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#Post#: 39--------------------------------------------------
E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
By: pilotofficerprune Date: September 12, 2018, 6:34 am
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Date: 3 May
Playtester: Elias Nordling
Played a game of Red Star, Blue swastika.
The finns elected to concentrate on the Pe2s, in order to score
maximum points for shot down aircraft. The Soviets Steep angle
bombed through the clouds with the Pe2:s while the Sturmoviks
strafed with rockets, including some flak suppression. The
Soviets put the Greens in the fighters and one of the Pe2:s.
The nice thing about the scenario is that neither plan seemed
like the obviously best strategy and I can see other
alternatives working without being sure which are better or
worse.
The Escorts for the Sturmoviks managed to tally and join the
fighting. Both sides had a surprisingly hard time scoring actual
kills in air combat, but the Finns also rolled high on cohesion
overall, and persistence won out, with 8 Pe2s shot down, with no
other losses for either side. Which makes the scenario read like
an actual Finnish account of air combat. Two of the Pe2s were
disrupted before dropping bombs.
The Sturmoviks rolled somewhat low, but managed to score 4 hits
on flak and 5 on the airfield, including a second strafing pass.
One of the Pe2:s rolled 12 on a +0 bombing, so they were
somewhat lucky there, scoring 12 hits, which means the Soviets
were one point shy of x3 damage!
I honestly have no idea if this was an exceptionally good
bombing result or the Soviets can expect to reach x3 damage on
the airfield, as there are so many different ways the Soviets
could stage their bombing and I can't tell which one is the
optimal one. Not to mention what the Finns do to counter it.
22 points for bombing for the Soviets, and 16 points for shot
down Pe2:s for the Finns. +6 is a Finnish victory. With that
last bombing point, it would have been a Soviet victory.
I thought the scenario worked well enough and was more nuanced
than I expected. Obviously the VP:s might need to be calibrated,
and I'm not sure what my one data point says.
A possible concern is that the Finns will go for the Pe2:s,
since they are worth twice the points of the Il2:s, but then
again it might be easier to score kills on the Il2s, and if
their flak-suppression could be neutralized, the overall bombing
score for the Soviets might be affected too. Which makes my
point that this is a scenario that is unexpectedly rich in
options.
#Post#: 40--------------------------------------------------
Re: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
By: pilotofficerprune Date: September 12, 2018, 6:35 am
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Date: 4 May
Playtester: Elias Nordling
2nd playthrough. Slightly different approach by the Finns, more
or less the same by the Soviets.
This time the Finns rolled 1 on almost ALL their kill rolls, and
also poorly on cohesion.
A single Yak 9 was downed, together with a Sturmovik taken down
by flak. One of the Sturmoviks were disrupted before bombing.
1 Finnish aircraft was shot down, 15 hits were scored on the
airfield (again a 12 from one of the Pe2 caused 8 of those) and
4 on the flak.
Soviet 23 points
Finnish: 2 points.
Soviet victory.
I suspect this was an outlier for the air combats, but the
bombing results were fairly consistent between the two games.
#Post#: 41--------------------------------------------------
Re: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
By: pilotofficerprune Date: September 12, 2018, 6:36 am
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I keep getting surprised at how good this scenario is. From the
setup, it looks kind of bland, but it is actually full of
decisions. There is no way the Finns are going to stop all the
bombers, but do they concentrate on one group or split? Do the
escorts stick with the Il2s and let the able Pe2:s defend
themselves. Should the Pe2:s steep angle bomb through the clouds
or glide bomb under them? That might depend on where the Finns
put their vectors.
This game saw some green escorts being lucky and draw a Finnish
flight into a dogfight. The Il-2:s strafed but were fairly
unsucessful and beat up both by flak and another Finnish flight.
The Soviets had low cohesion rolls with the bombers, and the
Finns high cohesion rolls.
The final result was 10 +1 points for bombing + 2 Bf109:s for
the
Soviets: 13
Finns shot down 1 Yak, 2 Pe2, 8 Il2: 13
Final score 0, a Finnish win.
The Soviets could definitely have scored another 10 points for
bombing which would have made it a draw, which seems right for
the losses. A few less losses and a Soviet win. So the victory
conditions seems right to me, and I see no need for further
adjustments to the scenario.
#Post#: 42--------------------------------------------------
Re: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
By: pilotofficerprune Date: September 12, 2018, 6:37 am
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The current VP outputs for plays are:
Elias 1st = 6
Elias 2nd = 21
Elias 3rd = 0
Average = 9
#Post#: 121--------------------------------------------------
Re: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
By: pilotofficerprune Date: September 15, 2018, 10:03 am
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Okay, the results are very swingy, and I think that's in part
because of the high value target and the low-level precision
nature of the attack. So I'm going to try something I want to
use on a few other similar scenarios and cap the amount of VPs
that can be scored from the main target, to 1x the target
counter's VP value.
