The issue isnt that they cant, its that they cost too much aluminum for the bonus they give you. The axis has basically unlimited aluminium, allowing them to absorb the increase, the allies dont have that luxury.
Germany MP strategies?
- Thread starter Stiflex
- Start date
-
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.
Wow how do you get so much rubber as Germany to build an effective strategic bomber force?
I'm afraid that's simply not good enough. I should know. I've used strategic bombers extensively in MP, but I also did a bunch of tests using 1940 planes to determine losses and disruption.
First of all, the disruption counter in the air region window is either full of lies, or is counting something useless. Ignore it.
In order to completely neutralize strategic bombers (with light fighters) via disruptions, you need well over 50% of the number of strategic bombers in fighters. 1000 STR require well over 500 light fighters to be significantly disrupted. At 1:1 ratios, the STR are basically not doing any damage. At 1:2 ratios, they are doing far less damage, but still hitting targets.
Note that this doesn't take into account planes shot down. At the same model year, strategic bombers really hurt light fighters. It's not enough to make light fighters useless, but be prepared to lose the planes (and upgrade the guns on those fighters). And everyone always forgets that even 1940 strategic bombers cost well over twice what a light fighter costs; always keep this in mind when comparing planes shot down.
Adding nice doctrines in the mix changes the math considerably. A lot of players actually forget that the later doctrines in the strategic destruction tree add even more air superiority to the fighters and more bombing ability to the bombers. Fighters with inferior doctrines are going to disrupt less, while bombers with maximum doctrines are going to hit harder. 200 light fighters simply aren't going to do enough to stop someone using 2000, let alone 1000, strategic bombers to attack air fields.
We don't ban them in our game, but we put some other rules in place that nerf them a bit indirectly. For example, we have strict rules about ahead of time research, so I can't run 1944 fighters and 1944 strategic bombers in 1939 as Britain anymore while swapping in the appropriate design company for each. I could get enough 1944 light fighters in action by the end of 1940 to establish air superiority over Berlin, Eastern Poland, and Czechoslovakia thanks to range on those fighters. Then I could escort my bombers anywhere they wanted to go. It was devastating.
But it's good to know that after well over a year of me trying to explain to players that strategic bombers have value that some players figured it out. It's not just airfields, either. Even a small stack of bombers can neutralize ports being used to supply troops. That's how I got the Italians out of Rhodes last week. Damn Italians were invading Turkey via Rhodes, but were dug in like ticks in the bad terrain. Bombed the port to death, and watched them go out of supply. Easy to remove them then.
(I also watched the German player bomb my ports in Hull and York before he launched Sea Lion. I don't think he was paying attention, because he landed south of an undefended dead port. Seriously, pay attention to bombers if you plan to invade someone via sea.)
I believe weve debated this several times before. Anyway, ive done significant work in my mod to make strategic bombers viable but havent managed to do it yet. Strategic bombers are simply terrible in vanilla, and i dont know what youre doing differently, but in my test scenario of 200 1940 German fighters with 5 agility vs 1000 1944 Strat Bombers, the bombers are all disrupted most of the time. Sure, you can damage a few buildings here and there, but lvl 5 AA Zones arent too expensive and counter the bombers very hard.
To be a bit more specific, i put a max lvl Radar in England and a max lvl Radar in Eastern Germany. Germany has gone down to the Agility bonus of Operational Integrity, and UK has completed the Destruction tree. The bombers and fighters have the manufacturer bonus. The bombers are almost completely ineffective, if i add a few lvl 5 AA zones in the mix, its over. If you switch the 1940 fighters to 1940 H-Fighters with 5 agility, then all the bombers die in a few weeks. Again, i dont know what you do differently (although i do know youve lost the air war by building 1944 fighters as the Allies) but in my extensive testing in the hope of fixing them, they are completely useless for everything other than drawing a few thousand axis fighters away from the eastern front.
To be a bit more specific, i put a max lvl Radar in England and a max lvl Radar in Eastern Germany. Germany has gone down to the Agility bonus of Operational Integrity, and UK has completed the Destruction tree. The bombers and fighters have the manufacturer bonus. The bombers are almost completely ineffective, if i add a few lvl 5 AA zones in the mix, its over. If you switch the 1940 fighters to 1940 H-Fighters with 5 agility, then all the bombers die in a few weeks. Again, i dont know what you do differently (although i do know youve lost the air war by building 1944 fighters as the Allies) but in my extensive testing in the hope of fixing them, they are completely useless for everything other than drawing a few thousand axis fighters away from the eastern front.
