Apocal

Yes. No.

My face would look very out of place on the East Front of WW2...

Yes, you can see the status of air missions from scen auth test mode: place a ground HQ somewhere it can be seen, click on unit, click on air support panel.

I used towed in my tests.

I played the aircraft side in scenario author test mode to see how the aircraft were doing. It isn't like the AA needs any player intervention to engage. The quad 20s in my tests ran out long before the single mount 37s.

Four quick tests with a full battery (twelve guns) of 20mm Flakv, got "HIT" notices on several times on IL-2s strafing which led to a long "PREPARING" delay, but none were ever downed and "ATTACKING" resumed after approximately two or three minutes. I think something might be wrong here. Has anyone seen an aircraft actually downed or even had its attack broken off entirely by AA?

...hmmm... As it stands, you can buy TRPs and destructive artillery reasonably cheap and there is no "balanced" force limit in QBs on the amount of artillery and TRPs you buy. Not quite a free-for-all, but useful in a lot of situations where (realistically) inaccurate blind-fired arty wouldn't be since the TRP gives a massive bonus to accuracy and response time. Artillery lethality in-game being high is already pretty well established, so I see there are competing balance considerations at play, but I'd suggest dialing down artillery lethality and allowing blind fire.

Forgot to mention some things yesterday. First off: None of the tanks burned. Not even the ones hit directly with bombs so big the destroyed vehicle was left turret down in the resulting crater. It would be a nice-to-have to improve the burn-up modeling a bit to cover extreme overmatch cases like this, but I don't consider it anything but eye candy. This allows me to segue into something I meant to mention: the numbers (inconsequential air defenses aside) might be somewhat accurate if one converts KOs into "abandoned, but operable" vehicles that routinely happen with inexperienced tankers under air attack IRL. The bombs do regularly max out the suppression bar of tankers with near-misses, but do no damage and it never pushes over into abandoning the tank. Perhaps this issue would best be solved this way? I don't know, perhaps people with more East Front specific knowledge can chime in here. Moving to the second, the observant might've noticed two sets of numbers for the undefended portion of the test. I decided to re-run the undefended test portion owing to the possibility that aircraft skill not being leveled (it was the first test scen made in the set and I forgot about it) had thrown off the results. I don't think it changed anything substantial though. Thirdly, comparing the cost of aircraft used (four Ju87D [heavy], 1940 points) against what they knock out on average (2.8 T-34/85, 708 points), it appears buying aircraft is money at first glance, but tanks are the most survivable asset against air attack, shrugging off large bomb near-misses (within 20m) with minimal damage and being mostly immune to the most accurate and persistent method of attack - strafing with cannons and MGs typically takes two runs to destroy radios and optics. Meanwhile, even tank crews and AA weapons positioned in cover would occasionally be spotted during my tests, mercilessly strafed and annihilated in one pass. I wouldn't go as far as to say Ju87D's would break even or (god forbid) come out ahead on points, but I will say they are worthy of consideration, especially if you suspect your opponent plans on taking a lot of ATGs and you can get the (much cheaper) Ju87D [strafe]. Don't use the Ju87G, limited ammo and much higher cost makes it a worse option since you get less steel in the box, which is useful when shooting up infantry and crews. Now for the portion I address to BFC itself: with 25 (or 30, if the first undefended test run counts) runs, is this considered a strong case for adjusting aircraft accuracy on moving vehicles down a few notches? If not, are more data points necessary? Or is there another aspect you'd like to see included in tests? If you want me to put a target number on how I feel this setup should go typically, I'd say the aircraft should be causing three "abandoned" tanks (panic states resulting from near misses) in the undefended scenario, with one actual knockout for every nine abandoned tanks. This number should be scaling down as defenses increase, capping out at eight 37mm AA guns (two batteries' worth, 690 points total). Two batteries' worth of 37mm guns should be downing one aircraft and forcing the other three off with battle damage after a single pass, with complete regularity. Just my opinion. Finally, I know the case for adjusting the influence of AA is weaker, but I'd say its actually a bit more serious of a problem because highly effective aircraft being countered by AA introduces a bit of interesting play/counter-play (realism aside, of course) whereas highly effective aircraft that are not countered by AA are less a gamble.

I consider scenarios where attackers get mortars/arty but no TRPs to be slightly broken for just this reason, although I understand the balancing considerations involved. Part of the problem is there is only one kind of TRP, which acts as a well surveyed, registered point rather than a vague bit of geography on a map, so giving the player lots of TRPs is essentially giving him lots of accurate, responsive fires above and beyond the ability to blind fire. Guess we'll have to wait for another engine update before getting artillery mapfire.

