ORIGINAL: Harrybanana
Loki in my questioning of the VP System I am pointing out what I think are two separate problems with the System. The first is that it is possible for the WA Player to "Bomb for VPs" and thereby win at least a minor victory without capturing any German territory and perhaps without even capturing Rome or Paris. The second is that irrespective of the current VP Score (ie whether the WA Player is winning by 500 points or losing by 500 points) at some point in an EF Box Off game (I say around the summer or fall of 1944) the WA Player will gain more VPs (or perhaps lose fewer) by Turtling than he will by continuing to attack. Now some people think that even if either or both of these are true it is still not a problem. On that point we disagree.
With respect I don't think your game will be too helpful with respect to the first problem. This is because it does not appear, to me anyway, that SmokinDave was ever trying to Bomb for VPs. I mean as of September 2, 1944 he has scored only 169 SB VPs (an average of only about 3 per turn) which is less than the VPs he has lost to UBoats and VWpns. This suggests to me that either he was bombing non-VP targets (Vehicles, AFVs, Aircraft, etc), or he was letting the AI choose the size of his bombing missions (in my experience it is far more effective to have 10 missions of 50 bombers than the one mission of 500 bombers that the AI likes to do), or he wasn't doing much Strategic bombing at all. Of course, the other possibility is that you have utilized very effective counter-measures to Strategic bombing. I believe I am about to encounter those myself in my game with Liquidsky. So if that is the case would you be willing to post here what those counter measures were?
With respect to the problem of the WA player Turtling, I am unsure if your game will provide useful data or not. The reason is that you have the EF Box turned ON so if Dave turtles you could send more units East thus delaying the end of the game. However, I very much doubt that Dave will Turtle. So I am following this game with a lot of interest. In particular I am anxious to see if Dave gains or loses VPs between now and Games End. My guess is that if he keeps attacking he will lose a lot. But we will see.
fair comments, I agree with the aspect that an allied player should see an incentive to carry on attacking in a normal game, but I also like the fact there are other options. Problem with closing off bombing to win is you make it easy for someone like Pelton to min/max against a simpler set of outcomes.
All games provide useful data, even those that end up completely one sided. It gives an idea of the likely range for a given style of game.
This thread is open to Dave (its quite a bit behind and I don't think there is that much long term planning with the German side once the Allies are in France). However, he said he'd rather not read till the game is over so I'll not comment on his bombing strategy till he has chance to rebut or provide his side of the debate. But I think he's relied a lot on auto upgrade and while that is fine with the B-17s, Lancasters, Halifaxes etc its a bit hit and miss for the other British bombers (I've noticed some older stuff on his raids that I would have changed by now). He's also mostly done single hex raids.
My defense has relied on a few basic ideas.
I put the day fighters under 1 Jagd corps and the NFs under II Jagd Corps. I've never set an air directive with either (so they only fly to need). At the start I put all those fighter squadrons on TPI in order to keep their effectiveness high. I then organised so the less effective planes were deeper in the Reich the Bf-109s/Fw190s were on the borders (as of now they almost all are deep and I'm relying on flak to defend the western cities). I made sure that all were maximised for air combat (so no drop tanks) and shifted them from base to base as I felt was sensible. There were also turns I set the entire group to rest.
What I wanted to do was to win (decisively) any battle rather than marginally. Having played the Allies more, I've come to regard damage as a bigger issue than outright losses (due to the morale impact). A shot up bomber squadron can be out of action for 3-4 weeks. I've paid particular attention to making 15 Air's life a misery. Its usually less well escorted, usually a guddle of plane types so can be vulnerable.
Overall this set up a game of cat and mouse - some turns I completely missed his raids, on others they walked into a heavy fighter concentration.
From early 1944 I started scrapping NFs to free up the pilots for the day squadrons (I probably was too slow and too conservative about doing this). Also spend Admin Pts getting your flak to cover key cities and repair key assets.
