Attack Helicopters

[Balthagor]

...add the unit type to the long list of things to look at hard during beta...

Done

[Jan]

About readiness, don't forget that asymetrical wars are fought with peacetime budgets and trainings. In game terms, you are fighting a war with your forces in DEFCON 5.

Red, nice try but TD were specialized hardware used because of their ease of production (no turret mechanism) and they offered some tactical advantage (height) in given situation.

They were specialised tool and they were abandoned at the end of CW because they were not versatile enough and/or too expensive to maintain given their usefulness.

Don't forget the conditions of the "performances" your are refering to. Facts and figures are only valid in several situation if the context is exactly the same.

About "theorist", don't forget that doctrines are a bit more elaborate than a post on a forum, several people hardly tested them on the training fields and others far more qualified than anyone here studied them for years.

falling back to the initial subject, did anyone contacted the PR officier of a local combat helo unit to have more details about their role and usage? if not, you definitelly should.

PS: please note my point is not to offend anyone, i'm only convinced that the game suffer of such focusing on details that other far more specialised have failed to render correctly.

cheers,

Jan

[Feltan]

Jan,

One problem when you avail yourself to the websites is that most are authored by staunch proponents of army aviation. Many of these folks live, eat and breath helicopters. That's fine; you need proponents to move things forward. However, their arguments tend to be one-sided. There isn't a helicopter pilot around that wants to contemplate getting blown out of the sky by an air defense unit. If you take note, there is an ostrich mentality about the vulnerability of attack helicopters in the open source literature. That mentality is much worse when you actually have to discuss these things with army aviators -- take my word for it. I've been called just about every name in the book for suggesting realistic damage profiles in the past.

I am pleased by this discussion. There seems to be a consensus that attack helicopter attack values need to be beefed up, and the vulnerability/defense is an open question that doesn't warrant a change to current values.

I am in complete agreement.

Regards,
Feltan

[Balthagor]

...About "theorist", don't forget that doctrines are a bit more elaborate than a post on a forum, several people hardly tested them on the training fields and others far more qualified than anyone here studied them for years...

But Red's comment is still correct that even after years of study, history has often shown that these theorists still end up being wrong. The point is that if we stick with current values no one can prove us wrong, they can only say that there is evidence we may be wrong. Theories are not facts.

...falling back to the initial subject, did anyone contacted the PR officier of a local combat helo unit to have more details about their role and usage? if not, you definitelly should...

I still don't see what this would achieve, as I mentioned there is no one I could speak to who has actually experienced the symetrical combat you describe. All they would do is repeat what the theorists taught them in training or their experiences in asymetrical combat...

[Jan]

I still don't see what this would achieve, as I mentioned there is no one I could speak to who has actually experienced the symetrical combat you describe. All they would do is repeat what the theorists taught them in training or their experiences in asymetrical combat...

Maybe to have professional point of view rather than your actual guessing, even if you already know everything (then i wonder why people are still wasting their time in military school and on training fields...), you'll at least have a confirmation.

On the other side, i'm probably wasting your and my time arguing on such details since it's not your goal to do a tactical wargame but your are rather focusing on grand strategy, right?

Feltan, you are right, if you don't want to hear something that is not exactly what you are actually thinking, don't go there, professional are so naive...

i'm sure that you'll all like what you will create by thinking that way, it's only sad for those like me who hoped to finally have found a game that combine more or less credible grand strategy AND realistic wargame.

cheers,

Jan

[Balthagor]

Sorry if we're frustrating you Jan, but you're as stuck on your opinion as we are on ours. You're right when you say that this is probably a waste of time, after all there has never been a real combat between an Apache and a Leopard tank or a Hind and a M1 Abrams, theories are all we can look into. Keeping to the idea of grand strategy, when we test it for the beta we'll try and make sure that helicopters have some role to serve.

And as usual, if you disagree with our balance choices, you'll always be able to adjust the values post-release.

[Feltan]

...Feltan, you are right, if you don't want to hear something that is not exactly what you are actually thinking, don't go there, professional are so naive...

Jan,

I was simply suggesting that what the "professionals" have to say has to be wieghed against reality and current combat experience. The attack helicopter proponents will have you believe they are flying near invulnerable aircraft that can deal death and destruction out to anything they encounter.

"Professional" air force proponents will have you believe every conflict can be won from the air. The Israeli's even bought into that thinking during their last encounter in Lebanon -- with ground forces and their commanders coming in too late with too little.

In the U.S., during the run up to the first Gulf War, every cable news channel had "professional" military analysts trumpeting how experienced the Iraqi army was at desert warfare; how superior their artillery was to that of the U.S. One hundred hours after the war started, the "professional" prognosticators were unavailable for comment.

I totally agree with Chris on this. I don't think you are going to gain any insight by talking to attack helicopter personnel about various values to assign to attack helicopter units.

