Strategic bombing - Testing

[zakblood]

i have to wait until santa drops it off, or so says the GF who is ordering it as one of my gift at xmas

[KenchiSulla]

Requesting for someone to confirm test results. Flak losses drop sharply above 15k feet and above 19k feet(in other words at 20k feet you see extremely low losses

[KenchiSulla]

ORIGINAL: jnpoint

Nice to know, Cannonfodder, that people like you tests the realistic outcomes of the game, especially because it claims to be very realistic. I don't have the insight or knowledge to test such a game. I haven't bought it yet though, still waiting to see if it is a hit among the players.

Jnpoint, I think the air system is very, very well done in this game. It's probably just a matter of tuning. I work as a Controls Engineer and the general experience is you can design a good system but tuning takes time....

[zakblood]

so seems flying higher is good, but bomb accuracy will be lower so more trips needed then?

[KenchiSulla]

ORIGINAL: zakblood

so seems flying higher is good, but bomb accuracy will be lower so more trips needed then?

I don't think the altitude effect on bombing is noticeable but further testing is needed ofcourse....

[jnpoint]

ORIGINAL: zakblood

i have to wait until santa drops it off, or so says the GF who is ordering it as one of my gift at xmas

Sorry about my English, but what is GF?

[zakblood]

girl friend or boss lady

she who is to be obeyed at all time, so i call her, well can't say it but was the leader of the German people in ww2 [:D]

[KenchiSulla]

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

Requesting for someone to confirm test results. Flak losses drop sharply above 15k feet and above 19k feet(in other words at 20k feet you see extremely low losses

I see a bit of a 1st order system in this....

[Helpless]

Flak fire indeed depends on the altitude so does the bombing accuracy. Flak efficiency max is indeed ~15K (depending on weather and flak placement(city or usual ground unit))

However I've seen much higher flak losses on high alt than in your example. The tricky part is that various type of damage done to the aircraft are weighted at the and before it goes to one or other category. In other words, damage done by A2A combat can contribute to the total losses, but it could be recorded as flak if damage by flak is prevailing.

[KenchiSulla]

That seems to be consistent with what I've seen so far. The battle with the highest flak losses is the one where I tweaked fighter group placement. It saw a large number of intercepts, probably leaving more bombers damaged and later destroyed by FLAK.

Following result is nice to see.. Flew the bombers at 3k towards Berlin. Not a single 88mm Gun fired.. but they got torn to bits by light flak and bomb damage was minimal...

[Helpless]

Thanks for sharing the results.

Basically flak can be described by the measuring flak value versus flight evade value. Flak value is a composition of various gun device characteristics modified by the target altitude and external parameters (placement, weather, supplies).

Evade is composition of speed and altitude. Speed evade is degrading once you go higher, alt is obvious does opposite. So the "safest" alt is either too low (but high speed/maneuver/or diving) or very high. Accuracy has opposite tendency.

[Denniss]

The first result shown is strange indeed, even the Romanians were able to inflict a good amount of losses on unescorted bombers. Germans also stationed a good amount of heavy Flak + Radar around the romanian oil/fuel production area to assist local AAA and provide early warning for fighters.
Flying in good heavy flak alt range should really cause damage + attrition/supression/fatigue and in the end should reduce bombing accuracy. Not easy to hit something if you are continuously shaken for 10 minutes while on the end run to target.
+ damaged heavies often quickly fell out of formation (both speed and alt wise) and became easy prey for defenders (if they noticed them).

[Peltonx]

Good stuff, thanks for info

[carlkay58]

cannonfodder - Helpless asked if you had FOW turned on. This is EXTREMELY important since you will always have high damage reports when you do have FOW on. The bombers see explosions and go 'oh yeah toasted that target!'. You will occasionally notice in a campaign game that you are losing points for either Uboat or VW targets but your reports show that they all have 100% damage . . .

Having been one of the testers that periodically sanity checked the air game as per losses and effects, my findings on the effects of altitude on bombing effectiveness and flak losses agree pretty closely with yours. Note that some of your losses due to flak actually fall into the Operational Losses column because flak damaged them enough that they did not make it back. The same with air combat losses - not enough damage to shoot it down but enough to have to ditch on the return trip. That also explains why Operational Losses are so high in this game. Accumulated damage effect combined with bad flying.

