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#Post#: 22--------------------------------------------------
E04 Schlachtflieger
DIR By: pilotofficerprune
Date: September 12, 2018, 4:56 am
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Date: 16 Feb
Playtester: Elias Nordling
Played a game of Schlachtflieger. Attacked is a screenshot from
the start of turn 2.
I don't think the game turned out as intended, though there were
also circumstances in the favour of the Germans. The Soviets
made a mistake in putting the vector on intercept of the Stukas,
they should probably go lower, and especially try to go where
the German fighters aren't. The German sweep was also very
successful, and managed to neutralize no less than 5 Soviet
squadrons (And they killed Pokryshkin!!! The Bastards!)
The remaining Soviet fighter squadrons arrived mostly too late
to interfer with the bombings, and they didn't stick around long
enough to make up for it in killed Henschels.
So, the German Dive Bombing, AT-gunning, and rocketing was
mostly successful, causing 15 hits on one tank, 12 on a second,
and 6 on the troops. That made for 19 points, doubled to 38. 8
assorted Soviet fighters were also downed.
The Germans lost 8 Messerschmitts and 5 Henschels.
I'm not sure the Germans can expect to be so effective with the
sweep, but no matter what the first couple of Soviet squadrons
will likely be entangled with them, and the rest are coming too
late to stop the bombings.
The obvious solution to this is to move the ground units
rightwards. Perhaps start with 2 squares and see what it does.
Regardless, there are some interesting positioning and terrain
here, I look forward to giving it another try. But the Soviets
won't be able to catch all those bombers, so I don't think the
German need the doubling of points for bombing hits.
#Post#: 23--------------------------------------------------
Re: E04 Schlachtflieger
DIR By: pilotofficerprune
Date: September 12, 2018, 4:57 am
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Date: 23 Feb
Playtester: Elias Nordling
I played Schlachtflieger again, with the targets shifted two to
the right but without the changes to the clouds (that I don't
think will make a big difference).
The Germans were much less successful at neutralizing Soviet
fighter squadrons this time round, only two were shooed off, and
two more disrupted. This is probably slightly worse than
average, I'd expect three Soviet squadrons to be broken by the
German sweep on average, perhaps with a fourth disrupted.
The shift of the Targets gave the Soviets more time to attack
the bombers and it now really felt like they had to run the
gauntlet. The exception were the Stukas, that still only got one
turn of attack (thanks to a lucky long range tally roll) before
going into dive immunity. Perhaps the Stukas should be moved two
squares to the left.
The Germans were still reasonably successful at bombing. in
fact, if you get +3 for strafing and another +1 after silencing
flak, you almost don't care if you are broken, you still have a
+2 mod, which doesn't feel entirely right.
Another thing that didn't feel right that I hadn't noticed
before: Should bombers really suffer a cohesion penalty for
low/no ammo when strafing?
Another question: When the targets line up like this, could the
HS129s, say, fire the guns in M0, fire them again in N0 and drop
bombs in O0? Could they even do it the same turn? I don't think
there is anything in the rules preventing you from being on
multiple bombing profiles at the same time, though it would seem
wrong. I'm not sure the rules prohibit strafing multiple targets
the same turn either, and that kind of makes sense given that
you are flying over an extended formation with guns blazing, but
it is certainly something that should be explicit in that case.
Score: In the end, the Germans got 9 points from bombing (the
hits were poorly distributed, it could have been 11 points), and
15 assorted Soviet fighters were downed.
The Soviets in turn shot down 6 Me109, 2 FW190, 1 Ju87, and
12(!) Hs129.
I think we should bring back the doubling for bombing, if
nothing else to make it matter in the general bloodbath.
Otherwise, the Germans could just scram with the bombers and aim
for a favourable enough exchange ratio in the air combat.
With doubling for bombing, the final score was 0, a Soviet
victory, and it felt like it. A German victory would definitely
be attainable with a few more bombing hits, or Soviet fighters
breaking earlier. It is possible that the VP levels should be
shifted up a bit, but I think I'd like to see more results
before doing that. Shifting the Stukas backwards might also
lower the German bombing results slightly.
I like the scenario. It is big and brutal, and it is nice to see
the Soviets rough up the best the Luftwaffe has to offer.
