Jazzed about Flying Circus - Thoughts on Plane Set

[DD_Arthur]

Hello Gav.

[unreasonable]

13 minutes ago, gavagai said:

Relative performance is important, yes, and relative performance was significantly off for the first 5 years of Rise of Flight.  The duration of time it took to change things was not because of conflicting evidence one way or another.  It was more tied to development constraints, so far as I can tell.

 

Anyway, the question is what was learned from the Rise of Flight project, and how it is going to make Flying Circus a better product on the first release.

 

I hope that the team has learned that if they are going to adjust relative performance, they should do it from the basis of the planes and performance figures that are well documented, and adjust the less well documented planes around them.   Not make a hash of the well documented planes as in the last iteration of RoF.

 

There is always hope: but so far IIRC Jason has said that the RoF FMs would be ported over more or less unchanged.  That would be a crying shame: they have the opportunity to get a better shot at something that satisfies everyone (well, nearly everyone), if they do not take it, FC will be plagued by controversy from the start. So I hope that they take their time and try to avoid obvious absurdities.

[Feathered_IV]

I hope the AI can do better than RoF’s trademark diving turn to the left, that gets repeated all the way to the ground.  

[Trooper117]

50 minutes ago, unreasonable said:

but so far IIRC Jason has said that the RoF FMs would be ported over more or less unchanged.  That would be a crying shame: they have the opportunity to get a better shot at something that satisfies everyone

 

I hope that isn't going to happen... that, along with no SP element would be the nail in the coffin for me I guess.

I have already paid for a pretty good looking version with RoF, I might just as well go on playing that if that's the case.

However, we shall see... it will all come out in the wash, as they say  

[Gambit21]

3 hours ago, Feathered_IV said:

I hope the AI can do better than RoF’s trademark diving turn to the left, that gets repeated all the way to the ground.  

 

 

That's the one, singular thing that finally stopped me from playing it.

I'm confident that will be left behind.

[BMA_Hellbender]

Beyond just pure performance figures, the damage models (excessive wing shedding), gunnery (dispersion) and observers need to be looked at. Observers in particular need to be fleshed out more in terms of what they can signify for the mission (operating radio equipment, photographing, using the bomb sight) and how they act in their combat roles. Realistic g forces would be a good start and go a long way -- not just for the sake of FC, but all of IL-2 Great Battles.

 

Knowing very well that the team has limited resources available, I still can't stress enough how important it is to have these issue addressed promptly. I'm trying to make this point as empathetically as possible, before the Captain and I make it more emphatically.

[Garven]

I really, really hope they implement a points system for both photo recon and artillery spotting which is what the air war in WW1 was centered on.  In RoF there is no way to award points for completing recon tasks which forces the mission makers to center everything around bombing targets so that two seater pilots can earn points and this happens to unfortunately result in a lot of action taking place on the deck at tree top level.

Edited June 9, 2018 by US103_Furlow

[Feathered_IV]

5 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

 

 

That's the one, singular thing that finally stopped me from playing it.

I'm confident that will be left behind.

 

Me too unfortunately.  After a while singleplayer just felt like a merry go round with a slight vertical element.  I hope they recognise how important it is to have some good AI this time. 

[SeaW0lf]

23 hours ago, US103_Furlow said:

I really, really hope they implement a points system for both photo recon and artillery spotting which is what the air war in WW1 was centered on.  In RoF there is no way to award points for completing recon tasks which forces the mission makers to center everything around bombing targets so that two seater pilots can earn points and this happens to unfortunately result in a lot of action taking place on the deck at tree top level.

 

I never really understood why ROF never had a points system for photo recon and artillery spotting. It does not seem to be an unreachable goal or something extraordinary to make. I just hope they address it properly this time around.

 

And I'm with Hellbender on the gunners revision, hitboxes and such. Plus an option to remove ambient flak for mods-off servers (if they really, really want to bring it back).

[unreasonable]

Oh no, not ambient flak. I cannot believe that will make it's way into FC.  

[[N.O.G.F]_Cathal_Brugha]

On 6/9/2018 at 11:06 AM, Feathered_IV said:

I hope the AI can do better than RoF’s trademark diving turn to the left, that gets repeated all the way to the ground.  

That seems to be the AI's go to move in IL-2 BoX right now.

