give bombers the ability to damage fbs

[madrebel 606]

26 minutes ago, Kilemall said:

How about visible supply at airfields?

Bro - I can't even convince anyone that bomb-able airfields are a good idea. Tried every angle, gameplay, history, nothing seems to work.

 

I think 1.36 and the potential interdiction that opens up brings all the attrition we currently need back. I'd be happy to have visible supply everywhere but that's likely a bridge to far ATM. 1.36 doesn't change the need/desire for bomb-able airfields but realistically we dont have the numbers currently. further, to devil's advocate my own argument - I think the recent RDP attempts really highlighted the achilles heel - we don't have the visual ranges required for an airwar at altitude to really function. if hatch's discovery (the old cylinder vs the current fishbowl) can get implemented after 1.36/64bit that 'might' change this. 

until then though, i think our best bet is to focus on expanding CAS. its the only thing that kinda works atm. 

[tr6al 32]

Bomb-able airfields are a nice idea but they would most likely show damage by using something similar to ppo's in the shape of rubble as the ground isn't something that can be manipulated .( from what I understand )

The rubble blocking the path of ac trying to land or take off. the "rubble " could get repaired (removed) I would imagine by an engineer type of player.

Just speculating .

 

Edited January 17 by tr6al

[madrebel 606]

displaying the damage isn't required IMO. its the ability to knock the AF out completely along with the Ai that I'm after.

[Kilemall 2,355]

2 hours ago, madrebel said:

displaying the damage isn't required IMO. its the ability to knock the AF out completely along with the Ai that I'm after.

I'm not.

 

I'm after supply being destroyed on the ground as a means to concentrate efforts to keep skies clear.

[madrebel 606]

14 minutes ago, Kilemall said:

I'm not.

 

I'm after supply being destroyed on the ground as a means to concentrate efforts to keep skies clear.

fair enough but remember, with 1.36 there won't be anymore flag stacking. we'll be back to the old rules and you can kinda count on the nearest AFs being out of/low on supply by default. this will mean flying from the next AF back. time it right, knock out the rear AF, now you've really slowed the bomber traffic and massively extended their ingress route. have your interceptors feast on the extended ingress route. 

i'll grant you destruction on the ground is significantly more historical/realistic but it would be a first of its kind and, a slippery slope. having something to play with drives subs, removing toys invisibly has a LOT of downsides and the subject should be broached very gingerly IMO.

AFs on the front line creates really unrealistic gameplay though. the inability to effectively knock out an AF that would otherwise be within artillery range and being bombarded via artillery is just silly. the protection it gives the defense creates an unending stream of bombers etc etc it just sucks.

[Merlin51 1,387]

I'd like bombers to be able to bomb lots of things, that they get some kind of result from doing, and that they can bomb from proper altitudes
right now.
Bombing AF's? sure.
Just has to be done in a manner that works well overall gamewise.

In warbirds, we could bomb the airbases, and it would shut them down, but after a time they would come back up
so if you wanted them taken down hard, you had to keep hitting them.
And that kept bringing the fighters after you, and so your escorts had to keep furballing etc etc.
It was done in a way that generated action while attempting to get the result
 

[aismov 600]

Having done a lot of flying I second the idea of the visual range. It was always shorter in WWIIOL but it is terrible now. Pretty much impossible to interdict bombers.

[raptor34 176]

23 hours ago, madrebel said:

displaying the damage isn't required IMO. its the ability to knock the AF out completely along with the Ai that I'm after.

With you on this, regardless of visual damage or not. Ideally it would include visual distruction of hangers to start. I’d also be completely behind visual supply on AFs that can be directly attacked but we might need to wait out on this. I see no reason why we should not be able to knockout AFs, it is such a major part of air operations in WW2 that we do not simulate. 

At the very least I hope we have lean supply in 1.36 in order to bring attrition into the air war, high loss rates should have an effect on the conduct of air ops. 

[madrebel 606]

5 minutes ago, raptor34 said:

With you on this, regardless of visual damage or not. Ideally it would include visual distruction of hangers to start. I’d also be completely behind visual supply on AFs that can be directly attacked but we might need to wait out on this. I see no reason why we should not be able to knockout AFs, it is such a major part of air operations in WW2 that we do not simulate. 

At the very least I hope we have lean supply in 1.36 in order to bring attrition into the air war, high loss rates should have an effect on the conduct of air ops. 

if your join date is correct then i'm guessing you never player 'the old rules' - suffice it to say the closest airfields on both sides NEVER had supply you could count on. squad night SOP was lift from monchen, sometimes dusseldorf, and fly as a unit to the front with RTB to the closest AF to wherever the group went bingo/winchester. frequently many 'AOs' were traversed in this and or the enemy's ingress lanes from their nearest AFs were patrolled. red fuel lights were something you actually saw with regularity.

the airwar was MUCH better back then, IMO.

[Merlin51 1,387]

23 minutes ago, raptor34 said:

With you on this, regardless of visual damage or not. Ideally it would include visual distruction of hangers to start. I’d also be completely behind visual supply on AFs that can be directly attacked but we might need to wait out on this. I see no reason why we should not be able to knockout AFs, it is such a major part of air operations in WW2 that we do not simulate. 

