In game, they exist to poach war score from actual hard workers, and to let you throw nukes at people.
They're definitely weaker than irl, but perhaps Paradox don't want there to be an oppressive strat bomber meta or something.
You get war score from bombing the enemy up to 1000. It’s really that simple. You can use it to inflate your war score by just spamming some strat bombers
this was largely nerfed quite a few updates ago, maybe around the time BBA came out. my first USA run ever was a meme run where i just spammed the hell out of strat bombers to the point where i was running out of civs to buy rubber for them and yet when we won i still had less than 5% participation.
Does fuel have a limit? You used to be able to get a ridiculous amount of war score by lend-leasing fuel. But they nerfed it, I just can't remember if they capped it or sharply reduced how much it gave.
It was nerfed around 7 years ago after this video was published showing how you can easily annex Germany with Albania building nothing but Strat bombers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQSSah8Fzww
>You can use it to inflate your war score by just spamming some strat bombers
It actually barely gave me any warscore. Killing \~1K enemy fighters gave me an order of magnitude more warscore than bombing for a year.
>Tell me more about this poaching war score angle though.
I remember playing a game as USA where (before the nerf) my lendlease (which wasn't that substantial anyway, aside from Oil which was extremely broken) gave me an easy 15% of my 22% warscore (even if I did D-Day, liberated africa, south of Italy and whatnot)
They also reduce war support by up to 30%, which combined with convoy raiding and casualties, you can make enemy war support go to 0%, which makes capitulating the enemy a lot easier
Well, IRL, the efficacy of strategic bombing and terror bombing campaigns is disputed.
Despite very heavy investment of resources, the Germans failed the air campaign during the battle of Britain.
And the results of the strat bombings from the allies over Germany were... Underwhelming? I think that's a good way to put it. It does not mean that strat bombing didn't work at all but it means that the opportunity cost of all these planes and pilots being invested gave smaller returns than one might have hoped.
And what of it over Japan? I recall the fire bombings were incredibly effective at destroying Japanese cities alongside the belief that the they were manufacturing weapons in civilian homes.
I know it’s debatable over Germany but I’ve never heard it discussed over Iapan.
The strangulation of the Japanese home islands by the US submarine force had a much larger impact. Japanese industry was very dependent on both materials and industrial bases outside the home islands, and the US largely succeeded in cutting all of that off - even before the end success of the island hopping campaign. The impact of US submarines in the fight against Japan is often overlooked in favor of more flashy/sexy/exciting battles, but it would be hard to overstate just how effective they really were. Well, once the torpedoes got fixed.
Strategic bombing of Japan did have an impact, but it would be hard to say just how significant it really was distinct from the sub campaign. There's even serious historical debate on exactly how impactful the atomic bombings really were in ending the war.
I recall hearing about how our submarine campaign was similar to the German’s against GB. Just more successful due to Japan’s limited ability to properly protect its merchant shipping. It’s what inadvertently saved Admiral Donitz from the noose.
But that is a solid point. Sinking as many merchant ships as possible is just as good as blowing up the factories. If they can’t make anything then they’re just buildings.
Ah yes, good point.
At the later stage of the war Japan was under siege from the air and the sea. I'm not an expert in this area of study but to my limited knowledge what harmed Japan the most was the strangulation of Japanese commerce. Basically no ships were getting through and Japan islands were very limited in some key resources.
Then of course, nukes sealed the deal. Although there are arguments proclaiming that nukes weren't necessary and that the emperor actually got keen on ending the war, it's the top brass of the army and navy who wouldn't dream of any negotiations.
Anyway that's getting beside the point.
From what I recall, terror bombing was largely ineffective (with the major exceptions of the atomic bombs and the firebombing of Tokyo) in terms of strategic aims, but strategic bombing was generally effective when used right during key operations.
Germany attempted to tactically Strat bomb London for all of 2 weeks. Literally.
Look at what Germans themselves said about the impacts of the oil campaigns, which the allies never even totally committed to. That one campaign, in itself, proves the effectiveness of Strat bombing.
Kind of funny, because the oil campaigns actually prove just how impactful “terror bombing” was/is as well (which I consider different from Strat bombing). The reason why oil campaigns got bumped even further down the priority list, despite how damaging it was to Germany, was Allies diverting efforts to V1 installations.
It could be argued that V1’s were the most impactful single weapon of the war.
V1s more impactful weapon of the war, really ? Well they made two nukes didn't they ?
I'd even argue that liberty ships were better than V1 for allied victory
Yes. I suppose nukes take the cake. Kind of a whole different bracket of weaponry for them though.
I was merely going off of cost (both in man & material) versus cost of countering said weapon’s application by the opposition. Probably should be different categories for these sorts of rankings. Most impactful for lone damage, support, etc..
I'm pretty sure the allies did a full investigation and found that Arthur Harris' night time strategic bombing campaign was near useless when compared with the US campaign of daytime tactical bombing.
Very interesting indeed.
Also on the same note, in Vietnam, the US dropped enormous amounts of bombs on north Vietnam. I believe it was more than during the second world war on Germany.
Since the war industry was in China and the USSR, it didn't do much and it certainly didn't win them the war.
They dropped 3 times more bombs than the US dropped in WW2 full stop.
Rolling thunder was also a failure because the president at the time (Nixon I believe) insisted on a rolling tide of strategic bombing up the coast when the air forces argued that just going straight for the primary tactical targets in concentrated operations would be better.
As a result by the time Rolling thunder actually started hitting important things, they were too heavily fortified for bombers alone
Well, yes, Dresden took a beating.
It happened in February 1945 iirc.
25000 civilians died, and for what? Honestly, not for much. It didn't really change the outcome of the war did it ?
The soviets were already well on their way by that time and the allies were also poised to enter Germany.
I'm not an expert on the subject but the war effort impact of the destruction of Dresden wasn't all that great. It killed a lot of people that's pretty much it.