Regards,
Feltan

[BigStone]

I have won wars with apachies AND A10's ....

Must say .. they where funniest wars i've played

[Pandora's Last Ray]

The way I see it, for SR2020 what the attack helicopters need most to improve their effectiveness is not necessarily increased attack values, but a sort of harassing and support type of AI. An AI that will be smart enough to keep them away from dedicated or potent AA fire, guide them to take out their prime or isolated targets (or to intercept), and this last part ties into one MAJOR problem I've had with every unit: when it runs out of supplies, after resupplying it should go back on the attack.

It's no secret that military tech is generally improving, even if there's a lot of sideways development. But isn't part of the whole point of stealth helicopters so that they won't be picked up by AA, or interceptors? This is also an issue of stealth rebalancing, not that I'm telling you to make invisible AH's. But as stealth improves, and I'm sure you can make for realistic allowances of what future AH's can do, they should be better able to sneak into and out of potentially sticky spots.

Another issue is that helicopters seem to me a generally lower-profile target; not necessarily less vulnerable, just less provocative in terms of retaliation. I think this is already modelled by the AI not sending interceptors after them when they attack isolated areas. However, they definitely make tempting targets in the field which ties into my next issues.

One thing I really wanted to be able to do in SR2010 but couldn't because of micromanagement, programming and AI issues, was to use transport helicopters as leg unit's primary transportation, not necessarily mech, armor (eek!), etc. I wanted for example to take some special forces, and load them up onto Pavehawks or Pavelows, and with some Apache escorts penerate into some other region's territory where they had a lot of resources and not a lot of defenses. Alas, stealth issues prevent this as well. And the micromanagement of trying to get the helos to not fly through AA...

Another thing I'd like to do with my helicopters would be to have transports pull damaged/depleted leg units out of the fight while having some AH's stall the enemy units long enough for them to get away. Then the AH could get away after they've stalled long enough.

Overall, I think that the unit values are right, even for attack. The main issues I have with attack helicopters in SR2010 was what the AI couldn't do with them, the stealth rules, not returning to fights after resupplying, and generally requiring too much micromanagement to work right.

It seems that AH's are in fact vulnerable to a lot of things- interceptors, AA, even small arms damaging them below combat readiness. But for this game they can work brilliantly as a supporting unit in a wide variety of roles if the AI and stealth rules can be improved enough to use them intelligently, that is unless you get Black Hawk Down syndrome and declare failure whenever you take a loss.

[bergsjaeger]

Just my opinion on AHs, but I don't see a real good use for them in the game, sure the ASW versions have a use to kill subs, however, all the AT versions don't have a place in my military. Why should they? I have swarms of F/B's that can do the same job and better.

I actually have gotten annoyed at the AHs. When I did try to use them, I recieved more loses that I inflicted. Just one Apache squad in theory should wipe out any Russian tank battalion or any other country's tanks. However, in the game the tank battalion could shoot down some of the apaches, but IRL that would never happen unless the pilots are stupid enough to hover over the tanks and let the tank commander use the AA mg on the helicopter.

Just my thoughts anyway. Someone will probably say something about those thoughts.

[Balthagor]

...However, in the game the tank battalion could shoot down some of the apaches, but IRL that would never happen...

Something to keep in mind, while this is a game and all battalions appear to be "pure" (meaning T-80 @ str=31 means 31 tanks and nothing else) the balance was intentionally set to simulate that a battalion would have a few extra pieces, in this case we assumed a total battalion would have 1-2 shoulder launched AA as part of their total support. I know there are some games that simulate more accuratly by letting players decided what is in a battalion, but that is not how we decided to go. For better or for worse, that is the system we used and currently the same system is being used for SR2020.

I still like the idea of boosting AT helo attack values (I've done so in my mod posted on Thursday)

[bergsjaeger]

knew someone would say something, course I never saw an Abram tank crew carry around a stinger. But hey its BG's game, lol they could put in goats as units if they wanted to.

[ainsworth74]

they could put in goats as units if they wanted to.

I think putting in attack goats could be a good idea, make it a canadian special forces infantry unit.

[bergsjaeger]

oh no no, I'm not getting back on the subject of commando Goats and exploding cows. Be funny to have though.

As for the AHs, if they could wipe out a tank battalion like a F/B then the AHs be more like the RL ones. Sone of the AHs of today are designed mainly to be tank hunters. Why do you think they have AT missiles attached to their wings.

[Wicked]

I think that helies role in field is done good - they realy should be good against hard targets but I also agree that it is should be true for the area where you have air superiority.

Well to meet my and other people demand and to increase desire to use hilies, it may be good to increase their deadliness. So heli for one trip can do more damage to the tanks and when we lose them we know that they've done a good job. It won't be harmfull I think, for the balance, because many units on the field have the ability to shoot heli, but thier share on battle will rise a bit.

I usualy use heli to fight partisans, or hard targets that go deep in my territory without good backup.