#Post#: 24--------------------------------------------------
Re: E04 Schlachtflieger
DIR By: pilotofficerprune
Date: September 12, 2018, 4:59 am
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Date: 24 Feb
Playtester: Elias Nordling
Played Schlachtflieger for the third time, this time. I played
it as written in the 17 fem expansion book, with the exception
that I moved the stukas 2 squares to the left. It gave the
Soviets some more opportunities at catching them before they
bombed, which they blew and the Stukas put 21 points of damage
on the first tank unit. I felt it was a further improvement on
the scenario.
A pattern in my playing is emerging in that the soviets gang up
on the Henschels since that is where the points is. Which
doesn't mean there were lots of interesting things going on from
a tactical perspective. In the end, it felt like both sides were
played competently and neither had exceptional luck in either
direction.
The final score was:
Germans: Bombing 16x2 7 soviet Fighters: 39.
Soviets: 4 Me109, 2 FW190, 1 Ju87, 11 Hs129: 29
Final score: 10, a German victory but certainly not off the
scale.
I have one more suggested adjustment, in addition to moving the
Stukas 2 squares to the left:
Make the Henschels, Stukas and FWs all worth 2 points each for
this scenario. The scenario description make it seem like the
Schlachtflieger were a valuable asset that the Germans could ill
afford to lose so heavily from. From a game perspective, it
opens up the scenario a bit since the Soviet focus will not be
totally on the Henschels just because they are 2-engined and the
best way to gain points (they will still be the best way, but
not by as much margin). Also, the obvious counter tactic to this
would be to just abort the Henschels early, especially if the
Stukas are successful.
In the game above, the adjustment would push the score to 7, a
draw one point from a German victory. That seems fair. The
bombings were a success but at a horrible cost.
As far as I can tell, the victory levels are fine as is, but it
will be interesting to se other player's results.
#Post#: 25--------------------------------------------------
Re: E04 Schlachtflieger
DIR By: pilotofficerprune
Date: September 12, 2018, 5:38 am
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Date: 11 Sep
Playtester: Dave Demko
Schlactflieger (first reported playing)
sceanrio v0.4
I have played v0.3 of this scenario and thought I'd gotten over
the first-try fumbling. But I didn't. My target planning was
still not good, and that meant too much exposure for the Hs 129,
which really should come in, strafe/bomb the tanks, and run away
as soon as possible. Bad enough they have to deal with flak;
they need to avoid Russian fighters as much as possible. Another
bad idea: the Fw 190s carried ATGRs because those looked like
fun (and they're accurate). But they don't hit all that hard; a
14-point bomb load might be a better idea. The Stukas bombed
well against the tanks. Rocket and AT Gun attacks were so-so.
The Russians faltered with a couple bad vector placements, but
otherwise they ran an efficient interception, except against the
Stukas, which waltzed in and attacked.
This was a 15-turn battle of annihilation. The Hs 129s stayed in
the area way too long. The Bf 109s made a straight fighter
sweep, hoping to ruin a few Russian squadrons. But the German
flights all broke by Turn 2. Meanwhile, Iron Ivan leading his
P-39Q squadron fought on for 15 turns before finally breaking.
They whiffed two easy attacks on unaccompanied Henschels, but
another time they managed 6 hits for 4 kills in a single attack.
That might be the first time I've ever rolled 6 hits playing
Wing Leader.
So bottom line, this is not an exemplary test, though it did
look a lot like the real Operation Bagration, a thorough
whipping for the Germans.
German VPs: 11 for kills, 21 for bombing
Russian VPs: 38 for kills (28 of them on Hs 129s)
Result: Are you kidding? A couple survivors gibbering
incomprehensibly in German
I will run this again with better planning and less Teutonic
machismo to see what happens. The Fw 190F-8 is on the back of
the Strumbock card, but it can carry bombs.
#Post#: 26--------------------------------------------------
Re: E04 Schlachtflieger
DIR By: pilotofficerprune
Date: September 12, 2018, 5:40 am
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The current VP outputs for plays are:
Elias 1st = 33
Elias 2nd = 0
Elias 3rd = 10
Dave 1st = -6
Average = 9.25
#Post#: 85--------------------------------------------------
Re: E04 Schlachtflieger
DIR By: pilotofficerprune
Date: September 13, 2018, 9:24 am
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Elias has suggested dropping the VP for twin-engined Hs 129s to
1 VP in order to rebalance the relationship between the low
target values and the high bomber VP.
