Super Bombing Run

Super Bombing Run (Full Version)

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BA Evans -> Super Bombing Run (12/20/2000 1:31:00 AM)
I just had a JU-88A-4 make a fantastic bombing run. There were 28 Somua S-35 tanks on one set of the AI's objective hexes. I decided that this was too juicy to pass up. I sent in the JU and his bombs killed 3 tanks outright and damaged two others. The nice thing was that 10 infantry squads were also wiped out in the same bombing run. Two turns later, three of the surviving Somua tanks retreated off the board. That makes 16 units destroyed and three damaged from a single bombing run! I am not sure why the AI parked 28 of his Somua tanks on a single set of objective hexes. There were 28 tanks spread out on four victory hexes. I didn't know that the infantry units were there also. These were damaged squads that were fleeing from my main line of advance. BA Evans

Charles22 -> (12/20/2000 2:40:00 AM)
I made a post once regarding how a single Ju88-A4 made a very dramatic run such as that, but the situation was one where my defense was starting to receive VERY close danger to losing the hill it was holding. It had to have wiped out at least 10 units, but there was no ammor in the hexes it hit (I'd wiped out all the armor before that, but my defense of that area had been considerably weakened). I would be curious to know whether those who have used any of the tank-buster German aircraft have found them as effective as the JU88-A4 (the Ju88 may be even exceed in AT ability as well, though that wouldn't be right).

Antonius -> (12/20/2000 4:13:00 AM)
I am using 37mm Stukas against SU152s in a PBEM game. Eight attacks have so far resulted in only 1 damaged "turret" despite many hits and no flak opposition...

skukko -> (12/20/2000 4:24:00 AM)
DO -217 and that JU-88 with 50mm pak attached

Charles22 -> (12/20/2000 4:35:00 AM)
skukko: So how effective were they, particularly if the tops were hit on the enemy tanks? I say 'tops' because most other places if hit on tanks, have sufficient armor to not cause any damage, particularly to the 37mm gun. BTW, in my Rudel book at home, whom was known as a Stuka pilot (37mm gun), they have a photo of him having torched an IS2! I don't recall if they mentioned it was a top hit or not.

Kharan -> (12/20/2000 5:28:00 AM)
The lovely encyclopedia nowadays has a max penetration value for every unit listed (it displays unit's first slot weapon's stats). The 37mm BK 3.7 can penetrate 40mm of top armor, assuming of course that the plane is less than 50 meters and on a vertical dive to it's target [img]http://www.matrixgames.com/ubb/smile.gif[/img]. But because all planes in SPWAW probably attack at a constant angle less than 45 degrees to the ground, turret sides and rear could be easier to penetrate at low angles than the top at high angles. A 250kg bomb has a penetration value of 115mm. Of course, High Explosives modeling against armored targets in SPWAW is done as subsidiary to AP modeling and is not nearly as detailed. IRL a bomb doesn't have to penetrate anything, it's shockwave will just twist the metal into deformed shapes killing everything inside (kind of like hitting a medieval knight with a steel mace). And a 250kg bomb dropped anywhere near a tank will leave just a few wheel sprockets hanging from faraway trees. But I wouldn't complain... I shudder to think how it was in SPWW2 2.x: 100kg bombs continously dropped on Panther roofs, BOOM, plink, BOOM, plink etc. At least in SPWAW if you get a bomb hit, it will kill the target. In fact, I did a test some time ago and got about 27 kills out of 30 bomb hits. And I think there is some sort of abstraction in SPWAW where you don't have to hit the tank to cause damage, because I remember getting other than top hits with bombs. Though I don't think I've seen a kill by a side hull hit for example. [This message has been edited by Kharan (edited December 19, 2000).]

Blackbird -> (12/20/2000 6:18:00 AM)
quote: Originally posted by Kharan: But I wouldn't complain... I shudder to think how it was in SPWW2 2.x: 100kg bombs dropped on Panther roofs, BOOM, plink, BOOM, plink etc. At least in SPWAW if you get a bomb hit, it will kill the target. In fact, I did a test some time ago and got about 27 kills out of 30 bomb hits.[/B] I've just seen KV-1 been hit with 250kg bomb. Result: plink. But I don't know where it hit him.

