-Ihantala battle where the Soviet grand offensive against Finland was halted. Most historians agree that the German Detachment Kuhlmey (mainly Focke-Wulfs and Stukas) played a crucial role in the battle, and without it the Finns might not have been able to stop the Soviet onslaught.

I agree that air power in SC1 had too much emphasis and it needs to be limited some what, but the air power should still remain a very important factor, and gaining air supremacy should be a potential war-winner.

[pzgndr]

We have experimented with lowering air attack values a notch, along with other minor adjustments to the "old" SC1 combat target values. This does help smooth out some of the combats and makes air power just a bit less overwhelming. With the new editor, players can further experiment with all the unit values.

There will be optional build limits in SC2, so Air Fleets and everything else can be kept to reasonable sizes. Like Germany limited to 6 AFs and no longer able to build 12 or more!

Also new rules for setting escort and interceptions on/off will help players control their AFs.

[Liam]

Rambo, you're absolutely right. The Italians should have a maximum rated HQ of 1 tongue.gif They were very good at surrendering so I hear on the Eastern Front. Who knows what it was, they did have awful guns, bad leaders and no reason to fight a war<they'd rather stay home a drink wine and make love, the French would at least take a week off of that to fight some> Recounts the Major News about Italy during WW2:

1940
November 22
Major Italian defeat in Greece

1941
May 5
The Italians are driven out of Addis Ababa by the Allies.

1943
May 12
Capitulation of the last Italo-German forces in North Africa.

1944
June 4
Rome is liberated.

Not including their defeat in the Italian French Alps in 1940<where they brought the whole Italian Army to face a few drunken Froggies> Losing Tobruk to the British same year, probably again by a few Drunken Limeys. Finally helping keeping Stalingrad from being surrounded tongue.gif and we all know what happened there ::pees himself::

[Liam]

Excel:

I didn't know about the little Finnish Save you're talking about. I do know that the B-17 Raids around D-Day were hellish on the Panzers in France attempting to kick the Allied invasion force out. Fact is though that the forest terrain of Northern France was difficult to scope out German Armor. Weather in Europe was often too bad to even do much damage, and in the East Front that's a whole other set of conditions to speak of there, vast, cold, many different combinations of terrain...I'm certian at our best hundreds of B-17s never once killed a whole Army or Panzer Army<let alone a division?>. The Germans never even possessed anything more power than a Medium bomber in vast numbers, just the HE-111 and that was a midget in comparison with the Lancasters and B-17s of the day. By late 1941 already the German Strategic Bomber command was obsolete and for an undertaking against Britian 1940.

Panzer: I would love to be able to turn off interception, that is the biggest headache in the world to have a 5 strength fighter eaten up and you would rather lose a corps or ship. Not only that, it's not like flyboys are willingly going to commit suicide smile.gif Toning down their power is very neccessary. If either of you fellows would like a test as to how I can beat you with just German Corps and 15 Air, I'll gladly oblige ;) a little unbalanced dontcha think? Worse with the UK, if I get up around 4-5 4 Star Carriers you'll just want to surrender France to me. I don't think Historically Carriers played much a role in that job. Plus if you get good LR, you can use those puppies to take out some of Western Germany too, move into the Baltic and directly kill 1 Germany Army/Corps/Tank per turn, enuff said. Something is wrong with these Carriers<they've got Lasersighted Smartbombs on their Fighters tongue.gif >

[Exel]

Liam:

I didn't say air units should be able to kill ground units - I think they shouldn't! In fact I think the damage done by aerial attacks should be capped at strenght of 3 or so. I was just pointing out that you shouldn't nerf the air units too much.

That "little Finnish save" I was talking about was the biggest battle ever in the Nordic region, and one of the biggest in World War 2. tongue.gif

And for the love of God, the nick is Exel! I aint no cheap Micro$oft product. ;)

[Wehrmacht]

lol

[SeaMonkey]

Look guys we have discussed this at length, remember this is an abstracted game. I agree air units should not eliminate ground units in a tactical sense. This is a strategic game, think of your destroyed units as disrupted, disorganized, dispersed entities, ineffectual in further combat tasks. They are making their way back to home base to be reorganized into effective combat units, ie. you must rebuild them. I believe the game represents this accurately.

[zappsweden]

I agree Liam. Air should be able to win battles, not destroying ground units.

[Some_God]

Didn't they say they were gonna tone down those things (They being Hubert and the other SCII Dev. people)?

[kenfedoroff]

Originally posted by Exel:

...I agree that air power in SC1 had too much emphasis and it needs to be limited some what, but the air power should still remain a very important factor, and gaining air supremacy should be a potential war-winner. I would have liked to see the airfleets in SC1 have their air attack values reduced at range to represent the reduced ability of the escort/fighter component of the airfleet to "go all the way" to the target. The medium bomber component would have the same value at any range for ground or air attack value. But this would mean using a separate program for air combat results, rather than using the same program to resolve all combat.

The only reason airfleets were so effective in SC1 (vs. Historical reality) is that the range of the escort component doesn't end at 3 hexes (like it would in 1940). In fact, medium bombers from both sides suffered devastating losses when operating without fighter escort.

Either fighter/escort units will have to be made separately, or some range limitation will have to be factored into the SC2 airfleets (as far as resisting interception).

Ken

[wlweir]

Let one of the major factors of airpower, that being interdiction be the real strength. In playing the Longest Day it was a major thorn in the side of the Germans attempting to move their panzers forward to strike.

