Precision Bombing

[Lucarse]

Another annoying question,...
Under patch 1.29 what is the behavior of precision Bombing?.
I have the vanilla version so of course the bug in this prevents these strikes.

Does the strike allow you to target specific buildings (usefull if you want to destroy the barracks or coastal fortress?) or is it random if so how is this a precision strike??

Please explain ???.

[spy14]

It's a ramdomly targeted building. Or civilians if no buildings are left. Kinda semi-precision then. What gets me about it is that you get Stealth aircraft many turns before precision weapons...

[Lucarse]

I find this annoying, i can see the real life breifing....

'Now B2 pilots we have this little invasion planned and we really want you to take out the barracks but any building will do..especially the library..they'll have nothing to read!'.

hmmmmm

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Lucarse
I find this annoying, i can see the real life breifing....

'Now B2 pilots we have this little invasion planned and we really want you to take out the barracks but any building will do..especially the library..they'll have nothing to read!'.

hmmmmm

I think when you select a city for PB, a list should appear giving you a list of targets to pick. Factories, Harbors, and Airports would be prime targets.

[Lucarse]

exactly!

[Lucarse]

Thrawn who is your new avatar i heard it came from a US tv show???

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by spy14
... What gets me about it is that you get Stealth aircraft many turns before precision weapons...

Well, you COULD get precision weapons first, if you went out of your way to do so ...

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Lucarse
Thrawn who is your new avatar i heard it came from a US tv show???

It's from MST3K, the Prince of Space episode.



Yes, a list of buildings/units would really make PB very powerful. If they did that... and unlock the 8 tile distance in the editor I would start building planes.

[Chemical Ollie]

Precision bombings suck.

If you bomb a city you normally would like to achieve some goals, with this order of priority:

1) Reduce HP on defending units
2) Kill population to prevent cultural flipping and reduce metropolis defence bonus
3) Destroying improvements is not on this list, except for some rare occations

Precision bombings do things in exactly the wrong order.

I don't know if anything is changed in 1.29 but this was how it worked in the last patch before that.

[reefer addict]

i used it well in my last game, i took central america from the aztec but didnt have the units to keep grabing there cities, so i p-bombed the ones near my new cities on the border and took all his close cities down to one population point and blew up everything that was producing culture. i havent had any problems with culture flipping in the modern times due to this style of containment, and my enemies are not producing very much near the front.

[Thrawn05]

I find bombing period bad. I don't build planes and carriers because I can send all those bombers in and all of them fail. HOW DO YOU FAIL BUSTING UP A ROAD!

Can someone in the Real-Life department tell me a time in WW2 were a bomber or fighter FAILED to bust up a rail road!

[vmxa1]

I do not mind if bombs fail to go off once in a great while and if they fail to hit the target more frequently, but not to the level they do now. They are more a pain than anything, but I will make a few. They are are to eventually wreck improvements.

[Fitz]

Thrawn, go read Catch-22. At one point they bomb the wrong village.

[Akaoz]

Originally posted by Thrawn05 Can someone in the Real-Life department tell me a time in WW2 were a bomber or fighter FAILED to bust up a rail road!

*cocks an eyebrow*

That depends. If the allies needed a piece of rail blown op in northern France around June '44, they had enough planes to blow it away.

But, around that time they had problems getting the bombs to hit within miles of their targets. That was with American daylight bombing. With the British night raids it was even worse. In general something less the 10% of bombs dropped landed within 3 miles of it's target.

In the modern era this has improved somewhat though.

-Alech

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Olaf Hårfagre
Precision bombings suck.

If you bomb a city you normally would like to achieve some goals, with this order of priority:

1) Reduce HP on defending units
2) Kill population to prevent cultural flipping and reduce metropolis defence bonus
3) Destroying improvements is not on this list, except for some rare occations

Precision bombings do things in exactly the wrong order.

I don't know if anything is changed in 1.29 but this was how it worked in the last patch before that.

Olaf, what you want to use are Cruise Missiles. They target only defending units.

