Official SEOW

Hi all:

I've been looking in posts about a possible new modification for level bombing missions to Factories. I think you know that with the new Mods, bombs do not "fly" so straight than before, so hitting factory buildings from 4000 meters is more a question of good luck than the result of a good aiming. Unless people get the exact deviation of the bombs, but it's not so realistic, I think. And even more, it's no usefull at all to "wear" many small bombs instead of very big ones, so the planes that are only capables of hitting factory buildings by now, are those how can carry many big bombs, and the ones that can only carry a couple of 500Kg bombs are not so usefull on high altitude level bombing.

What I propose (unfortunately I don't know about programming) is to change the way that factories produce their points, by setting some more buildings around the actual structure for that, so you have for a "whole" factory installation, instead of a single building in which you perfectly see what building is the one and whole points producer, that you can completely destroy it with a single aircraft with a 250Kg bomb, you will find a "production zone" of more or less buldings (maybe six) in which one of them has a "main" production rate (40-50%) of the total for that factory, but you will find too some unknown "small" buildings with rate productions of 10-15%, so if you are bombing from 4000-5000 meters (in a realistic way of doing it) you can hit at least some buildings of the Industrial zone with level bombing formations, instead of that old quirurgical aiming procedure, so you can use long pattern destruction loads instead of single/couple drops.

If this feature was implemented I think that we could get two advantages:
- First, it will be more difficult to completely destroy all the production capability of the enemy, but harming it so much depending on the bombing accuracy, or insistence, on planning level bombing runs on that Industrial zone.
- Second, get a real and more interesting option for level bombing pilots and flights, both human and IA's, in which you can set targets by zones, and not single buildings.

By the way, factory point production can be really damaged with single bomb attack planes, as you can destroy the main production center (the actual building which would produce the 40-50% of points of this factory), but at the same time, you let the level bombers to have some possibility of succes on their raids without forcing them to use 5000Kg bombs to get some hits.

(If it's not interesting there's no need to read more).

I thought that if this would be interesting, it could be done (and I remember that I don't know how it could be the best way to program it, so programmers can do it, obviously, as they think and know it's better and fast) by creating another table 'Factory_Buildings', with Fields: 'Factory_Name', 'Factory_Building', 'Production_Rate', 'X_Coord', 'Y_Coord', 'Active', 'Event_Date' in which:
- 'Factory_Name': The name of the Factory insatallation. Example='Sevastopol_S_F1' or the same name that the Industrial_Installations table.
- 'Factory_Building': The number of building inside the previous field.
- 'Production_Rate': The % of production that that building has inside the total of the Factory.
- 'X-Coord', 'Y_Coord': Position of the building in which the car/object will appear in the .mis file.
- 'Active': If it's true, this building will add production points to the factory total. If it's false, it won't.
- 'Event_Date': The day/hour in which this building is destroyed to take it in count for repairing times and so on.

When analiceing the eventlog file, check the destroyable object inside, and for getting the factory prodution points, count the % of each building to get the total of this factory and set it in 'Industrial_Installations" table.
In the MP, it will only appear the "main" building, so the secondary factory buildings are hidden to avoid being straffed for non AG planes.

Of course, this is only an idea, but I think that can open the possibility of realistic high altitude level bombing runs/missions without depending on too heavy bombs.

As another possibility, but it would be more job for programmers, there could be an Industrial Configuration option when starting the campaign in which each Commander can set how much buildings and which ones are each single Factory installation. But there could be a procedure to change it when this factory changes of side (conquered or so).

I hope it would result interesting for people, and I'm sorry for not to be able of helping in developing this idea at programming level.

S!

Hi Mdie,

Interesting idea. The present status is that big bombs are required to destroy factories in a single, precise strike. That encourages pilots to fly particular bombers with special heavy loadouts to get the job done.

That does not represent WWII massed bombing raids where many bombers dropped large numbers of low-medium weight bombs on targets. So you are advocating the placement of a large number of low-value targets associated with the major factories, so even if the major factories can't easily be destroyed by high-altitude bombing, at least the supporting small factories can be destroyed, thereby reducing overall industrial effectiveness.