skukko -> (12/20/2000 6:23:00 AM)
DO-217 kills if it comes to target because of bombs. It drops them in two hexes. Bad thing in plane is that it comes only once. In effectivenes and cost comparison it's better than Stuka with 37B.K. Stuka comes multiple times and Sovjets have had troble with it. I've used stukas mostly, they have some sort of 'fear' value ( ? ) added, so after it's attack tanks are both buttoned and pinned. Ju88 with that 50pak is accurate to take in every flyby one tank away of battlefield. It can handle more AA-fire than stuka and comes at your pre-assingned artillery hexes in a row as long as it has ammo. Stukas make their moves of the circuit so they often get sort of delays and are not available whole time. I've used also He-111aginst armor, and it is effective in that too. As are all planes which has 250 and over bombs under their wings. He-111 is my favorite in missions that lots of infantry is involved. It has 7.62 or something machineguns and is good to get inf. pinned. Besides it takes much AA to get it down. I use also those Uhu:s and some odd planes from Messerschmith occassionally, but they are too expensive compared to effective that they are capable.It is commonly too rare to get to play with Luftwaffe so when ever possible I choose something of them. In my long WW2 campaign He-111 and stukas have saved my troops many times from overflooding enemy infantry and tank hordes. Wish I could use AC:s more in western front, but there everything that moves with engine has so good AA -defence that it's impossible dream and waste of money [img]http://www.matrixgames.com/ubb/smile.gif[/img] mosh

Charles22 -> (12/20/2000 6:57:00 AM)
Interesting posts. I'm rather of the thinking that AT airpower is greatly lacking in effectiveness, particularly when compared to the huge anti-personnel affect. On skukko's point about the West, particularly the US, yes, I agree airpower against such an en masse extent of units having AA guns, especially the 50 cal., is all but useless.

Igor -> (12/20/2000 1:09:00 PM)
Yes, the AT effect of an air raid is pretty poor. But unless airborne cannon and large HE weapons get different codes versus armor, what can be done about it? Sure, I was bemused watching a 250kg bomb inflict a suspension hit on a Char B1-bis (which didn't even cripple it; just slowed it down). And I have never seen an airplane hit the engine deck to cripple/kill the tank, although it is the largest part of the vehicle when viewed from the air. But can bombs and heavy gunfire be coded to smite armor it missed or simply didn't penetrate without opening the possibility of HE kills inflicted by 82mm mortar near misses on a Panther? Sure, I'd like to see frontal kills on a Tiger from a non-penetrating SU-152 shot, but not at the cost of watching heavy tanks being picked off by medium mortars or howitzers...

Charles22 -> (12/20/2000 9:39:00 PM)
Igor: It appears you're talking about the practicality of airborne ATGs being mixed in as artillery, and for what it's worth I believe that's the system that's being employed, and that's why airborne ATGs are suffering, which is precisely why I brought up that point. I believe the airborne ATGs should be treated as good or better than the ground-based ones in penetration BUT, in most cases, with perhaps the exception of the Stuka, should be less accurate. OTOH I don't consider airborne rockets in the same class for accuracy or penetration as ATGs, but they don't seem to fit the 'artillery' mode either, because they can be aimed to some extent. One thing that strikes me as curious for it's being missing in this game, is the absence of the German radio-controlled mines (mines on wheels). I don't know if any other nation had these, nor if they were used enough to justify their inclusion in the game, but it would certainly be an interesting unit to mess with. It would allow the placing of mines behind enemy lines, and when you think of such things, then surely there were mines that were dropped from aircraft for just such a reason. Of course placing mines behind enemy lines could somewhat be implemented if you allowed airborne or commando units to place mines like the engineers. Just an idea....

Igor -> (12/21/2000 12:35:00 AM)
Actually, I wasn't as much concerned with airborne ATGs as bombs and rockets (and to a lesser extent, large bore shells). Near misses and glancing hits that should reduce the crew to strawberry jam (if not actually relocate the tank to another hex) are laughed off; and it can be annoying. The airborne cannon should probably have their own penetration and damage routine (especially the autocannons). Many, if not most, hits should be engine damaged/ destroyed; it's an easy target, and the engine deck is almost designed to catch shells rather than deflect them...but that's (IMHO) a lesser gripe. As for the mines; it would be interesting. It would also be amusing to model the German ATGMs. Both of these weapons, though, would belong exclusively to the Panzerjaeger formations that aren't really present in this game; which makes them more of a scenario specific special weapon than a commonly available one. That makes their inclusion a bit hard to justify if there can only be 255 weapons in the game.

