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Bella -> Some hints from a lover of this game (8/22/2020 3:38:11 PM)
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Love this game. I've played some 260 game turns of BTR as Allied in the 700 game turn scenario. As such, I've made many, many mistakes and learned a lot of lessons, some of which I want to pass on here to anyone joining the game. I welcome and encourage comments from the experienced players. Some of the assumptions I make about game mechanics may be plain wrong and I want to be corrected. There is no particular order to these comments, and this is not a comprehensive list. I will post again later as things occur to me. Please note that everything I write below is from the Allied perspective, not the German.
Targets: The key thing about selecting targets for your heavy bombers is to avoid trying to strike at a large variety of types of targets. This invites losses for little return. I keep in mind always that the goal of the strategic bombing campaign should always be to destroy or near destroy the German Air Force (LW) before D-Day. To that end, focusing on suppressing a small variety of critical industries will hinder the production of replacement aircraft and repair materials for damaged aircraft. Here are the three target types I really focused on:
Rubber: This is a critical industry that is crucial to producing armaments for all units including aircraft. The best thing about hitting rubber is that the industry is highly centralized and concentrated. A single raid can severely damage rubber production. Examples of this are the Ludwigshafen plant with 20 production, the Huls Chemische plant with 40 production and the Bunawerke plant with an incredible 60 capacity. Also, many of the smaller plants are within easy range so that missions do not have to be deep penetration with the resulting high losses. (Bunawerke is fairly deep into Germany, but worth the losses.) I was able at one point to reduce rubber production by 80% and maintain it by further raids to between 70-80%.) A further benefit to hitting rubber is that, because it is crucial to producing armaments, you seriously hinder the enemy’s ability to make anti-aircraft guns of all calibers.
Aluminum: Critical to the construction of air frames for new and damaged aircraft, the aluminum industry is also fairly highly concentrated (capacities of 12, 14 and 18 for the larger plants, and middling plants of 8 capacity) and for the most part the plants are located in western Germany and France. Fifteenth AF based in Italy can hit several of the Italian and Axis allied plants, also. I was able to get Aluminum production down to 55% and keep it there.
Chem: The Chemistry targets are vital to the oil industry. Reducing this industry eventually affects the production of aviation gas (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong.)There are several large targets (Ammoniawerke is the largest at 29 capacity) and targets are generally based in the west, with many in France and in Italy, so easily reached. I managed to get Chem down to 75%, and keep it between 65-75%.
Focusing on these three varieties (while also destroying the Luftwaffe in the air, see below) has reduced LW response to my raids by May 25, 1944 to about 10-15% of what they were in December of 1943. Bf 109 and Fw 190 fighters are very scarce and the LW seems to focusing on Me 410 fighters (question: is this due to low usage of aluminum in this model?). The LW has largely abandoned France except for a couple bases in the deep south of France (Toul, Bordeaux region etc.). The Me 262 and He 163 jets have appeared in Germany but their influence is pretty minor.
Early errors: I initially tried hitting the FUEL industry exclusively to suppress the production of synthetic fuel, (used to produce avgas, since historically, the destruction of the fuel industry is really what finally crushed the LW and the rest of the German war machine). This is a waste of time until you have pretty much shattered the Luftwaffe. Even at this point of my game, though, with the German fighter force really damaged and only really able to get stragglers, I'm still avoiding FUEL plants. The losses are just too high, and you destroy the morale of your bomber groups. The enemy AI puts up so much flak around FUEL plants, and so many of the larger plants are so deep into Germany, that to my mind, it's not worth it.
I also focused early on on hitting Aircraft Engine factories with the idea of creating a bottleneck in aircraft production. However, this industry is not very concentrated (true of the rest of the aircraft industry, air frames and electronics) with many of the plants deep inside Germany. Not worth the effort unless there is nothing else still standing in range, and its at least an 8 capacity plant or bigger. Often, the goal of the raid is just to get the LW in the air, so you can shoot them down.
I avoided trying to hit the ball bearing industry, even though it's historical and there is a high concentration of industry around Schweinfurt. But, the flak there is really intense, and the rest of the industry is fairly scattered with many smaller plants. Too many plants to hit.
