1.08.01 criticism from a Russian wargamer

[morvael]

Air war is messed up indeed. Interceptions are stronger now and Soviet AA is worse, so the balance moved a bit in the direction of LW, but nothing will help to solve problems arising from design. Perhaps just one fix is possible at this time, to block airfield bombings for used air groups, like the other missions are blocked (with the exception of German turn 1).

However

In my book LW did not have overall air superiority. For that you need to control the skies in a way the Allies did in Normandy. Sure, everywhere where Luftwaffe sent a pair of fighters (out of a dozen in working condition per 100-200 km of the front), VVS scattered in panic. However (and it's a recurring theme in diaries of German soldiers) everywhere else Soviet air force bombed land forces at will, with AA being the only defense available. Even if direct casualties were low, the delay, fatigue and disruption effects were having impact on the effectiveness of forces.

Finally

I was happy myself to restrict to 1 bombing per hex with airbases throughout the war in my PBEM. Can't see why the others have such problems. And improved interceptions meant Pe-2 40-60 bombers lost per raid (with escorts).

[M60A3TTS]

Almost all PvP games are done with house rules that limit bombing of airbases. Usually x3/turn. Issue solved.

[charlie0311]

Can unescorted LW "bomb unit" missions be fixed??

[M60A3TTS]

Shift right click when you bomb units to insure escort fighters are available. Issue solved.

[morvael]

I use manual selection and then I can select fighter cover (or I can see that no cover is available and cancel the attempt).

[charlie0311]

Thx fellas,

Let's see if I finally have this right. To bomb "something" and get fighter escorts, use manual (shift, rt/clk). Must be the first mission(s) of turn because if the fighters have done anything else then they won't be available. Does this "anything else" also mean no interdiction during the opponent turn and no ground support during opponent turn, if so, then turn GS off and interdiction to "0" when you end your turn?

[gingerbread]

Must have 0 miles flown to be first mission.

Setting air groups that you want to use for bomb unit missions to Night while moving & fighting in other sections of the map is a way to keep the air groups un-used.

It is an a bit tedious work around and no doubt you will forget to check day/night status before ending turn a couple of times until you include that in your EoT routine. I don't know any other way, though.

[von altair]

ORIGINAL: morvael
I was happy myself to restrict to 1 bombing per hex with airbases throughout the war in my PBEM. Can't see why the others have such problems. And improved interceptions meant Pe-2 40-60 bombers lost per raid (with escorts).

Yeah house rules can fix this air war. But that is also the way to prove that something is really wrong, if the
game needs house rules. Is it really that hard to balance sides? How about giving a large bombing (airfield) penalty
for russians until late -43? They were not doing them too much anyway (because they were fearing them).

Also German side needs a bit more endurance, so they can fly more sorties in a day. Also German planes
should be a lot more better quality than Russian ones. In other words, less operational losses for them
and a lot of them for Russians. Absolete planes should have even bigger penalties for stats.

[charlie0311]

Gman and others,

So sorry for the pea brain here. Does air activity during the opponents turn interfere with available aircraft during my turn?

Thx

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: von altair

ORIGINAL: morvael
I was happy myself to restrict to 1 bombing per hex with airbases throughout the war in my PBEM. Can't see why the others have such problems. And improved interceptions meant Pe-2 40-60 bombers lost per raid (with escorts).

Yeah house rules can fix this air war. But that is also the way to prove that something is really wrong, if the
game needs house rules. Is it really that hard to balance sides? How about giving a large bombing (airfield) penalty
for russians until late -43? They were not doing them too much anyway (because they were fearing them).

Also German side needs a bit more endurance, so they can fly more sorties in a day. Also German planes
should be a lot more better quality than Russian ones. In other words, less operational losses for them
and a lot of them for Russians. Absolete planes should have even bigger penalties for stats.

you do realise that in the game the German planes are better in terms of raw stats, usually more manouverable, will tend to be able to fire first, should have a large advantage in morale and in terms of experience. All in all the air war works out pretty well.

As above, worth bearing in mind just what was Soviet air doctrine. Air superiority didn't matter, what mattered was to assist (by protecting own bombers) or protect (by disrupting the axis bombers) Red Army ground operations.

If the game requires a simple, easy to apply, house rule then I don't really see that as indication its broken?

[darbycmcd]

"The air war" isn't really broken in my opinion. I don't use the spam bombing tactic, and I am seeing good historical exchange ratios when there are somewhat historical air doctrine. Altair, you seem to be given to dramatic pronouncements, that doesn't really help to improve the discussion about potential changes. I see that there might be an exploit to repeatedly bomb the same airbase, maybe one solution would be to decrease the mileage use for planes flying CAP over own base. If they could sortie more, it would be far too costly as a tactic.

