Strategic Bombing - overpowered?

[Alex_brunius]

You do not seem to understand. The strat bombers will destroy ALL OF THE AIR BASES

No they won't. Enough fighters disrupt 95% of the damage the bomber do. Add on top of it 80% damage reduction from AA and dispersed industry, and the fact that you have fighters based in 5 different airzones.

If the enemy split up their bombers to go after 5 different airzones you shoot down even more of them...

I am pretty convinced that the lack of any supply upkeep is the main reason why unit numbers tend to end up inflated to silly numbers as the game goes on. We'd probably need some sort of basic attrition (around 2-5% a month) to fix that.

Air losses are also pretty low ( both from accidents and actual combat ) allowing for silly accumulation of 10k planes . Several MP mods boost them by x2 or x3.

And this is multiplayer You can not pause when ur airbases get bombed we play speed 4 till war, and speed 3 till the end. No pausing. 1min of bad micro over an 8hr game vrs strats? and you will lose to many airbases, to ever be able to recover. Like i said, WE KNOW HOW IT WORKS. Why would you argue? If you think different, like i said, come on out and show me how wrong i am.

In my Multiplayer groups we always play speed 1 after Barbarossa and in some of them even with pauses. So that might be one reason why our experience differ so greatly.

 

[Skritshell]

Interesting. Not sure if something was changed in our internal build, but when I tested StratBombing last time, a simple 1:1 ratio for defender was enough to achieve a 80-95% interception ratio.

Also, it sounds more like the issue is less about STR being overpowered, and more about the fact that it is too easy to concentrate massive amounts of airplanes in a single air region, aplified by the fact that STRA has the highest default range of all the planes.

I am pretty convinced that the lack of any supply upkeep is the main reason why unit numbers tend to end up inflated to silly numbers as the game goes on. We'd probably need some sort of basic attrition (around 2-5% a month) to fix that.


Given that this seems like pretty much a best-case scenario for the bombers, I'd say that the result is actually pretty okay.
Those AAA guns will eventually auto-repair, so if there had been a decent number of FGT on Interception duty, that could have been a much longer, and much more bloody struggle.

2-5% attrition on strats a month will not fix it. Problem is the run away loss of airbases. What was it Baldwin said? "the bomber always gets through" we have had games were 4k axis strats will level every airbases east of the urals in 2-3 months. And this is against soviets with thousands of heavy fighters and and fighter 3s.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

[...] Air losses are also pretty low ( both from accidents and actual combat ) allowing for silly accumulation of 10k planes . Several MP mods boost them by x2 or x3. [...]

I actually like the lower (than original vanilla) losses for air combat, but...

2-5% attrition on strats a month will not fix it. Problem is the run away loss of airbases.

...on the other hand, it's indeed a problem if you can produce like 30 planes a day, thanks to the silly amount of Gearing and Output modifiers and this happens.

 

[yamato2cz]

You just made the point for me. We play Multiplayer competitively(or to the extent u can in hoi) and we constantly push for the biggest advantage possible. We try everything, we read what gamefiles we can find, we scour the wiki. We search for every little advantage we can find, becasue in multiplayer the little things matter. So not to be offensive, but taking all of this into account, knowing that we play this game every day of every week 1-2 full length games a day. And all of us not just one or 2 say that strat bombers are broken and not balanced. Why would you try and argue we are those that are the best at this game. Not to b to cocky but this is what we do, literally all day, every day. If they could be countered by now someone would have found it. You say biuld aa? biuld enough aa to counter the strats(witch u never can) and u will not have enough mills to make planes to shoot them down. Build a lot of heavy fighters? You do not have enough light fighters and cas to win the air war. Their is no way to do it. I have played the soviets made, 4k heavy fighter 2s, and 10k fighters 3s. Put them ALL in an air region with 8k axis fighter 3s and 4k axis strat bombers. They blew up every airbase in eastern poland. then they moved to Ukraine, then Belarus then Baltic, then northern front, and so on and so forth. It is uncounterable. Simple as that. Dont believe me show up and we will prove it.