One strategy I hit on that seemed to work for places like Schweinfurt, Ploesti, Hannover and Leipzig for example, where there are a lot of closely packed factories to hit, was to do a strike at the rail yard in the middle of all these factories. It reduces the production of all industries surrounding the rail yard. (I hit Ploesti rail yard (oil industry) with Fifteenth AF and reduced it to 99% damage. in a single raid. My industry damage score jumped a full point off that one raid.)
There is one issue with targets that you should know about: I call it the 'Repair Kit' glitch. Anytime you have put a target into greater than 50% damage (or 50% disruption for ground units) it becomes red, and it is then time to leave that target alone, until it becomes orange or grey again. Reason? Say you have put Bunawerk into 51% damage, but you really want to finish the job, and you bomb it heavily again. You will find that bombing that red target actually causes the target to repair itself significantly, as if you are dropping 'repair kits' instead of bombs. I have tested this repeatedly by repeating turns. Leaving the target at 51% alone....it is at 50% the next turn. Bomb it with 250+ bombers? Damage drops to mid thirties the next turn. That's an example of something that happens all the time. I can only assume that the algorithm for bombing fails to take into account the original damage of a target when applying the damage from the current strike, at least while the target is red. Doesn't seem to happen on grey or orange level damaged targets.
Fighting the Luftwaffe: The thing about the war in the air was that there were no great battles. It was the daily grind of attrition that finally did in the LW. Pay a lot of attention to your escort assignments. Make sure you have coverage along the full route. I have seen a fifteen minute gap in coverage by escort lead to thirty bombers downed. The enemy AI is great at scheduling attacks and it WILL find the gaps. I like to send fighter sweeps by non-Eighth AF fighters along the path of the bomber stream to provide coverage for damaged stragglers, and to hunt down the inevitable German fighters hunting them down.
More Escort Ideas: Keeping with the bomber groups for the majority of their mission is very important to the survival of the bombers. Your escort fighters have two stats that are integral to this; Escort Radius ER (in miles) and Endurance END (in minutes). Escort radius of course means how far out a fighter can go with bombers, one way. This does not include combat (more below).
Here are the values for your most important escort types from December 1944 on:
P-47D-15 ER 256mi END 195min
P-47D-20 ER 389mi END 295min
P-47D25 ER 443mi END 335min
P-38J ER 449mi END 340min
P-38L ER 795mi END 600min
P-51B ER 582mi END 440min
P-51D ER 709mi END 535min
The Mustang III and IV were British production models of the P-51B, with the about the same ER and END. Notice that the P-38L has an even greater range than the P-51D!
To put that into perspective, here are some representative distances to major targets:
Paris 164 miles
Essen (northern Ruhr) 244 miles
Frankfurt-on-Main (southern Ruhr) 342 miles
Hamburg 373 miles
Berlin 513 miles
So, you can see the value of scheduling escort types according to how far they can fly. P-47D-15s are great for insertion (the first part of the trip) and extraction (the very last leg of the return flight). P-51, P-38J and L models, Mustang III and IV for the middle part. As the war progresses, and the LW begins to suffer real losses from your cunning tactics, it will withdraw further into Germany and southern France, and, in Italy back to northern Italy and southern Germany (typically starting January-February 1944). This offers another opportunity to increase the time your escorts can stay with the bombers over enemy territory. In March, I'm typically launching my escorts 30 minutes after the bombers. This is travel time over the English Channel and up the Adriatic Sea. The longer German response time from taking out their radar stations, and the greater distance the German fighters have to travel allows you to do this. If the LW gets tricky and puts a group of fighters on the Channel coast, re-play the turn and blast the airfield to bedrock, as well as putting Fighter Sweep (FS) squadrons hanging over it as they return (more below on that). (It is probably obvious that I am a chronic re-player of turns...yup, I game the system). To finesse this more, I like to launch a big batch of escort (typically a couple groups at least, say 100 fighters) to meet the mission just after it completes its bombing run. This allows you to reinforce for the trip home, and those fighters don't have to experience flak over the target. Time in the air is a vital stat. As soon as fighters enter combat, they begin to consume fuel at four times the usual rate. Generally, the P-51s, Mustang III and IVs and P-38Ls can get into 2-3 scraps before they go bingo fuel and head home. P-38J and P-47 D20 and D25 can do 1-2 scraps, all this depending on the distance to target. So, there is a lot of value in delaying their takeoff for that first 30 minutes, if it's safe to do so.
