B-17 supremacy

[mike scholl 1]

btbw This whole thread resulted from you doing something incredibly foolish (docking your carriers at Numea) and having your opponant (I'm guessing the AI) make you pay for it. The B-17's involved got about 6% hits on stationary targets from 13,000 feet. Hardly an unlikely result. You need to stop whining, suck it up, and move on. It's a war..., "stuff" happens!

[btbw]

ORIGINAL: mike scholl 1

btbw This whole thread resulted from you doing something incredibly foolish (docking your carriers at Numea) and having your opponant (I'm guessing the AI) make you pay for it. The B-17's involved got about 6% hits on stationary targets from 13,000 feet. Hardly an unlikely result. You need to stop whining, suck it up, and move on. It's a war..., "stuff" happens!

Thank you for your brilliant post here! But i spit on carriers or not. I got same result with BB, CA, CL. Any top ships in port attacked with same manner - heavy bombers attack separate targets and only top ships with high accuracy. Absolutely ahistorical and non-real.
Another AFB detected...

[Sardaukar]

What Mike just said...and I am only going to comment this from now on:

[denisonh]

Spot on. Being an stupid is not a crime, but sharing it with the world is somewhat shameful.

ORIGINAL: Sardaukar

What Mike just said...and I am only going to comment this from now on:

[pompack]

The comments in this thread are so funny that I am tempted to remove the green button on the OP. But not enough to do it [:D]

[Misconduct]

Going to leave this here for the troll.

[PaxMondo]

ORIGINAL: pompack

The comments in this thread are so funny that I am tempted to remove the green button on the OP. But not enough to do it [:D]

+1

It is fun reading just the other comments though! I can create my own version of the OP's. Mine are MUCH better!

"Whine Whine Whine. Whine Whine Whine. See how they run. See how they run."

<you can add the tune here ...>

My 2yo favorite song right now. [:D]

[wildweasel0585]

you've hit the nail on the head Pompack. [:D]

[jeffk3510]

Its better to be an idiot and remain silent, than open your mouth and prove it.

[Grfin Zeppelin]

2 hits - SS and MSW, complete disaster area target Naval Yard, no one hits in biggest and best target AS in port - in Real Life
8 hits in best targets, 2 hits in port - WITP AE

[USSAmerica]

ORIGINAL: denisonh

Spot on. Being an stupid is not a crime, but sharing it with the world is somewhat shameful.

Denisonh, I think I may need to steal that line and add it to my signature! [&o][&o][&o][:D]

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: jeffk3510

Its better to be an idiot and remain silent, than open your mouth and prove it.

priceless!....and that's all I'm gonna say

[YankeeAirRat]

Just because I am a glutton for punishment.[:D]

This is what a port/airbase look like from 10k+ in altitude and if you can imagine a stream of bombers going after the airfield and the port at the same time not all the bombs are going to land
So here is Boston Harbor and Logan International from about 18k AGL


and here is Halifax, Nova Scotia from a satelite view

[Jaroen]

@btbw

How do you read such combat reports?
You do understand your opponent is using the so-called 'port attack', right?
The game routine for handling such an event is probably very much like YankeeAirRat describes. Do you agree?
Even though your combat report shows 'individual waves' it still is one full port attack. And apparently that routine favours targetting major combat ships over merchant shipping. Which is probably the same targetting routine running that first strike on Pearl Harbor! Do you think that routine differentiates between plane types attacking? I do not.

From your arguments it appears like you don't agree with this target acquisition and its effectiveness.
What sources do you have available on saying that 4e bombers couldn't hit small/medium targets?

Because from your answers it seems you only think of those mass bombing raids over Europe where it was established by the allies that hitting one specific factory was almost impossible. Which of course was true, generally speaking. You also know high quality crews actually could do just that! Not only the famous dam busters (617 suadron) but all those path finder squadrons as well. All these crews were capable of hitting individual targets very accurately (lets say 25% hit rate, near misses do count as Tirpitz attacks show!). And these crews really were not rare. So your 'general' view that 4e bombers were only 'area' hitting is false!

So the question now would be if those allied crews in the South-West Pacific were capable of similar performance. Or actually, if they were capable of being about half as good as those expert crews over Europe. All they had to be capable of was hitting one specific port. Not exactly a small target. Everything in small/medium port would be toast when 10+ bombers actually hit their target (= 40+ bombs). In that sense you were lucky with the presented results. Your merchant shipping somehow escaped their fate. They should have been hit just as well!? Well, from history we know allied bombing of ports in the South-West Pacific theatre really was that accurate. Because of it the Japanese turned to the usage of small, easy replaced barges to continue some semblance of sea (actually coastal) traffic. Rabaul was 'relatively' safe because it was immensily protected with forts, AAA, warning systems and air defense. Other ports were untenable (Lae, Finschaven, Buna and others on New Guinea and the Solomon Islands).

You might however question the launch of one full bomber group (or something close) to get to Noumea. In real life it was nearly impossible to operate those bombers in large groups until 1944. But that's how the game runs. Both sides profit in the same way.