And yes I had full air doctrine right side.

And i am modder. i know every bit of modable code. I have 500 hours on one single mod and 2k hours on modding Hoi3 and 4 together. i know every mechanic, every stupid define and what it does. dont use "hurr durr i have x hours on game" when it comes to mechanics of the game. if allies spend 300k IC on strategic bombers, you must spend as much IC on countering them. IF you dont use both mechanics to counter strategic bombers to defeat them, dont call them unbalanced. Axis in real life had massive issues with bombers and they were somehow prepared to face them. yes there is issue when it comes to missions, like being able to change them every day, or that state AA is really underpowered. but that does not mean that strats have to be nerfed or banned.

You MUST spend horrible amount of IC to defend against them. thats the whole point if it. thats why 50% of military output of UK aimed to disrupt axis air campaign. and dont use fucking heavy fighters, they suck ass. Use fighters and land AAs and give them guns and engines. make 250 planes strong fighter wings or even less, you need as much wings to execute mission as possible, because mechanics.

I explained what is best defense against bombers. yes, it will cost you. 15k industrial IC per state + whatever military IC you throw at it via fighters. but then it will be IC wise effective.

 

[Alex_brunius]

2-5% attrition on strats a month will not fix it. Problem is the run away loss of airbases.

So it could be fixed by a simple script change reducing damage airbases take then? ( Pretty sure AA already has it ).

In a slower pace games airbases isn't a huge issue since you can micro focus repairs on them and such things ( and they are dirt cheap so they repair a lvl in 2-4 days ), but I can imagine that's not possible in speed 3-4 games.

I actually like the lower (than vanilla) losses for air combat.
On the other hand, it's indeed a problem if you can produce like 30 FGT a day, thanks to the silly amount of Gearing and Output modifiers...

Disagree. The gearing and output are not silly, they are historical. It's the losses that are silly ( compared to history ). Especially accidents are very low and can be ignored 99% of the time.

 

[Skritshell]

No they won't. Enough fighters disrupt 95% of the damage the bomber do. Add on top of it 80% damage reduction from AA and dispersed industry, and the fact that you have fighters based in 5 different airzones.

If the enemy split up their bombers to go after 5 different airzones you shoot down even more of them...



Air losses are also pretty low ( both from accidents and actual combat ) allowing for silly accumulation of 10k planes . Several MP mods boost them by x2 or x3.



In my Multiplayer groups we always play speed 1 after Barbarossa and in some of them even with pauses. So that might be one reason why our experience differ so greatly.

And when they are escorted with doctrine? interception is more like 50 or 60. and its a simple fix. move the strats insatly to the air region next to wear the thousands of enemy fighters are flying. Blow up all the airbases their. make them chase you. You have the initiative and you will win. The airbases will dry up.

 

[Skritshell]

And i am modder. i know every bit of modable code. I have 500 hours on one single mod and 2k hours on modding Hoi3 and 4 together. i know every mechanic, every stupid define and what it does. dont use "hurr durr i have x hours on game" when it comes to mechanics of the game. if allies spend 300k IC on strategic bombers, you must spend as much IC on countering them. IF you dont use both mechanics to counter strategic bombers to defeat them, dont call them unbalanced. Axis in real life had massive issues with bombers bombers and they were somehow prepared to face them. yes there is issue when it comes to missions, like being able to change them every day, or that state AA is really underpowered. but that does not mean that strats have to be nerfed or banned.

You MUST spend horrible amount of IC to defend against them. thats the whole point if it. thats why 50% of military output of UK aimed to disrupt axis air campaign. and dont use fucking heavy fighters, they suck ass. Use fighters and land AAs and give them guns and engines. make 250 planes strong fighter wings or even less, you need as much wings to execute mission as possible, because mechanics.

I explained what is best defense against bombers. yes, it will cost you. 15k industrial IC per state + whatever military IC you throw at it via fighters. but then it will be IC wise effective.

