Best way to strategically bomb cities?

[Tartannosaur]

I'm trying to figure out the best way to destroy enemy structures from the air (AKA strategic bombing). Sending in all of your planes at once seems to be a disaster, and I'm still not sure which type of bomb damages buildings more. Through trial and error this is the method I've developed so far. What methods do you guys use?

1. Select fighter or recon squadrons and launch an air recon mission over the city. The theory is that bombing will be more effective with 400 recon points over the hex. Recon planes seem to get annihilated by enemy fighters and flak, so I tend to use fighters for this role. It seems like fighters can defend themselves better when they are caught in aerial combat, but I'm not sure.
2. Select fighter squadrons and launch an air attack over the city. The theory is to engage and shoot down as many of the enemy fighters as possible, or reduce their readiness, so they can't shoot down your bombers when they attack in the final step.
3. Select bomber squadrons and launch an air attack over the city. Now comes the bombing. On pg.369 of the manual it says that bombing hatches are effective against structural targets, but I'm not so sure about this. I've tested planes with equal loads of bombing hatches and precision bombs, and sometimes it seems like the hard attack precision bombs do more damage to buildings. This would make sense as I believe it is hard attack that damages enemy assets when taking enemy cities with tanks. Am I thinking about this correctly? In other words, are buildings (assets) soft or hard targets?

A lot of this is just a hunch or a result of trial and error. The manual doesn't have much to say about strategic bombing and the best way to accomplish it. What have others players discovered in this regard?

[Thrake]

It seems that bombhatch use firepower/70 to determine asset damage and precision bombs firepower/40.

Given that bombhatches and precision bombs have no cost to build, it means that lighter variants are more cost efficient... ignoring the cost of the rest of the plane. Precision is more ammo efficient than bombhatches.

When I'm expecting to be intercepted I sometimes send fighters along with bombers to avoid the risk that fighters aren't intercepted but bombers are.

I try to avoid attacking where there is serious flak coverage. The key with airforce is that the range allows to strike where there isn't manpad/flak/SAM.

[Soar_Slitherine]

My tests indicate recon level does not affect damage versus assets. There is a diminishing returns on asset damage per combat, which means that (before taking the strength of opposing air defenses into account) it's much more effective to send a few bomber air wings at a time rather than launching a single massive bomber attack.

Recon planes seem to get annihilated by enemy fighters and flak, so I tend to use fighters for this role. It seems like fighters can defend themselves better when they are caught in aerial combat, but I'm not sure.

An aircraft model's ability to avoid being hit in air-to-air combat is determined by its hitpoints and dogfight score, where dogfight score is primarily a factor of speed and the ratio of engine power to weight, and hitpoints are primarily a factor of the aircraft's size and armor design score. Air attack and dogfight score also matter a lot for shooting down enemy aircraft before they shoot you down. The only aircraft model characteristic that protects against ground-to-air attacks is hitpoints.

2. Select fighter squadrons and launch an air attack over the city. The theory is to engage and shoot down as many of the enemy fighters as possible, or reduce their readiness, so they can't shoot down your bombers when they attack in the final step.

Note that aircraft have huge combat penalties in the first few combat rounds when attacked at their airbase, and fighters are not guaranteed to intercept any given air mission, so it can be more effective to attack enemy fighters at their airbases rather than sending fighters to fly over the bombing target (if the two are not in the same hex).

3. Select bomber squadrons and launch an air attack over the city. Now comes the bombing. On pg.369 of the manual it says that bombing hatches are effective against structural targets, but I'm not so sure about this. I've tested planes with equal loads of bombing hatches and precision bombs, and sometimes it seems like the hard attack precision bombs do more damage to buildings. This would make sense as I believe it is hard attack that damages enemy assets when taking enemy cities with tanks. Am I thinking about this correctly? In other words, are buildings (assets) soft or hard targets?

Asset damage is a ratio of the weapon's firepower based on the weapon type, hard vs soft does not matter. Precision bombs are the most effective against assets, rockets are about as ammo-efficient but do much less damage, while bombhatches can't match the damage of precision bombs without excessive bombloads and are much less ammo-efficient.

[Tartannosaur]

Lots of good info here. I suspected precision bombs did more damage to assets than bomb hatches, even though the manual briefly states otherwise.