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Offline Ornsworlder

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Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« on: May 27, 2007, 08:49:59 AM »
Up to now it seems most of the AI talk has been about ground-attack or troop deployment missions and the troublesome problems that must be overcome for these missions to succeed. I'm going to tangent away from that and list a series of "real world" tactics that have proven useful to me in pure "air superiority" missions. Tellingly, most of these are WW2 vintage and concentrate on multiple fighters covering one another. I'd also like to hear about anyone elses experiences of "real tactic" use or any unique tactics of their own devising.

To begin, this overtly technical break-down of virtual dogfighting, which nonetheless is useful once you crawl through the maths:
http://www.sci.fi/~fta/acmintro.htm
In particular, the diving under an enemy's climb to force him to turn around, giving your plane time to bead him, is useful when using very-man planes, like Lightnings, against high-man planes, like Tau Barracudas.

This, the "thatch weave", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thach_Weave has proven useful to me during the first head-on flypast of battles, as it stops your enemy being able to zero out one aircraft while giving you piles of shooting opportunities - I like to stagger the aircraft (say 4) at altitudes 4,5,6 and 7 left-to-right and then use cards to swing them all upwards - one of the things that always comes out of ww2 books is height is all, up to now, I don't think I've had a single fighter drop below alt4 and it hasn't done me any harm.

This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luffberry I haven't had a chance to use yet, as I've only one Marauder, but I imagine it'd work well. Having said that, in AI, once a bomber is empty, screaming towards board edge seems like the best idea!

This I think, should be obvious to those who've read air combat history, but not everyone has; so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger-four a luftwaffe tactic that gives a group of fighters all around cover from each other. I've always used it, or a division of it (usually 2 planes) and I remember a distinct early point in most books about the Battle of Britain is that the RAF 3-triangle formation was eaten by the finger-four.

A more general tactic that has came out of this game for me is that even though pure fighter battles can get really mixed up (at times every plane on the board can be pointing different directions) the idea of wingmen still holds up, keeping a minimum of two planes following roughly the same moves within a +/-1Alt of each other seems a lot more effective than lone-wolfing, unless your the one hi-man plane on the board

Another tactic, especially with the Imperial Navy, is to launch all your A-2-A 'skystrike' missiles at the first instance, as once combat gets going you'll never be far enough away to use them effectively. The rules pretty much demand this, as they are "luxury" add-ons, not the weapons primary armament, whose ammo you ought to be more concerned with.

I can only speak from an Imperial perspective, though I hope to get a nice chaos wing soon (and an excuse to build a cool land-aircraft carrier from Double Eagle!) which, just looking at the rule book, demands a swarm of helltalons scaring the enemy while a hellblade sneaks in for the kill.

Anyone else got other thoughts?
« Last Edit: May 27, 2007, 08:53:28 AM by Ornsworlder »
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Offline Vilamus

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2007, 09:03:38 AM »
Hmm.... using three plane triangle formations might exlain some results there :)

Only a small tactical aside, but is 3 versus 4 plane formation tactics are reflected, then others might as well. Short game times seem to lend the game an air of ease with which to experiment new tactics.

Offline Ornsworlder

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #2 on: May 27, 2007, 10:17:09 AM »
The thing I find is that most "real world" tactics (especially from ww1+ww2) are not heavily theoretical as they were ad-hoc in reaction to prevailing circumstances - while the last 60 years of highly technical advance in fighter combat is all about beyond-visual-range fighting that has little scope for use in a wargame.

As an example, tactics as to how take on bomber formations with fighter cover come primarilly from two instances in WW2 - the Battle of Britain and the Aerial bombardment of Germany - in which the defending forces were outnumbered ranging from 2:1 to incalcuable. There are little "equal" examples to learn from - after all, in war, you maximise the advantage *before* you take of. Britain's little bombing raids in 1940/41 on Germany are perhaps the nearest to 'equal' - and the thing I derive from that is, if your a bomber with no fighter cover, go at night. Other things are a bit too 'macro' for AI, like sending differing wings of bombers on differing paths (setting off the entire of north-west europe's air defence network) before they all suddenly turn to converge on the one target at the last minute.

So, I guess AI is providing us with an opportunity to fight as certain of our forefathers never did, on equal terms - at least numberswise!

I might take a cue from the oldie-but-goodie mini-game "Bommerz over da Sulpha river" and do a 'Dambusters' mission, low-level, high-surrounding terrain, at night. Historically, after the suicidal first waves, the surviving Lancasters that had dropped their bouncing-bombs swung around then went ahead of the still-loaded Lanc to distract fire - i imagine this tactic could apply to all bombers in AI, you do your points-winning bombing run, then, rather than fly the bombers off the board you swing them back to ensure other bombers get their load down.