On 6/9/2018 at 5:28 PM, US103_Furlow said:

I really, really hope they implement a points system for both photo recon and artillery spotting which is what the air war in WW1 was centered on.  In RoF there is no way to award points for completing recon tasks which forces the mission makers to center everything around bombing targets so that two seater pilots can earn points and this happens to unfortunately result in a lot of action taking place on the deck at tree top level.

This is definitely needed.  

[SeaW0lf]

10 hours ago, unreasonable said:

Oh no, not ambient flak. I cannot believe that will make it's way into FC.  

 

Yeah, it would be so weird to have it in-game almost three decades after Red Baron and amongst the Il-2 crowd (it is too arcadish). I don't mind if they bring it back if they give us the option to make mods-off multiplayer missions without it and the option to disable it for SP. Then, as far as I'm concerned, they can make ambient flak bright pink.

[Gambit21]

While I in general don’t like the ambient flak, I’d be ok with it in PTO so long as it’s presence coiciced with/indicated the presence of real flak as well.

 

The reason is that we’re never going to see the kind of flak density/ambience that was present over carriers etc without it.

 

So I agree with caveats.

Basically don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

 

Now how would these zones move with the ships etc? That’s a bunch of editor logic that just doesn’t exist right now.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Not ambient flak. Make it HYBRID FLAK (tm). 1 lethal burst and 2-3 ambients for density. Should be visually excellent, relatively easy to program and a good functional compromise.

[Gambit21]

I like that idea Murf.

However to simulate flak over a carrier the still won’t do the trick.

 

I like that idea for other places/WWI though. To be clear I’m not an ambient flak fan. However the flak density over carrier groups is a special case and with your method we’d still need way more guns firing than is possible.

 

 

[unreasonable]

2 hours ago, Gambit21 said:

I like that idea Murf.

However to simulate flak over a carrier the still won’t do the trick.

 

I like that idea for other places/WWI though. To be clear I’m not an ambient flak fan. However the flak density over carrier groups is a special case and with your method we’d still need way more guns firing than is possible.

 

 

 

I suspect that it is things like the fact that even a small carrier group could have hundreds of AA weapons, hence thousands of projectiles in the air at once - plus the need to be able to see capital ships from great distances - that led to the Pacific being postponed, quite apart from the documentation of the IJN planes offered as a reason.  If the engine will not support a four engined bomber due to the number of crew stations, how can it support a carrier?

 

WW1 however absolutely does not need ambient flak or even ambient "parasitic" bursts, since the number of AA weapons in action was very limited: and most of these were slow firing. Given that the BoS engine can now handle fairly busy SP scenarios on a detailed map, it should have no problem with historically accurate levels of AA density. Where it would have a problem is in the number of normal artillery guns firing during a "big push": here I can see the ambient artillery strikes as seen in RoF being useful.

 

What FC needs is a new selection of ground targets,  especially horse drawn wagons and artillery.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

I suspect the AI will be a bottleneck as it is on heavy bombers. Perhaps synchronizing multiple AA guns to a single crew. Six or eight guns fire a spread with four ambients per gun. That’s thirty to forty bursts. Maybe break your ship into quadrants as well. Assign AA responsibilities based on quadrant. Gets you good visuals, good lethal pattern and severely reduces AI overhead.

Edited June 12, 2018 by II/JG17_HerrMurf

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

I hope for more realistic Archie - statistically for one plane down there ware couple of thousands shell fired plus flying low should make you easy target for small arms not big calliber AA. Tracking behind  obstacles is one thing to. 

[SeaW0lf]

The thread is about WWI, not carrier groups, so we have to take that into account. Ambient flak is one of the most criticized features in ROF over the years and they never came up with an option for us. Now that they are porting the game over, they have no excuse to not create a simple code for the mission builders to disable it. Or even to disable it on the quick mission. Make it an optional feature just like icons, warmed up engines and everything else.

 

BOX dserver / netcode should handle the amount of flak that they had back then (I think Arras offensive in 1917 had about two batteries every 5km over at the front). Take into account that it should be more in 2018, but it won't be like a carrier group barrage.

 

Ambient flak is an arcade feature and hinders spotting a great deal. They could even create some blank bursts, but attached to a real flak battery, so if a real aircraft is being targeted, some of the bursts can be blanks. Not just a cosmetic think popping all over the front. If you guys read Rickenbacker's book, flak was an integral part of spotting, and flak batteries even communicated with their pilots flying above. They were many times directed to the enemy by their own flak batteries down below.

