Campaign 13th Dec 1944

[vils]

(this is the old game, not the upcoming)

Ok, i have played through the 1943 campaign as allied and still does, but as a mediocre player i must confess i have some serious problems at this stage, due to massess of spawning german me109-4's, Ta152h's and Do335s. How can this be?

I started the game and wanted to test its game mechanics and therefor i first flattened out most ballbearing plants. After 1 month or 2 i noticed this didnt have any effect on game at all in conjuncion with low score. At same time i had the 1st Nov43 bug and all my 15th was annihilated exept for 6 fighter squadrons. So i continued playing with 1 airforce less as normal.

The ground war were movin so i decided to test STEEL out, and flattened every single STEEL on the map, and i held it like this from Nov43 until Nov44 and remarkably it had no effect of game whatsoever. Sidenote: Ground war did advanced fairly historically though. Instead germans came on stronger every day, until last 2 weeks germans are a real nuicance, even short raids take hvy poundings, i loose 2vs1 aircraft every mission if not more, and most of my aces are dead. So now i shifted again into more smarter tactics, attacking highpoint targets and all aluminium (ALU doesnt have the Import anylonger since D-Day) along with hammering PORTS and RAIL. Not yet any significantly change on the campaign but i expect it soon, if not the game will end earlier hehe. Still i am happy this game hasnt ended yet i wish to play it to the end of the war!

But some thoughs that ol' generals might comment on:

* 10th fightergroup is totally useless after DDay since they cant change airfields, and are stuck in the far West out of range. Any pos to give them a attached AF in France? Its 4 units with 2 important Typhoon units that surely should join the war not sit still all day.

* How is supply-route calculated as for ports and rail? I read that you could isolate areas by bombing nearby rails like a ring around it? How long range to closest unharmed rail would you consider good distance?

* What is the purpose of medium bombers? Mine just die to easy and very rarely effect and real harm on the targets. I upgraded them to heavies asap.

* 4 Mosquitos with 46 in experience flattened a OILS to 100% damage! Amazing they could do it but not 300 B17's at 16.000ft? Wewather clear in both instances.

* Any posibility to split the main campaign into a europe theatre and a Italy theatre so you can play either instead of both?

* I still got the NF problems, but its solved now since i send RCM ahead, and this makes some 50 enemies crash to the ground every time, so germany has no nightfighters left. But my NF's are way to many and way to inneffective, the DO detect enemile alot, bu the like 99.9% of the time never react on it. I use them at same alt as bomberstream (and have tried differently). Id say, reduce NF's by half for the allied, they really have no use in game.

* Fighter cover layers. Lately my P51's are taking a heavy beating they attack insaely much but almost always they get hitted instead, crashign and bleeding like never before. I mainly use Thunderbolts now to reduce the horrible losses. I really wonder where the all new pilots come from, especially germany, as i dominated the skies for a year upon until Sept 44. So any advice here id love it, i have tried every possible way i think, but i dont use gameys. Also i dont use fightersweeps since it is too ineffective in my way to play, they tend to be either to late, wrong direction or simply stays out of combat.

* Airplanes. Are there any custom rules that applies to different aircraft units?, like P38 works best in low altitude etc? These hidden rules would be invaluable!

Love this game though, contains so much more than meets the eye. I truly hope BoB2 will be released soon, and not stopped in production , that would be very sad!

Cheers!

[soeren01]

ORIGINAL: vils* How is supply-route calculated as for ports and rail? I read that you could isolate areas by bombing nearby rails like a ring around it? How long range to closest unharmed rail would you consider good distance?

* What is the purpose of medium bombers? Mine just die to easy and very rarely effect and real harm on the targets. I upgraded them to heavies asap.

If you click on TROOP units and wait a moment, the supply lines will be shown. If you bomb the RAIL and PORT on this line, you can isolate TROOP units.

Medium Bombers are good for bombing troops, railyards and ports and also the smaller industries and airfields.