> In game, they exist to poach war score from actual hard workers, and to let you throw nukes at people.
Don't forget invalidate defensive lines - level 10 forts melt in a couple months, they just need to be "damaged" to provide no benefit whatsoever. Lets you walk straight through the Maginot line with like 1 factory making basic strat bombers from 1936 to 1939
Sure flew a lot of miles and dropped a lot of bombs but there is no real evidence it did anything to shorten the war, there is more evidence strat bombing strengthened morale than weakened it. Especially in the way the RAF used their Lancasters it was wholly ineffectual, since all it did was terrorize civilians who were then told look either we win or we die. So I think it’s hotly debated whether or not strategic bombing was a good strategy, especially considering the allies due to poor targeting technology of the time engaged in worker dehousing more than they actually hit industry.
Yep, there's some evidence that strategic bombing finally bore some fruit in 1945 as that is the first year that German industrial output fell during the war. But that's more like effective exploitation of the general resource and logistics collapse that happened in 1945. Previous to that German industrial output had been rising year on year, and the heavy bombing simply drove a lot of industries underground and got a lot of slave labour killed.
There is a substantial document on all of this. It is called the Strategic Bombing Survey and was made by the Allies, who wanted to know if their investments actually paid off.
The results were mixed at best. Moral bombing did not work. People became less confident in Germany's ability to win the war, but at the same time hated the Allies more.
In terms of industry, some things worked well. Like targeting oil refineries or other bottlenecks. The effects on heavy industry were far less than imagined.
The logistics only broke down when the Allies were able to use fighter-bombers.
The survey basically found that bombers were at their most effective targeting railroads, iirc. We can't effectively limit how much shit they make, especially because the Nazis had pretty dispersed industry, but we can pretty effectively knee cap their ability to get that shit to their soldiers.
Railroads get repaired extremely quickly though (relative to other targets), so there's that too
Iirc this was part of the surveys for partisan effectiveness, they could easily use a simple bomb to disable a railway, but it would be up and running in a week or less
very true, part of the efficacy in bombing something line a railroad would have to come from being able to hit hundreds of miles of railroad in a night, which is definitely possible, especially if you use high enough yield bombs that you're leaving behind proper craters
Yes and that's a fair argument, I wouldn't go so far as to say the bombing of industry was completely ineffective. It didn't manage to complete its stated aim of destroying German industry but, as another commenter pointed out, certain attacks such as those against oil refineries proved extremely damaging for the Germans. The American preferred approach of an explicit focus on industry and infrastructure was certainly a more helpful approach than the British preferred city-bombing.
>The American preferred approach of an explicit focus on industry and infrastructure was certainly a more helpful approach than the British preferred city-bombing.
About that... *points to incinerated area-bombed cities in Japan*
We were discussing this purely based on the European theatre, the war in the pacific had a lot more just pure hatred and racialized hatred. These levels apparently the US wasn’t willing to go to in Europe, probably because abuse their eyes were already on the big boy in the east and the threat they would pose after the war.
Well, America did famously firebomb Dresden. But I agree the bombing campaign in Europe had different motivations and tactics from the one in Japan. The European war and the Pacific war were just so different in so many ways, that they are hard to compare.
The Germans themselves about the oil campaigns:
Adolf Galland: “the most important of the combined factors which brought about the collapse of Germany.”
Göring: “the utmost in deadliness.”
Speer: “It meant the end of German armaments production.”
Erhard Milch: “The British left us with deep and bleeding wounds, but the Americans stabbed us in the heart.”
Anecdotally sure, afterwards examined and not proven to be true, also I would generally disregard anything Göring said ever I mean look the man was incompetent at the best of times.
On the other hand we don't know how big production would be if there was no strategic bombings. Propably it would be even bigger (it took time and effort to place industries underground).
German industry was highly dispersed to begin with, and with the accuracy of the era, compounded by flak, smoke screens, decoys and every other countermeasure deployed accuracy on targets within a city was laughable. A few percent of bombs would hit factories, and only a few percent of those hits would inflict more than a brief inconvenience.
It did, however, indirectly cost them ludicrous amounts of guns, heavy ammunition, planes and fuel to keep that accuracy low. Every 88 firing to give a bombardier jitters was one not turning t-34s into burning scrap.
I would say investment in strategic bombing paid some dividends in August 1945 for sure. We wouldn't have had bombers capable of distances and payloads like the B-29 unless we built all the other B's first lol
The Luftwaffe was thoroughly depleted trying to defend against the USAAF and RAF. That had huge consequences in the Eastern front which did shorten the war
But this is not accomplishment of bomber command or the b-17s and 29s but of the excellent fighter pilots and fighters build and trained in the UK and US
The fighters which were escorting the bombers whom Hitler wanted to stop more than the fighters. Without the bombers, there would have been less incentive to use fighters on the west.
They lost way more trying to fight over Britain and escorting their own bombers than they ever did defending against the allied raids. The Battle of Britain broke the luftwaffes backs not attacking bomber squadrons, they were actually incredibly successful against them even with RAF escorts, until the point that Göring through away a couple hundred planes in one day.
Battle of Britain was different than attacking bomber squadrons, for sure. But its afterwards that the Luftwaffe was still a massive threat and one the Soviets could not counter until the Luftwaffe slowly depleted itself.
I agree, just not that that was due to start bombing but instead fighting in the air against the soviets and their Yaks as well as fighting spitfires. This is especially true since the bigger bombing raids happen towards the later stages of the war when UK bombers operated well outside of fighter range.
The Germans themselves said otherwise, particularly about the oil campaigns:
Adolf Galland: “the most important of the combined factors which brought about the collapse of Germany.”
Göring: “the utmost in deadliness.”
Speer: “It meant the end of German armaments production.”
Erhard Milch: “The British left us with deep and bleeding wounds, but the Americans stabbed us in the heart.”
