Matrix Games Forums

I was playing against a human WAllied opponent. I am playing the Axis. He decided to recreate the Eighth Air Force and try to bomb Germany into the ground. I responded by cranking out a ton of Fighters and AA and cranking as much tech as a I could into them. But its a horribly losing battle.

By '44, he had his Heavy Bombers with a 7 Evasion (!). That couples with a 4 Durability to produce a 28(!!) defense. In addition, Heavy Bombers have 1 Armor which reduces the number dice by 1.

My Fighters are pretty cranked up there too (no skimping on research). They are 7 AA and 8 Evasion. His Fighters are 7/7. My Flak is now 8 (because 7 wasnt doing diddly doop).

End result...I cant hurt the Bombers. We fight huge Air-to-Air battles and Fighters drop like flies (I'm not convinced Fighter Evasion is really worth it past a certain point...3 points per level isnt enough to counter the 3.5 that you get for each attack). But the Bombers wont die.

Using the handy-dandy little table that Paul Vebber posted, it seems my Fighters have only a 6% chance of a kill and my AA guns, about 25% (was 6% as well until this turn). Now if he came in totally unescorted, my chances would improve, but with some Fighter cover, he is just suffering almost negligible Bomber losses.

After that, my econ just gets hammered as there is nothing to impede the Bombers. Since there is no Bomber attrition, every turn sees more and more of them. I seem to recall the losses in planes and crews as being horrendous...almost to the point of the Allies calling it off. But here, the B1B's are flying with near impunity.

So what exactly can you realistically do about it? I am still in possession of a large econ as I still own a lot of Russia. My production would be around 41, but the constant hammering is keeping it about 37 or so. I am also constantly clogged up having to replace Fighters, AA, and Arty that gets bombed into the dust. That doesnt leave much for anything else.

I am trying to get my Fighter's AA rating to 8, but even that isnt going to change all that much in the grand scheme. So, what are your options as Germany? Just suck it up? That seems odd that you cant realistically develop a counter to Allied bombings.

(Oh and poor Japan has no chance in this arena...a few bombers over there are trashing her Econ incessantly too, although that is easier to rationalize with her 13 or so Production).

Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Beuller?

well the only thing I can think of that might be helpful is that you should have been noticing his bomber evasion skyrocketing and then made plans accordingly. Doesn't Germany start out with 6 AA on their fighters? That means you only have researched it up one point compared to his researching Hv Bomber evasion from 4 to 7? [:'(] So I think you could have at least had your fighters to 8 and maybe your flak to 9? or just fighters to 9? I dunno if thats as feasible as I make it sound because of the World Standard thing.. someone help us out with the calculations

The problem is that its an uphill battle to begin with.

The 1 Armor means you are already starting 1 die down. Then, each die of attack is adding 3.5 to your average while each point of Evasion is adding 4 to the Bomber.

Even if you get to 8 AA, you are looking at only 7 dice attack which averages to 24.5. You need a 28 to hit. Thats the 25% chance or so...But that is only after you have chewed through the Fighter cover. If, through some miracle, you outnumber his Fighter cover, you can HOPE that you AA shoots at one of the Bombers that your Fighters already fired at, but when there are 10+ Bombers and only 2-3 have been previously fired at, the odds of the AA targeting the same ones are quite low...

Unfortunately, you also have to cover multiple areas with your Fighters/Flak and they can mass up in any one and level it. If you have to have superior numbers in EACH location AND still have higher tech, it just isnt going to happen.

Ideally if you make an effort to defend, you should cause SOME attrition. But once the defense gets up that high, there really isnt much you can do about it from what I've seen so far. Even having HIGHER tech is not going to pay off and having equal tech leaves you with no realistic chance to score kills.

I really like the dice pool system in theory, but some of the interactions wreck realism. The same occurs in reverse in the Pacific where teched up Battleship AA can wipe out Aircraft in job lots. The dice pool just gets too high for the planes to really keep up. If you DO manage to get your CAG Evasion up there, you are invulnerable to everything else.\

Perhaps the cost of exceeding World Standard should be increased? The problems only really seem to result when ratings become significantly higher than the norm.