If the tool called "Precision Bombing" does not suit your concept of it, then come up with a concept to suit the tool. It seems that PB is for causing ruin to the enemy's infrastructure, so use it in their backfield.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Akaoz


*cocks an eyebrow*

That depends. If the allies needed a piece of rail blown op in northern France around June '44, they had enough planes to blow it away.

But, around that time they had problems getting the bombs to hit within miles of their targets. That was with American daylight bombing. With the British night raids it was even worse. In general something less the 10% of bombs dropped landed within 3 miles of it's target.

In the modern era this has improved somewhat though.

-Alech

What about the fighters destroying the trains? Isn't that a way to bust rail roads, or at least cripple them?



vmxa1

I'm right with you. I'm going to try some things to fix this.

[Wormwood]

Originally posted by Akaoz


*cocks an eyebrow*

That depends. If the allies needed a piece of rail blown op in northern France around June '44, they had enough planes to blow it away.

But, around that time they had problems getting the bombs to hit within miles of their targets. That was with American daylight bombing. With the British night raids it was even worse. In general something less the 10% of bombs dropped landed within 3 miles of it's target.

In the modern era this has improved somewhat though.

-Alech

See, that's how I use bombers. En Masse. I know three bombers are not going to be able to do any serious damage, if any, but with 30 bombers I cna be reasonably certain that they will accomplish the task I set for them. BOmbers simply allow me to project a little bit of power deep into enemy territory, to get at those resources and important roadways that gorund units could only get to with heavy casualities.

[Wormwood]

Originally posted by Thrawn05


It's from MST3K, the Prince of Space episode.

OT question, which one is funnier, Prince of Space, or the Invasion of the Neptune Men?

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Wormwood


OT question, which one is funnier, Prince of Space, or the Invasion of the Neptune Men?

Deffinate OT.

I didn't see the later, so I woulnd't know.


Back on topic please, unless you want to find out was Mingapulco is like this time of year.



vmxa1: Try taking the Bombard Str and Rate of Fire values of all of the planes and 4x them. That seems to be a quick fix. Now I have a reason to build carriers.

[WarpStorm]

Actually, real life precision bombing is almost always destruction of buildings and infrastructure. It is not killing units. That's what conventional bombing is for. As far as missing, individual bombs and missiles have a concept called CEP for Circle Error Probable. This is the circle which you are 95% certain that 50% of bombs will fall within given a specific aimpoint. WW2 iron bombs had CEPs in the ballpark of 1000 meters. They destroyed stuff purely by dropping lots and lots of bombs.

[vmxa1]

30 bombers? Dam I can do a lot of damage with 30 MA, forget the bombers.

[Wormwood]

Originally posted by vmxa1
30 bombers? Dam I can do a lot of damage with 30 MA, forget the bombers.

Well, there is quite a period of time between bombers and MA. Once MA roll around, bombers are pretty much just used for the first few opening turns of an attack, to hit the deeper resources and lines of communiaction. I use bombers because it's a unit I can use to minimize casualties for my mobile and infantry divisions.

Also, sorry about the OT. I don't want to go to Mingapulco !

I might have to hang out with that charmon1 guy.

[vmxa1]

Ok, make it 30 Calvs.

[igloo_boy]

For me bombers are simply long range artillery. I often find my tanks outpace my field artillery, leaving them far behind and out of the action. Bombers have the range to strike in front of my armies and soften everything up.

Actually, real life precision bombing is almost always destruction of buildings and infrastructure. It is not killing units. That's what conventional bombing is for.

What is this noise? The Americans introduced a tactic called "tank plinking" in the Gulf War. Their 15Es and F117 flew over the Iraqi tank and artillery positions just after sunset. The metal tanks cooled off slower than the desert sand making them all but impossible to miss on FLIR (forward looking infra red). 500lb laser guided bombs produced cheap one-hit kills. Plink, plink, plink. I was common for a pair of 15Es (a total of 16 LGBs) to return to base with 12-13 kills.
(Not that there isnt a time and place to let the B52s go to work with their dumb bombs )

[Lucarse]

OK a lot happened while i was in bed last night so

1. Thrawn very very funny avatar apeals to me greatly..

2. Olaf the word is 'PRECISION' not 'CARPET BOMBING' if you take out a cities barracks they cannot build veteran units to defend cities and the defenders garrisoned in the city do not heal in one turn.

