Hell-Divers! After Action Report

[DoubleTap]

Gents,

Well, Hell-Divers! kind of turned into Hell-Night with a swarm of technical glitches plaguing us early on before we even started. From Roger's internet woes to the server deciding Von Tonar and Mobius were personas non grata for some damn reason, to the rain and thunderstorm over my head as we flew it seemed as if the wrath of God was upon us.

Many thanks to you for the kind words in the forum regarding Hell-Divers! You guys are a great lot and good sports.

I have to say, however, that some of you may be too kind. I have to say that I was a little disappointed in how it turned out in that I badly misjudged the balance of the set-up. That was becoming evident to me on my second B-17 run on the Japanese fleet when I suffered barely a scratch on my way in, even when a Zero came by and strafed me. When the second mission finished around 7pm, I think it was confirmed that something was amiss.

Many of you stayed on TS after the match to review the campaign, and we had a good discussion as to the issues in the campaign. I also spoke with Psycho in person later that night and got his take. I have to say that I am inclined to adopt most, if not all, of what we discussed because they are dead-on. They include:

1) Removal of the A-20's

2) Removal or heavy reduction of the B-17's

3) Reduce the number of B5N2's

4) Increase number of Zeros and D3A's

5) Require the US to sink all 4 Japanese carriers

6) Reduction of the amount of AAA for the fleets

7) Breaking the campaign into the more "traditional" 3 60m missions

The bombers, which historically did not accomplish much, ended up being the decisive factor. The A-20's proved much quicker than the Zeros and both bombers are tough cookies to take down. More than one Japanese pilot reported emptying their magazines on the B-17's who proceeded on their merry way to bomb the carriers. Psycho reported unloading much of his ammo into the head of a B-17 to no apparent effect. I myself began to feel like I was flying a tank, and the only reason I died was because I had left my bomb fuses at 1 second.

Add to that the defensive guns and the Zeroes were looking a little enemic.

The bomb load of the B-17's (8x1000lbs) also meant than any successful run would hurt even if only a quarter of the bombs hit, and a good run could easily sink a carrier in one shot.

None of these two factors would keep the bombers out if the AAA could be increased. I HAD expected the AAA to absolutely pummel bombers on the way in, but the flak seemed inconsequential. If the AAA acted anywhere near where it would have historically, neither bomber could have attempted the extremely low bomb runs they did, or they at least would have paid a heavy price.

Since many players thought the AAA was already too intense, both for gameplay AND frame-rate, upping the AAA is not an option. Thus, the bombers have to go. The A-20 was anachronistic anyway, and meant to stand in for B-26s. I REALLY like the Flying Fortresses in the missions, so I am going to try find a way to balance them while keeping them in if I can. If the B-17 does stay, I am thinking of a max of two per mission, downgrading it to the D-model and reducing/altering its bomb-load. If anyone knows what the historical bomb loads on the B-17 were at Midway, let me know. Also, I will look to see if there is anyway to downgrade the skill ratings of the gunners in a DF mission, although I have my doubts.

While I like and will keep both types of torpedo planes in the missions, reducing the number of B5N2's and increasing the number of the other IJN planes seems necessary. As it currently stands, the Japanese side is forced to rely on AI (and those exterior flown) planes for good portion of their aircraft reserves; almost a third. This is already a burden and when you add in that for most of the pilots the B5 was a pain to take off in, its too much of liability to be forced to rely on it. I was trying to keep the ratios of planes used very historical but neglected to look at their viability in the sim.

Someone suggested, and I cannot remember who now, that requiring the Americans to sink all 4 Japanese carriers would be a fair trade-off for some of the Japanese liabilities, and that seemed like a great idea. I don't know if I will absolutely put it in, but it seems like a very good balancing option.

The 3 mission set-up was suggested by BG, and I believe seconded by at least 2 others. The reason I had wanted the 2 hour second mission was to allow time to sink 3 carriers under fire, but thinking about it, there is no reason why it can't be broken into two pieces anyway. It allow for the plane-sets to reset 1 more time, and give teams another chance to discuss strategy for the campaign.

Also, we had a considerable amount of lag which could have been due to any number of factors. One thing we need to do for all campaigns is set connection speed to 56k to hopefully get the smoothest gameplay. I will make sure to make a note of than in future manuals.

