Aircraft firepower

[TheOtherPoster]

I’d wish in RTW3 we get a better idea of our own aircraft. In particular, “firepower” is a bit obscure: it’s just a number. Fine, the bigger the number, the greater the fire power. Of course, a number to work with is exactly what the AI needs to compute. But for us it would be better if we were told what that number means: 6 heavy machine guns, or 1x20mm canon and 2 light MG or whatever. Also, it would be great if we were given the engine(s) power.
So we could get something like: Flycatcher 1923 Fighter, 2x .30 machine guns, max speed 128kn, Engine 400HP (plus range and the rest of course)

garrisonchisholm posted (back in 2020!) link a very interesting proposal regarding aircraft characteristics (including rate of climb) that he later used in his really entertaining “DLC, an Italian AAR” series (where by the way, we can also have a short look at the new RTW3 treaty system, much improved from RTW2, with true naval negotiations going on, and limits both for ship type -as now- and total fleet tonnage). I can’t wait!

Anyway, back to aircraft firepower, up to the 1940s or so something like this could work:

Firepower.xlsx (11.02 KB)

So instead of being shown a Firepower value of 6, we could have our aircraft listed as being armed with: either

6x .30MG or

4x .50MG or

1x 20mm cannon plus 2 x .50MG, and so on.

[cogsandspigots]

I disagree. Unless you want to get into full aircraft designing as it own feature (which would definitely take some design time for the developers), the current level of abstraction is appropriate for the game’s purposes. Getting too detailed without proper thought put into it is how you get weird and wonky outcomes. See Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts as an example of this.

[seawolf]

Mar 29, 2023 10:13:55 GMT -6 cogsandspigots said:

I disagree. Unless you want to get into full aircraft designing as it own feature (which would definitely take some design time for the developers), the current level of abstraction is appropriate for the game’s purposes. Getting too detailed without proper thought put into it is how you get weird and wonky outcomes. See Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts as an example of this.

I don't think that's what he's proposing, it would stay the same behind the scenes, just output a better description.
I've done this reverse of this when adding historic aircraft to my mods, it seems quite possible.

[garrisonchisholm]

Mar 29, 2023 9:26:00 GMT -6 TheOtherPoster said:

I’d wish in RTW3 we get a better idea of our own aircraft. In particular, “firepower” is a bit obscure: it’s just a number. Fine, the bigger the number, the greater the fire power. Of course, a number to work with is exactly what the AI needs to compute. But for us it would be better if we were told what that number means: 6 heavy machine guns, or 1x20mm canon and 2 light MG or whatever. Also, it would be great if we were given the engine(s) power.
So we could get something like: Flycatcher 1923 Fighter, 2x .30 machine guns, max speed 128kn, Engine 400HP (plus range and the rest of course)

garrisonchisholm posted (back in 2020!) link a very interesting proposal regarding aircraft characteristics (including rate of climb) that he later used in his really entertaining “DLC, an Italian AAR” series (where by the way, we can also have a short look at the new RTW3 treaty system, much improved from RTW2, with true naval negotiations going on, and limits both for ship type -as now- and total fleet tonnage). I can’t wait!

Anyway, back to aircraft firepower, up to the 1940s or so something like this could work:

View Attachment

So instead of being shown a Firepower value of 6, we could have our aircraft listed as being armed with: either

6x .30MG or

4x .50MG or

1x 20mm cannon plus 2 x .50MG, and so on.

I'm glad you brought this up again TheOtherPoster.  I would love to have an optional, flavor-only mod that would pick up your aircraft stats and add these kinds of story details.  It could be as simple as a spreadsheet (well, it *is* RTW after-all) but it would be really convenient if it could be done at a stroke without data entry, which is what stopped me from developing the aircraft further in depth.  Unfortunately I am a theorist, I'm not sure how this would be implemented in an automatic fashion, and Fredrik has enough on his plate for the visual horizon.   - & thank you for crediting me with coming up with something "really entertaining".     I'm already thinking about the next one, though I still want to finish out the DLC AAR.

