Do you want bombing VPs? Hit Heavy Industry

[carlkay58]

Balou - yes the number in parenthesis is the % damage. They are that high in the occasional area because I have bombed them heavily over several turns and the oil and fuel/synth fuel factories repair slowly.

The divisor will get you in the end. The 43 divisor is 6. It changes to 9 for Jan - Jun 44, then 12 for the rest of 44. In 1945 the divisor is 15. That takes a big chunk out of the VPs after a while.

Also be aware that suppressing the UBoats is fairly easy in 1943 but then it switches over to the VWeapons in 1944 and those are much harder to suppress. After the French invasion, the VWeapon point loss doubles. Between the VWeapon VP loss and the larger divisor the Bombing campaign has real problems generating positive VPs after Jan 44.

[RedLancer]

ORIGINAL: Balou

Devs, more ADs please !

You can already do this yourself. You can have a maximum of 23 Air HQs in the game (as that is the limit on space in the right hand bar). Adding Groups in the Editor is really easy - just create a XXX Air HQ (e.g. No. 1 Group RAF) with a HHQ of Bomber Command. That gives you more ADs. With the cap on Air HQs the challenge for a scenario designer is which to include and which to leave out.

[Smirfy]

As an aside I just read a fairly uninteresting paper whose sole point of interest was the fact that 12 of the "Memphis Belle's" missions were against the UBoat pens at St Nazaire, Brest and Lorient.. The numerous statistics of the bombing raids would be too numerous and dull to repeat. Perhaps there is grounds for adding a few more uboat targets?

[decourcy2]

Yeah, but we would never bomb the pens as post war research showed that the American 500lb bomb was incapable of penetrating the concrete! BTR had them on board but they were coded to be hard to damage.

[HMSWarspite]

The 500lber was incapable?! A 12000lb Tallboy was incapable of penetrating the concrete! Mind you they did lay waste to the surroundings with their bombing...

Also, the Allies had pretty much given up on conventional bombing of French pens by the start of the game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_pen). Tallboys and other specials only after early 1943...

[Smirfy]

we would never bomb the pens as post war research showed that the American 500lb bomb was incapable of penetrating the concrete! BTR had them on board but they were coded to be hard to damage.

I know *we* would not but the Allies did till they were blue in the face. One of the complaints I have heard is the current U-Boat target set telegraphs air missions. If the anti Uboat air campaign which was more political than practical as the wasted effort against the pens suggest perhaps raids against them (if they existed in game) should have a nominal vp point value to represent the percieved political directive. In that way one of the complaints can be obviated and it keeps bombers away from other targets and does no damage except possibly to the port which incidently helps disquise the invaision (which seems fair). Incidently minelaying was part of the anti UBoat campaign so if you want to vary the mission subset for U-Boats (which also would help disguise the invaision) the amount of Bombers you stick on Naval interdiction might count in some way. The end result is you could probably up the value of the actual U Boat yards to encourage higher risk raids.

[Smirfy]

By coincedence I'm reading Bomber offensive by the man himself and he stated he believed that bombing certain UBoat targets was pointless, argued against it and successfully did a deal with the Admiralty for laying 1000 mines a month instead. Minelaying taking up 14.5% of Bomber commands sorties in 43. He appears to have been pretty shrewd and realiased OTU's and Heavy conversion units could do alot of the work but realiased any night the weather was too poor for operations over Germany he could simply mine off the coast of Occupied Europe. So there is a precedent for Naval Interdiction being used in the strategic offensive

[LiquidSky]

I had a thought about bombing different factories. One reason why an effect may not be 'felt' when bombing say AFV or aircraft factories is a large percentage of the built products goes to the east.

Say 25% ( I don't know the actual percentage) of AFV production goes to the west. I have to bomb 4 points of factories to stop 1 AFV from making it to the west. With the EF box off, that essentially means a free 'buffer' of 3 afv's for every 1 that matters.

And a lot of those units aren't even in combat for half the game....allowing a pool to build up. Which makes it seem like no real damage is occurring, when in fact, you may pay a large dividend in 1944.

And that is probably frustrating to the 'I want it all and I want it now" crowd.

Bombing HI and MAN gives instant gratification. I can see the next turn that my vp's have risen. I'm not going to find out 20 turns later that I wasted 20 weeks of missions.

In my game with DicedT the EF box is on. Which makes me wonder if I can help win the game faster, by helping the Russians get to Berlin faster, by bombing equipment. Fuel probably doesn't matter in the EF box...Supplies probably do...so maybe bombing HI has more of a point.

