Fighter vs. Strat Bomber

[mroyer]

Any thoughts why this German fighter group is getting kicked in the teeth turn after turn by the British strategic bombers? Am I missing something, is this the way it's suppose to be, or am I just unlucky?

-Mark R.

[MrBlizzard]

I observed too this issue. With rel 1.04 strat bombers unit should have been erased from initial british OOB.
Don't know if also combat has been tweaked

[AlbertN]

Strat bombers often beat down fighters even without the escort of own fighters.
To me it's a huge problem if fighters are impotent against strategic bombers or simply are on the losing end of the fight. (Even if fighters cost less it means to keep them to intercept on your homeland is far from the best use of them).

Similar outcomes happened to me with 20/20 1945 teched Interceptors (I do not know the level of strength of the strategic bombers flying in, but I know my stuff for a while was at max til manpower / economical issues kicked in).

I pointed that out already but it seems it was evaluated otherwise for patching / balance purposes.

[Flaviusx]

That fighter group is at half strength and low readiness and of course is going to get the crap kicked out of it. It needs to stand down, repair and get some R&R.

Put in some fresh guys in there to cover your industrial and oil sites.

The enemy bombers are just racking up free experience in this turkey shoot and becoming that much more difficult to fight every turn.

Also: AA is your friend. AA by itself may be even more cost effective that fighters by themselves. 6 points on a target will practically guarantee a minimum 2 hits on an enemy bomber, and up to 4 points. That's with no fighter cover at all.

[AlbertN]

6 AA can net still 0 hits, I believe.
Or better, AA hits 50% of the times, but then the defence kicks in and may convert losses of HP into efficiency losses.

Still a half strength fighter unit should be able to do an amount of damage on strategic bombers that are non escorted.

[AlvaroSousa]

To represent damaged units any hit will cause an effectiveness loss regardless of the defense roll.

Also remember there is luck involved too. Quite possible the bomber got real lucky in the luck roll.

2 live WiF games ago my spanish 1936 fighter shot down 5 German aircraft air units and stuffed the invasion of Spain so badly the German player gave up. Of course foolishly he tried to invade Spain without collapsing Vichy.

Luck does play a roll.

[AlbertN]

Yes I am fully aware WiF Air Combat is truly dice based, there the Allies too can easily trash the Luftwaffe over France if they've a minor clue of how to play.
And in that case it's the German player fault anyhow to try to attack France with either Vichy established or without collapsing it. I take they were making an economy on the USE!

But for what concerns strategic bombers, it's not luck - it's a regular pattern by what I experienced.
If the strategic bombers were -that- good, the Germans were not about to 'win' the strategic air war over Germany (by that I litterally mean from the Allied perspective the % of loss was unbearable from their viewpoint!) at end of '43 and start of '44. Then longer range fighters arrived and a different policy was established (specifically - earlier escorts had to litterally escort the bombers, then it turned in what the Germans hoped to do in '40 with the RAF by bombing London. Bombers being the 'bait' and the goal of the escorts was to destroy the German airforce.)

Currently escort fighters are just a very large cherry ontop of the cake that makes interception virtually impossible since it will be Escort Fighter first and then the (Fighter able) Strategic Bomber mauling the same Interceptor/ing unit.

[Meteor2]

By the way... If bombers are attacking an industrial area with flak, who is defending first?
Flak or interceptors?
The outcome is different for each case?

[AlbertN]

If one goes by the combat log, Air vs Air first, and then Flak.

Interception on return is not contemplated - and in general it makes sense to hit bombers before they unload.

[Simulacra53]

Game vs RL.
Unescorted bombers would be harassed from the moment they entered enemy airspace, until they left it again.
Nothing is a juicier target than stragglers on their way home.

Just forget about bomber claims, they can be taken with a grain of salt,

[TrogusP96]

We don't have combat tables do we to evaluate probable outcomes and what to do. Mr. Cohen a good summary. Excpet the RAF Bomber Command campaign was not escort fighter based. Was it?

[AlbertN]

No but it was night bombing.

WiF covers that for instance. Want Night Mission for Strategic Bombing? Sure, halve your strategic bombing factors. But any intercepting fighter that is not a specific night fighter, has penalties.

Since Warplan does not cover that difference, we can assume that fighters and bombers are simply going all by day, or if by night as well, both ends have equally tooled planes for nocturnal operations.

[mroyer]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

That fighter group is at half strength and low readiness and of course is going to get the crap kicked out of it. It needs to stand down, repair and get some R&R.

They're not getting the crap kicked out of 'um because they're at half-strength and low-readiness, they're at half-strength and low-readiness because they got the crap kicked out of 'um, repeatedly, by the strat bomber group over an extended period of turns. I don't know what shape the British strat bombers are in at this point; perhaps they're suffering too.

BTW, I'm not complaining at all - just want to make sure I'm not missing something obvious, such as the suggestions to use more AA even early in the war.

Thanks for all the discussion,
-Mark R.

[scout1]

Early war, small number of bombers were grossly ineffective ….. Heck, they'd be lucky to actually hit the city, much less the target … Thinking this is a tweak AV may want to consider …..

[Simulacra53]

ORIGINAL: scout1

Early war, small number of bombers were grossly ineffective ….. Heck, they'd be lucky to actually hit the city, much less the target … Thinking this is a tweak AV may want to consider …..

This

[mroyer]

I kinda' like that the early war bomber command shows up. But year, besides a lucky result here an there, perhaps they should be less effective than they are.
-Mark R.

[panzers]

I don't know. I do have 30 landing crafts