Night Bombing Problems

[sven6345789]

maybe experience should play a role, like when experience drops below 70, the effects of night bombing get reduced severely (like skip bombing)

[pfnognoff]

ORIGINAL: denisonh

I think night raids are too effective, but it is the size of the raids that needs to be looked at.

Small night raids were used quite a bit during the war (B-17s hit Rabaul at night fairly frequently), but "large scale" night missions were used for City bombing, not "point targets".

Sometimes even the size of the strike doesn't matter. The accuracy can get very high, look at this report:

Night Air attack on Moulmein , at 29,35

Japanese aircraft
Ki-48 Lily x 12

Allied aircraft
Hurricane II x 13
Blenheim IF x 3

Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-48 Lily: 1 damaged

Allied aircraft losses
Hurricane II: 4 destroyed, 7 damaged
Blenheim IF: 2 destroyed

Airbase hits 2
Airbase supply hits 1
Runway hits 5

Aircraft Attacking:
12 x Ki-48 Lily bombing at 9000 feet

It was size 4 airfield fortification level 6 with enough airsupport. There were 4 sqdn of Hurricanes II and the night fighter-bomber sqdn. I had one Hurri and Blen sqdn on the night LRCAP over their own base. The overall effectivnes must be reduced.

[pfnognoff]

ORIGINAL: sven6345789

maybe experience should play a role, like when experience drops below 70, the effects of night bombing get reduced severely (like skip bombing)

It definately should be higher requirement. As is now, I have managed to persuade my IL-4 Chineese squadron to fly night air-attack mission over the biggest IJ airbase in China without any losses. Not even OP on landing. They were exp 52 morale 51 fatigue 15 at the moment I gave the order. They did have some B-17s allongside, maybe it helped? [8D]

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Kid

Night bombing is something I will look at for the next patch. My soluton is to make the fatigue and operational loses for groups conducting the mission much higher. Also, to improve night fighters with radar kill rate. If we can come up with a list of possible fixes, I'll post them in a poll and we can go from there.

Thanks!


Leo "Apollo11"

[Howard Mitchell]

ORIGINAL: Kid

Night bombing is something I will look at for the next patch. My soluton is to make the fatigue and operational loses for groups conducting the mission much higher. Also, to improve night fighters with radar kill rate. If we can come up with a list of possible fixes, I'll post them in a poll and we can go from there.

I'm not sure that the fatigue should be much higher - the tempo of RAF Bomber Command's night operations matched that of the 8th Air Force's daylight raids for example. Night attacks should be much less co-ordinated, but surely the main effect should be a great reduction in bombing accuracy. Again quoting the example of the European theatre, Bomber Command switched to area bombing because it was incapable of hitting anything smaller in the early war years.

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: Howard Mitchell

ORIGINAL: Kid

Night bombing is something I will look at for the next patch. My soluton is to make the fatigue and operational loses for groups conducting the mission much higher. Also, to improve night fighters with radar kill rate. If we can come up with a list of possible fixes, I'll post them in a poll and we can go from there.

I'm not sure that the fatigue should be much higher - the tempo of RAF Bomber Command's night operations matched that of the 8th Air Force's daylight raids for example. Night attacks should be much less co-ordinated, but surely the main effect should be a great reduction in bombing accuracy. Again quoting the example of the European theatre, Bomber Command switched to area bombing because it was incapable of hitting anything smaller in the early war years.

Accuracy should be dropped, disruption increased (simulate loose bomber stream), agree that fatigue and morale should not dramatically change.

On accuracy...At night, given the lack of accurate precision, perhaps not only should incidence of hits be reduced, but they might also be non specific. I'd say night missions can only attack city targets if 4E bombers, but anything be eligible for damage...manpower, heavy industry, resources, port supply, port, ships in port, airfields, airfield supply, LCUs etc. 2E and 1E aircraft can attempt tactical targets but suffer higher ops losses if not night equipped/trained and have very high incidence of failure to locate target.

[esteban]

I agree with much lower accuracy and somewhat higher fatigue, op losses and inability to find the target.

[DJAndrews]

Night bombing and night fighters were more prevalent in in Europe than in the Pacific. They used large bomber groups to area-bomb and pathfinder squadrons mark the route. In the Pacific, logistics and terrain made night bombing much less useful until later in the war.

There should be a restriction on the number of planes that fly a night mission and the results should be based on a dispersed bomb effect. This being said, there should be the ability for an occassional "critcal" hit to account for lucky hits on fuel or ammo dumps and surprise attacks by small specialized groups such as the "Black Cats".

Another thing that used to occur in UV that should be checked is the CV night attack. In UV it used to be possible to launch a night carrier attack on a base and yet have all aircraft fit and ready to fight a carrier action the next day (ie they accunmulated no fatigue). I haven't tried it in WITP yet, but there should be severe restriction for night operations with CVs because this just wasn't done until late in the war.

[BlackVoid]

I am happy that this issue will be looked at, night bombing is "uber" at the moment. In China I had to move my air groups back to Chungking to avoid being slaughtered.

[Hard Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Ron Saueracker

ORIGINAL: Speedy

I'm with some sort of restriction/change.

Night bombing does seem too accurate with tactical bombing (LCU, Airfield, Port.).

In my current PBEM with Hard_Sarge whenever he (Allies) attacks at night there is NOTHING I can do - CAP, AA do nothing. Damage is caused. Luckily he doesn't do it that often otherwise I would be pretty p****d. Worst raid was 30-40 B17's bombing Rabaul destroying 12 G4M's, couple of patrol planes and 6 Zero's. This was out of a total (at the time) of 75 planes! 4 nights of that and my entire force in the area would be wiped out.