Then show up and let us show you why you are wrong.

 

[Alex_brunius]

move the strats insatly to the air region next to wear the thousands of enemy fighters are flying. Blow up all the airbases their. make them chase you.

So we are back to the utterly stupid argument that it's the player that click fastest and most times that win the air war...

Meaning it's not the bombers themself that's OP, it's the air mechanics.

 

[Louella]

If your argument is that 4000 bombers are difficult to fight against when playing at the higher game speeds, and your fighters aren't covering an air zone from a different zone, then that's a very specific set of circumstances.

 

[yamato2cz]

Then show up and let us show you why you are wrong.

if you can show me, then you can write it down as well. this "come and we will show you" is redundant just as much as saying "strats are OP, ban them". You already shown issue. ability to change missions every day and ability to stuff unreal amount of planes in single air zone. both are problems of game mechanics, not strategic bombers and apply to all planes, not just strats.

remember stacks of dozens of bombers in hoi3? same issue.

 

[Skritshell]

So we are back to the utterly stupid argument that it's not the bombers in themself that are OP, it's the player that click fastest and most times that win the air war...

The micro is just an exstention of the unit. That is using the bombers effectivly using the built in game mechanics. Their is no way to cost effectly counter the strart bombing. If their is no cost effective counter to strat bombers then they are unbalanced and thus broken.

 

[Skritshell]

I actually like the lower (than original vanilla) losses for air combat, but...


...on the other hand, it's indeed a problem if you can produce like 30 planes a day, thanks to the silly amount of Gearing and Output modifiers and this happens.

30 planes a day on the axis is nothing. By mid 41 a good axis will be making 60+ fighter 3s a day

 

[Alex_brunius]

The micro is just an exstention of the unit. That is using the bombers effectivly using the built in game mechanics. Their is no way to cost effectly counter the strart bombing. If their is no cost effective counter to strat bombers then they are unbalanced and thus broken.

In speed 1 multiplayer games or games where you don't enjoy exploiting broken game mechanics ( like the instant swapping zones constantly to avoid interception ) they are very easy to counter, as I have shown multiple times.

I'm happy to play Germany in a MP game on speed 1 (while at war) and you can be UK and bomb me all day long. As long as you don't exploit and swap zones more often the once every 1-2 weeks I will slaughter those strats and their escort and you will be able to do very little damage with them.

 

[Fulmen]

Well I must say this is the first general forum thread where I see so many actual MP players. Usually it's just me against all the compstompers. Though admittedly the maturity of some of my "colleagues" leaves much to be desired.

You need to upgrade the range on the fighters to be able to use them effectively, especially when you have masses of them and the airfield capacity is the main limiting factor on using them. If you go for gun upgrade and range, you will have very low reliability, which means that if you constantly use them (as is the case againsts strats) you will just run out of planes due to accidents.

I used to believe this until recently, but never upgrading guns on LF was shown to me to be outdated pre-DoD meta. But then another recent test said what I previously believed: that guns against other LF only increase combat intensity and through the loss of reliability, your casualty ratio as well.

Now I'm no longer sure what to believe.

Regarding range though:

Yup, I can confirm all of this. In particular High efficiency planes against Low efficiency planes will even lose when detection is low for some reason. As I posted in another thread:

LOW efficiency + LOW detection > HIGH efficiency + LOW detection
LOW efficiency + HIGH detection < HIGH efficiency + HIGH detection

makes no sense at all.

So if I understand this bug/wonky mechanic correctly, without RADAR low efficiency (range) LF > high efficiency LF. Though of course in MP RADAR is often in play, but by no means always.

 

[Enigma1]

In speed 1 multiplayer games or games where you don't enjoy exploiting broken game mechanics ( like the instant swapping zones constantly to avoid interception ) they are very easy to counter, as I have shown multiple times.

