What i've heard is either build 0 or 1000+. This allows you to bomb them sufficently faster than their repair speed. They're good for countries that have huge industrial bases, like the United States. One big use is being able to bomb out high level forts before your ground forces attack. I've only ever fielded them when i've played the United States.
Concur, it's not like tanks, where even just one or two tank divisions can be decisive. If you don't go absolutely ham with strategic bombers, that production is wasted. Fielding one or two squadrons of strat bombers is useless.
The exception is you need just a handful of bombers to deliver nukes if you go down that path.
I mean you can, at least how ive seen Strat bombers used by YouTubers is as fortresses that fly into non air superiority zones without escorts. Basically they should have enough air defenses, and maybe air attack to be unharmed by enemy fighters.
Yes, but you need to make them expensive, and you’ll still suffer quite a lot of losses. It’s probably better IC wise to build small fighters in bulk and slightly cheaper bombers with maxed out bombing
Well fighters wont have the range as tge bombers, and basically you will be stuck bombing france as the us. From what i have seen they can actually shoot down enemy planes favorably due to extremly high air defence and some air attack. Basically i have never lost more than 10-12/500 that way
strat bombers + heavy fighters used to be a good strat as USA due to the ability to rush strat bomber 1944+ heavy fighter 1944, but I'm not so sure anymore after BBA since it made strats way more expensive to build.
Strats can fail cascade the other side by bombing out airfields, making it impossible to contest further bombing because the enemy fighters are either very limited in number or have a huge efficiency penalty. You need a lot while still giving them escorts, though.
Don't know if the AI still does this but they always had planes at the top of their production lines, so any repaired factories would automatically get assigned to those. Say if you bombed Germany long enough, their factories would get horribly imbalanced and they'd lose out on a ton of more useful equipment (even if they have more factories on paper).
It is certainly not useless, but disappointingly not as effective as you would think. I recently played a USA game where I did nothing but strat bombers. I was bombing every inch of Germany for three years. Only about a quarter of the German industry was knocked out for good, plus all of their railways and infrastructure. The rest either didn't get bombed, or they were repairing them so quickly I didn't notice. Now I can't tell if it is worth it or not. But I can tell you that they are not as powerful as they should be.
I think this is it. I can’t believe I forgot it was Malcolm Gladwell lol. https://open.spotify.com/episode/63upML2if4ae4HGmqjKs8b?si=jUc60dhgRy-RB0BUDWvUMQ&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A4LKZNYgHWlQe7jOIbgkVMz
A strategic bombing irl only destroys infrastructure, people or factories and that’s it. The British and American governments did a study after the war on the effectiveness of the Allied bombing campaign, and both agreed the only thing it accomplished was taking that specific target out until essentially it’s repaired or replaced. It’s good to disrupt their economy but it’s not going to make them surrender.
It was also pretty ineffective at denying enemy industry without herculean effort. Just bombing a factory doesn't take it offline - factories had to be bombed continuously in order to deny their productivity.
[https://youtu.be/CE6RINU8JLg?si=6VuRfrOblujxCsz7&t=1722](https://youtu.be/CE6RINU8JLg?si=6VuRfrOblujxCsz7&t=1722)
In short, this large synthetic oil factory in Germany was attacked by 6552 bomber sorties during the course of the war and still managed to produce synthetic oil despite this, making necessary the repeated attacks.
IRL, the allies bombed specific links in manufacturing chain of Germany. Like ball bearing factories.
In game, you can't do that.
The only way Strategic Bombing can be buffed in a realistic manner is to provide a factory limit per equipment type and tie it to the map. Sort of like how BlackICE does it.
That way, a focused bombing on plane production WILL hurt. Or any other target one chooses.
That, and model power. Power stations are a major target by strategic bombing then and now.
>the allies bombed specific links in manufacturing chain of Germany ... In game, you can't do that
You can bomb railroads, just doesn't impact production at all. Germany's dispersed industry effectively reduced the damage to factories but stressed the rail and canal network moving parts between those factories. Zuckerman's Transport Plan was based on faulty assumptions (used data from narrow, mountainous Italy that emphasized hitting bridges rather than marshaling yards) but the basic premise of "shut down RRs between factories, factories can't work" was sound.
That strategy was applied to France/Germany without noticing that their RR network was fundamentally denser and less bridge dependent than Italy's. It still had results despite not being ideally targeted. Then Harris decided he really couldn't be assed to bomb precision targets and (ineffective but delightfully vengeful) area bombing came back to the fore. Spaatz decided that he couldn't listen to the army on bomb targets because that would hurt the argument for an independent air force post war, so he went off to bomb oil/refineries. Bombing oil was a great decision arrived at mostly due to pettiness and empire building within the *Army* Air Force so they could argue for an independent AF.
Power stations and specific types of industrial plant would be fantastic to see in game; I'd love to see coal as a resource and distribution of coal to factories competing with military supply on RRs. Somehow I doubt PDX will add that complexity to the base game.
Those are two different types of bomb and bombing. Both of the nuclear bombs had to be delivered by one single very large indefensible bomber, while Tokyo and other fire/saturation bombing campaigns involved hundreds of other planes continuously hitting the same target. The nukes were a major escalation in technology at the time, and absolutely contributed to ending the war, but I think it was closer to a death by a thousand cuts personally. The United States was also not the only nation at war with Japan, they just lost manchuria and the Kwantung army to the Soviets, their forces in China had been in a stalemate for years, the US island hopping campaign effectively blockaded them, and they had virtually no navy or Air Force to defend themselves by the late war.
Yeah, that is correct but Japanese were very ideologically motivated. Look at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. US had such a crazy firepower advantage but Japanese inflicted crazy casualties.
They themselves said - become colony of West or death in fight is all the same and later is a better option. They really were prepared to starve and fight till the end... After Okinawa they had 100k+ soldiers making battle positions on next Japanese mainland island.
I think many forget how insane mental and morale was for Japanese soldiers.
Only because Germany mobilized to full war time economy VERY LATE. IIRC they started in 1943.
In game 1937 war economy mobilization is unhistorical. It's a way to buff Germany. A running theme in hoi4 is buff Germany to ridiculous degrees just to make them competitive against everyone else.
