Oleg Maddox's Room #1

[HenFre]

Just one quick question:

What amount of polygons does your models contain? For the groundvehicles, buildings and such?
Just a rough estimate..

[Bobb4]

Originally Posted by HFC_Dolphin

Birds...do we get to see birds?

Do you mean WAAFs or do you mean Women’s Luftwaffe Auxiliary Services or are you reffering to the feathered kind?

[Feuerfalke]

No, Thor is right.

It was quite common, that the other planes dropped their bombs when the leader of the formation did. You can see that in the documentary about the Memphis Belle, too (no, not the Hollywood-Movie). That is also visible on a lot of videos taken during bomb-raids. You will mostly see the leaders bombs impact before the bombs from the other planes do.

What you said, Monterey is true, too, though. All other planes had their bombardiers aiming, too, and this was vital for the mission success, because if it turned out there was a malfunction or a last second kill on the lead bombardier or even the whole plane, they could still release their bombs on target.


What Thor didn't say, though: This tactic is usually taken for carpet bombing, which means a large formation drops bomb over a wide area. Taking that into account, the (lead) bombardier of course aimed in front of the actual target, so the mass of bombs dropped right on and around it, massing the destruction around the center of the impact area.

Thor instead describes a "precision" attack, which of course uses different tactics and is usually flown by a line-formation and resulted in a much more concentrated impact-pattern.

[HFC_Dolphin]

Originally Posted by Bobb4

Do you mean WAAFs or do you mean Women’s Luftwaffe Auxiliary Services or are you reffering to the feathered kind?

The feathered kind. You know...Donald Duck, Duffy Duck, etc.

[T}{OR]

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

Thor instead describes a "precision" attack, which of course uses different tactics and is usually flown by a line-formation and resulted in a much more concentrated impact-pattern.

Flying in a line is equal to suicide if you're a bomber. I didn't describe that.

In real life this tactic of observing when leader's bombs fall and then drop on your own works because there is no delay (measured by ping in milisec. in IL2) between the server and the server and the lead bomber and the planes following the leader. When automated bomb release is used in IL2, with server delay and human reaction delay - and when flying online on a public server, coop you name it - this tactic doesn't work - every bomber that isn't the leader, no matter how close they fly will miss the target, and not by a small margin.

Because of this we're forced to use manual bomb release in IL2 - details about this method you can find in my 70 page manual linked below.

With manual release I can tell others to drop a second before I drop to compensate for TS delay, server delay and human reaction delay. With this method not only formation bombing can be effectively used online but it has other benefits - formation does not depend on the lead bomber and his bombsight computer but instead plane designed as deputy can take over anytime as BS angle is calculated easily and fast (usually given over TS to every bomber in case something happens).


Now, back to WW2. Reason why 8th AF switched to this tactic was because not every bomber had a bombardier of a same skill. And so bombs would land all over the place if some squadron had rookie bombardiers. Therefore, to insure tighter bomb patterns the best bombardier was selected to fly in a lead plane and few others to fly in the deputy planes which then used their bombsights but they didn't drop if the lead plane made it to target and was unobstructed on his bomb run.

For these reasons above Luftwaffe planes were regulary targeting the lead bombers. Flak gunners were instructed to do the same - they often even used lead plane as 'targeting point'.

Tail end charlie or lead - your choice.


Thats why formations looked the way they did. Their purpose was to stack different flights at different altitudes for two reasons - to make aiming harder for flak and to enable better defensive cover.

In most cases it looked like this - 4 squadrons came in over the target (squadron equals a dozen (12) planes and usually BG had four squadrons), each on different altitude and with elements inside it on different altitude. Getting the altitude correctly was the toughest part for AAA gunners. Fighters usually communicated with them to get the correct altitude. I could go on....


Please note this were 8th AF tactics. Let's get back to the subject - SoW.

[Meusli]

Another quick thought, to do with bombing formation. In the mighty 8th game by infogrames it would show you a position box where you should be in the formation, this would just be a wire framed box nothing fancy. In previous answers you said it might be possible to do on screen pointers for beginners any chance of this?

[Feuerfalke]

Flying in a vertical staggered line was the first method to beat the Freya-Radar for British bombers. Their losses went from 60% to only 3 planes overall with that method, while raiding Hamburg. Suicide? Your choice.

How many high-level precision-bombings were made during daylight, that really deserved the description "precision", though?

So the problem gamewise would be to actually teach the Lead AI to drop his bombs early and the player to adapt to the pros and cons of the virtual battlefield.

[T}{OR]

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

Flying in a vertical staggered line was the first method to beat the Freya-Radar for British bombers. Their losses went from 60% to only 3 planes overall with that method, while raiding Hamburg. Suicide? Your choice.

How many high-level precision-bombings were made during daylight, that really deserved the description "precision", though?

I ask you to look again at my last post - I stated this was for 8thAF.

And please, you can't compare RAF night bombing to USAAF daylight bombing.

Plus, in terms of precission night bombing was 10 times as bad as daylight bombing.

If you want to discuss this further lets start another thread, not here.

Originally Posted by Feuerfalke

So the problem gamewise would be to actually teach the Lead AI to drop his bombs early and the player to adapt to the pros and cons of the virtual battlefield.

That I agree with. I asked Oleg for a feature of 'red light going off' to help us bomb online. (only if it is historically correct, of course) I haven't played IL2 offline for last 3 years.

[Feuerfalke]

Originally Posted by T.}{.O.R.

I ask you to look again at my last post - I stated this was for 8thAF.

And please, you can't compare RAF night bombing to USAAF daylight bombing.

Plus, in terms of precission night bombing was 10 times as bad as daylight bombing.

I didn't compare them in terms of precision, if you reread my post.

But you put up a "general rule" that was not even general with the 8th, as there were a lot of different tactics and formations used for bombing, especially in reaction to FlaK-usage and coverage, enemy fighter tactics and target characteristics. Just compare strikes on Cologne-Wesseling to the raid on the Cologne railroad-station. Completely different in almost any regard.

The usage of bomber-waves was always the most lacking part in TheMightyEigthII and in IL2, but according to previous statements, this hopefully will be history with BoB.

BTW, I recommend the MightyEigth Airforce Museum. Loads of information and a great documentary movie there - when I was there, a veteran B17 Crewman talked a bit about tactics and ammunitions used.

[csThor]

Effectively what needs to be done is to model what we germans call "Zündschaltkasten" in detail. So the player can set the necessary variables to a standard both online (where the formation leader determines the values) and offline (where the formation leader predetermines the values, regardless whether the player or the AI leads):

- salvo or individual drop
- attack method (horizontal attack or dive attack)
- drop delay
- bomb delay

These parameters could be set in the Ju 88.