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ArchangeI posted:Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations is pretty much Harpoon remade for the ultra-grognards. Costs like it too. I remember seeing the price on Steam ($80 at the time) and choking. Every time I saw it.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 14:17 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 08:46 |
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Grand Prize Winner posted:This really, really, really belongs in the OP. I think all the OP needs is "just skip to the end and ask your question, reading the whole thing is fun but optional. Also, the answer to "is anyone interested in hearing about _____?" is always ."
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 14:17 |
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P-Mack posted:I think all the OP needs is "just skip to the end and ask your question, reading the whole thing is fun but optional. Also, the answer to "is anyone interested in hearing about _____?" is always ."
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 15:47 |
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Raenir Salazar posted:Another WWII aircraft question, I read that the effect range of the 20mm cannon the Germans used was 1000m, but what was the actual range in which a pilot could/would actually fire and likely to accurately hit an enemy aircraft? 300m is the number I vaguely recall and did this differ between machine guns and cannons? 300m/yards was a pretty common "optimal" range instructed by all air forces in all theaters, but that was realistically way, way too far for accurate shooting, especially with rifle caliber guns. The RAF had mandated early on in the war that all guns be converged at 600 yards, which was ludicrously far for light machine guns (eventually they relented and allowed pilots to adjust their guns as they saw fit). That said, 300m is still REALLY close flying; typical combat speeds for prop planes were between 300 and 600 km/h, so 300m goes up pretty quickly. The pilots/units that learned to shoot close got, in general, much better results...VMF 214 (the Black Sheep) started converging their guns at 150m in 1943; by the end of 1944 a lot of the best USAAF squadrons in Europe were using similar distances. Most of the elite German pilots (a notable exception being HJ Marseille who was some sort of aerial gunnery wizard) would wait until they were within 150m to even begin shooting, and several of them would close even further - Walter Krupinski liked to be inside of 50m. At that range there was a real risk not only of collision, but also of getting hit by debris flying off of your target. I think Krupinski was forced down a dozen times or so due to damage received from debris from a some poorly constructed Russian aircraft blowing up a couple dozen meters away from his plane. Convergence as such didn't much matter for the nose guns, but trajectory did, something the Russians didn't figure out for quite some time (and then promptly forgot during Korea)...the cannons had different ballistics from the machine guns, and not having them synched meant that you could miss your target with one or the other. A lot of elite pilots the Luftwaffe and VVS relied exclusively on the cannon...there's a great but possibly (probably) apocryphal story of Hartmann on the Western Front shooting down a P-51 with a single 20mm cannon shot to the radiator from a distance of 30 feet or so. All this sort of changed for the Allies when they started using fighters extensively as attack aircraft. In that role a shotgun spread was much preferred, so the wing guns on Typhoons and P-47s in the attack role were usually christmas-treed out well past 400m, to give a spread and to maximize the amount of time a pilot had to fire on a ground target. This also didn't really apply to Germans attacking the heavy bomber formations...they'd try to fire from outside of the .50's range for obvious reasons; the big 30mm guns could sort of do this. Really though, it was more of an exercise in survival than anything...a German pilot with 10 hours of training could just empty his guns from 1000m away, not have to fly through the death cauldron that was a heavy bomber formation, and then go home with empty magazines. It is pretty easy to just ask "well why didn't they just get closer?", but flying that close to anything, let alone a target, takes some really serious nerve. I'd guess this is probably about a 300m shot (note the German pilot GTFO'ing): While this is probably about 100m: I dunno, that'd be pretty drat hard to do, deliberately, and regularly. Then, imagine doing this in Korea, where the planes are flying 200 km/h faster than their WWII counterparts, but armed with the same guns...those radar gunsights were pretty important. Spacewolf posted:Costs like it too. I remember seeing the price on Steam ($80 at the time) and choking. Every time I saw it. I got it from here, for under $30. I assume it is legal and whatnot, it works fine on Steam. bewbies fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Jul 31, 2016 |