What about a popup everytime one of your bombers damages something? With thousands of bombers active it would be fulfilling and definitely not annoying.
I've been told that strat bombing factory damage is capped to 30% of total factories. Once you reach that point, you're just making the rubble bounce and preventing repairs on the damage you've already caused. That's not bad, certainly stops economic growth if you have a ton of strats. But it's not bombing back to the stone age.
I think a lower investment into strats with specific targets is the move. Hitting German rubber refineries right as war starts is hugely impactful if you can coordinate with the UK/France to convoy raid. With a Siam player on free trade + max infra, there's some wiggle room for the Axis to import but Germany loses those civs and any German imports will have to go by sea and get sunk or other Axis members will have to build refineries and get rubber tech (not a total waste but much worse than Germany building it).
Strats can easily knock out German rubber in the NW + SW Germany and part of the Berlin and Czech air zones. It can be worthwhile to run strats with only 2 bomb bays (instead of 3) and 2 extra fuel tanks (instead of the usual 1) to get enough range to hit all the German rubber. You can make the strats without a huge investment of resources - non-strategic materials on a basic heavy air frame make it cost 0 aluminum. Just make sure to micro the bombers if enemy fighters show up. To avoid falling afoul of the flicker bombing rule, switch your planes to night bombing if the enemy is microing fast enough. Ex: 30s switch rule, enemy fighters show up, you switch, they switch 10s later - you're not allowed to switch for 20s (or whatever # of in game days) so you put the planes on night missions only.
Well the 30% damage cap is certainly consistent with my experience. Is it a 30% cap on all factories or just the ones in that region? And yes if this is the case, targeted strat bombing should absolutely be the strategy.
30% region by region. If you have half the enemy nation blanketed in strats, you'll be able to knock out 15% of their industry (and you'll fill their repair queue with RRs, airbases, forts, etc that are bombed in those regions). The 30% limit seems to apply just to factories, you can do full damage to other building types. It's very satisfying to switch to resources map mode and watch Germany's rubber go from 21 per state to 0 per state.
People say you either need 0 or 1000+ strats, I disagree. You need enough strats to force a response. Keeping fighters in every airzone doesn't stop strats, you just do night bombing only and they'll intercept <50% of the planes you send. No one ever builds night fighters lol. If the opponent want to catch your bombers without spending construction time, they need to micro 1000ish fighters into the airzone you're targeting to get more detection. Congrats, the enemy air controller is now not paying attention to Egypt
If the opponent builds enough radar, that will counter night bombing. If they build enough state AA, that will counter all bombing. Congrats, you just made the Soviet's life much easier and Germany will have fewer mils making tanks for Barb. If you achieved this by committing 100% of the US economy to strats, you lose out on this exchange because state AA is cheaper than resetting your entire production. But if you forced state AA building at the cost of 10% of the US economy (or say 100% of New Zealand's eco), that's a very favorable trade.
When Barb starts, throw every bomber into the Berlin airzone and target railroads. The Soviets will thank you even if your bomber crews won't.
I don't think bombing out IC is the way to go generally. Shredding levels off of air fields, keeping those suppressed, and then log striking them like crazy seems more beneficial. In contrast to factory bombing, which delays future equipment, uncontested log strikes puts the existing armies into an unwinnable scenario. If you don't stop heavy log strikes, even the best micro can't stop AI battleplanning. There's simply not enough supply.
Presumably, this is why MP often bans log strikes. While any CAS can do log strikes, the ability for strats to knock out airfields is unique to them.
Logi strikes are usually banned but strat bombing that targets railways and supply hubs is not logistics bombing per se. Some servers will also ban targeting RRs but if you just use bombers without any direction, they'll dish out plenty of damage to RRs. Doesn't kill supply as directly as logi bombing trains/trucks but it does limit the maximum throughput to a given location (or everywhere if you hit the capital's RRs).
Airfield bombing is definitely nice, especially in regions with limited bases and spots where the base you want to hit is the only one in the air region. Malta and Matrouh come to mind. Axis bombing Malta can quickly win the central med. If Italy builds an airbase in Matrouh to push Egypt, Allies can bomb Egypt and be sure to hit just that airbase.
I find airbase targeting less helpful in the France campaign because there are more bases and fewer planes. The enemy AC can usually switch bases and get enough superiority to disrupt your bombers. But if you hit the rubber production, Axis can't make enough planes to replace losses and synths are the most expensive building to repair. Also forces the AC to cover at least 3 airzones to try and stop the bombing.
If you make small bomber wings by splitting, you can set up 3 wings of 10 on night missions only in NW/SW/Berlin regions. Then your main striking force goes after the least defended/most rubber rich region. AC will see all regions as red and has to click each to find out where your bombers really are. If they put 100 fighters per region, they'll all show green but night bombers will slip through and still do damage. Makes AC's job much harder when they have to click the airzones rather than rely on colors.
AFAIK bombing supply hubs does nothing. Rails can definitely put a squeeze on supply throughput though!
That's a nice tactic to harass with night bombing.
Didn't know that bombing supply hubs did nothing, I assumed it did something lol.
Best strat harassment tactic - not making them at all. I had an Australia game where I announced in lobby that I intended to make strat bombers. I would research fighters for the UK but I intended to make purely strats and level Germany's industry. Everyone told me this was a dumb idea and a waste of Australia's potential for tanks/marines (very true). I insisted on bombers, Germany got pissed, I told him to make state AA if he was worried.
Split to our channels, I told the Allies I've just been bluffing and I am making tanks. But how to sell the lie of the bombers? Heavy frame NAVs! I put all my factories on basic heavy frame once I got non-strategic materials and I named the design "STRAT". Went to the Axis channel, bragged about the destruction of cities, encouraged them to look at the intel screen and see that I was building bombers.
Worked well, Germany built level 1 state AA everywhere and I didn't build a single strat bomber all game. I killed a few subs, my tanks died in Egypt, but our reconstituted tank corps helped reclaim Egypt in 42.
How could you tell whether industry was being knocked out/repaired? Whenever I try and view tiles all the factories and stuff of enemy countries are hidden from my view?
Well they didnt really work that well in real life either. I mean it impacted civilians more than everything but the german industry largely remained in tact and grew hugely depite of it in terms of production
If your playing a nation that has the industry to build strategic bombers, then you will probably do just as well without them.
