Attack bombers broken?

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: ecwgcx

What bugs me is that I can get 9-30 casualties from half a dozen Ventura's and old B-26's bombing a well fortified LCU from 6k feet EVERYTIME, but raids of 36+ B-25D1's CAN NOT HIT a runway with a single bomb from 100ft. Nor do they seem to be able to hit any a/c on the ground when they strafe. And this against well recon'd targets. It becomes very difficult to build up highly experienced pilots because every rifle in the hex can take pot shots at them. I sure would like to see an option for having attack a/c only attack at 100ft or to act like regular medium bombers. Right now, in my game, I need to close airfields more that sink Maru's...and B-25D1's and-G's don't cut it.

that´s what I´m saying all the time and that´s why I think that it´s not just a bug that causes attack bombers dropping bombs from the alt you set them instead of always dropping from 100ft. but also a design flaw and not enough or no testing at all. Attack bombers are a pain in the ass, not for the one on the receiving end, but for the one who tries to employ them. With Allied players having attack bombers only from mid 43 on, pretty much a game breaker... hurrey, three cheers for this new "feature". [:(]

And please lets not forget the design "decision" (or oversight) that you can´t train strafe with your bombers. Thinking about such a new feature like attack bombers and their skills used, you sure would think that they could also think about: "hey, these bombers need strafe and lownav/lowgnd skill so if you set them to train lownav for example, they of course also have to train strafe". Obviously that has not been well thought out, nor tested.

IMO, the identified bug is the least problem because that just changes the attack alt. But that´s something I can do myselve, just set your bombers to that friging 100ft and they will attack at 100ft. Strafe and lowgnd for example and then you find out that this "bomber strafing to supress flak" is just a non working joke and hit rate with MGs (on flak, ground troops, aircraft, ships) is a joke too. And the non existing hits with bombs from 100ft against an airfield? Lol, use totally untrained B-25D1 on airfield attack and with 50 bombers you get how many hits? 1? 2? What a joke! Use totally untrained B-25C on airfield attack at 10000ft and with 50 bombers you get what? Ten times as many hits? 20 Times the hits? THAT´s what really is broken.

Ongoing PBEMs have a big aspect ruined due to this coming up during the game. Well, only spent two or three hours real life to reach mid 43 in the game... Next PBEM won´t have any attack bombers at all. Fighter bombers weren´t well working in WITP, fighter bombers are still there in AE and it seems all they did was to more or less use the fighter bomber routine on 100ft for attack bombers. Who really cared about fighter bombers in WITP, you had enough medium bombers. Who really attacked at 100ft in WITP? Well, now we have a hardcoded 100ft only attack for all the USAAF medium bombers from mid 43 on. Forget about the USAAF, they are stuck with heavies, something the Japanese player sure likes. Forget about no USAAF 4Es below 10000ft on nav attack too or what?

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: ecwgcx

I was under the impression that the bug that was identified only concerned bombing and strafing at different heights in the same turn. My concern is the total lack of accuracy at any height. If the fix means that a B-25D at 100ft now hits its target (ship, airfield, port, LCU, whatever) with bombs then HUZZAH!
These planes, historically, just chewed up targets. All those .50's and parafrags were devastating. I just don't see it in my game.

exactly!

[EUBanana]

Can you just use them as level bombers? Set them to 8000'?

[Sredni]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

And please lets not forget the design "decision" (or oversight) that you can´t train strafe with your bombers.

Ug... I've just starting playing around with attack bombers. Does this mean I need to train fighter pilots on strafe, and then once that's trained move the pilots over to a bomber group and train low nav (or low ground)?

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: EUBanana

Can you just use them as level bombers? Set them to 8000'?

I guess so, at least that´s what mine are doing (until the bug is fixesd). BUT, I have no clue if they hit something (mine don´t - but they were trained to LOWnav) and they strafe at the same time (and also take the damage from attacking at 100ft). My last PBEM turn saw 6 B-25D1 do these silly "strafing to supress flak" runs on two of the crappy IJN DDs with the result of 50% of the bombers downed. No hits scored, no MG hits, no bomb hits. Just one instance of course.

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Sredni

ORIGINAL: castor troy

And please lets not forget the design "decision" (or oversight) that you can´t train strafe with your bombers.

