Night Bombing: Waste of Time?

[Q-Ball]

I feel like RAF Strategic Night Bombing is a borderline waste of time. Here are my observations:

--It makes sense in 1943 when you don't have enough escorts; Night Bombing does limit losses.
--However, it doesn't cause alot of damage, not as much as day bombing.
--Once you have enough escorts, you can accomplish alot more with the RAF Bombers on day missions; into France, for VWeps and whatnot, and into Germany. Once you have Mustangs in numbers, even the P-47D15 which can reach the Ruhr, seems like daylight is a better option

Meklore, my opponent as Germany, seems to have reached the same conclusion, as nights over Germany are very quiet in 1944. RAF Bombers are flying all day missions.

Tough to know how to balance; IRL, night bombing probably was not as effective as Bomber Harris and the RAF thought. I also feel like accuracy should be higher for MANPOWER than other items, but not sure how possible that is (since Night Bombing usually targeted Manpower)

I'm fine with the night figthers and flak and the stuff that happens in the air, but I think the advantages of switching the RAF to DAY outweight what you lose by taking them off the night shift. RAF Bombers have very large bombloads, and on DAY they can obliterate a target.

Thoughts?

I hope the right balance is found, as Night Bombing was an important part of the war

[JocMeister]

I stopped flying night missions after a couple of weeks into my first AI game. Not only are losses pretty close to that of flying at day but the damage is so low you are pretty much losing bombers for nothing.

I mean getting single digit damage equals 1-3 points of damage even to the biggest factories but I would still loose 60-80 bombers. Might as well lose 80-120 bombers and get 80-100% of the factory destroyed. And this was before the patch that made NFs more potent....

[Helpless]

I hope the right balance is found, as Night Bombing was an important part of the war

Yes, but historically daylight bombing was much more accurate. However manpower damage during daylight bombing is indeed looks smaller than it should be, at least in terms of the VP gain. Both can be tweaked even prior pending changes to EW.

[whoofe]

I agree - even against AI my night bombing is far far less effective than daytime bombing. most of the time its either complete miss or miniscule damage, with moderate bomber losses. and I recon the heck outta strategic targets.

I understand night bombing would be less accurate, but the gulf between daytime and nighttime seems so wide right now

[Helpless]

most of the time its either complete miss or miniscule damage

In fact current FOWed damage reporting is very misleading, especially if it is smaller in total. It can show nothing although it can be even double digit in real. It was explained in other thread somewhere. I'm planning to make it a bit more consistent.

[whoofe]

fair enuf - but if I wanted to test it, with FOW off, would strat recon still be needed for bombing accuracy if FOW was turned off?

"Both can be tweaked even prior pending changes to EW"

also - what does EW mean?

[Helpless]

fair enuf - but if I wanted to test it, with FOW off, would strat recon still be needed for bombing accuracy if FOW was turned off?

Start recon provides just better damage knowledge. It is assumed that location of factories is well known.

also - what does EW mean?

Electronic Warfare. Radars, detectors, jammers, etc..

[Smirfy]

Bit of a myth daylight bombing was more accurate, daylight bombing in clear skies might have been more accurate but when did that ever happen over Europe. The accuracy achieved by bomber command in the pre DDAY rail campaign exceeded that of Daylight bombing. From the return of Bomber command to Harris you had various different systems operating. 3 Group was using G-H, 5 Group was using specialist target marking and the rest pathfinders. I heard someone said these lack finesse, nonsense it was the most scientific offensive up to that point in history, target marking and planned destruction became an art form, damage were 600 bombers were required for one target a year before 200 bombers now were doing it. Not to be macabre but Harris were not bombing specifics like morale, houses, factories, manpower etc he was bombing an "area" to cause cumalitive dislocation. "Area" should be a target in game and everything in that "area" should recieve damage depending on the effectiveness of the raid. As it stands precision mechanics are being applied to "area" bombing so you have every chance of a Nuremburg but little of a Hamburg

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: Helpless

most of the time its either complete miss or miniscule damage

In fact current FOWed damage reporting is very misleading, especially if it is smaller in total. It can show nothing although it can be even double digit in real. It was explained in other thread somewhere. I'm planning to make it a bit more consistent.

