ORIGINAL: Nikademus
My own mod-in-progress includes a Durability increase as well as having drastically cut B-17 production. (at present its 16 a month)
In combat with Kaiser73 so far, only about 4-6 17's have been downed in actual air to air combat so far (it's 3/42 in our game) The vast majority of the 50ish 17's destroyed in our game were all caught on the ground, with the rest accounted as operational losses. K can comment on the state of his 17's better since i'm playing Japan but I think i aptly demonstrated why 17's were not immediatley based at a forward and vulnerable point such as PM. He moved the entire 39th BG there and started hitting Rabaul. My quickcounterstroke destroyed a good number of 17's on the ground and forced the 39's withdrawl to a safer area. Now in the stock scenerio, with 75 17's a month coming in this would have been no issue for him.....but with the "Trickle" of 17's being represented coming in from the pipleline....evevy 17 lost to ground attack and op losses should hurt.
(this is exactly what happened to me in my last PBEM under the old replacement rates.....was getting hit in no less than 4 places on the map in Feb 42 by up to 50-70 B-17's!)
I also cut the bomber loads of all the heavies in half because in 42 it was rare for a 17 to fly missions fully loaded. They also carried a wide variety of munitions too. Purpose is to try to tone down the "uber effect" of the bombers when attacking airbases....more important than ever with the DUR increase. From what i've seen so far i've been very happy with the combat interactions. Hopefully K agrees as well.
Actually, one of the first actions General Kenney took after he assumed command of 5th Air Force was to hit Rabaul from Port Moresby at night, and successfully so. One reason you can pound Port Moresby in retaliation as the Japanese player in the game is because your fighters are too strong, and then, of course, in general the air model is out of whack, so at times the Japanese medium bombers record silly bombing results. I haven't seen much long-range destructive capability yet of these medium bombers at long range and against decent fighter opposition, but if (probably when) I do then that'll just be one more nail in the old
WitP coffin as far as I'm concerned.
I've posted the USAAF bombing survey twice before. That gives you loss figures of heavies in the POA. By year, and counting all causes (enemy fighter, AA fire and operational) it runs 6 losses in 1942, 23 in 1943, 38 in 1944 and 30 in 1945. The survey might well be in error, but those are the official figures for what they're worth.
According to the survey, in 1942 only 2 heavies were lost to enemy aircraft and 4 operationally. In 1943 17 were shot down by enemy fighters, 1 was dropped by flak, 5 lost operationally. In 1944 the sub-totals ran 14-9-15 respectively, in 1945 7-14-9. The grand total for the entire war of heavy-bomber losses comes to 97. And that's all the survey says.
I do have reason to wonder about the figures for 1942. Only 100 combat sorties are listed for this entire period, which has to be an error. It could be that these statistics only account for 5th Air Force activity, a command which wasn't in place until September of 1942. I don't know. All the survey provides is the bottom line.
Over the course of the entire war, 14,043 heavy-bomber combat sorties were carried out: 100 in 1942, 1,014 in 1943, 6,720 in 1944, 6,209 during the final months.
In any event, stock scenario 15 has too many B-17s on the map, and by a goodly number. Whose decision that was I don't know, but he ought to be shot. On the other hand, many Allied planes are downgraded to a serious degree, while Bettys and Nells tend to be too powerful, the Zero entirely over-rated, etc. Indeed, the air model, taken as a whole, makes little sense.
I gave up on this game a long time ago, terrible UI.