[JocMeister]

But helping the war effort doesn´t necessarily mean winning the game. The WAs are starved for positive VPs already and giving up one of the biggest sources may be giving away any chance of actually winning the game. It might help you win the war...but with the VP system we are stuck with I think you are better off playing the VP system and completely disregarding what happens in the "war". At least if you play MP.

Just a few thoughts. [:)]

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky
In my game with DicedT the EF box is on. Which makes me wonder if I can help win the game faster, by helping the Russians get to Berlin faster, by bombing equipment.

IMO, with EF Box on, bombing AFVs is the most effective thing you can do. I wanted to try it in my game vs. Smokingdave, but I think it's so effective I didn't want to "break" our game to make a point.

There are only 8 cities that contain all PzIV, Panther, and StugIII production. Those are the 3 models that are the most important. You can add the Jagdpanzer 38(t) to that later; it's built in just one city. Can the Allies keep 8 cities in rubble? I think you can.

I would like to see somebody try it to prove the point. It will take awhile to have an impact as you say, but imagine what the Wehrmacht would look like with no Panzer IV, Panther, or Stugs.

I predict someone will try this, and then there will be Houserules against AFV bombing.....

[NotOneStepBack]

By the time your bombing any other targets has an effect, if it does have an effect, you have lost out on the bombing modifer for vps.

[Smirfy]

In my tests the Axis surplus's are huge which as I said in the oil/fuel leads to a level of redundancy which negates the effort of strategic bombing.

[Smirfy]

ORIGINAL: Q-Ball

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky
In my game with DicedT the EF box is on. Which makes me wonder if I can help win the game faster, by helping the Russians get to Berlin faster, by bombing equipment.

IMO, with EF Box on, bombing AFVs is the most effective thing you can do. I wanted to try it in my game vs. Smokingdave, but I think it's so effective I didn't want to "break" our game to make a point.

There are only 8 cities that contain all PzIV, Panther, and StugIII production. Those are the 3 models that are the most important. You can add the Jagdpanzer 38(t) to that later; it's built in just one city. Can the Allies keep 8 cities in rubble? I think you can.

I would like to see somebody try it to prove the point. It will take awhile to have an impact as you say, but imagine what the Wehrmacht would look like with no Panzer IV, Panther, or Stugs.

I predict someone will try this, and then there will be Houserules against AFV bombing.....

Tank production unlike most other AFV production could not dispersed the Allies did not go after it until August 44. How viable in game is it to go after it before that? How quick do targets repair? What effect does weather have on bombing accuracy?

[LiquidSky]

With the EF box on it's easy to forget that the Germans are actually losing a lot of equipment every turn...although the mechanics escape me as I have only dabbled in the realm of EFing.

I'm not sure if I am noticing a degradation of bombing due to weather..other then the obvious Heavy Rain that prevents me from flying in the first place. I suspect that weather prevents some planes from flying, however, I am getting more and more planes during the winter, so overall it seems my bombing gets better.

It would be very difficult to bomb the AFV (or any other factory) to zero and keep it there. It would be trivial to bomb them and keep them damaged...however. If I haven't got an accurate picture from photographs, and the computer thinks the factory is damaged to 100%, it won't fly bombers to bomb it. And I am not sure how accurate picture taking is at 35k feet during bad weather.

[Joel Billings]

Weather impacts the accuracy of the bombing, not just whether planes will fly. Also can force picking alternate targets (IIRC).

[marion61]

Alternate targets? Think we could ever get an option to set that ourselves in game? And would you mind explaining how that works?

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: meklore61

Alternate targets? Think we could ever get an option to set that ourselves in game?

+1!

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



With the EF box on it's easy to forget that the Germans are actually losing a lot of equipment every turn...although the mechanics escape me as I have only dabbled in the realm of EFing.

I'm not sure if I am noticing a degradation of bombing due to weather..other then the obvious Heavy Rain that prevents me from flying in the first place. I suspect that weather prevents some planes from flying, however, I am getting more and more planes during the winter, so overall it seems my bombing gets better.

It would be very difficult to bomb the AFV (or any other factory) to zero and keep it there. It would be trivial to bomb them and keep them damaged...however. If I haven't got an accurate picture from photographs, and the computer thinks the factory is damaged to 100%, it won't fly bombers to bomb it. And I am not sure how accurate picture taking is at 35k feet during bad weather.

I agree that it's very tough to completely terminate tank production; I exaggerated. But it's easy, IMO, to severely disrupt it, enough to be a game changer. A single bombing run should easily damage a factory say 70%; keep that up on a rotation basis, even with priority repairs, and production will be at least halved.

[Smirfy]

Does the Luftwaffe not have fighters?

[carlkay58]

It only takes 50% damage to totally destroy all chances of production from a factory. So it is not impossible to keep eight or nine factories from producing during good weather. Which may be good enough.