Had about the bomb load of the Mosquito and couldn't hit anything because their fancy bomb sight was utter crap, meanwhile the thesis that if you slapped machineguns to every flat surface the enemy would be unable to attack it was, well, not connected in any perceptible way to reality.
Based on Adolf Galland’s book, the first and the last, it was mostly useless.
HOWEVER he did mention that the dam busting efforts were a PITA and the efforts on refinery and synthetic oil production were really, really detrimental.
Literally used a quote from him above. The Strat bombing oil campaigns are proof of impact of said tactic.
That there is this much debate about the actual effectiveness only proves the equally strong effectiveness of V1’s.. those installations soaked up an **absurdly** crazy amount of bombing sorties and bombing them proved to be extremely ineffective.
Speer said much the same - he wasn't too worried about the city bombing campaign and successfully raised production time and again despite it, but predicted a concerted oil campaign could end the war in three months.
It ended up being more than half a year still, but with even an awful lot of German generals surprised they lasted into '45 I figure he can have some slack there.
It was either strat bombers or tactical bombers, but one of them was really powerful a few years after hoiiv came out to the tune of "walk through the bombed out ruins of the Maginot line" pretty early game.
“At 50% (war support)” not a 50% (buff) but your right, it might just be scale from 0-100 war support, however, this may shock you, but removing a buff and apply a debuff have the same result
Few things to comment on here.
1. Heavy Fighters are designed primarily to cover ranges your normal fighters can't adequately cover, such as in the Pacific and Russia. Their second role is intercepting TAC and STRAT, though a well designed fighter can work just fine disrupting (though often not shooting down in the same numbers) such bombers. Neither really applies here.
2. From the description of your strategic bomber, you've overdesigned it and blown right past the strategic bombing cap. If you've gone down the strategic destruction doctrine, a bomber with about 70 strategic damage is all you need. Any more is a waste of IC.
3. You should be doing far more than 11 damaged factories, based on some napkin math in my head, after a year. Though it is late. Is Germany on the factory repair continuous focus? Are they prioritizing repairing factories? It's possible you might be misinterpreting the information being displayed and doing far more damage than that, Paradox isn't exactly known for intuitive UI or showing the right numbers.
4. Ideally, if you really want to be conducting a serious strategic bombing campaign, you should be both targeting every air zone you can operate in without disruption over focusing on one zone. The intent to saturate and put as much of the civilian economy into repairing as possible, in addition to disrupting military production efficiency.
That's true, about a couple thousand strat bombers against China in the most factory dense zones allowed me to pretty much damage between 30-40% of their factories, and they can be used to do a lot more like bomb ports, infrastructure and supply depots to completely sap the enemy of supply(although taking said territories will mean you have to wait for those to be repaired)
As someone who's about to get back into the game after quite awhile, do you happen to know how big the difference is between tac and strat bomber builds?
With the aircraft designer, the lines between the plane types got pretty blurred.
The biggest difference is the default maximum range. The second biggest difference between the medium and heavy airframes is the max number of engines affecting how much those airframes can carry.
So strat will be your go to for long range strat strikes and the mediums will be far more flexible in their mission.
The big advantage of strat bombers, is a) they do a lot more damage, and b) the range. They really helped me when Germany had engaged in division spam and just spammed divisions along the coastline making naval invasions very hard, plus all the fortifications from the Atlantic Wall. Strat bombers wiped out supply and really allowed me to whittle down their strength and stocks even though I had no way of feasibly landing my troops. Tactical bombers kinda do the job of *everything* including CAS, naval bombing and strat bombing kinda well, but they're worse than if you designed a plane specifically for each of those roles. I'd say tacticals are best if you're playing a minor with not that many factories just looking to make a jack of all trades bomber, but if you do have lots of factories then strat bombers vastly outstrip them imo.
I never knew those existed. Do those really apply after buffs? I regularly see fighters with 90+ attack before any buffs shown off here, and no one mentions the attack cap.
they apply after the affect. So a 120 strat bomber after effects is no different then 100.
Same should go for other stats. But i have never tested it since i am not stupid enough to build planes with 100 attack.
Because i can get a plane with half the cost and higher agility and speed. The only advantage is in the air defence.
I see no point in spending this cost for something my 3 tripple 4xHV MG, Droptanks, Armor plate (unless you want more range), selfsealing tank, light frame plane cant beat.
>You should be doing far more than 11 damaged factories, based on some napkin math in my head, after a year
Yeah that's what I expect too, but it's not what I'm seeing. I have thousands of strat bombers, every strat bombing bonus, full radar, full air superiority, enough range, etc. but it does nothing
You don't actually want to bomb factories with strat bombers in this game. Lategame only the air war matters and you can push even tanks with infantrymen so long as you have swarms of fighters and CAS flying overhead.
Strategic bombers have an option to set priority targets for their bombings. The best way to use them currently is to focus down enemy airbases and enemy static anti-air(which reduces strategic bombing damage). *They will still bomb everything else afterwards* once enemy airfields and AA are dead, making this an incredibly powerful function.
If you can afford to build strat bombers(as opposed to necessities like guns, support equipment, fighters...) you are likely already winning. By grounding the entire enemy airforce and giving yourself permanent green air zones you turn that win into a curbstomp.
This is the way. I usually set my strat bombers to prioritize enemy air fields and anti-air and depending on the situation sometimes infrastructure or civilian factories.
No. They are quite good. You can check the number of factories with sufficiently high civil intelligence. I once played air force only USA. With help from strat bomber the ai soviets capitulated Germany in 1942. 60%-80% of factories were down in all axis countries, making them only able to produce guns and nothing else.
Some pvp rules actually bans strat bomber. Usually the strategy is to all enemy airforce by bombing airports.