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: vils

(this is the old game, not the upcoming)

Ok, i have played through the 1943 campaign as allied and still does, but as a mediocre player i must confess i have some serious problems at this stage, due to massess of spawning german me109-4's, Ta152h's and Do335s. How can this be?

if you didn't do anything to stop the reseach, I can see all of these planes being in action, once they are ready, the AI is going to drop anything less and only build the better models


I started the game and wanted to test its game mechanics and therefor i first flattened out most ballbearing plants. After 1 month or 2 i noticed this didnt have any effect on game at all in conjuncion with low score.

as a crit industry, it is going to effect other areas, but as time goes on, the level of damaged needed will drop

At same time i had the 1st Nov43 bug and all my 15th was annihilated exept for 6 fighter squadrons. So i continued playing with 1 airforce less as normal.

to be honest, found out it was not really a bug, it is the way it did work out, only the way the game works, the later transfers did not happen, so in our verison, we move all of them to the XVth at the same time

The ground war were movin so i decided to test STEEL out, and flattened every single STEEL on the map, and i held it like this from Nov43 until Nov44 and remarkably it had no effect of game whatsoever.

loss of steel may be HARD to see, but it should of made some of the weapons types being made much less, but do believe that some of the AA,Armor,Arty were really slot based and not factory based, we are trying to make all of the game, factory based, but...
Sidenote: Ground war did advanced fairly historically though. Instead germans came on stronger every day, until last 2 weeks germans are a real nuicance, even short raids take hvy poundings, i loose 2vs1 aircraft every mission if not more, and most of my aces are dead. So now i shifted again into more smarter tactics, attacking highpoint targets and all aluminium (ALU doesnt have the Import anylonger since D-Day) along with hammering PORTS and RAIL. Not yet any significantly change on the campaign but i expect it soon, if not the game will end earlier hehe. Still i am happy this game hasnt ended yet i wish to play it to the end of the war!

well, some of this is tactics, and plans (or maybe better stated as style)by my way of thinking, you have to break the LW, break the LW first, then you can work over the targets as you want, work over the targets with out breaking the LW, and you are going to get hammered, if you take to long to break them, they are going to have a massive stock pile of planes to fall back on, and once you get into the better late war plane models, the edge in combat is back in the LW's hands

plus something that is odd, is point targets, (say BB, or Steel) do not give many points, so a good turn or a good week, does not really gain you any score, to gain score, you really need to work in some RR attacks along with the point targets

But some thoughs that ol' generals might comment on:

* 10th fightergroup is totally useless after DDay since they cant change airfields, and are stuck in the far West out of range. Any pos to give them a attached AF in France? Its 4 units with 2 important Typhoon units that surely should join the war not sit still all day.
one hassle is, even at this time, the GB still had units in 13 group, training command and other backwater areas, not every unit was in the front lines

* How is supply-route calculated as for ports and rail? I read that you could isolate areas by bombing nearby rails like a ring around it? How long range to closest unharmed rail would you consider good distance?

* What is the purpose of medium bombers? Mine just die to easy and very rarely effect and real harm on the targets. I upgraded them to heavies asap.
well, ours work better one hassle before, when trying to get FBs to fight back, when it worked, the Med Bombers couldn't hit the side of a barn (now how or why, I got no idea), but as Soren says, AFs are the prime target for med's, just keep them away from Heavy AA !!!

* 4 Mosquitos with 46 in experience flattened a OILS to 100% damage! Amazing they could do it but not 300 B17's at 16.000ft? Wewather clear in both instances.
part of that will be the fact that the Mossies will be dive bombing the target, I always saved my Mossies for key targets that had to be taken out, the losses may be heavy to the flak, but most times they take the target out, 300 17's ? could be bad luck

* Any posibility to split the main campaign into a europe theatre and a Italy theatre so you can play either instead of both?

* I still got the NF problems, but its solved now since i send RCM ahead, and this makes some 50 enemies crash to the ground every time, so germany has no nightfighters left. But my NF's are way to many and way to inneffective, the DO detect enemile alot, bu the like 99.9% of the time never react on it. I use them at same alt as bomberstream (and have tried differently). Id say, reduce NF's by half for the allied, they really have no use in game.
the main trouble with NFs or intruders, is the ones that were intruders flew all kinds of missions, the same squadron may send some planes out to the bay of biscay, looking for Ju 88s hunting seaplanes, then in the afternoon sends some planes out on rubar or rodio, and then that night, sends some planes out on a intruder mission, and other planes out to patrol the skies of England, so it gets HARD to say, well this squadron is on defenive duties or was only on intruder duty, and in the long run, Intruder missions were very importent

