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TaggedYa -> RE: 43 Grand Campaign AAR - Common (9/24/2013 3:37:28 AM)
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Where to start:
Last night I wrote a long email to Nick explaining why I was going to withdraw from our game. Then I didn't send it. Truth be told, I have spent 50 or 60 happy hours plotting the destruction of the Reich.
The problem is, the Emperor has no clothes. On turn nine my raid to Bremen got hosed because half of the escorts didn't fly due to weather. That in itself was not a problem. It was my error.
The problem arose when I started a test game to learn how not to have this happen again. During that game I rolled over a fuel storage facility in Homburg. It had over 100,000 fuel. Problem is, it was 90% damaged. This was, obviously, a what the **** moment. My weather testing went right out the window. I was now testing fuel storage facilities.
I set up a hotseat game, so I was playing both sides, and proceeded to bomb all of the fuel storage facilities. The results of that test were that any damage to fuel storage facilities less than the critical level has no effect whatsoever. It does not prevent fuel flow. It does not damage fuel. With everything but Ploistie destroyed. I was able to fly the entire German Air Force on two missions a day endlessly. Ergo, attacking fuel storage is meaningless.
So I tested rubber. My surmise, and from posts on these forums I presume the surmise around here was that destroying rubber production would have an effect on the armaments industry and thus reduce aircraft manufacturing and repair. Unfortunately, the only effect attacking rubber has occurs when it's critical level is reached. No damage less than the critical level does anything. At the critical level, armaments is reduced by the current production level, divided into the critical level percent of armaments production greater than the critical level. I wrote it and it still doesn't make sence. Let's try that as pseudocode.
Effective Arm prod = ( Rub Prod / Rub crit level ) * (Arm prod - Arm crit level) + Arm crit level
If you insert zero for rubber production, You will note that you get armaments production equal to the armaments critical level.
This means that you cannot drive armaments production below the critical level by reducing rubber production. Even if you reduce it to zero. Armaments production in any amount above critical level means no effect on aircraft production or ground defense production.
Net result, bombing rubber can in no way affect the German Air Force or the number of sorties they can fly. It does reduce the amount of AA guns, tanks, and artillery that are produced, but there is no way to know how large the pools of those are so there's no way to know if you're actually accomplishing anything.
Interesting item. If something is below the critical level, it's production is reported to the allies as zero. However, if you look at the above equation, if you are just barely below the critical level, there is no effect whatsoever.
I also tested transportation attacks as those have always been effective. At least I thought they were effective. First I tested ports. Bombing ports also has no effect if you do not reach the critical level. You're not going to reach the critical level, so bombing ports is useless. So I tested railroads. Railroad attacks do have an effect. They reduce the effectiveness of all installations in the immediate area of the damaged railroad. They seem to do so regardless of other transportation assets in the area. The effect is much greater for a destroyed railyard than it is for a 50% damaged railyard.
Damage to railyards less than the critical level has no apparent effect outside of the immediate area of the individual damaged railyard. Thus my strategy of destroying all railyards that I could reach is ineffective. It will only be effective to damage specific railyards that are near something that you want to limit the production of. As it only seems to be useful to limit the production of things that actually appear on the German production list your selection of targets is extremely limited.
This basically has left me with the conclusion that the only valid targets in the game are aircraft factories engine factories, component factories, armaments factories and the railyards adjacent to same.
More extensive testing may show a way to get an effect from a fuel strategy, and I did not test power, but I don't hold out a lot of hope.
So I'm bummed. Like I said, yesterday I was ready to just quit. Today, well, I guess I'll do some more testing and see if I can come up with a valid strategy within the constraints that I now see in the game.
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