Is strategic bombing broken? (Full Version)

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Arkham -> Is strategic bombing broken? (7/2/2014 6:05:03 PM)

Its late Jan 1944, and I've taken both Alum and rubber to 60+ damage globally. Today's missions shot down 100 luft for a cost of 30 allied. Yet when I look at the campaign summary i see that the luft is up to 3200 aircraft from 2600 the day before. How is this possible? I would have thought that breaking their supplies of those two resources would have made it very hard for them to make new aircraft.

I read somewhere in here that there is a bug with oil production. No matter how much you hit their oil storage they still produce 100 percent output. Is that bug global to all resources?



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/2/2014 6:19:49 PM)

Hi,
are you sure it is below the critical level?
If it at one Point is under the critical Level, the critical level will be automatically lowered to reflect the German willingness to adapt.
I do not know the critical levels at the moment, but I know from experience, that you need to keep pressure on!


quote:

I read somewhere in here that there is a bug with oil production. No matter how much you hit their oil storage they still produce 100 percent output. Is that bug global to all resources?

When was the Oil broken??

I havenīt played BtR in over a year, but while testing one of the original exe and one of the old OB/OAs, oil was one of the hardest to keep down:
- OILS only storage and disperse fuel to A/Fs and over ports and RR (moving oil/fuel seemed to work - including some delays)
- OILR produces fuel, but also can store some oil
- FUEL produces fuel via several processes (like FischerTropps)

So if you only hit OILS you will achive not much, you need to bomb the whole cluster of industries!



Arkham -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 5:23:53 PM)

Very odd. I have taken both alum and rubber far past critical. (rubber at 120 output from 500 critical level, alum 135 from 200). When I list targets both airplane factories and armaments show 0 output probably due to the critical factor.

Yet the luft repairs itself like mad. I kill 2-300 in a day? a few days later they are back up to strength. I bombed the 29th panzergrenadere in the gustov line down to 3 tanks and confirmed with multiple recons. I run 4-5 turns with no action, and turn 6 i confirm arm/air still showing 0 output, yet the 29th now suddenly has 30 panzers again.

what the heck is going on here!



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 5:58:04 PM)

what is the date?
and are you sure about the damage level? (how good is your recce - everything older 2 or 3 days is useless!)
are you playing hotseat or vs AI?

Gustav line - hard to break, because you also need a ground attack, because without a reserve unit will move in (I think 2 are here - I just install BTR at the Moment, so I cannot yet look)
usually the Gustav line break around the real date - only with maximum effort you can tear it appart sooner!



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 5:59:25 PM)

what is the actual exe?
I still have one of the testing exes.....



Arkham -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:02:47 PM)

I'm running 1.02 patched.

Here is the post I was referring too about fuel being broken: http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/fb.asp?m=3546160

Date is Late feb 1944. Playing vs AI. Yes, I am sure of the damage level. I'll put up my save game if you want to see it.



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:08:10 PM)

you mean this:

quote:

The fuel system is broken. Damage gives points but 100% destroyed fuel targets still get full production.

works as designed AFAIK
Fuel will be distributed to all sites that have a demand, even damaged ones - this can create a fuel shortage, because fuel is only very limited in redraw from distributed sites.

I will look through my old files and try out some things now that I have downloaded and reinstalled BTR



Arkham -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:11:24 PM)

Here is a savegame where I have ran recon the past few days only against alum and rubber.

http://www.filedropper.com/save007



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:25:19 PM)

thanks for the save.





wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:42:27 PM)

okay,

a little tip, play with "urban Areas" on - you will see if you hit something because you see the fire (red dot)
but you will also recognize the discoloured dot of the area after the raid (even outside an City)
[Harley wanted to eliminate this Thing, but as I see he was not totally successful [:'(] ]

as far as I see, your guess of the damage lvl is around 30% off - you Need better recce and I tried it for 10 turns and lost around 140 recce to see a better damaged lvl



Arkham -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:44:22 PM)

Yeah, the weather really sucks right now. I'm hoping march and april are better for bombing, since from november on its been annoying.