I've been playing a lot of allies in several game (despite wanting to play japs more) and I've somewhat noticed what you're saying. However I can make a few assumptions as to why you're in this position.

in more than half the games I've played, the axis ignores the soviets or the americans (and a couple games they ignore both). its rare that they'll engage everyone at once. I think players feel that by keeping them frozen they're playing against better odds. what I've seen though is that with all the resources russia can tech up tanks and usa can tech up bombers. so if you fight the usa and ignore the russians, russian tanks will roll over you and if fight the russians and ignore the US you're going to get bombed to the stone age.

am I wrong Uncle_Joe, did you use the japanese to attack the WA's holding in the pacific while germany invaded russia? or did you ignore the US and try to 'squeeze' the russian using the japanese in the east?

ORIGINAL: aletoledo

I've been playing a lot of allies in several game (despite wanting to play japs more) and I've somewhat noticed what you're saying. However I can make a few assumptions as to why you're in this position.

in more than half the games I've played, the axis ignores the soviets or the americans (and a couple games they ignore both). its rare that they'll engage everyone at once. I think players feel that by keeping them frozen they're playing against better odds. what I've seen though is that with all the resources russia can tech up tanks and usa can tech up bombers. so if you fight the usa and ignore the russians, russian tanks will roll over you and if fight the russians and ignore the US you're going to get bombed to the stone age.

am I wrong Uncle_Joe, did you use the japanese to attack the WA's holding in the pacific while germany invaded russia? or did you ignore the US and try to 'squeeze' the russian using the japanese in the east?

[:'(] What I learned here is the importance of strategic bombing. Still I think it is quite realistic. The clock is simply ticking for the axis. We had the pleasure to rebuild our cities here in Germany from scratch nothing was left.

Perhaps it would help if anti air guns would first target bombers you could build up a working defense...

Perhaps it would help if anti air guns would first target bombers you could build up a working defense...

from experience, I'll avoid anything that has even half as many AA guns as I have bombers. so 5-8 AA guns in w germany would probably dissuade anyone. but of course they needed to be teched up along with the hvy bomber evasion. without air power, there is usually not much I can do as allies, but this is probably because I have never tried to build up a large land force( this can also be watched though).

Nope, I followed a pretty historical path. Germany attacked France/Yugo and then Russia. Japan built up and whittled away at China and hit the US in W'42 'right on schedule'. I know a lot of people are going for the 'gimmick attack' of doubling Russia and ignoring the US. I specfically did not do so as I didnt want to let them have time to develop hordes of stuff unmolested.

Japan succeeded in taking all of the SRI's and was threatening India. I had some horrible ASW luck though and lost too many transports. I also didnt quite plan enough ahead to be able to threaten India, although I did invade and wreck Australia for a while (Militia, I can kill, but WAllied Infantry were too much for my Japanese...). All in all, Japan did OK and held out until the WAllies took a few islands near enough to Japan to work her over with the B1's also.

Granted I maybe should have watched his research a little more closely, but the fact remains that even when I got it up into the same tech level (and even 1 higher for the Guns), it didnt much matter. The math involved with Heavy Bombers vs AA and Fighters comes out heavily in the Bomber's favor. You cant research 'evasion' for your Infrastructure, so it is still toast with no real needed addition to the Land Attack of the Bombers (although having it higher makes paste out of coastal defenses...). But the defender needs Fighter AA and Flak AA raised up as well as at least some degree of Flak and Fighter Evasion. The Fighter Evasion does not pay off vs Fighters, but if you dont crank it up, 'Airfield attacks' will kill every Fighter you own on the ground...

What I was expecting was that, being caught slightly off guard, I would take it in the shorts for a while until I was able to tech up my air defenses, but once I 'got there', I expected to be able to whittle the Bombers down some. But, no dice. Note that I hadnt been neglecting the air power. I had 2-3 Fighters in each coastal territory and 1-2 AA Guns in each. I had been researching at least some aspect of the Fighters every turn and trying to keep the AA guns up to pace when time/money permitted.

With both Fighter AA and AA Gun AA at 8, I could finally start to kill off a few Bombers, but since Fighters drop like Flies (even with higher Evasion than opposing AA), it still did not work out all that well. Again, its due to the need to spread out to cover more area. It only takes one turn to basically flatten all the coastal defenses and open the beaches so you cant leave a spot unguarded. And until then, having to rebuild nothing but Fighters, AA Guns, Arty, and Supply (to fix the wrecked infrastructure) is totally consuming the econ.

Again, I dont think it would seem that bad if the Bombers were going down too. They do take longer to replace than the Fighters do. But mainly I was just trading Fighters with the WAllies and then watching my econ get hammered. By the end, I was just doing little else other than repair and replace.

