Interception: a model.

[John DiFool]

I thought that I'd summarize some of the reasons

why interceptors should do better than attacking

planes when they engage in combat:

1. Interceptors probably know where the enemy is

much better than the attacker does (thanx to

radar as well as ground supporters and shadowing

air units). Perhaps any advantage here can be

tied to radar tech...

2. Interceptors can often choose the optimal

moment in which to attack. This advantage can

be modeled by the number of enemy hexes over

which the attackers must fly (the longer they are

over enemy territory the more opportunities which

the interceptors have to engage optimally): an

attack on a front-line infantry unit probably

would virtually eliminate the interceptors'

advantage in this regard (but watch out on those

long bombing runs to the Ruhr!).

3. A continuation of the thought in #2: inter-

ceptors are typically in a better tactical

situation than the attackers, who might be running

low on fuel (escorts included in this description)

and hence would not have the flexibility to fly

anywhere to chase down enemy planes.

4. Planes (fighter-bombers) loaded with ordnance

(bombs/rockets) typically are not very well

suited for air-to-air combat, even if they might

be if their loadout was optimized for same.

Hence in a fight with pure fighters, they will

be at an often-severe disadvantage.

5. Escorts: can help to balance the scales of

course, mainly in terms of #2 and #4, but even

then they will likely never completely achieve a

balance of power with well-prepared and equipped

interceptors (note that in the real air war, it

was more of a case of out-attritioning the

Luftwaffe than it was of defeating them

consistently from battle to battle: even in many

of the 8th AF's "victories" in '44 the Germans

managed to plaster quite a few bombers).

And one more thought: the presence of escorts

shouldn't cause the defensive efforts of the

intercepting force to divert entirely and wholly

to the escorts, leaving the bombers untouched.

The latter should still suffer some casualties

at the hands of the enemy, tho lessened quite a

bit from what it would be sans escorts.

John DiFool

[Flash Gordon]

I concur.

The current air-battle model used in SC needs to be overhauled.

Flash

[JerseyJohn]

Agreed. Everyone knows about the problems Germany had in the Battle of Britain, fewer people realize the Brits and Americans also suffered huge losses when they went over to strategic air offensives, and for almost the identical reasons Germany had fared so poorly.

The interesting thing is the Allies had the same problems despite having much heavier bombers that were specifically designed for strategic bombing missions. It just meant Germany countered with improved fighters and radar guided "night fighters."

The Hurricanes and Spitfires, as escorts, had the same range and personnel loss problems that doomed the ME-109's earlier in the same role. Also, allied crews shot down over occupied Europe were just as totally lost as German crews shot down over Britain.

As mentioned earlier, these things are rarely mentioned.

I tend to agree with Flash, the present escort/interceptor system seems inadequate.

On the other hand, later in the war when the Americans developed effective long range fighters like the Mustang, interceptor losses rose noticably -- by then Germany's ability to replace them was dwindling so it's difficult to guage how much of the Luftwaffe's demise was due to combat and how much was due to a decimated industrial base. After losing Rumania, for example, it was difficult for Germany to even fuel the planes she still had pilots for.

[Flash Gordon]

I would like the air portion of the game to have more oomph. I come from a WWII air combat simulation background so you can see where my bias is coming from.

[Yohan]

I think the whole air piece should be up for discussion in SC2. From the addition of Tac bombers to reduce the huge ability of fighters to thingas like the ability to deselect Fighters from an interception role on a unit by unit basis.

Right now the side that gets a lucky IT and Jet bounce controls the skies and the game.

[Flash Gordon]

One thing I would like is for players to have more control over what their air units are doing.

They should be able to have them stand down and refrain from taking part in any operations due to heavy losses, etc.

They should be able to CHOOSE which units to devote to escort, CAP and BARCAP duty.

They should be able to specify whether their strategic bombers are attacking the units in a hex or the industrial structure in the hex.

[Desert Dave]

As originally posted by Yohan:

Right now the side that gets a lucky IT and Jet bounce controls the skies and the game.

I am thinking that the next patch will address that issue. Better research development and achievement will tame that unruly Air beast.

While I can understand the desire for more control over air units, and more detail in terms of specific activities, my feeling is that SC models the Air war pretty well. :cool:

These good ideas can be debated for SC2.

After all, this is a GRAND strategy game, and some finer aspects must be generalized, as is done with Anit-Tank and otherwise improved unit categories.

One thing you do have to pay attention to -- the placement (or, removal -- out of range) of Air Units. This can be an "art" in itself, paying strict attention to which HQs are where.