TaggedYa -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:46:57 PM)

quote:

Its late Jan 1944, and I've taken both Alum and rubber to 60+ damage globally. Today's missions shot down 100 luft for a cost of 30 allied. Yet when I look at the campaign summary i see that the luft is up to 3200 aircraft from 2600 the day before. How is this possible? I would have thought that breaking their supplies of those two resources would have made it very hard for them to make new aircraft.
When an industry that effects aircraft production is below critical level a die is rolled from 0 to current critical level. If the role is > the current level then production at that assembly line at that factory is skipped for that turn. Thus if the crit level is 200 and you have it bombed down to 100 then about half of the effected industry doesn't work. The reported level for that industry is always 0 when any industry it depends on is critical but that is false. (fog of war)

When an industry is critical the CritLevel is adjusted downward so that it has less effect. This used to be a straight 1% per day so the industry was no longer critical after 100 days. This is no longer the case but I have not determined exactly how the new system is working but keeping an industry critical seems to have an effect for closer to 300 days than the old 100.

quote:

I read somewhere in here that there is a bug with oil production. No matter how much you hit their oil storage they still produce 100 percent output. Is that bug global to all resources?
That would have been my post. The bug that is clear is that damage to any oil related facility (storage, refinery, fuel production) does not destroy fuel. Also, damaged oil facilities still function (there is no check for damage that I can find in the production code and tests using a debugger and setting all oil facilities to 100% damage show that they still work). Thus in a PBEM game there is no use attacking oil except for ind damage points as any competent player will not defend them. Against the AI they are valid targets to spread the defence.



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:50:21 PM)

btw I must congratulate you to your low losses,
you really kept your forces together!

but soon all your forces will be locked in mandatory (you may go around mandatory targeting - I always go with full mandatory)
also if you have a streak of bad weather turns (during testing someone of the crew had a 90+ days bad weather streak [:D]),
the AI will make an autovictory.




wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:53:19 PM)

quote:

That would have been my post. The bug that is clear is that damage to any oil related facility (storage, refinery, fuel production) does not destroy fuel. Also, damaged oil facilities still function (there is no check for damage that I can find in the production code and tests using a debugger and setting all oil facilities to 100% damage show that they still work). Thus in a PBEM game there is no use attacking oil except for ind damage points as any competent player will not defend them. Against the AI they are valid targets to spread the defence.


I will look if that is an addition that happened, because it worked at one Point (fuel/oil was destroyed)



TaggedYa -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:53:22 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: swift

When was the Oil broken??


It appears that the oil code was not ported from the talonsoft version so it has never worked in the matrix game.

quote:


I havenīt played BtR in over a year, but while testing one of the original exe and one of the old OB/OAs, oil was one of the hardest to keep down:
- OILS only storage and disperse fuel to A/Fs and over ports and RR (moving oil/fuel seemed to work - including some delays)
- OILR produces fuel, but also can store some oil
- FUEL produces fuel via several processes (like FischerTropps)

So if you only hit OILS you will achive not much, you need to bomb the whole cluster of industries!


Nothing done to oil targets does anything at all. Oil is however transported by train (no pipelines) so hitting the relevant railyards can cause intermittent shortages. However as a strategic target oil is useless.



Arkham -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:54:14 PM)

4000 allied losses and 4200 luft losses at the end of febuary '44 is considered low? I thought I was doing terrible. :)



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 6:58:07 PM)

I am a Maximum effort type - damage goes up to 75 before I get locked into mandatory targetting [:D]
but this also means higher losses (also for the enemy)



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 7:05:03 PM)

in a hotseat game the destruction of oil/fuel seem to work - just bombed the OILS near Paris every hour for a turn, next one of the sites in Holland......less and less fuel /oil after each successful bombing run????!



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 7:10:04 PM)

okay, something does not work right (not all sites work the same???)

I seem able to destroy a certain amount of fuel/oil with the first few attacks (20 to 25% of the storage) and than nothing seems to be destroyed any more......?

will run a series of test runs........