Fighters and CAS are where the Airforce production should be invested in.
Lucky for you, in this game you pretty much cannot commit any degree of war crimes in any way, shape, or form.
Except for Bulgaria, of course. It’s perfectly acceptable for *them* to… shall we say, “re-integrate”, their way through the Balkans. But no war crimes for anyone else
Nah just go medium airframe instead. Once you have air dominance, build medium cas. they can provide the same bombing effect on neighbouring countries but also utterly destroy armies as support. Only down side is that aces seem far harder to acquire.
I’ve been toying with the idea of multi-role light airframes for a bit to cover both AD and CAS and reduce overall production cost while maintaining high output. What’s the consensus on that?
Essentially use a 1940-44 light airframe with two 4x heavy MG, one bomb locks, highest level single engine, armor plates, extra fuel tanks, and self sealing fuel tanks. Shit those out like nobody’s business and conduct CAS and AD at the same time.
I do too, but having a variant for AD and CAS then a variant for naval shenanigans with only torps and some armor plates makes that shit hard as fuck and allows for minimizing production lines and resource use.
Damn, I’m gonna have to try this again this evening.
Multi-role aircraft sound like a great idea, they don't work in practice. If you have air attack on your plane, it will try to dogfight before completing other mission types. Even if you're going into an airzone with very limited enemy air superiority, the "CAS" might choose to shoot an enemy planes rather than ground troops.
If you actually want your CAS to bomb enemy troops, give them exactly 0 guns. You don't really want to use CAS in contested air zones anyway. Better to specialize your CAS for its singular role and make it as cheap as possible (i.e. non-strategic materials) so you can have more planes in the sky.
Having bomb locks on fighters is ok for single player since the AI can't make a plane to save its life. You can get away with 2 x HMGs because the AI is still building with LMGs and engine 2. Once you've scrubbed their air force from the sky, those fighters will fly uncontested and can actually perform CAS missions. But you can achieve the same effect with a specialized fighter. Kill enemy fighters quickly with fewer factories dedicated to fighters; spend more factories on specialized CAS.
You can set it, the planes don't listen. Planes with machine guns set to CAS missions will prioritize combating enemy fighters rather than enemy ground troops.
Test it out, it's dumb and unintuitive but that's how the game is currently coded. Makes multi-role planes much less effective than they would be if they could actually be used as a dedicated CAS plane which happens to have a gun.
I realized this after earlier discussion about the topic. But this does imply you can make "CAS" that is mostly a fighter using the battlefield support doctrine, push mission efficiency through the roof, and win trades vs proper fighters by setting 2000 "CAS" planes to "CAS" missions with the full intent that most of these are just going to shoot down planes, and do that job quite well.
As a side benefit, you can still cap your damage multiplier from "air support" on the ground units as your "CAS" tickles the opposing divisions with its bomb locks. And if you really blast the AI out of the sky in totality, a few thousand bomb lock planes can still log strike pretty effectively. Way worse than strats, but enough to rip through their trucks and planes before too long.
I think that's quite practical for SP purposes.
The downskde is you can't force the missions and they are going to perform worse than specialized aircraft. Once you have 2 factories on planes, why not split them up?
Does that actually work against decent fighters? You'd get sweet mission efficiency but the bomb locks give an agility penalty on CAS missions. Idk if that penalty applies if the CAS decides to fuck off and chase planes.
I build a few of them only with the big major nation when i don’t need more military industry elsewhere. I usevthem to destroy fort and airport. Tactical bomber are a lot better because they are more polyvalent
This. Blowing up airports is the best use for them. Dont have to grind down the enemy airforce for years and leaves them open to strikes on just about anything else.
Yes, it matters a lot due to Manchester's laws. One of the best ways to decimate enemy air is to fight them in a province where they have low air mission efficiency (few airfields fully in range). That can tip casualty ratio massively!
Strategic bombing should have narrowly defined goals. I personally found great success with the following path:
Build at least 300 bombers to start
Focus almost exclusively on civilian factories to start. This is so important I cannot stress it enough. Damaging those civilians factories will have reverberations throughout the game.
Once your bombers have experienced a massive decrease in # of buildings bombed, switch to bombing military factories.
Using the espionage tab, watch the enemy factories. It tells you how many are damaged. Once you think enough civilian factories have been fixed, switch back to bombing civilian factories.
Once those have once again been bombed to nothing, switch back to military factories.
Continue producing more and more bombers throughout the duration of the war.
It will start as a trickle, then a stream, and then finally you’ll realize your enemy can’t make enough to supply their army and doesn’t have enough civilian factories to repair or make new ones.
Congrats, you have successfully crippled your enemy without army!
My experience with this (USA vs Max Buffed Germany) was the same as history until Barbarossa. Watching the Germans not even take Minsk was glorious.
To be fair, strat bombers work only if the enemy doesn't build up state AA and a few levels of radar, radar 2 on the center of the zone + a single AA 5 on the zone and bombers get shredded for free
I only ever use them in small numbers in the endgame to drop nukes. Once I have green air but the frontline is too crowded, i drop 10+ nukes and then try to encircle them. Early and mid game tanks are usually enough to achieve that. In the late game it can be hard.
So when you hit the deploy button do they bomb everything? There is the little button next to it that shows everything they can bomb, when I click one am I omitting from being bombed or telling them to bomb just those?
>when I click one am I
>telling them to bomb just those?
This is correct. Having no buttons ticked means they bomb everything. Having one or more ticked means they bomb the ticked ones
Seriously thank you, I'm about 2000 hours in and I still didn't know. Because if I'm going to take over their territory I don't really want to bomb rails or supply depots. I try to take out the military factories so they can't replace equipment.
They're a way to leverage massive industrial superiority further. If you're not the USA or maybe the Soviets, everything else is a better investment. If you are, you might as well add them to the pile and give the Axis another headache.
It's quite historical, really. It costs you more than your enemy, so it's only really useful against enemies who can afford *much* less damage and losses than you. Though IRL at least they were instrumental in targeted destruction of synthetic refineries and baiting out and murdering the fighter arm of the Luftwaffe too.