I'm still running through the air strike tests guys, I just had a somewhat busy weekend. edit: Flak Undefended 1. 2 tank KO 2. 4 tank KO 3. 1 tank KO 4. 2 tank KO 5. 5 tank KO Flak 2AA 1. 1 tank KO, 2 AA KO 2. 5 tank KO, 1 AA KO 3. 5 tank KO, 1 AA KO 4. 1 tank KO, 0 AA KO 5. 5 tank KO, 1 AA KO (literal last second) Flak 4AA 1. 5 tank KO, 1 AA KO 2. 2 tank KO, 1 AA KO 3. 3 tank KO, 1 AA KO 4. 0 tank KO, 0 AA KO 5. 1 tank KO, 2 AA KO Flak 6AA 1. 2 tank KO, 3 AA KO 2. 4 tank KO, 0 AA KO 3. 1 tank KO, 1 AA KO 4. 3 tank KO, 1 AA KO 5. 2 tank KO, 2 AA KO Flak Max AA 1. 3 tank KO, 1 AA KO 2. 5 tank KO, 2 AA KO 3. 3 tank KO, 1 AA KO 4. 1 tank KO, 0 AA KO 5. 4 tank KO, 1 AA KO Extremely effective support isn't terribly uncommon. Judging from this, I don't think the presence of flak affects the accuracy or availability of aircraft. Flak is completely unable to defend even itself, let alone other forces. A single strafing run wipes out the 37mm flak gun crews, even with eleven other 37mm guns blazing away at the strafing aircraft.

Yeah, the campaign forces are somewhat huge for guys playing real time.

If you aren't sure, just wait for the demo to come out. Some long-time CM fans report they just can't get into CMx2 at all and others mention that they dislike the period of the war chosen for CMRT. ...what?

Is there any account of active tanks (i.e. not already knocked out or abandoned) being burned out by flamethrowers? I don't doubt it could have been done, I just haven't read anything indicating it was done.

I don't know anything myself, I just crib notes from the receiving end, who were in the best position to know what the effects of bombing were.

Because you post like Steiner: the same misspellings, sharing the same point of view and even structure your posts similarly. There is a good reason to use ground attack aircraft instead of artillery: aircraft can go deeper and don't exist off the limited logistic assets of your advancing forces like artillery. That being said, the story you referred to was hitting infantry in trenches + dugouts, keeping them contained within their positions until advancing armor was in a position to utterly dominant them, not knocking out AFVs of any sort. Unfortunately for you, Soviet loss accounting where available does not bear this out. 1. Not many that I noticed, but I'll start keeping track. Good catch. 2. The morale impact was restricted to extremely localized (in time and area) maxed-out suppression bars that cleared within thirty seconds. Tanks did not enter a panicked state unless struck by directly by bombs - which always knocked the tank out and inflicted crew casualties.

Steiner, most of the contention in this thread is about CAS against full AFVs. I don't think anyone is arguing that soft vehicles, exposed infantry, etc. could not be effectively attacked by aircraft.

It would be nice if there were tooltips for ranks.

So anyway, I've done a bunch of tests so far: ten minutes, four Ju-87Ds, heavy loadouts, ten T-34s moving through mixed clear and light cover terrain, 37mm AA if present placed in a medium density (I think) wood line, all forces regular, normal motivation, etc. Here are some preliminary results: Undefended 1. 3 tank KO 2. 2 tank KO 3. 5 tank KO 4. 1 tank KO 5. 5 tank KO Two 37mm 1. 1 tank KO, 2 AA KO 2. 5 tank KO, 1 AA KO 3. 5 tank KO, 1 AA KO 4. 1 tank KO, 0 AA KO 5. 5 tank KO, 1 AA KO (literal last second knockout) Four 37mm 1. 5 tank KO, 1 AA KO 2. 2 tank KO, 1 AA KO 3. 3 tank KO, 1 AA KO (got suspicious at this point and went straight to an extreme case) Twelve 37mm 1. 3 tank KO, 1 AA KO 2. 2 tank KO, 2 AA KO 3. 3 tank KO, 1 AA KO 4. 1 tank KO, 0 AA KO 5. 4 tank KO, 1 AA KO I'm going to definitely do more tests, but so far my observation has been that the influence of AA is fairly weak, even at high-density end of things. During none of these tests have all the aircraft been driven away (I can't determine how many - if any - have been driven off) as air attacks have continued to the very last minute and last second in some cases. 37mm guns a typically nearly dry at test end, with more AA present tending to cause more expenditure of ammo (some guns run actually run out, which did not happen in two flak tests) for reasons I cannot determine. It would be very helpful if there was a way to determine the status of opposing aircraft without hotseat (which would double time to test, effectively) so I could say with more certainty if flak is having any effect. As it stands so far, I don't think its working, but I'm still open-minded. Flight sim vs. wargame aside past this point: I'm not restricting myself to US/NATO or history, I'm including every serious air war fought post WW2 (Iran-Iraq War, Arab-Israeli Wars, Indo-Pakistan Wars, Ethiopia-Eritrea, etc.) and looking at the order of battle of other nations we could plausibly fight today or in the near-term. All of them feature preferential focus on long-range and mobile SAMs, numerous AAA systems, etc. with some of them spending on the order of three or four times their expenditures into fighters. In Falcon? I'd just fire my AMRAAM and keep the HARMs or ignore them totally by pushing up AB. Not like I'm going to die if I get caught. Well, multiple sorties per day are possible, but you pay for that with reduced sortie rates later on, with the sustained average sitting around 0.6 to 1.2 per day (depending on airframe type, maintainability, parts, etc.). The nature of a real air war is managing your sortie rates to ensure that downtimes aren't exploited by an alert opponent to play while the figurative cat is away. Done well (or if your opponent does this poorly) its possible to fly a modern air force into the ground without striking them directly. There is nothing reasonable about reconstituting a lost air force or disintegrated air defense system on a one or two week timescale. As for the third point, I already said the F4 campaign worked well as a mission generator, one of the best I've seen. But it isn't real air war, anymore than Call of Duty is real infantry combat. AWACS and JSTARS have little to do with SIGINT and GCI has nothing to do with it. I found Falcon 4 attractive as a study sim, I just don't feel the need to defend it as being realistic at scales above individual aircraft or flight tactics. Past that, its a cartoon version of real air war with only the barest concession to realism. I'm not old. Judging by the age thread, I'm one of the youngest members on this forum since I was born in the eighties. Most of the games I play aren't actually seriousface wargames, they are ArmA3, Titanfall, War Thunder, Wargame: AirLand Battle and Red Dragon, so my desire for visceral visual stimulation is pretty well satisfied. Talonsoft's 1999 BoB has no connection to Rowan's as far as I know. Its a turn-based wargame. I don't need to witness something happening for it to be entertaining, I just need to be presented with a reasonably representative range of choices and influenced by the same factors as a real commander would.

