A neat trick for JFBs

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A neat trick for JFBs - 1/24/2013 3:42:26 AM

Numdydar

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Tired of all those P-47s and P-51s ruining your day with those pesky sweeps before the nasty bombing runs? If so, I have a possible solution.

Set every fighter sq to training

Are you nuts, the bombers will kill them all you say. Better the planes die on the ground versus the planes AND the pilots die in the air :) But there is a benefit beside this. So there is more

If a bomber raid happens to fly over to vist WITHOUT any 'little friends' your training flights will wake up and say "Hey we are tired of just flying around shooting at targets, let hit some real planes!" And they will

The training flights will attack unescorted bombers pretty regularly. So this does two things for the JFB. It allows CAP that will only attack bombers AND avoids combat with ANY fighters. A much better out come than trying to survie all the sweeps the Allies can throw at you.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/24/2013 5:17:54 AM

JeffroK

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And you have tried this and discovered that sometimes your trainees will intercept, no guarantees are there?

Might be the best JFB plan since Midway.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/24/2013 6:11:38 AM

koniu

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Sometimes it will work sometimes it will not.
If You are lucky You will shutdown few bombers. Damn 4E are almost as good with shotting down fighters as P-47. If You are out of luck You will pay high price.

< Message edited by koniu -- 1/24/2013 6:12:04 AM >

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/24/2013 8:57:48 AM

DivePac88

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No sorry, but this tactic is doomed to failure, as your real chance (dice rolls) for intercepting unescorted LB raids are so low, to be just about non-existent.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/24/2013 9:29:12 AM

obvert

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On the other side of the coin, I think your opponent might have some issues with this tactic. Should your fighters be able to avoid the sweeps of planes that fly 40-60 mph faster than they do and can fly better at higher altitudes, thus getting the dive as well?

If this does work it's gaming the engine. How is it going to be when the Allies do this throughout 41-42 and skewer all of the Nells, Betties and Sallys you need to keep forts low, burn supply and hit shipping? I certainly would not be happy about that.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/24/2013 10:48:54 AM

Mike Solli

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quote:

ORIGINAL: koniu

Sometimes it will work sometimes it will not.
If You are lucky You will shutdown few bombers. Damn 4E are almost as good with shotting down fighters as P-47. If You are out of luck You will pay high price.

I often tell my opponent that (July 42), his B-17s are the best fighter he's got.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/24/2013 1:13:47 PM

Mundy

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I seem to have more luck with my B-24s. In one of my PBEMs, I have two B-24 aces.

Ed-

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/24/2013 3:35:44 PM

crsutton

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You can't be talking about using this tactic with a human opponent. If so, then I would venture that you need to find a better opponent. I personally can think of about 5 different ways that I can hammer this idea into the ground..

But vs the AI, then it may work. But that is like saying that you can beat your six year old nephew at chess four out of five times....

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/24/2013 3:36:34 PM

Chickenboy

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I wouldn't use this trick, even if it worked uniformly. It just seems 'gamey' to me and sidestepping the game mechanics through a glitch. It's not logical, so I won't use it.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/25/2013 6:03:46 AM

jejo68

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only 2 :)

8 out of my top 10 pilots are bombers. we are now mid 43

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/25/2013 7:00:38 PM

AW1Steve

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

I wouldn't use this trick, even if it worked uniformly. It just seems 'gamey' to me and sidestepping the game mechanics through a glitch. It's not logical, so I won't use it.

Oh, go ahead and let him use it. And thereby throw every other house rule in the cocked hat. I had it happen once by accident. Now that I know the effect, I'll never use it again. But the one thing about this "trick" is that it's not just for JFB's, it works great for AFB's. Especially for the 1st 18 months of the war.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/25/2013 7:09:31 PM

Jorge_Stanbury

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I think the AI uses it too (not necessarily willing); I just lost 14 Lillys in one bombing raid

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/26/2013 12:14:42 AM

Captain Cruft

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This does work quite well, I discovered it inadvertently playing Downfall. I think if you playing any other scen than that one (where you have a huge airforce squeezed into a small area) then yes it definitely is gamey.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/26/2013 1:48:30 AM

Icedawg

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

I wouldn't use this trick, even if it worked uniformly. It just seems 'gamey' to me and sidestepping the game mechanics through a glitch. It's not logical, so I won't use it.

+1

Definitely gamey.

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Post #: 14

RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/26/2013 2:58:31 AM

Numdydar

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So educate me on this please as to why gamey.

Training fligths are flying around the airfield in RL. A sweep comes in, they either a)fly away and loiter until the sweep is gone or b) land
Sweep goes away, training begins again, bombing run comes in escorted, again same as above.
Training begins again. Unescorted bombing run come in, AF commander, radios the flights in the air to try and engage the bombers. May catch the bombers, may not, but it is attempted.

Seems like this is a logical sequence of events to me and not gamey at all. Especially since I am a pilot and this is how I trained in RL. Of course no one was flying in to try and kill me in the process either lol.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/26/2013 4:05:24 AM

Alfred

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

So educate me on this please as to why gamey.

Training fligths are flying around the airfield in RL. A sweep comes in, they either a)fly away and loiter until the sweep is gone or b) land
Sweep goes away, training begins again, bombing run comes in escorted, again same as above.
Training begins again. Unescorted bombing run come in, AF commander, radios the flights in the air to try and engage the bombers. May catch the bombers, may not, but it is attempted.