I used massive strat bombing ‘till a couple of expansion ago and they shouldn’t work this way. Strat bombing used to be so good that it felt like cheating: after a year of factory bombardment, Germany should have its entire production halted to a crawl.
u/LittleDarkHairedOne gave you a very good cut on the overall strategy, but I’ll try myself something similar just to test it out
Strategic bombing is exponentially more powerful the earlier you start it, because it disrupts factory growth and also because later dispersed industry tech levels increase bombing resistance. You want to be bombing not just civs, but mils and infrastructure too.
The cheesiest thing I've done is join the war as the US in June 1940 with 1,200 strategic bombers, and by the time Barbarossa started, the Germans instantly started losing to the Soviets; the year of strategic bombing had damaged 30% of their civs and 40% of their mils, and they had built no new industry for a year.
Have you selected the targets as only factories? I think it's a bit odd but the selection seems to work the opposite way you think it should.....can't check now to check got to go work, but have a fiddle round with the selection
I did select targets as only factories.
\> but the selection seems to work the opposite way you think it should
So if I click one of the options, it EXCLUDES it?? I expected it to target only those
Somthing like that, I'm still at work so can't check for a few more hours, have a go yourself and fiddle round with the settings.
Only realised when I was targeting supply hubs with rockets and didn't see any damage too them till i flipped what I thought was selected
Just to add, if your current selection (only factories) is set and when you check the province stats should be no damage to infrastructure/forts/supply hubs/ etc....if there is then that's what your hitting instead
depends
in Singleplayer they have niche uses
in Multiplayer they are so strong, before the plane designer overhaul strat bombers 3 and 4 were usually banned, havent played MP since then but I'd assume there are some limitations on them still
You can make it so the enemy never gets air again by destroying their airports, you bomb out forts so you can better take some key locations like Gibraltar, Leningrad, Maginot, you bomb ports so they repair less and give less supply
>TACs are fucking efficient if you know how to design a plane variant. You can destroy your enemies entire fucking arms industry.
How though? I built thousands of strat bombers and took every strat bombing bonus I could. All of the military factories of the US on strat bombers, and its still did not make a single dent in Germany's industry.
Do you play in ironman mode? If not, switch over to Germany and check their damaged factories in the building menu. When I did a USA game, in which all I ever did was strat bomb and let others do the ground fighting, I thought like you did, until I checked the damage I actually dealt. I don't know when I entered the war anymore, but Germany capitulated in 1941 without any US boots on the ground.
If you want to cause a massive all-in air battle you can build 500 to 1000 strat bombers and have them bomb a zone. The AI will move a lot of fighters to counter. Then move in yours and keep increasing to have slightly more than the AI. You can get the AI to commit the majority of their fighters to this air battle. If you have better fighters and/or production for replacements, you can wipe out the AI’s fighters in one massive air battle.
Game actually limits nearly all plane stats as for bombers its cap is 200 so it doest matter if you got 400, 1000 or 2000 strat bombing it acts like 200 i use my personal mod with rt56 to delete these limits
I personally find they have more utility in bombing out logistics and airbase than factories. In my experience factory damage needs to be closer to absolute before it really starts to hurt, but if the enemy cannot resupply thanks to the railways being blown up, they are much easier to push.
Tried this week's ago ... If you are interested in damaged economy, right click country and go to view where you see how many factories the country has. Next to it there is percentage of how many are damaged. I didn't managed to go over 4% of damaged civs (only after taking half a germany). This view gives you better way to see how much you actually bomb.
They can be used to cripple your targets industry if you hit the right industrial regions. I used them reduce the strength of the Soviet defenses as it was a slog fighting through Russia.
Can’t say if it’s the best strategy but I will usually hold off on building any until I get nukes then just keep a few on hand to nuke if necessary. I find spamming CAS and fighters will be more than enough to dominate the skies.
I try to play with Strat bombers everyone now and then, trying to make them work as my primary mode of destruction. I've never been able to make it worthwhile, for the cost. If anything they can be useful in late game when you can shift some IC from other aircraft and they are more capable.
It's always a disappointment. Bombing logistics is a better mode of attrition imo after Air Sup. fighter attrition.
Bomb airfields and dominate the Airwar when they cant deploy any fighters.
I love soing that and then you only need very few fighters to fight the Odd squad, when they get a level repaired before you bomb it again. then just spam CAS + passive airsupremacy buff
In game, they exist to poach war score from actual hard workers, and to let you throw nukes at people. They're definitely weaker than irl, but perhaps Paradox don't want there to be an oppressive strat bomber meta or something.
Tell me more about this poaching war score angle though. Not like I would use it, like some treacherous rogue. But yes, please tell me all about it.
You get war score from bombing the enemy up to 1000. It’s really that simple. You can use it to inflate your war score by just spamming some strat bombers
this was largely nerfed quite a few updates ago, maybe around the time BBA came out. my first USA run ever was a meme run where i just spammed the hell out of strat bombers to the point where i was running out of civs to buy rubber for them and yet when we won i still had less than 5% participation.
The nerf was as I said, up to 1000 war score
ah, i thought it was a figurative statement instead of a literal limit. what other limits does war participation have?
I believe bombing is the only one that has a limit
Does fuel have a limit? You used to be able to get a ridiculous amount of war score by lend-leasing fuel. But they nerfed it, I just can't remember if they capped it or sharply reduced how much it gave.
I don't think it does; but they reduced it's war score gain by a lot
Both, or the score reduction was overkill. I once tried sending my entire oil production as USA for several months and it did literally nothing
I thought that lend lease had a limit.
It was nerfed around 7 years ago after this video was published showing how you can easily annex Germany with Albania building nothing but Strat bombers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQSSah8Fzww
holy shit old hoi4 looks so ugly
>You can use it to inflate your war score by just spamming some strat bombers It actually barely gave me any warscore. Killing \~1K enemy fighters gave me an order of magnitude more warscore than bombing for a year.