Charles22 -> (12/21/2000 1:31:00 AM)
Igor: So let's see if I got this straight. you agree with me that the airborne ATGs should destroy more, but also that airborne bombs/rockets should destroy more tanks, right? To me, I haven't seen enough rocket activity to make comment, but I don't think bombs should be all that effective, at least in terms of accuracy, that is, from where I generally consider bombs falling from (level bombers). In my mind, "perhaps" air, particularly dive-bombers, should be more effective in AT roles but that they should be VERY expensive, and should be able to attack more than just one tank per appearance (two or three perhaps), and given the length of a good deal of the battles and the time it would take to get the plane back to attack again, maybe limited to only one pass per 15 or 20 turns. There's nothing I hate more than the feeling that those planes I keep seeing in droves are the same ones over and over, and that they srike within 2 or 3 turns of their last strike. The amount of airstrikes get's so ridiculous sometimes that it's easy to see that you basically need to buy half of your army as AA units in order to come out with any kind of playable game. In that respect, artillery comes off the same way, though it seems there's little you can do about en masse artillery, so that the units (air/artillery) which are most subject to being way off the scale from reality, are the ones that can make this game wholly other than as people probably envision it when they started to play it. In my mind, there should be a hard limit to artillery, or, more particularly, air units, to the total amount of your force (example one airstrike per 1,000 points [which of course would vary according to mission - a nation on an assault mission might have 2 airstrikes per 1000 pts.]), completely independant of pricing, though priced at a high rate nonetheless. Just a few thoughts, I really do get sick of those missions where at least an hour of the total playing time of a battle is taken up by artillery or airstrikes, which, as I said in the case on non-stop air, makes you alter your force in a silly manner to deal with them.

JTGEN -> (12/22/2000 12:11:00 AM)
The aircraft bombs are effective and they should be so. I have played a lot of Germans and the Soviets cant really do anything to my king tigers from the front with their tanks but there is nothing I hate as much as sturmoviks as they are real tiger killers. It is not nice to lose 3 elite king tigers in one turn but on the other hand AI also lost 16 planes on that turn to my 16 flakzwillings. The threath of airstrike is bad as it should be for those slow moving big tanks but many of the plnes can be shot down with good AA defence. But when AI sends 26 planes at you on one round they are gonna do some damage. On the other hand that was away from the ground troops which were not so numerous then. Also the 37mm gun in sturmovik has killed some tigers and panthers from me.

Charles22 -> (12/22/2000 4:40:00 AM)
16 flakverlings in forces as small as this game, and he still can't shoot down all the planes? As mundane as going through the air strikes can be at times, and 26 planes definitely fits that bill, then why not have opfire from AA player controlled as well? Actually, it's sort of an absurd question, and I'm not all that interested in it, but if you have that many planes in the game, possibly more planes going against you, than you have tanks, then why trivialize what becomes a dominant aspect of the game by having AA fire done automatically? If the real 'spirit of the game' was to have planes overwhelm a battlefield, then why give it's combat secondary controls? Needless to say, I would hate to see such a scenario "never" happen (en masse aircraft), but perhaps in a future game, options could be added to "limit" unit picks by the opposition, such as no more than 10 aircraft per battle, if desired (which of course would apply to both sides)? For those who get annoyed at overpowering air emphasis in the game as I do (and no way to retaliate with interceptors), if you play scenarios it may be easy to deal with, but if you play the AI in campaign and it picks huge air routinely, it's another matter. Tell me, when people tell these horror stories of huge airpower, are they always talking of user-made scenarios, or AI picked forces as well? Thanks.

skukko -> (12/22/2000 5:40:00 PM)
I'm talking about both games. But I don't have problem to drop flyers down. 20mmFlakvirgls and 88:s and at close halftracks with Mg:s, also Flakpanzers work well.

Fredde -> (12/22/2000 6:04:00 PM)
There is an option for limiting aircraft for the opponent to a certain number of units (if I don't remember all wrong).

Charles22 -> (12/22/2000 11:09:00 PM)
Fredde: I've been playing SPWAW since it's inception, and I've never heard of such a thing. The closest we've had to that is people making gentleman's agreements (but then the AI isn't a gentleman). skukko: What do you mean by both games? Do you mean that you've seen that many planes against AI chosen forces (not scenarios) as well? My point was that you bought that many flakvierlings and still couldn't shoot down ALL of the planes, but even more elementary than that, was why would anyone want to play a game when so much of it is being taken up with shooting a bunch of planes (and if you fail, losing so much of your ground stuff to humongous airstrikes)? Surely, when you say 26 planes, you have to be exaggerating, surely you mean 26 'airstrikes' instead (some of the same planes, over and over - which is bad enough).