End of the day it is feasible for the Allied player to continuously bomb at night and pound the Jap into submission. Ridiculous I know but it shouldn't even be possible.

Either night bombing should be restricted to certain targets (city), minelaying etc

OR

There should be tweaks to make AA (more so than CAP since Jap didn't have co-ordinated night defence) more effective/LBA take bigger fatigue hits to prevent continuous night bombing/PERHAPS MOST IMPORTANTLY reduce accuracy - seems far to accurate at tactical missions. IN GENERAL BC would be lucky to get within a mile of their targets (A CITY!)

Just my thoughts.......

Regards,

Steven

I'd pretend to have ISP problems until he agrees to a house rule. Anyone who does not see this as gamey is either of two things, a gamey player or a player with no conscience.[8D]

Hi Ron
well, I got to say, I sort of resent this kind of reply, if my partner thinks it is right or wrong, we can talk and make our own rules, we already had a replay of a turn, where I did something that had been posted as a bug, that I had not seen, so we rerun the turn

and as this is a test game, waiting on the patch, house rules to be found and set up for the next game is a good idea

I would be more then happy to set up a rule that only City attacks can be made at night (only I hold out that Night Fighter/Intruders and seach planes can be flown at night also, since they were)

LOL and don't forget, Speedy is doing the same with his Betties that I am doing with my Forts

HARD_Sarge

[Speedysteve]

Hi Sarge,

As you say bud no real big deal since we only playing a small 'test' scenario and as you say we'll meet in the middle and make house rules when we start our campaign.

As for the Betties - payback son, payback [;)] Mind you with a much smaller payload though!

[Speedysteve]

Cheers for looking into this Kid and seeing if this can be 'tweaked'.

Regards,

Steven

[rtrapasso]

Just as being the Devil's advocate - didn't the Brits use the Swordfish torpedo bombers almost exclusively at night? I was reading "Radar History of WWII" and this was their claim - that the Swordfish generally got slaughtered during daytime attacks. This was one of the first aircraft with radar, and they would locate the enemy, drop flares, and have at it. I haven't read an actual account of Taranto yet, but the book sort of implies that these were the tactics used in that attack (as well as in others). By the way, I don't recall the Swordfish having radar in the game (not in front of it right now, so can't check), as well as the Catalinas (who got it later in the war [?1942] - but I don't see it as an upgrade as such]

[doktorblood]

Both sides used night bombing missions quite a bit in the war, mainly to avoid CAP. If it's too effective in the game I wouldn't try to fix it by gimping it to uselessness.

I think a realistic fix would be to increase coordination and accuracy penalties, more "unable to locate" mission scrubs, a slight increase in ops losses and reducing any night penalties to AA batteries since most most AA units had searchlight companys and later on radar directed fire.

I don't think a heavy boost to fatigue would be in order because I don't think flying a night mission would be any more tiring than wearing out your eyeballs looking for bandits during a day mission.

[erstad]

ORIGINAL: doktorblood

<snip>

I don't think a heavy boost to fatigue would be in order because I don't think flying a night mission would be any more tiring than wearing out your eyeballs looking for bandits during a day mission.

Although a one time fatigue penalty each time a group is switched from night-to-day or day-to-night might be warranted.

[pfnognoff]

ORIGINAL: doktorblood

Both sides used night bombing missions quite a bit in the war, mainly to avoid CAP. If it's too effective in the game I wouldn't try to fix it by gimping it to uselessness.

This is a sim and can be a recreation of history, but it is still just a game, and until there will be an option where my engineers can be given an order to build an airfield in any apropriate hex, the night bombing procedure against airfields must be looked into. With just the given number of bases and range limit of the aircraft, combined with the inability to stop your opponents night raids against airfields, your air ops will be non existant. And that means it is not playable (being historicaly correct or not) unless a house rule is agreed upon.

[2Stepper]

I'm gonna toss my 2cents in this just cause...

All in all, in terms of patching solutions I think we're on the right track. I would however like to suggest one thing. In terms of fatigue hits? Is it possible to limit the duration and impact of fatigue? By that, everyone knows you have a sleep cycle. You get up at 5am. Eat chow, do your 3 S's, and go brief and mission plan. After that's done you fly. Home around dinnertime depending on mission length.

Typical flyers day in a warzone.

Now then, if you change that to be a night raid, the change in sleep schedule would be the biggest killer. It would affect everything from effectiveness, to finding the target on those first day or two. That said though, if you leave the unit on the "night shift" the routine becomes the same...

Get up at say 7pm. Do your 3 S's, eat chow, brief and mission plan. Then you go fly your night mission and return around daybreak. End result, pilot night owls.

My suggestion is to make the fatigue hit fairly healthy when you change from day to night and/or back again, but only make it last for 3 days. Then return to normal. There should still be elements of difficulty in target location (night discipline, etc), but otherwise the rest shouldn't be THAT high.

Biggie in my opinion is the change to the body clock. Any thoughts?

[sven6345789]

I only used night bombing in UV if my bombers attacked a target outside of my fighter cover, like Bettys stationed at Rabaul attacking Australia. If the attack takes place in escort range of my fighters, i go for a day attack.

[Halsey]

We have started to restrict all non-night bomber units to City Attacks against manpower only. It seems to be working out fairly between both sides. We put no restriction on night naval attacks, as they seem to be alright.
Night fighter units seem to do ok once their experience is built up doing some daylight operations.

[Bison Frontier]

Am about to start a noob PBEM game. Could some of you PBEM veterans out there help me with night bomber attack rules? Would it be fair to both sides to just allow night attacks against ONLY cities and night naval attacks? All other forms of night bombing (airfields, ports etc) are not allowed. Suggestions?