 

In ROF, every time you get near the front, ambient flak lit up like a Christmas tree all around the front -- many times in a flak battery pattern, and around nothing but thin air confusing everyone. 
 

Edited June 12, 2018 by SeaW0lf

[Gambit21]

We get it

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

31 minutes ago, SeaW0lf said:

The thread is about WWI, not carrier groups, so we have to take that into account. Ambient flak is one of the most criticized features in ROF over the years and they never came up with an option for us. Now that they are porting the game over, they have no excuse to not create a simple code for the mission builders to disable it. Or even to disable it on the quick mission. Make it an optional feature just like icons, warmed up engines and everything else.

 

BOX dserver / netcode should handle the amount of flak that they had back then (I think Arras offensive in 1917 had about two batteries every 5km over at the front). Take into account that it should be more in 2018, but it won't be like a carrier group barrage.

 

Ambient flak is an arcade feature and hinders spotting a great deal. They could even create some blank bursts, but attached to a real flak battery, so if a real aircraft is being targeted, some of the bursts can be blanks. Not just a cosmetic think popping all over the front. If you guys read Rickenbacker's book, flak was an integral part of spotting, and flak batteries even communicated with their pilots flying above. They were many times directed to the enemy by their own flak batteries down below.

 

In ROF, every time you get near the front, ambient flak lit up like a Christmas tree all around the front -- many times in a flak battery pattern, and around nothing but thin air confusing everyone. 
 

 

Change ‘carrier group’ to ‘WWI objective point’ and my suggestion ports over quite nicely.

[Gambit21]

Your idea Murf would be far easier to code than moving, ambient flak supplementation in any case.

[unreasonable]

27 minutes ago, II/JG17_HerrMurf said:

 

Change ‘carrier group’ to ‘WWI objective point’ and my suggestion ports over quite nicely.

 

I really doubt that it is at all necessary - the numbers of AA guns were just too low, and there are hardly any quick firing guns like the WW2 20-40mm guns. What there would have been was a fair number of HMGs mounted for AA use.

 

The other point about WW1 AA is that it should be wildly inaccurate, as techniques and equipment to judge height were rudimentary, so most batteries fired barrage rather than predicted fire. RoF has this badly wrong with often ludicrous results: this really needs fixing for FC to be a credible simulation. 

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Until the advent of the proximity fuse WWII AAA was wildly inaccurate as well but I get your point about numbers of artillery/volume of fire.

[jeanba]

11 minutes ago, II/JG17_HerrMurf said:

Until the advent of the proximity fuse WWII AAA was wildly inaccurate as well but I get your point about numbers of artillery/volume of fire.

I am reading so report on the usage of french aviation in april-May 1917 and the AAA was fairly deadly, especially against "balloon busters" and "Arty spotters" (the latter had a very predictable behaviour)

[unreasonable]

1 hour ago, jeanba said:

I am reading so report on the usage of french aviation in april-May 1917 and the AAA was fairly deadly, especially against "balloon busters" and "Arty spotters" (the latter had a very predictable behaviour)

 

What is "fairly deadly"?  If you are doing artillery spotting for an hour, twice a day, for a week, a very tiny probability (ie in the order of 0.1%) of being hit by each shot is cumulatively dangerous.  The problem with unmodded RoF is that historically accurate flying is simply suicidal.   

 

Attacking balloons was certainly dangerous as the guns knew the exact height to which they would be hoisted, so the attackers could find it hard to avoid a barrage, in addition attackers would be low enough to be vulnerable to HMGs.  Nevertheless the great majority of balloon attacks would have been made without loss.

[SeaW0lf]

2 hours ago, II/JG17_HerrMurf said:

 

Change ‘carrier group’ to ‘WWI objective point’ and my suggestion ports over quite nicely.

 

What Unreasonable said: 

 

They are two completely different scenarios (WWII and WWI) and it risks ending up as bad if not worse than the current ambient flak we have in ROF. Back then the pilots even knew some of the enemy archie over the front, characterizing the crew as having good aim, bad and so on so forth. You won't find a cluster of AAA to synchronize in WWI (perhaps London and a few other cases that won't be in Flying Circus) unless we are back to ambient flak. And even worse, lethal ambient flak. We would be shot down like flies by our own flak.

 

WWI needs to address flak individually, just like we do in ROF. They just need to give us an option to get rid of ambient flak. It is simple as that. If they want to make it a bit lighter on the dserver, make some of the shells of a particular battery as duds.