Anyway, I must say that overall I do like the general set-up of the campaign, so don't get me wrong, I won't discard it. I got some of the kind of action I wanted happen (catching Psycho on the deck in my SBD made my night).

However, I do feel the set-up was a considerably unfair one for the Blue team and that I regret. I appreciate everyone's good humor about it, and especially appreciate the feedback. It really helps improve the missions for everyone's enjoyment.

I posted 3 tracks of Friday night to our file vault (HD_Mission1, HD_Mission2a, HD_Mission2b).

http://www.dangerdogz.com/files/tracks/HD_Mission1.ntrk

http://www.dangerdogz.com/files/tracks/HD_Mission2a.ntrk

http://www.dangerdogz.com/files/tracks/HD_Mission2b.ntrk

I have only looked a bit at mission 1 so far, although I plan to review them all again over the week. One thing that is very evident is the kind of lag we were suffering. One thing I am wondering based on reports is whether the American flak was for some reason heavier than the Japanese. If it was, I need to find out why.

Edited links: B16Enk

[BBloke]

Thanks Glenn for all your hard work and proposals to amend the missions and deal with different factors accordingly. I noticed you made reference to netspeed of the game. Whilst in game I did a little probing (cus pun) and found that the server was already on 56k, therefore clients would also be limited to the same. I tried to increase my netspeed to ISDN (8000) but to no avail. The server holds the cards on the netspeed limitaton.

I would suggest a test of 20 players or so in the same mission with the server running at 28.8k (3000 b/s) this should generally equate to 3Kb/s upload from the server to the client from the server and a small amount of upload to the server per client.

Thanks again Glenn for your hard work and dedication. A top notch mission pack and documentation that is well worthy of inclusion into a third party add-on.

I've had an idea just before clicking submit. Would there be a possibility to run the first mission as a recon (coop) to find the carriers and then obviously load the 2nd mission as a DF. Just a thought!

S! Doubletap

[DoubleTap]

Thanks Glenn for all your hard work and proposals to amend the missions and deal with different factors accordingly. I noticed you made reference to netspeed of the game. Whilst in game I did a little probing (cus pun) and found that the server was already on 56k, therefore clients would also be limited to the same. I tried to increase my netspeed to ISDN (8000) but to no avail. The server holds the cards on the netspeed limitaton.

I would suggest a test of 20 players or so in the same mission with the server running at 28.8k (3000 b/s) this should generally equate to 3Kb/s upload from the server to the client from the server and a small amount of upload to the server per client.

Chris,

Bear with me as I work through this, and please excuse what is probably going to be an unholy substitution of technical terms for my own jargon.

If I set the server speed tp 28.8k, does everyone have to set it to that speed as well? I remember a conversation between you and Roger regarding the fact that if players have different connections speeds, it will tend to favor some clients over others and contribute to lag.

Let me propose an normal set-up. I think 20 clients is a good figure to always base it on because the DF campaigns shoot for players around that total.

So, I set the server speed to 28.8k, or 3000b/s in the server config file. ALL skin downloading is turned off. All players set their network connections to 28.8k.

With that setup, the server will attend to all clients more or less with the same rate of transmission? And by doing so, it will both keep some players from lagging behind in updates and keep the server from sputtering by keeping data bursts/packets small?

I've had an idea just before clicking submit. Would there be a possibility to run the first mission as a recon (coop) to find the carriers and then obviously load the 2nd mission as a DF. Just a thought!

S! Doubletap

Chris,

Its not a bad idea, but I think the logisitics of it gets tricky. For one, players would have to switch to another IP for the DF server, although that's not really so troublesome. Second is, besides a time limit which we always have, in what ways are the next (the DF mission) started/triggered?

Sinking 1 carrier is an obvious one, but what if one team finds the enemy fleet first, and attacks it, but are wiped out. Would the other group get to continue to fly until they are done? If they do, the other team could be forced to sit and watch for quite a while. I hesitate over the possibility of something like this, because it kind of defeats the DF principle which allows you to get back into the air. While Coops are popular, one common complaint is that you fly for 8, 10, 12 minutes of longer, only to get whacked early (sometimes for no fault of your own) and sit out for rest of the match. Hell, you could have a bad takeoff and sit on the run way the whole time.

