4E bombers,greatest bug of all

[hawker]

Yamato,
you dont have the point.
I just want to say how these 4Es are overrated,and how that hurts the game.Thats all.

[arras]

Well there seems to be some missunderstanding around:
in case of big bombing rides (Battle of Britain or Allied bomb. campaign over G.), goal of defending fighters wasn't to stop (newer happened) it but to inflict so big looses to bombers that maintaining bombing for longer time would be impossible for attacker. During WWII this would mean looses bigger than 10%. Looses around 20% were considered disaster. Also looses of defending fighters tended to be quit high against US bombers. It was ofthen close to 1:1 (still before P-51). Of course loosing single seat fighter was far to be equal of loosing 4E bomber because of the production and material cost and because of loosing seweral man onboard bomber wersus one pilot of fighter. This aspect is totaly omited in WIP since any aircraft in game need one pilot to fly ...which is totaly unrealistic.
Also pilots shot down tend to jump from plane quit rarely in game. In real war to fight ower friendly teritory was allways big advantage since downed defending pilots returned to fight while attackers were mostly captured. Depending on altitude of air battle nubmer of such rescued pilots could be around 50% or more.

While I see pilot to jump and be rescued/captured from time to time it seems that operational looses always mean KILL. I don't know howe game handle/track pilots exactly but to me their looses looks to be much to high.
If pilot looses of experienced unit of 27 Zeros during early month of operations are somewhere around 30-40% and only few are from combat, that's bit too much I think.

Another aspect of this type of air war was that many bobmers which made it back were discarted because of been damaged beyond repair. Number of such planes lost was again something like 1:1 against those realy shot down.
Also many of those which made it back had some crew wounded/died. To be rear gunner of bomber was especialy risky employment.

And last: one of the most serious damage was around crews morale. Loss of morale was more common reason to stop bombing then real looses. I dont know howe well this is modeled in game but it is modeled. I was newer testing it however.

As for Zero ...it wasnt the best 4E bobmer killer and already over Pearl Harbor Jappanese had problems with shooting B-17s down. And those B-17s were unarmed still.
Lack of protection wasn't helping much of course.
Me-109 on the other hand wasn't much better, especialy early wariants armed with riffle caliber MGs. Germans were triing to improve its firepower by mounting two 20 or even 30mm canoons in pods under wings. That worked fine only against unescorted bombers of course. Grenade lunchers and special airbombs were used too as well as any aircraft they had on hand like Ju-88 fighter bobmers or Me-110 nightfighters. Again P-51 made stop to such improvisation. Only realy efective plane germans had against B-17 was Fw-190A especialy in A8 model which was build for this job. It was more heavily armored than A6 model and had large caliber MGs instead rifle caliber of those on earlier wariants. + usual four 20mm canoons of course. On the other hand all this made it heavier and so not as good fighter as earlier lighter wariants.

Head on attack was not so common. It required good aim since there was only short moment when to fire guns and iron nerves since if not careful or just bit too late it might result in to direct crash. Only few pilots practiced that and those were mostly B-17 experts. As much as I know there were cases of some units specialisating in this way of attack but in general it wasn't used so ofthen.

Later game fighters like Tony or Jake with for 20mm canoons and armor should be more efective against those bombers.
There were some adjustements in large bomber formation defensive fire efectivenes made in one of the patches however. Changes positive for bobmers asmuch as I remember...

[Ron Saueracker]

I am OK with the fighters being more effective vs 2E and 4E bombers because the bombers only have the target CAP to contend with, whereas historically (depending on the air defense complexity present) the bombers had to contend with fighters from bases along the route during the transit to and from the target. Seeing as this can't be modelled, the extra zap the fighters get vs bombers is not necessarily a problem.

[Yamato hugger]

ORIGINAL: hawker

Yamato,
you dont have the point.
I just want to say how these 4Es are overrated,and how that hurts the game.Thats all.

Hey, Im sorry, but sensationalism with no foudation does no one any good.

I for one am not sold on this subject 1 way or the other. People quote losses they have had in the game and say its too much. But they dont say how many days in a row they flew, what the experience and fatigue of these groups are, ect. Then there is the other side of the coin that say the bombers dont do near as much damage as history, and again, do not give details on why they feel like they do.

