Ok, I caught on pretty quick to calibrating the bombsight and can drop a stick of 24 100lbs bombs from 10k over a city and draw a neat line across it. I get a nice strings of messages in the text buffer telling me that I have destroyed X number of structures, Y number of gun emplacements and so forth. I’ve experienced the magic moment when the guns from all three buffs and an enemy fighter all meet at the same point. That is all good.
But at the end of the mission, what have I done? I can’t tell for the life of me that I have made any difference at all in the battle raging far below*. Frankly I need a bit more information on what the results of my mission was in terms of the overall strat in order to keep my interest in level bombing up. From the latest round of 1.10 Bomber posts, I’m not alone in this.
Further I would argue that for the time I put into the effort, I have made no difference. Consider that 1.10 has the concept of “zone” targets that in theory allow bombing to interrupt the repair of fields. Obviously, if I want to make a “strategic” difference I should be bombing these aggressively. But here is the thing, who cares if you bomb it? To the overall battle, assuming you destroyed all of a refinery, all you have done is restrict the percentage of fuel available for a longer period. This might make the Yak and 109 drivers switch to a P51 for a bit, but that is about it. So far as I can tell, the only worthwhile target is the HQ in order to shut down the opponent radar.
So what to do? I’d like to see a number of changes. Using fuel as an example…
1) Change the fuel to be volume based rather than percentage based. When all is going well, everyone has available to them X gallons of fuel where X is the amount needed to fill the tanks on the largest vehicle of that type. (Fighter, bomber or GV.) In other words, everyone get 100%.
2) When the fuel refineries are bombed, the maximum number of gallons available drops commensurate to the percentage damage of the refinery system for that zone. So now, everyone upping from that zone has X-(refinery damage)=Y gallons available. This means the defenders in the zone now have to choose between putting their Y gallons in a Yak and topping the tank, or putting it in an LA-7 with a higher fuel burn rate and having a reduced range. (You already make this choice anytime that you pick a plane based on the fuel percentage available.)
3) Add supply lines from friendly zone strat targets to enemy bases so that as you capture enemy bases, it is your supply system that takes over. (After all, I just bombed their refinery for that zone right?)
4) Add some feed back text to the bomber that tells him by what percentage the fuel output of the enemy has changed due to his efforts.
So now, a bomber can up. Bomb a refinery and learn that he reduced the fuel output that the enemy has by a few percent. Bingo, a tangible reward.
An interesting twist on the above would be if the amount of fuel a country produced was based on the number refineries it controlled and if the total fuel output had to be divided amongst the fields. That would mean that a country with 10 fields and 1 refinery would have more available fuel that one with 100 fields but only 5 refineries. Not sure what I think of that, but it is an interesting thought.
* Yes I know, someone out there is about to respond, “But that is realistic, bomber crews didn’t have instant feed back as to what the accomplished!” Well that is true, they didn’t, but this is a game and concessions must be made for gameplay.