I'll think on it, but I think that doing something like this is better done with DCG or with the Scorched Earth set-up Roger posted about.

[Enforcer57]

Glenn, that last screenie is one of the most dramatic ive ever seen. Wow. Thanx for all that hard work on your part. If i can make some observations and a couple of suggestions, some of which I may hve already brought up after the fight.

The US AAA was historically much more effective than japanese, for various reasons, especially proximity fused weapons like 40mm and radar directors etc. However, at midway, The only proximity fused stuff we used was 5 in and maybe a few 3 in. There were almost no 40mm mounts in the summer of 42, as most med cal AA was the single 20mm and quad 1.1 in mounts. Those were about 28mm guns that were not air exploding but direct contact like 20mm. I think the sim is way off if those are 20mm exploding in the air, as that was all direct contact stuff. (if it is 40mm, its to early in the war).The quad 1.1s (some good film of htem firing on yorktown and enterprise during the battle) were pretty still pretty effective though. I think one way to compensate the insane level of US AA is to tone it down ALOT. Like rookie on the ships and ROF no smaller number than maybe 30-needs some testing. Ive never really looked to see if the early war versions of us ships have the 1.1 in mts instead of the quad 40s that replaced them.

If I could also suggest-possilbly consider not having the US carriers factor at all in the first misn, since the beggining of hte battle was mostly IJN air attack on the base itself, and the vain defense the marines put up with F2As and F4Fs. Maybe have the B-17s take off at the beggining of this with 6 Avengers and PBYs etc to look for the japanese task force-maybe put it a bit farther away? The us carriers werent involved at all in the initial stages of the battle, and it was mainly concerned with the attack/defense of midway by Marine fighers. A real balancing act that one. Im looking for accounts of the B-17 attack, but im pretty sure they used 500lb bombs. Remember that the US CVs didnt factor at all at this point. There were also marine vindicators making shallow glide bombing attacks to at this point.

I would suggest only having three IJN CVs in the second misn, since the Hiryu was hiding in a squall during hte main attack. Save the 4th CV for the last misn as really happened. Possibly no heavy bombers at all in number 3, just naval assets, maybe wiht the option of landing on midway since most of us are really crappy CV pilots. The final stage of the battle was the sinking of Hiryu and the damaging of Yorktown (later sunk by sub of course). The second battle would be a chance to change the odds down from 3 to one down at that stage.

If any IJN CVs survive the second misn, tehn they would of course be involved, but I would save the last one for that misn.

Well ive rambled enough. And remember to load your damn guns before you go out, or wind up having to be Zeke bait for a misn. heh heh.

[Blairgowrie]

Impressive comments Enforcer. I'll never get in an argument with you.

[DoubleTap]

Glenn, that last screenie is one of the most dramatic ive ever seen. Wow. Thanx for all that hard work on your part. If i can make some observations and a couple of suggestions, some of which I may hve already brought up after the fight.

The US AAA was historically much more effective than japanese, for various reasons, especially proximity fused weapons like 40mm and radar directors etc. However, at midway, The only proximity fused stuff we used was 5 in and maybe a few 3 in. There were almost no 40mm mounts in the summer of 42, as most med cal AA was the single 20mm and quad 1.1 in mounts. Those were about 28mm guns that were not air exploding but direct contact like 20mm. I think the sim is way off if those are 20mm exploding in the air, as that was all direct contact stuff. (if it is 40mm, its to early in the war).The quad 1.1s (some good film of htem firing on yorktown and enterprise during the battle) were pretty still pretty effective though. I think one way to compensate the insane level of US AA is to tone it down ALOT. Like rookie on the ships and ROF no smaller number than maybe 30-needs some testing. Ive never really looked to see if the early war versions of us ships have the 1.1 in mts instead of the quad 40s that replaced them.