Blanket statements, by either side of the issue not supported by examples is not worth the time to read. I guess thats what I ment to say, and sorry if I was curt about it.

[Gen.Hoepner]

Once, when the rapair rate of the 4Es was very slow everything was working better imho.
Now it's simply too easy to smash since Feb 42 everything in range of 13 hexes.
Do not know if you ( who argue about the 4Es even too underpowered) tried to play as Japan against an allied opponent who masses his 4Es...it's simply unplayable. Ido not know if it's realism or a bad design...really donot know. I'm not that specialist...but i can easily say that the game gets unbalanced, to much.

When you have 500 4Es bombers in one single base you can face whatever Japan dreams to have even without escort.
The first day send 250 4Es....Japan how many good fighters( and good pilots above all) can have in CAP? 250? Maximum 300 i'd say...on a single base...300 Tonies/Tojos/Zeros at an exp level of 75?...yes, let's say 75, which is quite good for the second half of 42.
250 4Es can shoot down easily 60/80 enemy fighters...probably the allies will lose 100 bombers plus more 100 damaged...ok...those 50 bombers that survived will surely hit the strip, destroying planes on the ground and damaging many other more.
Next day you let the survivors stay down and send in more 250 fresh 4Es....Japan will probably have 1/3 of yesterday fighters on CAP...means that 170/200 bombers will hit the strip....probably....so...guess what... Base closed, hundreds of planes destroyed on the ground, something like 100/130 priceless pilots lost forever and the allied 4E bombers masters of the skies.

When the p-38s come in it's even worse.

So how difficult is for allies to mass 500 4Es with PDUs ON by mid 42?....very very easy.
How difficult is for Japan to mass, on a single base, 300 very experienced, modern fighters? Very hard, cause other bases will be almost undefended, and while Japan is tied to a static air defence, the bombers can chose what they want to attack in range of 13/14 hexes....

Simply unplayable IMHO.

Some will probably argue that Japan does the same, massing HUGE CAP, using DS or using hundreds of Sallies togheder in China...
Yes, true. But how many Sallies are needed to get the same payload of a 4E?...and the sallies have a range of 8...and unescorted is food for worms...and you have limited pilots...while the allies have not.

Jap DS can be faced..probably not with CVs in 42, but easily with LBAs. Sallies huge formations can be faced using a good CAP ( remember that everything below a ratio of 4-1 in favour of Japan is an allied victory in 42).
HUGE Zero CAP can be easily faced with 4Es...

...but nothing can stop an horde of 4Es...not with the actual system ratings.

my 2 cents btw

[Yamato hugger]

Well, I said it earlier. The biggest abuse in the game is "massing" forces, ie making death stars. LCU death stars, the KB, 600 planes at a base ment for 100, 15 divisions parked on an atoll, ect.

[jwilkerson]

I agree !!!

Trying to figure out ways to implememt so called "stacking" rules for 4EB will help. If IRL one could fly 100+ B17s over an airbase in the pacific and drop bombs it would certainly do a lot of damage .. but that never happened in the real war ... and the reasons it never happened need to be modeled to prevent it from happening. They currently are not modeled so it does happen.

[Capt. Harlock]

IIRC, german fighters of WWII (and their british counterparts from Battle for Britain) had similar ammo (7-11 sec on full fire)?

I'm not expert but i have this data somewhere in my head (from documentary film) and i could be wrong...

The ealier models of the Zero (A6M2 and A6M3) carried 500 rounds per gun for the machine guns and only 60 rounds per gun for the cannons. This works out to over half a minute's worth of fire for the MG's. American fighters also frequently carried 400 rounds per gun, again about 30 seconds' worth.

I don't think the power of the 4E bombers is a game-buster. For one thing, I haven't heard that the B-24's are as big a problem for the Japanese fighters, and that's as it should be. (The B-29 was a major headache for the Japanese, because not many of their fighters could reach the altitudes that the Superfort could go. However, they couldn't bomb accurately from that height, so they switched to night misssions at low level with incendiaries, disgraceful tactics IMHO.) Another point is that the B-17's can't reach Japan until and unless the Marianas barrier is cracked. B-17's are not useful anti-ship aircraft, which is what the Allied side really needs in the first two years.