As for the nice, fast-play of AI games allowing for tactical experimentation, I'm reminded of an old flying adage ... "you start flying with a full bag of luck and an empty bag of experience, the idea is to fill experience before luck runs out".

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Offline The GrimSqueaker

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2007, 01:54:49 PM »
AI is not supposed to be restricted only to such actions as those common to WW I and WW II. I would like to see a few additional manoeuvre cards dedicated to either the high end maneuverable aircraft or even for specific aircraft to represent the advantages/disadvantages of each. For example - VIFF (Vectoring in Forward Flight) cards for the Valkyrie and Vultures would be nice.

A chance to engage in more complicated dogfights than those used by Fokker Wolves and Tiger Moths.  ;)

When I've been playing we quickly moved away from straight dogfighting into including ground attack/transport options. This gives a theme or at least a slight narrative to the missions other than the "kill'em all" approach common to 40K games. It also allows more depth to planning the game as escort, SEAD, and exfiltration cover become necessary.
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Offline Vilamus

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #4 on: May 27, 2007, 09:08:24 PM »
That seems to be the prevailing thought: playing ground support AI. I must ocnfess to being somewhat of a dogfightest: my inherent RAF haughtiness regarding the ground troops keeps me from playing ground support too often lol

Though the defend the airbase misison wasnt as one sided as first seemed :)

any thoughts on troop insertion and how best to cover such landings?

Offline The GrimSqueaker

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #5 on: May 27, 2007, 09:21:45 PM »
any thoughts on troop insertion and how best to cover such landings?

Depends on your force as currently Chaos and Orks are unable to land troops even if they wished too.

Tau have the Manta which is able to force a landing on its own but you're paying for the benefit on the front end. A Manta has the ammo capacity and resilience to silence ground fire as well as survive the consequences. However, they need to be escorted into to the area due to their inability to evade enemy fighters worth a spit. The Orca needs a great deal of support in CAP as well as SEAD due to being somewhat more fragile.

Imperial forces have the Thunder Hawk and Valkyrie to force a landing with the same weaknesses and benefits with a decrease in over all ability easily balanced by a drastic decrease in cost. For one Manta you may nearly have four Thunder Hawks. Which does balance out quite nicely.

I'm currently building up my Imperial Navy so haven't play tested them to any great extreme.
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Offline Ornsworlder

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #6 on: May 28, 2007, 09:02:36 AM »
It occurs to me one possible expansion of AI they could pull out could be a 'space combat' version. With the Imperial Fury starfighter and what not.

Now that'd be interesting, inertial drift and other fun physics facts - or Babylon 5 starfighting, as I prefer to call it. It'd probably be better off as a Gothic add-on, but I'd still love to final see what they want the Fury to look like!

Viffing is, oddly, mentioned numerous times in Double Eagle, yet didn't make it into the rules even for aircraft that would seem most able - Valkyries and Vultures, as you pointed out - perhaps because that would have made most single-seaters in the game all very-hi-man and debalanced it a bit? I mean, thunderbolts are meant to viff (and vtol - though they only ever seem to land that way), though i'd like to find some vector-thrust nozzles on them!

I didn't want to indicate that AI is meant to be entirely a WW2 air-combat game, though that's definately the spirit it engenders ...  in general, modern air combat is beyond visual range hi-tech whizz-gadget warfare, leaving only ground support as something easily replicated on a board.

I mean, the only missile that can be used over 18" in this game is the Grot Bomb(!) so we're not exactly throwing around Eurofighters and JSFs. I do agree that the Valkyrie and Vulture (at least) need something done to them to make them a bit more (in the words of my security studies lecturer) 'whizzier'. Even with their ground attack skill, they seem horribly clunky.

Dogfighting to the death, however, really comes into its own when you do linked missions as then those increasing pilot skills and the odd Ace or two really mean something.

For SEAD and infil/exfil mission ideas, the actions of Typhoons in Normandy and the rescue of Mussolini (or Lysander operations) provide plenty of little examples. I noticed in one of the pictures in the back of AI theres a board with a series of armoured vehicles (Trojans I think) parked up, a Falaise pocket mission would be fun, one player - with a mix of AA and planes, covering armour that has to escape off-board. They didn't really seem to cover anti-convoy (ie, moving ground enemy) missions in the spec-rules. A model shop near me has started selling a 'Falklands Task Force' box set of great little ships and I'm tempted to get it, then you could have the AA mounted on the boats. (and rules for torpedo dropping!)

