Re: The Falklands
Posted: 2012-10-05 02:06
I am aware of the history of the Falklands War and how many aircraft each side had.Igwaith wrote:I just don't get it why Brits have such air superiority when it wasn't that way.
Brit won the air, but in numbers was inferior, the only thing that make the difference was the Sidewinder AIM 9L given to you by the EEUU, against the inferior matra that our planes used.... and reason why our airplanes avoid in the possible the air-air fight.
And you put in all the scenarios a big difference, brits have more planes, more helicopters... and, also AA defenses so I think that's no te point.
I know game balances are you gonna say, but.. Wasn't this "Project Reality"? Or "Project Balanced Game"
First of all, the AIM-9L Sidewinders where brought from the US (who the hell is the EEUU?), not given if you want to be exact. And please don't say "you", its not like I was part of this war or revived these missiles personally, I wasn't even born...
Second of all the Matra R.530 while an older missile, has a far superior range. 20km range to the AIM-9Ls 18km range in r/l (1km to the AIM-9Ls 900m ingame). The problem was that Argentina kept its Mirage IIIEAs and these missiles back from the fighting apart from a few cases at the begging of the air battle when they got shot down. Reason why they where kept back is unclear but one theory is they where thought to be because of possible Vulcan raids on the Argentine mainland but this reasoning isn't thought to be very accurate. If they had been put on the front line more, chances are they could have downed a few Harriers if they used their superior speed and weapon's range to their advantage, although their biggest problem was in r/l this, other than cannons was the only weapon they carried so at most they could only hope to down one aircraft, per sortie tops as getting into a gun fight with a Harrier would be suicide (although that isn't the case ingame since the Mirage has a good chance of being able to get out of the fight when it pleases).
As for the numbers of aircraft ingame, the numbers are mainly due to balancing purposes but there are also some realistic aspects that you have not considered which do throw the numbers off from just "how many aircraft each side had" which is the way your looking at this.
The biggest of these is Argentina could at no point throw all its aircraft into the fight at any one time, even if it wanted to which if it did would be a bad mistake logistically anyways but lets ignore that point. The reason behind this was many aircraft HAD to receive aerial refuelling to get to and from the Falklands. These where mainly the A-4s which made up the majority of the Argentines AF (according to your sources, 58 of the 139 aircraft the Argentines had, although many sources say a lot different and really the Pucaras and a few other aircraft probably shouldn't be counted in this number but we will anyways. That is over 40% of the Argentine AF and they where not the only aircraft that relied on aerial refuelling. The Argentines only had two tanker aircraft to serve the whole of their AF, which not only seriously limited how many aircraft could be sent out in one go, but also seriously limited the sortie rates of all the aircraft as they where based on the sortie rates of the tanker, and it takes quite some time to land and refuel a tanker, ready for another sortie.
Then their is the loiter time they Argentine aircraft had which for all, where not good, although that can be said for both sides but for the avg Argentine aircraft iirc it was around 5mins safe loiter time, where Brits had around 20mins but maybe wrong here and it very much depends on from what airfield the aircraft came from and what part of the Falklands they are attacking/patrolling.
Then their is sortie rates of the aircraft themselves, which I've already mentioned a lot of Argentine aircraft's sortie rates where based off the sortie rates of their tankers, while other non-tanker dependant aircraft like the Mirages and Daggers still had quite a low sortie rate. The Dagger, being the 2nd most common aircraft to the Argies, only had 5.1 sorties per aircraft. One of the biggest features of the STOVL aircraft like the Harrier is their sortie rates, which for the Sea Harrier its sortie rate was 51.25 per aircraft. That basically means that every time a single Dagger had been armed, fuelled and was off on a Mission, a single Sea Harrier was already on its 10th mission because its turn around was just simply, so much faster. Now I can't represent sortie rates very well ingame due to the fact you don't have guys running around your aircraft checking it, mounting weapons on it, fuelling it etc nor the time frame to do that in, even thou we do have a longish rearming point, the fact we don't have fuel sort of makes that irrelevant anyways.
Then we come to aircraft weapon loadouts. For gameplay reasons I've given the Argentine aircraft more missiles than what they carried commonly during the war, although wasn't impossible for the aircraft to carry these loadouts. For example on the Mirage IIIEA, I've added two AA-11 missiles (representing R.550 Magic missiles) onto its outer wing hardpoints as well as its R.530 missile. The dagger and the AS version of the Mirage I've also given these AA-11s too. The main reason for this is for the Mirage, 1 missile would suck on its own gameplay wise even with its extra range, especially with how far the Argentine main is as if you miss with that, you've got no chance of winning so you would just have to run, which would also suck for the Harriers not being able to get into a proper fight. The dagger mainly so it can also be used as both a fighter and ground attack, keeping it doing two jobs and not constantly bothering the guys on the ground and the AS version of the Mirage so it isn't totally useless once the AC has been destroyed, which otherwise it would be. Instead if the AC is destroyed, its still a somewhat effective fighter. The Harrier on the other hand has only its realistic, 2x AIM-9L missiles, as well as its 30mm cannons, and it can rather quickly get though just two missiles and then have to return to the carrier to rearm.
As such the only way to represent all these elements is really by aircraft numbers more than anything else.
As for the Helicopter numbers, like Rudd said, they are dynamic to how many the Brits can actually get, which is realistic as in the war, the AC (Atlantic Conveyor cargo ship) which was carrying a load of Chinooks and other choppers was sunk before it could unload all but one of its Chinooks, sunk by an Exocet missile and as such, the Brits didn't have enough choppers to fly over the Falklands with and had to walk. Since you can sink the AC ingame, which prevents any more Chinooks from spawning, you can do the same, its just up to you as a team to make it happen, only difference was during the real war, the Argentines where not intending to sink this ship and you are
Also you didn't quote Chinook numbers in your stats. 5 Chinook Helicopters where on the AC, but only one made it off in time in r/l. Ingame you can have a max of 3 spawning, with the first having a 10min delayed spawn, so if you kill the AC before the 10min timer is up, then you would have deprived the Brits of all Chinooks, weakening their logistics even more than they where in the actual war. As for giving the Argies such a limited amount of choppers, the biggest reason for this is down to making the Argies behave more like what they did during the war, with being more defensive than offensive. If I gave the Argies lots of choppers players would be flying to each and every flag which simply didn't happen in the war, they dug into the mountains and let the Brits came to us. Although I'm not limiting the Argentinian team from doing this, I'm not making it super easy either and they do get a Max of two UH-1Hs on AAS64 which is the same number Wessex helis the Brits get, which down to your numbers they should be getting a lot more
All in all, this has all been very thought out. I have tried to keep realism in as much as possible but the thing I don't think you quite understand is that balance and gameplay are both critical. Without them, there is no point me making this mod, as no one would play it for more than a few hrs at the most if its not fun nor balanced for either side and the map/mod would die. I would much rather have something that was being played and was close to the truth, rather than something which was 100% accurate and no one played and like it or not I believe in practice you and every other player would agree.
, Estados Unidos, and as it is plural it uses the same letter twice, EEUU.