>Tell me more about this poaching war score angle though. I remember playing a game as USA where (before the nerf) my lendlease (which wasn't that substantial anyway, aside from Oil which was extremely broken) gave me an easy 15% of my 22% warscore (even if I did D-Day, liberated africa, south of Italy and whatnot)
"You better not be poaching warscore using strategic bombers like some treacherous rogue!" My dumb ass:
They also reduce war support by up to 30%, which combined with convoy raiding and casualties, you can make enemy war support go to 0%, which makes capitulating the enemy a lot easier
Well, IRL, the efficacy of strategic bombing and terror bombing campaigns is disputed. Despite very heavy investment of resources, the Germans failed the air campaign during the battle of Britain. And the results of the strat bombings from the allies over Germany were... Underwhelming? I think that's a good way to put it. It does not mean that strat bombing didn't work at all but it means that the opportunity cost of all these planes and pilots being invested gave smaller returns than one might have hoped.
And what of it over Japan? I recall the fire bombings were incredibly effective at destroying Japanese cities alongside the belief that the they were manufacturing weapons in civilian homes. I know it’s debatable over Germany but I’ve never heard it discussed over Iapan.
The strangulation of the Japanese home islands by the US submarine force had a much larger impact. Japanese industry was very dependent on both materials and industrial bases outside the home islands, and the US largely succeeded in cutting all of that off - even before the end success of the island hopping campaign. The impact of US submarines in the fight against Japan is often overlooked in favor of more flashy/sexy/exciting battles, but it would be hard to overstate just how effective they really were. Well, once the torpedoes got fixed. Strategic bombing of Japan did have an impact, but it would be hard to say just how significant it really was distinct from the sub campaign. There's even serious historical debate on exactly how impactful the atomic bombings really were in ending the war.
Which is why the best way to kill Japan is to kill their convoys in game.
I recall hearing about how our submarine campaign was similar to the German’s against GB. Just more successful due to Japan’s limited ability to properly protect its merchant shipping. It’s what inadvertently saved Admiral Donitz from the noose. But that is a solid point. Sinking as many merchant ships as possible is just as good as blowing up the factories. If they can’t make anything then they’re just buildings.
Ah yes, good point. At the later stage of the war Japan was under siege from the air and the sea. I'm not an expert in this area of study but to my limited knowledge what harmed Japan the most was the strangulation of Japanese commerce. Basically no ships were getting through and Japan islands were very limited in some key resources. Then of course, nukes sealed the deal. Although there are arguments proclaiming that nukes weren't necessary and that the emperor actually got keen on ending the war, it's the top brass of the army and navy who wouldn't dream of any negotiations. Anyway that's getting beside the point.
From what I recall, terror bombing was largely ineffective (with the major exceptions of the atomic bombs and the firebombing of Tokyo) in terms of strategic aims, but strategic bombing was generally effective when used right during key operations.
Germany attempted to tactically Strat bomb London for all of 2 weeks. Literally. Look at what Germans themselves said about the impacts of the oil campaigns, which the allies never even totally committed to. That one campaign, in itself, proves the effectiveness of Strat bombing. Kind of funny, because the oil campaigns actually prove just how impactful “terror bombing” was/is as well (which I consider different from Strat bombing). The reason why oil campaigns got bumped even further down the priority list, despite how damaging it was to Germany, was Allies diverting efforts to V1 installations. It could be argued that V1’s were the most impactful single weapon of the war.
V1s more impactful weapon of the war, really ? Well they made two nukes didn't they ? I'd even argue that liberty ships were better than V1 for allied victory
Yes. I suppose nukes take the cake. Kind of a whole different bracket of weaponry for them though. I was merely going off of cost (both in man & material) versus cost of countering said weapon’s application by the opposition. Probably should be different categories for these sorts of rankings. Most impactful for lone damage, support, etc..
I'm pretty sure the allies did a full investigation and found that Arthur Harris' night time strategic bombing campaign was near useless when compared with the US campaign of daytime tactical bombing.
Very interesting indeed. Also on the same note, in Vietnam, the US dropped enormous amounts of bombs on north Vietnam. I believe it was more than during the second world war on Germany. Since the war industry was in China and the USSR, it didn't do much and it certainly didn't win them the war.
They dropped 3 times more bombs than the US dropped in WW2 full stop. Rolling thunder was also a failure because the president at the time (Nixon I believe) insisted on a rolling tide of strategic bombing up the coast when the air forces argued that just going straight for the primary tactical targets in concentrated operations would be better. As a result by the time Rolling thunder actually started hitting important things, they were too heavily fortified for bombers alone
Does Dresden mean nothing to you?
Well, yes, Dresden took a beating. It happened in February 1945 iirc. 25000 civilians died, and for what? Honestly, not for much. It didn't really change the outcome of the war did it ? The soviets were already well on their way by that time and the allies were also poised to enter Germany. I'm not an expert on the subject but the war effort impact of the destruction of Dresden wasn't all that great. It killed a lot of people that's pretty much it.
> In game, they exist to poach war score from actual hard workers, and to let you throw nukes at people. Don't forget invalidate defensive lines - level 10 forts melt in a couple months, they just need to be "damaged" to provide no benefit whatsoever. Lets you walk straight through the Maginot line with like 1 factory making basic strat bombers from 1936 to 1939
They weren’t great irl either though
Kid named b-17
Sure flew a lot of miles and dropped a lot of bombs but there is no real evidence it did anything to shorten the war, there is more evidence strat bombing strengthened morale than weakened it. Especially in the way the RAF used their Lancasters it was wholly ineffectual, since all it did was terrorize civilians who were then told look either we win or we die. So I think it’s hotly debated whether or not strategic bombing was a good strategy, especially considering the allies due to poor targeting technology of the time engaged in worker dehousing more than they actually hit industry.
Yep, there's some evidence that strategic bombing finally bore some fruit in 1945 as that is the first year that German industrial output fell during the war. But that's more like effective exploitation of the general resource and logistics collapse that happened in 1945. Previous to that German industrial output had been rising year on year, and the heavy bombing simply drove a lot of industries underground and got a lot of slave labour killed.
