Does anyone know of any good PC strategic bombing games related to either the 8th Airforce daylight or British Bomber Command night raids on German held Europe? I remember playing a board game years ago with round counters for bombers and fighters where each side would deploy their forces and designate raid targets, then each turn would play out as one series of raids against the defenses the German player decided to place around each target. Just a shot in the dark.
Eric Maietta
Shot in the Dark: Strategic Bombing PC Games?
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AbsntMndedProf
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AbsntMndedProf
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I think I remember a computer game called "Over the Reich" a few years ago. Don't know much about it but it got lots of press coverage when it came out. If I can find any info on it I'll post it here. But I know I've seen a computer game similar to AH's "Luftwaffe" somewhere.
“You're only young once but you can be immature for as long as you want”
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seydlitz_slith
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The definitive game that covers the WWII Strategic bombing campaign in Europe is Talonsoft's "Twelve O'Clock High: Bombing the Reich." The game was written by Gary Grigsby, who also was the writer for Matirx's Uncommon Valor.
The game itself covers the ETO theater from July 1943 until the war's end. It has all of the strategic targets, German aircraft production, etc. Orders are issued to a squadron level, and the AI resolves action keeping track of each individual pilot and each individual aircraft. The grand campaign is over 700 turns long.
The game came out three years ago this month, and is still on my hard drive. It is an excellent PBEM game, and the single play AI is very good also.
You should be able to find a copy in the bargain bins at some stores. I just began seeing it hit the bins this fall.
Don
The game itself covers the ETO theater from July 1943 until the war's end. It has all of the strategic targets, German aircraft production, etc. Orders are issued to a squadron level, and the AI resolves action keeping track of each individual pilot and each individual aircraft. The grand campaign is over 700 turns long.
The game came out three years ago this month, and is still on my hard drive. It is an excellent PBEM game, and the single play AI is very good also.
You should be able to find a copy in the bargain bins at some stores. I just began seeing it hit the bins this fall.
Don
I own and have played both Battle of Britain and 12 O'Clock High. They both give you the feeling of "being there". The sound effects, planes flying to target, etc are very good.Originally posted by seydlitz
The definitive game that covers the WWII Strategic bombing campaign in Europe is Talonsoft's "Twelve O'Clock High: Bombing the Reich." The game was written by Gary Grigsby, who also was the writer for Matirx's Uncommon Valor.
The game itself covers the ETO theater from July 1943 until the war's end. It has all of the strategic targets, German aircraft production, etc. Orders are issued to a squadron level, and the AI resolves action keeping track of each individual pilot and each individual aircraft. The grand campaign is over 700 turns long.
The game came out three years ago this month, and is still on my hard drive. It is an excellent PBEM game, and the single play AI is very good also.
You should be able to find a copy in the bargain bins at some stores. I just began seeing it hit the bins this fall.
Don
Some of the 12 O'Clock High campaigns can be quite long, but they sure are an education. . .
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madflava13
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12 O'Clock High is an amazing game. The long campaign will take a year to finish, but its worth it. The level of detail is similar to that in UV, only the number of units is exponentially larger. Its one of my all time favorite games, but be sure to patch it. There's a small but active support community for it as well. I highly recommend it.
"The Paraguayan Air Force's request for spraying subsidies was not as Paraguayan as it were..."
Posted by Dave Briggs
Over the Reich was a Bigtime software game where you run a squadron in the European Theatre '43-45 performing missions indicative of the period. It was a tactical game of air combat as opposed to a flight sim. Great fun but very simplistic. Achtung Spitfire and Flight Commander II (?) were games using the same system.
Unfortunately, despite the title, OTR is not a game of strategic bombing.
I think I remember a computer game called "Over the Reich" a few years ago. Don't know much about it but it got lots of press coverage when it came out.
Over the Reich was a Bigtime software game where you run a squadron in the European Theatre '43-45 performing missions indicative of the period. It was a tactical game of air combat as opposed to a flight sim. Great fun but very simplistic. Achtung Spitfire and Flight Commander II (?) were games using the same system.
Unfortunately, despite the title, OTR is not a game of strategic bombing.
Have no fear,
drink more beer.
drink more beer.
I bought Battle of Britain last year for about $7.00. I must have played that game for 3-4 weeks straight. I had a blast. No other game can compare to being the British and trying to stop the German air attacks.
Same as 12 O'Clock High - the sheer scope of the game, and the detail of the bombings, interceptions, etc was very realistic.