On a related point, the German fighters for the most part have terrible ER and END, worse even than British fighters (except the Mosquito and later model Mustangs, of course). I'm answering my own question from a later post here, but the need to base further back in Germany to avoid being destroyed forces the LW to build and deploy more longer range fighters like the Me-410 and the Me-210, just in order to meet the incoming raids over France. Neither of these is much good at fighter-fighter combat (they're hell on un-escorted bombers though), so your escort chews through them and the 410's an 210's end up just trying for stragglers in order to survive. At this point in my game (May, 1944), the LW AI is basing almost all his Me-109 and FW-109 units in Germany. A smarter ploy might be to have one or two groups attack very early from Holland based bases to trigger fuel use by Allied escort fighters, so that by the time the Me-410's arrive, the escort is weakened. But whadda I know?
The Me-262 jet is a pain if it gets into your bomber stream, but its endurance is so low that it makes a pass or two and retreats home. I love putting a non-Eighth AF P-51 squadron over its home base and watching them torch the jets as they try to land. I wiped out an entire 12 jet squadron that way a couple weeks back. The He163 is even less to worry about. It takes off, goes a short way and returns to base. The AI needs to get better at placing it under the bomber stream, but as long as you don't get predictable with your missions, no worries.
Avoid fighter and fighter bomber strikes on airfields. The light flak is always intense, even if there are no German units there and losses are always high. Plays havoc on morale of your fighter groups. I switched my B-25, B-26 and A-20 medium bombers groups from Ninth AF, 2nd Tactical AF and Med and 12th AF out for older night bomber types like the Stirling, Stirling III and the Lancaster I, of which there are plenty in the pool after their squadrons upgrade to newer models. Their bomb loads are HUGE (14,000 lbs for a Stirling III compared to a B-25 at 4000 lbs). A single Stirling III squadron can cause 99% damage to an airfield (although two squadrons is best), and at 15,000 feet, they largely avoid the flak. This is a techniques for March 44 and on when the LW has abandoned France and the heavies are left alone. I don't even give them escort for the most part. If you find a raid is getting hit by a stray German unit, re-play the turn, and add escort. These aircraft will do the job until the new Liberator III and IV arrives in sufficient numbers so you can upgrade the Eight AF heavies with them, and put the older B-24s into your Ninth AF and 2nd Tac AF units. Avoid using the B-17 after you have significant numbers of B-24 in the pool. Its bomb load is significantly less than the B-24.
You have to rest your air units. Missions every three days or so is best to dispel fatigue. This also gives the units a chance to repair damaged a/c. Don't push them into double digit fatigue, especially your fighters. They start to lose air combat fights when tired. Of course, the weather gives not a care about your schedule. Nothing more irritating than sending missions out in iffy weather, only to have a rest day with perfect blue sky. If anything frustrates me about this game, it's the weather algorithm. Plan, plan, plan, and then your missions get cancelled, or can't find the target. Worse is when your bombers take off, but the delayed escort gets grounded, so the bombers just go on blithely to their destruction.
I like to run the auto mission for reconnaissance on these rest turns, send up every REC plane (you can walk away from the computer on these turns). Watching rec missions is pretty boring but the info is valuable. Of course, being a turn re-player, reconnaissance is less necessary to me. But if you're a purist and don't want to play time traveler thing, do tons of recce.
Here's a trick that might seem like cheating, but I like to think of it as the Allies having great intelligence: Launch raids, set your detail level on 3, watch where and when the German units take off and especially when they return to base. Have a notepad ready to write it down, there's a lot of info. I even record the unit name and number, so I can tell who is who as they return to their bases. As the turn ends, exit, go back in, send out Fighter sweep patrols (use only non-Eighth AF fighters and non-Fifteenth AF fighters, in Italy, for this. Use Eighth AF and Fifteenth AF fighters for escort only. You need every plane up there with the bombers.) Have P-51, P-38 and P-47 D-20s waiting for them on patrol over those airfields as they come back. The slaughter begins. I've destroyed hundreds of LW planes this way. My best day (shared between the NW Europe and Italian regions) was 375 German aircraft in a day! I can average 120-160 destroyed enemy a/c per day. After a few months of that pounding, and hitting the industries above as mentioned, you'll have the LW on its knees in time for D-day.
More to come. Comments welcome.
Jeff
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