This is simply not true.
But let's address something first. Telling someone that putting 200 light fighters everywhere will disrupt bombers is not the same thing as telling them that 200 light fighters backed up by maximum AA will disrupt bombers. Those are two very different things.
Having said that, I spent a few hours this afternoon testing light fighters against equal model year strategic bombers. I tested with no doctrines, full doctrines, no XP on planes, 475 XP on planes, and with/without AA.
In all tests, it was 1000 strategic bombers versus either no fighters (to establish a base line) or 200 light fighters. No design companies or ministers on either side. I also ran the test multiple times, as bomb damage is highly variable between days.
For testing purposes, I used France and Germany in 1936, using the console to cheat a war, and using IC to build up level 3 RADAR. The French were bombing western Germany. The Germans were defending. Both sides had plenty of RADAR coverage when running tests that involved light fighters hitting bombers.
All tests were run for 30 days, with 24 hour bombing and no retreat. Both Germany and France had 10,000 planes in stockpile to cover losses.
The results:
With no interceptors and no doctrines on either side, and with no AA, 1000 STR (again, 1940 model, no XP) did this to western Germany:
This was an average run. I had one test where they damaged almost 70 buildings. Again, damage results against enemy buildings are highly variable thanks to random targeting.
When 200 light fighters (1940 model, no xp, no doctrine) tried to counter them, this happened:
69.9 buildings damaged. Note what I said earlier: damage against buildings is highly variable, so this test ironically matches one of my better bombing runs with no air opposition at all!
Look at the planes lost: Germany lost 52 planes and France lost 14 planes. (Let's ignore planes lost to accidents right now).
Calculating that out, each 1940 light fighter costs 26 production cost. Each strategic bomber (again, both at 1940 levels), costs 62. Germany lost 1352 production cost to France's 868 production.
So, not only did the 200 light fighters do very little to stop buildings from being damaged, they lost in air to air combat to strategic bombers. At this rate of loss, the Luftwaffe will be dead just from fighting bombers.
This is why I say ignore the disruption number. It is full of sweet little lies. Look at buildings damaged if you care about what bombers are doing to air fields and ports and factories.
The above test really just gives us a baseline. Let's add full doctrines and AA guns.
Ouch! Giving Western Germany full AA guns in every state resulted in 87 bombers shot down. But note the buildings damaged: 30.1. AA guns are doing damage to incoming bombers, but they aren't stopping them completely. In fact, we should all remember that AA guns can be bombed, so over a long enough time line, the defending AA guns will be reduced in effectiveness.
What about adding fighters into the mix? Same fighters and bombers as before, but now both sides have full doctrines (battlefield destruction for Germany and strategic destruction for France, daylight bombing side).
Huh, strategic bombers did more damage this time through and lost fewer bombers. Again, high variability among damaged buildings is causing this. But look at those bombers lost numbers. 200 light fighters shot down 8 bombers while losing 58 of their own.
Umm, Goering needs to be removed for this level of incompetence. Not only did putting 200 fighters there to stop bombers have no significant impact on buildings damaged (the AA guns have far more impact), but the losses the Luftwaffe is taking are simply unsustainable in the long run.
Part of this is related to how doctrines work. Folks often forget there are some nice ones buried in the strategic destruction tree. The one that increases bomber defense is crucial.
But these tests compared base model planes against one another. What if we applied 475 XP to the planes like so:
Will the 1940 Light Fighters make a difference now? (Note: adding speed to the 1940 strategic bomber is a waste in this particular test; the light fighter has it outclassed so badly, that adding speed won't help it very much.)
No fighters in the skies, max doctrines, max AA:
And with 200 fighters:
At this point, the 200 light fighters are finally making a small difference. But again, 200 light fighters even backed by maximum AA in all states in the air region has not stopped the bombing campaign. Those 23 damaged buildings could have been air fields.
Let's also consider the following: each static AA gun costs 2500 CIC to build. I built 35 to max out just one air region (in this case, western Germany). That's 87,500 cost in terms of CIC.
What else could Germany have spent that CIC on?
6.7 synthetic planes (13,000 production cost per plant).
