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Are Strategic Recon planes, scheduled to take Photos from damage dealt to a factory, more accurate with their reported % damage than the bombers that do the bombing themselves?

And if so (I assume it is):
- are cameras relevant?
- is number of planes relevant?
→ 5planesx3cameras vs 3planesx5cameras, what's better?

- does the "Air Recon Value" reported matter? It is shown in the combat reports for the recon.
→ There is no "Air Recon Value" added anywhere to any hex it seems, where is it?

If I remember right from WitW then camera-equipped recon had a much more accurate damage assessment than what was reported from bombers

So I did a quick test series.

Setup:

• GC 41 but rolled to 1942 and from another test before some Hexes are made Axis (but in another area, so not related).
• Targets are Railyards in 3 cities, Vilnius (Railyard 2) + Voronovo (Railyard 1) + Minsk (Railyard 6).
• The Altitude is set for both ADs to 20k, just one run the bomber AD was set to 7k (grey marked run).
• Bombers perform 2 Missions per week (day 1 + day 3) per Hex (I just thought it would be nice to not only have one, those 2 Missions are added up, so we actually have 3x9x2=54 Bomber missions, but I count them as "one", so 27 total) and at the end of the Week (day 7) the Recons fly.
• It's all vanilla otherwise and the game does with the ADs whatever it does.
  → So the size of the bomber missions are RY2=~48planes, RY1=~24planes, RY6=~144planes (with slight deviations)
  → So the size of the Recon mission is always automatically 12planes per each of the 3 hexes.
• A total of 9 runs were performed. So 3 Cities x 9 Runs = 27results.
• Planes choose their loadouts automatically.

Results:

• Averages EDITED
  The average deviations amongst all missions is in favor of the Recons with +/- ~30% compared top the bombers with average +/- ~65%.
  Interestingly, for Minsk, which is the one with the most Bombers per Mission (~144planes), the average accuracy is the best for the bombers with only +/- ~43%. So the number of Bombers may play a role and the large deviations for the small missions may be ruled out by forcing large bomber missions also on smaller Railyards.
• 'min<->max'
  The 'min' and 'max' deviaton of the assessment from actual damage is closer to 100% for the Recons 36%<->200% versus the bombers with 32%<->395%, the big issue of the 'max' for the bombers seems to be massive overreporting of damage at times (which is a nice historical hint).
  Despite this smaller 'min-max-bandwith' and the average deviation being smaller for the recons, in 9/27 Missions, Bomber damage assessment was more accurate from that of the Recons. So 33% of cases, which means the Recons actually worsened damage assessments in those cases and you'd been better off without recons.

Note:
We'd now need to test the Recons at higher/lower Altitudes to see if things differ.

I am aware that the Averages for the percentages and how I created them does not make complete sense due to the nature of "below/above 100%". I added it as info due to anyways averaging the damage and so on. The main argument are the mins/max and the "wins" of individual cities. But an average deviation would obv. be nice.
I am right now working on another series or tests with proper deviation averages and will add it to/amend the first example with that.


EDIT: Edited the post above, needed to add a column for deviation ....wanted to keep it compact but so the columns grow...

Wiedrock wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2026 10:38 pm will add it to/amend the first example with that.

done.
There are now 2 new columns showing the deviations, that way I can create percentage averages with proper info.
So reporting 80% damage (underreporting) or 120% damage (overreporting) will now both be shown as 20% each and so on.

Wiedrock wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2026 4:11 pm the game does with the ADs whatever it does.
→ So the size of the bomber missions are RY2=~48planes, RY1=~24planes, RY6=~144planes (with slight deviations)
→ So the size of the Recon mission is always automatically 12planes per each of the 3 hexes.

Accounting for this, new series mostly the same as before but with two changes...

1. the Bomb AD has a plane requirement of 150planes now (automatically ~24/48/144 before)
2. Recon AD has a plane requirement of 24planes now (automatically 12 before)

Things I wanted to know:

1. is the increase in bombers for the small Railyards increasing their damage assessment accuracy?
2. is the doubling of recon planes increasing their damage assessment accuracy?

Observations:

1. likely yes, all average deviations for the three cities were reduced (now having even better accuracy than the Recons in the case of Minsk)
2. slightly (may just be RNG), the total deviation was reduced from ~30% in the 12 planes series to ~25% here with 24 planes.
   
   There are 3/27 draws, 10/27=37% bomber wins, 14/27=52% Recon wins. Among the individual 27 results.
   So again ~33%'ish results that get made worse by Strategic Recons.
   • Averages
     The Average deviations now also amended in the first example. Here in the second one especially the bomber averages went down by quite a bit in total. Hard to say still if it isn't all just RNG since Minsk also improved quite a bit while not having "mor" planes....so...
   • 'min<->max'
     The overall 'min' the LBs have won since 24 Strategic recons managed to once report only 4/73 and once 1/79 damage percentages (like, seriously????).
     The 'max' showing 200%+ deviations was possibly ruled out by increasing the number of LBs (or again....it's juts RNG).

   

   results_strat-recon_150vs24.jpg (393.16 KiB) Viewed 76 times

   Not quite sure if I am missing something, but this seems to be little weird to have...
   • the amount of recon planes to possibly not matter for it's prediction accuracy (and if so then only slightly).
   • the recons actually "worsening" assessments in ~33% of cases.
     This means that the men taking & evaluating the taken photos are failing their job 1/3 times. Even worse, they "overwrite" good/better assessments done by others.
   • 24 Recons recognize 1 damage while there actually is 79damage done (1/79 example I mentioned already).
     So a factory complex/railyard being damaged to 79% is reported as 1% damaged. And with 24 planes there were 2 examples of this magnitude while with 12 planes there was none.