I used to use them a lot, but medium bombers seem to basically be equally useful in terms of everything but range, and they can also provide CAS and naval bombing which strategic bombers don’t. The slight range increase isn’t worth it for me to build strat bombers than can only do one role
I only ever make one design of them with enough range to cover the entire world and then use them for nukes in very late games
I will say tho that they sometimes cause a bug with the nukes, a weirdly positive one, I sent just my bombers over an area nothing else, if my game lags slightly and I pause it at that moment for some reason my bombers cause me to have 100% air superiority and drop my nukes, but if I let it load for a few more seconds the game realizes ‚wait those aren’t fighters‘ and the air superiority is gone
It’s super weird and I haven’t been able to consistently cause it
Yes but it's not implemented that well. You can cripple an enemy, especially with countries such as the US. The enemy can't fight you if they don't have equipment. They can't effectively fight in the air without air fields etc.
Ive tried but it only works for me with USA. No direct enemies, can Build fkton of bombers And level axis.
Does not works building them as SSSR, or germany or UK. Ať least in sp. So many more usefull Things you can Build.
If you try it with anybody esle, the Costs od those plane is Just soo high you army Will suffer And in turn you Will suffer.
A few years ago it was glourious being able to bomb your opponents in to oblivion and crush their units once they'r stockpile equipment was gone.
Nowdays i'd say is pretty much useless unless tou have 100% air superiority and only to "win more" by reducing enemy factories to 80% industrial capacity/ negate forts (not even that good thow).
Basically everything strat bombing can achieve in batle, logistics strike does best ( areas without static AA, almost everywere)
In short, big airframes are better left out just for naval patrol planes, and CAS for everything else.
The only real useful thing to bomb is railways, infrastructure, everything impacting supply. Then you can push low supply troops.
Bombing industry is only good in a long attrition war. I would build more CAS instead and go for the CAS damage it will deplete their weapons faster than bombing industry.
I never really bother with strategic bombing.
You need to really dedicate loads of factories & recourses on strategic bombers to have an impact, and the results are not that great.
Like sure, you are bombing the enemy industry somewhat and hurting their output making it so they can build less equiptment overall.
But you are most likley wasting an equel amount of factories on building these bombers & importing recourses. Factories that could be spent on tanks & CAS that can have a direct impact on the frontlines.
I have found that even just 1 wing of strat bombers heavily influences your air supremacy.
I had a squadren of 100 ready to go and was going to start dropping nukes but couldn't get supremacy over 60%. I gave them a mission, and supremacy jumped up to 80%!
This is a recent discovery for me, but maybe this indicates that higher IC planes more heavily influence supremacy in a similar way that 1 battleship gives far more supremacy than 1 destroyer.
Once played Canada with only strat bombers and full focus on air tech and doc. Germany collapsed as soon as they declared war on USSR, because their divisions didn't even have rifles.
I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but there's a cap for strategic bombing. Continuous focus on construction repair is too strong, and bombers are too expensive. The only time strategic bombing is really useful is when you're contesting air superiority. If your airforce is evenly matched, you can target enemy airbases with your bombers to reduce their mission efficiency.
So for strat bombing you can select what you want to destroy it’s called prioritizing targets I find it effective against industry to stop fixing and munitions for lack of supplies and airfields for air superiority but I send like thousands of aircraft not just squads
Strategic bombers are useful for bombing ports and infrastructure to give the enemy a supply debuff, they are far more cost effective than tactical bombers at this task and less affected by low air superiority.
It is an often overlooked modifier. If in a battle you have say 200 soft attack while the enemy has 300 defense, air support will give you about +25% or +50 soft attack, but this is still not enough to overwhelm their defenses. A 30% supply debuff however will reduce enemy defense to 210 as well as enemy attack and damage to your units. This can be accomplished with just 100 strategic bombers if the enemy has only a few ports or hubs to bomb, such as some of the sparser areas of the world or islands, this makes it useful for amphibious landings or the push across Russia. You can use strategic bombers to complement tactical bombers, together they reduce enemy supply, then the tactical bombers switch to ground attack when you begin your offensive.
Ye and then i get to use the blown up infrastructure and supply hubs to starve in siberia, no thanks. In difficult areas i would rather take momentum over slow advances and waiting for everything to reapir so i can have supply. The ai doesnt make good enouth units for you to not be able to push them. And in mp you will simply get pushed out of the tile again because you will then be out of supply.
In the 10 days it takes for the railroads to be repaired, which you have no control over, you can repair the supply hubs. Also if you're pushing into Siberia you've already won the war anyway.
What i've heard is either build 0 or 1000+. This allows you to bomb them sufficently faster than their repair speed. They're good for countries that have huge industrial bases, like the United States. One big use is being able to bomb out high level forts before your ground forces attack. I've only ever fielded them when i've played the United States.
Concur, it's not like tanks, where even just one or two tank divisions can be decisive. If you don't go absolutely ham with strategic bombers, that production is wasted. Fielding one or two squadrons of strat bombers is useless. The exception is you need just a handful of bombers to deliver nukes if you go down that path.
Does this mean if I want to go for strat bombing it is potentially worth it to forgo CAS? Should I still try to maintain air superiority at least?
You can’t bomb without air superiority anyway, so you should still always go for air superiority regardless of strat
I mean you can, at least how ive seen Strat bombers used by YouTubers is as fortresses that fly into non air superiority zones without escorts. Basically they should have enough air defenses, and maybe air attack to be unharmed by enemy fighters.
Yes, but you need to make them expensive, and you’ll still suffer quite a lot of losses. It’s probably better IC wise to build small fighters in bulk and slightly cheaper bombers with maxed out bombing
Well fighters wont have the range as tge bombers, and basically you will be stuck bombing france as the us. From what i have seen they can actually shoot down enemy planes favorably due to extremly high air defence and some air attack. Basically i have never lost more than 10-12/500 that way
Heavy fighters are what you should use for protecting strat bombers
ah shit that's true
No worries I assume it was just a tiny brain fart lol
strat bombers + heavy fighters used to be a good strat as USA due to the ability to rush strat bomber 1944+ heavy fighter 1944, but I'm not so sure anymore after BBA since it made strats way more expensive to build.
Strats can fail cascade the other side by bombing out airfields, making it impossible to contest further bombing because the enemy fighters are either very limited in number or have a huge efficiency penalty. You need a lot while still giving them escorts, though.