[Feinder]

(* observes the same old argument *)

(* sees the intractable opinions, despite whatever facts may be availble *)

(* decides to no bother *)

-F-

[Yamato hugger]

ORIGINAL: jwilkerson

I agree !!!

Trying to figure out ways to implememt so called "stacking" rules for 4EB will help. If IRL one could fly 100+ B17s over an airbase in the pacific and drop bombs it would certainly do a lot of damage .. but that never happened in the real war ... and the reasons it never happened need to be modeled to prevent it from happening. They currently are not modeled so it does happen.

Well, one thing that comes to mind is to count engines instead of airplanes for base capicity. #2 would be to limit bases like carriers, ie 10% over capicity or base shuts down. Maybe a bit harsh sounding, but it would grind to a halt these 200 plane raids out of a level 2 airfield.

As for ground units, one would almost have to set a number of troops that can be logistically crammed into a hex (effectively) on a per mile basis and any troops in excess of that number dont count. You would need 2 numbers. How many can attack effectively, and how many can defend. Case in point, Corrigidor when the allies were retaking it. There were 5000 Japs on the island, but since only a few could be brought to bear at a time, 1 single parachute rgt captured it (1 bn airdropped, 1 bn invaded, and 1 bn reinforced later).

Only tough part of this would be determining the defensable land area of each hex. Couldnt be done in this game of course, but for future reference.

[tsimmonds]

ORIGINAL: Feinder

(* observes the same old argument *)

(* sees the intractable opinions, despite whatever facts may be availble *)

(* decides to no bother *)

-F-

Makes two of us.

Well, one thing that comes to mind is to count engines instead of airplanes for base capicity. #2 would be to limit bases like carriers, ie 10% over capicity or base shuts down. Maybe a bit harsh sounding, but it would grind to a halt these 200 plane raids out of a level 2 airfield.

A most excellent idea. Of course it will never be considered, because "there isn't a problem"

I'm just about ready to move on. My PBEM opponent already has.[:(]

[tabpub]

ORIGINAL: Gen.Hoepner

Once, when the rapair rate of the 4Es was very slow everything was working better imho.
Now it's simply too easy to smash since Feb 42 everything in range of 13 hexes.
Do not know if you ( who argue about the 4Es even too underpowered) tried to play as Japan against an allied opponent who masses his 4Es...it's simply unplayable. Ido not know if it's realism or a bad design...really donot know. I'm not that specialist...but i can easily say that the game gets unbalanced, to much.

When you have 500 4Es bombers in one single base you can face whatever Japan dreams to have even without escort.
The first day send 250 4Es....Japan how many good fighters( and good pilots above all) can have in CAP? 250? Maximum 300 i'd say...on a single base...300 Tonies/Tojos/Zeros at an exp level of 75?...yes, let's say 75, which is quite good for the second half of 42.
250 4Es can shoot down easily 60/80 enemy fighters...probably the allies will lose 100 bombers plus more 100 damaged...ok...those 50 bombers that survived will surely hit the strip, destroying planes on the ground and damaging many other more.
Next day you let the survivors stay down and send in more 250 fresh 4Es....Japan will probably have 1/3 of yesterday fighters on CAP...means that 170/200 bombers will hit the strip....probably....so...guess what... Base closed, hundreds of planes destroyed on the ground, something like 100/130 priceless pilots lost forever and the allied 4E bombers masters of the skies.

When the p-38s come in it's even worse.

So how difficult is for allies to mass 500 4Es with PDUs ON by mid 42?....very very easy.
How difficult is for Japan to mass, on a single base, 300 very experienced, modern fighters? Very hard, cause other bases will be almost undefended, and while Japan is tied to a static air defence, the bombers can chose what they want to attack in range of 13/14 hexes....

Simply unplayable IMHO.

Some will probably argue that Japan does the same, massing HUGE CAP, using DS or using hundreds of Sallies togheder in China...
Yes, true. But how many Sallies are needed to get the same payload of a 4E?...and the sallies have a range of 8...and unescorted is food for worms...and you have limited pilots...while the allies have not.

Jap DS can be faced..probably not with CVs in 42, but easily with LBAs. Sallies huge formations can be faced using a good CAP ( remember that everything below a ratio of 4-1 in favour of Japan is an allied victory in 42).
HUGE Zero CAP can be easily faced with 4Es...

