Why the Buff formation is the most unbalancing item in the game.

[Chalenge]

I already said I attack bombers all the time but just a little more information might come in handy. Last month I shot down 46 bombers (if you consider the Il2 a bomber... 35 if not) to one death (a B24 bombed me in the gv hangar). Squad mates have learned to rein me in if I see bombers because they are such easy meat I will attack them under any circumstances.

[Cthulhu]

It's easy to kill buff formations. Just need some good tactical planning. You say that day bombing raids were costly against the US, but do you think the German fighters came up on the B17 and B24's tail at 250mph? No. They would come in with good tactical planning. Get to the buff's high 2 or 10, and dive in with a lead angle so you sweep just barely out of his tail gun's range.

It really wasn't the fighters that made the 8th AF day raids so costly. It's a little known fact, but flak was far more effective against buffs during the war than fighters. By the end of May 1944, flak accounted for ten times as much damage as fighters. This in spite of the fact that the German's never developed proximity fuses for their AA rounds.

Reference: "Operations Analysis in the U.S. Army Eighth Air Force in World War II" By Charles W. McArthur

[RumbleB]

Bombers by themselves should be dead meat.  However if that were true here, no one would fly them.  Organized bomber missions are rare, and to make them viable they have to be able to compete on their own.  So in that respect I understand and accept it as necessary.

If CT is ever released though, this should be adressed.  Large buff groups in scenarios are hard enough to tackle but with a bunch of head hunting AI gunners it will be rediculous.  That is if CT ever comes out...

 

[Stoney]

Something no one has pointed out:  Buff-hunting would be more fruitful if there were no 2x fuel burn multiplier.  As things are, climbing up to 20k+ to search for bombers leaves you little fuel in a lot of the good bomber killing aircraft, when patience counts for everything.

P-47N with max gas and triple tanks will give you nigh 2 hours of flight time at approximately 25-30K feet.  Ta-152 with a drop tank will give you over an hour easily.

I used to fly dedicated bomber hunting missions in P-47N's.  If you don't care about your K/T, you can rack up some monster numbers.  Get to altitude in a position where you can defend a few strats and some strategically placed airfields.  Climb away from the fight, and then hover along your patrol track at 25-30K.  Open up the Clipboard map and search for Dar Bar a couple of sectors behind the fight.  Since you're above 25K, the P-47 can cover a sector in 3-4 minutes at approx 400 TAS.  That gives you a 150mph+ overtake speed even if you're in trail of them, meaning you will catch them from a full sector behind in 10 minutes.

I'll caveat this by saying that most people don't have the patience, at least at the time, to properly set up and defend against bombers.  It takes dedicated anti-bomber support, especially if there's a furball around the field at 5,000 feet and below, and a formation scoots in at 18K.  No one should ever have the expectation that anyone within the radar ring of a base is going to be able to intercept before the ordnance release point.  You have to pick them up early--but if you do pick them up with a bit of altitude and speed, they are dead meat everytime, even in big formations.

One night, myself and two squaddies landed 15 kills out of a group of around a dozen formations of B-24's (36 planes or so) in a tight formation.  We saw them from far away on the map, climbed to altitude in P-47D40's and had our way with them.

Unescorted bombers in AHII are simply targets.

[E25280]

I believe you just shot your self in the foot. By claiming to not have experience you have proven you really have not considered anything from the bombers side of things.

Ah, baloney. It shoots what these guys have say about the firepower available to a B-24 or B-17 being barely adequate out of the water when I shoot down 2 fighers and badly wound several more in one of the most poorly defended bombers in the game. And I'm a bad shot.

So, you are telling HiTech he is full of it?


Good luck with that.   

[BnZ]

So, you are telling HiTech he is full of it?


Good luck with that.   

Forgive my lack of enthusiasm for boot licking. For more damning evidence in that regard, check my sig.

[CAP1]

I already said I attack bombers all the time but just a little more information might come in handy. Last month I shot down 46 bombers (if you consider the Il2 a bomber... 35 if not) to one death (a B24 bombed me in the gv hangar). Squad mates have learned to rein me in if I see bombers because they are such easy meat I will attack them under any circumstances.

they're easy for YOU. remember though, what is easy for you is not necessarily easy for someone else.

you guys that find it easy can share tips? or films to help those of us that don't find it easy?
 i still attakc em, but don't have a great track record agianst em.