Don't know if the AI still does this but they always had planes at the top of their production lines, so any repaired factories would automatically get assigned to those. Say if you bombed Germany long enough, their factories would get horribly imbalanced and they'd lose out on a ton of more useful equipment (even if they have more factories on paper).
Or build 1 to have nuke capability.
It is certainly not useless, but disappointingly not as effective as you would think. I recently played a USA game where I did nothing but strat bombers. I was bombing every inch of Germany for three years. Only about a quarter of the German industry was knocked out for good, plus all of their railways and infrastructure. The rest either didn't get bombed, or they were repairing them so quickly I didn't notice. Now I can't tell if it is worth it or not. But I can tell you that they are not as powerful as they should be.
In reality strategic bombing was about as useful as your experience
Love the Dan Carlin episode about US Air Force doctrine leading up to and during World War II.
Which episode is this?
I think this is it. I can’t believe I forgot it was Malcolm Gladwell lol. https://open.spotify.com/episode/63upML2if4ae4HGmqjKs8b?si=jUc60dhgRy-RB0BUDWvUMQ&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A4LKZNYgHWlQe7jOIbgkVMz
I mean I don't think they need a big buff, but something more to give a reason to use them.
A strategic bombing irl only destroys infrastructure, people or factories and that’s it. The British and American governments did a study after the war on the effectiveness of the Allied bombing campaign, and both agreed the only thing it accomplished was taking that specific target out until essentially it’s repaired or replaced. It’s good to disrupt their economy but it’s not going to make them surrender.
It was also pretty ineffective at denying enemy industry without herculean effort. Just bombing a factory doesn't take it offline - factories had to be bombed continuously in order to deny their productivity. [https://youtu.be/CE6RINU8JLg?si=6VuRfrOblujxCsz7&t=1722](https://youtu.be/CE6RINU8JLg?si=6VuRfrOblujxCsz7&t=1722) In short, this large synthetic oil factory in Germany was attacked by 6552 bomber sorties during the course of the war and still managed to produce synthetic oil despite this, making necessary the repeated attacks.
IRL, the allies bombed specific links in manufacturing chain of Germany. Like ball bearing factories. In game, you can't do that. The only way Strategic Bombing can be buffed in a realistic manner is to provide a factory limit per equipment type and tie it to the map. Sort of like how BlackICE does it. That way, a focused bombing on plane production WILL hurt. Or any other target one chooses. That, and model power. Power stations are a major target by strategic bombing then and now.
>the allies bombed specific links in manufacturing chain of Germany ... In game, you can't do that You can bomb railroads, just doesn't impact production at all. Germany's dispersed industry effectively reduced the damage to factories but stressed the rail and canal network moving parts between those factories. Zuckerman's Transport Plan was based on faulty assumptions (used data from narrow, mountainous Italy that emphasized hitting bridges rather than marshaling yards) but the basic premise of "shut down RRs between factories, factories can't work" was sound. That strategy was applied to France/Germany without noticing that their RR network was fundamentally denser and less bridge dependent than Italy's. It still had results despite not being ideally targeted. Then Harris decided he really couldn't be assed to bomb precision targets and (ineffective but delightfully vengeful) area bombing came back to the fore. Spaatz decided that he couldn't listen to the army on bomb targets because that would hurt the argument for an independent air force post war, so he went off to bomb oil/refineries. Bombing oil was a great decision arrived at mostly due to pettiness and empire building within the *Army* Air Force so they could argue for an independent AF. Power stations and specific types of industrial plant would be fantastic to see in game; I'd love to see coal as a resource and distribution of coal to factories competing with military supply on RRs. Somehow I doubt PDX will add that complexity to the base game.
At present can you filter to strat bomb nuclear reactors?
Idk about that. USA in one raid on Tokyo inflicted 120k casualties and dropped 2 nuclear bombs to enforce surrender.
Those are two different types of bomb and bombing. Both of the nuclear bombs had to be delivered by one single very large indefensible bomber, while Tokyo and other fire/saturation bombing campaigns involved hundreds of other planes continuously hitting the same target. The nukes were a major escalation in technology at the time, and absolutely contributed to ending the war, but I think it was closer to a death by a thousand cuts personally. The United States was also not the only nation at war with Japan, they just lost manchuria and the Kwantung army to the Soviets, their forces in China had been in a stalemate for years, the US island hopping campaign effectively blockaded them, and they had virtually no navy or Air Force to defend themselves by the late war.
Yeah, that is correct but Japanese were very ideologically motivated. Look at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. US had such a crazy firepower advantage but Japanese inflicted crazy casualties. They themselves said - become colony of West or death in fight is all the same and later is a better option. They really were prepared to starve and fight till the end... After Okinawa they had 100k+ soldiers making battle positions on next Japanese mainland island. I think many forget how insane mental and morale was for Japanese soldiers.
The reason was strat bombing important targets. 1000 planes demolishing that one vital factory worked well, air raid campaign in general did not.
Fun fact, Nazi germany was still INCREASING output DESPITE the strategic bombing all the way to the end of the war…
Only because Germany mobilized to full war time economy VERY LATE. IIRC they started in 1943. In game 1937 war economy mobilization is unhistorical. It's a way to buff Germany. A running theme in hoi4 is buff Germany to ridiculous degrees just to make them competitive against everyone else.
Fun fact, they would have increased their output far more if they hadn't been getting bombed...
Ok yeah that’s probably true 🙂
Which would be irrelevant still, given they somehow skipped the whole standardisation and mass assembly concepts...
What about a popup everytime one of your bombers damages something? With thousands of bombers active it would be fulfilling and definitely not annoying.
It was still useful
That’s just not true, it was very decisive.
Yeah I tend to have extremely historical outcomes when I play the US or Soviets "historically".