Ug... I've just starting playing around with attack bombers. Does this mean I need to train fighter pilots on strafe, and then once that's trained move the pilots over to a bomber group and train low nav (or low ground)?

seems so. While it takes three months to have other bomber crews being combat ready (means 70 skill of your preferred) skill, it takes 9 months for an attack bomber crew. Why? Let me give an example: you want to train your crew in lownav attack, you put them into level bombers, set them on 5000ft training lownav and three months later you´ve got 70 skilled pilots that work very well (perhaps too well but that´s another story). Now you can use these crews in a B-25C squadron, primary mission is low level naval attack. But you could also use this squadron on airfield attack, even if you haven´t trained them on grdbmb, they will do ok and get some hits from 10000ft. Over time with more grd attacks, they will do better and better. 3 months of training and you´ve got a dedicated anti shipping squadron that can also be used against grd targets.

Now take an attack bomber crew. You put it into an attack bomber, want to use them primarily as anti shipping squadron. Sounds good, put them on 5000ft navattack training and lownav skill will have increased to 70 after three months. So what? You now got lownav skill 70 but for an attack bomber you seem to also need strafe skill 70. Heck, you will find out that you aren´t able to train that, so take out the pilots and rotate them into a fighter squadron. Two weeks for pilot rotation later, you now set your ex-bomber pilots to train strafe for three months. After 6.5 months you now got your pilots ready to man attack bombers and fly lownav attacks (3.5 months later than a B-25C pilot that works better anyway). Now you want to attack a ground target with this dedicated anti shipping squadron. Fine, you set them to airfield attack and will find out that you haven´t hit anything with those bombers. Why? Because you now also need lowgnd skill to hit something (while untrained grdbmb medium bombers achieve hits from 10000ft on an airfield). What are you gonna do now? Set your squadron another three months to training lowgrd because if you want to bomb an airfield, they will do so from 100ft, therefore lowgd. I have yet to see the 50 questions answered which skill is used for attack bombers (wonder if they know it), so I can only assume it would be strafe, lownav and lowgrd.

After 9.5 months of training (6.5 months longer than you need to have a perfectly working level bomber pilot - Allied OR Japanese) you then go ahead and use this attack bomber squadron again against a ground target because you now think they would be as effective as in real life and set them to attack a moderately defended airfield. Then your oh so great working B-25D1 come in at 100ft after having done 9.5 months of training and 50% of them are shot down by light flak. Mhm... I would be glad to have NO attack bombers at all, just give me a Helen or Sally for every attack bomber I´m going to get, they are far more effective and better in game than these not really well thought out attack bombers.

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: Gräfin Zeppelin

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1
ABSOLUTELY CORRECT! The Allies didn't build several thousand specially modified "gunships" to get the kind of pitiful results received in the game. If this nonsense was affecting the Japanese. it would have been fixed a year ago. Since it only affects the Allies, we'll be lucky if it's ever made right. [8|][&:]

Poor allies, the stepchild of every ww2 game. [8|]

When your comment gets denigrated by such Axis FanBoys as "Zeppelin" and "von Tirpitz" you can be absolutely certain that you're on the right track...

[USSAmerica]

Since it only affects the Allies, it was not completely discovered and identified when everyone was playing '41 and '42 PBEM games. 

I find it ridiculous that you insist on your "JFB bias" rants.  Give the developers a break and a chance to actually fix things as they are discovered, documented, reproduced and corrected.  [8|]

Now, I guess I have (in your words) "denigrated" your comment.  Does that make me an Axis fanboy?  My userid is USS America.  Does that make me an Allied fanboy?  The truth is, you don't have a clue and should not presume to post any such nonsense.  Don't forget to pull you foot out of your mouth before you reply.  It's bad manners to talk with your mouth full. 

Edit: typo

[Puhis]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

When your comment gets denigrated by such Axis FanBoys as "Zeppelin" and "von Tirpitz" you can be absolutely certain that you're on the right track...

I think lot of people will "denigrate" your comments. Or maybe they just ignore them. [>:]

I'm glad there's the green block button...

[greg_slith]

Look, I don't care if you are a AFB or a JFB or whatever. This is important. It's like the bruhaha about land arty or Nuke Bombardments. Some of us are seeing something that took awhile to show up. We are asking the devs to take another peek at it because we feel Attack Bombers are not working as they should. If changes can be made, super. If not, then my next game will get messaged in the editor and I'll be producing B-25C's until 1945. Nothing to get our knickers in a bunch about. Does it take away from my game? Yup. Is it enough to make me stop playing? Not really. I'll come up with a work around, like wave hoppin' B-29's. What I love so much about this game is the flavor and 99% of it tastes great. Peace lovin' rant over.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: USS America

Since it only affects the Allies, it was not completely discovered and identified when everyone was playing '41 and '42 PBEM games. 

