Strategic Bombers.

[stormbringer3]

What are some of the recommended bombers both early and late? Right now all I've got are He 111s. Is it a mistake to switch lines such as going from a He 111 to a Do 217e than back to a late game He or Ju? I'm also thinking of purchasing a third bomber and can get a Ju 88 or another He 111.
Thanks for any opinions.

[huckc]

Consider keeping the He 111 as it will be a family upgrade to the He 177.

I also like the Do 217, but the He 177 has a higher naval attack which may or may not be worth it depending on the campaign.

Buy a third and fourth too

[hugh2711]

I get a heinkel asap and train it up to have at two heroes (never managed a third), I wouldnt bother switching between families, the stats on it are great, even the early model without upgrade on strength 13 can on dice chess usually destroy a full strength naval transport and make serious dents on any ship. When upgraded for a modest couple of hundred and a few heroes it is a monster, can suppress anything, take bites out of anything.

[captainjack]

Strategic bombers gain experience fast enough that you can sometimes get to 2* in a single scenario, so you don't have to prepare in advance. The downside is that they don't easily get kills for heores, and an advantage of training bombers early and then upgrading them is that you accumulate kills from early naval scenarios (eg Norway, Dunkirk and Crete).

Despite the extremely low fuel allowance, I often use a Do17 in 39 to get to 2* and maybe in 40 to gain the third. This means that you can upgrade to a 3* 13 strength Do217 early in 41. The He111 is useful in its own right at least until the Ju88 is available and simply needs to sit in reserve for a while.

As for upgrading out of class, the Ju88 to Ju188 is not a great upgrade and it comes quite late on, so it's definitely worth considering conversion to a Do217 or He177 if you have the prestige. Of course the best time to do this is when it's been damaged a bit (to 10 strength or less) as otherwise the loss of overstrength is annoying.

[proline]

I get a heinkel asap and train it up to have at two heroes (never managed a third), I wouldnt bother switching between families, the stats on it are great, even the early model without upgrade on strength 13 can on dice chess usually destroy a full strength naval transport and make serious dents on any ship. When upgraded for a modest couple of hundred and a few heroes it is a monster, can suppress anything, take bites out of anything.

Me too. The He 111 gets the 177 upgrade pretty early (1942), and the 177 is the best late game bomber for the Germans. I don't see the need to use any other class even if some of them have a slightly better naval attack.

[PoorOldSpike]

Just to digress slightly, why can strat bombers bomb empty enemy cities? What good does it do?
I ran some tests but they were inconclusive.

[proline]

In Panzer General, the AI was given $ each turn which it used to buy units at cities. Knocking down flags would stop them from placing units at those cities and could therefore be used to guide the battle away from difficult to capture cities towards easier ones. In PzC, the AI seldom purchases units so that's less of a factor but it still applies.

So basically the advantage is that the AI can't buy units there and they lose some prestige as well when their cities are bombed.

Important to know is that you can bomb enemy cities while you are in them. For example, place an AA unit in a city so the enemy can't buy units there, then bomb it every time your units don't have other military targets. Your AA will be unaffected but the enemy will suffer a loss of prestige that they are helpless to prevent.

[captainjack]

The enemy only loses prestige if you bomb a victory hex city (gold border). Bombing other victory hexes or other cities doesn't cause prestige loss.

You can't neutralise a victory hex city but other cities can be neutralised. This turns the flag white until the enemy or your team captures it. Neutralising a city has two benefits. First it stops the AI spawning units at the city - and it can't spawn units until two turns after it has recaptured it.
Second, an anemy city has a 1 hex spotting radius, so the AI loses awareness of what's going on.

Bomber efficiency which is (strength x [2 + stars], so max 105% for 15 strength 5* bomber) affects how much fuel/ammo the target unit loses. This is halved in cloudy weather.
Neutralisation chance is half the bomber efficiency rounded down so max 52%
Prestige loss from bomibng a VH city is the same as the neutralisation chance, so max 52 prestige.
Bombing a non-city VH (eg airfield, terrain feature) = no prestige loss or neutralisation chance.

While draining prestige sounds good, in practice most of the AI reinforcements are scripted or are triggered by a scripted prestige dump, so it's best to view this as a nice bonus on top of neutralisation, fuel and ammo reduction and high naval damage, rather than to make it a primary role for strategic bombers.