As far as the strategic air war goes, these are the only two games that even come close to protraying it in detail. Don't think games like these will ever be made again. . .
BTW, at the underdogs, under Sims, you can download Over the Reich and Actung Spitfire for free. . .
Same as 12 O'Clock High - the sheer scope of the game, and the detail of the bombings, interceptions, etc was very realistic.
As far as the strategic air war goes, these are the only two games that even come close to protraying it in detail. Don't think games like these will ever be made again. . .
BTW, at the underdogs, under Sims, you can download Over the Reich and Actung Spitfire for free. . .
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Fallschirmjager
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Yes 12 o'clock high is the game you want.
I cant sing its prasies high enough.
Ive played 2 500 and one 700 turn PBEM and they take a good year and half, 2 years to play out.
But its not really grognard level.
I usually let the AI plan my missions then I edit them and drop the bad ones and add some others to get a good sdturation of the target type I want.
They have patched the game quite nicely too,
I cant speak for Battle of Britian.
Ive heard its not quite as "packed" as 12 o'clock high.
But still a goodie.
Anyone know where I can pick a copy up?
Talonsoft amazingly still supports the game too.
I know a few ppl quite well just from e-mailing questions.
Sometimes they take a week or 2 for a answer but lo and behold they still get answered.
If you do happen to pick up the game...
All my PBEM partners have become unavailble so if your inclined to play Im availible.
But Like a said the games take forever.
But Im not going anywhere
And a 2 year AAR would be some kinda record.
Thats from the Talonsoft website.
Its a number to get ahold of take 2 if you absoloutly cannot find the game call them and see what they can work out.
I cant sing its prasies high enough.
Ive played 2 500 and one 700 turn PBEM and they take a good year and half, 2 years to play out.
But its not really grognard level.
I usually let the AI plan my missions then I edit them and drop the bad ones and add some others to get a good sdturation of the target type I want.
They have patched the game quite nicely too,
I cant speak for Battle of Britian.
Ive heard its not quite as "packed" as 12 o'clock high.
But still a goodie.
Anyone know where I can pick a copy up?
Talonsoft amazingly still supports the game too.
I know a few ppl quite well just from e-mailing questions.
Sometimes they take a week or 2 for a answer but lo and behold they still get answered.
If you do happen to pick up the game...
All my PBEM partners have become unavailble so if your inclined to play Im availible.
But Like a said the games take forever.
But Im not going anywhere
And a 2 year AAR would be some kinda record.
Please contact our order processing center at 1-800-211-6504 to place an order.
Thats from the Talonsoft website.
Its a number to get ahold of take 2 if you absoloutly cannot find the game call them and see what they can work out.
You might be able to pick up Battle of Britain at a discount store, or from the Talonsoft website.Originally posted by Fallschirmjager
Yes 12 o'clock high is the game you want.
I cant sing its prasies high enough.
I cant speak for Battle of Britian.
Ive heard its not quite as "packed" as 12 o'clock high.
But still a goodie.
Anyone know where I can pick a copy up?
Talonsoft amazingly still supports the game too.
When I bought my copy there were about a dozen copies of BoB going for $7.00.
Anyone who enjoys UV will also thoroughly enjoy these big strategic games. . .
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Fallschirmjager
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Frank W.
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i don´t recommend 12 O´clock high
on allied side you have SO much work in planning
your raids with hundreds of air groups....
on axis side, it´s more fun but even i have in sometime
in late 44 only FW190D (and a few BF109G as high speed interceptor groups), ME262, ME410 with rockets and the
HE219 UHU as night fighter, and caused heavy casualities
to the allied air forces (best is catching some typhoons without
fighter cover), but they still send so much raids to me, that
game is no fun.
and the program cheats: if u transfer air groups to a empty
frontline airfield, you can go shure that the allied launches
in the next turn heavy attacks on it....okay, there where some spies in the high command, but not every move from the axis
should be known to the allies...
problem is figuring out, in going and out going raids. and your fighters are stupid, if they are ordered to attack a bomber group
and while that are intercepted by enemy fighters they seem not to try to get away or defend themselfes instead trying blindly shooting at the bombers while they are decimated by the mustangs and thunderbolts. despite the fact, that my experience must be higher than theirs....
very annoying is the fact, that large bomber groups that are split up, say to 5 groups per 20 aircraft, and your fighter going after only one of these single groups or flying into emptiness. you have to order every single interceptor group to go after every single group of enemy air groups or even single aircraft.
and you have more losses on your own FLAk than that **** flak shoots down enemies.