Edited June 12, 2018 by SeaW0lf

[jeanba]

14 hours ago, unreasonable said:

 

What is "fairly deadly"?  If you are doing artillery spotting for an hour, twice a day, for a week, a very tiny probability (ie in the order of 0.1%) of being hit by each shot is cumulatively dangerous.  The problem with unmodded RoF is that historically accurate flying is simply suicidal.   

 

More than 50% combat losses were due to AAA.

After mid-18, the french Division Aérienne also conducted a lot of low level attack against german troops, and here again, losses were high.

 

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

1 hour ago, jeanba said:

More than 50% combat losses were due to AAA.

After mid-18, the french Division Aérienne also conducted a lot of low level attack against german troops, and here again, losses were high.

 

I read longtime ago a publication about WW1 AA effectiveness , it's true that effectiveness increase as war progress but this 50%   mean that there were less dogfights resulted losses. If I remember correctly in 1918 for one plane down there were approximately 6 000 shell fired. Imagine gameplay where 50% casualties are to AA ....

Edited June 13, 2018 by 307_Tomcat

[jeanba]

10 minutes ago, 307_Tomcat said:

I read longtime ago a publication about WW1 AA effectiveness , it's true that effectiveness increase as war progress but this 50%   mean that there were less dogfights resulted losses. If I remember correctly in 1918 for one plane down there were approximately 6 000 shell fired. Imagine gameplay where 50% casualties are to AA ....

The 50% losses were in the context of the Nivelle Offensive (April May 1917) : bad weather, low cloud ceiling. 

Generalisation must obviously be taken with care.

 

Same in late 1918, when french bombers were conducting low level attacks

 

In both cases, maybe AAA is the wrong word, we should replace by "groundfire" 

 

Edited June 13, 2018 by jeanba

[unreasonable]

2 hours ago, jeanba said:

More than 50% combat losses were due to AAA.

After mid-18, the french Division Aérienne also conducted a lot of low level attack against german troops, and here again, losses were high.

 

 

What is "high"?   Ground fire includes HMGs and even small arms fire: if you strafe columns of marching troops for long enough, one of them will hit something important with his rifle.  This has nothing to do with the capabilities of AAA, most of which could not fire at low flying aircraft at all.    0.9^7 is less that 50% - ie if there is a 10% loss rate per mission, and you make seven of them replacing casualties after each loss, there will be less than half of the original flight left.  So a flight of five might have one loss every two ground attack missions: a catastrophic loss rate in RL, but in the game you will have people complaining about lack of immersion.  I found loss rates in this order extremely immersive - but then I was flying DiD career.   

 

The only way to model  anti-aircraft guns realistically is to look at their actual capabilities sensibly, which RoF did not do.  Fuze settings cannot be changed on the fly to burst near low flying aircraft, and the gun officers had only the haziest idea of your height and speed.  AAA was extremely inaccurate,  and except for the occasional fluke planes would take hits from guns only if they were unfortunate enough to find themselves in a pre-set barrage.   Low level ground fire is best modeled by HMGs.   The return of the skeet shooting AA guns would be most unwelcome.

[jeanba]

I know that I don't know.

New works on wwI aviation based on recently discovered sources or new works have completly changed perspectives (for instance french reports from army and army corps HQ)

I quote sources which need to be completly reanalyzed, and especially losses causes ...

It is basically a "work in progress" and is quite difficult:

For instance, when you read a report of an Army  HQ and its attached Army Corps HQs, you need to check which events are duplicated or more : sometimes it is easy, sometimes much harder because they sometimes refer a plane according to its unit, sometimes to its crew name, not even counting typos ...

 

Discussing with english and US people, an interesting reading consistant with what I read seems to be : 

 

Two Roads to War: The French and British Air Arms from Versailles to Dunkirk Hardcover – June 15, 2012
by Robin Higham (Author)

Edited June 13, 2018 by jeanba

[unreasonable]

I agree that interpreting history is difficult, but no interpretation that includes things that are known to be impossible is acceptable.  You cannot traverse a WW1 AA gun like a HMG while changing the shell fuze settings every few seconds to shoot down low flying scout planes with air bursts.   No amount of reanalysis of documents will change that:  but this is what happens in RoF.   This is not simulation but science fiction.   

[1PL-Husar-1Esk]

I would like to see improvement in AAA AI in situation like this:
- stop shooting when two parties merge in combat;
- warn own side that there are enemies near.

