Bomber Missions and Industrials
Posted: Sat 29 Sep 2012 9:44 pm
G'day 4Shades,
I thought it'd be advisable to flesh out the idea which I broached with you on TS last night. That is, regarding numbers of aircraft available for each mission (I'll henceforward refer to as "operating phase") and the frequency in which bomber squadrons flew each day. As you'd appreciate, this is very subjective and open for debate. Is an idea which I'm floating for the "purists" and applied to scenarios where there is a very limited number of human participants on each side. It is not for those circumstances where there are a high number of participants or contest somewhat dictated by a "reserved quota" of flyable human seats.
As you'd recall, my thoughts went along the lines that historically, bomber attacks upon factory industrial districts where usually carried out within a single mission on a day and at squadron strength. Not in dribs and drabs over all hours of the day as is currently practiced in SEOW. For examle, the USAAF Schweinfurt raid, Luftwaffe battle of Britain raids, etc involved a large numbers of attacking aircraft passing over a target in a limited window (or envelope) of time. To this, each raid involved a large amount of prior preparation, crew briefing, reconnaissance and other considerations before the attack actually went in. In response to thoughts on this, I've obviously asked myself what steps could be taken in SEOW to reflect this?
Here are some of my thoughts.
1. As you indicated factories are now tougher to destroy. However, I still suspect they are still too easy to destroy by random raids and I haven't really explored the factory plate thing in a tested template. Anyway, is it possible to make industrial factories/fuel depots only targetable/destructable when a certain amount of reconnaissance has been gathered on the target. For example, you need to determine what the factory is producing before it becomes available on the target list. This way, reconnaissance missions have to go out and gather intelligence before the bomber raid goes in. It also makes sucessful recconnaisance missions infinitetely more valuable.
2. A mission flight count randomiser as discussed earlier. For example, say a given side has eight daylight operating phases each of two hours duration. In each two hour phase, that side can plot 25 aircraft to fly. This totals 200 aircraft able to fly over a 16 hour period. As it stands, the current 25 aircraft per operating phase gets pretty predictable in regards to types of missions, composition and known standard number of opponents. So given the above, is it possible to include an aircraft mission counter over the 16 hour period, so that a side may plot fewer than 25 in one phase, to allow a larger number of aircraft plotted in a later operating phase? In theory, in one operating phase, we could have excessive aerial activity and in next to none in the next. Maybe a seperate counter for nocturnal missions. Different, but is totally unpredictable.
3. Further balancing. For instance, on above example it may be prudent to increase the time for factories to be repaired (maybe a week) or too look at the factory output level, aircraft refueling, intelligence deteriation, etc. but as indicated, this would be the template designers consideration.
As I stressed in the opening paragraph, this is an idea for those campaigns where there is a low level of human participantion, no requirement to reserve seats and maybe less frame rate issues. A selectable option, so to speak.
Regards,
Warg
I thought it'd be advisable to flesh out the idea which I broached with you on TS last night. That is, regarding numbers of aircraft available for each mission (I'll henceforward refer to as "operating phase") and the frequency in which bomber squadrons flew each day. As you'd appreciate, this is very subjective and open for debate. Is an idea which I'm floating for the "purists" and applied to scenarios where there is a very limited number of human participants on each side. It is not for those circumstances where there are a high number of participants or contest somewhat dictated by a "reserved quota" of flyable human seats.
As you'd recall, my thoughts went along the lines that historically, bomber attacks upon factory industrial districts where usually carried out within a single mission on a day and at squadron strength. Not in dribs and drabs over all hours of the day as is currently practiced in SEOW. For examle, the USAAF Schweinfurt raid, Luftwaffe battle of Britain raids, etc involved a large numbers of attacking aircraft passing over a target in a limited window (or envelope) of time. To this, each raid involved a large amount of prior preparation, crew briefing, reconnaissance and other considerations before the attack actually went in. In response to thoughts on this, I've obviously asked myself what steps could be taken in SEOW to reflect this?
Here are some of my thoughts.
1. As you indicated factories are now tougher to destroy. However, I still suspect they are still too easy to destroy by random raids and I haven't really explored the factory plate thing in a tested template. Anyway, is it possible to make industrial factories/fuel depots only targetable/destructable when a certain amount of reconnaissance has been gathered on the target. For example, you need to determine what the factory is producing before it becomes available on the target list. This way, reconnaissance missions have to go out and gather intelligence before the bomber raid goes in. It also makes sucessful recconnaisance missions infinitetely more valuable.
2. A mission flight count randomiser as discussed earlier. For example, say a given side has eight daylight operating phases each of two hours duration. In each two hour phase, that side can plot 25 aircraft to fly. This totals 200 aircraft able to fly over a 16 hour period. As it stands, the current 25 aircraft per operating phase gets pretty predictable in regards to types of missions, composition and known standard number of opponents. So given the above, is it possible to include an aircraft mission counter over the 16 hour period, so that a side may plot fewer than 25 in one phase, to allow a larger number of aircraft plotted in a later operating phase? In theory, in one operating phase, we could have excessive aerial activity and in next to none in the next. Maybe a seperate counter for nocturnal missions. Different, but is totally unpredictable.
3. Further balancing. For instance, on above example it may be prudent to increase the time for factories to be repaired (maybe a week) or too look at the factory output level, aircraft refueling, intelligence deteriation, etc. but as indicated, this would be the template designers consideration.
As I stressed in the opening paragraph, this is an idea for those campaigns where there is a low level of human participantion, no requirement to reserve seats and maybe less frame rate issues. A selectable option, so to speak.
Regards,
Warg