WES: re MedMod: Should Destroyers have air bombard?

[TheLimey]

I'm maybe 2/3 the way through a gigantic game of the MedMod B5.

I managed to get to Democracy and just squeak to a couple of wonders, and also have way more cities; maybe a dozen more, that were pivotal in giving me a tech advantage, so i'm probably 6 or 7 or maybe a few more advances in front of the nearest AI.

As soon as I got to the Air Power section, I started building up a sizable airforce, on one land front that I was fighting on, and indeed, the improvements in the usefulness of airpower, making ground troops less useful are working.

I at the same time started building a carrier task force, to power project towards my other enemy. In the situation I am in now, my first carrier has arrived near the area, and knocked out some light ground 'resistance' on a coast, in passing.

The problem is, that you can't really approach coastal towns, by bomber, for instance, for fear of bombardment by relatively technologically inferior equipment; the battleship or destroyer.

Is it appropriate to have units have a (very decent) offense against a unit that hasn't even been invented yet? Kind of like giving Stealth Bomber 'CAN_BOMBARD_SPACE' or something. So why not remove that flag from the destroyer and battleship?

Their high movement rates make them phenominally dangerous to air units generally, in addition.

There are already appropriate countermeasures to air threats at sea- the carrier based fighter, and later the missile cruiser.

On land, you should build fighters, or slightly later, SAM Launchers.

This change will improve the utility of the carrier, over and above the Battleship, as it should be, and mean air domininance can be held, and used for a short period on the sea, as well as land.

[WesW]

Though Battleships and Destroyers were invented before airplanes, they were adapted into excellent anti-air units when air power became a significant military factor (though not until a couple of battles had occurred which vividly demonstrated the ability of planes to sink capital ships). I also gave Battleships the ability to carry Cruise Missiles, to represent their modification to have this ability as well (see Desert Storm).

I plan to expand the roster of 20th century units by about 15 in the med mod 4, which will allow for much greater development and specialization of unit strengths and abilities. Try and make do with what there is for a few more weeks, and then we should be able to have some much more realistic modern conflicts.

[TheLimey]

Personally, what I think I'm going to do is remove the Air Bombard feature of the Battleship, and create a new unit, with the same graphics as the Destroyer, at Rocketry, Combined Arms or Quantum Physics; Destroyer (DDGN) having the same stats as the current Destroyer unit.

The original Destroyer at Oil Refining will be designated Destroyer (DD) and have less movement rate, 5 or so sounds right, and no air bombard.

While from a factual and historical sense you are correct, there is a flaw;

Destroyers were retrofitted with AA guns only after the air threat to the navy was realized, months later in fact, and those were not combat operational until a year or more after the fact. Also, their attack potency against air targets was significantly less than their capability, for example to bombard naval or ground targets. CtP makes no distinction in attack power between bombarding air, surface or ground targets and so you can't really balance things well here.

Battleships, while they had and have good point defence weapons against air targets have never had good air standoff capability; naval designers did not want to dilute their dedicated surface strike/bombardment role. They are a capital ship, and have been escorted as such, throughout history.

Better to remove the capabilities of the early Destroyer and Battleship than to hamper air units unnecessarily.

[wheathin]

I like your idea, TM. Also adds a surprise element into the game because you wont know if that destroyer is going to smack you down or not...

[TheLimey]

I made the alteration to the files (though I was a bit brave since I didn't bother backing up first.)

Rather than giving the new destroyer the same GL string description (I.E. onscreen name,) I gave it a different one, specifically 'Destroyer GN'.

I included it in the primary and overflow backup naval defense sections of all appropriate fli's, giving the same weighting as the basic destroyer has in all cases.

I set the basic destroyer to go obsolete at Combined Arms (or actually Jet Propulsion... as it is in the advances file), removed its air bombard capability. Similarly, I removed the air bombard capability of the Battleship.

The new destroyer appears at Combined Arms too.


This way, you have to go along the same path to get to Missile Cruiser, at which point the Destroyer will go obsolete, although personally, I don't see why we can't have destroyers and cruisers running around. Is it merely because the AI isn't smart enough to handle this?

Anyway... I digress.

I loaded with the updated files just before the carrier group makes contact and 'power projects' and the whole tone changed.

Air units feel more like they should against the class of unit they are facing. Not totally overpowering... (considering the support costs)

As I was finishing playing for the night, the most advanced opponent (this one) had just developed flight... and interceptors.

It was a little challenging destroying that individual unit in a city with city walls; I did a little practice to find out what it took, but I had to diffuse the active air defense, using one interceptor, then attack (not bombard) with a couple of destroyers and three bombers. One destroyer was critically damaged. That was the only way to avoid a loss of a unit in attacking.

Defense with interceptors in cities and in plain old active defence mode looks just great... nicely balanced.

There is a big difference from fighting on your soil and fighting on someone elses; the computer, i'm sure is going to be generating decent numbers of fighter units to throw against me.

To summarize, the balance looks much better with the early modern naval units not having air bombard.

[BigJ]

I also made some changes to my game, as I found it strange that a destroyer could 'chase down' a plane and attack it. So I removed the bombard air ability of modern ships, even though they are now weaker against aircraft. I considered giving them active air defense, but as there is no differentiation between land and air bombard abilities, that would mean aircraft would get badly hurt just getting near a ship, especially a battleship. Historically, though, ships without air support have been fairly easy targets for aircraft, so I decided to leave ships without air bombard ability.

Another thought about aircraft in ctp- has anyone else noticed that the ai will sometimes fly its planes around until they run out of fuel and crash? I would like to keep the ai from wasting its planes like that, the only time I seem to have much trouble with its planes is when they are in a city I am attacking.

BigJ

[WesW]

I thought I would revive this thread to say that I have had somewhat of a change of heart regarding the bombard air feature, and that I think everyone will really like the setup in the med mod 4. All the new units have really allowed me to divide the ships into pre- and post- airpower groups.
Basically, post-WWII units will have the active-air defense feature, and earlier units will not. This means that fighters will only be vulnerable to AA Artillery and other fighters, until the post-WWII Missile Frigate comes out. Fighters will not have a very strong bombard ability, but Dive Bombers and Bombers will, so I am anxious to see what happens during play-testing.
Also, submarines will be a powerful force in the new setup.
Finally, I mentioned in the Intro thread that I may have stumbled upon the reason the AIs sometimes crash their planes.

[TheLimey]

I'm pleased to see the changes to the new mod. The mods I made to medmod5 have worked out fine for the game I've been playing.

I am holding off updating to MedMod 4, because of the amount of time I have invested in the current game, and the fact its still relatively interesting. I've been saving very often, more than once a turn, so I can work through the best scenario for that turn. In total there are 619 saves, totaling 353 megs, up to this point; 2010.

I am considering writing up a history of a world... and discussion on the choices that were made and why.

Incidentally; the computer really hasn't had the chance to build guided missile destroyers, at least in the ones that I've attacked. The attack I launched against the leading AI civ regressed their production, so that they've been building more numerous less advanced units first.