[KenchiSulla]

Hi Carlkay,

I appreciate what you are saying. Suppose I should take the time to test bomb results on different altitude bands in a Head to Head game..

[KenchiSulla]

ORIGINAL: Helpless

Thanks for sharing the results.

Basically flak can be described by the measuring flak value versus flight evade value. Flak value is a composition of various gun device characteristics modified by the target altitude and external parameters (placement, weather, supplies).

Evade is composition of speed and altitude. Speed evade is degrading once you go higher, alt is obvious does opposite. So the "safest" alt is either too low (but high speed/maneuver/or diving) or very high. Accuracy has opposite tendency.

That's interesting. Perhaps altitude evasion should be tweaked a bit to simulate the bomb run on target making FLAK at higher altitudes a bit more effective?

[Great_Ajax]

Small nitpick here as operational losses are non-combat losses such as mechanical failure, weather and pilot error. It is not uncommon for operational losses to be comparable if not more than combat losses.

Trey

ORIGINAL: carlkay58

cannonfodder - Helpless asked if you had FOW turned on. This is EXTREMELY important since you will always have high damage reports when you do have FOW on. The bombers see explosions and go 'oh yeah toasted that target!'. You will occasionally notice in a campaign game that you are losing points for either Uboat or VW targets but your reports show that they all have 100% damage . . .

Having been one of the testers that periodically sanity checked the air game as per losses and effects, my findings on the effects of altitude on bombing effectiveness and flak losses agree pretty closely with yours. Note that some of your losses due to flak actually fall into the Operational Losses column because flak damaged them enough that they did not make it back. The same with air combat losses - not enough damage to shoot it down but enough to have to ditch on the return trip. That also explains why Operational Losses are so high in this game. Accumulated damage effect combined with bad flying.

[KenchiSulla]

Testing continued:

Ran tests with 8th and 15th AF in the intro air campaign: Conclusions - Four of the targeted industries were reported destroyed (100% damage). Actual damage was 70-95%. Other facilities received lighter to moderate damage.

Raids flew at 21k feet, weather was fair

What needs to be looked into:
- The ability of FLAK to disrupt raids and destroy aircraft above 20k Feet
- The chance of interception by defending fighters. If groups are not on or near (two hexes) the flight path of the raid, chances to intercept seem very low. The allied player can use this to avoid known fighter concentrations. Not sure if newly transferred groups participate in intercepting but they don't seem too!
so this limits the ability of the Axis player to defend...

Asking for someone to confirm this by testing so we can move the game forward!

[carlkay58]

Having really tested this in many ways during the play testing I can tell you that there may be some more tweaks necessary but overall the loss percentages are pretty close to historical.

Play a Head to Head game with you on both sides. As the Axis move around the flak so that you can make some no flak, light flak, medium flak, and heavy flak targets. Remember that accuracy and damage is also dependent upon the industrial target you are attacking so keep that the same. Going after fuel and oil targets tend to do much greater damage on the whole, factories which produce other items tend to gain less damage. Something about the target itself being a large explosion just waiting to happen.

You should find that the flak levels not only affect the losses but also the accuracy of the bombing. Altitudes over 20K are only vulnerable to heavy flak (88mm+ I think). There is a lot less flak units in that category. The heavy flak also tends to have a lower rate of fire so flak thins out drastically above 20K.

If you want the Axis fighters to intercept well, place them on Air Superiority missions over the targets are along the flight path. Keep the area of the air directive fairly small - five or less - to greatly improve the chances of interception.

And play with Fog of War off so you can get accurate accounts on both sides because your intel lies!

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

Testing continued:

Ran tests with 8th and 15th AF in the intro air campaign: Conclusions - Four of the targeted industries were reported destroyed (100% damage). Actual damage was 70-95%.

In my current axis game vs. the AI I had a site hit with 100 damage reported, but damage was only 59 when I checked. I am playing with FOW but it seems counter-intuitive to tell me 100 damage when it’s my industry getting the report.

So I'm wondering if the 100 damage isn't actually a percentage but perhaps an effectiveness level? So 100 effect means the bombers do max damage but then the industry suffers a damage level based on target type, hardness, bomb size being dropped, etc. perhaps?

Jim