Range oversight with 1.4b Air patrols? (Yes, again)

[AKULA_71]

After being pounced on by several Hurricane patrols 50-100Km outside the maxium combat radius (~360Km assumeing the airbase is on the nearest beach). I'm pretty sure the game is more than willing to basicly send air patrols on oneway suicide missions to hunt for uboats. I find this tactic a bit odd since the RAF where short on both aircraft and trained pilots during the early years of the war.

Hurricats didn't show up untill mid 1941 and was used only to defend convoys against the condor patrol bombers sighted close by. So these Hurricanes I keep running into ~400+Km out to sea can't be comming from CAM equiped merchants.

End question is. Is it realistic for British and American ASW patrols to fly oneway missions just for the sake of makeing the game more of a challange for the player?

[Werewolf]

:hmm: ..........................maybe it came from an aircraft carrier?

[FAdmiral]

So far, I have never seen those kind of fighters come from
carriers, mostly Swordfish early in the war and Advengers
later on. Of course, anything is possible in a game cause
reality is not usually the programmers main concern, making
it fun for the players is ! They figure some planes are better
than nothing, I guess....


JIM

[AKULA_71]

After looking at the config files for the aircraft only the Hurricane and swordfish are set way beyond their Max combat radius. Most likely done to make aircraft a threat early in the war. Nevermind aircraft where only a minor threat to UBoats early on a good day for the RAF. I've had two carrers ended by single hurricanes catching me on the crash dive and have taken several painfull hits. :-?

The P-38J's 1200 Km combat radius could be too high but I've yet to run into one. If it doesn't carry bombs then 1200Km is about right.

Sunderlands, B-24s and PBYs combat radius in 1.4b are pretty close even erroring slightly on the low end of the scale. The B24's loadout seems to be a tad overkill at over 8,000lbs, these planes normaly flew with bomb loads between 2,000 - 4,000 lbs on ASW duty.

[Sailor Steve]

Yes, there have been many complaints about both the ranges and the overwhelming amounts of aircraft that show up in 1.4b.

Get the Airpower Mod. It corrects the ranges, reduces the amounts of planes, makes the planes tougher and your flak guns less accurate. All more realistic, and more deadly.

[Charos]

Fully agree these Hurricanes in Sept 1939 are simply absurd and im running 1.4b with RUB 1.42 - I was hopeing this would be corrected.

I have been attacked by Hurricanes 300KM NW of Lock Ewe, which to my limited knowledge of Coastal Command was far away from any airbase.

A hurricane in clean configuration at optimum speed and altitude has a range of approx 750KM. A Hurricane in the above config with drop tanks has approx 1500KM Range but is unable to attack anything other than by machine guns.

At low altitude on ASW work a normal Huricane with a bomb loadout I would imagine would not be able to get further than about 600KM. Even then its empty getting home if it simply goes 300Km from base and turns around for home IE: No patrol what so ever.
A patroling Hurricane could not manage further than about 250KM from base without carrying out the simplest of patrol.

If the air coverage was as bad as SH3 makes out in Sept 1939 the U-Boat war would have been lost in 1940.

Not only that but SH3's DYNAMIC "Cough" Campaign does not seem to utilise any data regarding how many aircraft were assigned to particular airbases at a given time (which would be readily available).