0
Pros:
190A5.
3 lives helps net more kills.
Cons:
Too many targets for the amount of players and the fact that both sides must attack and defend. It makes it end up being an all-or-nothing approach for the battle plan which is not good.
Similar to the Kuban scenario, it played into the hands of "NOE attacks all the time" for the Allies, where they don't have to actually both escorting because the bombers are good enough to be on their own, and the opposition doesn't have enough players to both mount an attack and defend. I counted only one or two sorties in my 3 frames where the Allied bombers actually went in at alt and used escort.
Clouds were absolutely horrible. Way too dense and they were at all sorts of altitudes...something that doesn't really happen IRL. If the clouds functioned normally it might not have been such a big deal, but rather they function as a box, and even if you're on the edge of the box you can't see a damn thing.
I agree that this method does not really provide an accurate value of rating.
I have to chime in on this observation. The B26s can do pretty good with minimal escort. The B25s, however, are dead meat if they are found without escorts. We proved that a few times.
Personally, I despise NOE missions in scenarios, and we didn't do them the first 2 frames, for the most part. Primarily because we were attacking ground targets. Vs shipping, however, it was easy enough to take out the CA and CV from 15k.. but the destroyers.. no so much. We had to drop NOE to get to them.. often having to finish them off strafing. Since our only bombable targets were ships the final 2 frames, we were kinda limited in our options.
This scenario is tough for me to rank.. I'd probably say 3 or less. I am very close to recommending that the B25C, in it's current, defenseless, state not be used in future scenarios unless is is mandated to have close escort protection. It's not fun sitting there getting hammered by 109s and 190s with no way to defend yourself. ( yes, it has an upper turret, but seems that everybody attacking my ships knew where it covered and they did a good job avoiding the arc of fire ). Also the B25 drones are way to unresponsive to evasive maneuvers.. makes the frustration all the more.
I can strongly recommend to never have fleets being the only targets for these bombers.
Fortunately, I was blessed with very tolerant buff drivers for this event. Without them, .. well, let's just leave it as I wouldn't be a very happy camper.
