German Tactical Bombers Dropping Like Flies in China?

[TheMoe]

I've been away from the game for a while and I decided to give it another whirl as Germany. This is my basic long-range tactical bomber (early game) and I've been a bit surprised that I've lost so many of them while sending troops to help Japan against China. Looks like I need to improve the build. Also, it's early game and I'm still replacing the interwar tactical bombers so that could be part of why I'm losing so many. What I mean by that is I'm losing more than I'm producing, which is something that didn't happen when I sent the bombers to help the Spanish. Of course I also had short-ranged fighters in that war, which due to distance is not an option against the Chinese.

Do I need to do something like this and turn it into a flying fortress?



Or do I need to add a bunch of machine guns to increase the air attack? Not really sure what the difference is between air attack and defense. I wouldn't use it as a long-range fighter, only a tactical bomber.




Thanks for the help.

Edit: Here's what I'm talking about when it comes to bomber losses. I don't even know if this means all bomber losses (Japan + mine) or just mine. There are clearly a bunch of Japanese planes in the area as well. It's hard for me to understand how so few enemy planes could shoot down so many bombers.

 

[Herennius]

Have you hoovered over the lost number to see what exactly causes them? The reason I'm asking is air accidents, which can be a huge problem (especially if you should operate from different more than one air bases, as plane wings stacked in one are kind of "protected" by a bug with missing accident scaling: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/air-accidents-in-an-air-base-dont-scale.1588074/ )

 

[TheMoe]

Have you hoovered over the lost number to see what exactly causes them? The reason I'm asking is air accidents, which can be a huge problem (especially if you should operate from different more than one air bases, as plane wings stacked in one are kind of "protected" by a bug with missing accident scaling: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/air-accidents-in-an-air-base-dont-scale.1588074/ )

How fascinating! I had no idea you could do that. Looks like accidents are the number one cause of losses. Thank you.



The only way I know to reduce the chance of accidents is in the Officer area where you can choose a couple different types.



That airfield is overcrowded, which might increase the chance of an accident? Last I heard, an overcrowded air base simply decreased mission efficiency.



I went back and looked at the plane designer and I didn't see any stats regarding reliability. Maybe reliability is not what causes accidents or we don't have any control over reliability?

 

[Herennius]

The only way I know to reduce the chance of accidents is in the Officer area where you can choose a couple different types.

For some nations air advisors and/or national focii might help as well, but for the rest you are pretty much correct. Since bad weather (like e.g. storms, snowfall) plays a role as well in theory you can reduce losses by just not using planes under such circumstances, but thats a lot of MM.

That airfield is overcrowded, which might increase the chance of an accident? Last I heard, an overcrowded air base simply decreased mission efficiency.

To my knowlegde overcrowding penalty does not affect accidents (and due to forementioned bug in fact you better overcrowd than spread out, if you want to avoid accidents...)

I went back and looked at the plane designer and I didn't see any stats regarding reliability. Maybe reliability is not what causes accidents or we don't have any control over reliability?

Reliability is a major factor for accidents, but as you already pointed out one not much under control of air designer choices. MIOs lately added some gameplay around it, but even devs agreed that reliability of planes ideally should matter more (see e.g. a post from C0RAX here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ation-to-accident-rate.1578797/#post-28887881 )

 

[TheMoe]

Thank you very much! That was all extra helpful info. Thanks for the heads up on the bug as well. I'll keep that in mind. Hope you great Sunday and a good week ahead.