Now it is clear you're not easily convinced. So check:
http://www.kensmen.com/index.html - an excellent source on the most prominent bomber group in the SW Pacific.
http://www.pacificwrecks.com/ - for performance and effectiveness of allied bombing in the SW Pacific.
There's more on individual 4e bombers attacking individual targets in the Pacific. I added a few links on a thread about skip bombing:
tm.asp?m=2952059&mpage=2&key=skip%2Cbombing (post nr. 50)

Enjoy the game and all its quirks.

[Wirraway_Ace]

ORIGINAL: Puhis

In this game level bomber is a level bomber regardless of plane size or number of engines. You do have a valid point, game should handle different type of bombers better. Tactical bombers are pretty much useless in historical close support role, because they are just bombers with small bombload. Heavy bombers are overpowered because they have biggest bombload without most of the real life drawbacks.

But it's not a bug, it's limitation of the game engine. They are not going to change the game engine.

For what is is worth, I agree with Puhis that btbw may have a valid point about how 4Es are modelled vs smaller level bombers....

However, it is a percieved limitation of the game engine that I can very much live with. The game does generally an excellent job of rewarding good tactics, operational art, logistical planning and strategy across an entire theatre. Do not have high value ships in port within range of a major enemy airbase seems like a valid lesson of which the game should remind us.

mike

[mdiehl]

Can you reveal how B-17 can have same bomb accuracy like Helldiver?

It was the nature of B-17s that from 15K feet they could hit almost any stationary target the size of a ship with at least one bomb. It happened on many occasions with US and UK level bomber attacks during the real war. IMO, if there is an "inaccuracy" in your result it's probably that you took LESS damage than the IJN would have in the real war had they done anything that profoundly suicidal with their CVs.

The error was in porting them within range of enemy bombers. Your result was not a "game flaw" it was a "player flaw."

[Empire101]

ORIGINAL: Misconduct



Going to leave this here for the troll.

Priceless!! [:D]

[VMF 214]

if I may add my $.02.....I think what the OP is saying is that there was 11 separate attacks with 1-6 planes in each attack. I believe he thinks it should be like in Europe 1 attack with all planes in the attack....in effect carpet bombing not wave after wave of small groups. Now I am no expert at this game and leave that to you fine people but is that how the game uses a mass amount of level bombers? Did they in fact in the Pacific use smaller plane runs rather then the big formations like in the European theater?

[Erkki]

ORIGINAL: VMF 214

if I may add my $.02.....I think what the OP is saying is that there was 11 separate attacks with 1-6 planes in each attack. I believe he thinks it should be like in Europe 1 attack with all planes in the attack....in effect carpet bombing not wave after wave of small groups. Now I am no expert at this game and leave that to you fine people but is that how the game uses a mass amount of level bombers? Did they in fact in the Pacific use smaller plane runs rather then the big formations like in the European theater?

Dunno but in the air combat phase the "box bonus" for defensive fire works as if they were in one giant formation. This makes 4Es relatively even nastier to intercept and counter with CAP as typically the only bombers that even hit fighters are those same 4Es and some US mediums. For Japanese bombers it doesnt matter how many planes the formation has - they'll always suffer, and hard.

This is actually part of the the strike size & coordination stuff discussed elsewhere...

[EUBanana]

ORIGINAL: VMF 214

if I may add my $.02.....I think what the OP is saying is that there was 11 separate attacks with 1-6 planes in each attack. I believe he thinks it should be like in Europe 1 attack with all planes in the attack....in effect carpet bombing not wave after wave of small groups. Now I am no expert at this game and leave that to you fine people but is that how the game uses a mass amount of level bombers? Did they in fact in the Pacific use smaller plane runs rather then the big formations like in the European theater?

I suspect the game engine splits the bomber stream up into flights, because AFAIK thats how it handles air combat in general. So indeed, on the combat report you see a bunch of flights, not 50 heavies all pattern bombing. I'm not sure about land targets (and a port with boats in it is a land target), but this is certainly how it works with ships. The size of the flight varies depending on altitude and plane type. AFAIK the main issue is only one of target acquisition, however, each flight picks a target. This is very clear when ships are being attacked in naval air combat, less clear in air to ground but I figure its probably not hugely dissimilar.

Also AFAIK every bomb dropped essentially has a % chance to hit something. If they really were pattern bombing you'd presumably see fairly binary results - either the box misses and you get no hits at all, or the box is on target and the poor victim is pulverised. You don't get that, you get an evenly spread average, so you tend to score somewhere near the historic average every time. So no very spikey results. I'm not sure this really makes any difference in the long run though. Imagine if a box landed right on target and a CV took multiple sticks, people would go nuts. No winning here I think. [:D]

However, I think it's kinda moot. In Europe the RAF and Luftwaffe at least certainly did not all "drop when the leader drops" when aiming at tactical targets anyway. A CV in port is not Schweinfurt.