At the very least I hope we have lean supply in 1.36 in order to bring attrition into the air war, high loss rates should have an effect on the conduct of air ops. 

Visual damage is probably the easiest way to go, if you are talking about trying to shut down an airfield
You shut the field down simply by virtue of there being no suitable place to taxi the plane and take off.

A guy can spawn in, but he looks and rubble and blast damage everyplace, no place to try taking off.
No wondering why your airfield is out of commission, you can simply see it.
In theory, no host coding time needed

[Kilemall 2,355]

21 hours ago, madrebel said:

fair enough but remember, with 1.36 there won't be anymore flag stacking. we'll be back to the old rules and you can kinda count on the nearest AFs being out of/low on supply by default. this will mean flying from the next AF back. time it right, knock out the rear AF, now you've really slowed the bomber traffic and massively extended their ingress route. have your interceptors feast on the extended ingress route. 

i'll grant you destruction on the ground is significantly more historical/realistic but it would be a first of its kind and, a slippery slope. having something to play with drives subs, removing toys invisibly has a LOT of downsides and the subject should be broached very gingerly IMO.

AFs on the front line creates really unrealistic gameplay though. the inability to effectively knock out an AF that would otherwise be within artillery range and being bombarded via artillery is just silly. the protection it gives the defense creates an unending stream of bombers etc etc it just sucks.

Well, that's the AF fortress effect yes, but I'm thinking more in terms of dynamic player-driven 'starting trouble', you see a big red blob coming towards your AF and you KNOW they can kill all the stuff on the ground, might as well pony up and fight right then.

 

Point of it being visible is to give a specific target while bombing/strafing, and that satisfaction of seeing your hated top tier enemy planes burn on the ground.

 

Many pilots I expect would NOT be happy about this feature set though, at least when they are on the receiving end.

[blggles 74]

A certain amount of visible supply does add to the immersion.

Maybe one day resupplied aircraft could manifest on the field as PPOs. You can keep'em, but you gotta defend'em to keep'em.

 

[madrebel 606]

31 minutes ago, Kilemall said:

 

Many pilots I expect would NOT be happy about this feature set though, at least when they are on the receiving end.

would tankers be super happy if the train carrying all their supply got crapped on leaving them with nothing? i'm all for visible supply but having nothing to play with when logged in because the previous TZ lost it all isn't the answer either. has to be thought out a bit better IMO.

[Merlin51 1,387]

1 minute ago, madrebel said:

would tankers be super happy if the train carrying all their supply got crapped on leaving them with nothing?

no, you would have to cap the max loss possible from train destruction
as it is a game and not real life, the loosing end of the proposition still has to have an incentive and ability to play

[Kilemall 2,355]

36 minutes ago, madrebel said:

would tankers be super happy if the train carrying all their supply got crapped on leaving them with nothing? i'm all for visible supply but having nothing to play with when logged in because the previous TZ lost it all isn't the answer either. has to be thought out a bit better IMO.

No difference between that and RDP bombs delaying the entire side, except that someone had to strafe/ambush the supply train, and you would need some way for defenders to know which train was running when and also be able to jump into integral AA guns.

 

Similar issues with naval convoy play.

[madrebel 606]

agreed, and how has RDP played out? now i'll grant you that is unfair to the argument - defending against RDP isn't really feasible given technical limitations. its doable as the tiers progress but finding the bombers in the first place is a crap shoot. if that were different, i think different psychology would play out. currently i think the only way it plays out is a sense of stupid helplessness.

if you feel helpless to prevent it, then the insult after injury is losing equipment, now you're in a game where he who spends more time doing boring bombing missions wins - with an eye towards avoiding contact at all costs. doesn't make for good play.

even destroy-able airfields needs better visual ranges IMO. none of it will function with current fishbowl limitations.

[aismov 600]

27 minutes ago, madrebel said:

even destroy-able airfields needs better visual ranges IMO. none of it will function with current fishbowl limitations.

Yes. I think visual distance is the #1 thing as far as the air game is concerned followed closely by engine-off bombing, airframe stress, and realistic clouds.

[forrest 340]

18 hours ago, aismov said:

Yes. I think visual distance is the #1 thing as far as the air game is concerned followed closely by engine-off bombing, airframe stress, and realistic clouds.

I fully support these changes.  Especially visual distance (going back to pre-fishbowl, if possible), and realistic aircraft stress being tops on the list.      

[Scotsman 535]

Noted ... soon as my code environment is built I'll have a look

[aismov 600]

As I said in earlier post we have to be careful with AF damage. Shutting down an airfield will be such a high value target that players will simply kamikaze into it, respawn and do it again.

Outside of personal spawn lists tied to your RTB/KIA ratio of some sort of spawn points system I can see two reasonable solutions to the above problem of suicide bombers with destroable AFs:

1) drastically increase AI AA and add an outer ring of AI defenses

2) make destroyed AF repairable via a truck or engineer