3. A pop up window would be 'PRECISION' and fab would justify the cost of an SB.

4. Bombers are good they soften up garrisons and in the field can reduce an enemy column to a 1 hp weakling, i had another en masse invasion from the AI and because i was expecting it i had my 3 carriers near by only 2 got through with any health left (i don't know how i manage to piss the AI off so much)

5. Historic Note (yawn) Once apon a time there was a rail bridge in france the allies sent 20 or so raids against the bridge, all failed so they made a new bomb just for the raid, the 'Grand Slam' this bomb was several thousand pounds of explosives and was soo big it ran the whole length of a Lanc's Bombbay and so fat they had to take the BBay doors off to fit it in. The lancs were fueled to the bare minimum to reduce take off weight. They took off, found the target and missed it, but it didn't matter as the bombs were so powerful they weakend the bridge so the next raid took it out..... sounds like the conventional B-25 bombers in CIV 3 ? yes.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I do not mind if bombs fail to go off once in a great while and if they fail to hit the target more frequently, but not to the level they do now. They are more a pain than anything, but I will make a few. They are are to eventually wreck improvements.

Exactly.
I'd like also to remind those who argue that bombers also miss targets in real life that a "bomber" fom civ3 is not a single, lousy bomber. It is an escadrille or something like this. A civ3 bomber is equivalent to 10 or 20 real life bombers, maybe 100, I don't know.
Now, when I attack with 10 civ3-planes, that means 200 real life planes that fail to destroy the damn road. Sooooo annoying

With artilleries is almost the same situation. If you want to weaken a city you need 30 or them. They are, however, very efficient against units in open-field battles.

Precision Bombing should destroy primarily baracks, airports, harbors, coastal fortresses, etc.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Tiberius
I'd like also to remind those who argue that bombers also miss targets in real life that a "bomber" fom civ3 is not a single, lousy bomber. It is an escadrille or something like this. A civ3 bomber is equivalent to 10 or 20 real life bombers, maybe 100, I don't know.
Now, when I attack with 10 civ3-planes, that means 200 real life planes that fail to destroy the damn road. Sooooo annoying

I'd like to remind those who argue that... (see the quoted post), that a "road" in Civ3 is actually not a single road, but rather a road network in an area of 10x10=100 square miles. To destroy it in such a way that it will no longer be usable, you need more than one successful hit (i.e. more than one bomber...).

If 10 Civ3 bombers (100 RL bombers) fail to destroy the road network in a given tile, then it is a pretty bad luck anyway, I guess... Four or less bombing raids usually do for me... on average, that is.

EDIT: spelling

[Tiberius]

Now I must go and shoot myself in my stupid head. Looks like my logic works only on 50%. That is, eastern european productivity

But still, 6 bombers (out of 10) failing to destroy a lousy road is very annoying.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Lucarse

2. Olaf the word is 'PRECISION' not 'CARPET BOMBING' if you take out a cities barracks they cannot build veteran units to defend cities and the defenders garrisoned in the city do not heal in one turn.

If I intend to conquer the city, I want as many improvements as possible still standing, especially marketplace and barracks. With a barracks, my units will heal faster after I have taken the city. If I could precision bomb the defenders to HP1, they would be easy meat and I would be able to take the city on the same turn, so that they never get benefit of their barracks. In those cases I want to raze the city, all improvements will be destroyed anyway, so why bother with precision strikes? Just let your bomber fleet turn the sky black and terraform the city into a gravel pit.

Precision bombing is a way to harass the enemy, but that won't win the war. It is only useful if you lack the ground units to conquer the enemy but have to do something to keep them out.

Cruise missiles are good for weakening defenders, but they have short range, can't be loaded onto ships and are expensive considering the fact that they can only be used once.

[Wormwood]

Originally posted by Lucarse
..... sounds like the conventional B-25 bombers in CIV 3 ? yes.

The bombers in Civ3 are b-17s, b-25s had only 2 engines.