What's the current take on strategic bombers and maritime patrol craft?

[Husein]

With 100 IC per plane it seems insane to build any as anyone but US. But is that really the case? Am I missing something? Can they be useful for Britain, Germans or Soviets? How do you even build them? Just load up as many bombs as you can or one-two bomb bays then rest on range, defence and electronics?

 

[marcelo r. r.]

Don't need defenses, unless u have plans to have activity on places like english channel.
Also the default defense of frame for bombers is already high(normally 12+, 15+, 18+)

 

[PorkchopSandwiches247]

I once did a stupid game as Britain where I focused entirely on my airforce and left my land army barebones…basically, called Germany’s bluff on Czech, and when I entered the war on their side, just obliterated their airforce and bombed their mils civs and airports to dirt. Actually worked pretty well, Germany cant really break Czech’s forts unless they have stupid amounts of CAS damage, which they cant reliably do if youre shooting them out of the sky and theyre dedicating a chunk of their own fighters to stopping your bombers. I did get lucky that the democratic civil war event happened though.

This was pre plane designer so I dont have any builds, but I would guess that maxing out bombing stats, then air attack stats, then air defense stats in that order would probably be the most beneficial. Could be wrong though, sometimes the math is messy.

 

[Gran Strategist]

I always use maritime patrol aircraft as Britain, US and Japan and try to start building them reasonably early. They are best used for the airgaps in the Pacific and Atlantic (as they were used in real life) where smaller aircraft can't reach as they don't have the range and even ships can have difficulty due to naval bases being far away.
When i play as Germany i also build them late game after taking Russia to help gain naval supremacy for invading the US.

I don't put defenses on them as they are best used in regions where fighters don't have the range and thus will only encounter fighters if they attack aircraft carriers so i put one flying boat module on them and then i load them up with extended range modules.

I use smaller naval bombers for coastal regions and these are usually protected by dedicated fighters if the air space is contested.


I only tend to bother investing in strategic bombers if i think i am actually going to use nukes and then i only tend to build them late game when i usually have spare factories anyway and have more factories than i have things to build with them.