[Liam]

Originally posted by kenfedoroff:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Exel:

...I agree that air power in SC1 had too much emphasis and it needs to be limited some what, but the air power should still remain a very important factor, and gaining air supremacy should be a potential war-winner. I would have liked to see the airfleets in SC1 have their air attack values reduced at range to represent the reduced ability of the escort/fighter component of the airfleet to "go all the way" to the target. The medium bomber component would have the same value at any range for ground or air attack value. But this would mean using a separate program for air combat results, rather than using the same program to resolve all combat.

The only reason airfleets were so effective in SC1 (vs. Historical reality) is that the range of the escort component doesn't end at 3 hexes (like it would in 1940). In fact, medium bombers from both sides suffered devastating losses when operating without fighter escort.

Either fighter/escort units will have to be made separately, or some range limitation will have to be factored into the SC2 airfleets (as far as resisting interception).

Ken </font>[/QUOTE]You're right about Medium bombers being pretty vulnerable. Though they were more used in the early years from what I understand, at least to any effectiveness.

Heavy bombers however despite escorts did quite well and were hard to reach by short range fighters. The best Bombsights and technology for locating targets of the time still wasn't adaquete and recon was ify as you could always trick the enemy.

Fighters have a massive kill ratio against ground units in SC. Generally it's difficult to replace so many planes/pilots/etc... to dedicate them against Ground would be a bit foolish expenditure considering the limitations. Germany in paritcular didn't have the fuel/planes or pilots to do what they get to do in SC. Plus it's price. The 109s don't appear to be designed for ground attack, the Stuka was the dive-bomber for that role. Pretty helpless machine against Hurricanes or Spitfires. So even it needed an escort... you could go as far as to say even the heavy German Fighters the ME110 was also in need of escorts. Whilst the Americans created much more agile heavy fighters... I suppose bigger engines, more durability, and a slight bit less cumbersome...&lt;fast as hell too&gt;

I think at best Fighters should inflict minor losses and that would be in later scenarios, and if they inflict heavy losses at a much greater cost I think that's what I'm attempting to emphasize all along. It's much more accurate and to be quite frank, I think Hitler in the Polish and France Era would sacrifice Tanks before he'd give up Fighters. You throw away a well trained officer who ate a lot oil with each one of those puppies.

[KDG]

3 things that have been done to reduce air power.

1) Its been mentioned that planes have been toned down in their raw numbers.
2) You can edit planes and reduce their effectiveness(and easily limit them) if you still don't like them
3) Units can now be attacked from 3 sides even when they are lined up, thus planes aren't needed as much to make breakthroughs.

[Night]

Heres an idea that I think could work,

You limit the amount of damage Air power can do to ground units to around 3 or 4, but you add a feature where if a ground unit is attacked by an air unit, it loses 1 or 2 points of soft and hard defence for that turn, this will simulate how air power was more effective as a tool of terror and how it caused disruptions to fighting units more-so then actual damage many times.

If you look at how Stukas were used with their terrifing whistle and how this effect's morale you can see how this is a reasonable option. Also, gettin bombed tends to leave troops with their faces in the dirt and shaken up, so they would naturaly not be as effective in defending immediatly after-words.

Prehaps air-defence tech could limit the effect this has by making it so they only loses defence points after 2 air units hit them, etc. for corresponding levels of tech.

[John DiFool the 2nd]

I think we had an old thread where we discussed
lowering readiness as a consequence of air attacks:
this seems to be the most sensible yet simple
option to me...

John DiFool Squared

[SeaMonkey]

Either way, Night and John got it right, maybe both as additional airstrikes are called in.

[Liam]

Yes, Stukas with their sirens going, whistling down bombs with pinpoint accuracy was maddening. To feel your Supply truck go boom behind you as you reach down into the dirt and dig your head in deep to miss the MG Fire that comes from the second pass, the German Pilot in competition for which one of his buddies rack up the highest Kill Ratio. Of course at this time uncontested in the Air. Though in later Camps, those same pilots would meet their doom against able Fighter Pilots.

Fighters are more for support of Bombers, and less as Bombers themselves. The error in SC to make the more than they are. Nuff Said ;)

[DSEDS]

Heavy Air stikes is a key element of the blitzkrieg strategie. Regarding to the SC2 Title it would be weird to weaken the air forces in the game.

[Wehrmacht]

Well IMHO, I think you can't get very good breaktrough with just aircrafts in real life, do you?

[DSEDS]

You cant really play Blitz in SC1, the role of the planes in the Blitz strategie is destroying supply lines, headquarters and enemy planes on the ground to isolte them and make breakthrough easier for your ground units, not only bombing the frontline.

Optimal in SC2 would be: If you bombing enemie front units you can damage them seriosly but with intact supply lines you cant really break trough. If you use tanks against the enemy ground units in combinations with planes to destroy the supplies, headquarters, trains, and airfields you can make a brakthrough on the frontline.

[Exel]

Originally posted by Liam:
Fighters are more for support of Bombers, and less as Bombers themselves. The error in SC to make the more than they are.The fighter detachments in SC represent - AFAIK - a unit with a mixture of different light, tactical aircraft. Not only fighters, but fighter-bombers and dive-bombers as well. Maybe even medium bombers. As such their high ground attack values makes sence - it was the light planes that did most of the tactical level bombing of enemy units. Heavier bombers were better suited and used for strategic missions, ie. bombing infrastructure behind enemy lines, not enemy units per se.

At this point one could say "Helloo! Mr. Obvious...", but it seems that many here (let alone outside these forums) think that B-17, He-111 and Stuka were all used for the same tasks.

I don't know how much less abstraction there will be in SC2, but at least with the two air unit types of SC1 it is more than reasonable to think that the fighter detachments also include everything up to medium bombers, while strategic bombers cover all the heavier birds.