* Fighter cover layers. Lately my P51's are taking a heavy beating they attack insaely much but almost always they get hitted instead, crashign and bleeding like never before. I mainly use Thunderbolts now to reduce the horrible losses. I really wonder where the all new pilots come from, especially germany, as i dominated the skies for a year upon until Sept 44. So any advice here id love it, i have tried every possible way i think, but i dont use gameys. Also i dont use fightersweeps since it is too ineffective in my way to play, they tend to be either to late, wrong direction or simply stays out of combat.
again, I think is is more to style or planning, but one thing I liked to do, was to follow up a raid with another raid, a few minutes behind it, and then another, one thing that tends to happen with the AI, is it makes a attack, and then gets behind the raid, once behind, they pick off any damaged or RTB planes, the following raids, will help to defend the cripples and give the escorts a chance to bounce the hunters, remember, the Bounce is what you want, the plain Attack, is pretty much 50-50 on who is going to get hurt

to my thinking, Sweeps are importent, too importent to not use, of course, you got to keep them out of the way of flak traps, but since it is late 44, you have got most of the AFs out of the way as it is, you need to find where the enemey is based, and then take them out, send Heavys to bring them up to battle, and send Meds to take out the fields, and then sweeps to work over what ever is left on the fields, plus the sweeps and bombers will also work over the fuel on that base, burn out all the fuel and nothing takes off from that base, do it right, and all of the planes based there are stuck in place

again, based on style, how do you plot your turns ? do you make the day last a long time, or do you plot everything in as short a time as you can ? you put up 2000 planes in a hour, the enemy may fly one mission, you put up 2000 planes over 5 hours, the enemy is going to be flying 2,3 maybe 5 missions, they are going to be worn out, a tired pilot, makes mistakes

* Airplanes. Are there any custom rules that applies to different aircraft units?, like P38 works best in low altitude etc? These hidden rules would be invaluable!
basicly, early P-38s, the P-39, the P-40, the A-36, the Stang I, should stay below 20 K (some lower)

in the new game, we have changes to the plane models based on what alt they are flying at, IE the best Alt for a 109 was just under 20 K, but it was still a good plane up higher, the 190 was also great below 20 K, over 20 the engine had trouble (hence the work on the 190 C and the later D models)so, in our game, that is modeled, in the old game, it is generalisze


Love this game though, contains so much more than meets the eye. I truly hope BoB2 will be released soon, and not stopped in production , that would be very sad!

B0B2 ?????

Cheers!

[Hard Sarge]

* 10th fightergroup is totally useless after DDay since they cant change airfields, and are stuck in the far West out of range. Any pos to give them a attached AF in France? Its 4 units with 2 important Typhoon units that surely should join the war not sit still all day.

good timing on that question, last night at work, I found some info that I may be able to use, need some testing to see if it works the way I would want, if so, I will come back and explain

[Hard Sarge]

well crud

okay that part of the idea did not work, but, since I got others to fall back on...

okay, info side, FC did have at least one base outside of England, and they would fly in units from FC to this base to fly missions for a few days at a time, and then return home (this one base would be home to 12 Squadrons of Spits at a time)

now, hassle is, I can't just assign a AF to Fighter Command (well that part I can) and have the sub commands use it, if I assign the field to FC only units attached to FC could use it

the trick now, is to find at least 3 fields that FC did use (another hassle, in the game, we can only base one command on a base, in the real world, they shared)

if I can find 3 fields, then I could assign one field to each Command

(VIII FC also had fields)

{of course, the hassle now is, I had the info on my HARD Drive before, but I lost that HD, now I got to refind it}

[vils]

Yes i admit i tend to plot few but big raids 1-4 big raids per day with soem days only recon. Moreover i never send anything with morale below 51 up in the air. I already see LW having problems filling up their reinforcements due to the ALU gone. But there is no problem getting LW in the air, they tend to scramble everything it got filling most map with dots.

Feeling my campaign may be semi-ruined, i must say if you dont look out the AI can be a challenge!

Thanks for input though, back to the next turn then

ps: bob2 err was naturally meaning Eagles Day title hehe

[Hard Sarge]

okay, just wanted to make sure

just so you know, Eagle Day is part of the title, so yes it is still in the works and is part of the game

both games will be playable from the same game, using the same game engine, so the rules for BoB work in BTR or the rules for BTR work in BoB (other then some stuff that is HARD coded just for the one game)