The Strange Case of the Downgraded Hien Guns

[Local Yokel]

This is something I came across in my Scenario 157 - CHS 2.08 + Nik Mod game.

I happened to check the armament of the Ki-61-Ib Hien fighters with which my 24th Sentai is equipped, and was suprised to note that they are carrying nothing more than a pair of 7.7mm Type 89 MG's on the centreline - as shown on the image below. That didn't chime with my recollection of this aircraft's armament, so I checked what they should be carrying in the scenario's database.

The database clearly shows this marque as carrying a pair of 12.7mm Ho-103 MG's, and a check of all my other Hien sentai confirmed that they all have the heavier Ho-103 armament mounted.

This is a very odd discrepancy. The 24th's fighters have ended up with a weapons fit equivalent to that of the Ki-27, and one inferior even to the Ki-43-Ib - that at least carries a single half-inch calibre machine gun.

I believe the 24th Sentai arrived as a Ki-27-equipped reinforcement which I upgraded to Hiens as we are playing with PDU's on. However, I'm at a bit of a loss to see how this one unit can have ended up with this somewhat ineffectual armament, given that no such configuration for the Hien seems to exist in the database.

Possibly this would go away if I were to convert the unit from Ki-61 to Ki-44, but it's still very strange. How can you end up with aircraft having an armament layout that doesn't appear in the database?

[jwilkerson]

Though I never tried it - it might be possible to change the aircraft attributes in the editor on the group screen. That would be my guess as to the explanation for what you're seeing.

[Local Yokel]

Yes, it certainly looks possible to change the devices assigned to a particular air group in the database, and thus to modify the armament for the aircraft with which that air group is equipped.

However, in this instance the affected unit (24th Fighter Sentai) is present on 7 December 1941, based at Amoy and equipped with Ki-27's. It occupies slot 053 in the Air Groups table of the database. This means that I must have upgraded from Ki-27 to Ki-61-Ib at some stage as the game progressed. I would have expected the Sentai's new aircraft to have inherited all the characteristics of the Ki-61-Ib as it is defined in the Aircraft table of the database (where it occupies slot 055). Had it done so it should have received a quartet of 12.7mm Ho-103's, rather than a pair 7.7mm Type 89's (I incorrectly suggested in my opening post that the Ki-61-Ib was equipped with only 2 such guns; in fact I should have said 4). I can't find any 'rogue' Ki-61 entry in the Aircraft table with this type of gun, and in any event I always thought it wasn't possible to modify data for a game already in progress, so I wonder whether there must be some other explanation.

It's as if, when the upgrade from Ki-27 to Ki-61 took place, the identity of the upgrade aircraft was successfully applied to the air group record, but the group's new aircraft retained the armament attributes of the replaced aircraft, the Ki-27. If so, that looks like it might be a fairly elusive bug.

I'm quite worried about sending out this sentai equipped with only a pair of rifle calibre machine guns. Methinks I'd better try to re-upgrade them rather quickly - perhips to a Ki-44.