[PoorOldSpike]

(Re Strategic bombing vs cities)
Thanks guys I just ran some tests with B-17G's bombing an empty German victory objective city, and each attack reduced the German prestige pool by 10.
We can only attack a city twice per turn at most, ie a B-17G beginning its turn in the city hex drops its load to subtract 10 from the pool and flies away, then a second B-17G flies in on the same turn and drops its eggs to subtract another 10, for a maximum of 20 pp's subtraction per turn.
(BUT if the Germans are getting say 30 pp's incoming per turn, their pool will still increase by 10 per turn, its a maths thing)

Summary (correct me if I'm wrong)-
20 pp reduction per turn due to strat bombing is not much in the grand scheme of things, but if the bombers have got nothing else to bomb they might as well clobber the city unless enemy fighters and/or flak make it too costly.
Strat bombing would be especially useful if the enemy is very short on pp's and he's not getting any new pp's each turn. We can find out what his pp allowance is by starting the scen in hotseat and peeking, call it "intelligence gathering"..

[proline]

Correct. Strat bombing basically just gives you something to do if your bombers don't have any tactical targets available.

[captainjack]

B-17G's bombing an empty German victory objective city, and each attack reduced the German prestige pool by 10.

Yep. 10 strength green unit has efficiency 20 = 10 x (2 + 0), so prestige loss of 10, which is half the bomber efficiency is what you should expect.

[huckc]

That's one of the things I hope they find a "fix" in Panzer Corps 2 because right now strategic bombers are much more useful in direct combat roles rather than strategic bombing of various cities which is sort of backwards.

For instance, B-17s were only used in combat in a few isolated cases such as the bombings of Monte Cassino and the Cobra breakout. For obvious reasons, one in particular is that dropping bombs from high altitude feet is danger close!

Maybe something like lower prestige AND global ammo/fuel reduction of all enemy units. That's probably a terrible idea just spit-balling

[PoorOldSpike]

What are some of the recommended bombers both early and late?...

I'm still running tests, for example here's another one I did to find out the experience level effect of strategic bombers against cities.
As I found out in the earlier test, a standard '0' experience B-17G strat bomber will subtract 10 prestige points from the enemy's prestige pool, but this new test below showed that a '5-star' experienced B-17G will subtract a whopping 35 pp's!
So two 5-star bombers clobbering him inflict a huge 70 pp loss per turn!
PS- got a bit of a mystery here, because I later upped some B-17's to '15' strength points (as below), but surprisingly each bomber still subtracted 35 pp's just the same as a standard '10' strength bomber, so I can only assume that 35 per bomber is the maximum the game engine allows unless I've overlooked something?



"When I look around to see how we can win the war I see that there is only one sure path..and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland"- Churchill, 1940

"Already, only twenty-three minutes after the attack had started, Cologne was ablaze from end to end, and the main force of the attack was still to come"- Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC, RAF Bomber Command

"The breadbaskets [local slang for bundles of incendiaries and target marker flares] looked quite pretty floating down in the night sky"- Marjorie (PoorOldSpike's mother) under Luftwaffe air attack, Leicester, England 1940

"I completely lack the bombers capable of round-trip flights to New York with a 4.5-tonne bomb load. I would be extremely happy to possess such a bomber which would at last stuff the mouth of arrogance across the sea"- Hermann Goering 1938 (giving go-ahead for development of an 'Amerikabomber')


Princess Elizabeth visits the US 306th Bomb Group, Thurleigh, England in 1944 to christen B-17 'Rose of York'

[AnalogGamer]

The scripting/coding differences between PG and PC have affected the use and utility of strategic bombers, as stated above. Flag-clearing does not have the same impact. Prestige-robbing can only be done on VLs.

If prestige could be taken from any city hex, that could help broaden the mission.

If a white flag did not turn until a unit had spent an entire turn in that hex, it could help.

If non-VLs earned (very small)prestige, it could make them better targets.

If strat bombers were immune to any small-calibre AAA, unless attacking a non-city hex, that could help.

Multiple escort interceptions when over a city hex could help steer strats to their intended targets. If they are better protected by fighters there, why send them elsewhere?

Rail and highway destruction should be a mission. Break the rail chain for all those trains. Make wheeled vehicles spend extra movement points to traverse a bombed road hex. DROP BRIDGES. Make them bring bridging engineers up!

I only use two bombers myself. A Ju-88 for Sealion and then a 177 in Russia. Part of my reasoning is that I am not using one core slot, I am using two. Every strat needs an escort. Even a single escort doesn't help much if the enemy is determined.

I have no doubt the GC will change much about my OOB. The vanilla Wehrmacht campaign is limiting.

They DO turn into beasts against any target once they get 5 stars and 13+ strength. Using a bomber to drain a tank's ammo/fuel feels wrong but I do it religiously. I don't have the time to whittle down a KV-2.