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Golden Bear -> RE: Beginner Questions (10/13/2009 5:14:01 PM)
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This game has a steep learning curve but it does begin to plateau off after a few turns. And there is no reason that you shouldn't win with your first attempt - I did with BTR back in the day.
Early in the game, playing the Allies, you will be struggling to hit much that is high value and with very few resources. My recommendation is not to fight against this but roll with it. There are many good targets within easy reach that can be covered with escorts. Try not to get all your named pilots - the 90+ ones - killed by starting off overly aggressive in what is a very long game. Many people have found that a '43 campaign takes almost as long to finish as the original campaign.
Speaking for the Heavies:
Generally, don't put more than 2-3 BGs bombing a given target. Get used to the idea that you will need to rebomb many of the places - that matches history. If you pile up a bunch of bombers for a target and it can't find it you've blown a day of fatigue and morale without good results. Better is to launch 2-3 2 BG raids at nearby targets. Plot the first one and make certain that you have a secondary target. Try to run the red and white lines clear of big targets (with AA), RR yards and airfields. Set the IP and the EP so that they form a shallow angle if you can. THis way the bombers minimize the amount of time in the flak zone. Pick your lead BG to have good morale and good exp. Weaker exp with better morale is the better choice. Add a second BG with decent morale and middling exp - its exp will develop with missions completed. Then put on escorts. Don't cheap out on these. When the escort screen comes up it shows the closest units first. These will be able to spend more of their time with the mission than flying to the assembly area on the E coast of England. Click on the different AC types and see how far they can cover. The Spit Vs cannot cover far but don't neglect using them, particularly early in the game. Set the escorts by setting the delay to 10 and clicking a unit. The right click on the first box (white?) and slide it around a little - also over on to the red line. Those Spits are handy coming in at the end of the raid to discourage the LW over the channel
Don't cheap out on escorts. Use about half of what you have for the double raid... thus about a quarter for this first raid. Layer them. You might put a single unit in close escort and then everything else up high. If you have enough, put one unit up at 3000 feet over over, then others at 2000ish, 1000 down do 500 if you want. Stagger the delays. Remember that you will have a second raid going along with this one and it can fill in some of the gaps in escort since they basically will share.
With that done, you've got your first raid plotted. Click "New Raid" and then "Follow." Then click "Primary" and pick a different target close to the first and then a new secondary. Then follow the above process for selecting lead group, escorts, etc. A well covered raid will have as many or more escorts as bombers.
Now you have a double raid that should draw up the LW to where you can shoot at them!
BTW, you need to look at your weather before launching a raid. The clouds on the map during the plotting are for 4:30 a.m. They will move SE with time. Does it look like you will have an opening on the E coast around 6? If not, try starting later.
When you launch the raid, set time to 1 and messages to 3... you'll want a notepad handy. Don't ever change the time from 1 or the damage, etc. won't work right. Keep one finger on the S key and wait for a message that fighters are launching from a LW base. Hit S and write down the base. Then hit C until another message comes up. You want to find out all the nearby (N France, Holland, Belgium) airbases that have interceptors. After a while you can sit back and enjoy the carnage. Don't be discouraged if your bombers don't do much damage right away. There are good days and bad days. You would like to knock down LW planes though, so any raid is a success.
A note about this... the LW gets fatigued and has their morale drop just like yours. Flying every day, with well protected missions of course, will cause them to get more and more tired until they need to rest. The ones that don't rest will become less effective.
To add to a day's missions, you can launch your short range types like the Typhoons and Mediums about 1.5 hours after the heavies take off and away from the path of the big raid or raids. You don't want to be near that area because there will be all kinds of hungry sharks prowling. Put escorts on the Mediums but I usually don't bother with the Typhoons because I keep them close to the coast and usually (not always) they can get over and back without getting hit. A nice thing about this game is that the escorts for Mediums will defend them, sometimes very well.
And another wrinkle is Fighter Sweeps (FS). Don't get carried away with them. They can hammer your units and WILL lower morale particularly if you have the same unit doing it over and over. The American planes are generally the bestt for this, since they carry heavier armament. The P47 is the FS plane of choice but you need to rotate a unit through escort and FS to keep morale up. Anyway, if you have been taking notes, from the second turn onwards you can run FSs to bases which have a high liklihood of having planes. Note that the LW shuffles units between turns regularly and you may come up empty. Launch the FS 1.5 hours after the main raid(s) and you will have a good chance of not only strafing the field and destroying planes on the ground but of catch planes landing and shooting down some of them. This is good because it gives you a chance to kill named LW pilots, which ground destruction doesn't. If I really want a killer FS, I bring them in low, under 10k, but this risks them getting bounced if you are unlucky. Stuff like that happens but you've got to take the chance.
This should give you a good shot of playing the first turn or two with some success, and thereby beginning to learn things for yourself. Watch how expended LW fighters peel off the raid and go home. Do they follow a certain path at a certain time? Maybe you could launch a FS timed to go up that same path and catch them with low fuel, etc.
Recon: Is a pain. If you are patient and caring you can plot it all yourself. I usually let the AI do it for me and just keep changing target types and clicking several times. If there are a couple places you particulary wantt to see, you can either plot it yourself or, after doing AI plotting, go into "Review Missions" and then modify the raid to have its primary be your desired target. Also, I usually only do this on rest days or days that look to cloudy for raids. Otherwise they distract from watching the interesting stuff.
Night bombing... well I am tired of typing right now but the bombing part isn't to hard to figure out. Again you should write down all the bases that launch NJs at a raid and then you can start putting your on NFs on top of them to catch them coming home. Plotting NFs is slow since each single plane needs to be set up separately. However, you can make itt a little easier: Figure out when your first plane should be over an airfield. Again the 1.5 hour works as a good rule of thumb. Launch your first NF 1.5 hours after the big raid(s) take off. Guide it to the target airfield at maybe 10000 feet, pick a unit, DON'T pick multiple planes, then click: New Mission-Follow-Pick Unit-(Done)-add hour to the time, then New mission, etc. Go forward about 3 hours, then go back 1/2 hours and twice more by hours. This minimizes clicking and gets planes covering an airfield at half hour intervals.
Enough for now. Good luck with this very addicting game!
Carl
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