Of course, the ultimate expansion of this idea is a full integration into Epic rules - *dramatic music*. But I'm not sure how FW could square that with GW. Still, as another version of "SEAD" (in a form) I like the anti-titan idea mentioned on the first AI board, as those things would definately be a bit of a presence in air combat - I love the little lightnings and fighta-bombas zipping round the titans on the Epic cover.

And if a Tiger Moth ever saw a Focke Wulf it'd explode into flames from fear alone!  ;D




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Offline Locarno

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2007, 10:32:46 AM »
Quote
Depends on your force as currently Chaos and Orks are unable to land troops even if they wished too.


Well - strictly speaking I suppose Chaos could use thunderhawks as well, but the orks need some rules for thunderbird 2 (the landa) before they can do anything.

As I've said before; done right, a space add-on is do-able; although I haven't had a chance to play AI yet, so can't comment.
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Offline sullyadbellum

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #8 on: July 9, 2007, 08:00:07 PM »
Currently, games like 40k are set up to operate at the tactical level of warfare.  I'd venture to say that even BFG is at the same level, although if you are conducting a planetary bombardment or a blockade you'd of course be at the strategic level immediately.    Epic and, by the sound of it, Aeronautica Imperialis are set up to be played at the operational level of warfare.

Why can't we just dispense with the nostalgic references to outmoded dogfighting styles and bring AI to the strategic level by giving them AMRAAM-style missiles capable of long-range air-to-air kills?  I understand some races may not be able to understand such weaponry - like orks.  These would then die by the thousands in a "real life" air campaign, both in the air and on the ground.  Imperials, Chaos, Tau, and likely Eldar would all have such advanced weaponry.  A true game of aerial combat would take that into account, compelling you to do proper mission planning to conduct effects-based operations designed, first, to destroy or suppress enemy air defenses, to sweep enemy fighter aircraft over their own airbases, destroy such airbases, and, after achieving air superiority (or better yet, supremacy!) go after ground-based centers of gravity.

I love Abnett's books, all of them.  I read them voraciously.  That said, never has he come closer to turning me off as a fan than in Double Eagle.  What an absolute crock!  They couldn't discern from orbit which of the heat blooms in the desert were carriers and which weren't?  A high-altitude recon mission could have easily solved this, or barring that a Sword-class frigate or two making high-speed, low-orbit passes over the planet.  Once the targets were determined as land-carriers, their coordinates could be fixed and combination lance-and-melta-torpedo bombardments could have annihilated the enemy carriers without jeopardizing a single airframe.  This is the strategic nature of spacepower at work!  So frustrating.

What I guess I'm getting at is, aerial combat is gee-whiz nice.  It makes for an interesting game.  But in "real life" tactics, if you're that close, you've already missed the point at somewhere along the kill-chain. 

My call, if I were the Lord Militant, would be to use my global perspective from space to ascertain where enemy strongpoints are and destroy them from space using a massive lance-and-melta barrage.  Then, I would land my forces in the cleansed areas to establish a planetfall.  Then, using the same methods, now combined with ground reconnaissance and air-breathing airframes like the thunderbolt or lightning, I would determine the location of enemy airfields and neutralize them, again from orbit.  That would give me air superiority immediately, freeing the majority of my air assets to support the burgeoning ground offensive(s) by interdicting troop columns and by performing close air support, where applicable.  I would also then have plenty of air assets available to continue to perform reconnaissance and determine the location of fuel dumps, ammo depots, and food caches and I would use lance strikes (no need for melta torpedoes any more - they're expensive) to eliminate them, as well.

This would of course depend on space superiority...but, as a space officer, my question is "Doesn't everything?"

Offline Locarno

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #9 on: July 10, 2007, 04:34:15 AM »
A lot of GW strategic reasoning is governed by 'the rule of cool' rather than what's necessarily best - something that's largely a pure missile fight may be more effective, but it's pretty much lanchester equations and therefore no fun to play as a wargame...

Quote
My call, if I were the Lord Militant, would be to use my global perspective from space to ascertain where enemy strongpoints are and destroy them from space using a massive lance-and-melta barrage.  Then, I would land my forces in the cleansed areas to establish a planetfall.  Then, using the same methods, now combined with ground reconnaissance and air-breathing airframes like the thunderbolt or lightning, I would determine the location of enemy airfields and neutralize them, again from orbit.