12.15 MIC (7200 production cost a piece)
8.1 CIC (10,800 cost a piece)
25.9 RADAR (3375 cost a piece)
This isn't to say that AA guns are useless, but anyone who thinks they are basically free is misleading themselves. There is an opportunity cost. And AA guns at the state level are basically useless for anything else. The good news is that they are helpful against enemy strategic bombing. The bad news is that even at 5 per state, you are not immunized against enemy bombing.
I could redo these tests with 1944 models (we restrict research in my MP group, so I don't think it's worth my time), but the results aren't going to change that much. I've tried a dozen other combinations, and it always ends up the same: you need well over 50% of the bomber force in fighters to actually disrupt it enough to matter and not lose tons of planes. Heavy Fighters are better at killing bombers than light fighters, but with 1:1 ratio of light fighters versus strategic bombers, the light fighters pay for themselves in dead bombers and disrupt enough to matter.
I note that those figures for bombers disrupted look impressive at a glance. The highest I saw was around 32k IIRC. To put that into perspective, those 1000 bombers should be flying 90k sorties in the report period since you have them on 24 hour bombing.
It would be so much better if they gave us a simple percentage for disruption instead of a misleading raw figure.
It would be so much better if they gave us a simple percentage for disruption instead of a misleading raw figure.
I would post a screenshot of my own, but my motherboard is dead and I won't be getting a new one until Wendsday. Ive typed all this on my phone.
Anyway, not including the designer is a mistake, the extra agility helps the fighter significantly even though I suspect it shouldn't. Adding 5 weapons hurts the fighters far more than it helps, not only reducing agility but reliability. The point isn't to shoot down bombers, but to disrupt them. Better to engine 5 and increase reliability to 100%. Also what do you mean by max doctrines? Did you go operational integrity as Germany?
So as opposed to arguing back and forth about these small details and my test vs yours (believe me I've spent hours changing one or two values in the defines at a time to try and get Strat bombing to work in this exact situation) let's just assume you are 100% right. That 200 light fighters does nothing against Strats. Germany should have 400 factories by 1941, what's to stop them or Italy or Japan or even Hungary from just putting 15 factories on HFighters? Then all your hopes and dreams are over.
Here's two more things that you're not acknowledging
1. Building Strats, especially in the numbers you mention, will prevent the Allies and the Soviets by extension from having any hope of winning the air war. Germany and USA should match 1:1 in fighter production, Hungary and Canada 1:1, Italy and UK 1:1, Japan can also match UK and Soviets can match Germany as well, that's how the game is balanced. The difference is that the axis can produce fighter 3s due to unlimited aluminum and the allies are stuck on 2.
See the problem there? If the allies hope to win, they need to DDay within a month or two of Barbarossa. The axis Air Force will far outnumber the Soviet one, probably by more than 3 to 1, and with superior tech. This will result in their inevitable loss very quickly unless the allies can DDay and split the axis airforce for long enough for the Soviets to gain the upper hand. You need fighters for that, not Strats.
2. From Danzig or War until Barbarossa your Strats are useless. The axis has no major foe to fight other than in Africa and has tens of thousands of fighters just sitting around. They could put 1000 planes in every airzone if they wanted and still have enough in stockpile to win Africa, at least they can if you build Strats. Your bombers will be meaningless until Barbarossa when the axis pulls it's planes off. At that point bombing doesn't matter, the end of the game is months away. Germany has 10k tanks in stockpile and unlimited support and infantry equipment. Continuing to build fighters would be important, but since you spent 150 factories building 2k Strats you won't have an airforce even close to his anyway. Once Barbarossa starts, you could level every factory in Europe to 0 and it wouldn't matter.
Anyway, not including the designer is a mistake, the extra agility helps the fighter significantly even though I suspect it shouldn't. Adding 5 weapons hurts the fighters far more than it helps, not only reducing agility but reliability. The point isn't to shoot down bombers, but to disrupt them. Better to engine 5 and increase reliability to 100%. Also what do you mean by max doctrines? Did you go operational integrity as Germany?
So as opposed to arguing back and forth about these small details and my test vs yours (believe me I've spent hours changing one or two values in the defines at a time to try and get Strat bombing to work in this exact situation) let's just assume you are 100% right. That 200 light fighters does nothing against Strats. Germany should have 400 factories by 1941, what's to stop them or Italy or Japan or even Hungary from just putting 15 factories on HFighters? Then all your hopes and dreams are over.