#Post#: 117--------------------------------------------------
Re: E04 Schlachtflieger
DIR By: pilotofficerprune
Date: September 15, 2018, 7:12 am
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Going back over the earlier playtests I believe we have
addressed and fixed many of the issues raised, such as:
- Dive bomber immunity (changed this to reduce hits on diving
aircraft)
- Cohesion penalty for low/no ammo (this hasn’t changed, has
been there all the time)
- Multiple attacks in the same turn (now explicitly prohibited)
- The order of bombing/strafing (can now strafe without bombing)
We’ve also doubled the VP for bombing. Moved the start positions
of the Stukas.
For the next release, instead of doubling VP for Ju 87s and Fw
190Fs, I’ll reduce the Hs 129 VP to 1, in accordance with
Elias’s suggestion.
The only other change I’ll make for this next release is to move
the draw window upward to +7 to +10. I’m hoping the VP changes
reduce the subtractions from the German score due to casualties,
to help balance this.
#Post#: 150--------------------------------------------------
Re: E04 Schlachtflieger
DIR By: Okmed
Date: September 16, 2018, 11:51 pm
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E04 Schlactflieger v0.4
Player: Dave Demko (solitaire)
Narrative: The Germans handled the sweep fighters well,
spreading the flights to cover the most interceptors, making
sure to be the attacker for the +1 Cohesion DRM, getting a
bounce, and shooting down Russians medium-well. Still, they were
unable to start dogfights, three of the four flights broke
early, and the interceptors shouldered their way through. The
last Bf 109 flight defended some Hs 129s by having a tally on
the La-5FNs attacking them. The Russians handled the
interceptions efficiently, with a good high-low distribution.
They killed a few Stukas and got two out-of-the-sun bounces on
Hs 129s. The Fw 190s used steep-angle bombing. The Hs 129s
pressed their attacks, losing 10 aircraft. Overall, it was
another bad day for the Reich.
Results: Stukas scored 4 hits and 7 hits on the two tank units.
Fw 190s get 7 hits and 1 hit on the tanks, Hs 129s strafe the
tanks for 1 hit and 4 hits. Target damage was Tanks M: 12, Tanks
N: 14, Lt Flak A: 0, Troops: 0. Notice that both tanks were only
a few hits away from crippling damage. Crippling both tanks
would have yielded a net -6 VPs, still a solid Soviet win.
German VPs 12 for bombing, 8 for kills = 20
Soviets VPs: 32 for kills (20 of those for Hs 129s)
Net: -12, whomping Soviet victory
Conclusions: The Germans fought efficiently, an La-5FN squadron
broke early, an Hs 129 squadron took 4 hits for 0 kills, and the
Stukas knocked down two fighters. The Russians inflicted 2
fratricides by flak. Three of four Bf 109 flights broke early.
So the luck was not mis-distributed and the Germans made no big
errors, except maybe for using those Hs 129s. Either I'm playing
the Germans wrong or this scenario is too hard for the Germans.
Suggestion: Move the targets two squares to the left.
Further testing: I split off a .vsav file of this game at the
point where the Henschels could have cut and run, with the idea
of playing that out as a comparison. I think that would yield
either a German win or a closer game, and I can still play it
out. The other option to try is to have the Hs 129s try to
circle and make attacks only when/if most of the Russian
fighters have broken.
#Post#: 151--------------------------------------------------
Re: E04 Schlachtflieger
DIR By: Okmed
Date: September 17, 2018, 12:02 am
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On reflection, moving the targets left seems too weak a fix.
Maybe this scenario does need to score lost Hs 129s at 1 VP
each.
I'll say this, though: The scenario sure does look like part of
Operation Bagration.
#Post#: 152--------------------------------------------------
Re: E04 Schlachtflieger
DIR By: pilotofficerprune
Date: September 17, 2018, 3:12 am
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Okay, the v0.5 version of the scenario now features the reduced
Hs 129 VP. Playing this change would have reduced the net VPs to
-2. If you'd got the extra hits on the tanks that would have
raised the net VP to +4, which would have been a draw under the
old v0.4 VP threshold, but is still a Soviet victory under the
v0.5 victory conditions.
Reading your account, I agree that the scenario appears to be
too hard for the Germans. However, I'd like a couple more tests
of v0.5 (and the VP outputs from those tests) before shifting
the draw window.
I notice from the VPs so far that Elias's first playtest really
skews the data. If I cross that out and just count the rest
(treating Dave's second test using the v0.5 special rule for the
Hs 129s) the data looks like this:
Elias 1st = 33
Elias 2nd = 0
Elias 3rd = 10
Dave 1st = -6
Dave 2nd = -2
Average = 0.5
As I said, I'd like to see more data, but this could suggest a
'draw window' around the +1 to +4 mark. Or even +1 to +3.
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