Given the parameters that have been installed, it then becomes necessary to adapt your strategies to the particular game at hand, and, as is mostly the case in this instance -- or indeed any real-life situation... not the other way around.

[dougmangin]

Originally posted by Immer Etwas:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> As originally posted by Yohan:

Right now the side that gets a lucky IT and Jet bounce controls the skies and the game.

I am thinking that the next patch will address that issue. Better research development and achievement will tame that unruly Air beast.

While I can understand the desire for more control over air units, and more detail in terms of specific activities, my feeling is that SC models the Air war pretty well. :cool:

These good ideas can be debated for SC2.

After all, this is a GRAND strategy game, and some finer aspects must be generalized, as is done with Anit-Tank and otherwise improved unit categories.

One thing you do have to pay attention to -- the placement (or, removal -- out of range) of Air Units. This can be an "art" in itself, paying strict attention to which HQs are where.

Given the parameters that have been installed, it then becomes necessary to adapt your strategies to the particular game at hand, and, as is mostly the case in this instance -- or indeed any real-life situation... not the other way around. </font>

[JerseyJohn]

The lack of control must be a carry over from COS. In that game you not only couldn't control interception, if you ordered an air strike you clicked on the enemy unit and didn't know which of your own air units would be carrying it out!

[pzgndr]

But I have to believe, even at this scale, that a nation would be able to choose when, where, and how its units operate. Every other kind of units allows you this degree of control - why not air units too?

Two reasons - PBEM and TCP/IP. Interactive decision points within a game turn require additional phases. SC is set up now where there is no interaction by the non-phasing player. This is obviously frustrating on one hand, but simple and effective on the other.

How much control do we really need without compromising simplicity? A nice feature for SC2 would be to provide an on/off toggle on each air unit. Turn it off for individual units if you don't want them to escort or intercept. Problem is, how to change an option after a unit has moved - this could be tricky. Another possibility is to let players set an SOP threshold for all their air units, like only units with stength 7 or more can intercept or escort. It's got to be something you set during your turn and then let the computer handle things. Otherwise, you're looking at making the game much more complicated if you want to make individual decisions about whether an air unit engages or not.

There is definitely an art to where you place air units in SC. I have lost air units time and time again by keeping understrength units too close to the front rather than move them away, and it burns me every time. That's FOW. Without seeing all enemy air units in interception range (beyond spotting range) or knowing their strengths, you take risks. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes he gets you. Things like that happen in war.

One other thing to think about for SC2 is the idea that interceptors should have some benefit. The air-to-air combat results do not take into account the type of air combat. Perhaps a small bonus could be considered, but I'm reluctant to push for this one. Let supply, leadership and experience provide the differences here.

[JerseyJohn]

Makes sense to me after Bill's explanation -- glad he offered it. I can't imagine being able to play pbem with the interception choice. If the intercept choice were ever developed it would have to be disabled for Human v. Human.

[Flash Gordon]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

The lack of control must be a carry over from COS. In that game you not only couldn't control interception, if you ordered an air strike you clicked on the enemy unit and didn't know which of your own air units would be carrying it out!

I'm playing COS right now and THAT feature really bugs me - sometimes, the least optimal air unit is the one doing the air strike! Good Lord. The other feature I don't like about COS is the fact that once you buy a unit from the "catalog", if it is completely destroyed, you can't buy any more - created an odd situation in one game where I decimated the Royal Navy but lost most of my ships...and couldn't "buy" anymore despite having resources to do so.

As for interceptions - I think it's a simple matter to just have "standing orders" for air units. Just let the the player determine whether a unit is standing down, or if it is available for BARCAP duty. THIS would not undermine the PBEM capability of the game. The other gripe about interceptions, i.e. the losses they take are too high, can be addressed by letting the players set a loss level at which the unit doing the intercepting will RTB, i.e. if it is set at 25%. Just adding a few more options like this can add to the flavour of the game while retaining the PBEM playability that it currently has. Also, when a player launches a strike, he can also specify whether he wants his raid to be escorted or not and which unit he wants to do the escorting.

[JerseyJohn]

-- Flash --

I almost forgot how aggravating COS could be -- not only would the weakest airfleet respond, it would often drop dead from the effort!

In COS -- Lost warships can't be replaced and once you've built the ones you're allowed that's it -- if, after building them, the Germans lose Bismark and Tirpitz they have no other BBs to build! Lost transports can be rebuilt but that's about it for naval builds.