I find it ridiculous that you insist on your "JFB bias" rants.  Give the developers a break and a chance to actually fix things as they are discovered, documented, reproduced and corrected.  [8|]

Now, I guess I have (in your words) "denigrated" your comment.  Does that make me an Axis fanboy?  My userid is USS America.  Does that make me an Allied fanboy?  The truth is, you don't have a clue and should not presume to post any such nonsense.  Don't forget to pull you foot out of your mouth before you reply.  It's bad manners to talk with your mouth full. 

Edit: typo

Someday he might actually play the Japan side and see how biased the game is towards Japan. Darn game is so Japan biased that Joe and I are retreating on almost all Fronts as Japan in our current PBEM and it's only late 1942! [:D]

[vonTirpitz]

+1 Very well stated.

Personally, I was actually glad to see that the developers had found an issue in the attack bomber code and plan to fix it. I would much rather know my opponent has the option to use them when that time comes instead of being "handicapped" by them. It simply adds to the richness of the gaming experience.

IMHO AE is the best game of the genre and the developer support is next to no other in terms of effort. It's a shame not everyone on the forum can accept this notion.

I am grateful that the developers are as involved as they are. I am also grateful for the (mostly) positive forum community that continue to help each other and share their gaming experience.

And yes, I have no problem calling out somebody who seems to not enjoy the game, the support nor the community. There is absolutely no reason for the overall community to be intimidated by such nonsense.

ORIGINAL: ecwgcx

Look, I don't care if you are a AFB or a JFB or whatever. This is important. It's like the bruhaha about land arty or Nuke Bombardments. Some of us are seeing something that took awhile to show up. We are asking the devs to take another peek at it because we feel Attack Bombers are not working as they should. If changes can be made, super. If not, then my next game will get messaged in the editor and I'll be producing B-25C's until 1945. Nothing to get our knickers in a bunch about. Does it take away from my game? Yup. Is it enough to make me stop playing? Not really. I'll come up with a work around, like wave hoppin' B-29's. What I love so much about this game is the flavor and 99% of it tastes great. Peace lovin' rant over.

[witpqs]

Back on topic, it would be nice to know the technique (or for the code to support one) to train bomber pilots in strafing (I mean without rotating them to fighters for training).

If a developer could comment that would be appreciated! [:)]

[Grfin Zeppelin]

My name was chosen because of the avitation pioneer Graf Zeppelin and not because of some Axis bias or because of a never completed carrier.
But yes, I prefer to play the Japanese side, I had most of their ships as models in my youth and have a personal attachment to most ships (that said I also realy love the Yorktown class carriers because of the same reasons)

Point is, I want the game to work within reason. Yamato pawning the Iowa is fun. Yamato always pawning the Iowa is not fun and would be completly out of whak. And I realy doubt the so called Jfbs would be happy if the game shows a clear bias to the Japanese side.And accusing the developers to having biases that way is even worse because they obviously tried to make a realy good game here.
Yes, Castor troy is indeed always ranting and complaining but in a constructive way. He points out game flaws but obviously with the intention to improve the experience for him and everyone else and thats good.Infact he acualy puts alot of work into his rants in is persistant too and thats a realy good thing imo.
But staying here and saying Best game evar or this game sucks accomplishes nothing. Saying the developers have bias because they want the Japanese to be better is fruitless also.

So, now please get this attack bomber thingie to work. I saw them jumping a convoy of my Marus and had a near heart attack when 15-20 hits on each where reported. Next day I scratched myhead and thought "uuuhm okay" after checking them and seeing they had around 15 sys damage and not much else.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Gräfin Zeppelin

So, now please get this attack bomber thingie to work. I saw them jumping a convoy of my Marus and had a near heart attack when 15-20 hits on each where reported. Next day I scratched myhead and thought "uuuhm okay" after checking them and seeing they had around 15 sys damage and not much else.

It sounds like those particular hits were .50 cal and maybe a heavy cannon hit thrown in (if the attack bombers were so equipped).