If I could also suggest-possilbly consider not having the US carriers factor at all in the first misn, since the beggining of hte battle was mostly IJN air attack on the base itself, and the vain defense the marines put up with F2As and F4Fs. Maybe have the B-17s take off at the beggining of this with 6 Avengers and PBYs etc to look for the japanese task force-maybe put it a bit farther away? The us carriers werent involved at all in the initial stages of the battle, and it was mainly concerned with the attack/defense of midway by Marine fighers. A real balancing act that one. Im looking for accounts of the B-17 attack, but im pretty sure they used 500lb bombs. Remember that the US CVs didnt factor at all at this point. There were also marine vindicators making shallow glide bombing attacks to at this point.

I would suggest only having three IJN CVs in the second misn, since the Hiryu was hiding in a squall during hte main attack. Save the 4th CV for the last misn as really happened. Possibly no heavy bombers at all in number 3, just naval assets, maybe wiht the option of landing on midway since most of us are really crappy CV pilots. The final stage of the battle was the sinking of Hiryu and the damaging of Yorktown (later sunk by sub of course). The second battle would be a chance to change the odds down from 3 to one down at that stage.

If any IJN CVs survive the second misn, tehn they would of course be involved, but I would save the last one for that misn.

Well ive rambled enough. And remember to load your damn guns before you go out, or wind up having to be Zeke bait for a misn. heh heh.

Thanks for info on the B-17’s and the 500lbs. That seems right to me, and I should have used that allocation in the campaign from the outset. I think this would have made the B-17’s a little less lethal on their bomb runs.

Also, the info on the AAA is helpful. I am not an expert on the particular ordinance used in any given time and theater, so it tends to be guessimate. I can tell you that AAA was turned down pretty far already for the ships, a ROF of 20 max, and in most cases rookie in any event. I will reduce them further for next outing.

I have to say I disagree with you on the US carriers in Mission One for 2 reasons, related to one another.

I think that the US CV’s factored greatly in the first part of the battle, even though they did not take direct part in it early on. The threat of the American carriers, which Nagumo could not discount whether he thought he had achieved surprise or not, factored into his later decisions. While the IJN hoped they would be able to knock out Midway unmolested and await the American response (ie, Carriers), they could not be sure they were not in the area. Recall that the reason why Nagumo’s carriers was found with his decks piled high with fueling planes, bombs and torpedoes were the conflicting desires to both knock out Midway and prepare for the appearance on the American carriers.

As I recall it, Nagumo planned to place torpedoes on his planes returning from Midway because he could not be sure where the carriers were; back at Pearl, or somewhere close. Then, when word came that Midway had not been neutralized, he ordered bombs be reloaded onto the planes. It was just after that ordinance suffle that the torpedo bombers from Task Force 16 and 17 showed up, one after another. Nagumo now knew the American carriers, one more than he even expected, were in the area. He then ordered the bombs removed and the torpedoes replaced. Then, of course, the SBD’s showed up and absolutely ruined his day.

My point is that even though the US carriers’ first attack (the TBF’s) did not arrive until after the initial sortie against Midway, the mere threat of them and the rest of American carrier force played a large part in subsequent events. In addition, had things gone a little differently, they could have played a part in the initial battle. For instance, what would have happened had some of the Wildcats from the US carriers shown up to defend Midway on the initial Japanese strike, targeting the Vals and Kates needed to attack the American fleet? What if the American planes had found the Japanese fleet earlier, perhaps as they were attempting to land, low on fuel? What would have happened had the Japanese discovered that the American fleet was already at Midway much earlier on, and had performed a much less chaotic session or rearming?

That leads into my second reason, which was I wanted to present the basic situation as it stood on June 4th, in Hell-Divers! This was mostly an enjoyment factor for the campaign. While pilots on both teams can play things out as they historically occurred, the idea was to allow for several different scenarios to play out. It all depends on what strategy each plans to follow, and how well they execute them.

Having said that, I DO like the idea of breaking up the second mission into two parts. How exactly I will do that I am not sure, but I think going to the 3 part format for the mission would make things both easier to manage and more interesting. Even here, however, I want the results of the battle as open as possible to the actions of the pilots as possible.

[Friar]

what would the missions be like without any aaa? defence would be dependant on air to air,

is that a too stupid idea, have i been sampling the priory special reserve port a little too often?

the times i take part in a mission, fly 3 or 4 mins to get there and bang! i find out just how under modeled the planes are with only 1 wing.