...but nothing can stop an horde of 4Es...not with the actual system ratings.

my 2 cents btw

First off, as I recollect you are still using the pre 1.6 replacement rates for planes.

Strike one.

Second, you are using the PDU, which was a very shortsighted attempt to mollify some of the people on both sides of the "I want to control everything in the game"

Strike two.

Third, you mention that such a force is unstoppable, as it can "close" down any airfield within range. This is true, but only in isolated cases, where there are no supporting airfields within range. A base that is "closed" still allows flyable a/c to transfer to/from it; a damaged group can relocate to reconstitute itself in the future. And if the "Flying Fortress DS" attacks some other base where you have little or no air cover, its not doing it's job destroying the enemy forces, it's just blowing holes in the ground that can be fixed. I believe that most of your "frustration" comes from fighting in isolated areas like Daily Waters Australia, where your single base could be picked on unmercifully by MC's heavies.

Foul ball on that one, so your're still at the bat.

So, to recapitulate, all the above factors make your experience something of an unusual one.
IF you had the lower Heavy bomber replacement rate, and
IF you didn't toggle the PDU on, and
IF you weren't fighting in areas that your opponent could single out one airstrip for continual pounding....
you might not have some of the same opinions.

I know that in one of my other games, I sent a group of 17's from Darwin to Kendari twice in 3 days to attack shipping building up in the port, that search and recon found.
Yeah, we hit around 10 ships or so in two raids, but I now have a group that has 1/3 of its planes operational and a morale of 35 AND what appears to be most of the Jap carriers sniffing around in the area looking for revenge. They will be heading inland for a while to recover.
I will leave you with this little form that I pasted together. It is all the Level Bombers that are in the game as described in the text attached. I don't see any 500 Heavy Bombers available to ME in this game. <note, I had to trim the file to exclude the Martins, PE's,SB's and one Wellington squadron...they aren't germane anyhow.>

[pauk]

ORIGINAL: pauk

however the main issue stays: B17 are overpowered and several glitchs in the game certainly doesn't helps:

#1 broken japanese AA fire (see Apollo11 threads about it)
#2 broken japanese radar (see japanese radar thread started by Tophat in war room)

unforutnatly, we haven't got any respons from officials on #1 and #2 and i doubt that this will be ever fixed (honestly i don't know why, but suspect we are silent minority here on forum and it is not worth effort - all other glitchs/bugs on the allied side are promptly fixed)

like i wrote, we are already on page two, and no one is interested in #1 and #2.
Guess that
it isn't really important, it affects only Japanese side[8|].

[Gen.Hoepner]

First off, as I recollect you are still using the pre 1.6 replacement rates for planes.

Strike one.

Second, you are using the PDU, which was a very shortsighted attempt to mollify some of the people on both sides of the "I want to control everything in the game"

Strike two.

Third, you mention that such a force is unstoppable, as it can "close" down any airfield within range. This is true, but only in isolated cases, where there are no supporting airfields within range. A base that is "closed" still allows flyable a/c to transfer to/from it; a damaged group can relocate to reconstitute itself in the future. And if the "Flying Fortress DS" attacks some other base where you have little or no air cover, its not doing it's job destroying the enemy forces, it's just blowing holes in the ground that can be fixed. I believe that most of your "frustration" comes from fighting in isolated areas like Daily Waters Australia, where your single base could be picked on unmercifully by MC's heavies.

Foul ball on that one, so your're still at the bat.

So, to recapitulate, all the above factors make your experience something of an unusual one.
IF you had the lower Heavy bomber replacement rate, and
IF you didn't toggle the PDU on, and
IF you weren't fighting in areas that your opponent could single out one airstrip for continual pounding....
you might not have some of the same opinions.

I know that in one of my other games, I sent a group of 17's from Darwin to Kendari twice in 3 days to attack shipping building up in the port, that search and recon found.
Yeah, we hit around 10 ships or so in two raids, but I now have a group that has 1/3 of its planes operational and a morale of 35 AND what appears to be most of the Jap carriers sniffing around in the area looking for revenge. They will be heading inland for a while to recover.
I will leave you with this little form that I pasted together. It is all the Level Bombers that are in the game as described in the text attached. I don't see any 500 Heavy Bombers available to ME in this game. <note, I had to trim the file to exclude the Martins, PE's,SB's and one Wellington squadron...they aren't germane anyhow.>

I'm not referring( sp??) specifically to my match with MC, but for how we both play that match can be brought as a good example of how things can go when both players use the PDU system at its maximum extension( hope this sentence is clear enough...sorry for my english-_-).