TaggedYa -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 7:42:29 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Arkham

Very odd. I have taken both alum and rubber far past critical. (rubber at 120 output from 500 critical level, alum 135 from 200). When I list targets both airplane factories and armaments show 0 output probably due to the critical factor.

Only the alum effects production directly and that only effects airframe production. Your alum level has reduced airframe production by about 35%. This probably is having no effect what so ever on aircraft output as there are a surplus of airframe production slots and pools build up. You will need to keep production down long enough to use up all of the airframes in the pools before you effect production.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Arkham
Yet the luft repairs itself like mad. I kill 2-300 in a day? a few days later they are back up to strength. I bombed the 29th panzergrenadere in the gustov line down to 3 tanks and confirmed with multiple recons. I run 4-5 turns with no action, and turn 6 i confirm arm/air still showing 0 output, yet the 29th now suddenly has 30 panzers again.

what the heck is going on here!

Its the pools thing again. Take the turn number and multiply by 140. Subtract the number of aircraft you have destroyed (from the campaign summery). That is how many (approximately; it depends on how many multi engine planes you have killed) are still in the pools. I just read the 4200 Luft losses item. The german has made 21000 aircraft and you downed 4200. You will never run him out of planes. You will need to concentrate on running him out of pilots. The pilot pool is capped at 10 days so you can always hurt him there.




Arkham -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 7:51:28 PM)

What does "The pilot pool is capped at 10 days" mean? What the best way to kill pilots, kill a lot of planes trying to land?

So at this point is it even worthwhile hitting airplane factories or avionics? If he has a pool of 17,000 airplanes waiting to go up, should i stop bothering with hitting critical industries and just work only on railyards?

Because honestly at this point if there is nothing I can do to win the air war by shooting down his planes, or depriving him of oil why bother trying.



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 8:00:30 PM)

Each country gets a certain amount of pilots each turn, but they are not stockpiled! (Co-Axis get their own pilots as well as each of the Commonwealth states)

Best way to kill pilots is to kill A/C - killing them during landing (or low on fuel) will give a higher KIA number, use your escorts, use sweeps, use various legs to the same Targets, etc....

Yes, it is still worthwile hitting aircraft industries, because the AI has stockpiled what it has produced, which means obsolete aircraft (a G-6 is worthless in late 44)

Wining a pure airware victory works only in BoB, but you may be able to get up to 12 victory Points in late 43.....and later even higher (have seen HardSarge with 24 or such a number)



Arkham -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 8:06:26 PM)

So if i keep up killing his pilots the average experience levels for his groups will go down, and if i keep hitting alum, rubber and start hitting aircraft factories and engine plants he's going to be stuck flying crappy G6's late in the war, and will be fodder?

(oh, and the totals of my air supperiority, industry and terrors peaked at 23 at one point in late 43. Then the weather hit. Killing powerplants and steel around the Ruhr REALLY hurt him)



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 8:12:30 PM)

I meant air supperiority only :D



TaggedYa -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 8:58:12 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Arkham

What does "The pilot pool is capped at 10 days" mean? What the best way to kill pilots, kill a lot of planes trying to land?
The Germans get 15 new pilots each day but the Pool is capped at 10 days or 150 pilots. Each of the German allies gets a couple and also are limited to 10 days replacements in the Pool. Excess pilots are lost. Actual code is pool(Nation)=pool(Nation)+RepRate(Nation); if pool(Nation)>RepRate(Nation)*10 then pool(Nation)=RepRate(Nation)*10;.

What this really means is that at any time you can only be about 250 lost pilots from a German pilot shortage. The way you attack his pilots is by increasing the tempo of your operations. If you want help on that start a thread for it in the war room.

quote:


So at this point is it even worthwhile hitting airplane factories or avionics? If he has a pool of 17,000 airplanes waiting to go up, should i stop bothering with hitting critical industries and just work only on railyards?

Because honestly at this point if there is nothing I can do to win the air war by shooting down his planes, or depriving him of oil why bother trying.

We are into that grey area of "Opinion" now.

You can't "run him out of planes". However, the planes in the pools are everything from Bf109G-2s to FW190A-6s. There are probably 1000 or more D520s in the pools. Probably 5000 Bf109G-6s. These older model planes don't fair to well against p47D-20s and P38Js.

