Slitherine

If I have some command points for my Airforce, I tend to use them in two ways - either I buy fighters, that have the highest stats against other planes, or I buy tactical bombers, which have the highest stat for bombing ground units...

But as resources and command points are few, I have never found a need for buying strategic bombers. However I feel that I might be missing out on something - I mean there must be a reason for them to be in the game.

So, do anyone else use these planes, and for what purpose? Are there specific scenarios or missions that they are better at?
Thanks in advance for your advice...

I find strategic bombers are good for reducing supply. They probably need to do several runs to make a difference depending on how supply is set up in the scenario.
Also they should reduce the unit target's efficiency.

Are there then any situations where it would be better to reduce supply, instead of using the resources on a tactical bomber, that can reduce the strength/morale of the units bombed?

I mean, is it for example better in a scenario where, lets say, you have a couple of infantry units around a trenched enemy, who you then can "soften" with these strategical bombers, and then afterwards your infantry can have a better outcome? - Instead of a tactical bomber who deal more damage to the enemy, but who is better equipped to withstand your attack with the infantry? Or is that just how it could make sense in my own head?

Also, are the strategic bombers better at destroying forts and strongholds, than the tactical bombers?

I would always go for purchasing tactical bombers, they are overall your best bombers since they are usually also good ship hunters.
I never buy a strategic bomber...

Depending on Air CPs, my core for 18 is usually 3 fighters, 2 strat bombers, 1 tactical bombers. I prefer strat bombers to tactical ones for following reasons:
1. strat bombers are more durable to fighters/ground AA attacks so hence usually don't get targeted by AI and therefore not costly to maintain or need to ground for repairs constantly.
2. strat bombers are more effective against stuff with high air defence (tanks/infantry), and as effective vs artillery/anti-tanks given their high shock attacks, so in general more versatile.
3. strat bombers have more fuel so less need to stop for refuel.

Conclusion: Probably you haven't had enough exposure to the game to appreciate efficiency attacks on enemy. You will find that it is often best to reduce efficiency to 6/10 of a unit with 2 artillery-type strikes than reduce it to 6/10 strength, because strength is much easier to recover than efficiency (and the AI rests units only after losing a lot of efficiency). The other thing is that strat bombers will rarely be attacked (if you have fighter escort) due to their high defence values, and will therefore be able to maintain their attacks for longer than tactical bombers, which get attacked even with escorts.

OoB is not a strategic only operational game (level 1 below), so strategic bombers are not needed. The direct air support units are important (fighters, fighter-bombers, dive bombers, light bombers).
Please note that most medium bombers (used directly behind the frontline to destroy communication lines, material depots and human reserves heading to the frontline) are considered as strategic bombers in OOB.
Examples: B-25 Mitchell, B-26 Marauder

Thanks for all your various experience with this topic - I guess I have to give the strategic bombers are second chance, to see if I can make good use of them...

I just find it so difficult to choose which units I want to buy, with a limited amount of points, as there are so many choices - and I would like to be better to see a purpose for each units "speciality" rather than it is now, where I just look what I can afford, and if that only limits me to a light tank and a engineer division, I have to go with that...

kondi754 wrote:OoB is not a strategic only operational game (level 1 below), so strategic bombers are not needed. The direct air support units are important (fighters, fighter-bombers, dive bombers, light bombers).
Please note that most medium bombers (used directly behind the frontline to destroy communication lines, material depots and human reserves heading to the frontline) are considered as strategic bombers in OOB.
Examples: B-25 Mitchell, B-26 Marauder

It is important not to confuse gameplay mechanics and real world tactics- it doesn't matter what the strategic bomber is called or what it's function was in WW2. Notice that I did not even put supply reduction in my reasons I like strategic bombers because the official campaigns 99% of the cases have frivolous supply that needs many turns of bombarding to influence.

In the end, it's a matter of choice as resources are scarce and the trade offs between the tac/strat bombers aren't obvious. One will be able to finish the game on last difficulty without strategic bombers, same way he/she can finish it without anti-tanks/AAs/recons too. The only units one actually "really" needs are infantry/tanks/artillery/fighters. So up to the player's choice, but I am glad I gave them a chance- you should try too.