# ? Jul 31, 2016 16:22 |
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P-Mack posted:I think all the OP needs is "just skip to the end and ask your question, reading the whole thing is fun but optional. Also, the answer to "is anyone interested in hearing about _____?" is always ." Sounds reasonable.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 16:24 |
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:When the OP was being written we specifically decided against saying this sort of stuff in order to keep from discouraging new posters who might have valuable knowledge. I was thinking less in terms of putting people on pedestals and more in terms of pointing readers toward subjects that they might want to dive into, but that's fair regardless. And at any rate someone would inevitably get left out and feel bad so gently caress it
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 17:01 |
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bewbies posted:I got it from here, for under $30. I assume it is legal and whatnot, it works fine on Steam. Those sites can have some seriously sketchy keys, Rimworld offered steam keys to people who bought the game through them but had to stop when people started hammering their site with stolen cards, buying from their site, and getting money by selling the steam key to key sites before the chargeback hit, leaving the people who made the game with no money. I don't know if it's a similar situation there or what, it might be just different region keys or something like that. bewbies posted:I think Krupinski was forced down a dozen times or so due to damage received from debris from a some poorly constructed Russian aircraft blowing up a couple dozen meters away from his plane. Alternately some rapidly deconstructed Russian aircraft, it doesn't have to be poorly constructed to fall apart when shot from that range. xthetenth fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Jul 31, 2016 |
# ? Jul 31, 2016 17:25 |
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xthetenth posted:Those sites can have some seriously sketchy keys, Rimworld offered steam keys to people who bought the game through them but had to stop when people started hammering their site with stolen cards, buying from their site, and getting money by selling the steam key to key sites before the chargeback hit, leaving the people who made the game with no money. I don't know if it's a similar situation there or what, it might be just different region keys or something like that. If you've ever wanted to take part in a global money laundering and blackmailing scheme, websites like that are your opportunity to do it. Either buy the game from a respectable publisher so that the people who made the game get their fair share of the money they earned, or have the decency to admit that you don't really want to pay the price of the game and just pirate it. At least pirating the game doesn't finance international organized crime rings. (note to mods: I am not asking people to pirate stuff, just making a rhetorical point)
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 17:41 |
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Does anybody know about British defense politics in the 1930s? I'm looking at how the RAF handled its procurement, and I'm having trouble coming to grips with the narrative. I get that military spending was on the upswing once Nazi Germany started officially re-arming, and that this spending upswing might have been precipitated by the exit of the MacDonald government and the takeover of Stanley Baldwin, but that's about it. How did the three prewar British governments differ? Coastal Command is the neglected middle child in the whole thing; the majority of aircraft they had in 1939 were Avro Ansons, which were bought in the mid-1930s apparently when the government put out a contract for cheap air frames to fill up Coastal Command's numbers. The Anson would actually be very successful as the basic multi-engine trainer, but in the naval patrol role it was just woebegone. In contrast, by 1937, the British Government went to America to order hundreds of Lockheed Hudsons as patrol planes (a move that I imagine caused lots of bitching from the British aircraft industry.) I'm not sure if this is justified, but I have this feeling that prewar Britain had some sort of official/unofficial policy of keeping as many aeronautical companies in business as possible, both to promote competition and to be able to operate multiple types in the same roles, so the most successful could be brought to the fore during a war. This certainly provided diversity, but it also meant that British aerospace firms could only get to be so big. A hilarious byproduct of this policy is that prewar Coastal Command flew a huge variety of different types of aircraft, most of which were obsolete. It's like the island of misfit toys of RAF commands Interestingly, the British paralleled thinking in Germany regarding bombers: in the 1930s they thought bombers should have two engines for economy reasons. When they had taken that as far as they could, they started developing new aircraft engines with 2000+ hp - and these were vaporware/unreliable for many years. In 1937 though, the British picked up the idea of four engine bombers just as the Germans were giving up on them; they looked to the Americans and the B-17, and apparently thought "huh, four less powerful engines