@cornwallis said in Can Tac Bombers Escort a Bombing Raid, but choose not to bomb?:
@panther but what if you send them in to bomb an air or Naval base, then they do participate in the dog fight?
Yes.
Strategic bombing the India factory
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Pretty much every time I run the Allies, my opponent insists on doing strategic bombing on the major IC in India. Is this really worth the risk? UK Pacific is likely to have enough money to build more than three units on precisely the first three turns of the game, and less than this with an early Japanese declaration of war.
Why do strat bombing to remove manufacturing capacity that will hardly ever be used on UK3 and beyond? You’re risking a 12 IPC bomber multiple times to keep maybe 2-3 units from being built over the course of several turns. If you lose even one bomber in this exercise you’ve basically erased all your gains from one AA shot.
You might say that to keep UK Pacific from producing even three units you need to shut down the factory, but honestly if you can’t handle UK Pacific producing a paltry three units (and realistically only two or one later in the game), you frankly should just give up playing Japan. Likewise, if your position is that UK Pacific is producing more than two units per turn after turn 4 you should again just give up playing Japan. (All my opinion, of course :))
Someone please explain to me, using small words that I can understand :-), why people insist on taking this unnecessary and ineffective risk.
Marsh
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Been thinking about this some more. Driving is good for this kind of thing apparently.
On UK1, the India factory can produce five units. This can’t be stopped by Japan.
On UK2, the India factory could protentially produce eight units IF on UK1 UK Pacific is at war with Japan, occupied Sumatra or Java, and has all its territories and consequently collects it’s NO on UK1. Realistically, six units is more likely unless Japan did a J1 attack, in which case UK Pacific realistically collected no more than 10 IPCs (making it three units, not five or six, produced at the India factory).
After UK2 depends on the status of war – with a J2 declaration, UK Pacific is collecting on the order of 10 IPCs or less, so again three units.
UK4 and beyond, assuming Japan did not wait til J4, UK Pacific is capable of producing two units per round ballpark.
If Japan plans to kill India on J5, strategic bombing basically can deprive India of about two units over multiple rounds of strategic bombing. During this time, there is around a 55% chance of loosing a 12 IPC bomber on J3/J4 to cause effectively 6 IPCs in lost unit production. The risk only gets worse strat bombing on J6 and beyond.
There is some value in the threat of strategic bombing, but frankly if Japan is making a play for India the risk of strat bombing at best equals the damage done over two rounds of strat bombing.
If not, I posit that if you’re running the Allies and someone strat bombs your India IC, you should only intercept if A) the damage from the strat bombing will cost you the opportunity to build any units at all or B) you outnumber the attackers. If you are running the Axis, there is some psychological advantage to be gained from strat bombing perhaps, but realistically it’s probably slightly better on average to not strat bomb at all IF you are planning to kill India.
Assuming that position is true, then the number of times when strat bombing India makes sense drops to when you are planning to take other victory cities than Calcutta. At that point, you might consider strat bombing to keep UK Pacific from getting “uppity” while you are off killing other VCs.
So I put it to you – is there value in strat bombing India that outweights the risk IF your plan as Japan is to kill India?
Marsh
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I didn’t do the math, but Japan gets so much leverage out of the bombers in early rounds, that I usually don’t consider using them for strategic bombing.
Paradoxall and although the existing bombers are super useful, there never seems to be enough money for Japan to buy new bombers…
I haven’t played many games against great players, but I’m into one with Me1945 right now. He went after India hard and didn’t do strategic bombing.
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One thing for me to consider Strat bombing the UK India factory is when UK P declares war. It’s the timing that matters, not the outcome which is inevitable. The delays it can cause helps other nations either in battle with Japan or potential hot war enemies of Japan.
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Marsh,
I think you’re right. That factory can fall to Japan, and with 6 or more damage, they have to do the repairs. J1 often involves trying to suffocate UK PAC income as quickly as possible, so they wont be building much. In G42, they start with even less money, so they only need to produce 1-3 units.
There are situations where as Japan, taking India becomes much more difficult (when help comes from Africa/ME/Anzac and the turtle is building in earnest. In those cases, you will need your strat bombers to destroy the stack, or the ships that come to help.
Viewed as a 1-1 trade, strat bombing isn’t a great deal. Especially when you only have 1-2 bombers (left), losing 1 more can’t help your cause. The time when a SBR is ripe is when you are facing an opponent with less money and power than you (US vs Japan or Ger vs Russia) and you are bombing the crap out of them right at the time they need to flood the board with fresh units.
If that’s the situation with India (tons of new units about to flood in) then bombing might be worth it to stop them. But incrementally bombing them 1-2 times doesn’t hinder the enemy much.
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My original calculations did not even consider that Japan has to repair the damage it causes. That extra cost means that over two rounds of strat bombing Japan is at around zero net-gain even if no strat bombers were lost in the process.
Marsh
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