Storms Are Brewing

[Korona 0]

 

A Hurricane is on its way! Not just metaphorically either. Gone are the spiffy pilots in their P-38s and now the RAF is able to boast a full compliment of British made fighters, with their Spitfires being joined by the trusty Hurricanes. This aircraft helps establish the RAF as the dominant force in air superiourity in the early game.

The basic tech tree forgoes early bombers and ground support in favour of a very strong fighter force. When the Lancaster arrives later the skies should be clear for large scale strategic bombing!

This refects how the British were forced onto the defensive after the fall of France, concentrating on fighter aircraft so as to be able to defeat the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britian and prevent the British Isles falling to the Nazis.

 

In game the Hurricane represents the start fighter for the British. It will be the air wing of the BEF whilst they fight alongside the French to beat back the Germans.

After the fall of France (1st tech advance) the other sides get a ground support varient of their basic fighter. The British however will be fighting defensivly, and therefore get their Spitfires instead (one of the best dogfigers in the game).

 

British tactics during the battle of Britian intended to have Spitfires tackle enemy fighters, while Hurricanes dealt with the bombers, however the Germans weren't having any of that, and in reality the Hurricane very much bore its share of the combat. This will be reflected in game. The Hurricane is a well rounded fighter, and contrasts with the Spitfire that is expensive and highly strung, and much more geared towards dogfighting.

It will be capable of holding its own against most fighter attacks, and its eight wing mounted machineguns will be totally deadly to ground support or bombers - yes you can now actually engage and defeat bombing raids!

 

Actually a word about overal game mechanics is appropraite. 2.7 is an overhaul of the air combat system. The most significant changes are the following:

Firstly, the speed of aircraft is greatly reduced. This is firstly to make it possible to actually click on air units, and more signficiantly to open out the roles of various aircraft.

Broadly speaking aircraft fall into three categories.

The first are interceptors. These are fighters and can only target other air units. They are still pretty fast.

The second are ground support aircraft. Most of the start-game fighters can upgrade into these (simmilar to the p-38) and it also includes any air unit that shoots up ground units. These are now much slower but horrifically powerful. They take a long time to reload which reflects the intended role of these units - they would ideally be used to blast open a strong point and support what ground forces are doing. They reload too slowly to defeat the enemy single-handedly.

Their low speed is inteded to encourage the use of interceptors to defeat them (compounded by the flak changes)

Finally bombers are very slow indeed. Some carry machineguns which are quite nasty to attacking fighters, but they really need an escort to keep them safe. A group of interceptors can quite hapily bring down a bombing run before it can do any harm.

[Feuersturm 0]

Interesting.

[IconOfEvi 0]

That thumbnail actually looks real cool :)

[SovietSteel 0]

So this means no more building to much flak cannons(i mean to much)just to bring down the heavy bombers then :ph34r:

[flyby 0]

IIRC, it took 16000 88mm rounds of FLAK to bring down an allied bomber...

So yeah, FLAK isn't that great to bring down bombers....

[Reginon 0]

THUMBS UP!

 

This seems like making the game really various and multitasking...gut.

 

Well, considered you're there, could you change the 88 burst? :P

It just makes no explosion when hitting, it's like a catapult :ph34r:

 

Good thing one now doesnt have to build forests of AA, though.

And the chance to hit the bombing run is great :)

[Korona 0]

The flak now makes nice puffs.

The main idea with flak is that you use it to pick of any stragglers that the interceptors don't quite manage to kill. The low speed of bombing aircraft means you have enough time to engage and destroy them.

More about that later though...

[Reginon 0]

The flak now makes nice puffs.

Cool!

 

I also meant when one uses the 88 with ground attack purpose.

Sometimes it just hits the infantryman, he dies bleeding. But one cant just get what happened. And then you see the infamous 88 right there...that was supposed to make a powerful explosion.

 

Talking about aircrafts, right, reducing the speed one increases the chance of shooting down bombers as well. The game is getting more and more interesting...

[Korona 0]

An AP round doesn't explode :P It does punch a big hole in a man though.

[PsiSoldier28 0]

Don't they explode inside the armour instead of outside?

[AbbaZabba 0]

its gonna be weird watching slow flying fighters :(

 

how slow????

 

fighters have to be fast...

 

and .... u just use shortcuts to select units.... u dont need to slow down the fighters so that people can select them!!!! .... just hit ur shortcuts....W is for Air!!

 

hit it once.... and u choose all air units in that screen!

 

hit it twice!.... and its all air units in teh entire map!

 

 

 

<_<

 

 

dont slow it down!!!!!!! :blink:

[From Norway 0]

This sounds very good.

I think it's good that most planes are slower now.

Good move :)

[Reginon 0]

An AP round doesn't explode :P It does punch a big hole in a man though.

Didnt know that :o

 

But the British 88 were exploding with huge blasts when they were raining upon our soldiers at El Alamein...at least thats what i always read in the diaries of the veterans...

[ironduke57 0]

First they are exploding AP rounds. There are some different rounds which are AP (Armor Piercing).