Yep, it seems to me this is more a case of insane exploitative games, running at speeds that reduce HOI4 to nothing more than an arcade shoot em up experience, having problems with insane levels of strat bombers and an insane lack of counter measures due to insane speed levels.
While this can be described as multiplayer, it certainly isn't one that I am attracted to playing.

If I decided to build such insane levels of Strat bombers in our MP games, I wouldn't expect to be on the winning side.
Putting insane levels of IC in strats at the expense of everything else is...insane.

As Alex has pointed out (and Secret Master's testing shows), strat bombing can be effective, but can also be countered effectively with planning, diligence, and a few basic rules.

 

[Praetori]

Both axis and allies get bonues to fighter reasearch so 1944 fighters is reasonable not 1944 heavy fighters.

That's rather a balance with Tech-rushing and not STRAT bombers though. It's like tanks being broken because USSR can rush MBTs. Of course 1944 fighters will have both the range and every other advantage to cut 1939 HFs to pieces but that's an entirely different issue.

The main problem is the slippery-slope that STRAT advantage leads to (no matter which side has gained it). Once you have "won" the battle of IC in the air your number of serviceable aircraft will just increase while the oppositions will decrease. It's basically the same as with CAS, CAG/NAVs or anything else (but STRATs actually fly missions even when there's nothing else going on since there's always factories or INFRA to hit).

The point is that STRATs IMO isn't flawlessly OP (due to their high IC-cost). Enough defending aircraft and it'll be a net-loss for the strat attacker. The problem here is that there's no room for mistakes by the defender and the attacker can create a game of whack-a-mole for the defender by virtue of range-advantage until the defender slips (which is easy on higher game speeds) and the bombers get a few days unopposed.

 

[Alex_brunius]

I used to believe this until recently, but never upgrading guns on LF was shown to me to be outdated pre-DoD meta. But then another recent test said what I previously believed: that guns against other LF only increase combat intensity and through the loss of reliability, your casualty ratio as well.

Now I'm no longer sure what to believe.

I tested it very recently in this thread (yesterday) and the conclusion is that upgrading guns most of the time make your fighters neither better nor worse against enemy fighters. If you have fully upgraded engines already +5 guns too can make them slightly better vs someone that don't upgrade guns even.
( After taking additional losses from accidents into account )

It does make a huge difference vs bombers though.

 

[Louella]

30 planes a day on the axis is nothing. By mid 41 a good axis will be making 60+ fighter 3s a day

How many factories is this using in total ? 150 factories? More? Fewer?

 

[Praetori]

Interesting. Not sure if something was changed in our internal build, but when I tested StratBombing last time, a simple 1:1 ratio for defender was enough to achieve a 80-95% interception ratio.

Not with Escorts. The planes flying interception will be busy dealing with the escorts so you need to have an advantage to actually stop the bombers. If you just break-even you'll end up with results like those which have been displayed in the thread.

...on the other hand, it's indeed a problem if you can produce like 30 planes a day, thanks to the silly amount of Gearing and Output modifiers and this happens.

Production-numbers of aircraft in-game are way way below historical levels (even if the US for example builds nothing else) and yet there are some stuff that gets pretty broken instantly when you specialize and start churning out 40-50 planes per day (as the Allies or Axis) and the opposition doesn't.

The problem isn't really inte the gearing and production part of the game. It's a balance issue that means even 200 Jet-fighters won't slaughter even 1940 STRATs by the hundreds even when unescorted and will die horribly if the bombers are accompanied by even a small number of measly prop fighters. STRAT bombers with great superiority and thousands of roaming escorts leveling everything isn't the problem, the problem is how you end up in that situation as a defender.
Having 10-20k fighters sitting around for just home-defense (yes that's about what it takes) IS an issue for most players (a lot of the less experienced players don't build that many aircraft for all fronts combined).

 

[grandad1982]

Many of the opinions and the way they are expressed in this thread, as well as highlighting the completely unfun (imo) way 'serious' mp groups work, are a large part of what puts me off even wanting to try mp.