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Some VERY preliminary testing on Strategic Bombing.

The tests on "strat bombing" that I have seen thus far, were "somewhat limited". So I decided to start running some tests myself. I haven't set up my formal test plan (as a dev, yes I actually am anal enough to formally write one up).

I was just dinkering around last night, just to see if I could establish some areas of "potential interest". I ran about 20 missions with B-29s and B-24s against various city targets in Tokyo. Varying size groups, and varying targets. No fighters to intercept. I haven't botherd to nuke the Flak yet, I'll get to that. My initial observations, in no particular order:

1. I couldn't kill manpower. You can bomb manpower, and get oodles of manpower hits (I think the most I got was like 135). While it does start fires, out of all my missions, manpower was never damaged or destroyed.

2. I could start fires. With about 120 manpower hits, the fire levels were about 4000.

3. The fires DID -damage- several other industries in the hex. I don't think they were DESTROYED tho, I'll have to retest tho.

4. However, not all other industries were damaged by the fires. I noticed that the engine/aircraft production numbers were still pristine. It could be that :
a. These facilities COULD be damaged by fires, but the random chance that these facilities were never damaged, did occur. I don't think this is all that likely.
b. These facilities can NOT be damaged by fires. Possible. I need to test more.
c. These facilities are too far down the list of facilities to be damaged. Sounds peculiar, I'll explain. The physical order of he facilities, seemed to reflect their damage to a degree (similar to LCU losses, the first takes the most damage). In my test case, the engines and aircraft factories were the last listed, and the damage stopped at "armament factories". This either means that
c1- You've got to do a LOT more damage, to damage your way down the list to actually hurt the aircraft prodcution. Or
c2- The aircraft prodcution cannot be hurt by fires, because either
c2a - It never looks aircraft production at all or
c2b - It never looks at the index that is aircraft production (so it might be hit it were litterally located farther up the list). Perhaps the "list of damagable industries" for fire damage is 6 items long, but if a city has 10 industries, the last 4 are never hit.


5. Firestorms. According to the manual, the max firestorm is 40 million. On an "average" run of 120 hits, I acheived about 4000 fires. To get the fires up to 40 million, I'd need to get 4000 hits (less 10% per turn according to manual, as they are put out). FWIW, I don't all of the bomber squadrons in WitP could achieve that... :^)

6. At 4000 fires, several of the industries in the list were damaged (not DESTROYED), by about 10%.

7. The target selection of attacking bombers, showed the exact status of the industry (wheras the hover was not accurate).

8. It appears that an industry "hit" was either
a. By plane. Each plane could "hit" the target. 39 hits, meant that 39 planes got hits. This is what I believe is the case.
b. By individual bomb. Doubt it. This would mean that each B-29 could inflict 40 hits on the target. I tested vs. HI, Resources, and Manpower, and never got more hits than bombers, so I doubt it. I can further test this by increasing the payload to 100x 500# bombs each, and see how many hits/damage I get.
c. By ordinance type. Haven't tested this. I want to see if a group of B-29s carrying 40x #250 pound bombs each, scores the fewer actual damage points than a group of B-29s carrying 40x 500# bounds. I -believe- that it might be somting like a 250# bomb might do 1 damage point, and the 500# bomb might 2 do damage points per hit (altho maybe not that linear).

10. I want to further test my theory of "by plane". I want to change the payload of the B-24s to carry 10x 500# bombs. Have 20 B-29s attack (total of 20 x 40 x 500# bombs). Record the hits/damage. Then have 80 B-24s attack (total of 10 x 80 x 500# bombs). My theory is that more hits and damage will be scored, because it's by PLANE, not by payload.

Regards,
-F-

Feinder -

Thanks again for putting in all this effort.

I do have a question/request - are you see "victory points" being awarded for the damage you are causing, and if so, what are the typical amounts?

In addition to destroying industry I'm interested to see if an Allied player can gain enought victory points by strategic bombing to enable a "win".

Thanks once more -

Dave Baranyi

Yes, you do get 2 vps per item destroyed. I didn't check to see that -all- types awared vps, but I know that "strategic" points were awarded.

I think the problem is going to be, getting the quantity of bombers over target. Between CAP and Flak, it's going to be really tough to get enough hits to do any real damage.

I know you can bomb the aircraft/engine factories directly. From my very limited obvservatsions, and my campaign '45 game; if I were an Allied player, I'd just cut to the chase, and bomb the aircraft factories.

Esp in PBEM, folks are talking about banking a bunch of HI. That means they don't care if you bomb the HI in '45, because they just spend the HI in the bank. So at first blush, I'd say bomb the aircraft factories or engines themselves.

But again, lots more testing to do.

-F-

ORIGINAL: ADavidB

Feinder -

Thanks again for putting in all this effort.

I do have a question/request - are you see "victory points" being awarded for the damage you are causing, and if so, what are the typical amounts?

In addition to destroying industry I'm interested to see if an Allied player can gain enought victory points by strategic bombing to enable a "win".

Thanks once more -

Dave Baranyi

The answer is yes and no.