[charlie0311]

Hi Charlie,

The answer to your question is yes (probably). Use the gingerbread work around.

To you "not broken" guys, if not broken no work arounds necessary.

[von altair]

Loki100 and darbycmd:

You guys think that everything is fine, just because you don't personally use
the game as 70% others will. I have played several pvp games and my LW has
been bombed down several times. While I have been playing as Soviets, LW
is usually wiped down dry and clean at -42 spring. Latest game my opponent
had to move LW way beyond front to be safe and some elements even to
national reserve.

Then we had one game with a house rule. It went better. But with a house rule
it took a large part of my intrest out of the game. Every time you have
to use some "house rules", its a mark of unbalance and bad design.

This spam bombing and usage of absolete planes as screen and damagedealer
is just so so... How easy would that to be fix? IT IS EASY. Just penalize
Soviet airfield bombing hard way. They rarely did such raids anyway.
Soviet Air force concentrated on ground support and some specially targeted
city bombings.

Also Soviet player can exploit with those pesky absolete planes.
In real, NO soviet pilot would EVER even try to go near Germans with absolete
ww1 plane. It would have been 100% suicide. In this game however, there are
no such problems. A player can spam 600 such planes and cause havoc to
German side without any real losses. If you loss 600 absolete planes
and manage to kill 80x Me-109F2 its a HUGE victory that will cause major
problems for LW. Soviet side doesn't lose anything. Using those planes
as cannon fodder is a major exploitation. Do we need to call another house rule?

PLEASE fix this.
1) Penalize Soviet airfield bombing runs in 41-43 (up to september -43).
- 30% damage/efficiency penalty, +30% more casualties for Soviets, +30%
more fatique/per run (because soviets feared Germans in that period).
2) Tune down absolete plane offensive value

These simple fixes does not affect to a war, or soviet ability to do its
things. But it takes of the need of use silly house rules with air war.

[heliodorus04]

The air war discussion is old. As a player and forum poster since release, I'm fatigued by old arguments.
The air war is WAY better in 1.08 iterations.

If you want historical realism READ A HISTORY BOOK. You deviate from history on Turn 1...

Otherwise, accept that games require abstractions, and the sum of all of them is aimed at playability more than historical rigidity.

There are a lot of House Rules necessary when you play a human opponent.
For example, the Soviet side can airdrop airborne brigades with perfect precision in 1941 (if used correctly it can completely negate German encirclements and ruin the 1941 offensive).
The Soviet can bomb German HQs (to kill leaders and disrupt support) and Airbases at will (I remember abandoning a game when, in Oct-41 Germany was down to 125 fighters across the entirety of the Eastern Front.)

When playing Human on Human the game will be widely different than history on both sides.

[PMCN]

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04
(snip)
If you want historical realism READ A HISTORY BOOK. You deviate from history on Turn 1...

Otherwise, accept that games require abstractions, and the sum of all of them is aimed at playability more than historical rigidity.
(snip)

This is an old and tired argument. If the game is supposed to simulate reality then it can not allow utter and total wacky results independent of what one does. If the game allows units to do things which are absurd in real life then the game engine is flawed.

A historical game means not that it reproduces history, that is impossible since battle results are not pre-ordained and many battles in history could have gone one way or another depending on how a complex series of events played out during the time of the battle.

To me, a historical game should present the player with the challenges that the people of the time were faced with. If you can do outright impossible things...then the game has a problem that should be address and fixed where possible.

As far as house rules go, I recall my proposed house rules were widely adopted by WIR players and even made it into WITE with the inclusion of limits on where the Finns will go. These sorts of gentleman's rules are necessary when the game itself has problems.

But the reality is if you need house rules to prevent exploitive behaviour then the game engine should be worked on to not allow it. Though probably at the end there is a limit what you can do and eventually it is prohibitively difficult to solve the problem, and min-maxer munchkins are exceptionally good at finding every possible loophole to exploit. That is infact why they are munchkins in the first place...they like that sort of thing.

But I, for one, don't want to play grey on brown. I want to play the eastern front in WW2. I want to deal with the issues that the people at the time dealt with and see how the fact that the logistics were a nightmare actually influenced the campaign NOT deal with some moron who thinks pulling all the german tanks out of the panzer divisions in the med and replacing them with cheap italian crud is OK (to quote a WIR multiplayer result that made me stop playing multiplayer).