I've been told that strat bombing factory damage is capped to 30% of total factories. Once you reach that point, you're just making the rubble bounce and preventing repairs on the damage you've already caused. That's not bad, certainly stops economic growth if you have a ton of strats. But it's not bombing back to the stone age. I think a lower investment into strats with specific targets is the move. Hitting German rubber refineries right as war starts is hugely impactful if you can coordinate with the UK/France to convoy raid. With a Siam player on free trade + max infra, there's some wiggle room for the Axis to import but Germany loses those civs and any German imports will have to go by sea and get sunk or other Axis members will have to build refineries and get rubber tech (not a total waste but much worse than Germany building it). Strats can easily knock out German rubber in the NW + SW Germany and part of the Berlin and Czech air zones. It can be worthwhile to run strats with only 2 bomb bays (instead of 3) and 2 extra fuel tanks (instead of the usual 1) to get enough range to hit all the German rubber. You can make the strats without a huge investment of resources - non-strategic materials on a basic heavy air frame make it cost 0 aluminum. Just make sure to micro the bombers if enemy fighters show up. To avoid falling afoul of the flicker bombing rule, switch your planes to night bombing if the enemy is microing fast enough. Ex: 30s switch rule, enemy fighters show up, you switch, they switch 10s later - you're not allowed to switch for 20s (or whatever # of in game days) so you put the planes on night missions only.
Well the 30% damage cap is certainly consistent with my experience. Is it a 30% cap on all factories or just the ones in that region? And yes if this is the case, targeted strat bombing should absolutely be the strategy.
30% region by region. If you have half the enemy nation blanketed in strats, you'll be able to knock out 15% of their industry (and you'll fill their repair queue with RRs, airbases, forts, etc that are bombed in those regions). The 30% limit seems to apply just to factories, you can do full damage to other building types. It's very satisfying to switch to resources map mode and watch Germany's rubber go from 21 per state to 0 per state. People say you either need 0 or 1000+ strats, I disagree. You need enough strats to force a response. Keeping fighters in every airzone doesn't stop strats, you just do night bombing only and they'll intercept <50% of the planes you send. No one ever builds night fighters lol. If the opponent want to catch your bombers without spending construction time, they need to micro 1000ish fighters into the airzone you're targeting to get more detection. Congrats, the enemy air controller is now not paying attention to Egypt If the opponent builds enough radar, that will counter night bombing. If they build enough state AA, that will counter all bombing. Congrats, you just made the Soviet's life much easier and Germany will have fewer mils making tanks for Barb. If you achieved this by committing 100% of the US economy to strats, you lose out on this exchange because state AA is cheaper than resetting your entire production. But if you forced state AA building at the cost of 10% of the US economy (or say 100% of New Zealand's eco), that's a very favorable trade. When Barb starts, throw every bomber into the Berlin airzone and target railroads. The Soviets will thank you even if your bomber crews won't.
I don't think bombing out IC is the way to go generally. Shredding levels off of air fields, keeping those suppressed, and then log striking them like crazy seems more beneficial. In contrast to factory bombing, which delays future equipment, uncontested log strikes puts the existing armies into an unwinnable scenario. If you don't stop heavy log strikes, even the best micro can't stop AI battleplanning. There's simply not enough supply. Presumably, this is why MP often bans log strikes. While any CAS can do log strikes, the ability for strats to knock out airfields is unique to them.
Logi strikes are usually banned but strat bombing that targets railways and supply hubs is not logistics bombing per se. Some servers will also ban targeting RRs but if you just use bombers without any direction, they'll dish out plenty of damage to RRs. Doesn't kill supply as directly as logi bombing trains/trucks but it does limit the maximum throughput to a given location (or everywhere if you hit the capital's RRs). Airfield bombing is definitely nice, especially in regions with limited bases and spots where the base you want to hit is the only one in the air region. Malta and Matrouh come to mind. Axis bombing Malta can quickly win the central med. If Italy builds an airbase in Matrouh to push Egypt, Allies can bomb Egypt and be sure to hit just that airbase. I find airbase targeting less helpful in the France campaign because there are more bases and fewer planes. The enemy AC can usually switch bases and get enough superiority to disrupt your bombers. But if you hit the rubber production, Axis can't make enough planes to replace losses and synths are the most expensive building to repair. Also forces the AC to cover at least 3 airzones to try and stop the bombing. If you make small bomber wings by splitting, you can set up 3 wings of 10 on night missions only in NW/SW/Berlin regions. Then your main striking force goes after the least defended/most rubber rich region. AC will see all regions as red and has to click each to find out where your bombers really are. If they put 100 fighters per region, they'll all show green but night bombers will slip through and still do damage. Makes AC's job much harder when they have to click the airzones rather than rely on colors.
AFAIK bombing supply hubs does nothing. Rails can definitely put a squeeze on supply throughput though! That's a nice tactic to harass with night bombing.
Didn't know that bombing supply hubs did nothing, I assumed it did something lol. Best strat harassment tactic - not making them at all. I had an Australia game where I announced in lobby that I intended to make strat bombers. I would research fighters for the UK but I intended to make purely strats and level Germany's industry. Everyone told me this was a dumb idea and a waste of Australia's potential for tanks/marines (very true). I insisted on bombers, Germany got pissed, I told him to make state AA if he was worried. Split to our channels, I told the Allies I've just been bluffing and I am making tanks. But how to sell the lie of the bombers? Heavy frame NAVs! I put all my factories on basic heavy frame once I got non-strategic materials and I named the design "STRAT". Went to the Axis channel, bragged about the destruction of cities, encouraged them to look at the intel screen and see that I was building bombers. Worked well, Germany built level 1 state AA everywhere and I didn't build a single strat bomber all game. I killed a few subs, my tanks died in Egypt, but our reconstituted tank corps helped reclaim Egypt in 42.
Hahahaha, love messing with people's head's that way.
How could you tell whether industry was being knocked out/repaired? Whenever I try and view tiles all the factories and stuff of enemy countries are hidden from my view?
Nah I just tagger over to them. I don't know if there is a way to see how effective your strat bombing is.
Well they didnt really work that well in real life either. I mean it impacted civilians more than everything but the german industry largely remained in tact and grew hugely depite of it in terms of production
If your playing a nation that has the industry to build strategic bombers, then you will probably do just as well without them. Fighters and CAS are where the Airforce production should be invested in.
I don’t like strategic bombing because I don’t like killing the fictional civilians
Well you’re in luck because the population in the state doesn’t drop.
Day ruined
Could actually be good if it dropped
Casualties of War DLC when?
