SlowLarry Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 What is everyones view on air attacks after playing around with the game? How to defeat them? Are they worth the money in a quickbattle? I had a battle recently where i had 4 pieces of aaa vs a couple of flights. The flak fired at the planes,seemingly without doing much damage at all as the aircrafts roamed above the battlefield continuously strafing and throwing bombs. So i set up a little test battle: a medium flak battery and a bunch of trucks vs 6 Il2, with various loadouts, all regulars. A medium battery consists of 12 guns of varying calibre: 2 platoons of 37mm, one of 20mm and one of quad 20mm. All positioned around a little wood, in open field. The trucks were deeply hidden in woods, some 500m away from the guns. So the battle starts and after some 2 min the first sounds are heard, the boys feverishly start trimming their guns towards the sky and finally start firing. Quite impressive view, i might add. The sound was deafening, really awesome! After about 6 respectively 7mins though the trucks were gone, shredded to pieces, one after the other. Then the planes started attacking the flakguns, directly, picking up one after the other. So i looked closer, and found the guns were empty, except 2. So in some 6 min of combat they had fired their entire loadout, leaving themselves defenseless. At the same time the Il 2 s had attacked continuously, strafing and bombing the trucks first, then the guns. After 10 mins, the battle ended with time expired. Some things to note: i do not dispute the possibility of planes, Il2s especially, to trash a truck column. Thats what they were designed for, as far as i know. Having done this myself when playing Il2 back then...Finding them in the woods though was a not trivial task, which they mastered. What about the ammo loadout of flak guns? Realistic? Too low? Also, of course, this is a single test, i ran it twice but obviously, not much statistical value in it. Would they even attack at all in such circumstances? Flying into a whole flak battery? There was a massive amount of lead in the air, pretty much everyone had a good view on the attack sector. In the end, the red side had a single man killed, in both runs. Yet i found the behaviour of the flyboys quite brave. Maybe a bit too much? So, what are peoples opinion on aircrafts? Allright, for another test i reduced the Il2 down to 3, still the aaa runs out of ammo before the game ends. They were not as successfull, leaving 2 trucks, but the game time was 10 mins. So if the game would have continued, they could have easily bagged the rest. No pilot was harmed during this little test... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hm_stanley Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Hummm.. interesting test. I usually load out AAA for my German units and I have yet to see a plane shot down or driven away. That said, I asked a similar question .. "how do shot down planes get modeled?" and no one had yet seen one shot down.. so, I'm guessing this is a very rare occurrence. That said, I don't know what the amount of ammo per kill was in WWII for ground attack aircraft, I would imagine it was rather high, that said, I would also imagine that gunner routinely "drove off" attacking aircraft.. which never seems to happen no matter how many guns I have on the map. I'd be curious to see if others have seen "planes shot down" and/or "driven off".. because, in all the games I've played, I've never seen it happen once. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonC Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Yes, the described behavior is typical of CAS in combat mission, and it is just silly. The planes are way too effective and flak ridiculously ineffective in comparison. This has been pointed out N times, with N large. But apparently people get their ideas of WW II CAS from playing flight simulators or from confusing the claims of the greatest braggarts in human history for reality. The average IL-2 lasted less than 25 missions - earlier in the war, about 15 - and didn't destroy a single armored vehicle over its entire operational life. We know that to a demonstration - the Russians fielded more IL-2s than the Germans lost tanks. Meanwhile, the average Flak gun also didn't manage to shoot down a single enemy aircraft over its (typically far longer) operational life, but they were cheap, and did average something like one plane for every 2-4 guns hunting them, which is excellent. No, the planes didn't kill more flak on the ground than the flak killed of them. They rarely even spotted them accurately, and then tended to shy away. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlowLarry Posted March 3, 2015 Author Share Posted March 3, 2015 Well, actually planes seem to get shot down, at least flying personal casuality is calculated( at least in BS i killed a couple of helis, they also show up in the battlestatistics as lost equipment). I ramped up the numbers of planes to 8 Il2s and 6 Pe2s. After the battle ended, the statistics said 10 killed and 5 wounded for the russian side. Yet they were not driven away but proceeded killing the whole battery. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toblakai Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 I made the same experience with CMBN, so I banned them from PBEM battles. Allied strafe air attacks are too cheap and the spotting ability is completely unrealistic (e.g. they are spotting hidden infantry or ATGs inside woods). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinkin Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Given this issue is brought up often, I wonder if it's worth the development time to deliver a sound CAS/AAA simulation?If players want a system, then we need to express what that system would look like. Sure, BF can research the same historical information as we can. I think this might be a good collaboration between players and programmers. Right now CAS is an under used feature of CMx2. Bet we could come up with a list of actionable ideas - if we really want CAS combat.Kevin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Personally, I'd rather it was ditched entirely for the WW2 titles. The times a JABO appeared over an actual engagement and hit anything useful are so few and far between, they're not worth considering. The development time would be better spent elsewhere. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 Personally, I'd rather it was ditched entirely for the WW2 titles. The times a JABO appeared over an actual engagement and hit anything useful are so few and far between, they're not worth considering. The development time would be better spent elsewhere. I'm with womble on this. I think players wanting a more potent CAS have a wildly exaggerated notion of how effective it was in the war. Air forces have always carried on intensive PR campaigns, and this is one byproduct of that campaign. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apocal Posted March 5, 2015 Share Posted March 5, 2015 Yeah, this has been mentioned before. http://community.battlefront.com/topic/113446-air-strikes/page-5#entry1508717 Flak doesn't do much in-game against aircraft. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted March 6, 2015 Share Posted March 6, 2015 JasonC, According to an Il-2 pilot in the thick of things in the latter part of the war, the figure was seven missions, not fifteen. Pretty appalling loss rate for the winning side, right? Helps explain, too, why the most produced aircraft of WW II is so incredibly scarce. This account used to be easily findable on IRemeber.ru, but it has been "improved" to the point of near uselessness, as I found coming of Russian Battlefield. Sure, the links to I Remember still work, but they no longer take you to the desired category, just the very pretty and unorganized page of random vets' accounts. worse, Search doesn't work, either! Regards, John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletpoint Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 Lots of things don't work well about air power in this game... Hoping they are working to improve things forward the next title. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 Lots of things don't work well about air power in this game... Hoping they are working to improve things forward the next title. I think BFC included air elements only reluctantly and as there is very little historical justification for its presence at the CM level, they have been reluctant to expend very much development resources to make it work to players' expectations. As womble stated earlier in this thread, it would probably be for the best if it were simply allowed to die. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bulletpoint Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 I think BFC included air elements only reluctantly and as there is very little historical justification for its presence at the CM level, they have been reluctant to expend very much development resources to make it work to players' expectations. As womble stated earlier in this thread, it would probably be for the best if it were simply allowed to die. Michael Well, either improving it or removing it would be fine with me personally. It's like the many bridge problems people have had. If it doesn't work well for technical or gameplay reasons, I would prefer it to be left out entirely. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted March 9, 2015 Share Posted March 9, 2015 Well, either improving it or removing it would be fine with me personally. It's like the many bridge problems people have had. If it doesn't work well for technical or gameplay reasons, I would prefer it to be left out entirely. Of course the immediate workaround is simply not to purchase any or play anybody who does. Although I would be tempted to encourage an opponent to take all he can get in light of their expense. It would prevent him from buying anything more useful. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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