[TheOtherPoster]

I guess theorists are the scourge of all programmers: always coming along with their wonderful ideas while leaving to the programmers the hard work of figuring out how to implement them! Probably Fredrik had enough of the likes of all of us for now…

Just to clarify, I think my spreadsheet may have been rather confusing. It was just to show the programmer some possible number to guns equivalences. Nothing extra to do or to learn for players.

Maybe a no intrusive way to provide more details about our aircraft could be to generate a new window after we right click over the aircraft's name. So if we do not right click, the player will not be affected by any extra info he does not want. But if we do, we could see more details of the aircraft in that window: Like
1941, Blackburn Flycatcher: shipboard, cantilever monoplane fighter. 4x .50 machine guns, 1x 1180HP Napier 12F watercooler engine, aluminium structure, self-sealing tanks, speed, range, rate of climb…

All those details would not add anything new to the game workings, AI would automatically generate them after the values it already has. It doesn’t matter the name of the engine or its exact output or rate of climb. But I think they could enrich our game experience without any real extra burden to us.

Maybe something for a future update of RTW3, once everything goes smoothly and they have at last more time available.

[cogsandspigots]

Ah ok, sorry. My mistake. I still do stand by my statement that the current level of abstraction is appropriate. However, I don’t think I would mind a bit more flavor to the existing systems.

[avimimus]

I think the current level of abstraction is pretty good to be honest.

There were a lot of differences in the approach to aircraft firepower. Even with two machine guns, the way they are fitted and details of operations can have a significant effect (e.g. Austria-Hungary's many issues). In WW2 the difference in the kinetic energy between the Italian, American, and Russian heavy machine guns was significant - while the German and Russian heavy machine guns also carried significantly larger bursting charges. Perhaps more importantly, the Americans grouped their guns in the aircraft wings instead of concentrating them as a synchronised guns firing through the propeller hub. Assessing effectiveness gets very complicated quickly.

In contrast, an abstract value can subsume things like how good a gun platform the aircraft is, how much magazine depth it has (rounds per gun), the reliability of weapons, as well as their effective punch in the hands of a typical pilot.

There might be a point to modelling the transition from light machine guns (which bombers could be partially armoured against) to reliable automatic cannons (which rendered large aircraft especially vulnerable from about 1941 onwards). However, I still think there are other areas where the modelling of aircraft could be improved as a higher priority (e.g. four engined ASW aircraft, long range 'R-planes/fleet shadowers' being an extension of the airship tech tree, use of floatplanes for anti-submarine and merchant raiding warfare, as well as spotting for bombardments, better representation of the torpedo bomber experiments in WWI).

[oldpop2000]

Well, let's see. A .50 caliber bullet weighed 660 grains. The .50 machine gun fired at a rate of 1000 rnds per minute. So in one minute the .50 caliber machine gun could fire 94.28 pounds of ammunition at an opponent. So six of those guns could fire 565.68 lbs of bullets. Muzzle velocity is another important variable also. Harmonization of the guns is important. 

[wlbjork]

Just as an additional point to that, 20mm Hispanos didn't have the throw weight of the .50 cal Brownings in terms of rate of fire and number of guns - but hit for hit they did an estimated 3 times the damage.

Tests carried out by the RAF pre-war revealed that for all the extra weight of the .50cal bullet, it would put a .50" hole in the fuselage of it's target whereas the .303 would put a .303" hole in the target, the judgement being that the smaller round allowed for more ammunition and guns to be carried for the same weight without any real trade-off in effectiveness.

[srndacful]

Apr 16, 2023 22:55:21 GMT -6 wlbjork said:

Just as an additional point to that, 20mm Hispanos didn't have the throw weight of the .50 cal Brownings in terms of rate of fire and number of guns - but hit for hit they did an estimated 3 times the damage.

Tests carried out by the RAF pre-war revealed that for all the extra weight of the .50cal bullet, it would put a .50" hole in the fuselage of it's target whereas the .303 would put a .303" hole in the target, the judgement being that the smaller round allowed for more ammunition and guns to be carried for the same weight without any real trade-off in effectiveness.

