Idea for a better a.i. by abstracting air and naval warfare

[Big Nev]

…
Let's look at the biggest air battle in history, the Battle of Britain. You can summarize the historical strategy like this:
Britain fought purely an attritional war (slight production advantage, operational advantage and conserving pilots by fighting over home turf) …

You missed the single most important part of the strategy. The RAF was outnumbered more than 2:1. A straight fight, even with the ROC, Fighter Command & the fancy toys like RADAR.

Concentrating on the bombers & only engaging the fighters sufficiently to interfere with their defence of the bombers. This is how pilots were conserved. Although many of them, at the time, didn’t see it that way.

The kind of fighting the AI will use, and the kind of overall "Air Superiority" you're advocating would hand the Luftwaffe an easy victory 100% of the time.

…
Germany first tried to gain air superiority and destroying all southern air fields, before Goering switched to strategic bombing (what a tool!).
That's it! Attritition, logistical bombardment, strategic bombardment. I fail to see the benefit of manually controlling each wing…

Ask Dowding.

I’m sure he’d tell you that his ability to retire wings individually for R’n’R (Repair & Reinforcement) and replace them with “fresh” full-strength wings at critical moments was vital.

...

as I said, IMO, it just turns this really fun RTS into a chess game, which has no story, no background, no context...

and no soul

 

[Taishair]

Why dont we just eliminate all the micro all together and just build planes, dosent really matter what type (too much micro for me fighter bombers research clickfest... amirightguys). After that you just select one big air zone that covers the world (so I dont have to make all those annoying decision or reassign any unit). Then you assign them to just one mission called "win" (so we dont have to pick any complicated mission types) and then your planes win or not...but no micro!

 

[unmerged(46341)]

I would be for implementing this for sub vs convoy part of the game.

I could be convinced that this is how air theaters should work.

I would not like to see this for surface or CAGs.

I Concur

 

[Big Nev]

Why dont we just eliminate all the micro all together and just build planes, dosent really matter what type (too much micro for me fighter bombers research clickfest... amirightguys). After that you just select one big air zone that covers the world (so I dont have to make all those annoying decision or reassign any unit). Then you assign them to just one mission called "win" (so we dont have to pick any complicated mission types) and then your planes win or not...but no micro!

+1




Who needs a sarcasm font?

 

[Midden]

I am looking forward to an overhaul of the air - anything will be better in my view to what we have in Hoi3.
At least the abstraction will solve some of this.
-Province airfield with a arbitrary size limit.
-Stacking modifiers.
-Changing bases by flying there.

What would be interesting to think about for the abstraction is not just plane numbers but the pool of pilot available often a significant limiting factor and maybe tracking aces could be modeled he he... there is plenty of flavor even in abstracting ideas.

 

[Dalwin]

Why dont we just eliminate all the micro all together and just build planes, dosent really matter what type (too much micro for me fighter bombers research clickfest... amirightguys). After that you just select one big air zone that covers the world (so I dont have to make all those annoying decision or reassign any unit). Then you assign them to just one mission called "win" (so we dont have to pick any complicated mission types) and then your planes win or not...but no micro!

All sarcasm aside, that is exactly what SPI's monster boardgame War in Europe did and it was certainly not the worst WWII sim ever. However, that was a boardgame and 35+ years ago, so we all know very well that simplification won't go anywhere near that far.

However, when it comes down to it, if I look at why I stopped playing each particular HOI playthrough, a high percentage of the time it came down to getting tired of managing the repetetive Air War. Especially since the execution of the missions and their effects, not to mention the air to air combat, never really felt right. I would have enjoyed every version of HOI more if the air system had been both more abstract and more automated.

 

[Fletz]

All sarcasm aside, that is exactly what SPI's monster boardgame War in Europe did and it was certainly not the worst WWII sim ever. However, that was a boardgame and 35+ years ago, so we all know very well that simplification won't go anywhere near that far.

However, when it comes down to it, if I look at why I stopped playing each particular HOI playthrough, a high percentage of the time it came down to getting tired of managing the repetetive Air War. Especially since the execution of the missions and their effects, not to mention the air to air combat, never really felt right. I would have enjoyed every version of HOI more if the air system had been both more abstract and more automated.

+1

 

[seattle]

All sarcasm aside, that is exactly what SPI's monster boardgame War in Europe did and it was certainly not the worst WWII sim ever. However, that was a boardgame and 35+ years ago, so we all know very well that simplification won't go anywhere near that far.

However, when it comes down to it, if I look at why I stopped playing each particular HOI playthrough, a high percentage of the time it came down to getting tired of managing the repetetive Air War. Especially since the execution of the missions and their effects, not to mention the air to air combat, never really felt right. I would have enjoyed every version of HOI more if the air system had been both more abstract and more automated.

Pretty much resembles my sentiment as well. DH is one step ahead of HoI2, but it really only works for subs because their missions don't need constant tweaking. You pick a region (not area!) and check "infinite mission time", then you never have to worry about that fleet anymore. In HoI2 you could only set areas and there was no infinite mission, so you'd have to click through the months...
For air warfare it slightly improved matters that you could select regions instead of areas, but due to the fickle nature of air wings, it still became a nuisance fairly soon.

That lead me more than once to completely neglect my airforce. For defensive purposes I always built an unrealistically high number of flak batteries and offensively just went for more tanks.
That surely worked as well as a realistic setup, but where's the challenge in that?

A simplified version would ironically lead to me investing more time in air warfare.