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i have about 300 planes based at luganville and im trying to launch ground attacks on lunga. my bomber squadrons meet all the requirements but they wont attack. why is this?

Hi, Do they have escorts? Are there fighters on Lunga? Some of the leaders won't attack if there are no/not enough fighter escort. Try putting them on higher altitude or night missions and see if they attack.

Originally posted by deilthedog
i have about 300 planes based at luganville and im trying to launch ground attacks on lunga. my bomber squadrons meet all the requirements but they wont attack. why is this?

What is the airfield level?

I'm currently flying unescorted day missions over Lunga from Luganville at 35,000 feet. But weather also grounds them at times...

I've noticed that if the target of level bombers is within fighter range, they quite often will get an escort even if you deliberately try to get them to go unescorted by putting all of your fighters on 100% CAP.

Fighters on 100% LR-CAP may at their discretion occasionally fly escorts and/or sweeps depending on whether the local commander is aggressive enough and thinks the normal CAP assignment is well enough covered. I've never seen more than a small portion of the LR-CAP planes used this way.

Regards,

- Erik

I am having problems with land air attacking as well. Supply, morale, experience, leadership, weather is all there. Yet with multiple targets, my land based air is just sitting there turn after turn. This is a larger scenario with many, many ships and aircraft. Yet my aircraft are ignoring targets that in smaller scenarios, I know they would be attacking. I just can't determine why they sit there, turn after turn.

Since my land based air was sitting round doing nothing, I finally dashed a carrier group in to attack a force beseiging an island I hold. Unfortunately, an entire carrier group attack was wasted on these hordes of little PC's and junks that are wandering around aimlessly. The major targets were ignored. And I am not sticking around to see if Jap carriers are nearby. As long as there is a screen of rinky dink ships between my carriers and my objective, I am going to have a difficult time attacking my true targets. It just isn't good risk/reward management to put my carriers on the line to sink a couple of sailboats, rowboats and junks.

Have you guys considered an ignore button for tiny ships when planning attacks? Tiny ships do form a great screen from carrier strikes on important assets. And I just can't see an entire carrier group strike diverting on junks when they are going after a major target that has been at a known objective for the last week.

And I am still wondering why my massive land based air is sitting around with tons of targets all over the place.

Originally posted by Jagger2002

And I am still wondering why my massive land based air is sitting around with tons of targets all over the place.

Check list:

Has the base got enough aviation support?
Has the base got enough supply (idealy twice reqts or more)
Are the number of a/c on the base within recommended limits (AF x 50 or less ideally, but no worse than AFx100)
Are the squadrons on the correct mission for the targets (naval etc, with less than 100% search - preferable 0%, and a specialist search sqd of Cats, or Mavis etc, on 100% search)
Are the squadrons suitably rested (moral/fatigue ok - say 40+minimum moral)
Are the targets covered by CAP? If so, do you have escorts available? (see items 4 and 5 for the escorts)
Are the targets in range, spotted, big enough to warrant attack?

If you can answer yes to all of the above, you've beaten me!

Try reading this: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/WW/WW-3-2.html

Im gratefull the few days my own B-17s manage to fly

i tryed setting them to 35000ft and i tryed night bombing. no luck.
can someone explain this please. ive tryed everything. its not weather related cos nothing gets cancelled. the japs are bombing me in australia yet i cant bomb them with b17's. the situation is i have ground units in the lunga hex fighting for the airfield. could this be the problem. if so how come the japs are bombing my troops.
-no fatigue
-high moral.support,supplies
-size 9 airfield
help

Do you have the naval search level set above zero. Initially I had most of my land based aircraft set to 100% naval search level, and thats exactly what they did. As soon as I set them to zero, and let my PBY's do the searching they started attacking. My B-17's have pounded ships in port at Rabaul, and Lunga.

all my bomber are set at 0 seach. i have 2 squadrons of cats on 100%search. this is begining to ruin my current game. i have 212 LR bomber at luganville and they are currently useless.
is this a bug or what?

Originally posted by deilthedog all my bomber are set at 0 seach. i have 2 squadrons of cats on 100%search. this is begining to ruin my current game. i have 212 LR bomber at luganville and they are currently useless.
is this a bug or what?

I presume the Japs control Tulagi and that you do not have ground forces on the island? Try bombing Tulagi port facilities...

Set Primary Mission - Port Target
Select Target - Tulagi (22)
Nav Search Level - 0
Current Alttitude - 35,000
Set All B-17E at this Base

If it works, than change the target hex to Lunga... bomb it's port facilities. Than Ground Attack on Tulagi.

yep, the port attack works fine but the bombers will not do ground atttack. was the game designed this way or is this a bug?

How much recon have you done on the target? If you have no forces there, you may not have a good fix on where to bomb the ground forces unless you've increased your intel on the base area. Ports and Airfields are always easier to find than ground troops. The other points mentioned above (things to check) are also valid possibilities.

Regards,

- Erik

as i said above i have ground troops in the hex and ive checked all the above points. ive posted the problem in the bug forum as there seems no answer to this problem

That sounds like the problem i have. My airwarriors dont want to fly day for day, it seems that they need 4 days for recover after a strike.

That cannot be realistic...when i let them fly with fatigue 0, they return with 40-50 or more, even with light opposition.

Next day of course only the thoughest fly again, but the raid is so small that you can scrap the mission entirely:mad:

I think this fatigue thing need some overwork, no aircrew can be such weak!:eek:

Originally posted by deilthedog
i tryed setting them to 35000ft and i tryed night bombing. no luck.
can someone explain this please. ive tryed everything. its not weather related cos nothing gets cancelled. the japs are bombing me in australia yet i cant bomb them with b17's. the situation is i have ground units in the lunga hex fighting for the airfield. could this be the problem. if so how come the japs are bombing my troops.
-no fatigue
-high moral.support,supplies
-size 9 airfield
help

What, exactly, does the supplies required line say ?

What, exactly, does the supplies on hand line read?

LR bombers expend an enormous amount of supplies. If you don't have Twice the amount required AT LEAST, they probably won't fly. If you have a bunch of ground troops on the base, with a very high supply requirement, like say, 20,000 per month, then you would need around 40,000 before the bombers will fly. Also, do you have some of your fighters and fighter bombers set to escort? I've noticed that when you base bombers at the same base with fighters set to escort, the bombers will only hit those targets that they can reach with fighter escort. If, on the other hand, you base them ALONE, that is only with other bombers and NO fighters, then they will fly at extreme range and hit targets far away.

i have at least double the suppilies needed and plenty of support plus there are no fighters at the base. the bombers fly port attack missions at lunga no problem, they just wont fly ground attack missions.
its very strange. maybe someone from matrix could respond

please answer the questions.

Hello...

I am not sure what the exact situation is. You might try reducing the number of aircraft at the base and increasing the amount of supply. There may also be a proble with range. The longer the range, the more weather effects your chances of launching a a strike. And the longer the range the more tiring the flight is for the crew and greater chance of cancelling due to worn out aircraft (remember that fatigue represents how tired the pilots are and how air worthy the planes are). Luganvile to Lunga is a long trip. So, make sure there is more than plenty of supply and the crews are very well rested and the weather is clear and you should see a strike of some kind. It would also help, if you flew recon missions over the target, with your PBYs, for a few days before the strike. The bombers would have a better chance of launching a strike, if they knew where the enemy was, and the stikes would be more accurate.

Hope this helps...

Michael Wood
Lead Programmer,
Matrix Games