B-17 are to heavy

[Paulchen]

In my game (#16), i have all B-17 stationed in PM, and they go to bombing the airfield in rabaul every turn, the field in rabaul is since 2 months completly not operating, all zero-fighters there are damaged (70) and no aircombat will start in the game, because no cap can start.

i think that was to hard, because i don´t lose any b-17 since 6 weeks (alttidute 35000, to high for flak) and the reinforcing of the b-17 will beginning in month 10/42 (i think).

This seems to me, that i can destroy and hold down every ai-airfield in the hole game. This was in my opinion historical not possible.

It´s very funny for my forces, but not funny for the gameplay.

[JohnK]

35,000 is a pretty completely unrealistic height for actual massed bombing...might see a B-17 on recon get over 30,000 here and there.

There are general problems with bombing in being too effective in killing ships in port (addressed in the patch) but it's also far too effective in killing ground troops (I've seen some amazing statistics for the number of sorties/bombs dropped on the Japanese in the Aleutians, and the pitifully small number of troops killed) and it also seems, in attacking airfields, particularly from very high altitudes.

[Jagger2002]

I agree. The B-17 is the giant hammer that squashes every airfield in range. I think its accuracy at high altitude is too high. And because of their high altitude accuracy against fixed targets and high survivability, their impact on the game is much greater than it was in real life.

I have started doing some research. I discovered that both the B-17 and B-24 Liberator used the norden sight. Yet the accuracy of the B-17 is much greater than the B-24 within Uncommon Valor. Compare the number of airfield hits at max altitude by B-17's vs B-24's. There is no comparison. Unless there is some reason other than the norden sight for the accuracy of the B-17, then I suspect there may be some sort of bug in here.

[kaleun]

The norden sight was used for both the B17 and the B24. It was also used in Europe, but, due to the weather over there, it was not as useful.
It was my understanding that the B17s, flying at high altitude, were pretty invulnerable to most Japanese defenses. At least Saburo Sakai made that comment in his story (Samurai I believe).
That said, I believe that a B17 or B24 at 30000ft would not hit anything smaller than a major city. Hint for the next patch.

K.

[Paulchen]

i will hope in the patch this problem will be stop.

[Jagger2002]

Here is a comparison between airfield attacks by B-24 and B-17's.

Both attacks from Port Moresby to Rabaul.

-------------

22 B-24's with 16 bombs apiece at 32,000 altitude scores:

1 Airbase hit.

---------------

19 B-17's with 12 bombs apiece at 35,000 altitude scores:

7 Airbase hits, 1 Airbase Supply hit, 37 runway hits.

---------------

Huge difference in accuracy between the two, yet both use the Norden sight.

If both planes are using Norden sights, I can see no reason why the B-17 would be so much more accurate. I think there is accuracy error for the B-17's.

I don't know if either 2By3 or Matrix is aware of this descrepancy or not. Hopefully, it has been fixed in the patch.

[Erik Rutins]

I've had good results from both, but I understand that you have some concerns. This is certainly not something we've looked at or put any priority on as none of our testers or developers have reported a problem with B-17 or B-24 effectiveness. If you would like us to put it on our list for the next patch, it would help tremendously if you could run some additional controlled tests. Unfortunately, anecdotal reports generallly go to the bottom of the list.

One test is interesting, but doesn't prove anything given how many other factors are involved in the accuracy of a given bombing run. Commander ratings, crew experience, morale, fatigue, range/loadout, altitude, recon of target, randomization, etc. all make a difference. Then there's also the issue that the random seeds are stored in the save file, so simply setting up a save to do repeated tests with can be problematic.

Please keep an eye on this, do some testing if you have time. I'll try to test it out here as well, but my to-do list is pretty huge.

Regards,

- Erik

[Jagger2002]

B-17's are fixed!!!!

With the patch, B-17's can't hit anything over 20,000 ft altitude. I think their lethality vs Zeros has been reduced as well but not sure.


Works much better!!

[FirstPappy]

It sounds like nothing was patched for B17s in 1.10 yet why the previous post results?

[Jagger2002]

I don't know what happened.

But I tried a number of large attacks at 35,000 with B-17's and they scored zero hits.

With about 40 B-17's at 20,000 ft, they only scored 1 hit.

Around 10,000 ft, they start scoring big hits-about the same number as at 35,000 before the patch.

Now B-17's are having to wade through flak.

Also on my last test, 27 zero's met the 40 B-17's at 10,000 ft. 2 Zeros lost and 7 B-17's damaged. This is a much better ratio than previously. However I haven't tried it enough times to know if it is a trend or not.

I am just glad it is working now.

[jww60]

One problem may be that the B-17E's range may be too long. The B-17E lacked the auxiliary fuel cells in the outer wings that were added early in the B-17F productions run. All subsequent B-17F and G aircraft had them. These added roughly 1000 US gallons to the fuel capacity.

In fact the main reasons for switching to the B-24 in the Pacific theaters were range, range, and finally range. It does carry a larger bombload but mostly it can carry farther than just about everything else the Alliies have until the B-29 comes along.

-- Jeff