Strategic Bombing

[Dereck]

1. What does RADIUS represent? The range, in hexes, from the staging base?
2. What does Raids represent? The number of raids conducted that week for the specific target?
3. If care isn't taken, can strategic bombing be TOO effective and end up tanking the German economy?

Historical question if anybody can answer:
Did the RAF and USAAF conduct raids every consecutive week or did the have a down-week between raids?

Thanks

[Joel Billings]

It is how far the raids will go out from the town listed.
Yes, I think it is the number of targets that are bombed.
Yes, in theory with enough raids of specific targets, you could effectively shut down German production.

Once it got going in quantity, strat bombing was happening pretty much all the time, depending on the weather. Not sure how early that's true. Could be not until Spring 1944.

[Dereck]

It is how far the raids will go out from the town listed.
Yes, I think it is the number of targets that are bombed.
Yes, in theory with enough raids of specific targets, you could effectively shut down German production.

Once it got going in quantity, strat bombing was happening pretty much all the time, depending on the weather. Not sure how early that's true. Could be not until Spring 1944.

Thanks. So if I want to have early 1942 8th Air Force bombing of France the radius would be 10 to 15 (100 to 150 miles)?

Thanks on the production - I will have to be careful not to do that here (WITW is a different matter).

And I found a web site that actually had a mission calendar for the 8th Air Force. Starting at the latter part of the last quarter of 1943 up to the last day of the war, barring bad weather, the 8th US Air Force was conducting air raids over Europe every day.

[Dereck]

It is how far the raids will go out from the town listed.
Yes, I think it is the number of targets that are bombed.
Yes, in theory with enough raids of specific targets, you could effectively shut down German production.

Once it got going in quantity, strat bombing was happening pretty much all the time, depending on the weather. Not sure how early that's true. Could be not until Spring 1944.

The game currently has a 66% of raids by the 8th and 15th USAAF with, at most 3 different targets per week with a possible 100% damage.

Through lucky research I stumbled on a site which had a calendar of all 8th USAAF raids. Just using 1944 as an example, barring bad weather, they had an air raid EVERY SINGLE DAY.

That would make the probability 100% with the possibility of 7 different targets each week. However this can't work since it doesn't factor in any days during that week where bad weather would cancel a raid. One cannot also just assume 1 bad day a week because then what target gets reduced?

That leaves this (tentatively): 90% probability of 7 8th USAAF raids each week.

I'm happy with that but what I'm still pondering and worrying about is the factory damage. Currently the events have then at 100% but with daily raids that would quickly put an end to the German economy. Since damage is cumulative and there are plenty of targets in Europe I was considering dropping the amount of damage from 100% to 40%.

I am just worried that 40% damage is still too much and the cumulative effects of the daily raids would tank the German economy well before early 1945.

So my question is this: will 40% factory damage be enough to cause hurt to the economy as in the real war but not cause the economy to crash too early? Should it be 30% or even 25%?

On a side note: If I'm going to have Vehicles as one of the strategic bombing targets would it be fair to the AI to set the Vehicle production modifiers for 1944 and 1945 to 100%?

[Joel Billings]

At this point it's all trial and error. Damage is impacted by the TB Air defenses, IIRC, and the flak in the target hex (for targets on the playable map area). We use Ai vs AI test games to try to balance out our work, but I don't think you have access to some of the tools we have to be able to load a test game save and look at the info on both sides. You can look at the metrics of some production items at the end of the game by looking at the Metrics screen (and can see a graph of the items for the entire game).

[Dereck]

At this point it's all trial and error. Damage is impacted by the TB Air defenses, IIRC, and the flak in the target hex (for targets on the playable map area). We use Ai vs AI test games to try to balance out our work, but I don't think you have access to some of the tools we have to be able to load a test game save and look at the info on both sides. You can look at the metrics of some production items at the end of the game by looking at the Metrics screen (and can see a graph of the items for the entire game).

Thanks again for the information. I will think on maybe making the damage variable based roughly on the TB air intensity