very bad: a single night interceptor that patrols one of your airfields with own nighfighters want to land can shoot down 5 or more a/c!! okay, one is shot down - the other machines still try to land blindly instead of fighting the lonely enemy fighter or try to land on another nearby airfield. i lost some very good pilots this way....
the concept of the game was good, but it´s lacks to much to be a good game. i´m sorry...
on allied side you have SO much work in planning
your raids with hundreds of air groups....
on axis side, it´s more fun but even i have in sometime
in late 44 only FW190D (and a few BF109G as high speed interceptor groups), ME262, ME410 with rockets and the
HE219 UHU as night fighter, and caused heavy casualities
to the allied air forces (best is catching some typhoons without
fighter cover), but they still send so much raids to me, that
game is no fun.
and the program cheats: if u transfer air groups to a empty
frontline airfield, you can go shure that the allied launches
in the next turn heavy attacks on it....okay, there where some spies in the high command, but not every move from the axis
should be known to the allies...
problem is figuring out, in going and out going raids. and your fighters are stupid, if they are ordered to attack a bomber group
and while that are intercepted by enemy fighters they seem not to try to get away or defend themselfes instead trying blindly shooting at the bombers while they are decimated by the mustangs and thunderbolts. despite the fact, that my experience must be higher than theirs....
very annoying is the fact, that large bomber groups that are split up, say to 5 groups per 20 aircraft, and your fighter going after only one of these single groups or flying into emptiness. you have to order every single interceptor group to go after every single group of enemy air groups or even single aircraft.
and you have more losses on your own FLAk than that **** flak shoots down enemies.
very bad: a single night interceptor that patrols one of your airfields with own nighfighters want to land can shoot down 5 or more a/c!! okay, one is shot down - the other machines still try to land blindly instead of fighting the lonely enemy fighter or try to land on another nearby airfield. i lost some very good pilots this way....
the concept of the game was good, but it´s lacks to much to be a good game. i´m sorry...
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AbsntMndedProf
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seydlitz_slith
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Hello Frank,
Your observations on 12 O'clock High show that you are indeed familiar with the game. However, I can not agree with the conclusions that you have drawn.
Whether or not fighters tried to dogfight with the allied escorts or tried to go direct to the bombers was controlled by the settings that the player assigned to each specific aircraft type. Quite possibly, you had all of your fighters on "direct bomber" and that is why they suffered from the fighters so much.
The AI did not cheat, but the computer, being a machine, could be much more relentless in planning each turn. The sheer magnitude of planning up to 299 mission each turn would wear you down, and that is what would happen if you insisted on planning every single allied mission manually.
Some of the issues regarding the night fighters, and the flak shooting down too many friendlies were fixed/ adjusted in the patches. There were 3 official patches, which did not fix everything, and then additional patches were made after that, which eventually did fix it so that it was the game that it should have been from the outset. That took almost two years after it's release to finally get it all done.
A lot of what you see in Uncommon Valor is the result of what Gary had done with 12 O'Clock High. UV is the same system for air with additions of ground attacks and naval,,,,,,, along with enhancements. Anyone who has played the air game will immediately recognise this when they first play UV.
regards,
Don
Your observations on 12 O'clock High show that you are indeed familiar with the game. However, I can not agree with the conclusions that you have drawn.
Whether or not fighters tried to dogfight with the allied escorts or tried to go direct to the bombers was controlled by the settings that the player assigned to each specific aircraft type. Quite possibly, you had all of your fighters on "direct bomber" and that is why they suffered from the fighters so much.
The AI did not cheat, but the computer, being a machine, could be much more relentless in planning each turn. The sheer magnitude of planning up to 299 mission each turn would wear you down, and that is what would happen if you insisted on planning every single allied mission manually.
Some of the issues regarding the night fighters, and the flak shooting down too many friendlies were fixed/ adjusted in the patches. There were 3 official patches, which did not fix everything, and then additional patches were made after that, which eventually did fix it so that it was the game that it should have been from the outset. That took almost two years after it's release to finally get it all done.
A lot of what you see in Uncommon Valor is the result of what Gary had done with 12 O'Clock High. UV is the same system for air with additions of ground attacks and naval,,,,,,, along with enhancements. Anyone who has played the air game will immediately recognise this when they first play UV.
regards,
Don
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Frank W.
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Originally posted by seydlitz
Hello Frank,
Your observations on 12 O'clock High show that you are indeed familiar with the game. However, I can not agree with the conclusions that you have drawn.
