S3 Series

Kind of realistic tactic the Allies were using from what I read. Long, boring flying hours, moments of stark terror, and more boring flying if you were lucky.

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Understood.

Here is the Goal:

Every Series for 12 years (maybe more) for me personally, I am given a plane or set of planes and told to fight in a 5 frame set of missions. With that scenario I use what I have to the best possible and seek the enemy no matter what with whatever what and do it however I can to achieve the CO frames orders inside the rules given.
That creates some really kewl frames and some really boring frames, it has never been always boring or always exciting, but truthfully that is part of the fun of it........ and the goal.

Can I find those who don't want to be found?
Can I Kill with the worst plane?
Can I do an NOE mission that is pretty much suicide and survive?
Can I lead my guys on a mission off a CV that I know we cannot come back from because fuel will not allow it, ever? Twice?
(all of the above having been done many times, not a theory)

The Goal for me is to answer YES. Do I have to like it? No. But it is exactly what I see in my conversations and histories with those who did it for real. And I am just deluded enough to want a small percentage look and feel of it for myself.

Do I want fun all the time. Heck yeah. Is that what S3 is all about. Nope. We (I say we I mean Jabo, Roan, Phoenix) attempt to create a semblance of what we all have heard and read about. Hours of boredom followed by 60 seconds of terror is about right. I ascribe/subscribe to their creation and work in it. I like that it is possible to not see an enemy, and have to FIND them. Do I want them to be doing the same? Absolutely, if they don't I will find them.

I also like having to change tactics to achieve the goal. If I must not fur ball to achieve local superiority I will, might be boring but we have a mission to achieve.
I understand the numbers thing but I have been with 5 and 6 and done the same thing for years, have done 10 to 13 and done same, have done 18 to 24 and done same. Also have gotten our ass kicked with few and many also. I am not impressed too much by numbers.

Goal defined.

I am not saying anything new or different at all. Not saying anything that I believe is different than the goal of anyone else. I believe it is probably the same as all involved.

As far as the Flight Models I very much appreciate everything being done. But, no matter what is done something must be dealt with, not by the FM team but by those who HAVE to fly them, no matter what state they are in. In fact, we are told to deal with it, and so I do and tell my fellows to deal with it also. Then we are told that they are bad or good or great or terrible, and they may be, but I must use what I have on that day, and use it the best possible, because my choice to do other is zero. That is my part of all this, to do best to help get things as good as possible, AND to use what I got no matter what. Otherwise I would go nuts trying to figure out what is good or bad on what particular day to what particular someone at what particular setting.

So, my favorite is to just do the same scenario twice and switch sides. Then we all deal with the same exact thing and see how things go. I think its fun.

I don't like boredom either, but it will happen in S3, if kept to a minimum that is great, but at times it is also pretty kewl because it gives a flavor that you aren't going to get anywhere else.

Just my 352 cents, and just wanting to have everyone know how nice it is to be with a bunch of guys who dream the same, and hope to somehow honor the Men of Great Worth I admire so much.

(S)s

Juice

So in summary:

Bomber guys liked it because they could bomb and had to actually talk to each other to come up with a plan...which should have been easy to execute since in War the enemy usually gets a vote, and the allies didn't register for this election...which enabled the bombers to reign supreme.

Fighter guys hated it because they couldn't fight due to one side running away

Juice says he will kill anyone in anything...

So if three minutes of "fun" in a 3 hour period is what is expected in an S3....how do you keep bringing guys back for more?

Just saying this was an exercise in point gathering...not tactical execution, since the axis pretty much did what they wanted over our airfields for the entire series while allied looked for points they could gather and declare "victory and wait out the axis boredom factor so they could RTB.


Anyone have a total number of humans killed by allied this frame? My guess is it is WAY lower than ai killed since that is what was targeted.

Dobs

I remember 2 or 3 years ago we did the back-2-back thing. That way everyone can see what the other side had to go through. I personally didn't like them because of the lack of variety, but they could be done again.

As for the number match-ups, the allied CO's (me included) could have set the orders to have all the fighters for a big mass and attack the IJ big mass but we didn't order that. We ordered everyone to run away if possible.

I think the biggest issue was the plane match-up, no matter how realistic or uber they may be. All the historic data indicated that the allied planes (P40's and P39's) had to dive out to live and not fight the IJ straight up. So that's what we did. and so that makes a boring event, but a realistic event.

I know I did learn one thing last night, It was very much a learning experience being on the AE TS. Thanks guys for letting the NS in. I have never heard a fighter group in action and it was really neat. It didn't sound to me like they were very bored. On our 1st run up to 60 we (NS and AE) ran into a high group of A3M. The AE, without hesitation, went right through them and attacked, even though they were outnumbered, and then drug them south east away from us so we could finish our strike. I, of course, was shot down on the 1st pass by a fricking 40mm gun (thanks for turning up the Ack Jabo), but the AE continued to protect the remnants of the NS until we all RTB'd. Sure seemed that they were not bored and I think they had some fun and had several kills.

I thought we did a good job of ordering the fighters to attack ships and ground targets. That should have kept everyone busy and having fun all night all 5 frames. Being a strike guy, thats fun to me but maybe not to the fighter squads.

