Strategic Bombing

[chuckbbq]

I'm trying to understand the air war a little better and found myself asking what impact does Strategic Bombing have on a variety of targets? For example, if I bomb a city with 4 Armaments, and cause 10% damage, what does that mean? Are Armaments reduced by 10% from that city? or is it 100% until I cause a certain amount of damage then it shuts off, similar to a port? Same with Rail and Manpower? If I bomb Heavy Industry, or a Factory, then the Soviet player evacuates them, what happens to the damage? I feel I under utilize my airforce as the Axis, especially early in the war. I've relied on moving my bases, transferring squadrons, and letting them automatically participate as ground support, and of course doing the 2 manual bombing attacks before a ground assault, but I feel like the level bombers can be put to better use. Has anyone had experience with this?

[Telemecus]

Quite a lot was written about Strat Bombing in an AAR you can see here fb.asp?m=4611399

If a factory has damage X%, then you should expect it to produce 2 * X% less in that turn. So 10% damage would mean you expect it to only produce 80% of what it normally would. 50% damage means no production.

When factories are evacauted they get damaged as just part of the evacuation process. This will typically be 50-99% anyway.

[chuckbbq]

Thanks Telemecus, I'll check that out. I feel like Ground Support being automatic has made me lazy when dealing with the air war, just a "put this airbase here and planes will fly there" sort of thing.

In regards to the factory, is the damage/production aspect the same with Heavy Industry, Armaments, or Manpower? I'm trying to determine if bombing is worth it. Also, the damage due to evacuation, is it cumulative? So if a Factory/Heavy Industry is at 30% damage, then evacuated and the evacuation causes 50% damage, is damage then set to 80%? Or does the evacuation erase the damage from bombing?

[Telemecus]

Damage of evacuation is not cumulative with damage from bombing. So in general bombing just before a factory gets evacuated anyway is not very effective.

Damage to production is the same for manpower, railywards, arms, HI etc

Note it is also the same for AFV and aircraft factories but in addition will halt their expansion if expanding. When you do the maths the loss of production due to slowing or halting expansion is far more destructive than simply stopping the production.

[eskuche]

Finding maximal use for German bombers is always good. Like telemecus says bombing to prevent expansion has cumulative/exponential/some math term sort of returns. However you have to identify targets that 1) are actually a bottleneck 2)can’t just be fighter guarded the turn after thus nullifying any further effects and 3) worth the opportunity cost of getting a few better ground support or ground bombing missions in. Another use of LB is to resupply as the first mission of a turn. Can be a godsend as this also releases your Ju52s for fuel only.

Edit: in 1.12 railyard bombing may actually be useful. But the available targets will most likely be guarded heavily n