Unkillable aircraft!!!

[DRG]

Deputy said:

I do have 2 questions concerning hiding from air power and spotting planes.
1. Spotting planes... If I have my units in trees, do spotting planes still "see" them all the time?

2.Is it even worth pulling off a road and hiding in trees to defend against air attacks? Or does any overhead plane "automatically" see every unit below them?

It's very simple and better to test this yourself. Set up a test game where both sides are human, ignore the requests for passwords but you will have to save the game in a save slot. Set up player two with some units in the open as a test but set up others in the best concealment you can find then set up player ones spotting aircraft and airstrikes based on what you already know about P2's disposition ( attack areas with AND without enemy units ) then watch what is revelled when the airstrikes come in so use as big a map as possible so none of P1's ground units can see any of P2's units. When the air attack is over and the game goes to P2 you can check what you saw during the attacks against what the actual dispositions were then end P2's turn and recheck what P1 can now see then run the test a half dozen more times with different visibility and see the results.

Don

[PanzerBob]

Freakin' JABO’s certainly are a pain, as they should be, but accept for bad tactical moves, such as bunching up units too much I've never had anymore problems than to be expected. The only thing that gets me is when the Enemy decides to call in several Sqdns of CAS. They can certainly suppress the hell out of a lot of units. However C'est l'guerre.

LAW’s in the game are nasty up close when they work, that is why infantry support is essential. Remember your vehicle is in a 50m hex so a frontal hit could be just as easy a track or vision slit. If I lose a panzer to a bazooka team I’d be hard pressed to counter it by moving another panzer in to counter it. Infantry or suppressing fire with arty or MG’s makes more sense.

Note to Chuck if your spotter planes are doing 500mph no wonder they can't spot anything!


Love this game, Prosit!

[Marek_Tucan]

PanzerBob said:
Infantry or suppressing fire with arty or MG’s makes more sense.

Second that. Especially useful for suppression is "Z-fire", IE blind area fire into a given hex. works well even if you don't have a direct LOS (say blocked by smoke or by wreck), if you mass enough units to that task - MMG/HMG units are good at it, ESPECIALLY those with three weapons

[chuckfourth]

Hi Panzerbob
I am talking about fighter bombers flying at 500mph not spotter planes.
Spotter planes have a different problem, their photographs have to be returned to HQ developed made into maps etc, so spotter planes IMHO dont really belong in the game. I dont mean airiel FOs, which I believe the game doesnt have because of playbalance issues. The same reason I dont like the fighter bomber spotting ability.
Best Regards Chuck.

[Marek_Tucan]

Atleast US troops in WWII made extensive use of light AOP aircrafts not only for arety spotting but also for frontline recon, the aircrafts being in direct radio contacts with units on pretty low level - online spottzing, no need to take and develop pics.

[chuckfourth]

Hi Marek
Very interesting would you be able to expand on what a low level unit is?
The problem is obviously that enemy units spotted by Light AOP can easily turn out to be friendly and wont appreciate being fired on by there own arty etc. A commander at a "Low" level cant check the spotted units identity. you may as well send the info to someons who can, divisional staff.
Though in the game every unit knows everything on a battlefield you are a brave or a very well informed man to deviate from the plan. Or jump in with an "opportunity" attack.
All these things are normally coordinated from a higher level, the divisional staff, which is where I imagine all ariel recon is planned from and feeds its information into.
Best Regards Chuck.

[thatguy96]

chuckfourth said:
Hi Marek
Very interesting would you be able to expand on what a low level unit is?
The problem is obviously that enemy units spotted by Light AOP can easily turn out to be friendly and wont appreciate being fired on by there own arty etc. A commander at a "Low" level cant check the spotted units identity. you may as well send the info to someons who can, divisional staff.
Though in the game every unit knows everything on a battlefield you are a brave or a very well informed man to deviate from the plan. Or jump in with an "opportunity" attack.
All these things are normally coordinated from a higher level, the divisional staff, which is where I imagine all ariel recon is planned from and feeds its information into.
Best Regards Chuck.

Aerial reconnaissance and dedicated FAC and artillery spotting is different. The US at least used light aircraft to direct artillery strikes, naval bombardment, and the like in direct or more or less direct (normal chains of command apply) contact with the firing units. The USMC still considers artillery spotting and the like to be one of the roles for helicopters which replaced these light aircraft. These aircraft were also used in the convoy escort role and others where the plan was to spot ambushes and possible enemy formations in real time.

I'd be surprised to find any of the light aircraft in game to be purely photographic reconnaissance, which you are correct, until recently required that film be returned to base for processing and analysis.

Edit: I just went and looked myself and from what I see the only issue is that the aircraft types themselves might be wrong. There's a heavy use of fighters in the USA and USMC OOBs to simulate this, probably because it was easier to copy some basic types rather than add a myriad of little known other types. However, it is still important to note that there were separate designations for Observation (O-X) and photographic reconnaissance (F-X) for a reason, as well as, Liaison aircraft being used in this role (L-X).

[PatG]

Back in ancient times before the coming of the PC, we used to play war games with little cardboard squares on paper maps. In games like Panzer Blitz intelligence and communication was absolute. As a player, you saw all of the enemies deployment and had near absolute control over your pieces. And yet, we had a good time playing and learned quite a bit about both history and tactics.

The SP series takes that to another level. The few double blind refereed Squad leader games I played in those days were an unequalled experience until I picked up SPWW2. Is aerial recce and command control a bit too powerful in SP*? yes - but it is far better than the old board game days.
Until (and a big "if") linked scenarios can be taken to the level where your recce/ground attack plane spots a enemy troop concentration in Scenario 1 but you don't get the report until Scenario 2, it's either go with the existing model or nothing at all.

For PBEM, agree on use of air and recce with your opponent first. For the AI, don't give it any airstrikes (though I don't know how well the AI uses air inteligence anyway).

And for the accuracy nuts, I know I have read a couple of accounts where observers wrote out a quick sitrep, tied it to a wrench and dropped it to the troops below - no developer fixer or stop bath required.