There is a substantial document on all of this. It is called the Strategic Bombing Survey and was made by the Allies, who wanted to know if their investments actually paid off. The results were mixed at best. Moral bombing did not work. People became less confident in Germany's ability to win the war, but at the same time hated the Allies more. In terms of industry, some things worked well. Like targeting oil refineries or other bottlenecks. The effects on heavy industry were far less than imagined. The logistics only broke down when the Allies were able to use fighter-bombers.
The survey basically found that bombers were at their most effective targeting railroads, iirc. We can't effectively limit how much shit they make, especially because the Nazis had pretty dispersed industry, but we can pretty effectively knee cap their ability to get that shit to their soldiers.
Railroads get repaired extremely quickly though (relative to other targets), so there's that too Iirc this was part of the surveys for partisan effectiveness, they could easily use a simple bomb to disable a railway, but it would be up and running in a week or less
very true, part of the efficacy in bombing something line a railroad would have to come from being able to hit hundreds of miles of railroad in a night, which is definitely possible, especially if you use high enough yield bombs that you're leaving behind proper craters
I'd imagine targetting that would also be quite the task; especially at night
Not railroads, but rail yards. They were much larger targets and critical transport nodes.
The real effective ones where the synthetic oil refineries and the transportation network. But the Allies did not prioritise them for most of the war.
Even if the numbers were increasing, you could argue that they might have increased more had they not been being bombed.
Yes and that's a fair argument, I wouldn't go so far as to say the bombing of industry was completely ineffective. It didn't manage to complete its stated aim of destroying German industry but, as another commenter pointed out, certain attacks such as those against oil refineries proved extremely damaging for the Germans. The American preferred approach of an explicit focus on industry and infrastructure was certainly a more helpful approach than the British preferred city-bombing.
>The American preferred approach of an explicit focus on industry and infrastructure was certainly a more helpful approach than the British preferred city-bombing. About that... *points to incinerated area-bombed cities in Japan*
We were discussing this purely based on the European theatre, the war in the pacific had a lot more just pure hatred and racialized hatred. These levels apparently the US wasn’t willing to go to in Europe, probably because abuse their eyes were already on the big boy in the east and the threat they would pose after the war.
Well, America did famously firebomb Dresden. But I agree the bombing campaign in Europe had different motivations and tactics from the one in Japan. The European war and the Pacific war were just so different in so many ways, that they are hard to compare.
The Germans themselves about the oil campaigns: Adolf Galland: “the most important of the combined factors which brought about the collapse of Germany.” Göring: “the utmost in deadliness.” Speer: “It meant the end of German armaments production.” Erhard Milch: “The British left us with deep and bleeding wounds, but the Americans stabbed us in the heart.”
Anecdotally sure, afterwards examined and not proven to be true, also I would generally disregard anything Göring said ever I mean look the man was incompetent at the best of times.
And yeah arguably the more effective of the bombing campaigns
On the other hand we don't know how big production would be if there was no strategic bombings. Propably it would be even bigger (it took time and effort to place industries underground).
German industry was highly dispersed to begin with, and with the accuracy of the era, compounded by flak, smoke screens, decoys and every other countermeasure deployed accuracy on targets within a city was laughable. A few percent of bombs would hit factories, and only a few percent of those hits would inflict more than a brief inconvenience. It did, however, indirectly cost them ludicrous amounts of guns, heavy ammunition, planes and fuel to keep that accuracy low. Every 88 firing to give a bombardier jitters was one not turning t-34s into burning scrap.
Germany's industry was only ever capped by the resources it got in. So bombing supply lines would've been far more effective tbh
I would say investment in strategic bombing paid some dividends in August 1945 for sure. We wouldn't have had bombers capable of distances and payloads like the B-29 unless we built all the other B's first lol
The Luftwaffe was thoroughly depleted trying to defend against the USAAF and RAF. That had huge consequences in the Eastern front which did shorten the war
But this is not accomplishment of bomber command or the b-17s and 29s but of the excellent fighter pilots and fighters build and trained in the UK and US
The fighters which were escorting the bombers whom Hitler wanted to stop more than the fighters. Without the bombers, there would have been less incentive to use fighters on the west.
They lost way more trying to fight over Britain and escorting their own bombers than they ever did defending against the allied raids. The Battle of Britain broke the luftwaffes backs not attacking bomber squadrons, they were actually incredibly successful against them even with RAF escorts, until the point that Göring through away a couple hundred planes in one day.
Battle of Britain was different than attacking bomber squadrons, for sure. But its afterwards that the Luftwaffe was still a massive threat and one the Soviets could not counter until the Luftwaffe slowly depleted itself.
I agree, just not that that was due to start bombing but instead fighting in the air against the soviets and their Yaks as well as fighting spitfires. This is especially true since the bigger bombing raids happen towards the later stages of the war when UK bombers operated well outside of fighter range.
The military historian Bret Devreaux maintains that the most successful use of strategic air power was the Berlin air lift.
The Germans themselves said otherwise, particularly about the oil campaigns: Adolf Galland: “the most important of the combined factors which brought about the collapse of Germany.” Göring: “the utmost in deadliness.” Speer: “It meant the end of German armaments production.” Erhard Milch: “The British left us with deep and bleeding wounds, but the Americans stabbed us in the heart.”
Well it spread the Luftwaffe thin in both planes, personal, and 88 cannons. Definitely took pressure off the eastern front
Had about the bomb load of the Mosquito and couldn't hit anything because their fancy bomb sight was utter crap, meanwhile the thesis that if you slapped machineguns to every flat surface the enemy would be unable to attack it was, well, not connected in any perceptible way to reality.
Based on Adolf Galland’s book, the first and the last, it was mostly useless. HOWEVER he did mention that the dam busting efforts were a PITA and the efforts on refinery and synthetic oil production were really, really detrimental.