Note that I did just win the game via 'survival', but I think its because of how well I did in Russia early on. I was able to hold onto enough 'safe' factories to score the win.

But at any rate, it just felt like there really was no effective way to stop the Bombers. If you could 'area cap' and have the same Fighters covering multiple regions or something, maybe...but as it is, you need almost twice the Fighters to defend as to attack.

I think one of the keys to winning is going to be to pick something to research and just crank it up so high that the unit cant realistically beaten without specific counter-research. So whether it be super tanks or super infantry or super bombers, I see one of them becoming the deciding factor.

Curiously, although Germany was obsessed with building the 'wonder weapons' that would win them the war, the Allies beat them with quantity of often inferior equipment. I see no way to model that in the game. The better equipment will almost undoubtedly win because of the way the system works.

The more I look at it, the more I think the game would benefit by increasing the costs to research above the 'world standard'. Just too many screwing things occur when the numbers start getting too high. The game should not be more about researching the best toys than about employing the ones you have properly. I'm not saying that that is the case yet, but I've seen it in the Pacific and now with the Heavy Bombers.

It can be very hard to balance research anew but I think Perhaps it should be even harder to research above World level or/and perhaps some kind of catch up system coudl be implemented ... like only half the costs for research if you are leading to 2 points behind world standart or smoething similar.

Bombers have 1 Armor, this is mainly why they are so sturdy ...And it's is pretty weird, and I can't see any justification to that - No bomber ever was armored [8|].Late Allied bombers like B-17 were resistant, but still vulnerable to fighters. Their good durability seems enough to represent that, why should they also get "armor" ?
Note that w/o armor, the AA 7 going against def 28 will have 25% chance, and AA 8 will have 54%, a pretty much more balanced thing. Historically Allied bombers were not challenged less and less as Germany was losing, if Germany stands and can spare high resources to fighters/AA they should suffer accordingly and not still raze Germany ...[:-]

Good point regarding the amor of the bombers. Still the point remains that it is "to?" easy research superweapon units.Which are perhaps to unvulnerable "?" I still think a catch up if you are elading 2 points behind and a 4x multiplicator for going beyond world standart +2
. I still think that bombers should be the first target of anti air guns. I think armor was even reduced in bombers to increase the load capacity though amor -1 could be fine.

If people are going to use the bulk of their production points to research heavy bomber evasion to such high levels then perhaps this imbalance could be exploited in some other way.

[:'(] I think the easiest thing to do is to take out England.No airfields for bombers, no bombers over Berlin.

You've clearly already lost the air war (has to be a winner and a loser), what is happening with your uboots? If you blockade England, he can't hardly bomb you any longer.

One thing I will mention though is that I heavily dislike armor being on heavy air.

Thinking again about it, I suppose the bomber "armor" has been put not to simulate any steel plating [X(], but rather the fact that bombers fly high and as such are somewhat invulnerable to anything else than other air and AA. Given than any ground unit has some sort of AA to shrug off low-level fighters and tac bombers, the 1 armor giving effectively -1 AA attack is a good solution.
However there's a loop : when very high tech bombers oppose fighter units, they end up invincible thanks to that 1 armor, and that's not fair... For the moment I can't see any solution to help bomber be less susceptible to ground AA and not to Air AA ..[&:]

I really dislike armor for heavy air and feel that everything you are talking about is modelled already with the techs. LeMay's bomber boxes are simply better evasion and air-to-air on heavy bombers. No need for armor to enter the equation. Eventually, German fighters start attacking those huge formations head on and all of the sudden, heavy bombers are dropping like flies in a number of disasterously huge air losses (German air-to-air improves via better tactics). This was NEVER resolved until the allies started using long range escorts. i.e., the fighters beat the bombers and the allied response was to start using escorts.

Putting armor in the equation makes this impossible because fighters can never beat bombers in the long run in this game.

It's really simple to remove the armour from the Hvy bomber units. Go to the unitdataXX.txt (XX = 40/41/42/43) and go to each country's hvy bomber and set ARMOR to 0. Give it a try and see if you like the results. If yes then you just have to convience any PBEM opponents to do the same.[;)]

I am slowly coming to the conclusion that research is WAAAAAY to overpowered in this game. Its fine to have an edge becasue of tech, but one point higher in tech level seems to give way too much of an advantage.

There does seem to be a problem here. I am playing a game now, where my opponent has researched only heavy bombers as the WA. But he is researching them in EVERY stat. That alone says something.