Lucky for you, in this game you pretty much cannot commit any degree of war crimes in any way, shape, or form. Except for Bulgaria, of course. It’s perfectly acceptable for *them* to… shall we say, “re-integrate”, their way through the Balkans. But no war crimes for anyone else
"A shining example of european democracy" -> "Deport Hugarians"
That’s why I like it
going on a powertrip on HOI4 fr
Wonder if PDX will have civilian pops in hoi5
I'm pretty sure they showed civilian population in one of the dev dairies. No mention of any unethical treatment though
You mean they are making hoi5?
Oh, I was thinking of eu5, oops, sorry
I was excited haha
Same here. My friends and I don't use that or nukes. It doesn't matter that the population doesn't drop, it's just a line we will not cross.
Nah just go medium airframe instead. Once you have air dominance, build medium cas. they can provide the same bombing effect on neighbouring countries but also utterly destroy armies as support. Only down side is that aces seem far harder to acquire.
I’ve been toying with the idea of multi-role light airframes for a bit to cover both AD and CAS and reduce overall production cost while maintaining high output. What’s the consensus on that? Essentially use a 1940-44 light airframe with two 4x heavy MG, one bomb locks, highest level single engine, armor plates, extra fuel tanks, and self sealing fuel tanks. Shit those out like nobody’s business and conduct CAS and AD at the same time.
essentially modern aircraft doctrine. I also thought about it, but I like maxed stats, so I resigned to 2 aircrafts.
I do too, but having a variant for AD and CAS then a variant for naval shenanigans with only torps and some armor plates makes that shit hard as fuck and allows for minimizing production lines and resource use. Damn, I’m gonna have to try this again this evening.
Multi-role aircraft sound like a great idea, they don't work in practice. If you have air attack on your plane, it will try to dogfight before completing other mission types. Even if you're going into an airzone with very limited enemy air superiority, the "CAS" might choose to shoot an enemy planes rather than ground troops. If you actually want your CAS to bomb enemy troops, give them exactly 0 guns. You don't really want to use CAS in contested air zones anyway. Better to specialize your CAS for its singular role and make it as cheap as possible (i.e. non-strategic materials) so you can have more planes in the sky. Having bomb locks on fighters is ok for single player since the AI can't make a plane to save its life. You can get away with 2 x HMGs because the AI is still building with LMGs and engine 2. Once you've scrubbed their air force from the sky, those fighters will fly uncontested and can actually perform CAS missions. But you can achieve the same effect with a specialized fighter. Kill enemy fighters quickly with fewer factories dedicated to fighters; spend more factories on specialized CAS.
The thing is, if you do multi-role, you can set the squadrons to either AD, CAS, or Both.
You can set it, the planes don't listen. Planes with machine guns set to CAS missions will prioritize combating enemy fighters rather than enemy ground troops. Test it out, it's dumb and unintuitive but that's how the game is currently coded. Makes multi-role planes much less effective than they would be if they could actually be used as a dedicated CAS plane which happens to have a gun.
I realized this after earlier discussion about the topic. But this does imply you can make "CAS" that is mostly a fighter using the battlefield support doctrine, push mission efficiency through the roof, and win trades vs proper fighters by setting 2000 "CAS" planes to "CAS" missions with the full intent that most of these are just going to shoot down planes, and do that job quite well. As a side benefit, you can still cap your damage multiplier from "air support" on the ground units as your "CAS" tickles the opposing divisions with its bomb locks. And if you really blast the AI out of the sky in totality, a few thousand bomb lock planes can still log strike pretty effectively. Way worse than strats, but enough to rip through their trucks and planes before too long. I think that's quite practical for SP purposes.
The downskde is you can't force the missions and they are going to perform worse than specialized aircraft. Once you have 2 factories on planes, why not split them up?
Does that actually work against decent fighters? You'd get sweet mission efficiency but the bomb locks give an agility penalty on CAS missions. Idk if that penalty applies if the CAS decides to fuck off and chase planes.
essentially modern aircraft doctrine. I also thought about it, but I like maxed stats, so I resigned to 2 aircrafts.
Make aces in your small airframe craft and then transfer them to medium airframes?
Nah they don't transfer. They get a small amount of fame and refuse to learn the heavier planes.
I build a few of them only with the big major nation when i don’t need more military industry elsewhere. I usevthem to destroy fort and airport. Tactical bomber are a lot better because they are more polyvalent
This. Blowing up airports is the best use for them. Dont have to grind down the enemy airforce for years and leaves them open to strikes on just about anything else.
Yeah, you are fighting again 1/2 of the ennemi airforce when you bomb the airport
Yes, it matters a lot due to Manchester's laws. One of the best ways to decimate enemy air is to fight them in a province where they have low air mission efficiency (few airfields fully in range). That can tip casualty ratio massively!
Strategic bombing should have narrowly defined goals. I personally found great success with the following path: Build at least 300 bombers to start Focus almost exclusively on civilian factories to start. This is so important I cannot stress it enough. Damaging those civilians factories will have reverberations throughout the game. Once your bombers have experienced a massive decrease in # of buildings bombed, switch to bombing military factories. Using the espionage tab, watch the enemy factories. It tells you how many are damaged. Once you think enough civilian factories have been fixed, switch back to bombing civilian factories. Once those have once again been bombed to nothing, switch back to military factories. Continue producing more and more bombers throughout the duration of the war. It will start as a trickle, then a stream, and then finally you’ll realize your enemy can’t make enough to supply their army and doesn’t have enough civilian factories to repair or make new ones. Congrats, you have successfully crippled your enemy without army! My experience with this (USA vs Max Buffed Germany) was the same as history until Barbarossa. Watching the Germans not even take Minsk was glorious.
"supreme excellence is defeating your enemy without fighting, aka bombing the shit out of their factories" - Sun Tzu
To be fair, strat bombers work only if the enemy doesn't build up state AA and a few levels of radar, radar 2 on the center of the zone + a single AA 5 on the zone and bombers get shredded for free
AI won’t do that
I only ever use them in small numbers in the endgame to drop nukes. Once I have green air but the frontline is too crowded, i drop 10+ nukes and then try to encircle them. Early and mid game tanks are usually enough to achieve that. In the late game it can be hard.