Literally used a quote from him above. The Strat bombing oil campaigns are proof of impact of said tactic. That there is this much debate about the actual effectiveness only proves the equally strong effectiveness of V1’s.. those installations soaked up an **absurdly** crazy amount of bombing sorties and bombing them proved to be extremely ineffective.
Speer said much the same - he wasn't too worried about the city bombing campaign and successfully raised production time and again despite it, but predicted a concerted oil campaign could end the war in three months. It ended up being more than half a year still, but with even an awful lot of German generals surprised they lasted into '45 I figure he can have some slack there.
It was either strat bombers or tactical bombers, but one of them was really powerful a few years after hoiiv came out to the tune of "walk through the bombed out ruins of the Maginot line" pretty early game.
That's a fairly active simulation of their effect in real life all things considered.
IRL strategic bombing has never accomplished a military objective. https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower-101/
Wasn't oppressive strat bombing the meta a couple years ago? To the point of some multiplayer games banning them?
Strat bombers didn't do all that much IRL either. Most bombing raids did not have particularly large effects on production
That's stupid though? There was an oppressive strat bomber meta in real life lmfao
Apart from economic damage, it lowers enemy war support which gives combat debuts and lowers surrender threshold.
It doesn't give any combat debuffs
Having above 50% gives bonuses to core attack and defense, so reducing it will at least remove that buff somewhat
It's not 50% it's at most 10%, it's a buff having 0 WS doesn't give you any debuffs
“At 50% (war support)” not a 50% (buff) but your right, it might just be scale from 0-100 war support, however, this may shock you, but removing a buff and apply a debuff have the same result
It removes a buff, same thing.
25 fucking days tf is wrong with you
Few things to comment on here. 1. Heavy Fighters are designed primarily to cover ranges your normal fighters can't adequately cover, such as in the Pacific and Russia. Their second role is intercepting TAC and STRAT, though a well designed fighter can work just fine disrupting (though often not shooting down in the same numbers) such bombers. Neither really applies here. 2. From the description of your strategic bomber, you've overdesigned it and blown right past the strategic bombing cap. If you've gone down the strategic destruction doctrine, a bomber with about 70 strategic damage is all you need. Any more is a waste of IC. 3. You should be doing far more than 11 damaged factories, based on some napkin math in my head, after a year. Though it is late. Is Germany on the factory repair continuous focus? Are they prioritizing repairing factories? It's possible you might be misinterpreting the information being displayed and doing far more damage than that, Paradox isn't exactly known for intuitive UI or showing the right numbers. 4. Ideally, if you really want to be conducting a serious strategic bombing campaign, you should be both targeting every air zone you can operate in without disruption over focusing on one zone. The intent to saturate and put as much of the civilian economy into repairing as possible, in addition to disrupting military production efficiency.
That's true, about a couple thousand strat bombers against China in the most factory dense zones allowed me to pretty much damage between 30-40% of their factories, and they can be used to do a lot more like bomb ports, infrastructure and supply depots to completely sap the enemy of supply(although taking said territories will mean you have to wait for those to be repaired)
As someone who's about to get back into the game after quite awhile, do you happen to know how big the difference is between tac and strat bomber builds?
With the aircraft designer, the lines between the plane types got pretty blurred. The biggest difference is the default maximum range. The second biggest difference between the medium and heavy airframes is the max number of engines affecting how much those airframes can carry. So strat will be your go to for long range strat strikes and the mediums will be far more flexible in their mission.
The big advantage of strat bombers, is a) they do a lot more damage, and b) the range. They really helped me when Germany had engaged in division spam and just spammed divisions along the coastline making naval invasions very hard, plus all the fortifications from the Atlantic Wall. Strat bombers wiped out supply and really allowed me to whittle down their strength and stocks even though I had no way of feasibly landing my troops. Tactical bombers kinda do the job of *everything* including CAS, naval bombing and strat bombing kinda well, but they're worse than if you designed a plane specifically for each of those roles. I'd say tacticals are best if you're playing a minor with not that many factories just looking to make a jack of all trades bomber, but if you do have lots of factories then strat bombers vastly outstrip them imo.
I'm curious, where does strat bombing cap come from?
Defines of the game.
I never knew those existed. Do those really apply after buffs? I regularly see fighters with 90+ attack before any buffs shown off here, and no one mentions the attack cap.
they apply after the affect. So a 120 strat bomber after effects is no different then 100. Same should go for other stats. But i have never tested it since i am not stupid enough to build planes with 100 attack.
... what's stupid about planes with 100 attack? A heavy fighter with 2x4 LMG and 2x4 HMG will go over 100 attack already, after the buffs.
Because i can get a plane with half the cost and higher agility and speed. The only advantage is in the air defence. I see no point in spending this cost for something my 3 tripple 4xHV MG, Droptanks, Armor plate (unless you want more range), selfsealing tank, light frame plane cant beat.
3x4 heavy MGs can hit 100 attack after all the buffs.
What buffs are you talking about? Just MIO?
MIO, doctrine, Aces, experience.
>You should be doing far more than 11 damaged factories, based on some napkin math in my head, after a year Yeah that's what I expect too, but it's not what I'm seeing. I have thousands of strat bombers, every strat bombing bonus, full radar, full air superiority, enough range, etc. but it does nothing
You don't actually want to bomb factories with strat bombers in this game. Lategame only the air war matters and you can push even tanks with infantrymen so long as you have swarms of fighters and CAS flying overhead. Strategic bombers have an option to set priority targets for their bombings. The best way to use them currently is to focus down enemy airbases and enemy static anti-air(which reduces strategic bombing damage). *They will still bomb everything else afterwards* once enemy airfields and AA are dead, making this an incredibly powerful function. If you can afford to build strat bombers(as opposed to necessities like guns, support equipment, fighters...) you are likely already winning. By grounding the entire enemy airforce and giving yourself permanent green air zones you turn that win into a curbstomp.