Back in 40k...what you've described is - pretty much - the standard invasion pattern against those worlds without heavy defences. Unfortunately, most worlds worth comitting a major force to pacify come with a rather impressive quantity of ground-to-orbit defences (torpedo silos, defence lasers, etc), which prevent the fleet from occupying a given region of space. The Siege of Vraks book uses the phrase 'constructive suicide' to describe the concept of trying to bring an Imperial Navy warship within useful range of the main fortress. Result - troops generally have to be landed in less defended areas and fight their way to the target, and orbital fire and observation is nice but far from garuanteed.

Quote
compelling you to do proper mission planning to conduct effects-based operations designed, first, to destroy or suppress enemy air defenses, to sweep enemy fighter aircraft over their own airbases, destroy such airbases, and, after achieving air superiority (or better yet, supremacy!) go after ground-based centers of gravity.

And with missions where you are required to attack airbases, carry out fighter sweeps, and hit ground targets - and escort in troop transports carrying special forces on sabotage missions; how is this not covered in Aeronautica?

Individual scenarios are designed to be balanced games; if you want to link up games into a campaign with a maintained squadron roster, you will get the benefit of intelligent planning and conservation of forces.

In a one-off game, though, you can't really have the game sit as part of a sucessful campaign by side a against side b - or else it's not a game becasue one side would be outnumbered 5-1, forced to fight over enemy surface-to-air weapons, and start damaged and low on ammo due to not having a chance to repair or resupply. People like to have at least a chance. If we were being entirely true to background then the rules for the Eldar Nightwing Interceptor would simply say 'you win'.



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Offline Vilamus

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #10 on: July 11, 2007, 09:10:08 AM »
I'm afraid I have to throw in this hackneyed old phrase: all wargames are abstractions and are utterly not directly analagous to real life, just a rough approximation.

People like "fun" to be included in these games rather than "realism".

And if you wajnt a validation of dogfighting, then look to current operational aircraft which still have rotary cannons incase missiles run out, are jammed by HARM missiles and are therefore useless or just fire for luck and hope they hit. Doesnt happen because nowadays the West has a huge technical supremacy.

The far, far future is much more equal in terms of fights. Lets GW and FW make more money that way :)

Offline Locarno

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #11 on: July 11, 2007, 10:06:32 AM »
I'd like to thank Ornsworlder for pointing me at this;
Haven't yet played AI, but with a bit of reworking, I tried something based on a Thach Weave in Battlefleet Gothic yesterday.

Ork Fleet (noted as highly unmanouvrable) verseus Dark Eldar (you take a guess)

Normally the ork fleet slams up the centre - then has to fight to turn around whilst the enemy rip up its weak rear armour. A lot of people use Roks (slow moving but 360 degree armed asteroid emplacements) as backstops to protect against this. It doesn't always work.

Fielding 2 'weaving' groups instead worked very well; turning away after a few prow shots for the 'weave' left the Dark Eldar with the unfortunate choice of break off and run or try to drop in on the rear and find themselves with another pair of kroozas bearing down on them head-on, heavy gunz blazing.

Result was 2 Dark Eldar Torture-class Carriers (well - one escaped, crippled, on one hit point remaining, with most of its command deck shot away), and twenty Corsair escorts killed in exchange for 3 Ramships and a Carrier. Score one for the US Airforce.

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Offline sullyadbellum

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #12 on: July 12, 2007, 01:06:44 AM »
Hahaha.  HARMs don't jam air-to-air missiles...and I hope you don't include America in "the west," as Americans have lost the art of the dogfight.  You want to see some wicked dogfighters, look to the Israelis.  They're the real deal.

Offline Vilamus

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #13 on: July 18, 2007, 10:08:21 AM »
Current-gen HARMS dont, but it wont take long to develop if the high-tech nations of the West ever (read: never) fight each other.

Thats why dogfighting games tend to be WW2: no missiles to spoil the "fun"

Offline The GrimSqueaker

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Re: Aeronautica Imperialis - use of 'real' tactics
« Reply #14 on: July 18, 2007, 11:06:09 AM »
HARMs don't jam anything what so ever. A next gen HARM would continue this role.

Dale Brown novels were full of decoy missiles launched within a squadron to mimic real aircraft as well as jam and interfere with enemy radar systems.

If you wish to duplicate such a device in Aero merely pay 10% of an aircrafts cost and place a "phantom" aircraft in your flight line. For the enemy to detect whether the aircraft they are approaching is real or a phantom they have to close within medium range. If the aircraft is a phantom it's removed from the board automatically.
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