[mike scholl 1]

ORIGINAL: USS America

Since it only affects the Allies, it was not completely discovered and identified when everyone was playing '41 and '42 PBEM games. 

I find it ridiculous that you insist on your "JFB bias" rants.  Give the developers a break and a chance to actually fix things as they are discovered, documented, reproduced and corrected.  [8|]

No bias? Then why is Tinian (the largest airfield in the world in 1945) still rated as a "4" (max "7")? That's been wrong since thee game was released..., and no sign of any fix yet...

[Sredni]

I wonder if combining low nav and low ground skills would be an option. It seems like pilots for attack bombers are going to take an extremely long time to train up properly with straf plus 2 bomb skills.

I train my normal bomber pilots with Nav B and Ground B to 70 so I can quickly task bombers doing ground missions to naval attacks (level bombing ships isn't super effective... until you send 150 bombers at once after a task force heh), and it takes roughly 6 months to train each pilot to that point. Having to add a 3rd skill for attack bombers would be a major impediment. Especially with the way pilots start to train a lot slower once they pass 50 exp.

Or perhaps they could make attack bombers training low nav or low g also train straf at the same time. That would solve the problem of needing to start your bomber pilots training in fighters heh.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

No bias? Then why is Tinian (the largest airfield in the world in 1945) still rated as a "4" (max "7")? That's been wrong since thee game was released..., and no sign of any fix yet...

That was answered in depth when you posed it before.

[TheElf]

Here are the answers for all those with panties in a proverbial bunch...Nice catch guys!

Attack bomber functions as:

1. Altitude set <6000, attack altitude is "low level". >6k' they are treated as normal LB at altitude selected.

2. AB flights are split up into pairs (or two pairs against land targets) if low level (doctrinal)

3. Due to the order of combat, the pair bomb target at 100 and then strafe at 100.

4. Strafing by AB adds to flak suppression. Higher SKILL_STRAFE value (70+) increases suppression more.

5. Non-attack Level Bombers bombing at <1000 gain a higher fatigue from the firing Flak.

6. Bombing accuracy for non-attack LB attacking at <6000 with low morale or high disruption is lowered.

7. Bombing accuracy of LB against TF at <7000 is reduced. AB accuracy is increased <6000.

@ Mike Sholl
8. No experience/skill minimum to execute an attack by non-AB planes but the attack impacted as mentioned above.

From My main man Michael...
The main reason things don't seem to working is that the code that control what sort of an attack (strafe, bomb land, bomb TF) had a badly constructed IF statement that end up treating AB at low level as strafe attacks which use a different method of bomb accuracy.
The next code change will make the subtle change, apart from that the existing code reflects the above points.

[The Gnome]

ORIGINAL: TheElf

Here are the answers for all those with panties in a proverbial bunch...Nice catch guys!

Attack bomber functions as:

1. Altitude set <6000, attack altitude is "low level". >6k' they are treated as normal LB at altitude selected.

2. AB flights are split up into pairs (or two pairs against land targets) if low level (doctrinal)

3. Due to the order of combat, the pair bomb target at 100 and then strafe at 100.

4. Strafing by AB adds to flak suppression. Higher SKILL_STRAFE value (70+) increases suppression more.

5. Non-attack Level Bombers bombing at <1000 gain a higher fatigue from the firing Flak.

6. Bombing accuracy for non-attack LB attacking at <6000 with low morale or high disruption is lowered.

7. Bombing accuracy of LB against TF at <7000 is reduced. AB accuracy is increased <6000.

@ Mike Sholl
8. No experience/skill minimum to execute an attack by non-AB planes but the attack impacted as mentioned above.

From My main man Michael...
The main reason things don't seem to working is that the code that control what sort of an attack (strafe, bomb land, bomb TF) had a badly constructed IF statement that end up treating AB at low level as strafe attacks which use a different method of bomb accuracy.
The next code change will make the subtle change, apart from that the existing code reflects the above points.

Hi, thanks for the insights. One of my main issues with the game (the game that I love btw, please don't take this as a knock) is that the engine is not chatty enough. WTF does that mean? Well, I just wish we got more feedback (maybe in the combat report?) as to what is going on the battle, subject to FoW of course.

A lot of time the game engine is doing some really nuanced cool stuff, and we as players have no clue. Like "Attack Bombers proceeding to the deck in pairs" would be cool as well as instructive. Not sure if implementing this into the current engine is a PITA.

Now back to my previously scheduled ice cream