From the Wargamer's Forum:
http://www.wargamer.com/forums/tm.asp?m=...page=6&key=
"Yes, I've been fighting John Kincaid for several months (been a busy summer for both of us or we'd be done long ago). Works very well and we're having a lot of fun. Well, maybe I'm having more fun than John. We're 3 turns from the end I will win a decisive victory as the Bomber Command player. I got a good lead in technology early on as John focused on getting the He219 into operation. While I can sit back and contemplate my raid planning, playing the German requires a great deal of atttention and "fairly" quick thinking. Based on how I've witnessed John's improved fighter direction skill over time, I would highly recommend playing against the AI first as the Luftwaffe commander before taking on a PBEM game. It takes practice to be good at directing "real time" interception operations. Once the German get's behind, I can see the difficulty recovering lost ground.
The biggest problem for the German is identifying which are the Main Force raids. John is constantly chasing my Spoof Raids which is utterly pointless. The German needs a lead in doctrine to get this info.
John has finally come to see that the real way to hurt Bomber Command is to worry less about inflicting damage on incoming raids (weather and my own crews have a bigger impact on immediate bombing results) and just cause casualties. This he has been doing as of late - but too late to stop me from winning. It's similar to Doenitz's "Tonnage War". Down enough bombers and you have a big impact on future Bomber Command operations. Not only are the replacement planes a limitation, crew morale suffers, requiring more stand down time to get rested (and willing) enough to be effective. To sum up, perhaps the best German tactic may be to wait until the bombers are done bombing to determine the main force raids and then throw everything at them, rather than wasting sorties on raids which turn out to be spoofs. Only He219s can catch a Mossie, so assigning Me110, Ju88 or Do217 units to intercept them is totally useless.
As Bomber Harris I've worked out SOPs which determine when units rest (must have excellent morale), train (if lower than 75%) or stand down to repair (must have 20 planes to fly a mission). This makes organzing the units simple. I "boost" PFF units - they are valuable.
Phasing out the Stirling's and Wellington's is tricky - there are never enough Lanc replacements. Halifax losses are always somewhat lower, but there are even fewer of them. One thing I have plenty of is Mosquitos, which is only nice to a point. Sure, their loss rate is low, but so is their bomb load. It's all about getting max tonnage on target, so coverting non-PFF units to Mossies is a net loss.
Multiple raids are always better than single massive raids, not only because it confuses and dissipates German strength, but because it also limits the effect of bad "die rolls". Horrible to send a 1000 bombers in a single raid and because of single bad die roll to burn 75 acres when it should be more like 475 acres.
Weather can play havoc with raid planning. Isn't always what the weather boffins say it will be. But when they predict good bombing (moon and clouds are right) one has to think hard about going deep, ie Berlin. It's worth more towards victory. But don't bother when the conditions are not good, the casualties you take (and you will take them attacking Berlin - the FLAK alone is terrible) will not outway the acreage burned.
RAF Night Fighters are neat to have, but they are not decisive like the P-51 was to US daylight bombing. More German planes are lost to "operational" reasons than night fighters and bombers (although every little bit helps). "
and...
"I just finished a full (all historical) campaign yesterday playing as the RAF vs AI Germany and walked away with a major victory, would have had a decisive victory if not for a couple of botched raids right near the end, otherwise I held a decisive victory the entire way. I dumped out the Wellingtons within the first 2 turns.. they are worthless and too damned slow (lack of speed definitely equals more time in the kill zone). The Sterlings by the end of the campaign were nearly wiped out. The Lancasters and Halifaxes held up the brunt of my campaign and maintained at least 2 main raids as much as possible using 1000 tons or more (when feasible) of bombs and carefully timed the raids according to the weather, range (which determines the # Luft. fighter gauntlets), AAA, weather, and tech levels. (Nick was dead on.. if you launch only one raid and their "die roll" sucks your score will get hurt). The He219 is definitely lethal and you learn fast to hate the "Musik" guns on the night fighters as the bombers have no defense against them. I also kept the RAF Night Fighters at maximum capability, as Nick said, every little bit helps. Routing your bomber paths is also VERY important so as not to fly over Flak zones or to give the Luft. an easier time coordinating attacks on your bombers. I didnt try any "spoof" raids as I wanted to concentrate as many of my "command points" as possible for replacing losses and effectiveness levels of my bomber crews and night fighters. I did however keep up with the tech race and for the most part held a slight edge on most turns.
The AI does a good job of battle management and tactics. I sent over a long report to Jim with quite a few suggestions and interface ideas that I think would help even further with this excellent game engine. One great thing, I only came across 2 VERY minor bugs. 1) In one case the raid resolution phase continued past the landing of all raids (didnt hinder game play in any other way however) and 2) The Beufighters have replacements as Mosquitos instead of more Beufighters. Other then that I have found no other bugs. Not bad at all for a v1.0 release.
Like I have said before.. this game is terribly addictive and extremely well designed. Anyone sitting on the fence.. dont, just get it."
Archived Forums
Help
Calendar
Member List
Search
){kind=link}
