Is strategic bombing broken?

[Arkham]

Its late Jan 1944, and I've taken both Alum and rubber to 60+ damage globally. Today's missions shot down 100 luft for a cost of 30 allied. Yet when I look at the campaign summary i see that the luft is up to 3200 aircraft from 2600 the day before. How is this possible? I would have thought that breaking their supplies of those two resources would have made it very hard for them to make new aircraft.

I read somewhere in here that there is a bug with oil production. No matter how much you hit their oil storage they still produce 100 percent output. Is that bug global to all resources?

[wernerpruckner]

Hi,
are you sure it is below the critical level?
If it at one Point is under the critical Level, the critical level will be automatically lowered to reflect the German willingness to adapt.
I do not know the critical levels at the moment, but I know from experience, that you need to keep pressure on!

I read somewhere in here that there is a bug with oil production. No matter how much you hit their oil storage they still produce 100 percent output. Is that bug global to all resources?

When was the Oil broken??

I haven´t played BtR in over a year, but while testing one of the original exe and one of the old OB/OAs, oil was one of the hardest to keep down:
- OILS only storage and disperse fuel to A/Fs and over ports and RR (moving oil/fuel seemed to work - including some delays)
- OILR produces fuel, but also can store some oil
- FUEL produces fuel via several processes (like FischerTropps)

So if you only hit OILS you will achive not much, you need to bomb the whole cluster of industries!

[Arkham]

Very odd. I have taken both alum and rubber far past critical. (rubber at 120 output from 500 critical level, alum 135 from 200). When I list targets both airplane factories and armaments show 0 output probably due to the critical factor.

Yet the luft repairs itself like mad. I kill 2-300 in a day? a few days later they are back up to strength. I bombed the 29th panzergrenadere in the gustov line down to 3 tanks and confirmed with multiple recons. I run 4-5 turns with no action, and turn 6 i confirm arm/air still showing 0 output, yet the 29th now suddenly has 30 panzers again.

what the heck is going on here!

[wernerpruckner]

what is the date?
and are you sure about the damage level? (how good is your recce - everything older 2 or 3 days is useless!)
are you playing hotseat or vs AI?

Gustav line - hard to break, because you also need a ground attack, because without a reserve unit will move in (I think 2 are here - I just install BTR at the Moment, so I cannot yet look)
usually the Gustav line break around the real date - only with maximum effort you can tear it appart sooner!

[wernerpruckner]

what is the actual exe?
I still have one of the testing exes.....

[Arkham]

I'm running 1.02 patched.

Here is the post I was referring too about fuel being broken: fb.asp?m=3546160

Date is Late feb 1944. Playing vs AI. Yes, I am sure of the damage level. I'll put up my save game if you want to see it.

[wernerpruckner]

you mean this:

The fuel system is broken. Damage gives points but 100% destroyed fuel targets still get full production.

works as designed AFAIK
Fuel will be distributed to all sites that have a demand, even damaged ones - this can create a fuel shortage, because fuel is only very limited in redraw from distributed sites.

I will look through my old files and try out some things now that I have downloaded and reinstalled BTR

[Arkham]

Here is a savegame where I have ran recon the past few days only against alum and rubber.

http://www.filedropper.com/save007

[wernerpruckner]

thanks for the save.

[wernerpruckner]

okay,

a little tip, play with "urban Areas" on - you will see if you hit something because you see the fire (red dot)
but you will also recognize the discoloured dot of the area after the raid (even outside an City)
[Harley wanted to eliminate this Thing, but as I see he was not totally successful [:'(] ]

as far as I see, your guess of the damage lvl is around 30% off - you Need better recce and I tried it for 10 turns and lost around 140 recce to see a better damaged lvl

[Arkham]

Yeah, the weather really sucks right now. I'm hoping march and april are better for bombing, since from november on its been annoying.

[TaggedYa]

Its late Jan 1944, and I've taken both Alum and rubber to 60+ damage globally. Today's missions shot down 100 luft for a cost of 30 allied. Yet when I look at the campaign summary i see that the luft is up to 3200 aircraft from 2600 the day before. How is this possible? I would have thought that breaking their supplies of those two resources would have made it very hard for them to make new aircraft.

When an industry that effects aircraft production is below critical level a die is rolled from 0 to current critical level. If the role is > the current level then production at that assembly line at that factory is skipped for that turn. Thus if the crit level is 200 and you have it bombed down to 100 then about half of the effected industry doesn't work. The reported level for that industry is always 0 when any industry it depends on is critical but that is false. (fog of war)

When an industry is critical the CritLevel is adjusted downward so that it has less effect. This used to be a straight 1% per day so the industry was no longer critical after 100 days. This is no longer the case but I have not determined exactly how the new system is working but keeping an industry critical seems to have an effect for closer to 300 days than the old 100.