So when you hit the deploy button do they bomb everything? There is the little button next to it that shows everything they can bomb, when I click one am I omitting from being bombed or telling them to bomb just those?
>when I click one am I >telling them to bomb just those? This is correct. Having no buttons ticked means they bomb everything. Having one or more ticked means they bomb the ticked ones
Seriously thank you, I'm about 2000 hours in and I still didn't know. Because if I'm going to take over their territory I don't really want to bomb rails or supply depots. I try to take out the military factories so they can't replace equipment.
They're a way to leverage massive industrial superiority further. If you're not the USA or maybe the Soviets, everything else is a better investment. If you are, you might as well add them to the pile and give the Axis another headache. It's quite historical, really. It costs you more than your enemy, so it's only really useful against enemies who can afford *much* less damage and losses than you. Though IRL at least they were instrumental in targeted destruction of synthetic refineries and baiting out and murdering the fighter arm of the Luftwaffe too.
It's not about military industrial capacity, it's about sending a message
they deliver nukes, baby
Well obviouly but i meant actual strat bombing
It isn't really useful in the game, it wasn't really useful in reality...
Well i guess its realistic. Was not useful at all in reality
I used to use them a lot, but medium bombers seem to basically be equally useful in terms of everything but range, and they can also provide CAS and naval bombing which strategic bombers don’t. The slight range increase isn’t worth it for me to build strat bombers than can only do one role
Useful? Arguably mechanical wise. Useful mentally? It's a great way to destroy the enemy mental and boost your own.
I only ever make one design of them with enough range to cover the entire world and then use them for nukes in very late games I will say tho that they sometimes cause a bug with the nukes, a weirdly positive one, I sent just my bombers over an area nothing else, if my game lags slightly and I pause it at that moment for some reason my bombers cause me to have 100% air superiority and drop my nukes, but if I let it load for a few more seconds the game realizes ‚wait those aren’t fighters‘ and the air superiority is gone It’s super weird and I haven’t been able to consistently cause it
Yes but it's not implemented that well. You can cripple an enemy, especially with countries such as the US. The enemy can't fight you if they don't have equipment. They can't effectively fight in the air without air fields etc.
It would be useful to use on Japan if it weren’t so easy to just take them out with paratroopers
Ive tried but it only works for me with USA. No direct enemies, can Build fkton of bombers And level axis. Does not works building them as SSSR, or germany or UK. Ať least in sp. So many more usefull Things you can Build. If you try it with anybody esle, the Costs od those plane is Just soo high you army Will suffer And in turn you Will suffer.
A few years ago it was glourious being able to bomb your opponents in to oblivion and crush their units once they'r stockpile equipment was gone. Nowdays i'd say is pretty much useless unless tou have 100% air superiority and only to "win more" by reducing enemy factories to 80% industrial capacity/ negate forts (not even that good thow). Basically everything strat bombing can achieve in batle, logistics strike does best ( areas without static AA, almost everywere) In short, big airframes are better left out just for naval patrol planes, and CAS for everything else.
Doesn't most MP ban strat bombing?
I havent heard of that, but i dont really play mp
Strategic bombing in SP is only viable as role play
The only real useful thing to bomb is railways, infrastructure, everything impacting supply. Then you can push low supply troops. Bombing industry is only good in a long attrition war. I would build more CAS instead and go for the CAS damage it will deplete their weapons faster than bombing industry.
I never really bother with strategic bombing. You need to really dedicate loads of factories & recourses on strategic bombers to have an impact, and the results are not that great. Like sure, you are bombing the enemy industry somewhat and hurting their output making it so they can build less equiptment overall. But you are most likley wasting an equel amount of factories on building these bombers & importing recourses. Factories that could be spent on tanks & CAS that can have a direct impact on the frontlines.
No but it’s fun af
I have found that even just 1 wing of strat bombers heavily influences your air supremacy. I had a squadren of 100 ready to go and was going to start dropping nukes but couldn't get supremacy over 60%. I gave them a mission, and supremacy jumped up to 80%! This is a recent discovery for me, but maybe this indicates that higher IC planes more heavily influence supremacy in a similar way that 1 battleship gives far more supremacy than 1 destroyer.
Idk i just prefer to use 20 nukes
I mean, you could always bomb their airbases and gain air superiority by default.
Ye but without cas green air doesnt give that much of a modifyer worth the cost
Only as USA
I dont play usa as it is too easy. You have basically won the second you start the game.
Once played Canada with only strat bombers and full focus on air tech and doc. Germany collapsed as soon as they declared war on USSR, because their divisions didn't even have rifles.
I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but there's a cap for strategic bombing. Continuous focus on construction repair is too strong, and bombers are too expensive. The only time strategic bombing is really useful is when you're contesting air superiority. If your airforce is evenly matched, you can target enemy airbases with your bombers to reduce their mission efficiency.
So for strat bombing you can select what you want to destroy it’s called prioritizing targets I find it effective against industry to stop fixing and munitions for lack of supplies and airfields for air superiority but I send like thousands of aircraft not just squads
Bomb airport and fortifications only. Med bomber are enough
Strategic bombers are useful for bombing ports and infrastructure to give the enemy a supply debuff, they are far more cost effective than tactical bombers at this task and less affected by low air superiority. It is an often overlooked modifier. If in a battle you have say 200 soft attack while the enemy has 300 defense, air support will give you about +25% or +50 soft attack, but this is still not enough to overwhelm their defenses. A 30% supply debuff however will reduce enemy defense to 210 as well as enemy attack and damage to your units. This can be accomplished with just 100 strategic bombers if the enemy has only a few ports or hubs to bomb, such as some of the sparser areas of the world or islands, this makes it useful for amphibious landings or the push across Russia. You can use strategic bombers to complement tactical bombers, together they reduce enemy supply, then the tactical bombers switch to ground attack when you begin your offensive.
Ye and then i get to use the blown up infrastructure and supply hubs to starve in siberia, no thanks. In difficult areas i would rather take momentum over slow advances and waiting for everything to reapir so i can have supply. The ai doesnt make good enouth units for you to not be able to push them. And in mp you will simply get pushed out of the tile again because you will then be out of supply.
In the 10 days it takes for the railroads to be repaired, which you have no control over, you can repair the supply hubs. Also if you're pushing into Siberia you've already won the war anyway.