to deliver more bombs; that kinda works" and started setting up bids for four engine bombers. The main bombers Bomber command used were kinda eccentric as well. The Bristol Blenheim: A light bomber designed to be fast, it had been built with the Biplane fighters of the day in mind; unfortunately, by the time World War 2 rolled around, monoplane fighters like the Bf 109 had rather moved the bar, and they were very vulnerable to fighters. They did serve as early night fighters during the blitz with some success, and like some German medium bombers, they received a far bit of development to make them fit into new roles, first becoming the Beaufort, and later the Beaufighter. Each revision saw it's usefulness jump quite a bit, making it a little difficult to take the piss out of the original design. The Handley Page Hampden: Dubbed the "flying suitcase" by those that few her, the Hampden was another attempt to make a fast medium bomber. It had a fuselage so narrow that I think crew would have to cimb over each other instead of moving around; like the Blenheim it proved vulnerable to fighters. It remained a front line night bomber until 1942, and almost half the air frames produced were lost on operations. It was then recycled to second line units, (IE Coastal Command) where it was replaced by Coastal Command as soon as something better came along. Both the Blenheim and the Hampden bore the brunt of the hideous losses the RAF took over the skies of France in May 1940. One pilot! Passing the savings onto the British Taxpayer! The Vickers Wellington: Designed by Sir Barnes Wallace, the Wellington build on Wallace's airship building experience, and had a geodesic airframe of aluminum weave covered by doped canvas. While like all the other bombers here it had inadequate defenses against fighters, its unique construction allowed it to take ridiculous amounts of damage and still remain flyable, a useful trait in a early war British bomber. It served as a night bomber until Britain's four engine designs replaced it. At the same time it moved into coastal Command roles, where it was actually quite successful as a naval "patrol bomber" as they called ASW aircraft back in the day. It also had a larger variant, the Warwick This damage didn't stop the Wellington from returning to base, so I assume the control surfaces survived the fire. Another example of non-terminal damage. The Armstrong Whitworth Whitley: The Whitney was designed specifically as a night bomber, so it managed to avoid the orgy of destruction that was the British day bomber campaign of 1940. Like the other twins here, it served as a night bomber until four engine replacements could become operational, and then was retired from bombing, being recycled into Coastal Command. It also saw second line service as a tug tower, transport and the like. The thing people remember about this bomber isn't all that. It's this: THIS IS LEVEL FLIGHT For reasons I have a real difficult time parsing, the Whitley was built to fly sort of nose down in level flight, because, I dunno, the engineer couldn't be bothered or something.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 18:01 |
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Also, command goes on 50% sale occasionally. It's worth $80, but I admit that's a pretty steep price tag. At $40, it's AWESOME.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 18:04 |
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Buy Command at full price to fund baloogan's reregs
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 18:11 |
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Nebakenezzer posted:
I'm pretty sure that's to assist in taking off, and I suppose also in landing. The wings have a relatively high angle of incidence*, offering improved lift especially at low speeds. In return, the fuselage of the plane will have to be pointed relatively further downward to maintain level flight at speed. *For reference:
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 18:14 |
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Topical crosspost from the .gif thread:
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 18:23 |
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Well the hudson was an excellent patrol aircraft. From the british perspective I can only guess that they realised too late the need for a modern parrol aircraft to develop their own. Why they didnt select the PBY instead I think is a bigger mystery.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 18:24 |
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BattleMoose posted:Well the hudson was an excellent patrol aircraft. From the british perspective I can only guess that they realised too late the need for a modern parrol aircraft to develop their own. Why they didnt select the PBY instead I think is a bigger mystery. Actually, I know the answer to this: Saunders-Roe was developing its own twin engine monoplane flying boat, and the British figured they'd use that. I think this is also a factor as to why Sunderland production remained quite low for so long; the British figured that the Lerwick (as the Saro design was known) was going to be a cheaper supplement for it. Then the Saro Lerwick flew, and it was indescribably awful. I think by the time this happened, the British had already started ordering PBYs. To compensate for the Lerwick disappointment, they ordered more PBYs and cranked up Sunderland production. Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jul 31, 2016 |