Erik2 wrote:I find strategic bombers are good for reducing supply. They probably need to do several runs to make a difference depending on how supply is set up in the scenario.

But however the city you bombard is one of your objectives when you are going to capture it the supply will be reduced.
The provisioning of a city is reconstituted in time ?

13obo wrote:

kondi754 wrote:OoB is not a strategic only operational game (level 1 below), so strategic bombers are not needed. The direct air support units are important (fighters, fighter-bombers, dive bombers, light bombers).
Please note that most medium bombers (used directly behind the frontline to destroy communication lines, material depots and human reserves heading to the frontline) are considered as strategic bombers in OOB.
Examples: B-25 Mitchell, B-26 Marauder

It is important not to confuse gameplay mechanics and real world tactics- it doesn't matter what the strategic bomber is called or what it's function was in WW2. Notice that I did not even put supply reduction in my reasons I like strategic bombers because the official campaigns 99% of the cases have frivolous supply that needs many turns of bombarding to influence.

In the end, it's a matter of choice as resources are scarce and the trade offs between the tac/strat bombers aren't obvious. One will be able to finish the game on last difficulty without strategic bombers, same way he/she can finish it without anti-tanks/AAs/recons too. The only units one actually "really" needs are infantry/tanks/artillery/fighters. So up to the player's choice, but I am glad I gave them a chance- you should try too.

I do not mix game with reality, after all I wrote that medium bombers are considered to be useful / used in operational level, but in the OoB game they are treated as strategic bombers, which clearly shows that the most important are only planes used directly on the battlefield.
The truth is that in OoB there is a whole bunch of "unnecessary" units and these are also strategic bombers in my opinion.

Developers should think about adding one DLC to the list.
I think of the US-British air campaign over Europe from 1942 to 1945, it is the only way to make full use of strategic bombers.

I didn't bother much about SBs either at beginning, as they have been quite useless in the early semi-naval vanilla campaigns like other land-based aircraft.
It highly depends on the scenario/campaign and the given supply points per hex how well you can decimate the enemy's supply storage. Although it surely takes some time, it can be devastingly well effective in scenarios where you can build-up large pockets with trapped units.
I also find SBs sometimes useful as efficiency-killer against powerful tanks, artillery guns, structures, or even small/medium AA-guns that aren't that effective against large aircraft. Even low-strength high-eff units can do damage on your own units, but high-strength low-eff are basically already defeated.

Horst wrote:I didn't bother much about SBs either at beginning, as they have been quite useless in the early semi-naval vanilla campaigns like other land-based aircraft.
It highly depends on the scenario/campaign and the given supply points per hex how well you can decimate the enemy's supply storage. Although it surely takes some time, it can be devastingly well effective in scenarios where you can build-up large pockets with trapped units.
I also find SBs sometimes useful as efficiency-killer against powerful tanks, artillery guns, structures, or even small/medium AA-guns that aren't that effective against large aircraft. Even low-strength high-eff units can do damage on your own units, but high-strength low-eff are basically already defeated.

Agree with this. With the few air points you get, SB are mostly not an option. They are most likely aux units in special missions. Would be fun to see some official, specialised missions which you can only win if you use your SBs efficiently.

BK-Dunkirk is an SB-friendly scenario where you can trap a lot of units in the middle with only few supply points to deal with. Maybe you don't get the supply down to 0 for most of the time, but even 50% makes a good difference.
You can also earn good cash with Forced Labour in PK-Kharkov42 if you can keep up a good encirclement, use SBs mainly against supply points, and don't attack with Romanian units. This scenario finally earned me enough RPs to field all my expensive veteran units from BK. Afterwards, the campaign was a stroll in the park.

Horst wrote:BK-Dunkirk is an SB-friendly scenario where you can trap a lot of units in the middle with only few supply points to deal with. Maybe you don't get the supply down to 0 for most of the time, but even 50% makes a good difference.
You can also earn good cash with Forced Labour in PK-Kharkov42 if you can keep up a good encirclement, use SBs mainly against supply points, and don't attack with Romanian units. This scenario finally earned me enough RPs to field all my expensive veteran units from BK. Afterwards, the campaign was a stroll in the park.