Yes, PDUs are on, but for what i see around at least 70-80% of the pbems going on have these settings, so there's nothing so strange.
IMHO PDUs is a great thing,especially because it gives you that flexibility you need not to be stuck with some stupid upgrade paths ( i think about IJAF fighters or Australian fighters for example). However the fact that 2E bombers are in the same "class" of 4Es really screws up the game. It can be said the same for light-medium bombers for what concerns Japan, but i do not see any "awesome" improovement from a Lily to a Sally/Helen...at least not the same "jump" that is from a Boston to a B-17!

For what concerns the mutual-supporting Airfield...yes, you're right.Bases like those in the Solomons-Rabaul area can be defended using LRCAP from other bases but that doesn't change much the things Imho. After 3/4 days of huge 4Es raids( >500 4Es employed) Japan will find itself with so few good pilots left in its squarons that it will be forced to pull back his fighters and get them back on training...so the results is the same:skies become a dominion of allied bombers.

However, i understand our points of view are completely different and our "sensitivity" about Japanese problems is different, so probably we cannot find a common "table" to discuss these things. I know nothing will do about that, but fortunately some new Mods ( THANKS NIK[;)]) do a good job about such problems...so for those who want, there's a kind of workaround, which is ok for me.

[Sneer]

strategic bombing of 4E is ok to me but wiping out troops in few days or closing any given airfield in burma is not
I don't remember examples from europe when 4e bombers were solely used to closing airfields and crushing ground troops
swarms of 2e bombers were used in this role
now nobody uses 2e in this role

lets give good bonus to strategic bombing and penalty to rest of attack and half of the problem will vanish

[invernomuto]

Well thats probably the single biggest "abuse" in the game, and not just 4E bombers. I have seen in recent games:

600+ aircraft based at Rangoon (level 5 airfield)

Well, current WITP air model forces players to concentrate large numbers of aircrafts in single airbase to launch "armageddon strike" against enemy airbases.
In RL even a dozen of 2E bombers could be not intercepted by CAP and devastate an airfield, in WITP, at least in my PBEM game, 20-30 bombers do quite nothing. You need at least 100-150 of them. The problem with current model is that if the devs decide to increase the damage done by small bombers grups, players will continue to use 200+ bombers attack doing catastrophic damage. As someone said before, we NEED A STACKING PENALITY [:@]

As for 4E, there are two problem IMHO:
1) They are too good in naval strikes. 60 B17 at 8000 ft could easily wipe out a TF. Historically, I doubt they were so effective if used in such way.
2) They are too good against enemy CAP. I know that Jap fighters had great problems against B17, but in my PBEM game they're Zero killers. That's a bit odd IMHO.

[tabpub]

I'm not referring( sp??) specifically to my match with MC, but for how we both play that match can be brought as a good example of how things can go when both players use the PDU system at its maximum extension( hope this sentence is clear enough...sorry for my english-_-).

Don't be sorry for your english; it is certainly better than my German would be, much less Italian...instead of extension, you might want to use effect

Yes, PDUs are on, but for what i see around at least 70-80% of the pbems going on have these settings, so there's nothing so strange.
IMHO PDUs is a great thing,especially because it gives you that flexibility you need not to be stuck with some stupid upgrade paths ( i think about IJAF fighters or Australian fighters for example). However the fact that 2E bombers are in the same "class" of 4Es really screws up the game. It can be said the same for light-medium bombers for what concerns Japan, but i do not see any "awesome" improovement from a Lily to a Sally/Helen...at least not the same "jump" that is from a Boston to a B-17!

Just because someone is using/doing something doesn't make it correct. PDU usage merely throws more petrol onto the fire. It is an example of a wrong trying to correct a wrong, and merely magnifying the problem. The upgrade paths could have stood a correction here and there, but not the wildly skewed changes that PDU encourage. As to the IJAF fighters and Australian fighters as examples, there were reasons in real life for their existance and usage, which the player should have to deal with. Now, in a PDU environment, every thing is optimized as the player would see fit, getting not only to fight the war the way they see fit, but to produce the war fighting material that they see fit also, with the microscope of hindsight to show the path.