For me, it is the difference between playing Panzer Leader (by Avalon Hill) and Tactics 2 (by Avalon Hill) both are good games but one is a generic blue on red game on a random map and the other is various battles from WW2. It is about seeing how going for moscow early rather than turning south would have changed things not about seeing how exploiting HQ build ups to do wild and crazy stuff in cojunction with the entire LW being used as an arial refueling service.

I can't speak for anyone else but I would be dubious anyone who wants to play a historical war game as a simulation doesn't want to change history, they just don't want to do it by exploiting game engines or being a min-max munchkin. They want to do it by trying one of the dozens of "what ifs" that exist when looking at WW2 and seeing what the result of it is or at least so I would think.

It is like when someone takes over the world strating from botswanaland in HoIx, using only militia or something equally absurd. That works only by mind wrenching exploitation of the game system and is about as interesting as watching paint dry.

I play these sorts of games to learn about the conflict in question. Seeing the effect of a decision in a game is more than just reading about it in a book. Watching the panzers wheel to turn south taught me instantly that it wasn't completely moronic to have done that...as it utterly unhinged what up to then had been a sucessful defence near Kiev but there was no way to hold that if the front holding the northern flank collapsed, which it certainly did when that many Panzer divisions hit it. The only thing that saved the day was mud (and the overeall ineptness of the AO as it should have pocketed more of my divisions).

That for me is the value and the point of playing a historical wargame. Otherwise I could just play civilization on a random map or starcraft or whatever.

[Denniss]

I have always seen spam bombings on HQs and airfields as bug misuse/abuse. Effects on HQs regarding leader kills have been greatly reduced in 1.08.
HQs represent administrative units spreads over a wide area and I don't think one should be able to bomb them many times a turn.
Dominic has already offered a change to airfield bombing in 1.08.03 so you can only assign units that haven't already flown this turn. This may be not sufficient to stop spam bombings so this may require the additions of a numerical limit to x attacks per turn per airfield

[micheljq]

I am just a newbie in this game, i use mainly ground support as the soviets and i lose a lot more airplanes than the Luftwaffe in 1941-42.

If the soviet player use mainly the air force to bombard airfields, how will the Red Army do without close air support in 1941? That is the bombers are not available to help it, too busy bombarding Luftwaffe airfields.

Can the Luftwaffe put the airgroups in light forest to have some protection? A lot of light forest in center and north. Can the airgroups or their HQ buy more AA?

Michel.

[heliodorus04]

ORIGINAL: Paul McNeely

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04
(snip)
If you want historical realism READ A HISTORY BOOK. You deviate from history on Turn 1...

Otherwise, accept that games require abstractions, and the sum of all of them is aimed at playability more than historical rigidity.
(snip)

This is an old and tired argument. If the game is supposed to simulate reality then it can not allow utter and total wacky results independent of what one does. If the game allows units to do things which are absurd in real life then the game engine is flawed.



That for me is the value and the point of playing a historical wargame. Otherwise I could just play civilization on a random map or starcraft or whatever.

I'm not going to argue with you.
If you want to make yourself unhappy with the game, have at it.
If you think something fundamental is going to change with the game's air war now, you're going to be unhappy indefinitely.

I haven't heard you discuss the supply situation (i.e. infinite rail capacity and the ability to move operational supply focus at will). There's another historical absurdity you can make yourself miserable about while I go back to enjoying my games.

Ta ta

[swkuh]

Happy for the 1.08.02 beta update; will soon find out if it plays better. Assuming so, compliments to the "dev" crew (and this forum, esp. Morvael) for keeping a good game going.

No problem here with a few house rules to satisfy "my" version of historical possibilities. What are yours?

As always, my coding crew of thousands is available to correct any issues worth their time and my money.

Some (unasked) advice to the "real" developers is to NOT get underwear wrapped into knots trying to fix what might be best handled by well known house rules. Sometimes a fix leads to more trouble, etc. Remember 2.0 is the goal and what doesn't assist in that journey is not so useful. But I believe in Santa Klaus, too.

[von altair]

ORIGINAL: Denniss

Dominic has already offered a change to airfield bombing in 1.08.03 so you can only assign units that haven't already flown this turn. This may be not sufficient to stop spam bombings so this may require the additions of a numerical limit to x attacks per turn per airfield

Is there really such feature coming in 1.08.03??? That would help a lot, along with that limit to x attacks (make it 1 or 2). per turn per airfield.