# ? Jul 31, 2016 18:35 |
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Phanatic posted:Topical crosspost from the .gif thread: New TW game looks less buggy than Rome II TW, good
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 18:35 |
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Nebakenezzer posted:The Bristol Blenheim: A light bomber designed to be fast, it had been built with the Biplane fighters of the day in mind; unfortunately, by the time World War 2 rolled around, monoplane fighters like the Bf 109 had rather moved the bar, and they were very vulnerable to fighters. They did serve as early night fighters during the blitz with some success, and like some German medium bombers, they received a far bit of development to make them fit into new roles, first becoming the Beaufort, and later the Beaufighter. Each revision saw it's usefulness jump quite a bit, making it a little difficult to take the piss out of the original design. Finnish Airforce's Blenheim BL-139's gunner Yrjö Hammaren shot two I-153's down during one bombing mission in Winter War so yes, certainly good enough against biplanes. Also so darn British looking, in a good sense. What's the record of air victories achieved by a bomber during one flight? And no, a torpedo bomber sinking an aircraft carrier doesn't count!
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 19:30 |
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Nenonen posted:And no, a torpedo bomber sinking an aircraft carrier doesn't count! How about a dive bomber killing a carrier with one bomb?
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 19:50 |
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Were their instances of aircraft being hit by bombs dropped by bombers in flight? If I recall correctly I think there were at least "friendly fire" instances in the massed bomber formations?
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 19:54 |
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BattleMoose posted:Were their instances of aircraft being hit by bombs dropped by bombers in flight? If I recall correctly I think there were at least "friendly fire" instances in the massed bomber formations? http://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=17714 quote:B-17G Fortress 'Miss Donna Mae II' drifted under another bomber on a bomb run over Berlin, 19 May 1944. A 1,000 lb bomb from above tore off the left stabilizer and sent the plane into an uncontrollable spin. All 11 were killed. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Jul 31, 2016 |
# ? Jul 31, 2016 20:04 |
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beaten
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 20:04 |
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Cythereal posted:How about a dive bomber killing a carrier with one bomb? Sure, if the aircraft carrier was airborne at the time
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 20:40 |
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Nebakenezzer posted:
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 21:20 |
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Raenir Salazar posted:So doing some quick maths here, so if the Yak-9 "at altitude" could travel 600 km/h, if my math is correct, this is 167 meters per second? I'm giving it a watch and I'm already slightly bugged by the criticism of the BTs and T-26s on the basis of armour and armament; the Pz III and IV are still on 30mm of armour at this point, only slightly higher than the 22mm they're lambasting the BTs for, and likewise for the 50mm guns (compared to the soviet 45mm). This is also ignoring that huge swarthes of the german arsenal are still Pz 38t and Pz IIs, and I believe still some Pz Is. The penetration of the 45mm is, indeed, not fantastic, but against the near-universal flat, thin armour of the time, it's entirely sufficient to over 1km, hardly "point blank range". EDIT: Lest it seem I'm too caught up in hard numbers, that's the opposite of my objection: The documentary seems overly focused on the technical characteristics and not the situation on the ground, there. spectralent fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Jul 31, 2016 |
# ? Jul 31, 2016 21:25 |
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The armour of the T-26 and BT was indeed too thin for modern war, which was discovered during the Spanish Civil War and only highlighted by further interbellum conflicts. That's what caused the T-34 and KV to be developed. But yes, the 45 mm gun was reaching the end of its dominance in 1941 with German tanks that had 50 mm of front armour that just started being produced, but the vast majority of German tanks still had 30 mm armour or less, and even the tanks with 50-60 mm of armour had it bolted on (25+25 or 30+30), with the extra armour falling off after one or two shots. It was still very much an effective weapon in 1941 and 1942.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 21:39 |
