Charleslamb
Posts: 1
Joined: 10/12/2006
Status: offline
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Hello,
I have not posted here before, but I have played WITP since its release, and played two long term pbem games. Until a few months ago when the results from an A to A combat in one of those games convinced me (as an IJN) player that the stock game was not worthing playing beyond 43 (the planetypes then seemed to guarantee that the US would get a turkey shoot regardless of pilotskill or even massive IJN numeric superiority....). I stopped playing as a result but the compulsion is back so I have recently been looking
at the various mods and their attempts to address the aircombat model:-
My other passion is flight simulation and I play and design campaigns and scenarios for a WWII flightsim il2 Sturmovik.
First Principle of an accurate system:- the values required should be completely numeric based upon statistics and not estimated or guessed. Statistical formula should provide the required value and there should be no departure from this:-
The general trend throughout WWII:- Planes became faster throughout the war at the expense of manouverability because SPEED is the most desirable asset in AtoA combat . The faster plane holds the initiative and can decide when to fight or when to avoid combat. Throughout this period planes became increasingly fast at the expence of manouverability. There is the old truism SPEED IS LIFE !.
I believe this is heavily factored into the secret AtoA algorithm...I hope so, it is correct.
Also from experiance of virtual air combat:- if you look at any two planes, you can always find one characteristic in which any plane is superior.
eg:-a Zero could easily outturn a P40, but the P40 was faster and could outdive the zero. A Gladiator has a far higher sustained turn than a ki61:- Pilot skill for a combat pilot primarily involves the ability to get your opponent to fight in a way that best suits your own planes superiority !.
e'g the P40's dive characteristic does not mean that the P40 is manouverable, it just means that the one advantage it had was the ability to dive faster (and extra weight allowed it to zoom climb...low and slow and the P40 pilot was dead) sucess related primarily to good pilots apreciating its sole advantage. Likewise if a Gladiator pilot managed to sucker a ki61 into a turn fight at low speed in which the biplane
was obviously more manouverable, the result would be down to pilot skill almost solely and would not prove that the Gladiator was an incredible aeroplane.
The incredible sucess of late war US planes were likewise down to many factors which if ignored would lead one to believe that US planes were incredibly good... however late war results historically included numerical superiority, tactical superiority, superior material and fuel and better pilot training !.
Hence wanting numerical figures based entirely upon universaly applicable formula with no exceptions.
Back to my first principle.....
Here is a link to a fantastic tool by 'Hardball', it lists performance statistics for WWII aircraft for il2 players. No bias here but the data from the most accurate WWII flightsim there is.
http://mission4today.com/index.php?name=Downloads&file=details&id=325
Recommend looking at this handy little utility for Data.
I have looked at the Nik mod and 'B' mods and think that both have made very good progress already.
'B' as I understand it has based a lot of his aircraft values on NIks mod .
GUN ACCURACY:-
Both lower gun accuracy considerably.
'B' arrives at his Accuracy values using a combination of ROF and MUzzle velocity. This is a good approach, the higher the velocity the straighter a projectile flys and the easier to hit anything with it is.
Centreline armament undoubtably more accurate, I like 'B' s +10 approach (effectively almost doubling) his much reduced from stock Accuracy values. NIcks 60 centrline values are way high to my mind for this.
Centreline armament was in use of course on planes of both sides- A6M5, ki43 and some of later war IJ planes but also P40c, P38 and Mosqito,A20 and beaufighter so should benefit some planetypes of both sides.
SPEED:- Easy to find and fairly unrefutable
MANOUVERABILITY:- Now this is the value that I have looked at in detail. I believe that manouverabilty
relates to a planes ability to change direction and gain altitude.
Hardballs plane data gives two useful values_
i) time to complete a 360 turn in seconds.
ii) sustained climb rate.
Sustained turnrate and sustained climb are effectively what makes a plane manouverable or not.