<<S>>

[BaldEagl]

you guys that find it easy can share tips?

I already did... but don't listen to me... I want them all to myself.

[Chalenge]

they're easy for YOU. remember though, what is easy for you is not necessarily easy for someone else.

you guys that find it easy can share tips? or films to help those of us that don't find it easy?
 i still attakc em, but don't have a great track record agianst em.

<<S>>

I have posted films before and they should still be on youtube. I know they are not the best quality there but until I find a codec that saves to a high quality format and works with Vista (still waiting on DivX) Im stuck to create anything better.

[CAP1]

I already did... but don't listen to me... I want them all to myself.

i'll be going back and reading your posts more closely.....yours are generally very informative, and well stated.

[CAP1]

I have posted films before and they should still be on youtube. I know they are not the best quality there but until I find a codec that saves to a high quality format and works with Vista (still waiting on DivX) Im stuck to create anything better.

oooo......somehow i missed that before....i had no clue you had some there.......will look tomorrow at lunch break

[Chalenge]

I cut most of them down to a single pass thinking it was enough to see how it was done. I caught heat from a couple people because I didnt show the entire film. I can upload the entire film if you like (if its not TOO big) but I think you can get the idea from one clip. The idea is to setup so you have enough speed to make it very difficult for the bomber to track you at all. You also want to give him the impression he can shoot you from the upper turret while pointing to the front of the bomber but you will actually attack from slightly to the rear and moving VERY fast so the upper turret is unable to turn back to a point where you can be fired at. All of the bombers return fire will be behind you if you do it right.

This film is from an attack I made on two rook B26 formations with a P51D. I had just dropped the ord at the base they launched from and I wanted to end their chances of hitting our field. I took my time having already been hit by ack at their field I didnt want to take even a single ping (and we all know how hard a B26 can hit you). The entire film is something over 19 minutes long and if I have the time I may convert it and post it too. This single pass clip is the only film I have saved at the moment.



And this is a more graphic representation (with an Me163) even though I dont feel like it is all that good in execution it did work and with the paths turned on you can see what I mean about the approach on the bombers.The first attack is a blatant HO of course but that is forgiveable in setting up the rest of the attacks. Also you should know on the last attack I am completely blacked out while firing.

[Furball]

Forgive my lack of enthusiasm for boot licking. For more damning evidence in that regard, check my sig.

The fact that you had to check logs to know that you got 2 kills is telling.  How do you know that they were not proxies?  Or golden bb before auger?

[BnZ]

The fact that you had to check logs to know that you got 2 kills is telling.  How do you know that they were not proxies?  Or golden bb before auger?

I've slept since then. All I remembered was pinging the crap out of stuff. Fact remains that people have been telling me how barely adequate the firepower on a buff formation is, how "fair" it is that they can check a little box and get two extra planes to help them, and how they need to be able to concentrate every gun of the formation on incoming fighters to stand a chance at all. Well, turns out, even the relatively lousy firepower of the Ju-88s is dangerous linked and in formation. If you can shoot in a wirbel, you can shoot in a bomber formation. You don't even have the vibration effect you get in a wirbel when shooting from the gunner positions, so your accuracy at 1000 or so yards tends to be a little better.

BTW, this was a situation where things were fubar because we never saw our escorts, and the opposition KNEW bombers would be coming in somewhere and had a week to adequately prepare defenses/designate some squads to specifically defend against buffs, and had hundreds of miles of territory in which to intercept the bombers. Under MA conditions, anyone with a little sense ups bombers in such a way that they hold the cards in surprise and initiative, every time. All these posts about "this is how I easily destroy buffs from an altitude advantage in a speed burner" ignore this fact. Upping a formation of buffs is the one thing an individual player can do to have an effect on moving all out of proportion to anything else he can do. Under conditions where a base is actually being defended, I'd say a high-altitude bomber attack by two people in buffs is more likely to gain you a base than a CV attack with a dozen participants.

[BnZ]

BTW, checked my k/d stats against B-24s for a few tours back.

104: 5/1

103: 7/0

102: 2/0

101: 8/0

So you see, this has nothing to do with whether or not I personally have trouble attacking buffs, as you can see, on the rare occasions I do attack buffs, I make a profit on doing so. I suspect the difference between me and the 40/1 boys on buffs is that I only attack the things when defense makes doing so mandatory, and then I attack to stop them from dropping their ordinace, whether or not I have time to set-up properly.