Help needed for air war introductory campaign

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: loki100

one of the great things about this game is the scope for disagreement over what works etc. Also, of course, the difference when up against the (good) AI and a player is important. But this is a well escorted night bombing raid on T11. Set up for recon between the bombing stages and I think you can see the effectiveness build up over the week. I also picked a target with high manpower/low flak and I suspect the German fighters then had to travel some distance.

Absolutely! Wouldn´t be much of a game if there was only "one way to do it". [:)]

I have never gotten as good results as you got at night despite doing everything "by the book" though. So one could speculate that results like that are quite uncommon while single digit damage is the norm.

[ParaB]

After many many tries with the introductory campaign I can now say that I can get two-digit results when bombing manpower with BC on a regular basis.

In my last run I was able to damage Hamburg manpower in 4 turns to 80%. In another I bombed Cologne to 75%.

I just have to watch our for those excellent weather nights.

[Chuske]

Hmmm after reading this thread I thought I'd try this as not really tested the air tutorial. Been bombing in campaign sinec end of the beta test with reasonable results but thought I can maybe learn something more here.

I'm not even getting near the level of VPs for a draw. I'm hitting oil, fuel near Ploesti with 15th, Hamburg oil/fuel with 8th and Manpower in Ruhr and Cologne with BC. Total losses for first turn 140 for all airforces together.

My method was:-
1) Switch off all auto-naval in doctrine as don't want anything flying that is of no benefit for strat bombing and losing me VPs
2) Moved all NFs to BC and rebased them in S.E England
3) I'm using Coastal recon assets for BC. Not changing HQ or rebasing as I need them recon from turn 1. Also noticed they are by default set to low camera and so changed loadout to high camera + drop tanks.

My city bombing ADs I went for 2 or 3 big strikes a week with Req AC set to 9999 and Num Strike set to 1 and I was targetting just 1 hex for each strike.

Recon also just 1 hex over target.

The 8th and 15th results were pretty good at 50% damage on the fuel/oil targets but BC was still only 1, 2 or 3% manpower damage on Cologne.

My recon was also no good at all. Target hexes for recon I got 0 recon points but surrounding hexes got 4 recon pts which seems very odd to me??

Anyone else noticing this recon issue? What recon % are you getting in this scenario?

[soeren01]

ORIGINAL: jonboym

Hmmm after reading this thread I thought I'd try this as not really tested the air tutorial. Been bombing in campaign sinec end of the beta test with reasonable results but thought I can maybe learn something more here.

I'm not even getting near the level of VPs for a draw. I'm hitting oil, fuel near Ploesti with 15th, Hamburg oil/fuel with 8th and Manpower in Ruhr and Cologne with BC. Total losses for first turn 140 for all airforces together.

My method was:-
1) Switch off all auto-naval in doctrine as don't want anything flying that is of no benefit for strat bombing and losing me VPs
2) Moved all NFs to BC and rebased them in S.E England
3) I'm using Coastal recon assets for BC. Not changing HQ or rebasing as I need them recon from turn 1. Also noticed they are by default set to low camera and so changed loadout to high camera + drop tanks.

My city bombing ADs I went for 2 or 3 big strikes a week with Req AC set to 9999 and Num Strike set to 1 and I was targetting just 1 hex for each strike.

Recon also just 1 hex over target.

The 8th and 15th results were pretty good at 50% damage on the fuel/oil targets but BC was still only 1, 2 or 3% manpower damage on Cologne.

My recon was also no good at all. Target hexes for recon I got 0 recon points but surrounding hexes got 4 recon pts which seems very odd to me??

Anyone else noticing this recon issue? What recon % are you getting in this scenario?

Did you set your recon to strategic recon and only 1 hex ?

[Chuske]

ORIGINAL: soeren01]

Did you set your recon to strategic recon and only 1 hex ?

In the most part yes as I was focusing recon and bombing on specific hexes to maximise short term results.

[ParaB]

1st turn in the introductory air campaign:

Target Hamburg

RAF BC bombing schedule set to 3+6, 2 strikes/day, 18k feet.
RAF BC recon schedule set to 1+2+3+4+5+6+7, 1 strike/day, 30k feet

Result: 25% manpower damage, 24 bombers lost, 19 enemy AC destroyed.

