No aerial recon?

[bsones]

It's so weird that airplanes don't lift fog of war when you send them into enemy territory. Early in the war, airplanes were used almost exclusively for recon. I'd be fine with it being a specific mission--i.e. planes sent to do air superiority or balloon busting don't give you recon--but it should definitely be an option. Honestly, it should be the default mission that you start with, and then air superiority should be something you research (so that you can shoot down recon planes).

[JohnnyReb]

It wasn’t as easy as all that historically speaking. Not to say that’s what they’re going for here cause I have no idea but, early on radios were to large to be flown in airplanes so recon by plane was usually a slow process involving many flights and photos being taken. It would be more appropriate to have that (aircraft reconnaissance) in the world map instead of spies in my opinion. The observation balloons had phone cables running alongside the tether so they were much faster at “lifting the fog of war” so to speak.
If this doesn’t interest you at all I do apologize for the word vomit lol just trying to bring a little history convo into this currently negative forum. Prost!

[Yuithgf]

Spies make next to no sense tbh, shouldve been something like raids to capture enemy intel or indeed air recon.

[JohnnyReb]

Yea I’m by no means an expert in ww1 espionage but to me it seemed to be more of a novelty given the static nature at the operational and strategic levels. I would’ve thought intel gained at a tactical level (such as you said trench raids and especially reports from the units at the front line in regard to enemy troop movements and artillery behavior.) I fully understand that all that would be very difficult to implement in a game like this but I still must agree that spies wouldn’t have been my first choice for intel gathering.

[bsones]

Originally posted by JohnnyReb:

It wasn’t as easy as all that historically speaking. Not to say that’s what they’re going for here cause I have no idea but, early on radios were to large to be flown in airplanes so recon by plane was usually a slow process involving many flights and photos being taken.

Okay, but in the real world, no man's land was a lot more than ~50 feet wide, battles lasted longer than 20 minutes, and sight distances are much longer. This is a game, not a simulation, and a whole bunch of things are already abstracted for gameplay purposes. Recon was the core mission of airplanes in the early war, so it's super weird to not have them involved in that at all.

The only thing they are currently useful for early on is the supply boost. There is no reason to ever send them out on missions until the enemy has bombers. I feel like it would have made a lot more sense to have "recon mission" as the default starting mission, rather than the air superiority, which isn't useful until much later. Click a spot on the map, plane goes out and circles that spot for a bit, which then lifts fog of war for a short distance around that spot for a limited time.

[Yuithgf]

Maybe air recon mission spot artillery, MGs etc, but instead of fully revealing infantry, you just get temporary markers indicating infantry was spotted roughly in that area, without knowing what type of infantry.

...And you could get all that info once the mission is finished.
Idk. Throwing ideas out there. instant spotting via planes would be far from the most ahistorical thing the game has done

[puree]

Aye, this is one of the things I find odd. Air war started because neither side wanted enemy scout planes observing them. First came scouts for recon, then pilots armed with pistols to try and shoot the enemy pilot then onto fighters etc.

the current game version jumping straight to fighters makes no real sense. It misses the most important aspect of ww1 air war - seeing over the hill and through the fog of war.

I can see why they maybe don't use this on the tactical map - the time scale etc is not correct, and you couldn't really counter it - by the time you are shot down you would have already revealed the map.

I can't help but think a better version would make all planes count as region/army intel on the strategic level, so buying planes means you don't have to pay for that form of intel. On the flip side also have planes count as counter intel vs enemy planes - so you position your planes to get a good view of the enemy, or to stop the enemy getting a view of you.

Then leave the tactical planes as they are - which is balloon busting and bmber/intercpeter missions.

[Machiavelli]

I'd love recon planes.

Originally posted by Yuithgf:

Spies make next to no sense tbh, shouldve been something like raids to capture enemy intel or indeed air recon.

Disappointed there is no trench raids.