At start of the game Japan has:
6510 ressource centers
250 oil centers
9080 HI centers
1000 naval shipyard
1000 merchant shipyard
more than 500 armament & vehicle factories
more than 500 aircraf factories
more than 1000 engine factories
that is around 20 000 strategic targets = 40 000 potential VP.

By the time strategic bombers will be in range of Japan, this total should have raised by some thousand points. Six months of intensive strategic bombing may give the Allied player around 30 000 points. The question is: is it enough to win your game ? Or do you suffer too much losses and need more points ?

I believe it's 2 points per damaged industry and 20 per destroyed.

FYI, I played a game vs the AI a while back. I had 4 groups of B-29's bombing western Japan from China. I think I had about 150 bombers on average attacking during the day at 12,000 feet. I had them target manpower for 5 straight days. They were usually getting over 100 hits per day. The damage over 5 days was pathetic. I think I made around 50 points on damage. In fact, the city in question could usually repair the damaged industries as fast as I damaged them (ie, only 1 damage per industry per day).

However, if I targeted a specific industry, I could trash it very quickly (100 hits per day on HI or Aircraft or oil will trash it very fast compared to trying to damage them via fires from Manpower hits.)

Feinder, I don't think manpower is ever damaged or destroyed. The higher the manpower of a particular city, the better chance you have of getting fires. I think it's real hard to get firestorms over a city when they have 2 manpower. But it's relatively easy when there is 150 manpower. I'm not completely sure of that, but the manual says so.

bc

You know those numbers AL? Bleh! :^)

To clarify your numbers tho, if they've expanded so that there are 30,000 industrial targets, that's a possability of 60,000 points.

But thats' assuming you kill ALL of them, without any losses (and I can tell you that Ollie is losing far more than 2 planes per hit in my PBEM game, so it's NOT worth the points).

And to kill all that industry means you'd need about 30,000 to 40,000 directed hits (assuming 1.5 damage per hit, not unreasonable). We'll give the benefit of the doubt for mega-fires, you'd still need 20,000 manpower hits.

Good Lord!

I don't see that happening either.

-F-

-F-

ORIGINAL: AmiralLaurent

ORIGINAL: ADavidB

Feinder -

Thanks again for putting in all this effort.

I do have a question/request - are you see "victory points" being awarded for the damage you are causing, and if so, what are the typical amounts?

In addition to destroying industry I'm interested to see if an Allied player can gain enought victory points by strategic bombing to enable a "win".

Thanks once more -

Dave Baranyi

The answer is yes and no.

At start of the game Japan has:
6510 ressource centers
250 oil centers
9080 HI centers
1000 naval shipyard
1000 merchant shipyard
more than 500 armament & vehicle factories
more than 500 aircraf factories
more than 1000 engine factories
that is around 20 000 strategic targets = 40 000 potential VP.

By the time strategic bombers will be in range of Japan, this total should have raised by some thousand points. Six months of intensive strategic bombing may give the Allied player around 30 000 points. The question is: is it enough to win your game ? Or do you suffer too much losses and need more points ?

Are those the numbers for Japan proper, or does it include China/Manchuria/Taiwan? You only get points for damaged industry on Japan proper.

The numbers I give above are only for Japan proper. I had them for HI, ressource and oils, and so I made an estimate for armament and aircraft/engine as some of them are in Mandchouria.

I doubt you will find 30000 targets in Japan in 44-45. That is 10 000 more than at start, a little too much. I think most players will add between 2000 and 5000 points to their industry, all expansions combined.

So that is about 45-50 000 points. I think damaging two third of it is possible, so arriving to the total of 30 000 point I gave above. As for handling Japanese defenses, I think they key is to hit small cities when you can't have fighter escort. There are over 20 cities in Japan that have strategic targets and CAP can't be heavy above all of them.

Seizing Iwo Jima or any base where you can base escort should then be a priority to deal with Tokyo or other cities like that. Another possibity is to use manpower attacks by night, as someone said manpower attack are more destructive against cities with a lost of manpower, so using them against Tokyo, Nagoya and so on may be a good idea.

Another possibility is to combine a B-29 raid with a Death Star cruise off Japan. Using torpedo bombers to bomb Japanese industry (under heavy escort) will score points, deplete CAP (with the escort) and losses to AA will be low, far lower than with dive bombers.

Hmmm - from the comments being posted here it doesn't look like Allied strategic bombing can give the kinds of victory points necessary to win. It sounds like ship hunting and base grabbing are much better ideals, and to use the bombers to simply pound ground troops so that they can't interfere.

Oh well, hopefully some day I'll get a chance to try this out...

Dave Baranyi

Feinder,

How many bombers were bombing in your test to get those 4000 fires?

Regards,

- Erik

Those were the "launch all groups" tests. It was about 250 bombers actually over target. I ran the mission 4 or 5 times. Again, just preliminary stuff. I thought 4000 fires souned pretty neat, until I saw in the manual what the max was...

:^)

I'm at the office, and don't have my notes with me. But I can run more methodical tests tonight.