 

Some type´s:

- APHE (Armour Piercing High Explosive)

- APC (Armour Piercing Caped)

- APCBC (Armour Piercing Caped Ballistic Caped)

- APCR (Armour Piercing Composite Rigid), APHC (Armour Piercing Hard Core), HVAP (Hyper Velocity Armour Piercing)(all the same, just different name´s)

- APDS (Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot)

 

Here you can see simple schematic´s of them and other rounds.

- http://waffen-der-welt.alices-world.de/faq/pz/pz_muni.html

(German)

 

Regards,

ironduke57

 

edit: Damn it! Link doesn´t work. Go HERE and then click on "Wie funktionieren Waffen?" then scroll down a bit and click "Panzermunition". There you are.

Edited May 3, 2007 by ironduke57

[Reginon 0]

First they are exploding AP rounds. There are some different rounds which are AP (Armor Piercing).

 

Some type´s:

- APHE (Armour Piercing High Explosive)

- APC (Armour Piercing Caped)

- APCBC (Armour Piercing Caped Ballistic Caped)

- APCR (Armour Piercing Composite Rigid), APHC (Armour Piercing Hard Core), HVAP (Hyper Velocity Armour Piercing)(all the same, just different name´s)

- APDS (Armour Piercing Discarding Sabot)

 

Here you can see simple schematic´s of them and other rounds.

- http://waffen-der-welt.alices-world.de/faq/pz/pz_muni.html

(German)

 

Regards,

ironduke57

 

edit: Damn it! Link doesn´t work. Go HERE and then click on "Wie funktionieren Waffen?" then scroll down a bit and click "Panzermunition". There you are.

Whoa, extremely interesting!

Thanks.

 

PS: IronDuke, your siggie rocks :D

[Korona 0]

its gonna be weird watching slow flying fighters :(

 

how slow????

 

fighters have to be fast...

 

and .... u just use shortcuts to select units.... u dont need to slow down the fighters so that people can select them!!!! .... just hit ur shortcuts....W is for Air!!

 

hit it once.... and u choose all air units in that screen!

 

hit it twice!.... and its all air units in teh entire map!

 

 

 

<_>

 

 

dont slow it down!!!!!!! :blink:

The point of slowing down the planes is for more than just selection (selecting the enemies planes, not your own you mook :P). The whole concept is to add more strategy into air battles. At the moment there is no way to stop a bomber before it drops its payload because it is just too fast. Fighters will still be fast, they need more speed to be able to catch the bombers. While the speeds will be accentuated beyond what is strictly accurate, this is to counteract the small map sizes. When we play on 80km^2 maps, then we can have aircraft that move at propper speeds. Until then we will need to make changes so that air combat is about more than just hitting the enemy out of nowhere and scarpering 100m back to base :P.

That isn't to say air power is useless, but it needs careful thought before it is employed.

[NukesforBreakfast 0]

How slow is slow? Is it like tank slow or?

[Mr.48 0]

[Neo 0]

Aircraft speed is now perfect...Still very very fast compare to grounds units but now the air combats look more real and less like a group of bees turning around! ;)

[Korona 0]

the Il2 is the slowest ground support aircraft and it moves about 150% of the speed of a transport truck... however it isn't a fair comparison. Aircraft can bypass all obstacles and generally speaking avoid the mess that is SAGE's dodgy pathfinding, making them massivly more versatile...

This means that tactially you need to think "cab rank" rather than "scramble scramble scramble" ;)

[Comrade Raptorkov 0]

You should add a scatter button for inf, that makes them speard out and maybe even garrison nearby buildings.

 

But I always remember seeing my tanks explode without seeing any of the silly big black tank round thingies, then I see an 88 firing invisible shells. And the Russian and Allied heavy flaks fire visible shells... :blink:

[SovietSteel 0]

Why don't you guys make more people garrison the buildings(especially the german castle) and also make the tanks and anti-tank infantry kill the units inside but only damage the guys inside by half rather than one shot kill and make industrial buildings produce more cash also the T3476 can shot its 2 76mm(the normal and close range) when its too close on its enemy and can you make some kinda of a squad of riflemans and conscripts too :)

 

the Il2 is the slowest ground support aircraft and it moves about 150% of the speed of a transport truck... however it isn't a fair comparison. Aircraft can bypass all obstacles and generally speaking avoid the mess that is SAGE's dodgy pathfinding, making them massivly more versatile...

 

Edited May 5, 2007 by SovietSteel

[Comrade Raptorkov 0]

The bigger building make $500, so, yeah they already did that.

[Korona 0]

- er what the hell kind of functionality would a scatter & garrison button for inf be based off?

- are you saying to be able to see the flak shells or not? It's not like you can see a tank round in real life.

- more people in a building would mean running out of exit buttons on the UI

- the building clearance weapons kill 1 person instantly. You can increase that number but you can't have a "half" kill... not that I am aware of anyway.

- squads - I don't like them and they don't add anything to the game. I hate how in cnc3 when your squads can be reduced in size with no means of replenishing them.

- the t-34 weapon is testbed thing... I didn't think it actually was in the current build at all... Oh well!

[PsiSoldier28 0]

You should add a scatter button for inf, that makes them speard out and maybe even garrison nearby buildings.

 

But I always remember seeing my tanks explode without seeing any of the silly big black tank round thingies, then I see an 88 firing invisible shells. And the Russian and Allied heavy flaks fire visible shells... :blink:

CTRL + X?