COS also has a lot of good features. But the AI seems to cheat at times. At first I thought I was going nuts, then I noticed units it shouldn't have been able to build were suddenly appearing, etc..

It needed an overhaul but I think the move from DOS to Windows caught it's designers by surprise. Unless it's designers are the guys who made SC, in which case they should come out of the woodwork and enlighten those who enjoy both games, and there are quite a few of us.

I also agree that the SC issues we're talking about here should be easily implemented -- standing orders, etc., and it would give a more realistic feel to the game.

[ November 19, 2002, 02:48 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Flash Gordon]

PLEASE do not tell me that the AI in COS cheats. I've been playing it a lot recently. However, if it DOES cheat, it may explain why I've been consistently losing (yeah...that's it...it's cheating).

The "can't build units once they are destroyed" thing is my biggest gripe about COS. In one game, through careful use of sea and air power and strategic bombing, I left the Royal Navy a pitiful shell of its former self. Unfortunately, I couldn't capitalize happy development on this because I had no capital ships left to build :-(. Also, the game sometimes won't let you land an amphibious force on a coast line, forcing you to dump that back where you got them from , leaving you with a rather vulnerable transport ship in an area teeming with warships.

With that being said, SC2 can become MUCH MORE than SC and COS by taking some of the good features in both games and tightening up how air units work. I really liked the COS feature where you would buy a unit and then have to wait for it to be available. This really cut down on the BANG you got an army, air armada, navy overnight problem that SC currently has. Also, the fact that units would retreat and that units could move before AND after attacks and that over-run attacks were allowed made certain aspects of COS superior to SC. Both games, however, suffered from the one-unit stacking rule, which I think is silly. IMHO, friendly units should be able to move through and stack in hexes containing friendly units, possibly paying a movement penalty to simulate the fact that things might get congested and chaotic due to "traffic" in that hex.

Another feature of COS that I liked was the political model - you could use your prestige points to push certain nations to join the Axis or Allies - I MUCH prefer this to the way politics work in SC.

[JerseyJohn]

I played games against COS where, as the Axis, I suddenly saw Russian infantry units become Air Units and, as the Allies, saw German infantry corps do the same thing, become airfleets -- another time I surrounded and destroyed Montgomery in Spain, meaning he couldn't return for a full year and at full price, and saw the AI resurrect him the very next turn.

That sort of thing may not be cheating. On the other hand, if it isn't cheating, what is it?

I also like the political facet, at least it's got some choice factor. Here too, as the Axis it's very hard for the human to get Spain to join and impossible to get Turkey, yet the AI, as Axis, seems to have no trouble at all.

I think the designers want to give the computer a little handicap, but went too far. Which is not to say the computer isn't beatable, it is. Also, I understand now that if you ignore the messages, you can play the game indefinitely as long as neither side has actually filled it's victory conditions.

[ November 19, 2002, 06:22 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[dougmangin]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

Makes sense to me after Bill's explanation -- glad he offered it. I can't imagine being able to play pbem with the interception choice. If the intercept choice were ever developed it would have to be disabled for Human v. Human.

Bill thanks for the insight, and you are right - this may very well add a degree of complexity that just wont work with pbem and/or tcp/ip. I do like the idea of say verses AI you can choose, intercept yes or no - but in playing a human you can disable it, or set up a threshold - either in terms of unit strength or in terms of expected losses. Perhaps you say no unit with a strength less than 7 will intercept - and no unit will intercept if expected losses are more than 2 - something like that.

Pheasible, I dont know I am as far from computer programming literate as you can get. But one question I still have that I dont know what, or IF there is an answer to is how can you choose where an intercept occours - which one, some are obviously more critical than others. Germany attacking a wounded naval unit that may be completely destroyed or a full strength army just to weaken it.

It just seems so unfair to watch an interception occour and then watch another attack while you are sitting there thinking to yourself - that is NOT what I wanted. And I am sure there is an element to war where commanders made a choice based on bad information - they later realized was the wrong one. So blunders happen - I just dont like them happening not because of my incompetence (which there is a substantial amount of at times) or choice - rather it is because the machine arbitrarily chooses for you.

I just cannot think of another aspect of this game where you are not in control of where and when your units attack. If I attack an air fleet on the ground, sure they should not have a choice. But if an air unit is going to be sortied - I should have the choice of where and when it goes. I dont know how that can be accomplished - it seems it might be more difficult than I realized. Still I can whine and pout about it - may not fix it but makes me feel better