-F-

ORIGINAL: Feinder

Those were the "launch all groups" tests. It was about 250 bombers actually over target. I ran the mission 4 or 5 times. Again, just preliminary stuff. I thought 4000 fires souned pretty neat, until I saw in the manual what the max was...

:^)

I'm at the office, and don't have my notes with me. But I can run more methodical tests tonight.

-F-

Wow! I'm definitely sticking to tactical bombing. B-29s ought to do a good job on an airfield...[;)]

Thanks -

Dave Baranyi

(Thinking about those folks who complain about B-17s against airfields...[:D])

ORIGINAL: AmiralLaurent

The numbers I give above are only for Japan proper. I had them for HI, ressource and oils, and so I made an estimate for armament and aircraft/engine as some of them are in Mandchouria.

I doubt you will find 30000 targets in Japan in 44-45. That is 10 000 more than at start, a little too much. I think most players will add between 2000 and 5000 points to their industry, all expansions combined.

So that is about 45-50 000 points. I think damaging two third of it is possible, so arriving to the total of 30 000 point I gave above. As for handling Japanese defenses, I think they key is to hit small cities when you can't have fighter escort. There are over 20 cities in Japan that have strategic targets and CAP can't be heavy above all of them.

Seizing Iwo Jima or any base where you can base escort should then be a priority to deal with Tokyo or other cities like that. Another possibity is to use manpower attacks by night, as someone said manpower attack are more destructive against cities with a lost of manpower, so using them against Tokyo, Nagoya and so on may be a good idea.

Another possibility is to combine a B-29 raid with a Death Star cruise off Japan. Using torpedo bombers to bomb Japanese industry (under heavy escort) will score points, deplete CAP (with the escort) and losses to AA will be low, far lower than with dive bombers.

Night attacks by B-29s are basically worthless. I've been keeping an excel spreadsheet log of my bombing missions over Japan and even with bomber fatigue at 5 or less I was hardly ever able to get more than 30-35% of my bombers bomb at night. And trying to bomb a city like Tokyo during the day you have to deal with the "supposedly" non-uber Japanese flak and fighters. Even at night I was getting damage rates as high as 89% just from flak which according to the historical documentation I've read was usually listed as "light" and/or "ineffective".

Even giving up on Tokyo and switching to day missions over other targets I've only managed to get my planes flown rate up to 61.738% which is a far cry from the historical percentage of 94.084%.

Feedback is welcome. Let me know if you think I missed something, or want more data on something (if I can provide it).

Note that 70 exp his is considerably higher than normal, which starts at 55. But it's not that hard to get a bomber squadron up to 70 exp, over time, and it makes it easier to test with, when they consistantly score hits.

******* I just checked, no permanent destroyed.

Test #2 (fresh start)



=====

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR 01/04/45

[no night attack]

Day Air attack on Tokyo , at 66,43 = Forcast - Clear


Allied aircraft
B-29 Superfortress x 93


No Allied losses

Heavy Industry hits 86

Aircraft Attacking:
20 x B-29 Superfortress bombing at 6000 feet
37 x B-29 Superfortress bombing at 6000 feet
13 x B-29 Superfortress bombing at 6000 feet
16 x B-29 Superfortress bombing at 6000 feet
7 x B-29 Superfortress bombing at 6000 feet


186 HI actually damaged.
374 points awarded.
Damage confirmed on B-29 target selection.
Average group fatige = 43 and 49. I noticed they started about 15 for both groups.
Ops losess = 8 damaged, 2 destroyed.
Points and ops losses confirmed on Allied VP screens.
No fires.

[Stood down day squadrons, so as not to muddle things, and maybe the night-owls will launch.]

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR 01/05/45

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Night Air attack on Tokyo , at 66,43 = Forcast - Partly Cloudy



Allied aircraft
B-29 Superfortress x 57


No Allied losses

Heavy Industry hits 15

Aircraft Attacking:
20 x B-29 Superfortress bombing at 6000 feet
37 x B-29 Superfortress bombing at 6000 feet


62 HI actually damaged.
126 points awarded.
Damage confirmed on B-29 target selection.
Average group fatige = 19 and 34. Both groups started about 6 & 7 fatigue (no launch first day).
Ops losess = 5 damaged, 0 destroyed.
Points and ops losses confirmed on Allied VP screens.
No fires.



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TEst #3 (fresh start)

Those results are getting "uglier" with each test. I sure can't see any reason to try strategic bombing if that is what I can expect.

I'm becoming more convinced that an Allied player can't obtain the points necessary to win this game.

Thanks again for the tests.

Dave Baranyi

FWIW, almost unrelated, it's interesting that either
a. There are no night attacks on the first turn of a scenario or
b. You must have < 10 fatigue to launch a night attack (but that's a project for another time).

-F-

What are the experience levels of the B-29 pilots? Can you tweak the experience to see if there is some threshold where performance improves significantly?

Thanks -

Dave Baranyi

I want to run a couple of base-lines vs. manpower. I can probably get 2 in before calling it a night... I'll get to 5 tests each, but it's my time after all, and I'm curious...

:^)