[JohnnyReb]

Originally posted by puree:

Aye, this is one of the things I find odd. Air war started because neither side wanted enemy scout planes observing them. First came scouts for recon, then pilots armed with pistols to try and shoot the enemy pilot then onto fighters etc.

the current game version jumping straight to fighters makes no real sense. It misses the most important aspect of ww1 air war - seeing over the hill and through the fog of war.

I can see why they maybe don't use this on the tactical map - the time scale etc is not correct, and you couldn't really counter it - by the time you are shot down you would have already revealed the map.

I can't help but think a better version would make all planes count as region/army intel on the strategic level, so buying planes means you don't have to pay for that form of intel. On the flip side also have planes count as counter intel vs enemy planes - so you position your planes to get a good view of the enemy, or to stop the enemy getting a view of you.

Then leave the tactical planes as they are - which is balloon busting and bmber/intercpeter missions.

I like it

[Shipwrecked]

Yeah, as I started in 1915, I found it weird you only get fighters and no recon. That said, I did notice that when the Germans use bombers, it reveals their own artillery to me. Is this a bug? And do bombers and fighters provide the location of artillery? I haven't tried it myself yet if they do.

[Cathal Brugha]

I was just thinking about this. If you have an air unit in the battle you should be able to send an air recon mission over enemy lines to reveal just like balloons, and which can be countered by enemy planes and protected by more of your planes.
This game need more in depth things like this. It is a good start but needs some more depth

[bsones]

Originally posted by puree:

I can see why they maybe don't use this on the tactical map - the time scale etc is not correct, and you couldn't really counter it - by the time you are shot down you would have already revealed the map.

I'd do it like this: you assign a recon mission just like you assign a bomber mission--by clicking on a point on the map. Your plane will then go out and circle that target point, and after, say, 20 seconds, fog of war will be lifted in a set radius around the point. The plane will continue to circle and give you vision on that location for a set amount of time (a minute or two, maybe). Then it will head back to the airfield, and fog of war will come back.

The enemy can, at any point, send an air superiority mission to shoot down your recon plane. If they shoot down your recon plane within the first 20 seconds, they will prevent you lifting the fog of war entirely. After than, it will re-establish fog of war (though at that point you may have already seen what you needed to see).

[Jonnydodger]

The devs addressed this ages ago. Basically aircraft don't lift fog of war because they had no real way to communicate with the ground.

[Cathal Brugha]

Originally posted by Jonnydodger:

The devs addressed this ages ago. Basically aircraft don't lift fog of war because they had no real way to communicate with the ground.

Artillery spotting. They should lift fog of war over a smaller area than balloons, so you can direct artillery

[Alpha2518]

Originally posted by Cathal Brugha:

Originally posted by Jonnydodger:

The devs addressed this ages ago. Basically aircraft don't lift fog of war because they had no real way to communicate with the ground.

Artillery spotting. They should lift fog of war over a smaller area than balloons, so you can direct artillery

Ok, but how do you communicate the target coordinates? Aircraft have no radios. The spotting ballon has a telephon wire running along the winch which is why it can report what it sees.

If you want to use aircraft, though I don't know if this was done, perhaps instead of direct LOS you get icons to show MG position here, infantry here as "spotting reports." The infantry ones may or may not be still correct. But for static positions like MG nests, and mortars, those would still be valid since they can't move.

[bsones]

Originally posted by Jonnydodger:

The devs addressed this ages ago. Basically aircraft don't lift fog of war because they had no real way to communicate with the ground.

Okay, but again, "realism" isn't a compelling argument in a game that is already not particularly realistic. Especially when their solution (no aerial recon at all) is *incredibly* unrealistic.

If you want to be that pedantic about realism, then you shouldn't have any control over units that you send "over the top" after you issue the initial attack order, because in real life they would then have been on their own. They aren't lugging radios across no man's land, after all. Instead, they let you continue to issue commands to them because A) it's simper, and B) it's better from a gameplay perspective.

The game really needs to have aerial recon represented in *some* fashion. The complete absence of it as a game concept, despite having aircraft in the game, is a weird omission.