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Yeah. Better guns/more armor won't help a tank that's stuck in a swamp with no fuel. Trying to read Schwerpunkt now, and I get how people react to my China posts- it's a baffling impenetrable swirl of names and places. "The 5th fahrfuvnugenstaffel advanced their pzkw6X3sfz tanks over the bridge to diggledigllrbrod," zzzzz
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 21:48 |
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Nebakenezzer posted:
That is a rather ugly plane.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 21:49 |
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P-Mack posted:the bridge to diggledigllrbrod," I know a lot of units got lost in the fighting in the USSR but accidentally ending up in wales seems a bit of a stretch.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 22:10 |
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P-Mack posted:Yeah. Better guns/more armor won't help a tank that's stuck in a swamp with no fuel. Yeah, it's pretty dry in that regard. Just endless pages of divisions advancing here and there and attacking other divisions, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, before marching on to other places. It's the bad old school of military history writing. Ensign Expendable posted:The armour of the T-26 and BT was indeed too thin for modern war, which was discovered during the Spanish Civil War and only highlighted by further interbellum conflicts. That's what caused the T-34 and KV to be developed. But yes, the 45 mm gun was reaching the end of its dominance in 1941 with German tanks that had 50 mm of front armour that just started being produced, but the vast majority of German tanks still had 30 mm armour or less, and even the tanks with 50-60 mm of armour had it bolted on (25+25 or 30+30), with the extra armour falling off after one or two shots. It was still very much an effective weapon in 1941 and 1942. If I'm not mistaken, the Soviets kept the 45mm as their light anti-tank gun in the infantry units throughout the war.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 22:25 |
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I didn't mind it as much as most old school stuff because there's a real thread of analysis and so on that lets you pull common stuff out of it well and get a good synthesis.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 22:45 |
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I can do some big posts on the foreign policy of the two labour governments and the (shudder) national labour government between the wars, as about 100 of my guys end up first as MPs and then in the cabinet. However, it's half eleven and I'm back from the pub so I'll not do it now in case it turns into "and ANOTHER thing I don't like about Ramsay Mac... But yeah ok I like him a lot let me tell you about the bastard Morrison". It's not all that interesting though, especially as the actual full term labour government was first sorting out the shocking Victorian state of the British welfare state and then suddenly thrust into the depression and finding itself entirely incapable of dealing with it (though George Baker's hero Philip Snowdon carries a lot of the responsibility for this), making the outstanding socialist government of the thirties not Ramsay Mac's, but over the pond. Anyway, will sort that out tomorrow.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 23:31 |
lenoon posted:I can do some big posts on the foreign policy of the two labour governments and the (shudder) national labour government between the wars, as about 100 of my guys end up first as MPs and then in the cabinet. However, it's half eleven and I'm back from the pub so I'll not do it now in case it turns into "and ANOTHER thing I don't like about Ramsay Mac... But yeah ok I like him a lot let me tell you about the bastard Morrison". I definitely want to learn about interwar British politics: it's an area I feel I should know more about ,so any effortposts or book recommendations would be welcome.
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# ? Jul 31, 2016 23:37 |
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Thanks everyone for your replies to my questions. I ask because I'm back to trying to work on my idea for a Eastern Front Air combat game using Ogre Battle/Tactics style gameplay (adapted for 3 dimensions) and I'm trying to very carefully consider the relative scale of everything when determining what I can safely abstract. If it isn't too much of a bother I could use some feedback, picture below of my mockup for reference. I'm thinking 1 Hex length is 200 meters. Each "Turn" approximates 6 seconds like in Dungeons and Dragons that I think works as a rough compromise between the split seconds decision making in a dog fight without being too tedious. I am thinking 200 meters is best because then a single 6 second round means a Yak-3 would travel 6 spaces in a straight line which would fit in the screen space of the game, as well as having your "effective" firing range also be within that same screenspace. I know the Yak is only 10 meters long, the game is meant to eventually be somewhat cartoony in its aesthetics, like in Advance Wars. Does this strike anyone as a fair compromise between what's "Fun" and what's "Realistic"?
