Early Allied Strategic Bombing

[wga8888]

Its only January 1942. As Allies, I have opportunity to city bomb industry in cities recently lost that do not yet have CAP. My choices are typically Heavy Industry, Resources, or Oil. Which would be most damaging to the Japanese? From my past Air Play (Grigsby's USAAF, Eagle Day: Bombing the Reich); it seems best to focus on one. My limits are the British aircraft has small bomb loads until bases develop to support B17s.

[Ian R]

Oil.

Particularly if you can bomb Palembang, Balikpapan, Tarakan, Miri, etc.

There are plenty of resources about; for example, in the vanilla scenario there is an island near Sumatra that produces 900 resources, and also therefore 900 supply, per day. And unless you are bombing the HI in the home islands, which gets you strategic VPs, there is not much point - anecdotal evidence suggest human IJ players turn off HI expansion because it sucks to much out of the economy anyway. It might be worth bombing HI targets that help produce supplies near the front (for example, Singapore has a shipyard; can't recall if there is HI there, but its worth bombing the shipyard anyway).

[engineer]

I second Ian. Stock WitP typically is an anti-oil game. CHS, however, is tight on resources so you want to hit those.

There is also an oil target on Formosa if your B-17s on Luzon aren't smoking ruins on the tarmac.

[BPRE]

I wouldn't say it is as simple as pointing at one type of target.

It all depends on what the Japanese player has conquered and in which state it is. You also have to factor in how much expansion that has been made on HI.

When the war starts you have a huge deficit in both Oil and Resources as Japan (as in real life) and the stocks will only last you about 6 months I believe without any change in available sources and the amount of HI you have. After that you won't be able to produce 100% per day.

Without expanding more than historically I believe you can expand your HI production roughly 25% and still have a slight surplus of Oil and Resources but remember that it's not just the matter of 1000 supply to repair one Oil or Resource it's also a matter of time. You will only repair one per day so a Palembang with resources at 170(730) after capture will take 2 years to fully restore at a cost of 730000 supply.

And the oil is probably just as bad in that case so it's enough to make you cry [:(]

/BPRE

[wga8888]

Game has progressed to December 1943. Strategic bombing is now operation primarily out of Akyab (AF5; 1xBG B17Es) and Chungking/Kumming/Chengtsu/Yunan. (combined 2xBG B24J with several P38J FG escort). Japanese fighters are not a threat as they are now hunted. With repeated bombing I can eliminate any target. Most cities have multiple targets, there are many cites, and there is limited time. the land campaign in Burma and China is unlikely to progress. There are few intact Oil targets. Out of ignorance, I am now focusing in Heavy Industry instead of Resources or ground troops. I do not know if this is the correct path.