Turn 2:

Same settings as above,

Result: 15% manpower damage, 33 bombers lost, 16 enemy AC destroyed

That's a 40% reduction in manpower, as well as some damage to uboat factories and heavy industries

Not too shabby IMO.

[Chuske]

ORIGINAL: ParaB

1st turn in the introductory air campaign:

Target Hamburg

RAF BC bombing schedule set to 3+6, 2 strikes/day, 18k feet.
RAF BC recon schedule set to 1+2+3+4+5+6+7, 1 strike/day, 30k feet

Result: 25% manpower damage, 24 bombers lost, 19 enemy AC destroyed.

Turn 2:

Same settings as above,

Result: 15% manpower damage, 33 bombers lost, 16 enemy AC destroyed

That's a 40% reduction in manpower, as well as some damage to uboat factories and heavy industries

Not too shabby IMO.

Did you change the Required Aircraft or Min aircraft settings or doctrine mission pct? Or did you stick with the defaults?

[ParaB]

I used the default settings.

BTW I've seen strange recon results, too. Sometimes the target hex (area set to 0) shows no recon lvls at all, while adjacent hexes shows recon levels of 6 or even higher. Sometimes the target hex shows good recon lvls. No idea how that actually works.

[Helpless]

Sometimes the target hex (area set to 0) shows no recon lvls at all, while adjacent hexes shows recon levels of 6 or even higher. Sometimes the target hex shows good recon lvls. No idea how that actually works.

You can ignore hex recon levels when doing strategic bombing. Strategic recon shouldn't cause hex recon values to go up, which is considered as currently active bug.

[ParaB]

I've finally done it:





WA AC losses: 659
Axis AC losses: 730

RAF BC hit Hamburg twice a week
8th AF hit two cities per week, each 2 days/week
15th AF hit two cities per weak, each 2 days/week

All raids used 2 strikes/day, except in excellent weather where I reduced them to 1 for BC and 15th AF.

[marion61]

So is there any point to strategic recon? If it doesn't help hitting strategic targets, why bother? Or am I misunderstanding your meaning?

[Helpless]

So is there any point to strategic recon? If it doesn't help hitting strategic targets, why bother?

It does help targeting "correct" factories. Also it helps to provide correct information if the damage done.

Ex.1

Real damage 25, FoWed damage 50 (bad recon info). Raid made +10 real damage (to +35), and estimated damage is 50 (more precise than it was). So net result that battle report show no damage increase as it checks fowed values only and player complains that city bombing is very ineffective.

Ex.q

Real damage 25, Fowed damage 40 (better recon), real damage after strike +10 = 35, new assessment is 50. Battle report will show up with +15 damage done, which is much close to the real +10.

I see when such reporting can be a bit misleading and will try to provide better estimates of strike efficiency. But currently it will be very variable with FOW on and once you would like to test bombing accuracy, FOW needs to be swicthed off.

[Chuske]

Pavel indicated to me that it's main use is to assess damage with FOW on and if you have a AD over a large enough area to contain several targets that match your target priority it will make better choices on what to bomb based on the damage already done. I'm not sure from what he said if it actually helps your achieve more damage, the way he worded things means I suspect not and that it only improves the info on damage done.

I'm sure Pavel will correct if I'm wrong [:D]

[Chuske]

lol, well looks like Pavel beat me to it [&o]

[marion61]

That's good to know, thank you. Does it not matter what the recon level is in the hex for strategic recon, just so long as you do it? And I am assuming that the more frequently you do the recon during the week, that you get more accurate results on bomb damage?

[Helpless]

Yes to both.

[marion61]

That's very helpful. I was so worried about getting results in the target hex that I would put recon flights on area zero to ensure results. I'm glad that I can cover more targets now by increasing the area re-conned.

[Chuske]

Got it [:D] Thanks to Nico & ParaB

[ParaB]

Good job!


Funny how things can change in a complex wargame like WitW from "IMPOSSIBLE!!!" to "Difficult, but doable" once you learn the intricacies of the simulation.

[Nico165b165]

Yeah ! And we're learning fast : the game came out 2 months ago. Real air marshalls had to train their whole adult life. Guess not dying when you try something stupid helps learning faster [:D]