For what concerns the mutual-supporting Airfield...yes, you're right.Bases like those in the Solomons-Rabaul area can be defended using LRCAP from other bases but that doesn't change much the things Imho. After 3/4 days of huge 4Es raids( >500 4Es employed) Japan will find itself with so few good pilots left in its squarons that it will be forced to pull back his fighters and get them back on training...so the results is the same:skies become a dominion of allied bombers.

Well, I still can't find the 500 heavy bombers that you speak of; I am in November of 42 vs. Herbie and I have 432 17's and 24's in the entire Pacific if they were fully equipped, which they are not. Oh, wait, back to the PDU again, aren't we. And I guess I need more green pills for my pilots, because if I was to fly them for 3/4 days straight, they would be useless for a 2 week period afterwards.

However, i understand our points of view are completely different and our "sensitivity" about Japanese problems is different, so probably we cannot find a common "table" to discuss these things. I know nothing will do about that, but fortunately some new Mods ( THANKS NIK ) do a good job about such problems...so for those who want, there's a kind of workaround, which is ok for me.

Sensitivity...that's a funny word to use in a wargame discussion. As to the proliferation of mods, maps, and 'tweaks'; all that I fear will happen will be to turn something that might have had been so much more into something fragmented and Balkanized. It will be like a sport that has different rules in each country...nay, each city that it is played in.
A year from now, it might become impossible to find a player to compete against, as they all have different opinions on which settings/mods/patch to use. I guess I am just weary of the comments from both 'sides', as it were. I think that there will never be a consensus about what is the right value for almost anything. Everyone has different experiences; air search/bombs kill too many subs, yet I rarely get hit, much less killed by airpower; ASW too strong, yet I don't lose many to ASW; 4E bombers are killers, mine lose 20-25 morale points on a unopposed bombing raid, etc.

I've been up too late; this is nothing personal here Hoep. You just happened to be in the line of fire. [>:]

[tabpub]

strategic bombing of 4E is ok to me but wiping out troops in few days or closing any given airfield in burma is not
I don't remember examples from europe when 4e bombers were solely used to closing airfields and crushing ground troops
swarms of 2e bombers were used in this role
now nobody uses 2e in this role

lets give good bonus to strategic bombing and penalty to rest of attack and half of the problem will vanish

I would have to agree in general with you; a floor to daylight bombing by bombardment(H) of 10 to 12,000 feet, a bonus (if necessary) for area (city manpower attacks); and a change in the CAP routine, something like only 1/4 of the planes set to CAP are in the air and the rest do the area scramble routine. Then high flying planes would have less opposition, yet lower levels would face more defenders.

[tabpub]

Well, current WITP air model forces players to concentrate large numbers of aircrafts in single airbase to launch "armageddon strike" against enemy airbases.
In RL even a dozen of 2E bombers could be not intercepted by CAP and devastate an airfield, in WITP, at least in my PBEM game, 20-30 bombers do quite nothing. You need at least 100-150 of them. The problem with current model is that if the devs decide to increase the damage done by small bombers grups, players will continue to use 200+ bombers attack doing catastrophic damage. As someone said before, we NEED A STACKING PENALITY

As for 4E, there are two problem IMHO:
1) They are too good in naval strikes. 60 B17 at 8000 ft could easily wipe out a TF. Historically, I doubt they were so effective if used in such way.
2) They are too good against enemy CAP. I know that Jap fighters had great problems against B17, but in my PBEM game they're Zero killers. That's a bit odd IMHO.

Well, there is a 'stacking penalty', but as to its effectiveness, I am not sure. Personally, I think that a better handle on the base limits would have been something like putting into "reserve" status a proportion of all planes when over the limit for the physical limit of the base. That, and a "timer" on transfers; transfer a group, and it has to stand down for 2-3 days before the next transfer mission. Would make you choose between the short, safe but REALLY slow hops, or the one LONG dangerous op loss causing one. Would make the CVE carriers more important, as when they arrive, the planes are ready to go and no standing down from the transfer in.

[Sneer]

4e were mostly used to bomb "area" targets 2e were used for more precise duties

BTW there are quite a lot of examples where friendly troops were bombs due to inaccurancy of support bombing
now even 100+4e are always accurate against troops