Yeah, I can see research as being THE deciding factor. Playing the Allies it makes sense to use Russia to try to get unkillable tanks and use the WAllies to get unkillable bombers.

That way Germany has to research too many things to compete. And if they dont, they'll lose hard. Tanks that wont die arent quite as bad as bombers that wont die, but its close.

The problem that develops is that too many things have to be researched up to keep up with units that are simply increasing evasion. If Tank Evasion goes up a few notches, only your 'best' equipment has a chance of hurting them. In my last game, I found myself as Germany starting to ignore Infantry and Arty for the front because my tanks were 9/9. That meant that they alone would often survive without loss while Infantry/Arty would die off....so, the only Infanrty built were for garrison duty while lone armor did all the fighting.

Opposing Infantry (7 attack), Arty (7 then 8 attack) were ineffective vs my tanks as were all of the Russian air assets (all 6 or less GA). I just didnt see any reason to build other units once the tanks were up there and that felt wrong. I'm starting to think that my 'better play' in Russia was simply my tech advantage over him.

I understand that having a tech advantage is supposed to convey a bonus. I have no problem with that. But its starting to look like people will have to just specialize their unit construction based on research and that is not a good thing IMO. Granted the design is that its harder to continually research something as you have more and more, but that is not enough of a deterrent. For the WAllies, they have time to crank the bombers up BEFORE mass producing them and for the Germany/Russian, the number of tanks you have doesnt change the research cost enough to make it more attractive to research other things as well.

Perhaps Evasion in general should cost more than the other stats? It is defense against EVERYTHING after all. One point of Evasion requires multiple units to all increase their attack and that isnt likely to happen. Instead, the enemy will pick one 'counter unit' and crank that instead. I know next time I'll probably ignore Flak altogether and just concentrate on getting the Fighters maxxed out. Trying to do both is what costs too much to do.

So, in conclusion, I'd like to see some serious new testing/analysis done on this. If a problem is confirmed, then the research multiplier should be upped to make it less profitable to go over the standard. Otherwise the cost of defense vs offense for units should be increased a bit to reflect that each point of defense is doing considerably more work than each point of offense.

(One thing I just noticed is that its really only the units with 'armor' and/or high durability that are causing the problem. The die reduction just gives them too much head start. For units like Fighters, Evasion seem to be weaker because its only 3 defense per point while attacks are going up at 3.5 per point. But with a 4 Durability and/or armor, too many attacks need to be increased to make dent. Battleships have their armor 'countered' by Torpedoes which is why they dont 'dominate' the seas as much although again, with 1 AA research, they are pretty close to self-sufficient vs air threats).

I actually think research is pretty reasonable as it is. The first thing I do every turn is scan to see what my opponent has researched. In most cases, I had anticipated what he might do anyway (e.g., ASW) and already started research to counter it. Indeed, playing as the Axis, I still managed to get the jump on him in several areas.

In my own game, I increased flak and fighter stats in anticipation of my opponent researching heavy bombers. So far I'm keeping up with him fine. But the reality is that Allied land-based air power was in fact quite overwhelming in the actual war, and it's good that the game models this.

Incidentally, bombers may not have been armored like a Tiger tank, but they were certainly sturdier than fighters, and the four-engine Allied jobs bristled with guns. Unescorted B-17s could fend off Zeroes. Heck, in WITP, B-17s are better fighters than some fighters.

I think it may be too late to dig yourself out of the hole you are in in this particular game.

There are two things that I think needed to be done to avoid this problem.

I believe that you must keep the initiative in the Battle of the Atlantic. If the WA is forced to rebuild many tranports and to commit major resources to countering the efforts of your subs, fleets, and air units against their shipping, they will be less able to launch this killer air assault.

Also, early on, it may have been possible for you to take the bombers out on the ground in England. A sizeable attack against the airfields by your tactical and heavy bombers may have been able to destroy his heavies. This of course assumes that he is not able to maintain air superiority with his fighters.

On the subject of research in general, I think increasing the cost for going above the world standard would make things worse for the Axis rather than better. If going above the standard were too expensive, only the WA player would be able to afford to do so.

From your current situation, I think it best to stop using fighters to defend W. Germany. Send them all to the Russian front or put them on coastal areas where they can harrass Allied shipping. Focus all your AA in Germany. If he continues to attack your infrastructure, your AA should apply some attrition without you having huge air losses of your own to replace. If he diverts to bombing the AA, your factories get a breather.