skukko -> (12/23/2000 1:25:00 AM)
Charles22: Both. I mean AI have choosen planes to it's own use, max number at east was 8 plane in one medium meeting engagement. In a pbem game where we did let AI choose our troops AI bought same number of planes to russians. I was in trouble at the beginning in that game, I wasn't waiting AI to buy any planes, so I had only one section AA-panzers [img]http://www.matrixgames.com/ubb/frown.gif[/img] In usermade scenarios there is more planes, take a look at the North of Psel for instance, Germans have plenty AC:s on the air. These are from eastern front. At western front there has been more planes. In both case. I don't know if AI takes AC-points from preference screen. I have there 5 ACpoint for quick battles against AI. Does that effect? I'll have to test it. mosh

Charles22 -> (12/23/2000 1:40:00 AM)
skukko: To my knowledge there are no limits for AC or artillery in the preferences menu, and it seems noone else has seen them either (I'm not at home so I can't look). Okay, 8 planes, that's not too awful (but 26 airstrikes is), especially if you don't have huge forces. I was well aware of user designed scenarios/campaigns, and/or human opponents being unscrupulous with the AC, but it's just the AI that I was uncertain of. [This message has been edited by Charles22 (edited December 22, 2000).]

Alexandra -> (12/23/2000 10:30:00 AM)
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Charles22: [B]skukko: To my knowledge there are no limits for AC or artillery in the preferences menu, and it seems noone else has seen them either (I'm not at home so I can't look). There is. It's the "Air Sections" on the right side. It starts at XXX - which allows a historical amount of them, accoring to the manual. But it can be reset, like all the other Pref's, and the number there is how many Air Sections you can have at max. Alex

BA Evans -> (12/23/2000 1:14:00 PM)
Preferences section: "Air Strikes" setting. This will limit how many aircraft are available for each side. BA Evans

Charles22 -> (12/23/2000 7:03:00 PM)
Thanks guys, that ought to improve the game a lot. I'm wondering though if you've ever tried it? I noticed it too last night, considering such a notion was mentioned and perhaps what I have to say will be a surprise. When you pick totals for yourself and your opponent as to size of force for total force composition, the XXX is the default setting for what is being played. Perhaps something has changed since SPWAW's inception, because there used to be a 'negative' amount that went below the default level. Considering that this no longer works (try hitting the force reduction button when you're at XXX, to see what I mean), the amounts that you get when hitting the upward increments, at least 'used to be' what you "added" to the default force, to where if your air sections were defaulted to 26, any number you would have on the plus side beyond the default would only make matters worse. Given that the default no longer goes to the negative, it would make sense that the numerical amounts in there are now 'totals', without consideration for the default, but I'm wondering if that's truly the case. I obviously don't mess around with those settings very much.

john g -> (12/31/2000 4:14:00 AM)
quote: Originally posted by Charles22: Surely, when you say 26 planes, you have to be exaggerating, surely you mean 26 'airstrikes' instead (some of the same planes, over and over - which is bad enough). I don't know about the battle he was in, but when I played a WWII campaign as the Germans, I faced at least one battle with this many aircraft. After my first battle with the Americans where I got clobbered by aircraft, I then checked each time I faced Americans, if aircraft were not available to me, I would spend 3/4 of my support points on AA. That is on top of the 88AA and flakpanzers in my core. The worst battle was 24-26 aircraft of which I shot down all but one before it got to the target. Because I was so AA heavy (never bought any ob artillery at all from 1943 on), I never suffered the sort of core degradation that normally would occur. I ended the war with over 50,000 unspent repair points because I wasn't losing units to airstrikes. thanks, John.

skukko -> (12/31/2000 6:36:00 AM)
JohnG: You can achieve this in games against AI. Games against human comes trickier, because human opponent lets his/hers arty to drop bombs innthe smoky hexes. When this happensyou would move your AA-units, but they are pinned, so if there comes more bombs in same area your 88:s are unusefull. Same happens when you get them to map and fog of war takes LOS off them. I use 20mmflakvirgls because they can move independent, which is important if smilies keep their AC:s on the air: >When plane comes to hit its target, it hits 88:s mover, not 88KwK. mosh