Here's two more things that you're not acknowledging
1. Building Strats, especially in the numbers you mention, will prevent the Allies and the Soviets by extension from having any hope of winning the air war. Germany and USA should match 1:1 in fighter production, Hungary and Canada 1:1, Italy and UK 1:1, Japan can also match UK and Soviets can match Germany as well, that's how the game is balanced. The difference is that the axis can produce fighter 3s due to unlimited aluminum and the allies are stuck on 2.
See the problem there? If the allies hope to win, they need to DDay within a month or two of Barbarossa. The axis Air Force will far outnumber the Soviet one, probably by more than 3 to 1, and with superior tech. This will result in their inevitable loss very quickly unless the allies can DDay and split the axis airforce for long enough for the Soviets to gain the upper hand. You need fighters for that, not Strats.
2. From Danzig or War until Barbarossa your Strats are useless. The axis has no major foe to fight other than in Africa and has tens of thousands of fighters just sitting around. They could put 1000 planes in every airzone if they wanted and still have enough in stockpile to win Africa, at least they can if you build Strats. Your bombers will be meaningless until Barbarossa when the axis pulls it's planes off. At that point bombing doesn't matter, the end of the game is months away. Germany has 10k tanks in stockpile and unlimited support and infantry equipment. Continuing to build fighters would be important, but since you spent 150 factories building 2k Strats you won't have an airforce even close to his anyway. Once Barbarossa starts, you could level every factory in Europe to 0 and it wouldn't matter.
Where does Axis get so much oil and rubber?
To use around 900 aluminium allies have(~750 base US+UK+CAN+SU +30% tech) one needs 500 oil and 300 Rubber (lvl 2 fighter), so 70+ synthetic plants, which would set axis around 100MIC back, and they already are at CIC disadvantage v allies.
So Germany has to build 330-ish MIC, probably large part of synthetic plants(say 50+), with only Yugoslavia, France and Bennelux up for grabs in Europe? At best tech, with France and Benelux already occupied Germany will add 120MIC/year. Before Benelux and France, you will be adding around 60 MIC/year.
400 MIC+ synthetic plants to feed them seem unrealistic before 1 january 1941, unless I`m missing something.
The axis absolutely does not have a CIC disadvantage vs the allies. Let's tally it up ~300 for Germany (build Civs until mid 39 and take everything in Europe), ~100 for Italy, ~ 100 for Japan, 450 total for Majors. Now onto some common minors, ~20 for Hungary, ~40 for Romania (after Bulgaria), ~75 for Spain (after Portugal). Unless my math is wrong that's 535 or so. Soviets build ~180, UK ~70 (they are build space capped), USA starts with 130, and assume about an average of 20 (100 total, generous and often put to poor use building land forces that aren't needed due to aluminum bottleneck) for the rest of the Commonwealth. So I believe that's 480 or so. I'm not seeing this Civ advantage.
Spain and Romania build the oil, Italy and Germany are secondary contributors. Doesn't a synthetic plant produce 9 oil (after extraction 3)? Lets say theirs 75 oil hanging around Europe after focuses and such, build 50 synthetics and 9x50=450+75=550 oil. More than enough to finance operations for not too much cost, and it's mostly a cost bared by minors.
Im probably being a bit over optimistic on Germanys mil count. Likely in early 41 you'll see it hit the 300 mark, most Civs come from Europe after you've built your initial 100 in 39. But Mil count increases quickly from there. Hitting 450-500 in 42. Then you're out of space and need to convert or wait for higher industry tech. A huge advantage of the axis is their near unlimited build space. USA has virtually none, nor does UK, nor does the Commonwealth. Axis factory count increases exponentially for nearly the entire game. This is a reason why you often see Germany wait until 42 or even 43 to attack Soviets, the Mil and Resource count is so far in the Axis favor that if you wait you actually gain a huge advantage.
Of course it all depends on rules. 95% of vanilla servers have no rule against taking things like Switzerland or Sweden or Norway, ect. If you play on a server that does, then everything I've ever said in this thread changes.
Last edited:
Okay, now I know we aren't playing the same game. There must be something different between our games.