This. This is the main reason I don't advocate more complex aircraft design: way too many options and variables to consider. 
I mean, here we are squabbling over a basic stuff like (metaphorically) "should the CL mount 3" or 5" or 8" guns and where do we put them?"

And let's not even start on the rest: 
- Basic construction and material
- how much armour and where to put it
- number, size and shape of the wings
- size and shape of the tail
- radial or inline engine
- cooling system for said engine
- number, size and shape of the propellers
- positions and roles of the crew
- number and position of pylons, hardpoints or bomb-bays

And these are just off the top of my head - I'm sure oldpop2000 can provide a lot more.
Basically, we're talking about a game of it's own, here - and the team has enough work already providing us with this one.

So, yeah - I'm all in favour of abstract forms of aircraft quality's representation - so team can focus on what's important. 
Let's let the sleeping dogs lie, folks.

[oldpop2000]

Apr 17, 2023 22:28:43 GMT -6 srndacful said:

Apr 16, 2023 22:55:21 GMT -6 wlbjork said:

Just as an additional point to that, 20mm Hispanos didn't have the throw weight of the .50 cal Brownings in terms of rate of fire and number of guns - but hit for hit they did an estimated 3 times the damage.

Tests carried out by the RAF pre-war revealed that for all the extra weight of the .50cal bullet, it would put a .50" hole in the fuselage of it's target whereas the .303 would put a .303" hole in the target, the judgement being that the smaller round allowed for more ammunition and guns to be carried for the same weight without any real trade-off in effectiveness.

This. This is the main reason I don't advocate more complex aircraft design: way too many options and variables to consider. 
I mean, here we are squabbling over a basic stuff like (metaphorically) "should the CL mount 3" or 5" or 8" guns and where do we put them?"

And let's not even start on the rest: 
- Basic construction and material
- how much armour and where to put it
- number, size and shape of the wings
- size and shape of the tail
- radial or inline engine
- cooling system for said engine
- number, size and shape of the propellers
- positions and roles of the crew
- number and position of pylons, hardpoints or bomb-bays

And these are just off the top of my head - I'm sure oldpop2000 can provide a lot more.
Basically, we're talking about a game of it's own, here - and the team has enough work already providing us with this one.

So, yeah - I'm all in favour of abstract forms of aircraft quality's representation - so team can focus on what's important. 
Let's let the sleeping dogs lie, folks.

I am in complete agreement. I believe that we can over-complicate this game and it will  become a real nightmare to play. It's a game, nothing more. As it stands now, it is an excellent game, let's leave it that way. The only area that could be explored is aircraft maintenance which is and was vital. You might be able to include aircraft maintenance after a number of flight hours, say about 500 hrs. If there is no war, then it might take years for the bird to get to 500 hrs. During wartime, that 500 hrs will arrive very quickly. This will require extra birds, and good planning along with a facility that can perform the 500 hr. maintenance and upgrades. It would be at this time, that new types of weapons, engines etc. could be installed and the planes capability upgraded. It can be written into the game as an option, not mandatory. This maintenance could be titled depot level maintenance.

[oldpop2000]

If the team were to attempt to develop depot maintenance for aircraft here is my idea of how to do it.

1. Assume that each mission takes 2 hrs from launch to recovery. You could adapt that number of hours to the type of bird. Bombers might take 4 hrs.

2. If we set the limit before depot maintenance at 500 hrs, that means that an aircraft could fly 250 missions before it needed depot level maintenance at the factory. If the bird flew two missions per day during wartime, that is 125 days of action or about four months of continuous combat before it had to be sent back to the factory for upgrades and repairs. Some maintenance and damage repairs could be accomplished on the carriers. Engine, hydraulics, pneumatics, ordance and even wing and fuselage panels can be replace on-board with spares. Even cannabalizing can be done to maintain the air wing.

3. There would have to be spare aircraft to replace aircraft in maintenance. Aircraft damage during combat or non-operational would have to be taken out of service until the carrier could return to port.

4. As technology changes and improves, maintenance always gets more complex and takes longer. This will have to be included in the basic parameters of depot maintenance.

It can be simplified but this would work. Again, it should be made optional. If you really want to dive into this complication, knock yourself out.