On which level of difficulty do you play?
I must admit it is a very interesting solution with PK Charkov42.
I didn't think about it, although it resembles poaching a bit.

How many SBs do you use? I understand that you are buying SB at the expense of TB?
Otherwise, you are weakening your fighters and the enemy can shoot down your bombers ...

I only play medium/middle diff and even with gameplay mod. Some bombers like the Ju-88 can switch between TB/SB mode with my mod, so you may call this a cheat.
In 03_Kharkov_42, a single Ju-88 was enough to reduce the supply of the 5-point villages while ground troops managed to slowly tighten the grip on the pocket by occupying the rest of the settlements around with higher supply amount. It takes a while and requires additional arty support to finally keep the AI's efficiency to 0 that it becomes too afraid to break free with units. In the end, it turned into a lucrative clean-up operation.
No idea if it is feasible with vanilla and higher diff, but I think the possibility is there.

As a tests-and-pretty-pictures nut, I couldn't resist just doing the Strategic Bombing tests below in vanilla OOB..
1- This juicy German city is producing 10 supply points worth of sauerkraut and schnapps, so I send in a B-25B strat bomber to disrupt production (2 and 3).
(Note: cities can be bombed even if they're EMPTY, like here)
4- and bingo, the city loses 2 points worth of production and is down to a sickly yellow 8 points!




In the test below, we see that a unit in a city also gets hurt under strat bombing.
1- A fresh fullstrength US infantry unit is happily watching a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie, what could possibly go wrong?
2- The city is at full production, churning out ample sticks of gum to supply the unit, and still has 7 points surplus to spare.
3- In comes a Heinkel 111H to drop its eggs which strips the city of 2 points worth of production.
4- Note the infantry unit has also been hurt, losing 2 strength points and some efficiency.
5- Confirmation that the city too has been hurt, it can still supply the infantry but has lost some capacity to supply other units that might be around.
6 and 7- after several more turns the Heinkel has completely halted production and the infantry is now displaying the dreaded "out of supply" red dot!


SUMMARY- Strat bombers can hurt city/town production AND hurt any unit that might be in there, which makes them pretty good value.
However if the enemy has got lots of supply cities/towns on the map we probably won't have enough cash and/or air command points to invest in a big strat bomber fleet to clobber them all.
But if there are relatively few cits/towns in a scenario it might be worthwhile launching a strat bomber offensive against them, because as we saw in the tests, a typical strat bomber strips 2 points of production per turn, so in 5 turns a single SB can reduce prod to zero, and if we use say 3 SB's hitting the same target they can reduce a cit/towns production from 10 to zero in just 2 turns..

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

Princess Elizabeth visits 306th BG, Thurleigh, England to christen B-17 "Rose of York"

I actually use Stat Bombers quite a lot and nearly always acquire one for my campaign core as soon as I can afford it. I'm quite a bit of an "Artillery General" as my strategy relies heavily on lowering the enemy efficency, and a Stat Bomber with a value of 20+ (in addition to regular artillery) does work wonders there. I never use it to lower supply points by bombing cities, that only comes as a nice addition when bombing an enemy unit entrenched in one.

A Stat Bomber, compared to regular artillery, also does not get his own efficency lowered by -1 after taking a shot + a Bomber is a highly mobile air artillery, which can quickly respond to threats, enemy attacks and breakthroughs on the battlefield.

Only disadvantage is the danger of getting shot at by AA/Flak, repairing a Stat is really quite expensive, so my first priority when attacking a highly fortified position (Inf, Art and AA) is to first attack the enemy AA position(s) with Artillery to lower their efficency, get a Tac Bomber/Stuka in after two shots at a AA and reduce the strenght of it and then the way is more or less paved for my Stat Bomber to attack the regular entrenched positions of the enemy, as the AA will struggle to effectively counter my Stat Bomber attack(s), finally followed by the attack of my ground forces.