Every series we play with the hand dealt us. Every series its our job, as frame CO's, to make the frames fun for everyone. Sorry if I wasn't able to do that, a lot of times I look at ways to gain points instead of how to help squads have fun, I will try to do better in the future. If the fighters would rather just ball up and go head to head, we can arrange that in the future.

If people thought this series didn't have enough action, next series will really be bad. I think Jabo posted that we are going to do a good old fashioned ETO event. Lots of Buff flying a DTF for 3.5 hours and AX fighters waiting on the ground for us to get close enough for them to engage. The last one I was in, some of the AX had to wait 45min. to even take off. At least with AI wingmen, maybe we will have some impressive buff groups.

~S~

Dobs sir, you actually make a very good point,
From all accounts that I read, not a lot I admit, the series played out like it did in real life. The AL were severely outnumbers, they survived by running away and by hitting where the IJ weren't.

Maybe the real answer is to not do realistic series. There really is nothing saying we couldn't have something made up that has both sides on even footings. Hell, we could have a fictitious German vs German (some revolt in the middle of the war or something). give both sides the same planes and same numbers and see what happens. there are a lot of different things that could be done.

From what I have seen in the past, the S3 tries to do realistic series. I believe, and could be wrong, that there were very few even up battles. If they were even up, they probably wouldn't have happened. Jabo tries to tweek things a little bit to make them more even (by assigning more points to specific things) but I think it is very tough to find an even up real war battle.

Not sure, but if non-war series are desired, I bet Jabo would do them if everyone wanted them. Just suggest something.

I like the side swap thing. I am planning a late December event that will allow this to happen.

Personally, S3 could be half the time (1.5 hours) and much smaller scope. I think numbers are such that there should be a single point of contact and a short, single engagement sort of thing.

But that's me...

I think more difficult settings would be a great help in eliminating a lot of the issues. No GPS would go a long way to adding a realistic level of fog of war that would lessen the effect of superior numbers or FM differences. There should be no clickrange allowing ID of bogies in flight, the aircraft types displayed in the icon should be generic (SE, ME for example instead of A6M)

And the FM team needs to get cracking on the FM's. Flying the P39 especially pointed out how poorly it is modeled. And there is a long list of FM's in need of attention. That doesn't mean the P39 would go from bad to good, just that there are big holes in its model and when one of those FM's is flown against a recently reviewed model there is a stark contrast. Not that the Zeke is perfect. I went for excellent handling at low speed and combined with its engine rework it is awesome in the low end (properly I think) but generous at higher speed where it is known to have been weak.

Musky..most of the previous s3s were fun due to being a challenge...be it in aircraft parity or scenario setup. I love S3s...this one not so much due to minimal player vs player interaction.

Hard to get guys excited to go bomb boats for 3 hours with orders to run from cons...at least for guys who love fighters.

We were above your engagement in the last s3 and ended up mixing it up with high a6ms...lost one, got one... Before we headed away from large mass of inbounds.

I think escort duty is one of the most challenging scenarios for fighters to accomplish....look forward to the next s3:)

Think we need dar to be dar..not fighter data link with bandits not ID'd by AI vs human.

Juice I agree with you and Dobs once again I don't know where you get your information from. With my guys, there is a lot of tactical planning going into covering the buffs and there are times when we all die regardless how well we plan a mission.

We are in constant communication with all those that are escorting us. Our Ki-43 were no match for the P040's and we lost all of them. I know from your perspective it was boring, but from our view.

I really don't see where you're coming from on this one.

My Ni! cents.

several things in play here. You cannot argue that the plane match up wasn't historical. It certainly was. Both sides KNEW their rides, what they could and could not do with them. Now, if you have two sides that know this, and both sides are smart enough NOT to enter a fight at a tactical disadvantage, then you have a scenario that neither side engages, or one side wants to, and the other doesn't.
In this case, would a Zeke squad place themselves outnumbered and low against p 40's? ( cept for you Juice). Neither would anyone else.
For p 40's or p-39's to successfully engage zekes they would have to have them at a tactical disadvantage, like have alt/and/or numbers in which case, Zekes are NOT gonna do that if they can help it. Likewise the reverse is true.(hence allies refused to engage)
Since the allies could not under any circumstances get themselves into that position ( unless the other side committed a tactical error) the die was cast, and the only means to victory lay within the ground work of the rules/points, which tactic the Allies employed.
It was the only outcome that COULD have happened given our experience and talent.

Salute! Banzai!

I go with Hawk and Sleepy. Planes were what they historically were for this series. Goals of each side were what they were back then but not real specific on our "rules" page. Good grief, the IJN air arm and Imperial navy boats were ready to kick butt and did for about a year or so. The Yanks and Aussies and Brits were not ready.

So you develop a strategy for the series and not show up each week to see what the frame CO expects. Once side squads are assigned, you talk with each other, duh????? The side that gets together early and then cooperates usually comes out on top, especially if they execute well. Gee, who woulda think that?

I would not like an S3 that had tactics and strategy specifiied in the rules. An overall goal would seem fair if it was based on the historical scenario, huh?

That's my story and I am sticking to it.

BTW, real world lites in 'nam and Storm and later flew an hour and a half or more to drop a few bombs or cover the strikers. It ain't PS3 or whatever. And even with our compressed terrain in WB, the buffs fly an hour or so to die on many missions.

Gums sends...