My initial reaction is that this is quite possible to do, and could be achieved in a number of ways. However, it will take significant effort for people to capture the industrial data across the 61 sectors we have in SEOW now to build a complete feature.

One question that pops to mind is if a target object is placed in a simple cottage, is that easier to destroy with a bomb than a target in a factory building? I suspect that having many targets grouped closely together will make the idea work best, in which case a simple extension of the Industrial_Installations table to include an "Importance" field could achieve almost the effect, e.g. cottage A has importance 5% while Severomorsk Factory 1 has importance 100%, and the production point amount made in each target is the importance value times the standard production rate.

Either way there is a lot of work here to get it done. What do other people think?

Cheers,
4Shades

IV/JG7_4Shades wrote: However, it will take significant effort for people to capture the industrial data across the 61 sectors we have in SEOW now to build a complete feature.

Yes

In my opinion, it would be not necessary. Actually, there are always several factories in each industrial location that simulate industrial areas. When grouped factories is enabled, it simulates partial dommages to a industrial area. Add others objects would be possible, but will increase again the weight of the mission's file. I think that there are enough objects at the moment, we have sometimes to reduce them (runlight, AAA automatic objects, ...) to get a more playable mission for low and medium configurations. Simulate massed bombing seems to me very realistic for History but ireealistic in IL2 for the same reasons.
If "Industrial targets are activated in ALL locations" that increases again the objects number.

Hi All:

After cleaning my computer of a %&#@ trojan, and some celebration days I'm here again to discuss about this idea.

Of course, it's not to be mandatory, if people experiences some problems with big .mis files, or with hundreds of objects inside any map, but it could be "fixed" with a simple marker in DCS new campaign options. More or less like "Grouped Factories" option.

The question of implementing this feature in SEOW system can be done step by step. I mean that if "we" (more precisely, the programmers ) implement this option, it could start with a single structure in the secondary table for each factory, with its correspondant % of production points of the total, and each commander who wants to develope this posibility can add by himself in the factories secondary table all the buildings (secondary factories/store buildings) he wants, taking in count that the summatory of all the percentages has to be 100%.

I'm not sure about how the "Grouping Factories" works, but I think that it makes a whole Industrial zone to produce a single good. With this new option, each commander can produce more types of weapons, and in some attaks, he will be able to add some production points to his factories. I think this will decrease the effectivity of the use of "quirurgical" light strikes (Bf-109 with a single SC250) and will open the door for high altitude bombing runs. Maybe it will take some effort from slow computers, but I think that from a more or less realistic point of view, attacking, and collapsing a whole factory witha light ariplane witha single bomb takes away a lot of realism to the campaing concept.

Maybe it could be done a kind of marker in the DB in which DCS can "see" if this option can be used or not. Maybe so simple as if some field in the secondary factory table is distinct from null, you can choose it, and add new building/structures under each commander request. Once the Secondary table was full it could be sent to SEOW headquarters to be included in that map in later versions. I remember that some maps has no factories, like the ones of Pacific Ocean.

And I propose too that those new secondary buildings wouldn't appear in recons. I mean that the enemy won't be able to know where are exactly which structures are the secondary factories of a given Facility. In recons, it will appear the general info of the factory, and the % of destruction it has, but not the position of each secondary target.

Anyway, I could help on getting the new coordinates of some maps. Maybe under request. Just making a pool to see which maps are more interesting to have first this new selectable feature.

S!

Hi Mdie,

Let's start with a simple map: Ardennes, specifically Bastogne. Can you send a spreadsheet of the kind of data you are thinking of?

Cheers,
4Shades

A bomberpilots perspective

After flying with the partly realistic "Torpedo and bombing mod" I belive there are a place for enlarging the target area.

Larger target areas are also more realistic.
WWII is a very good example of dispersed production. Both the UK, Germans and the Japanese did it in an organised fasion.
The Allies discovered in late 1943 that their favorite bombsize's where inadequate for industrial bombing. All it did was to shatter equipment around. Most tools could be reused after an attack. They had to use bombs of 500lb and more to get an effect that destroyed tools.
Source: "Brute force" by John Ellis


Such a feature would be nice, but as always; It is easy for those that does not have to do it. If we get it would be nice