Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

Strat Bombers....Exploit?

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
unmerged(35801)

unmerged(35801)

Colonel
Nov 1, 2004
815
0
ok....ive seemed to notice the unreal effectiveness of strat bombers verses navy units.....in a game where i was USA and Mighty G was UK.....the jap navy was almost totaly destroyed by canadian strat bombers.......totally unreal!.....now the shoes is on the other foot this time as Dan is UK and ive lost many ships to....guess what?....canadian strat bombers!....although there were at times some tacs in the mix as well......it just seems to me that not many ships were lost in WW2 to strat bombers!......not too sure they would even be used on naval bombing missions!......any comment and or experience with this would be cool....thx in advance, Geno
 
While an experienced player as myself would never let my navy be decimated in such a ridiculous way, this is a frequent problem for new, inexperienced players such as yourself.
All you need to do is to not let your navy stay stationary, and screen them with your own airforce, preferably Fighters, since they have longer range.
 
http://www.ww2pacific.com/navalair.html
Reconnaissance Bombers - Land Based.
Long Range Bombers resulted in an Army-Navy controversy over coast protection. Traditionally the Navy provided coastal protection beyond the range of Army shore based artillery. The Army Air Corp, BGen Billy Mitchell, made dramatic displays that it could fly long ranges, could find ships far at sea, and could destroy armored warships from the air. The Navy considered all coast defense that was beyond the range of artillery to be their domain. Air power aficionados considered the Navy outdated and motivated by self-preservation.

European air attacks early in the war showed that massed land based air power could destroy ships at sea. However the American experience was far from convincing, primarily because there were not have enough aircraft to make massive attacks.

A single B-17 bomber could carry a lethal bomb load, but had to attack from high altitude to escape shipborn antiaircraft fire. At high altitudes, a strategic bomber could not hit a maneuvering target. A bomber had to fly straight and level to the target to align the bombsight with where the bombardier thought the target would be after the bombs made a long fall. During that period, as the bomber was committed, a ship could maneuver for several minutes to confuse the airplane and to avoid the falling bombs.
The army B-17 was sold for coast defense before the war. The press was primed for B-17 success and reported splashes as hits. In fact, in all of 1942, one Japanese destroyer was sunk, and it was stopped to pick up survivors from a ship sunk by carrier planes. B-17s did damage several warships and sank several transports in harbor or convoy. 1943 saw another DD, a seaplane carrier, and more transports.

See Naval aircraft lists - all types in 1942.
 
It goes back to the loooooong standing argument about the effectiveness land-based air should have against naval units. I also once fired off a post after being pissed, and I was even on the swinging end of the hammer, I sunk several carriers in a battlegroup of 30 with a lone CAS squadron which took nary a hit.

Argue the historicity of it until your blue in the face, but fact is that I'm reluctantly forced to agree with Anders: the game forces you to operate ONLY where you have air superiority because the fleets flat-out have no recourse on their own to shoot down enemy aircraft. Comes down to a simple game engine design flaw that Blue Emu pointed out in a thread some time ago.
 
well im not saying you can operate w/o air sup.....my argument is the effectiveness of the strat bomber itself....ive been surfing for an hour or so and cant find any examples where strats were used effectivly during the war...if at all for naval bombing.....edit....it would be nice to set your CV fleet CAP from 0 to 100 percent.....then you would always have to make a choice as to how much air cover you would send on CV bombing missions and how much to leave behind
 
That's just the way the game mechanics work, Geofactor. We long-time players have observed quite a lot of this and other peculiarities in the way the game works, and it's a pleasure to be able to share our vast game experience and knowledge with you rookies. :)
 
I quite like the idea of raping 600 ships up with 12-15 bombers.

I mean players usualy cluster that many units in one stack, how could you misS?

Though i do believe bombers should take heavier losses.
 
Mighty G said:
I quite like the idea of raping 600 ships up with 12-15 bombers.

I mean players usualy cluster that many units in one stack, how could you misS?

Though i do believe bombers should take heavier losses.
Click to expand...