Even at 80% reliability, you lose so few planes to accidents that they are practically a rounding error. Look at the screenshot I posted earlier. 200 light fighters with no XP applied (thus 80% reliability) lost two whole plans in 30 days of flying. And that's flying missions 24 hours a day in all weather. Those night missions cause more accidents, and yet 80% reliability produced so few accidents over a 1 month period that you might as well not care. And that's without ministers, doctrines, or design companies.
I already did the tests with reliability. Comparing planes with no XP applied (80% reliability) versus planes with +1 guns (lower reliability and agility due to guns increase) resulted in the guns +1 planes killing more extra planes than they lost due to lower reliability. It was a hands down win for the +1 guns planes.
Then I did +2 guns with no reliability upgrades versus +2 reliability planes. The guns +2 planes did better than the +2 reliability planes, losing fewer planes even when factoring in the extra accidents. As long as your planes are busy fighting on a regular basis, you can come out ahead in aircraft losses going as low as 50-60% reliability (ministers can let you go lower in some cases, while areas with high rates of bad weather or constant arctic night might require higher reliability).
Well, if you want to run the numbers on heavy fighters, we can do that. I already did that test some time ago. Heavy fighters are better at killing strategic bombers, and they have better range. 1940 heavy fighters with +5 range can base themselves in Alsace-Lorraine and reach almost 100% of occupied Europe, removing the need to rebase fighters to counteract bombing.
But they are also sub-optimal when fighting light fighters and eat up a research slot. The agility advantage of light fighters, plus their lower cost, make heavy fighters problematic when trying to fight against escorted bombers. Which means if you build too many heavy fighters when the enemy has chosen not to run strategic bombers, you will find yourself at a disadvantage.
But this also assumes you will have a human Hungary. And to be frank, the Italians and Japanese have their own military commitments. Japan and Italy can build heavy fighters all they want (they might even need them for their own operations), but if they run short of NAVs, then there's a whole other list of problems facing the Axis.
House rules may also change the math on the value of certain aircraft strategies. In my MP group, the US is not allowed to join the war before January 1st of 1942 unless certain criteria are met. One of those criteria is Japan going to war with the Allies. So, while Japan could try to Lend-Lease planes to Germany, getting those convoys past the RN might be difficult. If Japan joins the actual war and sends entire squadrens to Europe, then the US enters the war and now Japan is missing aircraft she might need to hold her own against the USN and USAAF.
The Allies don't have to be stuck on 1940 light fighters. Until we changed the rules in our group, I routinely ran 1944 light fighters as Britain. They'd have tons of XP applied by the time the war broke out, too, since I often appoint Dowding (a contentious choice among my group). With 1944 light fighters, Fighter Command can escort Bomber Command all the way to Berlin. No part of the Reich is safe from them. And with fighter escorts, it's much harder to disrupt bombing. And if no part of the Reich is safe, then you can't hide synthetic plants anywhere. Any of them can be bombed at any time.
Whether the UK should try to get 1944 light fighters into action so quickly is a different question, but they aren't chained to 1940 fighters. It's also worth pointing out that 1944 strategic bombers can be in production alongside 1944 light fighters long before 1940 ends. And they can both have the appropriate design company if you really want to spend the PP.
The Axis doesn't really have unlimited aluminum. I know some people say the Axis does, but I've seen both sides run out of aluminum during the war. Of course, rubber and oil are also limiting factors.
I've gotten Germany to the point where 33% of her MIC are offline due to bombing in the period between the Battle of France and Barbarossa. In the same campaign, I managed to take 70% or more of her synthetic plants offline.
Even worse, that same game, I managed to damage Italy so badly that we (USA and I) had to delay parts of the invasion of Italy because the infrastructure and ports were still too badly damaged to support the invasion a year after I stopped hitting the Italian boot with bombers.
I want to note something very important to everyone in this thread: I am in no way suggesting that going the strategic bombing route is the only or best way to win the war. It's one possibility among several that can work. If the UK pursues this approach, and the Axis has not prepared to counter it, they can be hurt very badly. And preparing to counter it is not free and requires resources that could be used to do other things, not to mention some foresight. If the Axis has prepared to counter it, and the UK has noticed it early enough, nothing stops the UK from swapping to another approach.
