Question for Mike Wood regarding 4E and 2E level bomber attacks...

[treespider]

What are the chances of having a/c operational losses increased by a factor of two, three or four?

[Andrew Brown]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

Already have Leo. I have acknowledged that DB's will get the shaft somewhat however it is not in all places hence my distinction.

Being dumb I probably missed it elsewhere - exactly why are dive bombers "shafted" so much using your mod, and can anything be done to mitigate it (I understand that changing one thing affects everything else, so I don't expect you to say "yes")?

[Nikademus]

Dive bombers (and fighter bombers) in the game are hard coded to "attack" at 2000 feet, which under my mod, vs. substantial heavy flak concentrations (land flak only***) can result in greatly inflated losses.

How to avert?

Tough question. increasing DUR and/or armor is one way but here's the catch....it would detrimentally impact a2a combat. Hence, for the time being DB's get a bit of "the shaft" when attacking a land base with heavy AA concentrations of land-bound heavy flak guns. I continue to fiddle in the hopes of finding a solution that *wont* also impact a2a.

There are however as previously mentioned work-arounds. The simplest is to use TB's exclusively as the attacker as they can be set to the safer altitudes that LB's can be and thus reduce losses.

Another way to compensate is to time the DB attacks to either go in on the same turn as a naval bombardment or the immediate turn after as my tests have shown that AA LCU's that are highly disrupted are much less effective at shooting down planes vs. an undisrupted one.

LB's however remain the primary means of bombarding land bases back to the stone age so its a price i feel is feasible. DB's it should be ****noted***** will not be impacted with sea combat. I have not altered heavy sea based flak as it works decently to begin with. If anything, the new flak rules will curb the tendancy for KB adventures against well defended ports such as Pearl Harbor.

[Brady]

My Bigest peave with 4E bomber ingame and any leval bomber for that mater, is their efect aganst shiping, They are way toefective aganst Ships, lage bombers were notiriously inefective at leval bombing ships, yet in game they are wounderfull ship sinkers, I wish thier was somthing that could be done about this.

[Nikademus]

The halving of their specific bomb loads has had a good impact on this aspect. Beauty of it is that it doesn't impact their attack loadout for land targets.

[Brady]

Wow thats cool so their is a fix in ...how has this played out in your mod? I feal so dirty when I sink convoys with 4E bombers, makes porn feal wholsome....[:)]

[Nikademus]

Has so far worked very well. the 4E's are much less uber on naval attack.

4.0 is officially released. Spooky should have it up soon. If you want a copy sooner, email me at lansoar@hotmail.com I think you'll like this version Brady. [;)]

[Brady]

Sounds very good, I do appricate the efort put forth to better the game for one and all.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

I sincerely hope something will be done with this officially (i.e. for "vanilla" users of WitP that make majority of userss not necessitating need for custom mods)...


Leo "Apollo11"

[Charles2222]

Based on that 2nd B-29 attack, that's ridiculous!!!

89 bombers, with 9 damaged get:

ships hit - approx. 80
20 guns destroyed - (10-20 hits?)
437 casualties - (50 hits?)
port hits - 7
port fuel hits - 4
port supply hits - 2

So are we talking like 163 hits from 89 bombers (9 damaged)?????
So each plane hit more than one target, one of which was a ship?????
The Japanese must had lined up their guns/port fuel etc, to be right beside each ship so that each load dropped would hit more than one target.

[Apollo11]

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: Charles_22

Based on that 2nd B-29 attack, that's ridiculous!!!

89 bombers, with 9 damaged get:

ships hit - approx. 80
20 guns destroyed - (10-20 hits?)
437 casualties - (50 hits?)
port hits - 7
port fuel hits - 4
port supply hits - 2

So are we talking like 163 hits from 89 bombers (9 damaged)?????
So each plane hit more than one target, one of which was a ship?????
The Japanese must had lined up their guns/port fuel etc, to be right beside each ship so that each load dropped would hit more than one target.

Yes... that is the sad truth... [:(]

It appears that every single bomb is calculated and not one bombload per single bomber...


BTW, if you follow the links I gave in this thread (see messages before this on page 1 of thread) you can get info/data of all comprehesive tests I did (B-29, B-17, B-25, Betty).

The problem is not B-29 - even B-17 and B-25 can wreck utter devastation in my tests and excape almost untouched...