Of course the flip side of that coin is with 600 ships firing anti-air rounds, there's no way those slow lumbering bombers would have a chance at staying in the air.

Geofactor said:
my argument is the effectiveness of the strat bomber itself....ive been surfing for an hour or so and cant find any examples where strats were used effectivly during the war
Click to expand...

Well the point is that they "could" have been used and thus the game properly has assigned a naval attack value. I sincerely doubt we would find an historical example of its use against navies in war simply because there is no way in hell leadership would waste IC and resources into building such an expensive aircraft and throwing it away on a torpedo bombing run.

Like I said, there's no way strat bombers should have a chance at keeping much strength after a naval attack...nowhere near suited to such a task. However, there's no good way to model that point with the current game engine.
 
harsh reality

strat bombers technically cant by and large hit shits in the 36-45 time frame.

that is the reality.

however, what is a strat bomber over the war period.

the problem is the whole naval aviation orbat is screwed totaly. sweden get off your arse
 
Wasn't strat bombers pretty decent for port strikes?
I think the uboat ports and facilities were hit pretty hard by strats.
As well as Tirpitz at the norwegian anchorage.

Im not sure about Japanese harbours in range of strats but seeing how hard their cities were hit it would have been a waste not to knock out some ports aswell.

I wouldn't call them exploits though, they are much more expensive and with less naval attack than NAVs so unless there is something really funky with the code they shouldn't be better at sinking ships.
 
Last edited:
well yes but

Alex_brunius said:
Wasn't strat bombers pretty decent for port strikes?
I think the uboat ports and facilities were hit pretty hard by strats.
As well as Tirpitz at the norwegian anchorage.

Im not sure about Japanese harbours in range of strats but seeing how hard their cities were hit it would have been a waste not to knock out some ports aswell.

I wouldn't call them exploits though, they are much more expensive and with less naval attack than NAVs so unless there is something really funky with the code they shouldn't be better at sinking ships.
Click to expand...

it took a 1000 attacks to get tirpitz. Basically Strat bmbers should have a fixed attack value of 1 and that should not change. japanese warships would regularly not even weigh anchor when attacked by B-17 in the pacific. As far as i am aware US B-17/b-24/b-29 only sank one japanese warship at sea in the whole war.
 
Geofactor said:
ok....ive seemed to notice the unreal effectiveness of strat bombers verses navy units.....in a game where i was USA and Mighty G was UK.....the jap navy was almost totaly destroyed by canadian strat bombers.......totally unreal!.....now the shoes is on the other foot this time as Dan is UK and ive lost many ships to....guess what?....canadian strat bombers!....although there were at times some tacs in the mix as well......it just seems to me that not many ships were lost in WW2 to strat bombers!......not too sure they would even be used on naval bombing missions!......any comment and or experience with this would be cool....thx in advance, Geno
Click to expand...

Yes ive had this problem vs major ball in a number of games. The counter I use is my own long range bombers Tacs, Naval or Strat bombers with escourt fighter brigades attached. These bombers can then perform airsuperioty missions and will decimate those strat bombers.

Thats how I keep those pesky strat bombers of my German fleets in the deep atlantic. The escourt brigades only reduce the rang of long range planes by 150 which dosnt really effect there range. Just check what you can cover with your bombers and dont move your ships beyond that range out in the deep blue sea.

Another trick with this is you can have say 8 Naval bombers on naval strike, put just 1 strat bomber on air superioty to get those strats bombing your fleet. The 8 navals will join in the air to air battle to give you 9 vs what ever hes got. A good way to rape those strats so they wont be comming back anytime soon.

I think escourt fighters are invaluable if your going to be playing a naval game out in the deep oceans. They can save entire fleets when used like this and make the strategy of using strats against you useless. Ofcourse once you beat up his air your bombers can then bomb his fleets. :D

Now if for some reason you move your fleets beyond even the range of strat bombers with escourt fighters, then you deserve to lose all your ships for being so foolish. It is a risky gamble to move outside of air cover, some time it pays off, others you pay a steep price.

I hope that helps you Geo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back