Strat bomber whack-a-mole -> what to do?

[sekelsenmat]

Hello,

I started a game as Germany on veteran, took over Poland, now I'm preparing to invade France, but, but, but .... the bomber whack-a-mole is killing me. I can't focus on the big picture if I need to constantly monitor the airzones to find where the british bombers are attacking this week....

This is not a thread about how Paradox could fix this, there are already plenty of those.

What I wanted to know is what other players do about it in a historical gameplay (so no early Sea Lion early which obviously will cause them to no longer have range to strat bomb)?

You just let them bomb and ignore it? You pause every 10 days and move the fighters?

I really don't have enough fighters/heavies to make a big dent in a stack of 600 bombers without concentrating them. Just leaving 200 fighters in every airzone (and they can target so many zones, even Poland) doesn't kill enough bombers....

thanks,

 

[bitmode]

STR_BOMB_MIN_ENEMY_FIGHTERS_IN_AREA = 300, -- If amount of enemy fighters is higher than this mission won't perform

Put >300 fighters on intercept in each region and you're golden.

 

[sekelsenmat]

Put >300 fighters on intercept in each region and you're golden.

wow, thanks so much! You saved the game for me

I had assumed it would dynamically compare the number of fighters and bombers....

 

[Vin55]

Put 300 in the Western 2 tiles, 200 over Berlin a hundred over the eastern tiles, you can then Concentrate the air over France, Cas over the nothern part and then sealion the english out of existence, withouth them the game is then pretty easy, if you dont attack too many others, because then you have Canadians allies they suck.

 

[RELee]

Put >300 fighters on intercept in each region and you're golden.

Ah! So there is a number.

 

[Bolshevik-]

Usually if the AI puts 150 bombers over a region it won't do any damage and can be ignored. If its 400+ it might do some damage. Whats more annoying though is having to deal with 2,000 strat bombers in multiplayer over an air zone. 300 fighters per air zone won't be enough and you constantly have to make sure your 2-3k fighters are over the correct air zone getting bombed by the 2k strat bombers or risk losing half your industry in a region if you're too slow to react. Fortunately Germany only has 3 main air zones to worry about. It would still be nice if you could get green air over the English Channel and the North Sea and not have to worry about strat bombers being able to fly over to bomb your industry. If Paradox could implement this change that's been suggested multiple times before it would be very nice.

 

[Cavalry]

I really don't have enough fighters/heavies to make a big dent in a stack of 600 bombers without concentrating them. Just leaving 200 fighters in every airzone (and they can target so many zones, even Poland) doesn't kill enough bombers....

Don't need to be absolute winning, disrupt them is enough.

 

[ep1c_fail]

Put >300 fighters on intercept in each region and you're golden.

The problem, of course, is that you tie up at least 900 fighters defending core territory which would be better used fighting the RAF/French Air Force.

 

[Eisscrat]

In my single player games i invade benelux and france right after killing poland. This only take 1-2 weeks. So in this timeframe i can endure the british bombers strat bombing my economy. After this they sit on their island and cant escort the bombers any more. Still they beam around and didnt get slaughtered by the luftwaffe like at operation double strike but you can contain it.

 

[Anaraxes]

The problem, of course, is that you tie up at least 900 fighters defending core territory which would be better used fighting the RAF/French Air Force.

Which is, of course, part of the value of just having strat bombers. It's not just the damage they do, it's the threat that comes from the damage they can potentially do, which causes the enemy to divert resources to defending against them.

This point is of course true for all military assets. It's pretty much the core of the "Fleet in Being" concept -- having a navy in existence means the enemy has to worry about what it might do, divert production into anti-naval assets like NAV or ASW ships, or your own navy, all of which IC could be used in some other role to concentrate on one particular enemy point.

Making those grand strategic decisions as to where to apply your resources, and what X to give up so that you can do Y better, is the main point of a grand strategic game. If there were a simple answer, just check the box and ignore the enemy airforce, you might as well not even have them in the game.

One of the resources you have to decide how to allocate is your own attention. The game speed affects how much you effectively have of that. The OP's comment implying that pausing the game every 10 days is odd and ridiculous seems to indicate he likes to play on high speed and just watch everything flow. (My own habit makes me think the notion of letting the game run for 10 days straight without pausing is weird. To each their own.)

If pausing is a burden, then it's hard to reallocate fighters to chase bombers manually, and so some players will wish for some sort of automated solution. In real life, of course, the bombers did hit shift areas of targets, partly just to keep the enemy guessing. And the Luftwaffe didn't instantaneously redeploy every squadron to the current attack -- even though they had dozens of staff officers, including some in each squadron, just to concentrate on that particular question. Even with unlimited resources of attention (comparing one player to the Luftwaffe command staff), defensive aircraft didn't redeploy to different airbases and each intercept every attack. So, a proposed mechanism to automate that process needs some way to reflect the real logistical difficulties and disruption changing airbases constantly would cause. Most likely, that would turn into some sort of post-relocation efficiency penalty for fighters, much like the one strat bombers already have.

 

[ep1c_fail]

Which is, of course, part of the value of just having strat bombers. It's not just the damage they do, it's the threat that comes from the damage they can potentially do, which causes the enemy to divert resources to defending against them.

This point is of course true for all military assets. It's pretty much the core of the "Fleet in Being" concept -- having a navy in existence means the enemy has to worry about what it might do, divert production into anti-naval assets like NAV or ASW ships, or your own navy, all of which IC could be used in some other role to concentrate on one particular enemy point.

Making those grand strategic decisions as to where to apply your resources, and what X to give up so that you can do Y better, is the main point of a grand strategic game. If there were a simple answer, just check the box and ignore the enemy airforce, you might as well not even have them in the game.

Except that in real life, fighters would be able to intercept bombers en route instead of having to wait until they reached their target region (in this case air-zone) before engaging.

One of the resources you have to decide how to allocate is your own attention. The game speed affects how much you effectively have of that. The OP's comment implying that pausing the game every 10 days is odd and ridiculous seems to indicate he likes to play on high speed and just watch everything flow. (My own habit makes me think the notion of letting the game run for 10 days straight without pausing is weird. To each their own.)

If pausing is a burden, then it's hard to reallocate fighters to chase bombers manually, and so some players will wish for some sort of automated solution. In real life, of course, the bombers did hit shift areas of targets, partly just to keep the enemy guessing. And the Luftwaffe didn't instantaneously redeploy every squadron to the current attack -- even though they had dozens of staff officers, including some in each squadron, just to concentrate on that particular question. Even with unlimited resources of attention (comparing one player to the Luftwaffe command staff), defensive aircraft didn't redeploy to different airbases and each intercept every attack. So, a proposed mechanism to automate that process needs some way to reflect the real logistical difficulties and disruption changing airbases constantly would cause. Most likely, that would turn into some sort of post-relocation efficiency penalty for fighters, much like the one strat bombers already have.

There is no thought involved in incessantly having to move air wings from one zone to another to counteract an automated response. You say that the "Luftwaffe didn't instantaneously redeploy every squadron to the current attack", but neither did the RAF have the clairvoyance to instantaneously abandon, and then reformulate, its bombing strategies the moment they were resisted. On the contrary, Bomber Command doggedly endured atrociously high casualties (~45% KIA) during its air raid campaign.