[BBloke]

If I set the server speed tp 28.8k, does everyone have to set it to that speed as well? I remember a conversation between you and Roger regarding the fact that if players have different connections speeds, it will tend to favor some clients over others and contribute to lag. [/quote

Hi Glenn,

If you set the server then that is all that will be needed. The server always dictates to the clients the max speed so they would have to sing the same tune regardless of their individual settings.

Yes, the server will attend to all with the same data rate barring any unfortunate packet loss. It should also make it better for dialup users sa 3Kb/s should be a more consistent amount of data the 5Kb/s. 56k was only ever a theoretical amount of data and I dont think it gets achieve with the consistency of broadband.

Its not a bad idea, but I think the logisitics of it gets tricky. For one, players would have to switch to another IP for the DF server, although that's not really so troublesome. Second is, besides a time limit which we always have, in what ways are the next (the DF mission) started/triggered?..

..one common complaint is that you fly for 8, 10, 12 minutes of longer,..

..Hell, you could have a bad takeoff and sit on the run way the whole time.

I hear ya on the logistics. I was thinking just a plain jane recon mission with limited intel. You could always point the different sides in initially the wrong dimension. Golden rule of no engagements. If people are willing, you could always setup test runways next to carriers to limit initial casualties!!!!

Thanks for listening.

S! Glenn

[DoubleTap]

Thanks for listening.

S! Glenn

No problem. The problem I DO have is that I have been getting some good campaign ideas and don't have time to work on them all. Colin sent me an idea for a mini-campaign that actually uses a variant of the scouting idea using dedicated Recon planes, and I still have not been able to tackle guitarman's suggestions for a Battle Of Britain one, although I think it would also be alot of fun.

(sigh)

[Friar]

had another idea last night.....if the ship aaa is too fierce, how about disabling it and placing a normal aaa unit on a deck somewhere, would that work?

[DoubleTap]

had another idea last night.....if the ship aaa is too fierce, how about disabling it and placing a normal aaa unit on a deck somewhere, would that work?

Well, you can achieve the same thing with the ship by really forcing down the rate of fire. The other problem is that you can't raise the AAA above sea level, so you can't place it on the deck.

[Friar]

sorry, i thought that in my dabblings in the past with aaa i have placed it up a mountain (doing a 633 squadron type valley run)? and that would then be ok for a carrier. :oops:

[DoubleTap]

sorry, i thought that in my dabblings in the past with aaa i have placed it up a mountain (doing a 633 squadron type valley run)? and that would then be ok for a carrier. :oops:

It SHOULD be able to be placed on a ship's deck (for reasons of assisting Mission building), but the reason why you can place it on the mountain is that its still connected to the ground, I suppose. Why exactly they did not program the game to allow much more objects to be placed upwards I am not sure. Perhaps modeling gravity or something?

[JensenPark]

had another idea last night.....if the ship aaa is too fierce, how about disabling it and placing a normal aaa unit on a deck somewhere, would that work?

Well, you can achieve the same thing with the ship by really forcing down the rate of fire. The other problem is that you can't raise the AAA above sea level, so you can't place it on the deck.

keeping the carriers and decks above sea level was a real problem for the blues wasn't it.

[Tonar]

keeping the carriers and decks above sea level was a real problem for the blues wasn't it.

[Rattler]

had another idea last night.....if the ship aaa is too fierce, how about disabling it and placing a normal aaa unit on a deck somewhere, would that work?

Well, you can achieve the same thing with the ship by really forcing down the rate of fire. The other problem is that you can't raise the AAA above sea level, so you can't place it on the deck.

keeping the carriers and decks above sea level was a real problem for the blues wasn't it.

still blew your a$$ away a couple of times, didn't we?!!

West-coast hippie! :wink:

[Redeye]

LOL @ Kelly! :mrgreen: :cheers:

[Rattler]

LOL @ Kelly! :mrgreen: :cheers:

Today is officially "I hate Kelly" day. All blues post suitable references to his manhood, flying ability, social ineptness, or anything else you can think of (within reason of course: we like the guy, remember?!)

[DoubleTap]

LOL @ Kelly! :mrgreen: :cheers:

Today is officially "I hate Kelly" day. All blues post suitable references to his manhood

Kelly has manhood?!