All combat manouvres are a result of the above or lack of. (if you lack either of above vs opponent you have to bleed energy ('e' and altitude to compensate). Likewise you can turn speed into manouverability but not over a sustained period as you have to bleed speed to gain increased manouvrability and you eventually going to run out of speed.
Hardballs viewer provides actual performance data and relates to how manouverable the plane was IRL, as oposed to more arbitrary values like power to weight or wingloading. The later do not necessarily guarantee good real world performance....it is better to look at the performance itself.
All planes can dive and altitude is a tactical advantage because any plane can trade height for speed, but once height is lost you have to climb back up again !. Fast dive rate relates to aircraft with higher speed and a high speed dive is more of a disengagement or hit and run tactic.
OK so where did I start:- I wanted to adopt a constant system that would produce similar values to what we already have, here is what I have come up with:-
100/ rate of turn(seconds) X 25/rate of climb to 4100m = Manouverabilty factor.
Simple and universal.
Here is what I got:-
A6M2 Model21:-
100/ 15.6 second for 360 turn =6.41
25/4.3 minutes to climb to 4100 metres = 5.81
so 6.41 X 5.81 =37.24
The formula provides a value of 37 for A6M2 very similar to stock value.
now I applied the same formula to many planes in the system (you have got the equation) and you have the data from hardballs so do the maths as I have done if you doubt anything below (bearing in mind that you have to convert the sustained climb into time to 4100 metres, or whatever you pick provided that it is constant for all aircraft.)
Here it is:-
formula value \ Stock
A6M2 37 35
A6M3 38 36
N1K1-George 29 36
J2M Jack 36 33
D3A Val 25 24
B5N Kate 16 20
Ki47 48 33
Ki43-1b 47 35
Ki43-IIa 40 34
Ki61 31 29
Ki84-1a 32 35
Ki100 26 34
SeaGladiator 40 29
Seafire 37 33
F2A Buffalo 31 29
F4F3 31 33
F4F4 30 32
FM-2 Widcat 27 30
F6F-3 24 36
F6F-5 Hellcat 24 36
F4U-1D 23 38
TBF Avenger 15 23
Hawk 75A 32 30
Brewster339D 31 29
Hurricane IIc 23 29
Spit Vb 36 34
Spit VIII 36 37
Beaufighter Mk21 21 27
Mosquito FB.VI 23 26
P36A Mohawk 31 30
P40E 24 31
P39D 29 29
P40C 26 31
P38G 22 32
P47C 23 34
P47D 23 36
P51B/D 33 36
Ok take a look at the results from the pure equation that I have used and the stock ingame values.
Pretty close in most cases.
The ki43 is way more manouverable as are all biplanes.
Most glaring differances to my eyes :- Hellcat, F4U, P47, P38 and P40 !.
( All heavy, Rugged and powerful energy fighters built for speed and not manouverability...it would appear that in the stock game they have all the advantages..... despite not going round corners very well in real life.....)
I explain how and provide the information to arrive at the figures above. At some point in the past somebody has done something very similar I think capping the ki43's and adding an extra 50% onto their favourite US latewar planes just to ensure the result ! .
OR
they have double factored speed thus double handycapping slow planes and extra rewarding faster planes.....
AT which point 'manouvrability' is not actually manouvre but Speed and Manouver.
Hard to tell without knowing the A to A combat algorithms but playing testing with my data values seems to be producing satisfactory results so far.
Enough said I think.
Willing to send the complate database as I have calculated it to anyone that is interested.
Currently testing a game through offline with these figures, seems to be working out.
I think the manouverability rating tends to be used more for calculating the evasion possibility rather than which planes get to attempt shots (speed derived I would guess).
Anyhow hope this helps the discussion along its way.
< Message edited by Charleslamb -- 10/12/2006 2:11:16 PM >
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Printable Version
RE: Air to Air improvements - 
(I suggested simple curve consisting of few key altitudes so that full spectrum can be "drawn" to extrapolate data in all altitudes) only to learn that this was already proposed by BETA tester even before... unfortunately this never materialized (and I doubt it ever will)... 
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