#Post#: 467--------------------------------------------------
Re: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
By: Okmed Date: November 4, 2018, 2:14 pm
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Scenario: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
Version: v0.3
Playtesters: Dave Demko solitaire
Report: The Finn has super-bad luck on the initial turns' tally
rolls and eventually had to double-back to catch the bombers.
Therefore they didn't split and so took fewer shots. The
Russians blew one escort reaction and the other escorts decided
to tally. The Russian fighters couldn't shoot worth a damn and
couldn't force any dogfights. I'd given the fighters Green crews
to optimize the bombers. Flak and fighter hits bounced off of
the IL-2Ms. Rockets from the IL-2Ms did OK and steep-angle
bombing by the Pe-2s was good; combined those pushed the
Airfield to its VP cap, with 14 hits. The IL-2Ms did well
strafing the flak for suppression and then Cripping damage. The
Finns got some easy kills on the Yaks late in the game.
Victory:
Finns: 3 for kills = 3
Russians: 14 for bombing + 0 for kills = 14
net: 11, Draw
Recommendations: 1) For the cost of only 3 fighters and 2
stragglers among the strike aircraft, the Russians delivered a
solid pasting to both targets. The Finns stumbled. Yet the
result scores as a Draw. That doesn't seem right. Since this is
a quick-playing scenario, I'll do more runs
2) The bombers start pretty close to the target, so the Finns
have to get busy right away. That's not a problem now, but if we
do anything to shift balance in favor of the Russians, then we
might need to back up the bombers two squares left to protect
the Finns from losing because of an early failure. This playing
had them Draw in such a situation.
#Post#: 468--------------------------------------------------
Re: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
By: Okmed Date: November 4, 2018, 2:15 pm
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Scenario: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
Version: v0.3
Playtesters: Dave Demko solitaire
Report: Both sides used the same plans as my previous
play-through, for comparison. The Finns went after both bomber
formations, tallied well, and split both squadrons. The IL-2Ms
carried rockets. Target priority was Airfield first, then flak,
so the flak was active through all the bomb runs. Damage hit the
Airfield's VP cap and got 5 hits (Heavy damage, suppression) on
the flak. On Bf-109 flight broke early; the rest held together
to inflict a good number of kills.
Victory:
Finns 8 VP for kills (including 4 for Pe-2s) = 8
Russians: 12 VP for bombing + 1 for a kill = 13
net: 5, Finnish victory
Recommendations: The Russian raid inflicted heavy damage, but
was quite costly because of effective Finnish air-to-air. The
result, Finnish victory, seems justified.
#Post#: 469--------------------------------------------------
Re: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
By: Okmed Date: November 4, 2018, 2:19 pm
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I have deleted the duplicate thread I started today. I'd missed
this existing thread on page 2 earlier.
In today's two playings, using the same plans, the difference
between a Draw and a Finnish victory was Finnish dice-rolling
for tallies and cohesion. I still think my first playing looked
like a Russian win.
#Post#: 473--------------------------------------------------
Re: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
By: pilotofficerprune Date: November 5, 2018, 2:00 am
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Dave, I can't help feel that the Finns under-performed on your
first playthrough. A net +3 VP for air-to-air victories should
not be enough for a Finnish victory, and it wasn't. In Elias's
playings we had, for loss VPs only, the following in the Finns'
favour:
Elias 1: +16
Elias 2: +1
Elias 3: +11
That's a mean of +9.3 VP. In your first playing, you only needed
3 VP -- one fighter and one Pe-2 -- for the Finns to achieve a
win, given good Soviet bombing results.
Now, your net air-to-air loss numbers were:
Dave 1: +3
Dave 2: +7
That brings the air-to-air mean to +9.7. When we throw in the
bombing outputs, our mean VP for the scenario are +8.6.
As for the Russians, you bring up a good point. What do they
need to get the win? I think that because of the caps, max VP
results on the airfield are likely, though interestingly, the
Flak can be farmed. Outputs of 12 or 14 VP from bombing are
going to be common.
This suggests that the draw window probably needs to be about +7
to +9. In that instance, The Soviets need to keep the Finns to
+3 to +5 air-to-air VP or less. While the Finns need to get a
net +6 to +8 air-to-air VP to win.
Note that this lower draw window would have made your first
playthrough a Soviet win, and the second a narrower Finnish
victory.
#Post#: 474--------------------------------------------------
Re: E07 Red Star, Blue Swastika
By: pilotofficerprune Date: November 5, 2018, 2:22 am
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FYI, the mean bombing outputs for the scenarios played so far
are 13. With the suggested new draw window that forces the Finns
to score +4 VP air-to-air just to get a draw, and +7 VP to get a
victory.
In the circumstances, I wonder whether the draw window needs to
shift even further, to +6 to +8, to force the Finns to really go
for the high-value Pe-2s.
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