The irony is that in my current game as the UK, I'm not as invested in strategic bombing as I usually am. I have been busy doing some other things with other types of planes. Then again, the Germans decided to build 700 STR before the war even started in 1939. We've never really seen such a heavy investment in STR by Germany in our MP group. The ultimate goal of the Axis is not immediately clear to me (and they haven't said why they are doing this), but I've had to adjust to changing conditions. Luckily, Fighter Command has kept British skies relatively clear. Despite a year of bombing, we've sustained only minor damage at the cost of a significant number of German bombers. Where this goes is anyone's guess. Another attempt at Sea Lion while delaying Barbarossa? (They already tried to invade me at home once, but the Canadians basically crushed the two panzer divisions that made it ashore; the rest of the Home Guard didn't even make it to the fighting.) Strategic bombers hitting the Soviet airfields on day 1 of Barbarossa? Long range bombing of Singapore? Who knows with the players running the Axis this time. Maybe they plan to use strategic bombers to drop Nazgul on Stalingrad.
But what keeps being hammered home to all of us in our MP group is that there are very few "safe" strategies. I've seen Germany win with light tanks. I've seen the Axis leveled to the ground with strategic bombing. I've seen the Axis launch their own Torch and reclaim North Africa and contest the Suez after Rome fell to the Allies. I've see a successful invasion of Ireland. I've seen a successful Soviet invasion of Denmark on day 1 of Barbarossa. I've seen multiple failed attempts at Sea Lion (no successful ones yet, but they happen often enough that no UK player in our group feels safe at home). I've seen the Italians lose in Libya in two months. I've seen the Italians take the Suez in two months. I've seen MOT/SPART divisions win in North Africa. I've seen IJA divisions get surrounded and destroyed by Chinese forces during a landing.
I rarely feel confident of claiming anything is useless in MP. Strategic bombers certainly are not.
If we were to agree on one element that is actually useless in MP (unless you are fond of rookie bashing), it would be paratroops. We have yet to see a single person invest in any of them. Their biggest contribution is that none of us trusts the others enough to assume there will be zero of them, so some key rear areas get a small garrison just in case.
Interesting. I've been planning a game with me as Germany vs two of my friends (Soviet and UK), and have been wondering about using paratroopers to help secure North Africa and the various islands in the Mediterranean. Primarily because Italy will be AI, so I can't plan around the Regia Marina reliably securing sea zones for me to launch naval invasions (sort of historical, actually). My hope was to take the islands as quickly as possible with paratroopers, and have divisions stationed in North Africa to attack as soon as I go for the Benelux. My hope is to get into a good position in the Med. while everyone is distracted by the fall of France.
I also usually create Vichy so that their navy can help Italy in the Mediterranean a little, and I've also considered building a small naval force to deploy in the Med. if I need to ship any divisions around in the Med. I was thinking maybe a light cruiser, some destroyers and old subs. Possibly a heavy cruiser too.
It's quite costly in terms of XP to design a decent paratroop division though. Do you really find them completely useless, even if one were using them with Kurt Student (-50% out of supply)?
Problem is that they drop at ~10% org so if they drop into combat they quickly die, and since you can't drop with proper artillery, tanks or get planning bonus when preparing they really suck at attacking anything... Also since they will be cut off from supply they will move at 1km/h after dropping, so they can't be used to secure much terrain or advance either.
The only use I can see Paratroopers have in a MP game is grabbing undefended stuff behind enemy lines and holding/defending it long enough for proper attack divisions to complete the encirclement on the flanks.
@Secret Master
You have a point, of the fact that the STR are never useless.
They can be used even as Germany to bomb forts, and have an easier BRK trough the maginot line or the line behind belgium.
They can be used in a province to destroy naval fortress, and have an easier invasion and ecc..ecc..
As you have pointed out, they can be used for industry bombing run, or even to destroy fighters on the airbase ( if they airbase that gets bombed as airplanes inside.
But, your test are unrealistic. They prove a point, but they are unrealistic
You run your test with 200 fighters, against 1000 strategic bombers. It's 200*26 ( If fighters T2 are considered) vs 62*1000 =
It's 5.200 vs 62.000
Try to make a 2385 INT ( only 2000 can enter in combat tho) vs 1000STR
The damage that they do will be WAY MORE, the ratio of the lost, way less and the 1000 STR will just be ineffective. Totally Ineffective
At the same time, Germany as way more the upperhand industrial talking, Germany can easily deploy the double the amount of what the UK does, because Germany as simply double the factory of what the UK has.