Makes sense, but being on the receiving end, night bombing is much less effective. Day bombing is a better use of Bomber Command resources.

I don't know what the solution is, but I foresee most players abandoning night bombing in 1944. This will force the German player to disband NF units for fighter pilot replacements.

[Helpless]

So far it looks as problem with navigation code, when OBOE/H2S navigation doesn't work the way it should. New beta patch should have it fixed.

[HMSWarspite]

Hey, Smirfy... this may be a first, but I think I agree with you! I would suggest that you dont need a specific 'area' target though. What is Manpower but an area target? You aren't aiming for air raid shelters, you are aiming for the city. Thus I think anything else in the city should be eligible for damage in proportion to the manpower damage done. Not 1:1, since factories tend to be a little apart from housing (if only due to things like railway sidings, raw material warehouses etc. Also some factories 'in' a city are actually outside it. A classic example I know well is the Bristol Aircraft factory in ...Bristol ([&:]). It is actually on the northern edge of the city, and some 5 miles away from the main railyards, city centre etc. A Manpower raid on Bristol would have to be absolutely enormous, or very inaccurate to damage it (even by BC standards). Thus maybe at the end of a raid, if random100<manpower_damage(this raid)/2 then there should be a chance of a bonus hit on a factory. Say a raid does 10% manpower then there would be a 5% chance of one or more factories being hit. If you get a firestorm type effect (60 or 80% manpower) you should get 30-40%. The amount of the hit could be based on a bombload, or (small) percentage of the total (absolute) damage done that raid (to avoid a big factory in a small MP town getting hit too much...)

[Q-Ball]

ORIGINAL: Helpless

So far it looks as problem with navigation code, when OBOE/H2S navigation doesn't work the way it should. New beta patch should have it fixed.

Great!

I do tend to agree with other posters that PRECISION bombing of industrial targets should not be very effective at night. I do think indescriminate bombing of MANPOWER should be effective; a City is a big target. This would also model what Bomber Command focused on: The whole "de-housing" campaign, which targeted residential areas mostly.

[ParaB]

When testing the air war I found that GP bombs on average did ~ 30% more damage than incendiaries.

[Belphegor]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

I stopped flying night missions after a couple of weeks into my first AI game. Not only are losses pretty close to that of flying at day but the damage is so low you are pretty much losing bombers for nothing.

I mean getting single digit damage equals 1-3 points of damage even to the biggest factories but I would still loose 60-80 bombers. Might as well lose 80-120 bombers and get 80-100% of the factory destroyed. And this was before the patch that made NFs more potent....

I realize this is one example counter to yours (and that nav was fixed in the next beta) but I disagree that night bombing losses now have to be severe or damage low. pic is game vs Meklore in Oct. 43

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: Belphegor
I realize this is one example counter to yours (and that nav was fixed in the next beta) but I disagree that night bombing losses now have to be severe or damage low. pic is game vs Meklore in Oct. 43

Indeed that is unusual low losses. Personally I have never seen such low losses. Then again I stopped using night attacks a long time ago. But as far as I can tell the only difference between now and then is that NFs are better. So this might very well just an freak occurrence. [:)]

If losses like that was the norm I might consider switching to night attacks once every 4-5 weeks though just to let some pressure off the bombers pools.

[Belphegor]

I didn't take screenshots the next turn, but basically the same. I've split bomber command between Essen and Hamburg (and hit both with the 8th as well). Hamburg nicely burning. Essen well on the way.

Too many possible variables to say why my losses are so reasonable. Not escorting much.

[Helpless]

I didn't take screenshots the next turn, but basically the same. I've split bomber command between Essen and Hamburg (and hit both with the 8th as well). Hamburg nicely burning. Essen well on the way.

What is the version you play?

[Belphegor]

.21 beta

[wokelly]

ORIGINAL: Belphegor

.21 beta

In my .21 beta game, I find that night fighters (ALL of them) reduce Bomber Commands loss rate to like 1% of sorties. Also, ditching the incendiaries for manually added HE loads is FAR more effective against manpower (or at least the air summary page makes it look that way). I find BC, specifically hitting the same town for a week (because 1% loss rates mean I can use BC every night), at night with NF escorts, using HE bombs, targeting manpower/resources/HI at max levels produce good results.