I read somewhere in here that there is a bug with oil production. No matter how much you hit their oil storage they still produce 100 percent output. Is that bug global to all resources?

That would have been my post. The bug that is clear is that damage to any oil related facility (storage, refinery, fuel production) does not destroy fuel. Also, damaged oil facilities still function (there is no check for damage that I can find in the production code and tests using a debugger and setting all oil facilities to 100% damage show that they still work). Thus in a PBEM game there is no use attacking oil except for ind damage points as any competent player will not defend them. Against the AI they are valid targets to spread the defence.

[wernerpruckner]

btw I must congratulate you to your low losses,
you really kept your forces together!

but soon all your forces will be locked in mandatory (you may go around mandatory targeting - I always go with full mandatory)
also if you have a streak of bad weather turns (during testing someone of the crew had a 90+ days bad weather streak [:D]),
the AI will make an autovictory.

[wernerpruckner]

That would have been my post. The bug that is clear is that damage to any oil related facility (storage, refinery, fuel production) does not destroy fuel. Also, damaged oil facilities still function (there is no check for damage that I can find in the production code and tests using a debugger and setting all oil facilities to 100% damage show that they still work). Thus in a PBEM game there is no use attacking oil except for ind damage points as any competent player will not defend them. Against the AI they are valid targets to spread the defence.

I will look if that is an addition that happened, because it worked at one Point (fuel/oil was destroyed)

[TaggedYa]

ORIGINAL: swift

When was the Oil broken??

It appears that the oil code was not ported from the talonsoft version so it has never worked in the matrix game.

I haven´t played BtR in over a year, but while testing one of the original exe and one of the old OB/OAs, oil was one of the hardest to keep down:
- OILS only storage and disperse fuel to A/Fs and over ports and RR (moving oil/fuel seemed to work - including some delays)
- OILR produces fuel, but also can store some oil
- FUEL produces fuel via several processes (like FischerTropps)

So if you only hit OILS you will achive not much, you need to bomb the whole cluster of industries!

Nothing done to oil targets does anything at all. Oil is however transported by train (no pipelines) so hitting the relevant railyards can cause intermittent shortages. However as a strategic target oil is useless.

[Arkham]

4000 allied losses and 4200 luft losses at the end of febuary '44 is considered low? I thought I was doing terrible.

[wernerpruckner]

I am a Maximum effort type - damage goes up to 75 before I get locked into mandatory targetting [:D]
but this also means higher losses (also for the enemy)

[wernerpruckner]

in a hotseat game the destruction of oil/fuel seem to work - just bombed the OILS near Paris every hour for a turn, next one of the sites in Holland......less and less fuel /oil after each successful bombing run????!

[wernerpruckner]

okay, something does not work right (not all sites work the same???)

I seem able to destroy a certain amount of fuel/oil with the first few attacks (20 to 25% of the storage) and than nothing seems to be destroyed any more......?

will run a series of test runs........

[TaggedYa]

ORIGINAL: Arkham

Very odd. I have taken both alum and rubber far past critical. (rubber at 120 output from 500 critical level, alum 135 from 200). When I list targets both airplane factories and armaments show 0 output probably due to the critical factor.

Only the alum effects production directly and that only effects airframe production. Your alum level has reduced airframe production by about 35%. This probably is having no effect what so ever on aircraft output as there are a surplus of airframe production slots and pools build up. You will need to keep production down long enough to use up all of the airframes in the pools before you effect production.

ORIGINAL: Arkham
Yet the luft repairs itself like mad. I kill 2-300 in a day? a few days later they are back up to strength. I bombed the 29th panzergrenadere in the gustov line down to 3 tanks and confirmed with multiple recons. I run 4-5 turns with no action, and turn 6 i confirm arm/air still showing 0 output, yet the 29th now suddenly has 30 panzers again.

what the heck is going on here!

Its the pools thing again. Take the turn number and multiply by 140. Subtract the number of aircraft you have destroyed (from the campaign summery). That is how many (approximately; it depends on how many multi engine planes you have killed) are still in the pools. I just read the 4200 Luft losses item. The german has made 21000 aircraft and you downed 4200. You will never run him out of planes. You will need to concentrate on running him out of pilots. The pilot pool is capped at 10 days so you can always hurt him there.