Bombers

[Wushuki]

I realize that strategic bombing probably wasn't that well developed during WW1 and that they shouldn't play a large role in a WW1 game, but it seems that bombers in SC:WW1 are completely useless. Every country can only produce a single bomber, but there is 350 MPP of bomber research that you can do. Such a huge investment to improve a single unit is wasted.

On top of that an a bomber will do 2 damage (3-1) in the ideal circumstances, which would cause 9 MPP (one turn 6 MPP, 3 MPP on the next) in damage against a mine. However, there is a 25% chance the bomber takes a point of damage, which would cost 10 MPP to repair. On average then the gain of bombing is then 6.5 MPP in damage under ideal circumstances. But this is only achieved if you manage to get a bomber with 100% readiness, which is rarely ever the case. In practice, you'd probably destroy about as much of your enemy as you'd destroy of yourself, because when the bomber has 70% readiness it would do only 3 MPP in damage to an enemy mine and take 2.5 MPP in damage back. And that still excludes enemy interceptors.

Of course, you could use the bomber to attack regular units, but this will on average cost about 10 MPP, because it will damage your bomber and that is just not worth the 10% demoralization that it causes. So anything that you'd do with bombers will generally end up harming you more than your enemy. Even if this would be considered realistic by some, gameplay wise it is absurd as it will lead to no one ever producing or researching bombers. It is really not impossible to buff bombers a bit without having them play a huge role. Solutions might be:

1) Give them a 100% attack evasion rate, forcing enemies to use interceptors or dedicated AA units to shoot them down. The rationale would be that bombers fly too high for machine guns to shoot them down.

2) Reduce the amount of research levels and increase their effect. Two levels of research that increase the strategic attack of bombers by 2 points each would make investing in bomber technology a slightly more valid choice.

3) Increase their strategic attack value, demoralization value and/or de-entrenchment value.

4) Give some countries the ability to produce 2 units of bombers, this is necessary to make investing in research worthwhile.

Implementing some of the above changes will really not break the game in any way and will at least ensure that players will not just disband any bombers they might get to gain a tiny amount of MPP. On top of that it will not take more than a minute or so to make such a change for the next patch as no programming is required. Any responses are appreciated.

[Bill101]

Hi Wushuki

I've been thinking about this because while I can see what you're saying, I've also found them to be more useful than you have, though my use of them is mainly as German rather than with the Entente.

Admittedly they aren't useful without upgrades but I usually use them in conjunction with some Zeppelins and then we can really pummel a target unless it has good fighter protection or AA.

The necessity to have a few levels of upgrade to turn them into something decent does mean that we are very unlikely to see them develop into anything very powerful early in the war. But by the end they should have more potential as in real life.

Germany already has a build limit of two and perhaps the easiest and best solution might be to increase the build limits for some of the other nations too?

Bill

[Wushuki]

I see your point that in principle fully upgraded bombers are useful if you use them for strategic bombing. A fully upgraded bomber with 70% readiness would do 45 MPP in damage to an upgraded mine (15 + 12 + 9 + 6 + 3) and take roughly 4 MPP in damage back. Against a city it would be 15 MPP in damage and 4 MPP back. This excludes the industrial percentage of nations. So if a nation would have 200% industrial capacity it could do up to 86 MPP in damage per strike (45*2-4). Note that I assume here the chance of taking a point of damage when attacking a unit with 0 defense is 25%, I am not sure whether this is correct.

This is fairly much, although at this point you would have invested 950 MPP in getting your 2 units of bombers (350 for research, 2x 300 for upgraded bombers). That means you would have to get about 12 good strikes against an enemy mine (950 MPP / 86 MPP) to get your investment back. That should, with 2 bombers, be reasonably well possible.

So it is true that fully upgraded bombers have the potential to be useful and I agree that increasing the bomber limit could make the investment pay itself back. Of course, this will not happen until late game and it assumes that you have several mines nearby, and the enemy is not actively countering your strategy. Also because there seem to be so many better technology options available I'd still say some additional buff would be needed to make them a better choice.

That is my view on the matter though, feel free to decide differently.