You can maybe have the point that it's way more difficult for Germany, to deploy airplanes in differents industry for lack of range, meanwhile its' preatty easy for UK to bomb a zone, and then bomb another one in matter of days. But at the same time, if 1000 STR are going to be produced from UK, I would expect only that to bee seen.
And it's way easier to intercept 500STR than 1000.
Also INT are way more easily to replace and give a combat bonus to the troops on land, STR don't, at least they don't directly.
There are costrunction docrtines that can make you easily repair at twice the speed for free, and reduce of half the cost of the bombing runs.
You have a point, of the fact that the STR are never useless.
They can be used even as Germany to bomb forts, and have an easier BRK trough the maginot line or the line behind belgium.
They can be used in a province to destroy naval fortress, and have an easier invasion and ecc..ecc..
As you have pointed out, they can be used for industry bombing run, or even to destroy fighters on the airbase ( if they airbase that gets bombed as airplanes inside.
But, your test are unrealistic. They prove a point, but they are unrealistic
You run your test with 200 fighters, against 1000 strategic bombers. It's 200*26 ( If fighters T2 are considered) vs 62*1000 =
It's 5.200 vs 62.000
Try to make a 2385 INT ( only 2000 can enter in combat tho) vs 1000STR
The damage that they do will be WAY MORE, the ratio of the lost, way less and the 1000 STR will just be ineffective. Totally Ineffective
At the same time, Germany as way more the upperhand industrial talking, Germany can easily deploy the double the amount of what the UK does, because Germany as simply double the factory of what the UK has.
You can maybe have the point that it's way more difficult for Germany, to deploy airplanes in differents industry for lack of range, meanwhile its' preatty easy for UK to bomb a zone, and then bomb another one in matter of days. But at the same time, if 1000 STR are going to be produced from UK, I would expect only that to bee seen.
And it's way easier to intercept 500STR than 1000.
Also INT are way more easily to replace and give a combat bonus to the troops on land, STR don't, at least they don't directly.
There are costrunction docrtines that can make you easily repair at twice the speed for free, and reduce of half the cost of the bombing runs.
This is true, good points. That is sort of how I was thinking of using them. For example dropping them in a few provinces around the Suez area as I'm pushing from Italy's territory in North Africa, in the hope that they can hold out long enough for me to encircle or overrun the retreating divisions from El Alamein. Something like that.
And for the islands in the Med. they might be useful to land, regain their org, and possibly push out any cheap garrison divisions my UK friend might have on the ports (I'm not thinking Malta, but those other islands in the Eastern Med.)
As far as I am aware Strategic bombers can give equal combat bonus to troops on land ( per plane ) since all airplanes running active missions provide air superiority, as long as they do missions over the same airzone.
And the test with 200 vs 1000 was not done to test feasibility, it was done in response to SpeedKatMcNastys claims that 200 fighters is enough to disrupt 1000 strategic bombers earlier in the thread.
They are useful in a couple roles. You can drop them on an island while naval invading to open up more combat width. If you're doing DDay, you can drop them around the port to prevent reinforcement of that port. You can drop them behind enemy lines to cut off supply in certain bottleneck areas. You can insta peace out nation's like Norway, Sweden or Turkey by paradroping on their cities, this can save you some time.
A couple of suggestions. Use them in two width formations and drop 20 at a time, this way you can maximize org. Be prepared for them all to die.
You miss the point entirely. It was 200 fighters because another poster claimed that 200 fighters in every zone would more or less shut down strategic bombing efforts completely, thereby rendering the bombers useless and something that it had been a mistake to build or research at all.
It was not meant as a fair test of industry spent on aircraft. It was to disprove a misleading and erroneous claim.
I imagine what the strat bombers will do when the new update release
I remain unconvinced. Not only with my personal experience in an actual match, but due to extensive testing for my mod on this very issue.
A couple of factors remain untested (and I'll test them with screenshots once my motherboard arrives tomorrow). The allies won't have radar over most of Europe after Malta and Africa falls (which it will because the axis will have a significantly larger airforce), so how do bombers compare with having no radar coverage with the axis having max? What about adding engine 5 and the manufacturer to the fighters? What about testing bombers vs 200 1940 Hfighters with engine 5?