Whether or not fighters tried to dogfight with the allied escorts or tried to go direct to the bombers was controlled by the settings that the player assigned to each specific aircraft type. Quite possibly, you had all of your fighters on "direct bomber" and that is why they suffered from the fighters so much.
The AI did not cheat, but the computer, being a machine, could be much more relentless in planning each turn. The sheer magnitude of planning up to 299 mission each turn would wear you down, and that is what would happen if you insisted on planning every single allied mission manually.
Some of the issues regarding the night fighters, and the flak shooting down too many friendlies were fixed/ adjusted in the patches. There were 3 official patches, which did not fix everything, and then additional patches were made after that, which eventually did fix it so that it was the game that it should have been from the outset. That took almost two years after it's release to finally get it all done.
A lot of what you see in Uncommon Valor is the result of what Gary had done with 12 O'Clock High. UV is the same system for air with additions of ground attacks and naval,,,,,,, along with enhancements. Anyone who has played the air game will immediately recognise this when they first play UV.
regards,
Don
mhh.. No!
my tactic in the latest game was like this:
ONLY the ME410 and some left FW190A groups with rockets had direct bomber tactic!
my plan was to decimate the allied fighters!
i left sometimes fly bombers in favor of enemy fighters because i think they are more dangerous.
only when i figure out, that these bombers go after very critical indutries or airfields i concentrate on them.
i think the game was not bad, but indeed it was just TO much work for me, esp. the allied planning of raids or the axis work with assigning every single group of my fighters to enemy groups. problem was that almost all enemy groups split up after a time! so you have say 40 P51 in a group. you tell your FW190D´s on attacking them. but then it seems that these 40P51 are suddenly 3 single groups with say 15,10 and 20 aircaft or so. so your 100 (or so) FW 190 go after only one of these groups,perhaps decimating them while the others pass and attack you ME410 or HE219 (these i sometimes let attack bombers even in daylight because of the good effects of the "schräge musik". but if they are caught the get shoot down....
italy was my biggest trouble. i had to retreat to northern italy very quick, because of almost all airfields
i think i had the v.1.05 version....
AND: IIRC there was no way to change course for air groups during flight! you send up a group to engage a incoming raid, but say the raid decides to turn away or have already bombed it´s target. what happend? your fighter fly after the fleeing enemy group till it´s out of range or your groups rans out of fuel. why there wa not a right click menu with options like back to base, change target group,turn away, flee at high speed and so on...
??
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Kanon Fodder
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I have both Battle of Britian and Twelve O'Clock High: Bombing the Reich
I played BoB quite a bit when I got it about 3 years ago, but found it much more interesting PBEM against a former wargaming buddy.
TOH:BtR I got as far as loading on my machine.
There are just not enough hours in the day/week/month to play this one - it's for grognards and/or accountants only.
I played BoB quite a bit when I got it about 3 years ago, but found it much more interesting PBEM against a former wargaming buddy.
TOH:BtR I got as far as loading on my machine.
There are just not enough hours in the day/week/month to play this one - it's for grognards and/or accountants only.
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seydlitz_slith
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I will agree with you that most of Gary Grigsby's games would benefit from.....designed use of the Right Mouse Button.
The absolute best use for TOH:BTR was as a program to burn in and stress test a new computer. You could load the game on a new system, call up the long campaign, set both sides to computer, and let her go. In about a week it would finish, and the computer would be well burnt in.
I still like playing TOH:BTR a lot, but I like playing as US. Since the time to plot the turns is lengthy, you can't do a bunch of turns.
BOB is a much better PBEM game, as it's scope is much smaller, and you can finish it in a month (or less). However, you can abuse the program much more than TOH:BTR, and for me it was very easy to win as the German if you understood how the logistics part of the game worked. You couldn't get away with the same tactics in TOH:BTR since the scope was so much larger.
Don
The absolute best use for TOH:BTR was as a program to burn in and stress test a new computer. You could load the game on a new system, call up the long campaign, set both sides to computer, and let her go. In about a week it would finish, and the computer would be well burnt in.
I still like playing TOH:BTR a lot, but I like playing as US. Since the time to plot the turns is lengthy, you can't do a bunch of turns.
BOB is a much better PBEM game, as it's scope is much smaller, and you can finish it in a month (or less). However, you can abuse the program much more than TOH:BTR, and for me it was very easy to win as the German if you understood how the logistics part of the game worked. You couldn't get away with the same tactics in TOH:BTR since the scope was so much larger.
Don