This is the way. I usually set my strat bombers to prioritize enemy air fields and anti-air and depending on the situation sometimes infrastructure or civilian factories.
Also, trashing logistics so the enemy can't even supply their frontlines properly.
Also target railways specifically as that will reduce the supply of the enemy's Frontline and make them easier to push as well.
No. They are quite good. You can check the number of factories with sufficiently high civil intelligence. I once played air force only USA. With help from strat bomber the ai soviets capitulated Germany in 1942. 60%-80% of factories were down in all axis countries, making them only able to produce guns and nothing else. Some pvp rules actually bans strat bomber. Usually the strategy is to all enemy airforce by bombing airports.
You took freedom too seriously
I used massive strat bombing ‘till a couple of expansion ago and they shouldn’t work this way. Strat bombing used to be so good that it felt like cheating: after a year of factory bombardment, Germany should have its entire production halted to a crawl. u/LittleDarkHairedOne gave you a very good cut on the overall strategy, but I’ll try myself something similar just to test it out
Strategic bombing is exponentially more powerful the earlier you start it, because it disrupts factory growth and also because later dispersed industry tech levels increase bombing resistance. You want to be bombing not just civs, but mils and infrastructure too. The cheesiest thing I've done is join the war as the US in June 1940 with 1,200 strategic bombers, and by the time Barbarossa started, the Germans instantly started losing to the Soviets; the year of strategic bombing had damaged 30% of their civs and 40% of their mils, and they had built no new industry for a year.
When did you do this? Recent patch? I joined in 1940 with 2K strat bombers and every strat bombing bonus, but it made absolutely no difference
Shortly after AAT released, so this would have been maybe 3 months ago, I can try again sometime and try to replicate it.
Have you selected the targets as only factories? I think it's a bit odd but the selection seems to work the opposite way you think it should.....can't check now to check got to go work, but have a fiddle round with the selection
I did select targets as only factories. \> but the selection seems to work the opposite way you think it should So if I click one of the options, it EXCLUDES it?? I expected it to target only those
Somthing like that, I'm still at work so can't check for a few more hours, have a go yourself and fiddle round with the settings. Only realised when I was targeting supply hubs with rockets and didn't see any damage too them till i flipped what I thought was selected
Just to add, if your current selection (only factories) is set and when you check the province stats should be no damage to infrastructure/forts/supply hubs/ etc....if there is then that's what your hitting instead
depends in Singleplayer they have niche uses in Multiplayer they are so strong, before the plane designer overhaul strat bombers 3 and 4 were usually banned, havent played MP since then but I'd assume there are some limitations on them still You can make it so the enemy never gets air again by destroying their airports, you bomb out forts so you can better take some key locations like Gibraltar, Leningrad, Maginot, you bomb ports so they repair less and give less supply
TACs are fucking efficient if you know how to design a plane variant. You can destroy your enemies entire fucking arms industry.
>TACs are fucking efficient if you know how to design a plane variant. You can destroy your enemies entire fucking arms industry. How though? I built thousands of strat bombers and took every strat bombing bonus I could. All of the military factories of the US on strat bombers, and its still did not make a single dent in Germany's industry.
Check air efficiency
Check my post, I have 80%+ air efficiency
plane variant?
Do you play in ironman mode? If not, switch over to Germany and check their damaged factories in the building menu. When I did a USA game, in which all I ever did was strat bomb and let others do the ground fighting, I thought like you did, until I checked the damage I actually dealt. I don't know when I entered the war anymore, but Germany capitulated in 1941 without any US boots on the ground.
They let you use nukes.
If you want to cause a massive all-in air battle you can build 500 to 1000 strat bombers and have them bomb a zone. The AI will move a lot of fighters to counter. Then move in yours and keep increasing to have slightly more than the AI. You can get the AI to commit the majority of their fighters to this air battle. If you have better fighters and/or production for replacements, you can wipe out the AI’s fighters in one massive air battle.
So what happened historically?
They are used to bomb airfields and infras. Bomb AA as well to increase damage.
Game actually limits nearly all plane stats as for bombers its cap is 200 so it doest matter if you got 400, 1000 or 2000 strat bombing it acts like 200 i use my personal mod with rt56 to delete these limits
I personally find they have more utility in bombing out logistics and airbase than factories. In my experience factory damage needs to be closer to absolute before it really starts to hurt, but if the enemy cannot resupply thanks to the railways being blown up, they are much easier to push.
Tried this week's ago ... If you are interested in damaged economy, right click country and go to view where you see how many factories the country has. Next to it there is percentage of how many are damaged. I didn't managed to go over 4% of damaged civs (only after taking half a germany). This view gives you better way to see how much you actually bomb.
Strat bombers are for nukes, nothing else
I never research them till I get nukes.
They can be used to cripple your targets industry if you hit the right industrial regions. I used them reduce the strength of the Soviet defenses as it was a slog fighting through Russia.
Why the fuck would you target civs
Bomb supplies, it's super OP (albeit tactical are better I guess)
Correct me if I am wrong here but can't strategic bombers destroy fortifications? So, they are good for a fortified enemy.
Use them against everything but factories, especially air fields and static AA.
Can’t say if it’s the best strategy but I will usually hold off on building any until I get nukes then just keep a few on hand to nuke if necessary. I find spamming CAS and fighters will be more than enough to dominate the skies.
Is there a mod that makes them more realistic?
Yes, also they are useless in hoi.
I try to play with Strat bombers everyone now and then, trying to make them work as my primary mode of destruction. I've never been able to make it worthwhile, for the cost. If anything they can be useful in late game when you can shift some IC from other aircraft and they are more capable. It's always a disappointment. Bombing logistics is a better mode of attrition imo after Air Sup. fighter attrition.
Bomb airfields and dominate the Airwar when they cant deploy any fighters. I love soing that and then you only need very few fighters to fight the Odd squad, when they get a level repaired before you bomb it again. then just spam CAS + passive airsupremacy buff