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 00:33 |
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I'm looking for some reading recommendations. Anything on the tactical evolution of soviet forces 1943-45. Red Steamroller was very disappointing in how it avoided showing what Soviets units did to counter German advantages. Something divisonal level or lower please. Anything good on the Luftwaffe on the eastern front. In Wages of Destruction, Tooze points out that what Germany was dumping all the money in was the air force, and I know it played a huge role in the opening months of Barbarossa, but it seems to be getting overlooked in modern scholarship like Schwerpunkt and Glantz's work.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 00:57 |
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Raenir Salazar posted:
Yep, that sounds like a reasonable scale. Good luck ! Are you using any existing hex-based games for reference ?
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 01:12 |
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lenoon posted:I can do some big posts on the foreign policy of the two labour governments and the (shudder) national labour government between the wars, as about 100 of my guys end up first as MPs and then in the cabinet. However, it's half eleven and I'm back from the pub so I'll not do it now in case it turns into "and ANOTHER thing I don't like about Ramsay Mac... But yeah ok I like him a lot let me tell you about the bastard Morrison". I'd appreciate it! My first point of contact with this stuff is the time the British tried to build airship airliners to connect their empire together and it's not exactly a shining moment for the British Government or democracy in general.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 01:21 |
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Raenir Salazar posted:Thanks everyone for your replies to my questions. I ask because I'm back to trying to work on my idea for a Eastern Front Air combat game using Ogre Battle/Tactics style gameplay (adapted for 3 dimensions) and I'm trying to very carefully consider the relative scale of everything when determining what I can safely abstract. This sounds a lot like Sid Meier's Ace Patrol games.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 01:30 |
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From a few pages ago ..Kemper Boyd posted:I am pretty sure Steel Panthers: World At War had a "put down the Warsaw uprising" scenario. Hogge Wild posted:You can play Spanish Civil War battles in Steel Panthers WaW. I am feelin' the Love!! SPWaW 28 Nations 1930 - 1949 BooYahh!!! Comrade Koba posted:In theory, SP:WaW is a great game. It's the ultimate wargame sandbox - make up any scenario you want, using (pretty much) any Allied or Axis nation from the early 30's to the late 40's, and you can probably make it happen. Finns battling Nationalist Chinese in the forests of Siberia? Sure thing. Republican Spain vs. Norway? Not a problem. I noticed this last night, while I had been drinking. I was all ready to reflex-post ........ actually use the well known Drunken-Reflex-Post, but while my need to correct this was strong, I knew that it would come out all wrong. We've been working on this game for years ...... Yes, in the olden days there was a real bias in the game. We got rid of all that. Fixed as much as we could, new sounds, icons, a new pallette. A total review and correction of ALL the OOB's in the game. Tons of things..... too much to report. We bundled everything all together, (sorta) It works just fine in Windows 10, and we're well on our way to solving a niggling irritant due to new multi-processors. There's been a good 4000 D/L's of this updated version since it's intro in December 2015. SPWaW 2016 is a great game! And you can get it HERE!!! You should also get the addition Scenarios and Campaigns (plus a few patches etc) from HERE!!. There. I said my piece. Do with me what you will.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 01:34 |
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Nucken Futz posted:From a few pages ago .. Grats for making a great game!
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 01:37 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 08:46 |
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mllaneza posted:Yep, that sounds like a reasonable scale. Good luck ! I only did the most cursory look, and by look, I mean just clicked the first thing and haven't done anyting else yet. As I get further along I'll try to look for prop-plane combat hex games, any suggestions? Pornographic Memory posted:This sounds a lot like Sid Meier's Ace Patrol games. Hrm, looks promising, I'll check it out for reference. I can't tell very well from screenshots but I'm not sure if it has a Z-layer.
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# ? Aug 1, 2016 02:16 |