Dive bombing = Glide bombing. Why?

[Drunken_Jedi]

I thought I'd test one of the pre-made scenarios, a squadron of Val dive bombers vs a DD and an oiler. I thought to allow for a dive bomb attack, I'd set my altitude to 10000ft, as is typical for a dive bomb attack pulling out at about 3000ft. I issued attack orders to the oiler, given that it's the more valuable target here and watched the aircraft move in to attack.

However, instead of attacking from the designated altitude and diving down on the target they instead thought it'd be ideal to drop to just under 3000ft and GLIDE BOMB the targets instead. As a result accuracy was terrible and I lost an entire wing to AA fire.

THIS IS NOT DIVE BOMBING. For real guys, I don't understand how you can get something so basic so wrong?

I'm trying REALLY hard to like this game, after all Killerfish did an incredible job with Cold Waters I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. The AI is just terrible and the UI is one of the least logical and intuitive designs I've seen in many years. I fear I'm getting close to refunding this with just under two hours of play time. I'm not enjoying it at all.

I see the potential here, but some of the issues are so fundamental (like UI) that they can't just be patched out. I fear this is not going to be a success on the scale of Cold Waters...

[Zuul]

Eh, I mean...yeah, they probably shouldn't cruise in at 2800 feet like a bunch of buffoons. That being said, the attack profile isn't that far off of what the Japanese were trained to do.

Japanese standard was to release at something like 1200-1300 feet and pull out around 500-600 feet. The dive wasn't as steep either, SOP was 50-65 degrees, with 65 degrees being the literal maximum while retaining control of the aircraft. Meanwhile the US Dauntless could exceed a 70 degree dive with control.

Now, since the US dive bombers behave the same way, their behavior is egregiously more stupid, and needs some fixing.

That being said, I have no idea how you managed to lose an entire bomber wing and have poor accuracy on a dive bombing run in this game given your specified opfor. Just a few minutes ago I sent a wing of Val's against a Oiler and DD to test. Came away with half a dozen direct hits on the Oiler and 1 plane smoking, no losses.

[Redmarkus4]

My US dive bombers make steep dives. I'd say 80 degrees.

[The Inept European]

I think the game is expecting the bombers to cruise in at about 3000 - 3500 feet. From that altitude the dive attacks work fine, you get a steepish dive, probably around 50-65 degrees.

[indycar]

1st its called level bombing

2nd read manual where its all explained at what alt your planes need to be to do either level, dive or skip bombing

[The Inept European]

Glide bombing is actually something different from any of those 3 things.

This game doesn't implement glide bombing and it was not really used [much] in WW2.

[boris.glevrk]

Do you even know what glide bombing is?
A glide bomb is a winged bomb that actually flies, instead of falling like a rock.

Every dive bomber has its designated dive entry altitude limit. I don't think SBD's limit is that low, but I'd say reducing the run is probably better for the implementation, because a prolonged dive in the video game has the following problems:
1. prolonged straight, non-evasive period under AA fire. problematic since almost all games exaggerates AA fire efficiency.
2. the limited ability to cope with ship maneuver during a dive. The AI is not a real trained pilot, it only has a very limited capability to compensate for target ship movements during the dive. The longer the dive, the worse the accuracy.

[The Inept European]

Very good points.

[VX]

Much of the game is abstracted, I'm fairly sure the developers don't think that all dive bombing aircraft of the era only attacked from 3,000 ft. You have to stop looking at the aircraft portion of the game as so literal, it's mainly there to represent the aircraft as best as they can. For example right now B-17's have to be used as PBY's, sent out without armament to have the range to find the enemy forces.

IMHO the developers have tried to improve upon the North Atlantic game but have overreached their capabilities in a few areas which should have just been abstracted even more. The majority of players who are disapointed truly believed that a small studio was going to deliver real time 3d world physics and combat on a grand scale, and that was not going to happen. We have what we have.