Seems like this is a logical sequence of events to me and not gamey at all. Especially since I am a pilot and this is how I trained in RL. Of course no one was flying in to try and kill me in the process either lol.

Not really gamey, just a dumb and not effective means to achieve on the cheap the CAP desired by the OP.

Read this recent thread and my posts in particular.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3244889

There are far too many ways to take advantage of such a tactic.

Alfred

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/26/2013 7:52:43 AM

bradfordkay

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

So educate me on this please as to why gamey.

Training fligths are flying around the airfield in RL. A sweep comes in, they either a)fly away and loiter until the sweep is gone or b) land
Sweep goes away, training begins again, bombing run comes in escorted, again same as above.
Training begins again. Unescorted bombing run come in, AF commander, radios the flights in the air to try and engage the bombers. May catch the bombers, may not, but it is attempted.

Seems like this is a logical sequence of events to me and not gamey at all. Especially since I am a pilot and this is how I trained in RL. Of course no one was flying in to try and kill me in the process either lol.

Would the commander of a base within range of enemy bombers be likely to set all his fighter squadrons to "training" rather than CAP? There is also the question of how in WW2 they know that the incoming aircraft are a fighter sweep, an escorted bombing raid or an unescorted bombing raid unless they approach within visual range. This is where your scenario seems a stretch to me...

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/26/2013 8:33:35 AM

LoBaron

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Easy counter: LRCAP that base, and escort your strikes, and you got a lot of dead Japanese pilots which would have been much better off flying
layered CAP or not flying at all.

IMHO not really gamey, since against a human opponent it is easy to counter and requires far too many squadrons with training setting to show
a reliable effect.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/26/2013 8:48:37 AM

gradenko2k

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It's gamey in the sense that while the response of the training pilots is arguably realistic, it's NOT realistic for pilots to be set to train in an airbase that's being constantly bombed, just for the sake of being able to side-step the sweeps/escorts in the first place.

If you want to fly CAP over a base, you're expected to set fighters to CAP. Settings fighters to Training because it happens to be a sometimes-better-CAP is "gamey" because you're not using Training for its intended purpose.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/26/2013 11:13:10 AM

Icedawg

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Numdydar

So educate me on this please as to why gamey.

Training fligths are flying around the airfield in RL. A sweep comes in, they either a)fly away and loiter until the sweep is gone or b) land
Sweep goes away, training begins again, bombing run comes in escorted, again same as above.
Training begins again. Unescorted bombing run come in, AF commander, radios the flights in the air to try and engage the bombers. May catch the bombers, may not, but it is attempted.

Seems like this is a logical sequence of events to me and not gamey at all. Especially since I am a pilot and this is how I trained in RL. Of course no one was flying in to try and kill me in the process either lol.

"The training flights will attack unescorted bombers pretty regularly. So this does two things for the JFB. It allows CAP that will only attack bombers AND avoids combat with ANY fighters. A much better out come than trying to survie all the sweeps the Allies can throw at you."

The part in bold taken from your original post shows the gamey nature of your tactic. It allows you use a poorly designed part of the game engine to selectively engage unescorted bombers. In real life, you wouldn't have been able to tell that the incoming raid had no escorts until your fighters got a line of sight, and then it would have been too late - they'd be engaged by any escorts. However, as you indicated in the quote above, your tactic allows your training flights to have some sort of ESP - "That incoming raid we just heard about on the radio has no escorts. Let's go get them." and "This incoming raid we just heard about on the radio has escorts. Let's bug out.".

Now from my personal experience, training flights in the game do engage sweeps as well, so your technique for avoiding enemy fighters isn't foolproof. Maybe you're playing a different version of the game. I'm playing DaBigBabes C. Perhaps it works in your version, but not in DBB.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/26/2013 12:52:04 PM

LoBaron

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quote:

It allows CAP that will only attack bombers AND avoids combat with ANY fighters.

This is wrong. It avoids combat with fighter sweeps, but it gets completely trashed by LRCAP as compared to CAP, and loses much of the usual advantage
when battling strike escorts. In addition it sufferes from very low efficiency (successful intercepts vs. # of fighters available).

Attempting to hurt raids with training flights instead of CAP is an ineffective tactic.
And not to escort bomber types which rely on escorts for defense is a calculated risk of the attacker.

TBH it is more or less irrelevant if anyone personally thinks it to be gamey or not, it can be easily rendered useless.

I am very much with Alfred here.

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RE: A neat trick for JFBs - 1/26/2013 5:43:49 PM

Numdydar

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quote:

ORIGINAL: gradenko_2000

It's gamey in the sense that while the response of the training pilots is arguably realistic, it's NOT realistic for pilots to be set to train in an airbase that's being constantly bombed, just for the sake of being able to side-step the sweeps/escorts in the first place.

If you want to fly CAP over a base, you're expected to set fighters to CAP. Settings fighters to Training because it happens to be a sometimes-better-CAP is "gamey" because you're not using Training for its intended purpose.

I agree with this point as I just cannot see an AF commander saying, "Ignore the bombing everyone. Just concentrate on your touch and gos."

quote:

ORIGINAL: LoBaron

This is wrong. It avoids combat with fighter sweeps, but it gets completely trashed by LRCAP as compared to CAP, and loses much of the usual advantage
when battling strike escorts. In addition it sufferes from very low efficiency (successful intercepts vs. # of fighters available).

I should point out that I am not using this in front line bases since you are correct it is too dangerous. I am using this in rear areas where long ranger LBAs and P-38s are anoying me

(in reply to gradenko2k)

Post #: 22