All this happened during ww1.

[[N.O.G.F]_Cathal_Brugha]

2 hours ago, 307_Tomcat said:

- stop shooting when two parties merge in combat;

Pilots were supposed to stay away from areas with heavy friendly AAA defense as the battery would fire upon any plane in the area. Rickenbacker mentioned this in his book and the near disastrous results from entering these restricted areas.

[SeaW0lf]

1 hour ago, Cathal_Brugha said:

Pilots were supposed to stay away from areas with heavy friendly AAA defense as the battery would fire upon any plane in the area. Rickenbacker mentioned this in his book and the near disastrous results from entering these restricted areas.

 

I doubt that it happened during the whole war and in all instances, areas or that it was indiscriminate, so you can't take it as a rule. Like I said, archie batteries communicated with their own pilots up above. Rickenbacker also mentions that in his book IIRC. I think Gold Lee, Stark and others also mention it in their books. 

 

But I reckon that this is not a priority and it would require some work to make a bit random (stop firing in some instances and not in others).

[[N.O.G.F]_Cathal_Brugha]

3 minutes ago, SeaW0lf said:

I doubt that it happened during the whole war and in all instances, areas or that it was indiscriminate, so you can't take it as a rule.

Never said it did. I was just pointing out another circumstance. 

 

4 minutes ago, SeaW0lf said:

Like I said, archie batteries communicated with their own pilots up above. Rickenbacker also mentions that in his book IIRC. I think Gold Lee, Stark and others also mention it in their books.

 

Rickenbacker did mention working with AAA batteries but it was more of a special circumstance than the norm. Most I have read indicates this. Also, AAA did not directly communicate  with pilots, as they had no way to. Arty spotters were the only planes with direct radio communications to the ground, and only to the arty battery they were spotting for. (barring communicating with colored panels and dropped messages which required the pilots to be close to the ground and were sketchy at best)

 

Rickenbacker also said that the chances were VERY low that AAA would get you AT ALTITUDE, but that going low over the trench lines it was a matter of when not if you would be shot down as everyone with a weapon, from MGs to rifles and pistols,  fired at low flying planes. That is the problem I see in RoF right now, like others have said, as it is safest to fly low across the trenches, but climb high and AAA gets you.

[SeaW0lf]

1 hour ago, Cathal_Brugha said:

Also, AAA did not directly communicate  with pilots, as they had no way to.

 

IIRC Gould Lee (and others) mentions they used different ammunition (different smoke color) or blasts as an indicator, for example a single blast high above the formation would mean enemy in position to bounce, etc. It's been a while since I read all those books, but in no way flak in WWI was impersonal like in WWII. Especially from 1917 backwards. Like I said, they knew some crews down below just because they would be shot at everyday by the same battery in a given spot.

 

And the list goes on. Check Gould Lee. His books are really good. Udet and Stark are also little gems.

[[N.O.G.F]_Cathal_Brugha]

2 minutes ago, SeaW0lf said:

Gould Lee (and others) mentions they used different ammunition (different smoke color) or blasts as an indicator, for example a single blast high above the formation would mean enemy in position to bounce, etc.

Thanks for reminding me about that. Now you mention it I remember reading that too. That would be a cool feature to have!

[unreasonable]

5 hours ago, Cathal_Brugha said:

<snip>

 

Rickenbacker also said that the chances were VERY low that AAA would get you AT ALTITUDE, but that going low over the trench lines it was a matter of when not if you would be shot down as everyone with a weapon, from MGs to rifles and pistols,  fired at low flying planes. That is the problem I see in RoF right now, like others have said, as it is safest to fly low across the trenches, but climb high and AAA gets you.

 

Ambient small arms?     You are right - difficult to implement in a game in a way that players would accept, partly because of the absence of soldiers on the ground other than defined weapon teams, and also there is the fact that hardly any of the ground fire - with the exception of dedicated AA-HMGs would have been using tracer.  

 

One simple way would just have a lowish probability of taking a randomly located rifle calibre hit at some short time interval whenever you are below a certain height. This probability would be variable by height and location: highest near to the enemy front lines, but also near enemy columns. It would also progressively increase by date and at the times of big offensives.   This will usually just ding your wing or fuselage: but there is a real risk of a pilot or engine hit. As MvR found to his cost.  You could even make it non-zero low over your own lines.

Edited June 14, 2018 by unreasonable