Without knowing what you have done and what your strategy has been I can't give definitive answers to this so I will say what I would do if I was starting a scenario from where I think you are at. 8 and 15 AirForce would attack nothing but aluminum until it was at 0. Not 100, not 10, not 5, ZERO. That would stop airframe production for a time. It would not stop Aircraft production. It would limit Aircraft production to what was in the Airframe pools. I.E. More of the same old junk he already has 1000s of.

I would then attack engine factories until his engine production was at zero and it would stay there until the game ended. This would keep him from modernizing his Airforce. The new great plane types are based on new engines he doesn't have a stockpile of and the new planes are engine intensive.

But the primary basis of my effort would be to get the Luftwaffe into the air at the crack of dawn and keep them there until the next morning. Attack his pilot fatigue. Attack his maintenance crews. Attack his unit moral. His night fighters are mostly twin engine. Camp every field with night fighters every night and send bomber command to get him in the air.

You have fighter bombers until hell won't have them. Use them. Hit his airfields with fighter sweeps first thing in the morning. Three hours later hit it again. A couple of hours after that hit it with a typhoon raid. When your bombers are outbound and his fighters are up hit his big fighter fields with typhoons to crater the runways. You will get some crashes. If you do enough damage he has to move. That is a unit out of play for a couple of days and a loss of moral for the move and a loss of moral for the crew losses and a loss of moral for poor aircraft maintenance.




TaggedYa -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/3/2014 9:06:49 PM)

Quick addendum:

Do not hit ball bearings at all until you have had alum critical for 200 days and it isn't effective any more. Then shift to 100% against ball bearings until they are at Zero and keep it there



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/4/2014 3:28:01 PM)

quote:

The Germans get 15 new pilots each day

Thatīs for BoB and not BtR????



TaggedYa -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/4/2014 11:41:02 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: swift

quote:

The Germans get 15 new pilots each day

Thatīs for BoB and not BtR????


No this if for BTR. I don't generally speak to BoB as I don't play it. I did however check and there is no test for which game is being played (this test is used a lot in the code) and no test for scenario date (also seems to be used allot to apply things to different scenarios) so it is probably applicable to both games.

Curt



Arkham -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/5/2014 4:19:42 AM)

I've taken to rotating my airforces which are active each day, so my pilots get rest. On even days the 2nd tactical and the 12th airforce is the 'up' airforce, and they run missions. On odd days the 9th and Med run missions. 15th and 8th run every day, , but I chose which bombers are active by type. One day I run b17's, the other day I run libs. Escorts get rotated by the last digit of squad number, so even on even days and so on. Also every night I run my Mossy's deep into germany to drag the german NF's around the sky for hours on end. On nights that the moon isnt too bright, I send my night bombers in two to three hours after the mossies run around.

I'm hoping this tactic will exhaust the LW in a few weeks. Typically I get between 20-30 pilot KIA a day now between escorts and camping airfields.

It hard to get the timing right on airfield camping. I typically launch FS's 90 - 120 minutes after my heavys depart.

Plus, I am staggering my tactical raids so i have stuff going out almost hourly. Even if i don't hit anything well, i still consider it a success if it gets interceptors up there.



wernerpruckner -> RE: Is strategic bombing broken? (7/5/2014 6:05:31 PM)

quote:

I've taken to rotating my airforces which are active each day, so my pilots get rest.


that is a good thing to do, especially for your Strategic Forces. But I would suggest you use fatigue/morale numbers - some Units can take a lot of punishment and still be very effectiv


My main Problem was always the very limited number of missions, so I am always forced to limit my amount of pain brought to the Axis.
If I plan an BC turn in 44, I need up to all 199 missions for that alone (30+ bomber missions, 20+ ECM/RCM missions, NIs over known fighter bases 60+, NIs in stream all the rest!)

What I have seen in your save is that you do not really use the BC for ist Job.
BC is the most dangerous weapon until middle 44 (after that it is a matter of opinion)

Can you tell me how you used BC so far?



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