Leo "Apollo11"

[Charles2222]

Well I guess IJ will just have to attack the USA then, and then people can talk about how unrealistic that is. Though the situation in the early IJ attack into the USSR was unfair, if IJ attacks the USA very regularly with a lot of the players, and achieves largely success, then of course the perception that it could never happen would drive Allied pundits to destroy that notion by cutting IJ's PP's to a third or somethign similar. So what's more unrealistic? Strategic bombers with better than DB efficiency or success in attacking the USA. Not that I would probably do it mind you, but such ludicrous bomber achievments can drive some equally ludicrous tactics to combat it.

[Sardaukar]

Little bit of restraining oneself goes long way to make gaming experience lot better. Or mutually agreed house rules if PBEM.

As it's said before ad nauseum, "ahistorical use tends to yield ahistorical results"..[:D]

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Brady


My Bigest peave with 4E bomber ingame and any leval bomber for that mater, is their efect aganst shiping, They are way toefective aganst Ships, lage bombers were notiriously inefective at leval bombing ships, yet in game they are wounderfull ship sinkers, I wish thier was somthing that could be done about this.

One of the biggest "ship sinkers" of the war was the B-24. However, the game does not (and can not, apparently) model this (usually attacks carried out at night using radar). Low level attacks in this game are brutal for bombers (compared to higher attacks) in losses and fatigue, while in the actual war the opposite seems to be true. Unless you propose to fix this also, i don't think it is right to decrease the abilities of the level bombers because ONE aspect of the model is off. Yes, the entire model is off - but one aspect (increased daytime level bombing effect) is somewhat balanced by the deficiencies in the other parts of the model (essentially a total lack of nighttime capacity, poor modeling of low level attacks).

[Brady]

Realy?-Forgive me I dont know everything, I never heard of B-24's being big ship killers, do you have any figures for this? How many ships sunk what units whear and when kinda stuff?


I do agree the night time atack model is porked for aircraft of Both sides.

[Nikademus]

Statistically the ultra long range version of the B-24 accounted for more Uboats than any other ASW aircraft. It was the bane of Donetz's force.

[Brady]

Das Rich Babby[:)], but what abuot in the Pacific ?

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Brady


Realy?-Forgive me I dont know everything, I never heard of B-24's being big ship killers, do you have any figures for this? How many ships sunk what units whear and when kinda stuff?


I do agree the night time atack model is porked for aircraft of Both sides.

The B-24s flying from China pretty much massacred shipping in the area (Soth China Sea, iirc) in night ops, iirc (i'd have to look this up) it was several hundred thousand tons of shipping sunk in about 3 months time. It was so bad that the Japanese offensive (I-go???) was done partly (or mainly) to push the B-24s out of range of the Japanese shipping.

This (Allied air offensive) was done on a shoestring, as bombs and fuel had to be hauled "over the hump". The numbers of sorties were very limited due to this, but the number of targets was overwhelming, so much so that the radar operators had multiple targets available at any one time, and had to pick and choose their targets. They did huge damage to the merchant vessels, but also sank a fair number of IJN warships, including one (damaged) CA. I've posted on this in the past, with direct quotes from sources (one good one was Radar History of WW2) - you might be able to find it doing a search on the forum (maybe - the search routine is lately improved, but still deficient).

EDIT: I can pull the reference if you like when i get home (will do so on request).

[Nikademus]

Not sure off the top of my head. I do know the B-24 was better suited for the Pacific courtasy of it's long range vs. the B-17 and of course, there were far greater numbers of Liberators available starting in 1943 than the trickle of Fortresses. I'd think though that the 2E planes would have been used more for anti-ship strikes.

The Silent Service stole the show on this count in terms of merchant tonnage. [;)]

[rtrapasso]

Not sure off the top of my head. I do know the B-24 was better suited for the Pacific courtasy of it's long range vs. the B-17 and of course, there were far greater numbers of Liberators available starting in 1943 than the trickle of Fortresses. I'd think though that the 2E planes would have been used more for anti-ship strikes.

I think that the 2E planes got the glory because of the dramatic photos we see. Also, not much is written on (or at least not much attention is given to) Chenault's efforts in China compared to SWPac and CenPac operations. Until fairly recently (last year or so), i did not even know that there were US bombers operating out of China (except for the brief B-29 operations.)

The Silent Service stole the show on this count in terms of merchant tonnage.

Too true (in the actual war) - not true in WITP!!