@Auswanderersland:
Question regarding SBR, it has not come up before for us.
When sending bombers for SBR and the interceptor combat is concluded, are bombers required to choose a target to bomb or may they decline acting as “escorts” for the bombers that do decide to bomb.
Alpha 2 and Alpha 3 how does this apply.
Situation:
We want to send 15 bombers to bomb a MIC and it has 1 fighter in space, but we only want to use one bomber to bomb and let the other 14 bombers act as “escorts”.
Yeah, that’s not how it works.
Tactical Bombers do not act as “escorts”. Only fighters can be used as “escorts” Tactical Bombers can be taken as casualties to fire from interceptors, the same as Strategic Bombers can, and generally will be selected first, but that doesn’t make them “escorts” and it confuses forum readers when they’re called that. It is a known loophole that tactical bombers can shield strategic bombers in certain circumstances, but only fighters are used as “escorts”
Now that that’s clear, when interceptor combat is finished, tactical bombers (and strategic bombers) CANNOT choose to disengage. If you send tactical bombers on a strategic bombing mission, they MUST have a legal target to bomb (a naval base or air base MUST be in the territory, though you don’t need to declare which you’ll hit) and they MUST continue on after interceptor/escort/defensive fire to a naval or air base (selected at this point, and then the installation fires AA at the tactical bombers).