Charles22 -> (12/31/2000 9:59:00 AM)
john g: Wow! Somebody that's actually finished a long campaign! I haven't been deep enough into campaigns due to the upgrades, but I noticed how the liberal amount of upgrade points might make things easy (but if you get slaughtered the first battle or two you really need it). Such a liberal amount though, and I've mentioned this before on the forum, might leave something to be desired. I don't recall which game it was in, perhaps Panzer Strike, but the amounts were less, or so it seemed. On top of that, if you fixed too many of your losses or upgraded too much at one time, you ended up missing battles. It made the game interesting, because you knew that the more of the monthly battles you missed, the less points you could score (seems like the co-op campaign I played with an old friend of mine, ended up with us getting like 57,000 points [I assume that was pretty good]), but this had to be balanced against putting new units in. I think it allowed you to use 10% of your core total, to apply to fixes and upgrades without a delay penalty, but I believe 10.1%-19.99% would delay you a month, and each 10% after that would be another month. So, if you had 1/2 your tanks wiped out (the computer would automatically fix some of them) you could still fight the next month, as long as you didn't replace too many. I do miss that strategy involved, in that bit, of that game. Hey here's a weird idea (at least I think so). Some people have talked recently of multi-national forces. I wonder if any of these people have ever thought when picking support, of choosing AC from another nation? Imagine a P51 flying for the Ruskies.

john g -> (1/4/2001 5:16:00 AM)
quote: Originally posted by Charles22: Hey here's a weird idea (at least I think so). Some people have talked recently of multi-national forces. I wonder if any of these people have ever thought when picking support, of choosing AC from another nation? Imagine a P51 flying for the Ruskies. The problem with that is the crew characteristics are generated for the nationality that you took the plane from. I noticed this when buying German equipment for the Spanish Civil War. The equipment comes with German crew if bought off the German list. Not quite the chance for an army to run captured or lent equipment like the docs make it out. If you are running a unit like the rag-tag boys who used any captured vehicle they came across, you end up with odd crew characteristics. thanks, John.

Charles22 -> (1/4/2001 6:26:00 PM)
Oh I suspected that the crew would be from the nation that I was taking in, which was precisely the point, to take in foreign units so it really was multi-national. In the USSR's case I would think the P51 unit and crew would be an upgrade.

JTGEN -> (1/4/2001 9:41:00 PM)
Hey Sorry this comes this late. When I had those 26 planes they all came at once and could not be coming to an other strike as there was no strikes before that. The fact that they were not all shot down is that those damn sturmoviks were hard to shoot down and my flakwirlings just ran out of shots in the end. Hard to say if I was mad about that as something like that may well have happened in the real life as I remember that they made more than 30000 of those sturmoviks and there was a lot of them around. Also loosing the king tigers was my own fault as I was not mooving fast enough and the aircraft got them even with the timelag from the bomb command to the actual bombing run. Also the kings are so slow and when they fire they can not really move around. So the lesson - use panthers.

john g -> (1/6/2001 4:39:00 AM)
quote: Originally posted by JTGEN: Hey Sorry this comes this late. When I had those 26 planes they all came at once and could not be coming to an other strike as there was no strikes before that. The fact that they were not all shot down is that those damn sturmoviks were hard to shoot down and my flakwirlings just ran out of shots in the end. Hard to say if I was mad about that as something like that may well have happened in the real life as I remember that they made more than 30000 of those sturmoviks and there was a lot of them around. Also loosing the king tigers was my own fault as I was not mooving fast enough and the aircraft got them even with the timelag from the bomb command to the actual bombing run. Also the kings are so slow and when they fire they can not really move around. So the lesson - use panthers. I have to disagree with you, I had 4 platoons of tanks survive the west front (never ever took them to east front), with all the American air attacks, I only lost 2 during the long campaign to air attack, admittedly I often had 30+ flak guns there to protect them. I compared how panthers did against tiger I's after the fact to see if I had made the correct decision in not changing to panthers when they came available. When I fought 2000 points of panthers vs 2000 points of tigers, letting the ai run both sides all but one of the panthers was destroyed, only 2 of the tigers were destroyed. It seems clear to me that tiger I's will outfight panthers. The only advantage the panthers have is more movement, if you push your tigers like I did, full movement every turn accepting the occasional breakdown, you get the same movement you get nursing the panthers along. The kicker remains once they start shooting at each other the tigers will blow the panthers apart. Tigers with their thicker armor and larger size will also survive bomb hits better. I have yet to see a tiger destroyed by any means that didn't have at least one crew survivor, and survivors are the key to keeping your exp up in a campaign game. When they came available I upgraded to PzVIb and never changed to any other armor after that. To my playing style it is the perfect tank, it has all the qualities that a tank needs. thanks, John.

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