Also make sure to have a fighter escort, espacially at the beginning of each battle, as the AI normally tends to not attack a Stat Bomber when covered by a fighter (note that there are exceptions to this AI behavior).

PoorOldSpike wrote:
SUMMARY- Strat bombers can hurt city/town production AND hurt any unit that might be in there, which makes them pretty good value.
However if the enemy has got lots of supply cities/towns on the map we probably won't have enough cash and/or air command points to invest in a big strat bomber fleet to clobber them all.
But if there are relatively few cits/towns in a scenario it might be worthwhile launching a strat bomber offensive against them, because as we saw in the tests, a typical strat bomber strips 2 points of production per turn, so in 5 turns a single SB can reduce prod to zero, and if we use say 3 SB's hitting the same target they can reduce a cit/towns production from 10 to zero in just 2 turns..

That is what I meant with "specially designed maps with aux strat bombers" - otherwise, there just isnt that much of a rationale for them, especially with tight resources.

VKing23 wrote:I actually use Stat Bombers quite a lot and nearly always acquire one for my campaign core as soon as I can afford it. I'm quite a bit of an "Artillery General" as my strategy relies heavily on lowering the enemy efficency, and a Stat Bomber with a value of 20+ (in addition to regular artillery) does work wonders there. I never use it to lower supply points by bombing cities, that only comes as a nice addition when bombing an enemy unit entrenched in one.

A Stat Bomber, compared to regular artillery, also does not get his own efficency lowered by -1 after taking a shot + a Bomber is a highly mobile air artillery, which can quickly respond to threats, enemy attacks and breakthroughs on the battlefield.

Only disadvantage is the danger of getting shot at by AA/Flak, repairing a Stat is really quite expensive, so my first priority when attacking a highly fortified position (Inf, Art and AA) is to first attack the enemy AA position(s) with Artillery to lower their efficency, get a Tac Bomber/Stuka in after two shots at a AA and reduce the strenght of it and then the way is more or less paved for my Stat Bomber to attack the regular entrenched positions of the enemy, as the AA will struggle to effectively counter my Stat Bomber attack(s), finally followed by the attack of my ground forces.

Also make sure to have a fighter escort, espacially at the beginning of each battle, as the AI normally tends to not attack a Stat Bomber when covered by a fighter (note that there are exceptions to this AI behavior).

Well said. Forgot the "no loss of efficiency when firing", which is a huge benefit.

What difficulty do you use when playing?

P.S. I disagree with what most people say above in that strat bombers are useless (or useful only to damage supply). They are definitively substitutable with tactical bombers (like tactical bombers are substitutable with strat bombers), and require a different playstyle, but useless they are not.

Andy2012 wrote: That is what I meant with "specially designed maps with aux strat bombers" - otherwise, there just isnt that much of a rationale for them, especially with tight resources.

Andy, you often say how you ground your tactical bombers in your AARs of Panzerkrieg to prevent damage to them- well strat bombers don't need to be grounded at all, as no one fires at them if they have a fighter escort. When using tactical bombers, they end up soaking the damage and require reinforcements. With strat bombers, your fighters take the damage, but they are only used to shoot down enemy planes (when there are no planes, fighters just fly around doing nothing), so reinforcing them doesn't impact your ground combat ability.

13obo wrote:
Andy, you often say how you ground your tactical bombers in your AARs of Panzerkrieg to prevent damage to them- well strat bombers don't need to be grounded at all, as no one fires at them if they have a fighter escort. When using tactical bombers, they end up soaking the damage and require reinforcements. With strat bombers, your fighters take the damage, but they are only used to shoot down enemy planes (when there are no planes, fighters just fly around doing nothing), so reinforcing them doesn't impact your ground combat ability.

I need to see that for myself - would be odd behaviour. Still, I need my tacbombers and dont have enough air command points and resources to spare for an extra set of stratbombers. And keeping my bombers grounded for a turn or two until I have cleared the skies is me being extra careful - not sure if that is still necessary, first beta versions of Panzerkrieg were extremely short on credits.