Uh no, enemy air has not presented a comparable threat to aircraft in something like sixty years with outliers centered exclusively around the Arab-Israeli wars. Ground-based air defense are a tougher, more numerous and more persistent threat to aircraft than other aircraft. Positive. Shoot down all of North Korea's MiG-29s or annihilate air defenses west of Pyongyang and seven? ten? in-game days later the forces lost respawn. Each airframe pushes three or four sorties per in-game day instead of the historically accurate 0.6 to 1.2 sorties. There is no SIGINT/ELINT functionality in-game: detection and tracking of radar-based air defense is based upon either their firing on aircraft or proximity to friendly ground forces. Higher than accurate (or even reasonable) weapon effectiveness is something that plagues the flight sim genre, but its made especially egregious when the player can reliably kill a platoon or two of tanks every sortie and this snowballs into the extreme influence of single aircraft (player-flown, naturally) on the campaign. You're right, I'm generalizing based on Red Viper circa 2007 or so, when I last played the game, but given that I can't find mention of any kind of improved SIGINT/ELINT or other electronic warfare improvements in BMS, nor dialing down weapon effectiveness to match empirical norms or even added decoy targets so I doubt they've shifted gears to make the campaign a realistic simulation of air campaign instead of a very good mission generator. Modern? Harpoon 3.0, Command: Modern Air/Naval Ops. For WW2 air campaign, TalonSoft's Battle of Britain from 1999. Testing is a bit slower because aircraft take awhile before they show up and you can't pre-plan them anymore. I'm using a quick battle map under three conditions: two 37mm flak in cover/concealment, four 37mm flak in same and undefended. Target set in all three cases is a company of T-34s moving back and forth across the map. edit: Actually, I'm going to use five sets of conditions: undefended, two flak, four flak, six flak and twelve flak because initial test runs have made me suspicious of something. Does anyone know of a way to track aircraft status besides hotseat?

More planes were shot down trying to kill tanks than actually managed to kill tanks on the East Front since mobile formations were habitually associated with flak units and even light flak organic to the formations involved would maul aircraft. Which is what I imagine is JasonC's big issue with this: aircraft knocking out full tanks in contact with the enemy was pretty exceptional, especially on the Eastern Front, while losing duels to flak was quite common. I could run more realistic tests later (if the download onto my second laptop works) to cast more light on the issue rather than fighting over relevance or non-relevance of the OP's test, if anyone is interested. No, the biggest threat is ground defenses. Killed more aircraft than opposing air in both absolute and value comparison terms, currently occupies about two-thirds of the thinking behind modern air campaigns. edit (off-topic): F4's campaign has the same relation to the conduct of a real air campaign as Call of Duty does to real infantry combat. Its a good tool for setting up interesting situations for the flight simulator portion, but the lack of sortie rate limitations, simplified target sets, completely hand-waved BDA, near-irrelevance of intelligence/surveillance/target acquisition systems thanks to perfect intel capabilities from the ether, frequent "respawns", dumbed-down EW and communications modeling and weapons modeling easily two times (and sometimes five or ten times) higher than empirically established norms, etc. all make it clear its not meant to be air campaign simulator so much as a flight sim mission generator.

American XOs without radios or FO teams that lose their radios can still call in artillery.

You play too many flight sims.

Probably because one target is a big chunk of metal and the other is a bag of mostly water. edit: that being said, the HE effects of ATGs does feel too strong for their respective classes in CMx2 generally. That could be an issue of misplaced perception though, I have nothing hard indicating that ATGs were necessarily bad at blasting infantry, I just notice a conspicuous lack of comment on their effectiveness in this role when reading accounts of RL action.

Yeah, its a bit of a well-known track and heavily associated with the Wargame series.

Does it change with date? I can't quite tell...